The Secret to Writing Powerful Stories

Using examples from John Denver's conservation work, the Wildlife Concert, films like FernGully and Avatar, and themes embedded throughout Sasq'et, Max and Joe discuss the difference between storytelling and lecturing, message versus agenda, and why the most powerful stories invite audiences to care rather than tell them what to think.

The conversation also explores the neuroscience of storytelling, conservation themes hidden within Sasq'et, and why adapting the novel into a streaming series could bring its message to a much larger audience. 

If you're a writer, filmmaker, creative professional, conservationist, or simply someone who loves great stories, this episode offers insights into what makes stories resonate long after the final page or closing credits.

00:00 – Welcome back to Sasq'et the Story
00:45 – Can a novel become a streaming series?
01:15 – Why storytelling matters more than ever
02:00 – The conservation themes inside Sasq'et
02:45 – Lessons from John Denver and the Wildlife Concert
04:00 – Why conservation was central to John Denver's mission
06:00 – Authenticity versus preaching
09:00 – John Denver's gift as a storyteller
11:00 – Why music changes hearts better than politics
13:00 – Stories versus lectures
14:30 – The neuroscience of storytelling
15:00 – Message versus agenda in creative work
17:00 – When does subtext become propaganda?
18:00 – How editors help writers avoid preaching
19:00 – FernGully vs. Avatar: where is the line?
21:00 – Why The Wizard of Oz still works
23:00 – Leaving space for the audience
24:00 – Environmental themes hidden inside Sasq'et
25:00 – Conservation, ecology, and humanity's future
27:00 – Why Sasq'et belongs on screen
28:00 – Reaching audiences through streaming television
29:00 – What Max hopes readers feel after finishing the book
31:00 – Why great stories invite people to care
32:00 – The challenge of getting meaningful stories made
33:00 – How listeners can help the Road to Streaming journey
34:00 – Closing thoughts

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Creators and Guests

Host

Joe Woolworth

Story Engineer, Founder of Relevant Media Solutions & Podcast Cary.

Host

Maxim Langstaff

Writer, producer, and author| Grammy and Emmy nominated whose creative and editorial work has reached millions of people worldwide.

What is Sasq’et The Story - Road to Streaming?

What does it actually take to turn a novel into a streaming series?

Join Sasq'et author Maxim Langstaff, and host Joe Woolworth as they attempt something most writers only dream about: transforming an independently published novel into a streaming television series.

Each episode documents the real journey—the meetings, setbacks, wins, industry secrets, marketing experiments, networking opportunities, and unexpected lessons that move the project one step closer to the screen.

Along the way, Joe and Maxim sit down with producers, showrunners, authors, actors, agents, publicists, marketers, executives, and creators who have successfully navigated the entertainment industry. Every conversation is designed to answer one question:

What is the next step toward making Sasq'et a television series?

Whether you're a writer, filmmaker, entrepreneur, dreamer, or simply someone chasing a seemingly impossible goal, this show offers a front-row seat to the process.

No shortcuts. No guarantees. Just the real story of what happens when two creators decide to aim for Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount+, or wherever the journey leads.

One episode. One connection. One step closer.

2 - Sasq'et the Story
===

[00:00:00] Saskiyat is a book. Our goal is to make it into a television series. Join us as we document every step of the journey, every guest, every connection, every step closer. This is Saskiyat The Story: Road to Streaming. Here's your hosts, author Maxim Langstaff and producer Joe Lowther

Joe Woolworth: to Sasquatch the Story. This is the second episode of the show with the premise: can we turn the best-selling novel Sasquatch by Maxim Langstaff into a streaming series? We're gonna kinda just document as we go along the way. We're kinda starting from this point where we have an amazing story in a novel called Sasquatch written by Maxim Langstaff, and that's kind of our step one.

We have a a book trailer that's doing really well, almost a million views on YouTube, and our YouTube audience has grown up to about 2,000 people.

But today, what we wanted to talk about is something that every storyteller struggles with. It's how do you write about something that you care about [00:01:00] deeply without turning the audience away? You know when things feel preachy, when things feel like they're trying to tell you what to think, and it just turns people off.

Here's a couple quotes that I wanted to talk to f- talk through w- as we're setting up this topic. First from Robert McKee, the screenwriter. Um, "Story is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." Lisa Cron: "Story's not a luxury. It's how we make sense of the world." John Gottschall: "We are, as a species, addicted to story."

Maya Angelou said, "People will forget what you said. They'll forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made 'em feel." Paul Zak said, basically, after research, found that compelling narratives can stimulate oxytocin in your brain, so this is kinda like a brain science thing, that "stories can cause us to pay attention and engage emotionally are stories that move us to action." Sasquatch has a strong theme of conservation and wilderness and humanity's relationship with wilderness, [00:02:00] but Max never really set out to write a environmental manifesto. That's not really what the book is about, ~not the first time~ he kinda walked that line of that tension.

Before Sasquatch, Max worked alongside John Denver in the Wildlife Concert with a project created to support the efforts of the Wildlife Conservation Society that reached millions of viewers, made a bunch of money for the, for the Wildlife Conservation Society, and used the mechanisms of storytelling and television to do that.

. Here's the rundown of today's episode. One, we're gonna talk about lessons Max learned working with John Denver and The Wildlife Society.

Two, why stories beat lectures. Three, FernGully versus Avatar. Four, conservation in the book Sasqua. And five The Road to Streaming: What's Next section where we talk about what's our [00:03:00] next step. So let's jump in. The first segment. Welcome, Maxim. Let's talk about what we learned working with John Denver.

Max Langstaff: Well, that's a terrifying introduction. I want to start off with that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna cover all of this stuff. What was it like working with John Denver?

Joe Woolworth: What do you think that John Denver understood about conservation that many activists miss today?

'Cause I think there's a lot of stuff in that space, but there haven't been a lot of successful crowdfunding things that raise so much money. So what do you think John understood about conservation that a lot of people miss?

Max Langstaff: I think what, for John, , it was such a core part of his ethos, but I think that he recognized that conservation isn't sort of a topic over here or over there that we talk about.

You know, we talk about this or sports or that or different kind of subject matters like conservation. It's embedded. I mean, it's, it's the only topic on some level you could argue. Yeah. In the sense that the food we eat, the water we drink, um, the air we breathe, everything that allows us as human beings to be alive and to live, to do all the things that we love to do in life, [00:04:00] we're dependent upon the environment.

And John really got that, and he understood that we need to focus on that more and we need to have a greater respect for the world around us. Um, because he thinks that, he th- he thinks it's funny because for me, he's still alive. I mean, he really is. Um, his spirit is so powerful. Um, but y- and, and John was a very, very smart guy.

I mean, you know, he, he was heavily branded, you know, John Denver and, but that's very different from the artist and the human being., He was not a passive, um, sort of a passenger in life.

He, if he was passionate about something and believed strongly in something, then he engaged. And, um, you know, y- I, I wrote an, a, a, an article, a feature about John D- Denver years ago, sort of, I think the, the topic, the, the title was called Whatever Happened to John Denver? And because there was a period of time when he sort of disappeared from the landscape.

He hadn't had a hit song for a while. He was doing some other things. And then We Are the World came up and it, it was this huge thing. And We Are the World was quite wonderful what it was, but it was a one-time [00:05:00] event. You know, it was a one thing. It's easy to get superstars to come together for a day- Yeah

or for whatever. For John it was a lo- Well,

Joe Woolworth: not for me, but I've heard it's easy. I,

Max Langstaff: it was... Okay, there you go. Supposedly. But the bottom line is for John it wasn't, he didn't, you know, he didn't like this idea that you come do a, do something for a day or it's your passion for a week, you know, usually to promote, to promote you and to promote what you're doing or, you know, your managers is, is trying to promote something, um to help deliver record sales, et cetera.

But for John, it was way beyond that. It, it was his passionate and he wanted very much for people to come on board and to recognize our responsibilities and the joy in it. Yeah. For him, it was get up every day and be that guy, not just show up for a particular event. Sure.

Joe Woolworth: So a little bit more context.

We're talking about the Wildlife Concert with John Denver. There's tons of clips from it on YouTube. I think it's streaming on Amazon, if you wanna get a little bit more context. It was aired on PBS, right? It

Max Langstaff: w- it was aired on, um, A&E. A&E,

Joe Woolworth: okay.

Max Langstaff: And then PBS picked it up.

Joe Woolworth: Gotcha. Or there's [00:06:00] tons of individual songs broken down on YouTube under John Denver's channel- Right ... that you can kinda see from the concert. But I think as you were talking about John Denver being incredibly passionate about the environment, although I think nobody would describe his music- Or his, his approach to sharing what he's passionate about is overly preachy.

Why do you think that is?

Max Langstaff: Because it comes from a very authentic place for him.

Joe Woolworth: Mm.

Max Langstaff: Um, it's ... John, John wrote songs that were aspirational in the sense that he'd write a love song and it wasn't necessarily a reflection of his love life. Yeah. It was what he hoped for. It was what he dreamed of. It was what he hoped could be, you know?

Yeah. So there was always a quality of hope, and sort of there's a pathos and sadness to a lot of his music. It's not all just merry sunshine. And I think for him, um, some of his songs became very much almost like protest songs later in his career, protest songs about the environment. But I think his core was just [00:07:00] celebrate it.

You know, if you're a living, breathing human being, if you're not a slug or a rock, um, you're gonna get it. Just, just celebrate it. M- Bring it into people's consciousness. And I think one of the things that John did, um, aside from what he did musically, was that through his songs and through his lyrics and through his experience, because he actually lived the, the, the, the, sort of in the environment and, and, and in nature the way he, he talks about it, he was able to popularize a conservation ethic in this country, an ethos that had primarily stayed in academia or scientific circles.

For the first time, conservation became a popular thing, a popular topic, and that's to a large extent driv- was driven by John in the 1970s.

Joe Woolworth: Hm. So let's talk about a little bit behind the scenes. So you're, you remember there, you're, you're shooting it. It's it's on a ... What stage were you shooting it on?

Max Langstaff: We shot it in, at Sony Studios in New York.

Joe Woolworth: Okay.

Max Langstaff: And it's where they did all the Unplugs.

Joe Woolworth: Okay. All the MTV stuff.

Max Langstaff: Yeah, all

Joe Woolworth: the MTV stuff. So if you're thinking like '90s kid, I'm thinking on a- There you go ... right back to Nirvana. [00:08:00]

Max Langstaff: Nirvana.

Joe Woolworth: The Unplugged stage. That's

Max Langstaff: right. Mm.

Joe Woolworth: Smoking cigarettes.

Max Langstaff: Same place. Same

Joe Woolworth: place.

Skinny Dave Grohl. There you go. Yeah, so that's the stage. If you go watch it, you can ... It looks just like ... It's the same stage, same

Max Langstaff: set stage. Well, what's interesting, the reason we shot it there, and it was a very specific reason we did, because Sony at the time was, was, you know, had the be all and end all technology, and we were moving into a more advanced digital period.

And so, um, they had technical capabilities that other studios didn't have at the time. Hm. But most importantly, they had a capacity to do television as well as music. So you, you could record an album, a, like a full record album-

Joe Woolworth: Yeah ...

Max Langstaff: at the same time, you could film a television show.

Joe Woolworth: And that's

Max Langstaff: why there's- And most studios can't do that

Joe Woolworth: that's why there's a CD version- That's

Max Langstaff: right ...

Joe Woolworth: that you can buy. CDs.

Max Langstaff: CDs.

Joe Woolworth: Streaming version, I suppose, if you're, if you're a younger person. So let's, let's talk about-

Max Langstaff: And a DVD.

Joe Woolworth: And a DVD. There you

Max Langstaff: go.

Joe Woolworth: You can have all the

Max Langstaff: physical medias ... which, which when we did it, it was video. So you'd- VHS ... you'd get a video cassette, you know.

Uh-huh. It was pretty cool.

Joe Woolworth: So let's talk about John as a storyteller. What do you think he did differently as an artist [00:09:00] who stands on stage? That came across not as just telling people what they should believe, but I know you talked to me a little bit about his, his storytelling nature when recording that He'd tr-

Max Langstaff: he, he would turn a song around.

John was, would, would not be telling you, he'd be sharing him. So he'd be sharing his view, his perspective, what he believed. He's not telling you what to believe. So he'd just share how he feels and what it means to him. Mm. And you either get it or you don't. The thing about John, which was, he was an extraordinarily charismatic person, and I say that because you could be in Madison Square Garden at, at a John Denver concert, and you were absolutely convinced that he's singing just to you.

Joe Woolworth: Yeah.

Max Langstaff: Just to you. And he'd be on a stage, a big huge stage like that, a big giant venue with just himself and an acoustic guitar, and he could sustain that. Most artists can't do that. They've gotta have, you know, dancing bears and all kinds of- Yeah ... you know, goofy stuff and all kinds of lasers and s- I mean, you look at it [00:10:00] today in particular.

I mean, I think John Denver could've gone to the Super Bowl and done the halftime show with just his guitar. I mean, I don't know if you saw the last Super Bowl we had, and s- sometime in, in the middle of that thing, somebody started singing spontaneously Take Me Home, Country Roads. And if you watched the, the Super Bowl, the entire you know, people who were there for the Super Bowl, all in the stands, they're all singing Take Me Home, Country Roads.

It sort of dwarfed the halftime show in terms of audience participation, in terms of people feeling like, you know, when you hear a song like Take Me Home, Country Roads, you feel like somebody understands you. Mm. You're a little bit less alone. Mm. And John imbued that quality to other people rather than preaching to them, "Do this, do that."

He had his, he had his share of protest songs where he would say to people, "Come on, let's get it together," but yeah.

Joe Woolworth: Do you remember, do you ever remember any time during this process of working with John on this project that he talked about whether music was more effective than politics when it comes to changing hearts and minds?

[00:11:00] Did he ever say anything along those lines?

Max Langstaff: Yes, all, all the time. All the time. It's funny 'cause George Martin felt the same way, and w- we talked about it. I think musicians understand this to a large extent, and music artists, songwriters. Music is the only universal language. Mm. When you think about it, it's the only universal language, and it's unmediated.

You and I can make music even if we've never picked up an instrument in our lives. Everybody has access to it, and the only thing music requires is a little bit of time.

Take a song, again, like Take Me Home Country Roads, everybody loves it. I don't care if you're left wing, right wing, you're short, tall, fat, rich, poor, Black, white, red, woman, male, whatever, you can relate to that song. Yeah. And there's a universal quality to music that doesn't have to be explained. You were talking earlier about, you know, with today's show, about, you know, not wanting to come across like you're preaching.

You d- you're not preaching when you're music. The music, John used to say to me, you know, "What's a good song, John? How do you know you've written a good song?" And he said, "When it becomes yours."

Joe Woolworth: Yeah.

Max Langstaff: In other words, that's, that, he said, "That's my [00:12:00] job." S- And he, and, and, and s- so once the song become, if I listen to a song and I feel like it's becoming mine or, you know, I'm, I'm, it's a bridge of empathy of m- Right

this songwriter knows my experience, and therefore I'm not alone so much. That's, um, you're not preaching.

Joe Woolworth: Yeah.

Max Langstaff: It's, it's a, it's, it's me and the audience, the self-discovery. It's my song.

Joe Woolworth: Yeah, it makes me think of, um, I think it's Confucius, right? A man with a, a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.

It's, it's not preaching. You're just telling, "This is what happened to me." Right. You can't deny it. Right, right. You can't say it's not true. Right. You, I'm just telling you how I feel.

Max Langstaff: And the thing is that you can't go out and say, you know, if you're preaching, you go out there with some universal idea of like this or that, or this should be this way or that should be that way, and I want you to think this way.

That's not what an artist is supposed to do. Yeah. That's not their job. An artist can only speak from the particular, their particular worldview, their particular space, their particular whatever. And a- all artists in any f- art form, their job is [00:13:00] to create the universal from the particular. Yeah. But don't go for the, the universal.

Joe Woolworth: So you might be wondering why we started on this John Denver story, 'cause it's, it's setting up a premise here that I think is really important for storytelling, and it's gonna get us back to Sask at the book, as well as why we think it should be a streaming series. But, um, switching now, I wanna just hit on this idea of Lectures versus storytelling when it comes to effectiveness.

You know, this isn't what I want to talk about, but you can, you can certainly make a case that the educational system is still embracing lectures, and it might not be the most efficient way to help people learn. but we started talking a little bit in the beginning of the show about neuroscience, and I really think the way that our brains are wired are to receive stories, and so we can remember them much better, which means we can apply them to our lives or recall them much better than just rote information in a lecture.

Max Langstaff: when you're doing storytelling, storytelling, you're creating [00:14:00] shared belief.

Joe Woolworth: Mm.

Max Langstaff: When you're lecturing, you're talking at somebody.

Joe Woolworth: Yeah.

Max Langstaff: And you're telling

Joe Woolworth: them

Max Langstaff: how it is. I don't care what you think about this. I don't, I don't care. I don't

Joe Woolworth: care what you think

Max Langstaff: about it.

It, it's, I'm telling you something. I don't care what you think. I don't care how you feel.

Joe Woolworth: Yeah.

Max Langstaff: So it's, it's what Ma- your quote in the beginning of, of our, our session about Maya Angelou. If, you know, people forget what you say, that's a lecture, and they'll even forget what you do. Mm-hmm. But they'll never forget how you make them feel.

Yeah. And the operative word is how you make them feel. So it's, it's ... So if, if you and I are, are doing a sharing or it's a song or it's a book or something like that, what's important to the artist is that you feel, not that I convince you to feel what I feel. Yeah. That's the big difference.

Joe Woolworth: Let's talk to, to storytellers right now, people who love the art form of storytelling.

What do you think is the difference between a story having a message and a story having an agenda? 'Cause I think I've seen so many movies that end with that black screen, white font with where to donate and what the political views of the person is, and I'm like, "You just [00:15:00] ruined the whole movie."

Max Langstaff: Right, right.

Exactly, yeah. I, I got good news and bad news for you. Um, the, the bad news is that, um, storytelling as an art form is, is highly overrated in the sense that we're all storytellers. Human beings don't operate from facts. So if I sit here and try to tell you what it is or how it should be or what you should do, a lecture or something like that, I'm trying to imbue my belief system of what I think is a fact, and you should know that.

Yeah. As opposed to in storytelling, it's more about, um, a shared belief. Yeah. So I believe something, I care passionately about it, um, it, it affects me a certain way, and, um you, you communicate that. An artist's responsibility is to communicate, certainly a writer. You have to leave space, certainly for a writer.

This was some great learning that I, I got from a teacher of mine. You, y- you can't tell the person how to feel. They have... You have to leave space in your work- Yeah ... so that they can bring [00:16:00] themselves into it themselves.

Joe Woolworth: When do [00:17:00] you think a theme in a book, in your experience, in your belief, um, stops being subtext and s- subtext and starts being propaganda?

What's that line?

Max Langstaff: Well, the difference between fiction and nonfiction. There you go. There's, there's- ... from a book you could s- you could argue that because most nonfiction is, is somebody has a point of view, they have a, they want to get it across, and they want everyone to agree with them. Yeah. I mean, that's really what they want.

When you're writing fiction, it's, it's much more pure storytelling, which is I'm gonna tell a story, I'm gonna lay the story out, and, see how people react to it. You're never g- quite sure. The trick for me as a, as a writer is you... If I have something I wanna say, it's important to me to say it don't put it in the narrative of the, of the book or the story.

Embed it inside the character. So let that character, so that you as a reader can discover- Hmm ... that character and see how that character operates and feels and believes. And so you, you end up identifying a shared belief with a fictional character as opposed to, [00:18:00] "This is how the writer feels." Yeah.

Joe Woolworth: All right, so then final question on this topic.

So how do writers know when they've crossed that line? Is it, is it when you're em- you're embedding what you believe in exposition, like you were just hinting at? Or- A

Max Langstaff: good editor. That's how you know. Your editor just comes back... My editor would come back to me sometimes and go, "Max, this is great what you're saying, but you're gonna kill your audience there.

Nobo- no one's gonna like that because they're gonna feel like you're preaching to them." Yeah. And you can't preach. Um, and so you, you either completely remove it, which what the editor would do, or you have to rewrite it in such a way that... I mean, definitely for me as a writer, there were, there were some points and some s- a point of view that, that I have.

I mean, when John writes a song or The Beatles write a song Paul McCartney, he has a point of view. He expresses it, and you can go that far. But, um, but don't... I'm not... You, you can't tell your reader, you can't tell your listener how they should feel about that expression.

Joe Woolworth: Yeah.

Max Langstaff: And then the question is my expression of that and how I feel about something, [00:19:00] does it translate to the larger group?

Does it become your expression? Do you feel like, "Wow, this guy... I've, I've just heard a story that's sort of my story," or there's aspects of that story that I can relate to that are sort of, um, from moments in my life that could be completely unrelated. Yeah. And that's exciting when that happens. Then you're succeeding as an artist.

Joe Woolworth: So next segment, wanna ch- chat about two movies that may or may not, for you, have triggered this. But I remember the first time, '80s kid, there was this movie came out called FernGully. Okay. And we can maybe put up some pictures of it if you remember it. It's like a musical set, but basically it was so...

Even as a kid, I was like, "This is a PSA for saving the rainforest."

Max Langstaff: Oh, there you go.

Joe Woolworth: And it just felt like, even as a little kid, like, man, they're really trying to get me to do something or believe something. Right. And it kept taking me out of the story. Right. Yeah. And I think that's the fear of becoming preachy-

Max Langstaff: Right

Joe Woolworth: is that you'll actually [00:20:00] exit the story-

Max Langstaff: Right ...

Joe Woolworth: and, and miss the whole kind of arc. The other thing that, you know, I've always heard, and I've even hear people com- compare James Cameron's Avatar to the movie FernGully. It was, like, basically a very similar thing. Right. There's just this one is set in space.

Let me hear your thoughts on are there specific movies, or maybe Avatar is one of those movies, that you feel like crossed the line? And what, what made it cross the line into feeling preachy for you?

Max Langstaff: You can tell the director or the writer, whoever put it together obviously in this case it was Cameron, has an agenda, and he's been very clear about it.

Yeah. He made, he made it very clear that he has an agenda, and that he, he's trying to communicate a message. And there are times in that film when I found it boring, and the reason I found it boring, not... The special effects are insane. I mean, we- you get that. But I found it boring because the storytelling part of it gets l- [00:21:00] sometimes gets made second shrift to a, a message.

If you feel like you're just being pummeled with a message- Yeah ... however much you gussy it up and how pretty it looks and all the special effects, it's not helpful, as opposed to, um you know there's lots of movies, um, tons of wonderful magical movies that you can see that don't necessarily have an agenda i- that's that overt.

But that doesn't mean that the writer and the director don't have a point of view and they're not moving you toward a point of view. They are. Um, I mean, you look at something like The Wizard of Oz. I mean, who doesn't like The Wizard of Oz? That's my favorite movie, okay? It... I admit it. I, I confess. Um, and w- you know, there's no place like home.

Now, you could have done that movie s- and just pounded people over the head saying, "You know, you need to understand that there's no place like home."

Joe Woolworth: Yeah.

Max Langstaff: And we would've been totally turned off by it. But what happens in the movie is Dorothy goes through this experience with all these tr- trials and tribulations and joy, and, and so we get to experience [00:22:00] all those things with her- Yeah

and can relate to that with her, and she arrives in this place at the end about discovering for herself that there's no place like home. Now, the interesting thing about the movie is that it's, it's brilliant because she, she didn't have to go on that journey to discover that. She, she always ha- what she was looking for throughout that whole movie she already had.

Joe Woolworth: Yeah.

Max Langstaff: And we've, we've all been in that place. We have all done that in our lives. And so that's why you can understand why it's not so much that they're putting out a point of view, that, it, you come away from it watching it going, "Yeah, that's how I feel." Yeah. "Oh, God, I've done that." Or in a, your own little, teeny, small way, and it's very, very moving.

Joe Woolworth: We're kinda dancing around it. We don't have a great answer for you on how to make sure that your agenda isn't showing through in your story. I wonder if it's kinda like- Like kind of when the, the Supreme Court tried to define pornography and the basic ruling was like, "I don't really know what it is, but I know it when I see it."

Right. Maybe that's it. When your agenda comes through in a story-

Max Langstaff: Well, it's... The agenda comes through in a story, it's usually because you haven't left [00:23:00] any space for your audience or your viewer or your listener or your reader That's a good tip You're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're driving what you want.

It's all about you, you, you. The whole, the whole art of, of, of, of, of creative work is giving it away. You have to give it away, and part of giving it away is, is in the writing process itself, is that you're writing something that, um, you know is an exercise in communication, and you have to leave room for the person who's receiving that communication.

Yeah. If they don't feel like they're, engaged or that they're being preached to, sort of you feel like you're not respected, and why am I... Why do I, why do I wanna read your opinion about this, that, or the next thing? I wanna know about me. I wanna know about my opinion. I wanna know about my life.

And so if what you write makes me feel something about my life, then I've succeeded.

Joe Woolworth: Yeah. All right, so back to the idea of the, the book Saskat.

Max Langstaff: Good book, by the way. It's

Joe Woolworth: a good book. Have

Max Langstaff: you read it?

Joe Woolworth: I've read it. Yeah. The... And we wanna encourage you guys to join us [00:24:00] on our mission to get this turned into a streaming series, 'cause it's a good story, and you can't possibly be a fan until you get you some of this story.

So you can buy it anywhere you buy books. Also, the audiobook is available if you're read like I do. Sometimes I tell people I read books, and I just listen on Audible, and I'm fine with that. I think that's perfectly okay. So check it out. But-

Max Langstaff: As long as you have 20 hours.

Joe Woolworth: So my question to you regarding the story of Saskat is what environmental ideas are embedded in the story that readers might not have even have noticed?

Max Langstaff: Well, it, is, there's all kinds of things, environmental stories. I don't know. It's, it's hard to say. I guess one of the principal ones, there's a, a memorial service for one of the principal characters in the book. It takes place sort of fairly early on in the book, and the minister gets up there and he's describing, um that he's got the journal of the man who died- Mm-hmm

Albert. And, um, Albert kept a journal when he was through- throughout much of his life, and [00:25:00] inside his journal he discovered a couple of quotes from the Bible from Ecclesiastes. And I'm paraphrasing horribly. I'm gonna... I'm probably gonna get struck by lightning for this, but-

Joe Woolworth: I don't think the author's gonna sue you.

Max Langstaff: There you go. Right. The author is safe, I guess. Is it, it talks about, um, the, the part that he pulled out of the book that obviously, and it, it's, it's, it, it, the minister shares it with the, with the congregation at the memorial service, and the quote is something to the effect that however, however fate or how- however it goes for the beasts, it goes for humanity.

And there's a message in that, which is basically if we kill everything, and we kill all the wildlife, and we destroy this, this, this planet that we're in, this garden, this is the garden. We're in the garden. And, you know, if we, if we do that, we're, we're not gonna survive either. You can't exploit everything and destroy everything around you, turn the entire planet into parking lots or [00:26:00] big- Yeah

cities or whatever, and expect to survive. If we lose the, the Amazon, if we develop the Amazon, pull out mining and whatever we're gonna do with the Amazon or the, or African Congo, the rainforest in Africa, we won't be able to breathe. I mean, it's that simple, and yet we're doing it. We're, we're, we're destroying millions of acres of land every, every year, and so much so that the area in the planet that is the most biodiverse and has the fastest ability to regenerate itself can't keep up.

Joe Woolworth: Yeah.

Max Langstaff: So here you have a moment in the book that sort of references sort of the, an ethos around that right out of the Bible, and it speaks to all of that stuff on the environment- Right ... without having to lecture people about it. Let them figure it out for themselves. It's not complicated.

Joe Woolworth: Yeah, I think we're, we're self, we're intrinsically motivated species.

Yes. Like, we only do what we wanna do. Be- And so I think that's why it's so much more effective to rely on asking, getting people to ask better questions- Right ... than telling people a series of answers. So-

Max Langstaff: Exactly ... [00:27:00]

Joe Woolworth: again, we're asking you to join us on this series of trying to get Sasquatch turned into a streaming series.

One of the goals is we'd love to get to 10,000 subs on YouTube. I think we're sitting at about two right now, and we're excited. Thank you guys for joining us on the journey, and- If Sascat were to eventually become a streaming series, what opportunity does TV create that a book doesn't?

Max Langstaff: Well, it's that's a very good question.

I when I started this book, um, I started it as a screenplay. And, um, then I realized, oh my God, is the, what, the narrative itself, it just, you just instinctively knew that it's too big. You have to do the book first. And so I did. And The reason why I wrote it the way I wrote it stylistically, and I modeled it after other people, you know, they say that lousy writers borrow and great writers steal, so I just did as much stealing as I could.

Um, but you can't, um... Young people today, and I say young people anybody under f- 40 years and younger, [00:28:00] um, primarily receive information visually as opposed to in my generation, we used to read books. Um, now only one in five people read books today, um, in this country. So if you want, if you, if you, if you have a great story and you wanna share that great story, and you wanna reach all kinds of people and more people, the best way to do that is through film and television because, um, young people can relate to that better.

They can receive the information better and, I think, can relate to it better. Yeah. So that's why I think it's really important if you believe in your work, and I do, obviously, um, and you wanna share it, and you think it matters, which I, of course, would think that, um, TV, you know, streaming, limited series on TV is the obvious way to go.

Joe Woolworth: So put yourself in the position of readers of the book. So it's out now. It's been on several best-selling lists. So people have read it. That's exciting to think about. It is.

Max Langstaff: It is.

Joe Woolworth: What do you hope that the readers feel, not [00:29:00] think, but feel after they finish reading Saskat?

Max Langstaff: I hope the readers feel there's some bridge of empathy.

What does that translate? What does that mean? They feel a little less alone. I'm not talking about lonely, but alone. They feel like they're understood, that other people understand them, and that their trials or their tribulations, their difficulties in life, and the wonderful moments that they've had are not just theirs.

Th- th- that by reading this book and going through this ex- experience, they do that, and one of the simplest ways I did that in the book, you could just say it was a device, was by introducing my dog into the book, my dog Kemo. He's a real dog. You can find him on, on, on, on the website. Um, and he really was exactly as I describe him in the book, and he...

And I didn't wanna have a dog in the book, which people do have animals and pets in the book as, as sort of pets, and they're really just window dressing. He's a real character in the book. And who doesn't, who doesn't love a dog? You know? Yeah. Who doesn't love a... Who doesn't have a dog or a cat or you know a potbelly pig or [00:30:00] whatever?

Um, the point being, um, y- I want people to come away so with, with a little bit of joy and just feeling like they're a part of a world. It, it could be a fic- It's a fictional world obviously, but it connects to them and then maybe just some tiny scintilla of insight about, "Wow- that makes me wanna ask a question here, or I have to rethink that.

It did it for me, which is interesting as a writer. I started out thinking I was going from A to B, and I, I, I took a left turn somewhere, and I came away a changed person from my own book.

Joe Woolworth: Hmm.

Max Langstaff: I came away going, what I thought I knew about things and what I knew about the world and what I knew about certain kinds of experiences, I come away from the book feeling very different than- Yeah

how I felt when I

Joe Woolworth: started. And, I mean, that's kind of the point of a great story, right? Like, if you go back to, like, Joseph Campbell and talk about the hero's journey, the... one of the parts of the cycle is always the ending, the catharsis. Right. The idea that the, the character or the hero is forever changed.

If that's not- And then he

Max Langstaff: starts all over again.

Joe Woolworth: Yeah. If that's not part of your story, then you don't really have, [00:31:00] like, an ending yet. Um, so one of the things I keep hearing as we've been talking today is that great stories don't tell people what to believe. They invite people to care.

Max Langstaff: That's right.

Joe Woolworth: And that's really what we're trying to do with Sasquet.

We're trying to invite you to care. We're not trying to lecture you. We're not trying to create, like, a, a fantastic YouTube standalone series, but we're trying to create an adventure worth joining, which is can great stories get made? in, in an industry that seems very tough. The amount of books that are written versus successful books, the amount of screenplays that are written versus things that get turned into streaming series.

Max Langstaff: Well, this is a good q- good thing that you mention that, because I think that people don't understand the entertainment industry. I think they don't fun- Well, I don't understand it ... they don't fundamentally understand that content is king in the sense that they need content, always have needed content f- to succeed, whether it's in the music industry, TV, film any, any, any aspect of it.

At the same time, um, they don't need great content. They just need [00:32:00] something. So the standards are f- actually fairly low, and you can see this by the kind of quality TV that we get, for example. It's about, it's about making money for the companies that do this kind of thing. Sure. They need to find a way to make money.

It's the

Joe Woolworth: entertainment business.

Max Langstaff: It's, it's a business. It's

Joe Woolworth: not the entertainment calling.

Max Langstaff: I, or the entertainment- Right. Oh, you know, I'm an arti- I'm an artiste in love... No, it's, it, they don't care, and I think that this is where a lot of artists get into trouble. But I, so I think that it's not driven by, um, let's go find the best thing.

Um, it's driven by, um, you know, who, who, who has the highest profile- Yeah ... the greatest celebrity or this or that or the next thing, so that they can make money. And my feeling is, um, you will always make money, really pretty much always can make money, if you do really good work. My father used to say to me, "Max..."

I used to say, "Dad, I gotta make money. I gotta make money." Go, "Don't worry about money." He said, "Just deliver unimagined excellence and the money will come." Mm. But that's not how the industry operates. And so, um, it's a lot [00:33:00] cheaper and a lot easier for them to d- you know, make a TV series called Naked and Afraid or Dr.

Pimple Popper- Sure ... whatever these series are, than it is to, you know, do something like True Detectives- Yeah ... or to do Taylor Sheridan. And yet w- which is better storytelling and which is enriches us more? Um, it's obvious, but the industry doesn't r- they're not programmed or, or, or, or, or their standards are not necessary, necessarily to ca- to care about that.

Joe Woolworth: Or it's not even their directive-

Max Langstaff: Right ... to

Joe Woolworth: tell great

Max Langstaff: stories. It's not, right, it's not their directive.

Joe Woolworth: So if that's something that you care about, that interface between great storytelling and stuff getting made into stuff that you wanna watch on TV, here's how you can help. Join the Sask at the Story team by reading the book, get the audio book, share the podcast.

, Hey, maybe you know somebody that we should interview. Maybe you know a showrunner. Maybe you know somebody that would like this experiment and wanna join us on it by being interviewed on a quick interview on the podcast. Let us know. .

, Thanks for watching. Be sure to like, comment, [00:34:00] and subscribe