Who We Are
Mike and Shannon Mannon started 3-Minute Storyteller in late 2015 as a way to capture brief, inspiring stories from artists and activists and gurus they loved.
Our Next Chapter
Now that we’re 80 stories in, our sense of what is possible with 3-Minute Storyteller has evolved. When we started, we were hungry to explore what it means to be fully human with inspiring people.
Our storytellers—a wildly eclectic bunch of artists, scientists, leaders of all stripes—are legendary change agents—some you may know and, hopefully, many you don’t.
In the beginning, the idea was to briefly introduce you to brilliant and inspiring people in hopes that those stories would help urge you to live your own inspired vision.
But a funny thing kept happening: we got really caught up in the conversations we were having and the connections we were seeing. Our 15-minute chats started turning into hour-long, deep dives. People opened themselves to us in ways we hadn’t imagined, and it ended up opening us up too.
Over the past three years, things have gotten so topsy-turvy and polarized, especially here in America. We’ve found that people need the timelessness and universal connection of stories more than ever. Not only do they connect us to our essence and shared humanity, these conversations hold a deeper power that, quite honestly, we didn’t see coming:
We’ve learned that when these stories touch us, they activate this indescribable, but unmistakable current. This current courses between us. It transforms many distinct us into one collective we, enlivening each one of us as it flows.
We’ve learned that our stories at 3-Minute Storyteller are sacred containers for this current.
And maybe the craziest thing we’ve learned? The more awareness we bring to this current, the more powerful it gets! As we’ve plugged in, we’ve discovered just how many of us are out here working for love. We’ve found the most unbelievable love army: partners, collaborators and conspirers who are shaping the kind of world we want to live in.
You may have noticed that though our videos have held fast to our original mission of telling fascinating stories in just three minutes, our intro blurbs have become more like essays. And we let that happen. Because, to be honest, our thoughts on the people we talk to just couldn’t be contained.
In fact, the most common request we get from people is: “I want to hear the whole conversation—not just three minutes of it.”
We’ve been utterly transformed, and we want you to join us. That’s why we’re so excited to kick off the new year with more ways to connect with you:
- A new podcast called For the Love of Conversation where you’ll be able to hear the full expansive and intimate conversations with our storytellers.
- This new glorious website that provides the container that these stories deserve.
- A new (old) ’74 VW Bus named “Scarlet” that we’ve been painstakingly restoring into a mobile storytelling unit so we can take this show on the road and meet more of you.
And best of all, deepening relationships with you and with this community, as we connect together into the current of love.
Thanks for loving us back,
Mike and Shannon
In the last couple of years, we've featured an incredible diversity of fascinating people and stories—from astronauts just returned to earth to best–selling authors.
Each week, we release a video story and essay, sometimes written by Mike, sometimes by Shannon, most of the time, a little bit of both. A key theme of 3-Minute Storyteller is the commonality of the heart that connects us all. One of our missions at 3-Minute Storyteller is to figure out why humans disagree about so much, when in conversation, we seem to have so much in a common. What we hoped, and what we've found, is that by telling each other our stories, we find the vulnerability, the heart connection that leads to greater understanding. We hope you enjoy our stories.
