EP 3 - Connecting Stories - The Aqeel Akber Extra Extra Extravaganza

Proudly sponsored by my own company. Get the app → https://getmeos.com/extrameos is where i keep thinking with the mic off.This episode → https://aqeelakber.com/extra/ep3All episodes → https://aqeelakber.com/extraConnecting Stories — conversation with Sarah Mak (CEO of Folktale). The Aqeel Akber Extra Extra Extravaganza, made by Aqeel in Canberra.In this episode🧐 The facts>> Sarah Mak, co-founder and CEO of Folktale, joins Aqeel for episode three, Connecting Stories.>> Folktale connects people who know stories with those who need to hear them.>> Their conversation recalls a Pacific customer event celebrating community story excellence across many countries.>> Much of the discussion centres on development-sector reporting beyond lengthy written documents.>> Trust, consent, and where shared stories travel recur as the conversation deepens.🍃 Between the factsWhat begins as a memory of communities celebrating their own achievements soon folds into harder questions about evidence, outcomes, and what gets left out when reporting stays numerical and impersonal. Sarah and Aqeel keep returning to the gap between the stories humans naturally share and the systems that still prefer summaries, metrics, and text without context.🌬️ Beyond the factsBeneath the practical talk of platforms and programmes sits a quieter argument: that understanding is incomplete when lived experience is treated as optional data. As tools accelerate and more decisions lean on machine-readable information, the human texture of who speaks, who listens, and who is kept safe becomes harder to ignore.🔥 Why you should listenThe arc does not resolve into a product pitch or a policy answer. It moves from celebration and purpose toward trust as the condition that makes sharing possible at all, and ends in the kind of open uncertainty these conversations are meant to hold. Worth staying for the full exchange if you care how story, technology, and accountability meet in real communities.dsq.studio