There are reasonable creative projects … and then there are the ones that grow ten times their size and cause their cowering creators to ask, “What have we wrought?!” The Big Ask audiobook began with the innocent question: “Hey – what if we turned the paperback into an audiobook?”
What followed was less a project and more a monstrously ambitious lab experiment—one that ultimately assembled 23 hugely talented voice actors into a single, many-headed storytelling creature.
Yes, twenty-three, with myself as the central narrator. At some point along the way, this stopped being “an audiobook” and became something bigger, and—given the scale of its production—quite possibly one of a kind.
Now unleashed: the audiobook of The Big Ask: Unlock the Possibilities in Your Work, Life & Dreams with Courageous Requests. It’s based on one deceptively simple idea: that by asking for what we want we have the potential to change the present moment, if not the course of a career, a relationship, a life.
The ensemble of actors voice the true, inspiring, and sometimes moving stories of people who “asked big”—whether for help, opportunities, buy-in, promotions, permission, exceptions, clarity, feedback, emotional support, truth, or forgiveness—at work, home, or in their lives at large.
Making the audiobook required a big vision, one not solely my own. It also took the support of executive producers … judicious cuts to sections that work well in print but wouldn’t in audio … multiple days of studio recording … and weeks of fastidious editing.
The audiobook’s director and editor, Kevin Theis, who also voiced some of the stories, aptly called the project “a monster” (Frankenstein’s, surely, given all the parts). Beyond managing the auditions and running the recording sessions, Kevin pieced together 16 narrated chapters, 82 actor-read stories, and 141 separate lines of vignette dialogue, all while tightening gaps in pacing and incorporating producer input on what would become an engaging 6-hour audiobook.
Many of the actors recorded at our studio in Chicago, others from locations as disparate as Los Angeles, New York, and New Zealand.
Some stories are read by the original storytellers. Most notably you’ll hear Emmy winner Jane Lynch (one half of our brilliant executive producer team), as well as the original voice of “Siri” in North America, Susan Bennett, recounting the asks that factored importantly in their respective and stellar careers.
Moth StorySLAM winner Errol McLendon lends his signature warmth and intimacy to his own story about a question he asked that dramatically changed his life.
In most cases the multiracial cast reflects the ethnicities of the original storytellers. By design, the actors made no attempt to imitate the storytellers’ voices, except in the case of Elayne LeTraunik, whose reading of Holocaust survivor Ida Paluch Kersz is a moving re-creation based on her listening to interviews of Kersz on Youtube.
ASMR fans are sure to get tingles from the tranquil, bottomless voice of Debo Balogun. And Chicago theatergoers will recognize the sparkling resonance of Britain-born Nick Sandys, whose accent work animates the book’s U.K., Australian, and Dutch storytellers.
Dana Powers, star of the fantasy audio series Carcerem, is heard as several women who “asked big,” including a profoundly lucky college student, a vigilant emergency room nurse, and a job seeker whose spontaneous question changed everything for her.
A highly accomplished voice talent herself, executive producer Mari Weiss impressed all of us on the production team with her ability to nail multifaceted stories on the first take, including a memorable one of her own.
When Mari and I listened to the unedited recordings, I was just as floored by her ability to detect the faintest sounds—lip smacks, micro-clicks, tiny pops—and flag them for removal. Mari was also an invaluable sounding board helping me decide, in a few cases, what content to keep or delete.
I’d done some narration in the past, but never for an audiobook. Behind the mic I began to resent the two words that appear on nearly every page: asks and requests. Perfectly acceptable words in print, they’re minor acts of sabotage when spoken aloud. Unless you over-enunciate asks and requests with a crisp, forward placement you’ll sound like Tom Brokaw, the anchorman famous for his slack diction.
Another challenge: for some reason it took several takes for me to say “British” without it sounding like berdish. I also learned, at long last, that diabetes rhymes with Wheaties not fetus!
In addition to the actors already mentioned, the stories were voiced by the super-talented Sandy Borglum, Raymond Donasco, Zach Fueling, Greg King, Jim Lew, Richard Reardon, Jeanine Alana Robinson, Audrey S. Romero, Maddie Sachs, Karen Vaccaro, Ben Werling, Karl T. Wright, and Joseph Wycoff. A shoutout to audio engineer Jade Peitri at ARU Studios, who’s not only a total pro but made everyone feel at ease behind the mic.
Like its paperback and digital counterparts (which have a different cover, by the way), The Big Ask audiobook was created to inform, entertain, and inspire you … to help you ask for, and get, what you or others want. By that I don’t mean “gimme gimme,” but asking from an expanded sense of possibility. Because most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, live in states of relative contraction. This book invites you to act from a greater sense of agency, and hope, in your life. And that can begin with something as seemingly simple as asking.
So, the “monster,” The Big Ask audiobook, is now on the loose. If you pop on the headphones, will you drop me a line or post a review?
That’s my big ask.
But, more to the point—what’s yours?
Photo by Amin Asbaghipour on Unsplash
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