Red Thread Talks · with accompaniment · opening soon
Give a Red Thread Talk and say it out loud for the first time
The story of your relationship to the thing you care about, told live to a warm room. We help you find it, shape it and rehearse it, then make something lasting from it.
What a Red Thread Talk is
It isn’t a TED talk and it isn’t a lecture. You don’t need to be an expert in your subject, only in your relationship to it: why it keeps calling you back, where it started, what it has made of you.
You tell that story to a small room of Grokkists on the Network, then you talk with them. Members give these talks as a way of introducing themselves, and for many it’s the first time they’ve said the true version out loud.
Why it matters
What it’s really about is being witness to aliveness: the moment someone is most themselves, and you can hear it in how they talk.
- Half-formed thoughts about yourself become a story once you have to put them together for other people.
- Said in a room, even a small one, it becomes socially real. You cross a threshold in your own understanding, and you can’t go back.
- Revisiting it afterwards, in the recording and the written piece, helps the new version of you settle in.
- The room gets something too: the chance to watch someone come alive in front of them. People leave hopeful, and usually with an idea of their own.
What would you say if you knew it would be met by friendly ears and hearts? That’s the invitation.
What we’re not doing
We’re not looking for something to say about yourself that sounds good. That’s social armour, and it’s exactly what a Red Thread Talk sets down. The armour can go back on later.
It doesn’t have to be a neat story with an insight at the end, either. People come to witness someone in the middle of living and figuring it out: what they’ve worked out, what they haven’t, how they’ve gone about it. Saying it out loud, and hearing it reflected back, is the point.
Two shapes it can take
You at the centre
A personal story of how you came to the thing you care about, then conversation with the room. This is the shape most talks so far have taken.
An idea at the centre
You set the table with your own take on a question that matters to you, and the room takes it up together, café-style.
Either works. If one feels within reach but a little edgy, that’s usually the one.
On the same terrain
two people who did Find Your Red Thread, the course that covers the same ground, and one on giving his talk
“This is bone. This is skeletal structure. Now that I see it, I can build from here. I can build from the truth.”
Emily M, Find Your Red Thread“Finally putting voice to things I’d been quietly saying to myself. Once they were out loud, I couldn’t go back.”
Zaheer Merali, on giving his Red Thread Talk“I didn’t fit in a box. This made me feel like I make sense.”
Trudi B, Find Your Red ThreadHow it goes
two sessions with us, the talk itself, then what you keep
Session one
Find the thread
What you keep coming back to, where it started, and the shape of the story. Unforgetting is good preparation.
Session two
Shape and rehearse
You run it out loud and we listen the way the room will, then tighten what needs it.
The talk
In good company
Live on the Grokkist Network, followed by conversation. Scary, which is part of the point.
Afterwards
Yours to keep
We produce the finished pieces for you to share, below.
See one
Rodney King gave his talk in January 2026: teaching around the world, running an organisation, finishing degrees, and what his body was telling him the whole time. This is what it became. There are more in the library of talks.
“By the time most people would have said I’d made it, my body was already quietly falling apart.”
Rodney King, opening his talkWhat we make for you
- Your talk written up on the Grokkist Press, edited with you, in your own words
- Short highlight clips from the recording, to share wherever you like
- The full recording
- A page of your own on the Press, with your bio and picture
It’s something to point to when someone asks what you do. You can see how they turn out in the talks already written up.
Who it’s for
Anyone with a thread they keep following and haven’t yet put into words: a practice, a cause, a craft, a question that won’t leave you alone. Being unsure what you’d say is the usual place to start.
Members can still give a Red Thread Talk without accompaniment. This is for anyone who would like help getting ready, and wants the finished pieces made for them.
Saying it out loud is the point. That, and having it reflected back.
The terms
$350
Two sessions, the talk, and the finished pieces. Opening soon: write to us to be among the first.
Ask us
Tell us a little about your thread. We’ll reply with how it would work for you and when.
With
Danu Poyner
Founder of Grokkist, with the Press team.