Show Notes
Want to make your data story more engaging? Try adding a little tension. Join data storyteller Alli Torban as she explores how tension can create curiosity and keep your audience invested in your story.
You’ll learn three simple ways to build tension—expectation versus reality, knowledge tension, and action tension—and see how members of the storytelling with data community put each technique into practice.
RESOURCES MENTIONED: Register for our 8-week online course: plan, create, and deliver your data story. September 28th–November 22nd, 2026. Use the code PODCAST10 for 10% off your registration!
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Look through the community exercise submissions for building tension Danny’s submission
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Cole recently appeared on the Analytics Power Hour, and this was such a great conversation, we're rebroadcasting it here! ———— There’s a version of this episode where AI replaces the data visualization expert entirely, and there’s a version where it’s useless without one. Neither is quite right, according to Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic of Storytelling with Data, who joined Tim, Moe, and Julie to sort out where AI genuinely earns its keep in data storytelling and where it’s just producing a shinier first draft of the same shitty slide. Cole—admittedly a skeptic-turned-convert who once joked she’d retire before having to deal with any of this—walks through why the humans who benefit most from AI are the ones who already have the foundation to know when to ignore it, why “let me look at some options” beats “give me the final chart” as a prompt, and why the analog, pencil-and-paper parts of the process might be the most valuable friction in the whole workflow. Bring your own opinions on whether Claude should ever be handed “the rules” and told to just go.
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