There are eight billion people on this planet, and not a single one of them sounds exactly like you: the timbre of your voice, the way you enunciate, the little chuckle you give after you say words like “widget” or “confusticated.” Even identical twins have different cadences, different vocabularies, different verbal tics. You may be a longtime radio announcer or someone who has never even recorded a voice memo, but every single one of you has the potential to be a great podcast narrator.

How do I know this? Because unlike traditional radio — where you still hear a monoculture of deep male and warm female traditional “radio” voices — podcasting is a habitat that enables all sorts of voices to grow and flourish.

Oh wait, you hate the sound of your own voice on a recording? You don’t think you have a “great radio voice”? Me too! And you know what? I got over it. And oddly enough, now people compliment me on my voice. I feel confident.

But this isn’t about me — this is about all of us, about getting back to the instrument that was the oldest, original, primal way of bringing Homo sapiens together in caves and around fires: the voice. There is nothing else like it, and no one else like you.

You’ve been given a gift — do you know that? I’m here to help you open it and share it with the world.

And the best part is, like love, your voice is a gift that is undiminished by being shared. In fact, as you give it more, share it more, use it more, it only gets more powerful and vibrant and inviting.

Let me tell you a story. Gather ‘round and hear a story. This story started when . . . librarians, camp counselors, coaches and parents. Teachers, elders, priests, and medicine men. These are the storytellers and the situations all over the world, and all throughout human history. Stories to comfort us, guide us, scare us, and warn us.

We may be sitting in the driver’s seat of a car instead of around a fire in a cave, but the way humans need stories — and how listening to another voice is how we want them — is still the same.

But why is it different than reading or writing? Both from the teller and the listener’s experience? Maybe it’s because writing is such an internally-focused activity: yes, there is a reader out there . . . somewhere, but it’s abstract, a silent, imaginary presence. Also the act of writing almost doesn’t involve the body. Fingers moving, that’s it. Emily Dickinson, penning her poems in the garret.

But narrating is an explicitly bridging act: how will this land? How will this connect? How will this other part resonate? Because narrating is not just reading for its own sake — it’s reading for the sake of an audience. To narrate is to broadcast that you’re not just doing this for yourself.

Narrating is reminding the world that you believe stories can change people. I’m Nate Davis, and I hope you found this little reminder encouraging: voice your story; change your life.

Behind-the-scenes note: this script, like all scripts that matter, came from repeated wrestlings with a question that wouldn’t leave me alone: what does narrative podcasting mean to you? I sat down and tried to write about it for at least 10 consecutive mornings, and after pages and pages of effort, this script finally took shape.

A few other thoughts — an effective script will connect the personal and the universal: show the narrator’s skin in the game, but also connect to the listener’s experience. A good podcast script will also clearly offer the listener something — in this case, the encouragement that they can create.