Shankar Vedantam

Psychologist Jonathan Adler returns to the show.

He'll answer listeners' questions about the stories we tell about our lives, and we'll hear remarkable tales from listeners about how they came to terms with dramatic and difficult moments in their lives.

You're listening to Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedanta.

The first films in history were quite simple.

A series of moving pictures showed a horse running, a family playing in a garden, and a boxer punching his opponent.

As the technology developed, so did the complexity of the stories portrayed on screen.

In the 1902 film A Trip to the Moon, George Meleus depicted astronomers who fly to the moon, get captured by aliens, and then escape back to Earth.

As Hollywood evolved into its studio era, the plots of films coalesced into a distinct style with a beginning, middle, and end.

In most blockbuster movies today, the characters inevitably reach a satisfying conclusion.

Filmmakers with an artistic bent have experimented with different storytelling devices.

The 1950 film Rashomon is about a samurai who gets murdered.

It tells the same story from four perspectives.

The film Memento tells its plot in reverse, while Inception evokes the feeling of a fragmented dream.

When we watch these films, we're riveted by the characters, the action, and the dialogue.

But we often fail to notice that the way the story is told has a fundamental impact on how we feel.

If Forrest Gump didn't have flashbacks, it would simply be a guy sitting on a bench talking to a stranger.

If Star Wars had started with Luke blowing up the Death Star, it would be a completely different story.