Will Storr is an author, journalist, and former photographer. Stories mould who we are, from our character to our cultural identity. They drive us to act out our dreams and ambitions, and shape our politics and beliefs. Some of the world’s greatest contributors are those who have learned to master storytelling. Is storytelling something we can learn? Is there a science to storytelling? Expect to learn how we use stories to gain status, why stories are key to how we process reality, what most people get wrong about great storytelling, the fundamental questions great storytellers answer, what the best stories in recent history, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom Get up to $350 off the Pod 5 at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Why are stories so persuasive? Well, stories are persuasive because humans think in stories. Our brains remix reality and turn that reality into a narrative with ourselves at the center. So storytelling is sense-making for the human brain. We haven't evolved to think in data, algorithm. We've evolved to process reality in the form of stories. A story is always going to be
the most persuasive, you know, technology out there. Story's also always going to be the thing that persuades people most of all.
Is it kind of ironic that in the modern world, a lot of the time we're told to take great heed of rationality and data and statistics and stuff like that, but you've got to disregard all of that personification and narrative and archetypes and religion and mythology. That's very unsophisticated. It doesn't really meet the criteria by which we judge what's happening in the modern world.
So you're asking people to get rid of the stuff which to them feels most real and is persuasive, which is story and archetype and mythology and personification and blah, blah. And to start to believe in the thing which is the most sterile and novel and sort of alien to us.
Absolutely. And I think there's a huge naivety out there that, you know, especially in, you know, what you might call our world of, you know, we like to think of ourselves as rational people, atheistic people, people who are interested in data and science. And amongst our people, there's a very naive idea that we are the ones who are led by data. I mean,
I remember earlier in my career as a journalist interviewing a famous skeptic, Stephen Novella, who used to present a podcast called The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. And he very confidently told me that skeptics were kind of immune to irrationality because they were kind of tuned to be, you know, automatically skeptical about crazy beliefs.
I just think that's sort of deeply naive, you know, like what you'll find, especially, you know, you see all the time in the era of social media is that, you know, even, you scientists, you know, not even scientists as much as anybody else, they start with the story and then they find the data to back up their story.
So you can find, you know, academics who know way more than you or I, both of us put together about human biology who believe in that kind of woke idea of biology, gender biology, and why are men better than women at certain things? They could find all the data in the world to tell you that that's not true, even though we believe that it is true. So you can take something like Jordan Peterson,
on the one hand, and Adam Rutherford, on the other hand, two very smart men, two very opinionated men, two men who I respect, you know, equally, I would say, but two men who are very angry and very lost in the story. They're both lost in the story. So, you know, I love Adam and I love Jordan. I can never imagine being in the same room together.
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