A Masterclass In Storytelling - Will Storr - #944

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, you know, with ourselves at the center. So, you know, 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, um technology out there. Is story is also always going to be the thing that persuades people, uh, 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 uh 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, you know, that's sort of that's very unsophisticated, that 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. Uh, and to start to believe in the thing which is the most sterile and and and novel and sort of uh uh alien to us. Absolutely.

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