The power of story -- even in Japanese (English below) -- transports us. Where do we go when we go off in our heads full of wonder, or bored, in search of the next story to learn from?
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| Story taught to monkey, Java (Mararie/flickr) |
This week’s show is about story and narrative with Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal. Although this is not about Obama or politics, Barry reveals the overwhelming importance of story in our lives:
In a July 2012 interview with Charlie Rose, Obama said that “the mistake” of the early years of his presidency was his failure to be a better storyteller:
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| The Buddha, master storyteller of Jataka Tales |
“The mistake of my first couple of years was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that’s important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.” If given a second term he says he will “spend more time with the American people, listening to them, but also being in a conversation with them about where do we go as a country?”
The late evolutionary biologist Steven Jay Gould called humans “the primate who tells stories…” And it’s not just Gould. Anthropologists have found societies that have existed for millennia without the wheel, but they’ve never found one that doesn’t tell stories.
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| Siddhartha daydreaming about what it would be like to be free (Nitin_Paul/flickr.com) |
What does Gottschall have to say about the latest science on the subject? Why is narrative so powerful? What is its evolutionary value? And can what we’re learning help us get even better at tapping its power?
