242. Jonathan Gottschall — The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears Them Down

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2022

⏱️ 97 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it.

In The Story Paradox, Gottschall explores how a broad consortium of psychologists, communications specialists, neuroscientists, and literary quants are using the scientific method to study how stories affect our brains.

In this conversation based on his new book, Gottschall reveals why our biggest asset has become our greatest threat, and what, if anything, can be done. It is a call to stop asking, “How we can change the world through stories?” and start asking, “How can we save the world from stories?”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Sherman Shower.
0:19.0	Welcome to the Michael Sherman Show. I'm your host to Michael Sherman.
0:20.0	My guest today is Jonathan Gutshaw with with his new book The Story Paradox.
0:26.4	How Our Love of Storytelling builds societies and tears them down.
0:31.3	Jonathan Gottshaw is a distinguished research fellow in the English
0:34.6	department at Washington and Jefferson College. He is the author of The Storytelling
0:39.7	Animal, a New York Times editor's Choice, and finalist for the LA Times Book Prize.
0:46.4	And he's the, and the other book, The Professor in the Cage, one of Boston Globe's best
0:51.1	books of the year. He has written for or been covered in the New York
0:54.7	time Scientific American, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the
1:00.3	millions. Gotchol has also appeared on popular podcasts like Star Talk, that's
1:05.1	Neil degress Tyson, the Joe Rogan experience, and a radio lab. He lives in
1:09.6	Pennsylvania. So this is a sequel to Jonathan's previous book has mentioned the storytelling animal which was about the positive side.
1:17.0	The storytelling, the story paradox is the kind of the dark side of stories, stories that divide us, stories that include
1:24.8	people that we know and work with and interact with as evil demonic forces that
1:31.6	must be destroyed and so we get into all the current events and things
1:36.2	that have happened in the last five years or so and we dive deep in the QAnon and the rigged election conspiracy theories and these are all stories and they motivate people.
1:48.5	So we get into the structure of stories, why stories are so psychologically compelling.
1:53.6	And we get into some of the neuroscience of that,
1:55.6	which he studies, and going back to Plato's time
2:00.6	and kind of the history of storytelling what makes a good story or not a good story and to what extent
2:08.6	religious stories or political stories or economic stories,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Michael Shermer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Michael Shermer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.