I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. Our stories really shape our worlds.

And radio host, Jad Abamrod, has made a career of telling great stories. He's weaved beautiful

tales and shared narratives of struggle and wonder. But it wasn't until he did a nine-parts story on the legendary Dolly Parton

that he learned how to really land an ending, the upshot, the takeaway of a story.

He explains what he learned from Dolly in his archive talk from TED 2020.

I want to tell you about my search for purpose as a journalist and how Dolly Parton

helped me figure it out.

So I've been telling audio stories for about 20 years, first on the radio and then in

podcast.

And when I started the radio show Radio Lab in 2002, here was the quintessential story move we would do.

We'd bring on somebody.

It's one of the most hypnotic and spellbinding spectacles in nature, because you have to keep in mind it is absolutely silent.

Like this guy, mathematician, Steve Strogatz, and he would paint a picture.

Picture it.

There's a riverbank in Thailand in the remote part of the jungle.

You're in a canoe slipping down the river.

There's no sound of anything.

Maybe the occasional, you know, exotic jungle bird or something.

So you're in this imaginary canoe with Steve.

And in the air all around, you are millions of fireflies. And what you see

is sort of a randomized starry night effect, because all the fireflies are blinking at different

rates, which is what you'd expect. But according to Steve, in this one place, for reasons no scientists

...