I'm here with Michael Batnick and our guest today is Derek Thompson. He is a writer for the Atlantic and the author of Hitmakers and today we're going to discuss why things go viral.

Stick around.

So Derek, before we talk about the why of virality,

maybe let's just back up and talk about the

myth, the viral myth, as you described it. What's that about?

So in this book there are really two myths that I'm trying to break. The first is the

myth of novelty and the second is the myth of virality. The myth of novelty says

that there's this idea especially especially in advertising and marketing,

that were obsessed with things that are new. In fact, the word new is the most commonly used word in all of

advertising. But the oldest idea in psychology is this thing called

the mere exposure effect. And what the mere exposure effect says is that

essentially we have a familiarity bias. We like old songs. We like old movies but we like them with like a little bit of a twist.

So we like old features and old franchises, but we watch them again in sequels.

Or we like old songs, but we like them sort of redone. You see this with some of the most famous sort of stories in history.

Batman?

Batman?

Certainly the entire Marvel comic universe.

But also, Star Wars, right? When Star Wars was first being written, George Lucas had no idea what a story would be.

He had a brilliant world-building exercise, but he had no story. And then he discovers

Joseph Campbell. He comes up with this theory called The Hero's Journey in a book, The Hero

of a Thousand Faces, where he says that for centuries we've been telling the same story over and over

and over again. You have the Hero who often has lost a parent or both parents who's offered to go on a quest that's

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