You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science a richer, more rewarding life.

Hey, welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gantus. This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it matters.

On this show, we've talked to historians and inventors about technological innovations,

from self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and so on, that have changed society or that promised to. But Angus Fletcher

thinks we're ignoring the most important one of all, literature. He's a professor of story

science. How cool is that? And he holds degrees in both neuroscience and literature. He's a professor of story science. How cool is that? And he holds degrees in both neuroscience and literature. He's on faculty at Project Narrative at Ohio State. It's the world's leading academic think tank for the science of storytelling. And his latest book is called Wonderworks, and it tracks 25 literary inventions with distinct psychological

benefits. Angus Fletcher, welcome to Inquiring Minds. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm delighted. So I want to start out by first giving our listeners a sense of how you do your work.

So as far as I know, you are the

first or only professor I know of whose job title is science of storytelling. So tell us about

how do you do your work? How do you conduct your research? Like what is the science of storytelling?

Yeah, well, first of all, I hope that I serve as an inspiration to everyone out there that just wants to invent their own discipline.

Because you can do it.

I mean, I've done it.

And, you know, the truth is, at some point, somebody had to invent all these disciplines.

So why not you?

So, yeah, I know I'm a professor of story science and it is kind of wacky because on the one hand,

you know, when you start to think about it, it's completely intuitive. Story is just this enormously

powerful thing. And of course, we would want to understand the science of it. We would want to understand

how it works in our brains. And we would want then once we understand how it works in our brains

to start thinking about it like an engineer or a scientist would. And how can we empower ourselves then, once we understand how it works in our brains, to start thinking about

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