You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Let me introduce you to Liz Neely.

As a young scientist making her way through the world, she didn't think that storytelling

had a place in science.

I wanted to be the most serious scientific scientist who ever lived.

So I thought that storytelling was somewhere between a distraction and a danger.

And so I thought that storytelling was like hand waving.

That it was what you did when your data was weak in order to sort of nudge people towards

your preferred interpretation.

But Liz eventually came around to storytelling in a big way.

So what changed your mind about it?

I started working in science communication and wanted to understand how people make sense

of the world, how do they make judgments.

So I kept reading these papers that told me narratives are powerful and important.

Right.

I hated it.

Yeah, because you were wrong.

I was so wrong.

I love being right.

Who doesn't?

Now Liz runs the story collider, an organization that puts people on stage to tell personal

stories about science.

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