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We love telling stories. We tell long, winding tales at a child’s bedside, sitting around the dinner table or in front of a crackling campfire. Before Netflix, Youtube and the Kardashians — even before the written word — storytelling was the best way to entertain and be entertained, to leave the present world for fantasy, to teach and be taught.
That may seem obvious to anyone who’s spun a good thread. What’s been harder to determine is the science behind this imperative — why we’re wired to appreciate good stories, why we’ve evolved to be so receptive to them, and how they change our behavior.
Author Jonathan Gottschall made that the centerpiece of his new book, The Storytelling Animal. We talk to him about what he discovered.
