What We Do with Stories — and What They Do for Us, Explained by Author and Journalist Will Storr

Stories riddle our lives. They dazzle us, keeping us entertained, intrigued, motivated and pursuant of a variety of different interests. Creating stories is, of course, what writers do in their fictional work, but it’s also what happens every day in the wider world. In business, politics, journalism and religion, stories are the active ingredients binding us together, and sometimes tearing us apart, as we go about our daily dramas.

“The brain is a story processor, it’s a story generator, and one of the purpose of stories is to distract us from the sometimes very harsh and bleak realities of existence.” –Will Storr, author of “The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better”

Many books have been written about the craft of stories, but every now and then a new book or work of art comes along, demonstrating both how we create stories, and how they often seemingly manifest before us, as if by magic.

Listen: How humans craft and mold a raft of stories that carry them through life.

Guest 

Will Storr is a journalist and author. He recently published the book, “The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better.” Storr has written about psychology and the operations of the mind. He says that stories do many things, one of which is to distract us from our own mortality.

“The brain is a story processor, it’s a story generator, and one of the purpose of stories is to distract us from the sometimes very harsh and bleak realities of existence,” he says.