The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

Stories, of course, are common as dirt. Everyone has one, if not an infinity of them, and they surround us at all times whether we acknowledge them or not. Stories are the wells we dip into to be reminded of who we are, and the ways we reassure ourselves that, however obscure we may appear to others, we are actually important, even crucial, to the

What makes us so good at remembering epic poems and long-running TV series is that long-term human memory is particularly adapted to retaining stories. As Kendall Haven writes in his 2007 book, Story Proof: The Science Behind the Startling Power of Story, “Human minds…rely on stories and on story architecture as the primary roadmap for understandin

all cultures have created stories to help us grapple with, and ultimately map, the chaos into which we are thrown at birth;