How To Tell Stories That Move People - Will Storr

Chris Williamson 0:00 Why are stories so persuasive?

Will Storr 0:04 Well, stories are persuasive because, um, humans think in stories. Uh, our, our brains remix reality and turn that reality into a narrative, you know, with ourselves at the center. So, you know, storytelling is sense-making for the human brain. We haven't evolved to think in data, algorithm. We've evolved to process reality in the form of stories. A story is always gonna be the most persuasive, you know, um, technology out there. It's, story's also always gonna be the thing that persuades people, uh, most of all.

Chris Williamson 0:37 Is it kind of ironic that in the modern world, a lot of the time we're told to take great heed of rationality and, uh, data and statistics and stuff like that, but you've got to disregard all of that personification and narrative and archetypes and religion and mythology? You know, that's sort of, that's very unsophisticated.

Will Storr 0:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:59 It, it doesn't really meet the criteria by which we judge what's happening in the modern world. Uh, so you're asking people to get rid of the stuff which to them feels most real and is persuasive, which is story and archetype and mythology and personification and blah, blah, uh, and to start to believe in the thing which is the most sterile and, and, and novel and sort of, uh, uh, alien to us.

Will Storr 1:21 Absolutely. And, uh, and I think there's a huge naivety out there that, that, that, you know, especially in, you know, what you might call our world of, you know, we like to think of ourselves as rational people, atheistic people, uh, people who are interested in data and science. And, and as if, it, it, amongst our people, there's a very naive idea that, um, that, that we are the ones who are led by data. I mean, I remember, uh, earlier in my career as a journalist interviewing a famous skeptic, Steven Novella, who, who used to, um, present a podcast called The, The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, and he very confidently told me that, that skeptics were kind of immune to irrationality because they were kind of tuned, uh, to be, you know, automatically skeptical about crazy beliefs. Um, and, and I just think that's sort of deeply naive. You know, like, um, what, what you'll find especially, you know, you see it all the time in the era of social media, is that, um, you know, even scientists in, you know, not even, scientists as much as anybody else, they, they start with a story and then they find the data to back up their story. So you can find, you know, academics who know way more than you or I, both of us put together about human biology, who believe in that kind of woke idea of, uh, y- y- y- you know, um, biolo- you know, biology, gender biology, and you know, y- you know, why are men better than women at certain things. You know, they, they, they could find all the, all the data in the world to tell you that that's not true, even though we believe that it is true. So, so, you, you know, you can take someone like Jordan Peterson on the one hand and Adam Rutherford on the other hand, two very smart men-

Chris Williamson 2:44 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 2:45 ... two very opinionated men, two men who I respect, y- y- you know, e- equally I would say, um, but two men who are very angry.

Chris Williamson 2:52 (laughs)

Will Storr 2:53 And, and, and, and very lost in the story. They're, they're both lost in the story of this, you, you know, so, so, so, you know, I love Adam and I love Jordan. Um, I can never imagine them being in the, in the same room together.

Chris Williamson 3:03 I was about to say, yeah-

Will Storr 3:04 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:04 ... I wonder what happens over that dinner table.

Will Storr 3:07 But, but, but equally, with the greatest respe- greatest respect to both of them, I don't, I wouldn't trust either of them to talk to me about the science of, you know, gender, uh, or talk to me certainly about what's going on in Israel-Palestine. Um-

Chris Williamson 3:18 Dispassionately.

Will Storr 3:20 Yeah, dispassionately. Becau- because the, because, not because they're, um, dishonest, not because they're, um, is anything wrong with them, but because they're lost in the story. They're, they're, they're utterly lost in the, in their particular story of the world and, and the data-

Chris Williamson 3:31 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 3:31 ... that they cite, the data they choose to believe, um, is subservient to the story. So even with people like Adam and Jordan, you know, two brilliant minds, um, the story comes first as far as I'm concerned. I th- I think that's inarguable.

Chris Williamson 3:43 Have you come across knowingness?

Chris Williamson 3:45 Do you know what that is?

Will Storr 3:47 No. This is new, new to me.

Chris Williamson 3:48 Cool idea. So this is from Brian Klaas who wrote Fluke, uh, ou- ou- outstanding book, nearly as good as yours, and he, uh, talks about (laughs) , he talks about, um, the, the problem of knowingness. A lot of people in the modern world think that the biggest issue is misinformation. It's people being given poor quality information.

Will Storr 4:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:11 He, he contends that a much bigger issue is knowingness, and knowingness is a belief that you already, uh, have the answer to the question before the question has been posed. It's a kind of reverse intellectual curiosity. So I know, no, no, no, no, no, the science is settled on climate change-

Will Storr 4:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:30 ... humans are not having any impact on whatever it is. And the interesting, uh, insight he's got here is if the issue was simply misinformation, and, and, and that is true, let's just imagine for a moment that misinformation was the biggest problem, all that you would need to do in order to counteract that would be to provide better, more compelling information. But it's not. It's knowingness which is this kind of Faraday's cage insulation where people don't... It doesn't matter about the information because they're not open to any new information-

Will Storr 5:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:01 ... regardless of whether it's mis or real or dis or mal, whatever, prebunked malinformation. Uh, and he makes this really great point that when you're thinking about the problems of the modern world, talking about misinformation, talking about, uh, you needing better facts, we need to d- deliver more information, if you can't get past the problem of knowingness, if you can't get past the issue that people feel like they already know the answer, and this is, uh, thi- this is kind of similar to the, um, every religion believes that it's the right one but by definition that can't be true, like only one of them can be right given that they don't all agree. Uh, he, he has this great line where he says, uh, "Everybody acts as if the facts are already settled whilst no one can agree on what the facts actually are."

Will Storr 5:51 Yeah, I mean, knowing this sounds- it sounds like implicit belief is- it's the beliefs that are just implicit, uh, uh, a- and you believe them with such kind of ferocity that, that you can't see that they're beliefs. They just feel like reality to you. And, you know, and when, when I talk about the story world, that we all live in this story world, you know, I, I think that speaks to that idea that w- that we all, um, y- you know, we, we all live in this narrative. A- a- and, you know, one of- one of the kind of moments in my career as a writer that always sticks with me was when I was in my 20s. I wrote, my very first book was about ghosts, (laughs) and I went around the world trying to figure out if ghosts existed. It was, it was good fun. Uh, and one of the guys that I met was called Mor- Maurice Grosse and he was this, um, you know, this old guy, um, who lived up in Muswell Hill and he'd been a ghost hunter all his life. And he was, he was famous for, um, investigating the Enfield Poltergeist case. He's kind of a legend, Maurice Grosse. Um, and so I, so I managed to get an interview with him and I went to his house. And as I was leaving his house, he said, "You know, you know, Will," he said, "if you're looking for evidence of the supernatural, you're going to find it." And that's always stuck with me because I did find evidence (laughs) for the supernatural, even though I don't believe in the supernatural.

Chris Williamson 6:53 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 6:53 And it's always stuck with me because I think the great- the brain is this amazing evidence-finding machine. If you've got a belief, the brain will find evidence to back up your belief, wh- no matter what you believe about gender or Israel-Palestine or whatever it might be.

Chris Williamson 7:06 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 7:06 Um, your brain is gonna find multitudinous evidence, um, to, to back up, you know, what you believe. You're g- you're gonna see it everywhere and I, and that's one of the tricks of the kind of storytelling brain. You know, we live in this story world, we live in this narrative. And the brain's ve- you know, the brain's not interested in what's the truth. The brain's not really interested in i- i- i- in you having this kind of perfectly clear understanding of reality. The brain wants you to, to, to, to succeed in your life as a human. And what that means is, we have to achieve connection with a group and once we've a- we t- achieved conn- connection with a group or a tribe, we kind of earn status within it. And so a- and so to earn state- the connection to that group, you've got to believe their story. Every group has a story it tells of the world, a political or, you know, whether it's a political organization or a cult or a religion or, um, you know, uh, you know, me and you are in the kinda same kind of cultural group. We, we believe roughly the same things. We have a, we have a shared reality, we have a shared-

Chris Williamson 7:58 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 7:58 ... idea of, of who are the h- heroes? Who are the villains? What are the good beliefs? What are the bad beliefs? What is status? Um, uh, y- you know, s- so, so me and you share a story and a lot, and you're, we, we, we share a story with most of your viewers and it's reassuring. You know, we see evidence for it everywhere. So, so, so that's kind of how, you know, all this is working. The, the, the brain isn't motivated to, to tell, to, to, to discover the truth. The brain is motivated, motivated to make us want to collect with like-minded people and then status from those people. And that means believing their stories.

Chris Williamson 8:28 Mm-hmm. So is it,

Chris Williamson 8:29 is it right to say that story is the language of the brain then?

Will Storr 8:32 Absolutely. That's e- that, that's exactly right. Y- y- you know, and, and what, what we know, and as I write about in Are Stories The Deal, I think the big, the big idea that kind of made me excited about this book was this idea that, you know, what is story originally for? Um, well, story is what enables us to be these highly cooperative apes. You know, as you know, humans are an ape. We're one of five existing species of great ape. Um, but we are a weird, obviously an unusual kind of ape. And that, and that weirdness is that, that we are also a bit like ants, in that we're highly collec- collective. You know, other apes overcome the obstacles of their existence individually. They live in troops, but they find food individually. They, they pursue goals individually, you know, broadly speaking. But we don't. Humans are like ants, that we, we, we form into these super organisms, these problem-solving super organisms in, in which every kind of individual human plays their part. And that's how we're amazing. That's how we've, you know, we've taken the best of the ape and the best of the ant and we've taken over the world. But that poses a, a problem. You know, you've got all these apes, you know, once upon a time, h- how do you connect all those individualistic ape brains together? How do you get all those, th- th- those brains firing i- in the form of this highly collected super organism? Well, you do it with story. Story is a device for fusing brains together. You know, under the power of story, we're all facing in the same direction, um, uh, uh, pursuing the same goals, overcoming the same obstacles, we all have a shared idea of who you are, who your, what your role is, what you should be doing. So that's what story is doing, is it, it, it's, um, it's fusing individual human brains together and getting them to experience the same reality. And you can see that effect happening when you go to the movies, when you go to the cinema. You know, we go into the cinema as this crowd of individuals and if, and if the, if the film is any good, we're transported into it. And, and for that 90 minutes, we forget our own reality. We forget our own consciousness.

Chris Williamson 10:19 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 10:19 We're all sucked into that consciousness of the, of the film, experiencing the lives of the people up on the screen. And we kind of leave that cinema connected as one, having, having had that, you know, mad experience. And, and, you know, you often have that weird, kind of almost trippy experience coming out of the cinema where for a few moments, you feel like the hero of the movie. You know, you feel like Luke Skywalker for a moment. It's all, everything goes a bit weird. You kind of, you kind of snap out of it. Well, that's story doing what story is supposed to do, which is entering our brains and getting us all to experience this kind of collective reality of the story.

Chris Williamson 10:51 So it's kind of like a coordination mechanism to get everybody onto a similar page.

Will Storr 10:58 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, that's the... and, and, and it still works like that, of course. You know, MAGA people b- have a, have a particular story of the world that they tell each other. You know, anti-vax people do, um, pro-vax people do, climate change people do. You know, like, that, that's how it works. We, we, we, you know, we still collect into these groups that are defined by the stories they tell of the world. And those stories infect us. They influence us. They, they, they cause us to believe certain things and to behave in certain ways.

Chris Williamson 11:27 Why... Is this just that evolutionarily if all you've got is the spoken word, uh, humans needed to... The, the most obvious way to explain the world is to do it through personification, narrative, roles, characters, motivation. This is why the goddess that is the moon and the god that is the sun rises and the thunder and Thor and, you know. Um-Is this just, before you got written word and before you can do statistical analysis, the, uh, most obvious, most common, most sort of close to our experience of reality way to communicate information was to personify it into a sort of a-a-a narrative? Is that we're just the progeny of storytellers that told stories to pass down wisdom to tell stories to pass down wisdom?

Will Storr 12:21 Well, I mean, the-the-the current leading theory is that, is that, is that language evolved in the first place to tell stories that enabled us to operate as these highly cooperative groups, these super organisms as I call them. You know, what- what- you know, one- one early form of storytelling is gossip, you know. Gossip is a universal human behavior. We all do it. What, you know, why do we do it? Well, gossip teaches us who-who we ought to be in this super organism. It teaches, it teaches us what are the good behaviors, what are the bad behaviors. It motivates us to behave in a, in a kind of way that serves the super organism because then we're rewarded with status. Uh, a-and, you know, also incentivizes in the other way, that- that if you're being gossiped about and the gossip is negative, you're gonna get punished, you know. So that's, so- so that's one form of early storytelling. And then the other story- the- the- the other kind of storytelling is about the future, you know. We tell stories about the future. Um, there's-th-there's a, there's a very brilliant, you know, evolutionary biologist called Michael Tomasello that says, you know, that it's im-, i- i- it's impossible to imagine two chimpanzees picking up a log and carrying it together to take it somewhere else. Like, even that basic level of coordination-

Chris Williamson 13:21 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 13:21 ... corporation that c- that even chimpanzees can't do, our closest, um, relative. And storytelling enables us to do that, you know. "Hey, g- you know, if we, if we move that log over here, that can be a foundation for our next camp." "All right, dude, you know, we're gonna do it." So- so- so that's a form of storytelling, you know. We- we're telling stories about the future. And that's why stories are always about obstacles and goals. Every functional story fundamentally is about obstacles and goals because that's what story evolved to do. It's- i- i- its purpose is to, is- is to pull us into a group a-a-a-and the f- and the purpose of that group is to overcome obstacles in pursuit of goals.

Chris Williamson 13:55 What role does social identity and mimicry play here?

Will Storr 14:00 Um, huge, huge roles. I mean, you know, social identity is- is- is your identity within the group. Um, you know, who- who are you in the group? You know, you know basic idea might, you know, basic concept might be a football team. Who are you in a football team where you've got a pos- you're playing in a particular position that comes with certain expectations, um, you've got certain roles to perform, and you're judged, your status is, goes higher or lower depending on how well you perform those roles. And- a- a- and- and- and that's the same in every, you know, y- y- your social identity in the football team is striker, defender, goalkeeper, whatever it might be, right? It can be referee even. Um, and that's the same in every human group, you know. In e- with every group we join, we have what we call a social identity and- and what a, you know, a human identity is in part a collection of these various social identities that we have.

Chris Williamson 14:46 Right. Yeah, I wonder, what was that, um, what was that Apple ad? The Lemmings thing?

Will Storr 14:53 (laughs) Yeah. So- so- so- so, yeah, in A Story Is A Deal, I tell the story of, um, well, I sort of pose a question really, like, a-abo- about, like, um, one of the most famous ads that was ever made was Apple's 1984 ad which- which- which kind of played on the George Orwell's novel and showed, um, and showed this, um, horrendous kind of totalitarian hellscape, uh, all these kind of bald, gray middle-aged men, God forbid, (laughs) you know, drone-like, um, automatons, um, and- and- and this kind of, like, barking patriarchal face and this technicolor woman with an Apple T-shirt on runs down the middle of it, throws a hammer, smashes the- the face and then it comes up saying, you know, "In January 1984, you're gonna find out, um, th- wha- wha- why..." You know, uh, I forget the actual words, "Because of Apple, 1984 won't be like 1984." So basically- basically-

Chris Williamson 15:46 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 15:47 ... 1984 is freedom, it's power, it's, um, creativity, it's progress. Hugely successful, massively successful, um, ad campaign. I mean, they sold, um, i- i- in today's money, would be, you know, hundreds of millions, um, dollars worth of- of computers when that, when- wh- when they were launched after that ad, um, uh, so enormously successful. Um, and then the next year, that, people know about the 1984 ad because it is seen as one of the most successful ads in, in history, but the next year, (laughs) they tried to repeat it. They did the same thing. It was the same advertising, um, agency, Chiat Day, um, they used a- a Hollywood, um, uh, uh, film director, um, and what this ad was, it's called Lemmings, and it was just the most horrendous, like, dark, dark thing where you've got all these, like, automaton, um, sad sack businessmen, a bit like the PC guys in their 1990s or early 2000s ads, I'm- I'm a Mac, I'm a PC, um, kind of marching, you know, with briefcases marching off, um, this cliff to their deaths to the sound of a- a nightmarishly slowed down version of Hey Ho Hey Ho It's Off To Work We Go. Um, and basically saying that all these, um, uh, uh, uh, business computer users were a bunch of lemmings and if they, you know, implying if they knew what they were doing, they'd be buying Apple computers. And it was just a, it was a massive disaster. It wasn't just, it wasn't even a, well, like a null effect where everyone just ignored it. Um, th- the day after it was, um, uh, launched on, uh, the Super Bowl, uh, A- Apple's headquarters were getting inundated with phone calls from people saying they were, business people saying they were never gonna buy an Apple computer again. And, you know, and one of the things I'm arguing in the book is that what, you know, one of the reasons, one of the things they didn't understand was that, um, you know, that 1984 ad was offering the Apple user status. It was just saying, you know, fundamentally that if you buy an Apple computer, you're on the side of progress, um, y- y- you know, um, creativity, smashing the man, which was, you know, a big thing in the '80s. Um, it's not gonna be 1984, you know. So- so- so it's a very, um, optimistic, high status, fashionable, um, um, uh, story they were telling. Uh, but- but the other ad, it took status away, so it was an absolute disaster.

Chris Williamson 17:54 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 17:54 It was basically telling people, um, that they're a, yeah, they were these bunch of braindead lemmings and they were gonna...... fall to their death due to their own stupidity.

Chris Williamson 18:02 Right. And is that, is that role of, of s- d- desire for this is where I am within the group, this is my social identity, uh, this sort of mimesis, mimicry thing that I want to feel like I belong and that this is, is, is that all wrapped together at all?

Will Storr 18:17 Yeah, a little bit. So, so, so to understand wh- one of the reasons that 1984 was so successful, you have to really understand the story of computers that was being told in the 1980s. So when the advert was, um, broadcast, the Berlin Wall stood up, um, th- this wasn't the age of Silicon Valley, you know, Facebook, Google and all the, you know, friendly corporate, um, um, you know, brands that we know today. Um, computers were still feared. Um, th- they, they were seen as these kind of machines that were gonna like, yeah, go- gonna introduce a future of conformity and, you know, totalitarianism. Um, it was, um, just the year before, um, 1984 was broadcast, there was a massive film called WarGames, um, which I just about remember from my childhood, you know, which, which was all about this computer that was, that did, um, um, that, that did war games, um, f- with the Soviet Union kind of went go- goes crazy and actually starts and almost starts a brand new nuclear war. And, and the computer there was this huge kind of flashing mainframe thing operated by inscrutable men in white lab coats. So that was, that was, that was what people feared. People feared computers. Weirdly, that, that fear is re- re- reawakening at the moment in the age of AI. People are starting to have those fears again. But they went away. Um, a- a- and, you know, really largely one of the reasons they went away is because of that ad. It was, it was saying that no, you know, this is not what personal, personal computers are all about.

Chris Williamson 19:37 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 19:38 Personal computers are about freedom. They're about individuality. They're about progress. So people would love that story, you know. They, they massively identified with that story and, and, and it ended up being an incredibly powerful, um, p- powerfully persuasive piece of storytelling for Apple. I mean, you know, like all, like all the ads I talk about in the book, it had no information in it about the actual product. It had no price, no technical details. It didn't even have a picture of the damn thing. It was pure storytelling and, and incredibly successful. And then, you know, one scholar in marketing that I, that I read and I agree, you know, argues that 1984 didn't just, um, tell a brand new story about Apple Computers. It told a brand new story about Silicon Valley, about computers in general. That, that story about, um, y- um, yeah, computers being the tool, tools for creativity and changing the world and freedom, that became the story of computers going on for decades.

Chris Williamson 20:28 Is it, is it right to say that stories are identity manipulation in that way then?

Will Storr 20:34 Manipulation is a strong word. (laughs) Um, I, I, I-

Chris Williamson 20:39 Curation.

Will Storr 20:40 Curation. I don't think... I don't think their ads are manipulating our identity, strictly speaking. I think they are manipulating us by appealing to our identity. So, you know, humans, you know, we, we, we live in these two worlds at once. We, we, we live in the physical world like an anim- like other animals. And in that physical world, we care about our survival. We care about food and shelter and procreation and the, you know, and importantly the safety, um, of our children who are gonna then move, move our genes forwards. So in that respect, we're no different from a dog or an elephant. But humans live in this other kind of crazy world, this story world, uh, where we, we care about other things. And, and in, in the story world, we aren't a, a, a flesh and blood machine. We're an identity. We're this collection of ideas. That's what we are. And this identity means more to us than our lives. You know, like, like to, to, to, to, to a, to, to the average human being, their identity is the most precious thing they'll ever own. I mean, you know, our childrens aren't our possessions but our, our, our identity is. So, so, so, so you know, you can see people throughout human history have, have chosen identity over, over their own lives. When, when we go to war, that's what we do. When we fly planes into the World Trade Center, that's what we do. When we kill ourselves, that's, that's what we do. You know, the mo- most co- cases of suicide are what I call identity failure. That it's not because, you know, that, that they can't physically live anymore because they're sick or because they're, um, poor or something. I mean, of course people do often kill themselves because they're ill.

Chris Williamson 22:19 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 22:19 Um, but very often they don't. Very often they kill themselves because they feel like failures. Because their identity has failed, because they're lacking in connection. No one loves me, no one likes me, everybody hates me. They're lacking in status. I'm useless, I'm pathetic. And, and crucially they're also trapped. They feel there's no way they can rescue their identity. And the pain of their identity failing becomes so acute that they choose death over, um, you know, o- o- over the pain of having their identity fall to pieces. And so, so that's the power of identity. And so the most powerful ads, you know, appeal to, to identity. And, and again, that's what, you know, Apple did with their, with their other really, um, famous and successful ad campaign, you know, Think Different, which is a bunch of black and white pictures of people like Gandhi and Mother Teresa and John Lennon. And this is you, think different. You know, so if you're, if you... You know, so, so basically people who identify with those characters, you know, changed the world, became another absolute cliche in Silicon Valley and it began really with Think Different as bit when it became popularized, that idea. And, and, and that's an appeal to identity. Now there's, there's another really great example which I found, um, which I'd never heard of and if you're not Canadian you won't know about it, but it's Molson Beer. So back in the year 2000, Molson Beer were in trouble. They were number one and then they were slipping. And so, um, the, the, the ads agency were tasked with rescuing the, the reputation of Molson Beer. And what... And, and, and the guy who the ad agency was Canadian and knew that one of the things that annoys Canadians is when Americans basically say, "You're just Americans." You know, there's no difference between Canadians and Americans. Something that really winds Canadians up as you can imagine. So he came up with this ad campaign, um, um, called I Am Canadian and all it is, is this ordinary guy in a plaid shirt and jeans on a stage listing things that are Canadian, like it's zed, not Zee, for example. We don't say aboot, we say about. It's just a list of things, but it was massively successful. It went instantly, you know, um, viral, viral at the time. Um, you know, kids began, you know...... shouting it on the streets. Um, the value of Molson beer, you know, rocketed. I forget the exact number but, you know, tens of millions, um, o- of the value of the company through the roof. Uh, one really s- one of the, like incredibly smart thing they did was they debuted that ad in the ad break of the Oscars just after the South Park film Blame Canada had been performed. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 24:34 Ah. (laughs)

Will Storr 24:35 So, 30 words, Blame Canada. And then they had this very patriotic I Am Canadian thing. But what's fascinating about I Am Canadian is, an- and it became known as the rant in Canada. It's very famous in Canada. And what's fascinating about it, again, just like the Apple ad, there's nothing in there about the beer, about its tastedness or whatever, you know, what are the qualities of this beer, why should we be buying it. Nothing. It's, it, it's literally an appeal to identity, saying, it, it's j- it's holding a mirror up to their market, their audience and saying, "This is who you are." And we're so in love with our identity, we go, "Yes, that's me." And we, we, we, we, we flock to the product. That's, and it's the same as what Apple did with Think Different. They just said, "Here you are. We see you. You're amazing, you're fantastic and, and, and, and this is who you are. You are this person." And, I mean, you know, so, so, so, so that's how it's mani- manipulating us for our, for our identity, like the very best, most persuasive ads. That's how they do it.

Chris Williamson 25:22 Does that mean from a story perspective, stories overall, adverts too, but just generally stories, that they can, they're a way that tribal preferences can be used, can be manipulated in-group, out-group, the people like us meme?

Will Storr 25:40 Absolutely right, yeah, yeah. So, so, so, I mean, th- th- and this is, this is, this is, you know, thi- thi- this is another concept that really came home to me when I was doing my research for A Story Is A Deal, a- and it really made me feel like, uh, a- as a, as a society, we are still at the foothills of maturity in talking about issues like race. Because, uh, you know, we fundamentally hate this idea but it, but, but it's an inarguably true idea. And the idea is that people like people like them. You know, we collect into groups of like-minded people, so we're always looking out for people who are a bit like us, uh, to, uh, to, uh, to identify with. And so, so, you know, that's why, you know, race becomes a problem, because white people naturally tend to flock towards white people. Black people naturally tend to fl- flock towards Black people. And at its core, it isn't racism, it's human nature. And until we've sort of really grasped that, we're not gonna make any progress in these sort of very difficult problems. Um, so, so, so, so that's what we're kind of constantly doing. And, and again, it's human nature because it's in our, it's in... We're always looking for people with similar identities to us that we can cooperate with. It's that superorganism, you know, programming again, so that nature is constantly wanting us to gather into groups of like-minded people and repel, you know, re- re- re- repel people who we think aren't like-minded. And, and the most persuasive storytelling, you know, understands that. Like one, one, one of the most recent examples was from the Trump election, th- the one just gone, which I thought was extraordinary, where, um, you know, there's, there's a concept in the book I call atomic statements, which, which are kind of, you know, tiny little phrases, uh, that, that are, you know, that are absolutely packed with meaning. And, and they're atomic because they're, they're tiny little things but they explode on contact with the human brain. They're, they're so packed with meaning. And you can see, like mov- lines of movie dialogue, like, "We're gonna need a bi- we're gonna need a bigger boat," is an atomic statement because it's the entire movie packed into a, to, to a line. "Houston, we have a problem" is an atomic statement, you know. The- these are lines that we love and we repeat and become iconic because they're atomic, they're packed full of meaning. And the best advertising lines are like that. "Just do it" is packed full of meaning. It's a story about what Nike stands for. "Just do it." You know, it's fantastic. And politicians use these to great effect too. You know, in the book I write about Project Fear and, um, Take Back Control, which were very successful for the Brexit Leave campaign. But after the book was finished, there was this other incredible atomic statement that came out of the Trump campaign, which was, "Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you." Which, you know, even the people that came up with it were staggered by how successful it was. Now Ka- Kamala's own, um, uh, research team, um, figured, uh, worked out that it had created n- a 2.7% shift in the election rate, just that line alone. So, you know, that's a story and, and it's a story that, that, that, that millions of Americans immediately understood. Um, a certain kind of American (laughs) wh- who, who, uh, were, were, were incredibly frustrated and fed up with the kind of, you know, the, with, with the kind of era of wokeism. And so, so, so yeah, that, that, that was a, another example of incredibly powerful persuasive storytelling that appeals to identity.

Chris Williamson 28:39 Does that mean that misaligned messages and misaligned stories can threaten identity then, if you get it, if you get it wrong on the other way?

Will Storr 28:47 Yeah, exactly. So, so you look at the Gillette ad campaign where they, um, were trying to appeal to men by calling men abusers and, you know, harassers. (laughs) You know. It's like lemmings all over again. Like, you're not gonna, you're not gonna make people happy by removing their status, by telling them a story that they don't want to believe. It's the Bud Light campaign, y- you know, giv- g- g- giving a, you know, tr- transgender woman Bud Light to drink. You know, that, that, that's a story, you know. We, we know that this person stands for wokeism and wokeism at, is at its core, um, you know, if we're honest about what wokeism is, at its core one of the things it, it is, is a movement against straight white men. So, you know, straight white men were the, were the market for, for, for Bud Light. So that, that was a ridiculous thing to do, and, and it exploded in their faces. And also Tesla. You know, you know, the, you know, Tesla's stock prices collapsed, um, and that's partly because of the tariffs. But, but, but their, but their sales have dropped massively in, you know, across Europe, which isn't because of the tariffs. And that's because the story that Tesla stands for-

Chris Williamson 29:49 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 29:49 ... has been polluted by Elon Musk's behavior in the last, you know, 18 months, and his alignment with the Trump government.

Chris Williamson 29:57 It's vicious, isn't it? The, the power that stories have, because, you know, much of this... I- i- if you were to say reality, you said there's two things. We, we sort of live in the world and we live in stories. Tesla's cars from, I don't know when they launched, decade ago, something like that, until now, have just linearly got better-... and cheaper and faster and more convenient with improved build quality, uh, but largely are the same thing, right? So my point is that they haven't changed, but the story around them has, and that's made way more of an impact on the stock price and on their sales and on the way that people see them than the incremental improvement month on month, year on year, over a decade, to their full self-driving capacity. So, you know, in this way, the, the story is more real than reality is.

Will Storr 30:47 It is more real than reality is. That's, uh, that's exactly right. And, and to understand why, you've gotta go back to that concept of the story world, that human beings are these two things. We're a bag of bones and blood in, on, in the survival realm, but in the story realm, we're nothing more than a collection of ideas that, that we, that we collect. You know, uh, we, we, you know, uh, we, we, we are the things that we love. We are the art that we like. We are, um, the podcasts that we listen to. Uh, y- y- you know, we are, um... It, it amaze, it, it makes me f- laugh when I'm watching, you know, travel podcasters who go around the world, and they all do, th- they all copy Baldur Bankrupt's body language. You know, he does this weird thing where he looks behind him all the time, and you see, especially at the beginning, th- they, they, they do it, they... I, I think subconsciously aping his body language, like-

Chris Williamson 31:28 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 31:28 ... because they, you know, they, they, they're part of... He's part of their identity. And that's also true of the things that we own. The things that we own are part of our identity. So if you're somebody that stands against Trump and, uh, uh, uh, th- and you own a Tesla, then it's bec- it becomes toxic to you because, because it's like, it's, it's like you've become... Your, your very self has become polluted with this alien kind of element. y- you know, you wanna cut it out of you. It's, it, it's a, it's a, it's a radically bad thing to happen to you, so you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna reject it. It's like being forced as a middle-age, -aged man to walk down the road, um, you know, um, with a, I don't know, with a skin-tight Taylor Swift T-shirt on. Like, it, it just makes you feel deeply uncomfortable, you know?

Chris Williamson 32:06 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 32:06 So, so, so, so b- b- because the self is nothing more than a collection of ideas in that story realm.

Chris Williamson 32:13 What does the Theranos story, uh, tell us about group psychology and how that works?

Will Storr 32:19 Well, it's, it, it, you know... I, I love the Theranos story because it, it, uh, it, it, it really speaks to all this stuff, you know. A- as we know, Elizabeth Holmes, um, you know, came along and said she had this incredible device that she called the Edison. And the Edison was revolutionary because, um, you used to take a couple of vials of blood to, to do all these huge battery of blood tests, and then she could do it with a, w- with a, with a pinprick of blood on your finger. Amazing, revolutionary, fantastic. And as we know now, the, the... it was fantasy. It didn't, (laughs) it didn't work. There was no machine. Um, a- a- and so w- what's incredible about the Edison is that, is that she managed to get huge amount of backing from, uh, from people on her board, including Henry Kissinger, uh, e- in a, you know, the, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control, you know, like very, very high status smart men. They were all men on that board, not a single w- not a single woman, um, and that's important for reasons that will become apparent in a second. Um, so, so, so all these guys gambled their reputation on her telling the truth. And, and then incredibly smart, successful guys, um, and girls invested hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in, in, in Theranos. Ru- Rupert Murdoch, um... It, it was the bi- it was the most amount of money he's ever invested in any company outside of his own family of companies. And the incredible thing about this is most of these people did no due diligence. So Rupert Murdoch did no due diligence. So they didn't even bother to find out whether she was telling the truth. Like, it's extraordinary. Some people did. So, so somebody from Google Ventures, um, uh, w- who were interested in investing went down to a Walmart where, where Theranos were doing their tests for a, for a (laughs) for a blood test, and they took two massive vials of blood out of his arm. He's just like, "Wait, hang on a minute. This isn't... We are not investing in this." So some people didn't fall for the story, but Rupert Murdoch did, and Henry Kissinger did, and the Walmart family did. And, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I... Me and other commentators too, this is not just me wh- who's come up with this, it, I, I'm convinced it was the story that she stood for, you know? This was, this was at a t- well, we're still in that time. We're in the girlboss era.

Chris Williamson 34:26 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 34:26 P- people were and remain desperate for a female Steve Jobs, you know? People very, talk very disparagingly about tech bros, you know, the masculinity of the tech world is a problem for the, you know, for, for the good people of our culture today. So people were desperate for a female Steve Jobs, and she became a female Steve Jobs, even down to the turtleneck, you know? It was extraordinary, the, the kind of cosplay that she did. Um, and, and, and so, so, so, you know, people like Rupert Murdoch and Ken- Henry Kissinger, by buying into Theranos, they're making it that part of their identity, so her heroic story becomes their own h- heroic story. Rupert Murdoch comes from somebody that has backed this female billionaire genius founder. So, so, so, so that's how important the story is. And as I say in the book, I mean, the, the device didn't exist. The f- the device was worth nothing, but the story was worth $9 billion. That's what Theranos was valued at at their peak, $9 billion. So that's the power of storytelling to kind of bedazzle the minds of even our greatest, smartest, wealthiest people.

Chris Williamson 35:23 (laughs) Do you, do you think that we overestimate logic because we sort of underestimate identity in this way?

Will Storr 35:32 Yeah, we do. I, I... There, there, there's something in the brain that tells us that, that, th- that we are... Something very powerful that tells us that we are not under the influence of story, that we are under the influence of rationality. W- well there's a... You know, it's actually quite easy to, to, to, to figure out why, why that is. Like, you, you have to believe in the story of, of your group in order for that group to function. Like, obviously you do. Um-

Chris Williamson 35:54 Because if you don't believe, you can't be a part of the group.

Will Storr 35:57 Yeah, because b- because you're not part of that group's mission. You're, you're, you're de-identified with the group. And also, you know, o- o- one of the fundamental things that you want from that group is... Well, the two f- fundamental things that you want is connection and status. So, so, so you only really connect with a group if you believe in, in their story. So if you believe in th- that Jesus was a real guy and that he died and re- and resurrected on the third day, you're a, you're a Christian now. Like, that's what you are, you know? Um, you're, you're a Christian.It's as simple as that, Jordan, by the way. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 36:25 (laughs)

Will Storr 36:26 Um, uh, uh- and, um, a- and so- so- so- so- so now you're connected into that Christian world, uh, but- but in order to, um, uh, earn status in that Christian world, uh, you have to allow that belief to- to- to- to- to kind of fill you up. I call it, this process active belief. You have- you have to, that belief has to act on you like a parasite controlling your behavior. So, you go out in the world and you- you- you- you start acting out the values and the story of the Christian set of beliefs. You know, you can't do that if you- if you don't believe in Christianity. It won't make any sense to you. And also, you can't earn the status. You know, like- like- like- i- l- one of the things that- that- that Muslims do, they- they call it the hadith w- where- where they... Some- some Muslims will learn the Quran by heart, so every- every- every word of the Quran, you know, it takes sometimes two to three years. It's a massive thing.

Chris Williamson 37:15 Wow.

Will Storr 37:15 And- and if you manage to pull this stunt off, you get a huge amount of status. I think it's called a hadith. But you- you get a certain title and a certain status. Now, you have to believe in the story of Islam to go through that trial of two to three years of earning it by heart, because- because otherwise you're not gonna be motivated to do it. And- and- and- and also, more importantly, the status will mean nothing. It doesn't mean anything. So, if you don't believe in the story, to you and me, it's a waste of time (laughs) l- learning that book word for word. Why would you bother? But if you believe in the story, it has m- it has massive meaning, i- i- you know. So- so- so yeah, we- we- we have to believe that- that- that the stories that- that aren't just stories, that they're actual tr- they're actual truth, they're reality. And we believe it so much, you know, looking through human history, people all the time fight and die on behalf of the beliefs of their groups.

Chris Williamson 38:02 Mm. Yeah, I had this conversation with Andrew Schulz a couple of months ago. Uh, Ben Shapiro's famous tweet about "Facts don't care about your feelings."

Will Storr 38:12 Mm.

Chris Williamson 38:12 But in reality, feelings don't care about your facts.

Will Storr 38:15 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 38:15 And that's a much (laughs) - a much better way to put it. I- so I get- I get this sense that facts are kind of... In some ways, they do become obsolete in a story-driven world.

Will Storr 38:25 Yeah, yeah. I saw that too, and I was jealous. I was like, "Damn, I wish I'd- I wish I'd come up with that." (laughs) But yeah, it's absolutely, I think that-

Chris Williamson 38:30 Not too late to add it to the book. Um, uh, there's a pre- it's only a pre-print.

Will Storr 38:33 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 38:34 Yeah.

Will Storr 38:34 Uh, yeah. The, yeah. So- so, yeah, the, I think that's absolutely right. That- that's the right way to think about it. And again, I'll just go back to Ad- you know, poor Adam Rutherford and Jordan Peterson, who I- I just have to emphasize (laughs) they- they've got to be smart guys who I have nothing but respect for. But their, but- but- but they- they have their stories of the world that they believe thoroughly, and nobody, no- no set of facts is gonna- is- is gonna change their minds on- on- o- o- o- on- on- on- on their beliefs. It- it, that seems pretty clear from the tenor of their conversation on social media.

Chris Williamson 39:05 Mm. Okay, so connection, identity, but also status. So, how do we use story to gain status?

Will Storr 39:13 Yeah, as I said, it's like, you know, what- what, you know, once we believe the story of the group, what we want then is to earn status within the group. So, nobody wants to be at the bottom rung of a group, liked, but seen as kind of useless. We- we kind of want to rise up the group. That's- that- that- that's human nature. Um, a- and- and you do that by, um, developing a reputation of somebody that's valuable to the group in some way. So- so- so, um, yeah. So- so- so- so- as I said, you know, if- if you're a Christian, you just become a better Christian. You start acting like a Christian. If you're a anti-vaxxer, you don't get vaccinated, you go, you might go protesting, you might start doing some blogging. You might have an argument with your GP about how vaccines are shit, and then you'll tell all your friends and they'll go, "Oh, you're amazing." You know, so- so- so that's what I call, that f- that- that kind of active belief. We- we all- you know, and again, we allow that story to take us over. And again, this is why stories are so incredibly persuasive. You see it all the time. Stories take over the minds of people, and- and they start behaving in ways dictated by the story. At- at its most extreme, it's a cult. I mean, that's the most extreme form of, you know, what I call a status game.

Chris Williamson 40:17 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 40:17 Where you've, where- where people have one identity, one story, one status game and- and that's it. I mean, that's why people in cults are usually encouraged to not even contact family and friends anymore, because they- they cannot be allowed to have any other source of... any other story, any other identity, any other source of status. And, you know, our- our religion is just a slightly weaker form of a- of a cult. A political party is- is- is- is- is- is a weaker form of a cult, and you can, you know, carry on going down and down, um, the line. You know, all, you know, all groups are kind of loose or tight, and the tightest is the cult.

Chris Williamson 40:49 Mm. Is there a difference between high and low status influence in storytelling?

Will Storr 40:57 Yeah. So, um, y- you've mentioned mimesis a couple of times. And- and so- so- so, you know, our- our, the copying instinct. And how that tends to work in the, you know, in human groups is that we are unconsciously constantly on the lookout for people like us, so people that we identify with, um, uh, who are higher status than us. And when we identify s- w- what, like, a higher-status version of ourselves, we tend to automatically start copying them. That's when the mimesis kicks in. So, we will- w- we will- w- we wi- we will, um, want to get near them, so that might be by flattering them if they're a celebrity. It might be by buying their products, joining their, you know, social media feeds, whate- you know, going to their concerts. Um, we might start mimicking their patterns of behavior, the way they talk, the way they dress, their artistic tastes. We will automatically s- yeah, so- so it's a- a- and- and consciously, that's the- that's... 'Cause our- our brain has gone, "Well, this is a person like me who's got high status. I want high status." So, it... The more I can make myself like this person, the more likely I am to rise up that status game.

Chris Williamson 41:59 Mm. What about virtue signaling? That's a very specific type of status.

Will Storr 42:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:05 And probably involve story.

Will Storr 42:07 Yeah. Well, there- there- there are, th- th- there are kind of... Well, there's lots of different kinds of status, but there are th- there are three main kinds of ways that we can earn status in human groups. The f- the first way is dominance. So, that's the an- the much more animalistic way, the much more ancient way. So, dominance is violence, the threat of violence, also the threat of social violence.Ostracization, cancel culture, all that would come under the, come under dominance. Um, and then th- and then there's the other two kind of forms which are based on our reputation, our identity. And so the first one is, um, competence. So, um, w- we become good at stuff. So, w- w- we become valuable to our group by, um, becoming an excellent hunter or a great ex- honey finder or a, um, an excellent storyteller or an excellent sorcerer. And so people respond to us by rewarding us with status and, you know, in all human groups, the more status y- you get, the better everything else becomes. You become safer, better fed, you get greater access to choice of mates. You know, in, in the modern world, you get richer. That, you know, th- it's always worked like that. It always will work. But the other way of earning status is b- is by virtue. You know, we, we also award status to people who we perceive as virtuous. And, and the role of virtue in human groups is about rules. It's about knowing the rules, knowing the stories, uh, but it's also enforcing the rules. So again, we have this very naive view that virtue is obviously good. That virtue is, um, is 50% good, 50% evil because, because, you know, practicing with virtue is that, is that, um, instinct to enforce the rules and to, um, punish people who don't share our story world. So, um, you know, Michelle Obama, you might call her a virtue superstar because she's, sh- sh- sh- she's, um, you know, known for her perceived moral goodness by l- by her people. The Pope, the Dalai Lama, these are virtue superstars. These are p- these are people who are incredibly high status, you know, Greta Thunberg, on the basis of the perception that they are high in, uh, you know, l- levels of virtue. But also, um, uh, you know, the, the, the, during the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards were playing virtue-based status games. People doing cancel culture, you know, it's dominance, virtue. You know, they, they're, they're not interested in competence. They're not interested in success. They're interested in, "I'm gonna punish you, uh, for not following the rules and for not believing the sacred stories of my group."

Chris Williamson 44:31 Mm. How do... It sounds a lot like rivalry. How do the mechanics of rivalry play out in stories, storytelling?

Will Storr 44:39 Rivalry is interesting. So, um, wi- within a group, um, rivalry can be very, um, productive. So, but rivalry, it tends to be classified as a one-on-one thing. So if you are r- rivalrous with one individual and, you know, o- one of the tests of rivalry, you know, p- people who are rivals are usually quite similar. They're playing a s- they're playing a same status game and, and they, and they have a, a history of near wins and close matches. So that's the recipe for a rivalry. And that kind of rivalry can be amazing. It can drive people to, you know, incredible feats. It's, it's the Lennon-McCartney thing. Um, you know, in the, in the, in the status game, I told the story of, you know, the true origin story of the iPhone, which is that when (laughs) Pr- Steve Jobs went to a barbecue his wife, that his wife organized with some twat from Microsoft who was s- sort of going, "Oh, Microsoft just solved computing. You've got this touch device with a stylus. It's gonna blow you out of the water." And then Jobs came in, um, to work on the Monday and was like f- furious, livid, and instructed his team to, to figure out a way of, um, blowing Microsoft out of the water. And it wasn't gonna be a stylus. It was gonna be with a finger. So, you know, that's rivalry. I mean, rivalry made the iPhone. It began as the iPad and then reemerged with the iPhone. So, um, so, so, so that tends to be good for us. It's obviously exhausting, but it's, you know, but, but, but, you know, we've all been in that situation where, where we become obsessed with a rival. It drives you forward. Um, what's less, um, um, healthy is competition. So if rivalry is one-on-one, one person versus one person, one group versus one group, competition is kind of all against all. And competition in, in that kind of technical sense, um, is, is often less productive. It's kind of exhausting. It's kind of toxic. People kind of, pe- people in organizations high in, you know, very high in competition, um, experience lots of burnout. They, they, they experience kind of a, kind of a toxic culture in which everybody's kind of hoarding the status for themselves, taking all the credit, um, pushing all the blame away. So yeah, you've got to be careful in organizations how you're engineering your teams so there's not too much competition, but there is plenty of healthy rivalry.

Chris Williamson 46:45 Yeah. You, well, you need people to be able to capture the upside from doing a really great job whilst not detracting from the positive sum gains that you get by working in a team. And this, you know, the tension between connection, uh, and, uh, capturing, I suppose, self-capturing of, of, of this status. Like, I need to show that I'm contributing to the group, but I actually want to capture as much, if not maybe even a little bit more, than I actually contributed. But I can't do too much 'cause if I do too much, then people are gonna know that I'm a freeloader.

Will Storr 47:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:17 So, you know, I need to have a conspicuous productivity, uh, to the point where people will allow... I remember, this is so funny. I haven't thought about this for forever. So, uh, during my, uh, degree at Newcastle-

Will Storr 47:28 Mm.

Chris Williamson 47:29 ... we had a, um, a consultancy project. (laughs) This is so fucked up. I can't believe I haven't thought about this in ages. We did a consultancy project for a, a, a company. It was a marketing consultancy project. And we were chosen... I think it was the British Fly Fishing Association. Uh, and we... I remember we went down to Stoke-On-Trent. We all drove down as a group and it was a group of five or si- I think, I want to say six, group of six. And, uh, me and my business partner were in there. So obviously we were a super, super tight group and, um, real competent. We, you know, we were doing this professionally ourselves. We knew how everything was going. Uh, went down, we did this consultation project and then we present it to the, uh, to the lecturer. Now, one of the ways that yo- (laughs) that your grades were mediated was that everybody in the group had to give a relative rating that they thought about the contribution of everybody else in the group, which just... It was immediately gonna allow us to get into coalitional bullshit.

Will Storr 48:25 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:26 Uh, and, and, and sure enough, there was a couple of people who hadn't contributed all that much and I think, you know-... we got the ranking correct, but we fucking twisted the knife, for sure.

Will Storr 48:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:37 Because we were like... Uh, and it just became a coordination problem.

Will Storr 48:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:41 And given that me and my business partner were club promoters, all that we do is coordinate people into social groups, that was... I, I was a professional social coordination manipulator. Uh, I, we were always... I was never gonna... Like, I got the... I think I got some, like, absurdly high mi- You know, I got, like, a, a, a 1.5x multiplier on whatever the, the, the group score was for me and my business partner because of how much we'd contributed, and we convinced everybody else to give us this grade. Um, which I, again, I stand by the fact that we deserved it.

Will Storr 49:10 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 49:11 But, uh, yeah, it just... You know, perverse incentives. So a-another thing on the, on the rivalry point, have you looked at venting much? Like, the specific act of venting?

Will Storr 49:19 No, I haven't. I'm fascinated.

Chris Williamson 49:21 Fucking awesome. So this is a little bit of Christina Duranti, a little bit of Tanya Reynolds, a little bit of Corey Clark, some evolutionary psychology ladies, super smart people. And, um, venting is a unique type of gossip. And you mentioned gossip earlier on.

Will Storr 49:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:37 Uh, it's a, it's a very unique type. Venting allows the gossiper to couch their gossip under the pretext of empathetic concern for the victim.

Will Storr 49:52 Ah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:53 So-

Will Storr 49:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:53 ... I mean, me and you are having a conversation, and I say, "Will, you know, I'm just... I'm really worried about John because, you know, he's sleeping with all these girls-"

Will Storr 50:05 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 50:05 "... and I'm just really worried that he's gonna get hurt 'cause I, you know, I care about him so much. And, and I, I'm just really concerned. He just keeps on sleeping around all the time, and like, I really think that, you know, he's worth more than that, and he doesn't really understand it." He's worth more than that. Okay.

Will Storr 50:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:21 So what, uh, what, wha- what communica- information have I communicated during that? Well, I've told you that John's being a man-whore, right? Uh, but I've done it... "I, I, John, I, I'm just so wor... I, I didn't say, I didn't say anything bad about you. I just care about you so much as a friend."

Will Storr 50:38 Right. Yeah, it's coming from a good place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:40 Yeah, and, uh, I've, I've positioned me as the sort of person that morally would... "Well, I mean, if I'm pointing this out, I can't be behave- engaging in the same behavior." Uh, me, like John, I would never.

Will Storr 50:51 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 50:51 I would never behave in the same way that John behaves. I mean, this is... You know, I mean-

Will Storr 50:55 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:55 ... like, just I care about him so much. So you've got all of this stuff. It's a very unique form of gossip, venting.

Will Storr 51:00 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:01 Really, it's a, a, a, a novel, um, uh, vector of attack that, um... It's specifically done amongst women, which is why all of the people-

Will Storr 51:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:10 ... that have, that I mentioned that did the research were female researchers. Um...

Will Storr 51:14 Well, I hate to bring it up, but I am thinking about Love Island as you're... Just 'cause you, 'cause this, this is-

Chris Williamson 51:17 Yay. There it is.

Will Storr 51:18 There it is.

Chris Williamson 51:19 Coalitional warfare.

Will Storr 51:20 Ye- y- exactly. That's, that's why I'm, uh, I, I remain a fan. Like, you see that all the time amongst the women in, um, in Love Island. Um, the, the, the other kind of gossip which I, which I, which I've sort of detected in Love Island is you see that, what you call venting, which is, which is that kind of... Yeah, that, that kind of... That, that, that naked kind of status-

Chris Williamson 51:38 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 51:38 ... kind of warfare. But you, you either see... You also see what, what, what, what I... They call it... Sometimes they call it... They call it co-rumination. And what, what I found, especially more so in recent series of Love Island, when the, when the guys have a problem, it's so interesting, the guys get together and try and f- solve the problem, um, a- and, um, the- they'll, they'll, they'll often hold each other a bit accountable, and that might get a bit arsey.

Chris Williamson 51:59 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 51:59 Um, but they, but, but, but they often will. Um, and so sometimes they try to build each other up and, "You can do it, mate. You can do it. You just need to do this."

Chris Williamson 52:08 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 52:08 So, so, so, so the kind of, the, the kind of coalitional care amongst the men is, is, is focused around problem-solving and accountability a, a bit.

Chris Williamson 52:17 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 52:17 But the female (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 52:19 (laughs)

Will Storr 52:19 ... the fe- when, when, when the females get together, they do the venting, but they also do this co-rumination. So ra- rather than... So, so when the woman says, "Oh, I've got this problem with Bob," um, rather than, than trying to figure out and solve the problem, they, they, they... It's this pattern of, "Yeah, he's an arsehole. He's a bastard. Oh, you're quite right. I feel so sorry for you." And again, it's similar to the venting thing, because it feels like they're being, um, sisterly and supportive. But what they're actually doing is driving that person even further into the ground. They're, they're-

Chris Williamson 52:46 Away from a solution.

Will Storr 52:47 ... exaggerating the problem. They're demonizing the, the man and t- turning his behavior into this horrendous thing. Um, you know, there, there's usually tears and then a big fucking argument after it. (laughs) You know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a wholly kind of toxic and kind of devious form of "help" be- be- because it just... It, it, 'cause it, 'cause it makes everything worse for that indivi- individual. And like with venting, the, the, the, the women who are doing it are, are made to feel superior, like they're being helpful and supportive-

Chris Williamson 53:15 Yeah.

Will Storr 53:15 ... but actually they're not.

Chris Williamson 53:17 Yeah. It's performative empathy in that regard. It looks like a caring approach from the outside and probably feels like it from the inside. I mean, this is, you know-

Will Storr 53:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:26 ... the, the b- the best way to deceive others is to believe the deception yourself. And, uh, y- you know, very few people that are venting are thinking, "This is some 5D chess way for me to gain status or stand on the shoulders of, uh, of this other person's rumor," or whatever it might be. Uh, but yeah, the (laughs) the sort of barefacedness of, um, revealing somebody else's, uh, shortcomings. There's this phenomenal Bill Burr bit where he's talking about, um, the WN... He's talking about, uh, body positivity in the WNBA. And he says, "Ladies, if you could only support the WNBA the way that you support a fat chick who's ate herself out of her dress size and is no longer a threat to you, they'd be making more money than the NBA."

Will Storr 54:17 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 54:17 And it, it... Uh, dude, I wrote, I wrote an entire essay about it because it's such an accurate insight. I, I, and I think that the body positivity movement, in many ways, is women encouraging their attractive but slightly chubby girlfriends to not diet themselves down into their mating competition pool.

Will Storr 54:35 Yep. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:35 It's, "No, darling, you look, you look great at any size. Like, you don't need to lose weight."

Will Storr 54:40 You're perfect.

Chris Williamson 54:40 "No, you're a queen." Like, if they t- ... If you look-

Will Storr 54:42 And if he can't see that, that's his problem.

Chris Williamson 54:44 ... if, if, if he can't s- ... If he's not able to work ou- ... He doesn't deserve you, like, you're better than him. Meanwhile-Like, rules for thee, but not for me. It's a-

Will Storr 54:52 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:52 ... luxury belief as, as, as Robert Henderson would say.

Will Storr 54:55 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:55 Um, that if you're a bigger girl with a bigger girlfriend, sh- her, uh, dieting down or her, her, you know, g- hitting the gym and, and making herself more physically attractive, uh, is, uh, you now no longer being able to keep up with her. And if you're a, a, a more in-shape girl, that is a huge threat to you. It's one of the reasons why I believe that, um, people who are in shape, BMI, uh, are more threatened by Ozempic than people-

Will Storr 55:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:25 ... who are plus-sized. Because the people that are plus-sized, even though ostensibly they are the ones whose identity is being threatened, they don't have anything to lose in the same way because my competition pool is my competition pool. Maybe there's even fewer people at this size now, so perhaps I can access the, uh, people more easily. But if you're in shape and you see that someone's able to get there easily, unfairly, uh, uh, hey, fuck you. Get back-

Will Storr 55:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:51 Stay where you... You don't deserve this.

Will Storr 55:53 Yeah, yeah-

Chris Williamson 55:53 Um, so yeah.

Will Storr 55:53 You deserve it.

Chris Williamson 55:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Will Storr 55:54 This is not how our status game is played.

Chris Williamson 55:56 Nope.

Will Storr 55:56 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that, that, that's absolutely right.

Chris Williamson 55:59 Uh, what about Substack badges? I saw that you, uh, looked at that.

Will Storr 56:04 Yeah, so, so, uh, it was interesting, um, Substack, um, they, yeah, they, they, they, they, they, they're obviously kind of a new kind of social media player. Um, uh, and they, they, they, they've been still figuring out how to, um, kind of employ status game psychology into their platform, I think, a little bit. Um, I've got to be careful 'cause my wife works for Substack, so I don't- (laughs)

Chris Williamson 56:32 No!

Will Storr 56:32 (laughs) Like, um, um, so I've got- but, but I've got none of this from her. I've got s- uh, this, what, what I've written in the book I got from something that Chris Best, one of the founders, um, w- wrote. And, and he wrote a, a really interesting essay about, about the state of psychology in Substack. And, and, and it was initially, I think, that they, th- they, they, they, they kind of made this mistake where they w- were putting writers into, um, some kind of chart that could easily be gamed. So what, what, what that meant was that writers were then getting bots to, you know, like and l- you know, like, um, uh, their, their essays. So they, so they were gaming the thing. And so they changed it to, "We, we are now going to reward writers who make the most money," because that's the status game of Substack. Our purpose on this Earth is to allow creators, especially writers, to make a living from their work, so that's our game. So from now on, we're gonna reward you. We're gonna reward the writers who earn the most money." And then, then it kind of fixed itself. They'd got their incentives correct, and, and, and, and the game started to be p- being played, um, correctly.

Chris Williamson 57:36 Did you look at how stories play out in the role of reputational crises? We're in the era of take-down and break-down and, and, and accusation and stuff like that.

Will Storr 57:50 Yeah, I mean, so, so there are a few ways of sort of tackling that. I mean, you know, o- o- one of the ways is to kind of think, you know, go back to the idea of female aggression as we were just talking about with the venting and the co-rumination. Uh, and, and I feel, um, you know, I, I feel that the whole woke thing, the, the reputation destruction thing, it just feels like a very kind of female-heavy movement. It kind of, it feels like a female-style movement. You know, male aggression tends to be one-on-one, um, out in the open. You could talk about toxic masculinity as being, uh, a b- being a guy walking into the room and being very intimidating to people and pushing people around and bullying people.

Chris Williamson 58:28 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 58:29 Female aggression tends to be coalitional. It's the, it's the group against the one. There's a lot of ba- behind the scenes gossip, and it's about not physical, um, destruction, but reputation destruction. And so s- s- s- s- s- so, so, so, you know, it, it, y- you can see the ri- th- the, the success of feminism, the incredible rise in the power of women in, in society and culture-

Chris Williamson 58:55 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 58:55 ... kinda goes hand-in-hand with this new way that we're playing status games in the world, um, uh, you know, wokeism and cancel culture being, um, one of them. So, so, so, so that's, that, that, that, that's one way that I kind of think about this. Kind of more technically, um, you know, there, there, there are a few things I write about in the story as a deal about, um, uh, uh, about how to kind of manage, um, at times of reputation destruction, you know, what is a good apology. Um, one, one of the things that's really interesting from evolutionary psychology is just how incredibly toxic, um, the, the, the state of selfishness is. So because we are this tribal animal, we are this, you know, coalitional loving ape, you know, we, we, we, we, we, we form into these super organisms. Um, what the story is always wanting us to do is to be selfless, is to put the group's interests before our own interests. So when you look in storytelling, generally a hero is always somebody that puts the group before themselves, or puts somebody else before themselves.

Chris Williamson 59:55 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 59:55 So selflessness is the essence of heroism universally. So, you know, courage in the face of, um, crisis for the, for the group. Um, you know, whatever it is. So, so, so selflessness is, is, is ineffably heroic, and its opposite is selfishness. So, you know, villains in stories are always selfish in some way. They want to keep all the r- all the rewards for themselves. They want to keep the girl, for th- you know, whatever it is. Um, they want to, um, uh, um, you know, hoard resources. So, s- s- so one of the things that leaders need to avoid massively doing in times of crisis is to, um, uh, have the appearance of selfishness. And that's one of the things that Tony Hayward did, the, the, you know, the CEO of BP, when there was the huge, um, Gulf oil spill. Um, you know, he, he didn't handle it very well at the beginning. He tried to kind of push blame away, but he eventually accepted full blame and, um, enacted the gr- the most expensive clean-up operation in all of history, just an enormous, um, you know, deliberation, pay-for, um, by P- by BP. And then he, then he, um, did a TV interview, and at the end of the TV interview, he said, "Believe me, no one wants to get this over more than I do. I'd like my life back."

Chris Williamson 1:01:06 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 1:01:07 And that moment just destroyed him. Not only did it destroy him, it became international news. You know, uh, Barack Obama, who was president at the time, even started talking about it and, of course, he got... Y- you know, his 25-year career, uh, at BP was, was kind of over in a flash. So, so, so that's really important that, that, that in times of, times of trouble, you've got to appear selfless because selflessness is the essence of the hero-

Chris Williamson 1:01:27 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 1:01:27 ... in the, in, in the human story world. And there was a, there was another thing, which I, which I thought was very interesting. This guy called Christopher Booker, who's, who wrote, uh, uh, an epic book called The Seven Basic Plots. Um, and he defined the heroes having these four qualities of, um, um, feeling, order, strength, and agency. And, uh, uh, and so, um, heroes in stories kind of tend to show those kind of four qualities. And when you look at really good apology videos from people, they tend to embody those four, um-

Chris Williamson 1:02:00 Feeling, order, strength, and agency.

Will Storr 1:02:02 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, they, they, they tend to, um, embody those kind of four qualities in a, in a really perfect way.

Chris Williamson 1:02:08 What's a, what's a good apology video, and what's a horrible apology video?

Will Storr 1:02:13 Well, the apology video I really like is from way back in history, and there's a guy called... (laughs) Well, way back in history, about 20 years ago. B- No, it was about, it was 2007. It's very early days of YouTube. And, um, it's Patrick Doyle who took over Domino's and, and kind of... Patrick Doyle is an amazing CEO. He, he really turned Domino's around. It was, he, he turned it from being, you know, from, from down there to up there. He, he was kind of a revolutionary guy. But he just, uh, he'd just begun, um, (laughs) Domino's, and it was the early days of YouTube. And these two idiots in, in, in a local, uh, Domino's, uh, decided to make a video of themselves, um, picking their noses and rubbing it on a pizza and farting on a pizza (laughs) and sending the pizza out. And they put the video on YouTube, and nobody really knew what YouTube was at the time. And so this thing went on YouTube on the Monday, and Domino's were like, "Oh, nobody's gonna see this." Then the next day, hundreds of thousands of people can see it.

Chris Williamson 1:03:02 (laughs)

Will Storr 1:03:02 And then by the Wednesday, um, when you typed in Domino's into Google, it was the top thing, you know, (laughs) on Google. So, so, so Domino's actually opened their first Twitter account in order to put this video on there. And Patrick Doyle did this, uh, you know, kind of, kind of off... It was... It seemingly sort of pretty off-the-cuff apology video. You can still find it on YouTube. Um, uh, and, and he really embodies all of those... I mean, you know, broadly speaking, it's the kind of masculine and the feminine. You've got strength and order, f- feeling and, and... Sorry. Was... It was strength, order, feeling, and understanding, not feeling and agency. Strength, order, feeling, and understanding. And he does all... He hits all of those kind of four, four, um, buttons in the apology video. You can tell he's furious. You know, he's, he's angry. He's, "We, we've called the police. They've been arrested. We've shut down the, the branch of Domino's. Um, we've, we, we, we've completely..." You know, he, he tells you all the things they've done, which is the, you know, the tough guy stuff. But then he adds in, "Look, we're a franchise business. All these Domino's around the country, they're owned by mums and dads. They're... You know, like, and they're all suffering, and the people who own this Domino's franchise are suffering too, and we... You know, we feel, we feel really bad for them." So you've got that feel, feeling and understanding stuff in there too. Um, and, and, and it worked. I mean, so, you know, when you talk about this whole Domino's scandal with the, with the snot and the farts, no one's ever heard of it. It went away. You know, it went away.

Chris Williamson 1:04:17 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 1:04:17 So it was, it was a really successful apology video. And I think it's because it... You know, he does come across as this... You know, he's a, he's a lumpy CEO. He doesn't look particularly heroic, but he, but he's embodying all the qualities of the classic narrative hero in that video.

Chris Williamson 1:04:32 Have you seen any bad ones? Do any, uh-

Will Storr 1:04:36 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:04:36 ... s- scientific, science of storytelling, uh, suboptimal-

Will Storr 1:04:40 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:42 ... uh, ones come to mind?

Will Storr 1:04:42 I forget the name of the platform now, but there was a... It's in the book. There's a guy. What's the... There was some website he owned, I think, and he, um, he had to lay off, like, two people. Um, and, and when he had to lay off two people, he put a video of his self up on LinkedIn with a tear, like a genuine, like a tear coming down his face, um, uh, talking about, "I wish, oh, I wish I was the kind of CEO that could just lay people off and not care, but I care so much." And of course, you know, it's back to the selfishness thing. He's just thinking about himself. And, uh, you know, it was, it was entirely, um, self-defeating. The comments under the LinkedIn video were, were hilarious. It became a big Daily Mail story. He became this kind of massively hated figure for a few days in the, in the media generally. So, so yeah, the, the, the, the, the LinkedIn tear guys is, is I think the worst one I've ever seen.

Chris Williamson 1:05:31 Mm. Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:05:32 So, getting practical, what do most people get wrong about good sto- good stories, good storytelling?

Will Storr 1:05:42 What do most people get wrong with good storytelling? Well, I, I think, um... Oh, there's so much. But, but like, like, like I, I, I... What, what do you mean when they're trying to create kind of persuasive stories?

Chris Williamson 1:05:52 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 1:05:53 Yeah. Okay. Well, I, I, I think people still feel that the best way to sell a product is with facts about the product. I mean, there, there might be cases in which that's true. Certainly, you can, you can list off the business-to-business cases in which that's true. If you order, wanting to order a part for your car or your rocket, you just want to know how good the k- the, the, the part is. Then, you know, it's fine. But, but, but if we're not talking business-to-business, what generally is the best way is to appeal to people's identities. It's much more powerful than, um, you know, um, a- appealing to the, the, the qualities, qualities of your product. And that, and that general kind of idea of identification is just a massively important thing, not just in persuasive storytelling, but in all storytelling. You know, i- i- in the stories that we love, we sit down and, and the film begins or the novel begins, and we, we meet a character that we identify with. You know, there's a v- there's a very ridiculous kind of idea in storytelling still th- that people want to write characters that we like. Likability is the thing. But likability isn't the thing. Identification is the thing. You know, if we identify with somebody, if part of our brain goes, "That person on the screen, that's me," um, then we're gonna love that story. You know, that's why the girlboss era in Hollywood has been so unbelievably toxic.

Chris Williamson 1:07:03 Mm-hmm.

Will Storr 1:07:03 You know, the Indiana Jones, the, the Star Wars, and in the UK, the Doctor Who, where they've, um-... not just removed all the straight white male characters, but, but humiliated them. They, they, they've killed them and humiliated them and replaced them with mostly, c- c- you know, cardboard cutout girl bosses. Um, so, so, so, you know, so, you know, the- these sto- these story franchises were broadly made for young men. They, they, they, you know, like, they, they, they were, they were stories for young men, but they've been, you know, um, disidentified with these stories which are a part of their identity, like, a big part of their lives. And, and, and that's why they respond with such fury. It's not because they're misogynist or racist or anything stupid like that. It's because, you, you know, i- i- in a, in a very real sense, if you're humiliating and degrading Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones in Doctor Who, you're humiliating and degrading they themselves who are watching it. So, so, so, so, so, so that identification is just a massively important thing.

Chris Williamson 1:08:04 Because if it was, if it was just, "I like Luke Skywalker. He is likable," uh, you- you've made him unlikeable, z- so what? But, "I identify with Luke Skywalker. I see me in him," and he's now being mocked or castigated-

Will Storr 1:08:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:20 ... or whatever, that makes me feel mocked and castigated.

Will Storr 1:08:22 Absolutely right. So, absolutely. So, so when we ident- when we identify with anything, we make it a part of ourselves. You know, we, we make the music, the art we love a part of ourselves. We make the cars we buy a part of ourselves. You know, we are a collection of ideas. And, you know, one, one, you know, one of the most important facets of our identity are the people, the stories that we love and the characters that we grew up with. You know, Luke Skywalker at the beginning of the first Star Wars film is this, um, orphan. He, he, he, he works on a moisture farm. Um, his solo status, his nickname amongst his school friends was Wormy. That's what they called him, Wormy. And he, and he, you know, he overcomes his, um, fears, um, and becomes this incredible hero. And, and people love Luke Skywalker. But in the latter period of, of Star Wars, they've reintroduced him as, just as they did with Indiana Jones and all ... You know, they, they do it time and time again. They reintroduce these amazing straight white male heroes and make them miserable, sexist, um, disillusioned. They had him sort of chugging this kind of weird teat's milk off a ... I mean, he, he was humiliated. He d- he wasn't just-

Chris Williamson 1:09:23 Yeah, I mean, you saw this with, uh, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, right, and you've done that across a much shorter timeline. Think the first Thor probably came out less than 15 years ago, maybe 10 years ago, something like that, and the, you know, across the span of maybe only four Thor movies, maybe, like, eight that he was involved in to do with The Avengers, he's gone from being slightly childish but lovingly heroic, uh, god guy to person that does Jean-Claude Van Damme splits over flying dragons and is kind of always out of touch and the butt of every joke and totally un-self-aware. And, um, yeah, uh, it, it, it wouldn't surprise me if someone was like, "I s- I see a little bit of that, you know, heroic energy, but kind of adult man-child thing in Thor." Uh, they, I think they would feel, um, put out in a way. So how-

Will Storr 1:10:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:19 ... how important are heroes then? Is it, is that a, a crucial element of most stories?

Will Storr 1:10:24 Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, yeah. I, I, we ... Archetypal storytelling, I'm talking about. I'm not talking about modernist novels that kind of, that, that exist to break the rules. That's the kind of whole point of them. In archetypal storytelling, yeah, protagonists are really important because, um, you know, my book is called A Story Is A Deal, and what I mean by that is that a story subconsciously says, "If you behave like the hero does, you're gonna be rewarded with these incredibly prepre- precious social resources of connection and status." That's what all heroes in archetypal stories win. They win connection, uh, a- and/or status. So, that's what happens with, um, obviously with Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. He begins as Wormy and ends up with a big medal around his chest, surrounded by people who love him. You know, that's what we all want. That's, that, that's a, that's a human universal. That's, that, that's what drives everyone is, well, three things, survival, connection, and status. Those are the three things that all humans want. And that's, that, those are the three things that all, the, the, the, that are the subject of all archetypal storytelling. All stories are about survival, connection or, or status. And, and the best stories, the stories that last through the ages, that we can watch again and again and again, are about all three. So, if you think about a movie like, uh, The Revenant, that's about survival. A movie