In the Telling

Storytelling Part One, Betweeen the Lines

March 23, 2020 Liz Christensen / Todd Wente Season 2 Episode 29
In the Telling
Storytelling Part One, Betweeen the Lines
Show Notes Transcript

Between the Lines is an "In the Telling" series where the host and guest talk about a storytelling, arts or entertainment industry nonfiction book.

Guest Todd Wente joins host Liz Christensen to talk about Jonathan Gottschall’s book “The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human.”  Recorded prior to this time of "social distancing," this interview has not been published until now, a completely fortuitious circumstance.  This is the perfect time to discuss Gottschall's unified theory of storytelling, how we all need story, how stories contribute and perpetuate our humanity, and to listen to Todd's takes, and even his tall tales, about how stories matter.

Episode Extra, Josh Curtis beautifully shares his thoughts about what he is doing with art and entertainment while working from home and social distancing. 

You can find out more about “In the Telling” at lizzylizzyliz.com
Or check out the “In the Telling” Podcast channel on YouTube for bonus content. 
Theme music by Gordon Vetas
In the Telling is hosted and produced by Liz Christensen

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spk_0:   0:00
I'm a theater person. I am a storyteller at heart have always been My wife is fond of saying that when I start talking about things she said, Oh, here comes another one of Todd's tall tales and we do have Ah, it is a T t. T shorthand in the family. They will, they will, Mandy that about. I have a degree in psychology from BYU, which will come to play and what we're gonna be talking about today. You know, I has gone on and done interesting things. I've taught classes, no classes in literature, but some classes in psychology and a couple of philosophy and one or two in history, which may also come to bear. I'm an associate provost at a university here that is headquartered here, But my love is first and always music, music and story, music and story. They cannot be separated in my mind.

spk_1:   0:45
The voice you just heard belongs to Todd 20.

spk_0:   0:48
My name is Todd 20. I am male. I am

spk_1:   0:52
possibly not just into today's discussion, just

spk_0:   0:55
in case you couldn't tell boy. I've never been asked to introduce myself this way.

spk_1:   0:58
Who joined me before this time of social distancing to talk about Jonathan. Gotcha. Lt's book. The Storytelling Animal. How Stories Make Us Human. I'm your host, Liz Christiansen. And it's all in the telling welcome to Episode 29 with My Guest, Todd, 20. Todd was the perfect guest to discuss a book that is all about proposing a unified theory of storytelling. I've been sitting on his interview for a while, and I'm so glad I did, because I feel like this is the perfect time to have a conversation about how stories help us navigate complex social problems. Todd and I had a long interview, and this week I'll be giving you the best of the first half of it. Listen through to the end of the episode to hear the episode extra, a chance to hear briefly from Josh Curtis, who called into in the telling to beautifully share his thoughts about what he's doing with art and entertainment while working from home in social distancing. Okay, you have your hands in a lot of storytelling pies, so I kind of do it for me.

spk_0:   2:04
I have been a performer, a stage performer in multiple shows, including shows like 17 76 Elf the musical. I have also been a director of shows. Most recently I directed All Shook Up, which was a show built around Elvis's music. Cotton candy for the mind. Not even mental flaws, not even a palate cleanser. It was cotton candy

spk_1:   2:25
and had a wonderful

spk_0:   2:26
time worked with some wonderful people. I think you were one of those, Um, currently, I am also involved with the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, so I do a lot of music with them. I I think second tenor I am in the middle of my second book. The first book was more of a modern parable. Ah, the second book is a It's a mystery thriller. We'll see how things go. I have. I have a block that I do which is more about, ah, what it means to be a middle aged white male father that is not necessarily living in New York City and does not necessarily have $50,000 in disposable income. And how do you do those things at that point in time? How do you take your kids to see a movie? How do you make sure that you have the latest styles and trends and fashions. It's it's kind of a fun little blawg. I used to be a I used to sell men's clothing, men's fashion, and so that's That's a That's a horrible disease to have. And then I also have a video channel that is called Daily 1 80 You can you can find a few Anybody was willing to look for it. You can find it by looking for everyday dad 1994 on YouTube or type in Todd 20 daily. 1 80 And we're a little behind on the daily part. But, you know, we get it. We get about three or four out a week.

spk_1:   3:40
You're still missing one. Which one of my missing haven't talked about your podcast?

spk_0:   3:44
Oh, I haven't talked about the podcast. Yeah, the legendary and podcast.

spk_1:   3:48
That is a lot of storytelling. I'm kind of

spk_0:   3:51
a little overwhelmed with myself right now.

spk_1:   3:53
I think I'm doing way too much is having to listen out, right?

spk_0:   3:56
Yeah. Yeah, I have never I haven't done that. I haven't done that before. And that leaves off two or three things that we talked about before the recording started. So yeah, things are busy

spk_1:   4:06
howto live in overscheduled life with? Well, badly. Ah, lots of coke.

spk_0:   4:11
Zero and lots of popcorn. So between those do you did you gotta stay alive.

spk_1:   4:16
Awesome. Okay, let's dive into the thing we're gonna talk about today. Oh, my goodness. Yes, I'm so excited. So I picked this book for you specifically. Well, yes, because because you are in all of these different realms, you'd like Jack of all trades kind of

spk_0:   4:33
and master of none.

spk_1:   4:34
Well, that's not what I was gonna say. But if the whole premise of this book could be summed up by, we have a biological and emotional and neurological need to tell and receive stories. Yes, I feel like you have a breadth of that. Thank you that we can talk about. So let's dive in. What is it you want to start with?

spk_0:   4:56
So the thing that I wanted to start with maybe the maybe the first thing that's worth noting about me and about the way that I've that I've grown up in story is that I was not a reader at first in my life. And it wasn't until I discovered comic books that I became a reader. And after comic books. I became a just a voracious reader and for me stories, and I'm an only child. So I also had to entertain myself. Um, I was always I was always in what he refers to as the has never land. And so I spent a large portions of my life in Neverland. Some people say I really don't leave Neverland, and that's probably accurate. Somewhat

spk_1:   5:36
talk to me about his version of Neverland. His version of

spk_0:   5:39
Neverland was a CZ, he described. It was the place where we go. The place where Children go primarily to play and for adults is the place where we go when we daydream. And it's the place that we try things out, where where we confront problems, bigger problems than we would confront in real life. We It's where Children slay dragons and they become superheroes. And and when I was that age, I became Luke Skywalker or I became Iron Man or I became Spider Man. I was fascinated with comic books, Um, or I became Derek Wild star from the Star Blazers. We inhabit these characters or we or we inhabit the worlds that these characters inhabit, and we practice what they go through as ways of solving problems as ways of exploring what, what is right and wrong, what's good and bad. That's why I was never Darth Vader, and I was never a stormtrooper. But sometimes I kind of envied those kids who could be, you know. And it was it was a world of shared constructs. It's a world of shared perspectives, and it's collaborative, and it is very welcoming. At least it can be. And for younger Children, it's certainly it certainly is. And as we grow older, this idea of Neverland, we get a little older. We get, we get to eight or 12 or 15 and we tend to pack, never land away into tiny, tiny little slivers. And we say the only slivers that are acceptable are the ones where I'm pretending that I'm gonna be on a championship winning football team or where I'm winning the I'm winning the state championship basketball game by sinking the winning free throw and we allow ourselves or of becoming a ballerina, and I'm actually gonna be on Broadway or any of these kinds of tinier stories that sound like maybe they have a chance and they're not quite so far flung. And we don't run around with light sabers anymore because we're grown up and his contention is known unknown. No, no, never land. We're we are in Neverland way more than we think we are. Neverland is the place where stories live. And when I when I first heard him say that, of course, immediately I went toe I thought of Peter Pan and I thought of Captain Hook. I played Captain Hook one time terribly misunderstood individual. Um, but he But he talks about he made a reference. Do you remember Ben Stiller? Walter Mitty? Yes. Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

spk_1:   8:03
Yeah. So when when he first said, never learned I was like Peter Pan. But then, as soon as he started talking about what it was, I was like, Oh, secret life of

spk_0:   8:09
Walter Mitty. And he said he made

spk_1:   8:12
a

spk_0:   8:12
quote. He said some people, some people heap scorn on those Walter Middies who build castles in the air. But later he points out, Ah, and I have always felt we all do that were all I remember talking to a gentleman. He was I was 14 and he was 50 55 He was vice president of a bank. Ah, fairly, a fairly well to do individual. You know, he's had a good career and we were talking about stuff and he says, Uh, I build skyscrapers. I said,

spk_1:   8:46
No, you don't. You're a bank

spk_0:   8:48
guy and he's like, Well, yeah, I'm a bank, I but I build skyscrapers, he said. Every now and again, about three or four times a day, I leaned back and I say, What if I were to build skyscrapers I would build on that would look like this, like this, like this and that was when I was 14. That was my first glimpse that grownups I have these daydreams that they held onto as well. He does a wonderful job in this book of laying out the idea that that that really is one of the things that saves us. It's one of the things that helps us maintain or sanity is that we still maintain this connection to Neverland. Even as we grow up, we just are not necessarily is as fair about it. We don't talk about it quite so much and it's really too bad

spk_1:   9:34
because of that level of what's socially acceptable in Neverland. Now,

spk_0:   9:37
Yeah, and the idea that somehow those people who are in Neverland too much are out of touch with reality, and I

spk_1:   9:47
think is

spk_0:   9:47
he weaves through this book. I think one of the things that maybe bear some examination by us as a culture is that the people who spend most of their time in Neverland are the ones they're shaping the world around us for the rest of us

spk_1:   9:59
talk to me about I mean, I've read it. So I think I know where you're headed, Steve jobs and stuff. You're short of kind

spk_0:   10:06
of Steve Jobs and Dan Brown and and the Bronte sisters. And there's a point where he talks about He was talking about the storytelling mind, and he said that it seems that much of Western thought has been crafted by individuals who are a little too close, too mad to madness. Um, and he was he was talking about. Some psychological experiments are psychological studies, not experiments. Studies that have been done that identify the fact that fiction writers in particular and poetry writers on on a huge level that I think, he said 40 times more likely poetry writers or 40 times more likely to struggle with bipolar disorder, and that fiction writers are seven times more likely to have some form of mental illness but certainly toe have to struggle with una polar disorder. I had a friend, and I have remembered for now for 15 years. I keep reminding myself of her observation of me when I'm in the middle of a creative project, whether it was preparing for a concert or preparing for a show. She looked at me and she said, You are You are different when you are getting ready for a show. And she said, And I am impressed at the fact that you seem to hold it together so well and I looked at her and I said, The fact that you think I do means I'm a better actor than you think. I think one of the risks of being willing to be in store and never land so much to be as to commit yourself to being an an effective storyteller is that it does bring with it all of the emotional upheaval that characters go through. And it does it in such rapid succession, sometimes because we we devour material, prepare material and we do it in such an intense manner. And then we perform it on stage for multiple people to see over and over again that by the time we're done, by the time I'm done, I am just completely run out that leads. That leaves an individual very vulnerable to depression to struggles with that. And so it wasn't a surprise to me that he said, Oh yeah, poets, especially. They are 40 times more likely than average people that have this kind of stuff. I'm like, Yeah, thank you. I get that, I get that and then I start connecting the dots to things like two things that I see. We we have the Heath Ledger's who invest them so much, invest themselves so much in telling the stories that they can't escape from it and it takes their lives. We have the Kurt Cobain's that are invested so much in telling those stories that they lose their lives in the process and we have so many of our other popular icons that are engaged in telling stories that their connection to real life, the life that the rest of us live of paying bills and making the making the mortgage work and trying to make ends meet and having casual friendships that you see when you're down shopping for groceries and all that kind of step. They're very disconnected from those and and as a result, perhaps that's that does carry with it a certain amount of mental illness or propensity for him.

spk_1:   13:20
Don't you think, though, that like if this author was here to like Devil's Advocate for us a little bit, that he'd be like, Oh, but the but your normal life of paying bills and going to the grocery store. That's just a narrative you're telling yourself anyway, like you've just co directed for yourself a story about your life that's

spk_0:   13:38
pretty normal. In fact, it's what? Yeah, because let's let's be honest after my introduction. Obviously my story is not. My life is not the normal storytelling life, right? That's not hot. Not Maybe I'm more normal. Maybe I'm less normal, but I'm certainly busy. Um, one of the things that he said that was that was really interesting to me was the idea that we we tell our self narratives where we are the prime character where the protagonist, our own stories and that we use our history, our memories and our time and never land to craft with that narrative is going to be. And then, of course, is used as he's going through the book at different places. He pokes huge holes in how good

spk_1:   14:18
our memories are. Oh, yeah, right. This part was so fascinating for me because I had this moment where I became friends again with someone I had dated a long time ago, and it ended poorly, and there was a good space in there where we were not friends at all. Okay, and then there was a space of non communication at all on Dhe, then the space of like cool and difference, and eventually it works its way back around to being friends. And the conversation that made it so that friendship was possible was an over what actually happened. And the narrative I had told myself and constructed for myself from my memory and my storytelling brain and his narrative. They were they could not exist in the same reality, but we were both totally convinced that that's how it wins. And at some point in the conversation I just went like, Okay, But the true reality is both Then because if that's how you experienced it and you made choices based off of that experience and have feelings like how is that? Not really. Yeah, So we're just gonna I'm just gonna accept that the history of what happened is these two completely incompatible things simultaneously. And I'm just gonna move on, Yeah, you know, like that dichotomy is too hard. That's a

spk_0:   15:37
trope that is used in a lot of in a lot of, um I shouldn't say a lot. It's a trip that is used from time to time in dramas and television dramas, in sitcoms of two people saying, Well, no, here's what happened and we see a totally different kind of a C one story and then somebody else goes Nana, here's what happened, and I'm Of course, I'm thinking to myself, this is a perfect one for friends because Joey and Chandler would tell totally different stories about something as simple as getting Chinese food. I mean, those two guys, wouldn't they? They would see totally different things. They would respond to them differently. They would. They would acknowledge things differently, and they would be threatened by things differently. But both of them would have some kind of a story to tell about just getting Chinese food. But it would be different stories and because they're different stories, the trajectory that their lives take around, things as simple as going back to that restaurant or any of those kinds of things could be dramatically changed. One of my favorite episodes of Ah, Star Trek The Next Generation is one where Will Reicher is accused of committing murder. They play the scene out. Maybe it's deep Space nine. I think it might be deep Space nine anyway. Sorry I'm too many Star Trek episodes,

spk_1:   16:48
but they But

spk_0:   16:49
they played. They played all through. They played his version and another person's version and then 1/3 person's version and all of these characters delivering the same lines, delivering that doing pretty much the same blocking, but doing it with different motives, different ideas, different subtext, all of those pieces. And just

spk_1:   17:08
how much fun

spk_0:   17:08
is that? How real is that? You? I think you've been present when I told a story about my daughter and about our growing up experience, and I told I tell a story about making my Children cry, and it's a horrible moment. It's a horrible parenting moment, but now it's kind of funny. Um, and the way I can tell it makes it even funnier. Which, I'm sure means that I'm remembering it completely wrong. Um, but my my daughter, uh, I I was telling the story of one point in time, and my daughter said, Yep, that's exactly how it happened. I remember it exactly that way. I'm like, I'm not sure you D'oh! But But I've controlled that narrative enough that she does. But I think also the fact that I control the narrative is something that she has built into her narrative. Oh, if I'm not sure, I can ask Dad, Dad will come up with a good story about why we do this or why it happened or whatever. I find that really fascinating. I remember as a child certain events fairly clearly. And after reading this book, I'm not sure I remember anything fairly clearly anymore. Uh,

spk_1:   18:17
you've decided you're an unreliable narrator.

spk_0:   18:20
I'm I'm an unreal. I am an interesting narrator, but I am an unreliable fact source. So if anyone was gonna I was gonna fact check my life, they'd probably come back and say, Now you're a crazy person. Although there is one thing that I do remember happened. I was locked in a dryer when I was 34 years old. It was closed, it was turned on, and I was left there for a period of time. I do know that that story's true. I have corroboration of that, so that one's true.

spk_1:   18:47
But that was also not very artistically told as a story you left out all of the details didn't make the objective interesting,

spk_0:   18:55
and I could and I could share those. But it's not about my stories. It's about what he tells us about our stories and how we tell them one of the things that was fascinating for me in the reading. For me, this started to be really important when I be when I found myself in a management role because I could see people telling their narratives, telling their stories and getting bent out of shape over something that was not happening. But it was happening for them. They perceived it as happening, and so as a result, it Woz and they reacted to it, and and it drove lots of crazy behaviors. And so I started. I started learning in that kind of a moment like, I gotta be really careful about taking immediate action based on any one person's story, because it's going to be incomplete and rendered from it from an incredibly interesting perspective for them, but not necessarily filling in some of the other details. Not because they're trying to be malicious and

spk_1:   19:55
not because they're

spk_0:   19:55
trying to be a liar, but because they're completely oblivious to some of the other things that are going on. They're not paying attention because the storytelling gray doesn't have time to catch that. It catches the pieces that are important to protect us, to protect our belief of ourselves of where we're going of why we're a good person. Nobody believes they're a bad person. And so it's been really interesting for me, is I've I've watched those things, too. Then read some of the things that he says about how people fight to protect their narrative of themselves as good. They can't admit that they did anything wrong, and I've started to be a little bit more thoughtful. I'm

spk_1:   20:37
not sure I'm good at it yet. One of the things

spk_0:   20:39
that I think was that it was really interesting. And tremendously uncomfortable was his conversation about morals and moral storytelling. Especially when he started talking about religious perspectives. Do you?

spk_1:   20:54
How do you feel about that? Well, so when he talks about how the most powerful stories that have stuck around the longest are all the religious ones, Yeah, I was like, Well, yeah, OK, I agree with that. I mean, if you look at all of the cultures and ancient civilizations, what they worshipped or how they explained the creation of the universe Yeah, those were the stories that last the longest. Yes, that didn't bother me. And it seemed to me like he was making an assertion that every story is a moral story.

spk_0:   21:20
Mmm mmm mmm mmm. Mmm.

spk_1:   21:21
Maybe not about oh, how don't want to say that. Maybe not about, like, the same set of values. Yes, but it's all dealing with morality.

spk_0:   21:30
Yes, with what is right and wrong with what is with with what is desirable and what is not desirable. Especially when we're talking about fiction, the place that it was that it was a little bit uncomfortable for me, not because I disagreed with him, but because I do agree with him. And I bought into this before I taught a philosophy class where I challenged the class. They were predominantly from a particular faith. And I said, the myth of this individual and they all went Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

spk_1:   22:00
You can't call

spk_0:   22:01
that a myth. I said, I absolutely can. They're like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Myths are not true, Mr Fake. And

spk_1:   22:08
I know that this

spk_0:   22:09
story is true. And I said, Hold on, hold on. Myths especially according to you, we were We were doing a reading and philosophy. I said, According to this person, myth is a story that we used to help us outline values what is desirable in life. And in that context, I can call it a myth. It says nothing about its truth or falseness. It is about whether or not we use it to help us decide how to behave. And they all kind of stared at me like a row of open mail boxes like Ah, and I'm like, I'm sorry, guys. That's let's put all of our biases aside for a second. Let's let's put whether or not we agree with all those things. Let's put whether or not you feel like you are compelled to believe that way or not and talk about it from that description. So as

spk_1:   22:54
soon as

spk_0:   22:55
he started talking about the myths that we share, I was like, Absolutely, absolutely. And then I found myself going. I better be careful how it what ship some of these with people, because I am a person of faith. I do subscribe, rightly or wrongly, according to many people, whether ever they're going to choose I. It's the way I choose to live, and I'm honest about the fact that it's a choice. I choose to live a life of faith. And so my acceptance or rejection of some of those myths becomes a little bit of a thorny issue.

spk_1:   23:29
Todd and I spoke about our religious faith and stories for a bit before recycled back to the book, Jonathan Gotschl wrote.

spk_0:   23:35
He makes a big point that fiction which we can. We can take these myths and lump them in as part of fiction because of the way that they tell stories of people and of good and bad protagonists, challenges to overcome and all these kinds of things that that fiction these stories help us as a people to have a common set of values around which we say this is desirable. This is not. In ancient times, we did it in small groups, around fires as we grew older, whether it was on the Savannah or in the mountains or around the hearth. We still told those stories until technology moved along. That allowed us to start having these communal experiences separately, reading books, watching videos, binge watching Netflix, all of those kinds of things. We could do them in our own on our own. But they're still something that we share with other people who are doing the same things. We just may not do it in the same place. Unless, of course, you're seeing O brother, where art thou in a movie theater? And then if you're seeing it with me, I'm the only one laughing because everybody else is not aware that it was a rip off a complete rip off of Homer, and I'm looking at it when it says, you know this is from the Odyssey and everybody's staring at it. I started laughing at that moment in time because

spk_1:   24:53
I knew

spk_0:   24:53
what I was gonna get and nobody else was laughing. And I'm like So when he talks said that he talks in the book about movie theaters. We all go on. We all have this communal experience. I'm like, Yeah, not all the time, Not all the

spk_1:   25:05
time. That was twilight when he first came in to the room around the glass door. Right? And like, you know, cinematically, this smooth underscore changes the The pacing slows down, right. They used the party lens that softens everything, light scorches, and he comes in and there's a kid you're not an audible like in the movie theater. And it wasn't what was happening on the screen. I was like, This is a trope. This is what we do. This is how we tell these stories. Fine. But knowing that my age gender demographic was predominant way still got, I just burst out laughing like you just got played so hard. Yep, yep. One of the

spk_0:   25:54
things that he doesn't talk on awful lot about in this book is that there are storytellers who are thoughtful about their craft. While we may be suckers for story, he says that several times we're suckers for story. Um and we are and people who say No, I'm not I I will read fiction. I've just I'm a nonfiction person. Those are the people that I look at it. I go Really, Really. So tell me about the football game last night. Oh, man. Sure seen it. They were back on that. And I'm like, you're telling a story. You're telling a story. You're not giving factor telling a story. It has been interesting to meet what for me to watch and to participate in the process of learning how to be a better storyteller and to learn how to more quickly, more, completely, more expertly, more deviously suck people in on story.

spk_1:   26:45
I'm not going

spk_0:   26:46
to say I'm in the in the top 100 but

spk_1:   26:49
I think that I'm pretty dog gone

spk_0:   26:51
good at it. And I know that because there are times I've, for instance, when I've directed a show, there are times that I can sit in the back and I hear those audible gasps I hear people go. Oh, and I'm like, Yeah, it may have been good material that I was working with, but I got you on that one, and I'm thrilled with it.

spk_1:   27:11
I love that part. She was talking about how cool it is that knowing it's a story doesn't change the emotional processing your brain does. It was real. So, like the same m R I. Things are happening in your brain even when you know it's a story.

spk_0:   27:27
So years ago, I had a conversation with a friend of mine by the name of Steve. He's a mental remind. He was teacher, um, and and he continues to be a very good friend and a mentor to me. And we have We have lunch every now and again. We had a conversation. Probably. It's probably been 34 years. 34 35 years ago, I had done something abysmally stupid. I will not bore you with story. Uh um what law? Um, but I I looked at him and I said, Well, you know what they say. Experience is the best teacher, and he looked at me seriously as a heart attack, at least as I remember it. And he said, experience is the only teacher, but vicariously work is available for most things. It's called books.

spk_1:   28:06
I I was like Thank you. Uh,

spk_0:   28:12
and I have continued to use that, although now I think I would turn around and I would say Vicarious experience is available. It's called story because we're telling the same stories over and over and over again. That impacted me very powerfully, especially as he talks about the idea that if we're watching it, our brains respond to it. If we're hearing it, our brains respond to it. And that is perhaps the most powerful indicator that our brains biologically were designed for it because it gives us a place to practice without having to suffer death. When we fail, he does. He says it very differently. But that's that's what I took from that, that all that that most ma'am, I think, he says. Um, all most mammals, um and all intelligent ones engage in play and talking primarily about the young, where they do things that are going to be required of them as adults, as adults of their species, and that play is where they practice, what they will have to do well, stories for us or where we have to do that. And then he makes a wonderful, wonderful statement. He makes the point that says that those of us who read Maur especially read more fiction are better in social situations. I would just I would love to just hold it up and say

spk_1:   29:33
all of you bite me, All right. Um, I

spk_0:   29:37
mentioned earlier that in the legendary um, right now we're doing a lot of Brandon Sanderson and that we've been talking about both bringer. There are some, uh, portions in that in that series of stories that for me, they are not rehearsal. They are not practice. They are cathartic, eviscerating moments to pull open what I have been going through and remind me that I need to be more thoughtful about them, that they cannot be washed underneath. They can't be brushed underneath the rug. They can't just be allowed to float away in the in the detritus of our lives or in my life. I have to hold on to the lesson because without those lessons, I will not be as well prepared to handle the next difficult social situation. It's been very it's been a lot of fun, and certainly as I read the book. I found myself coming back to that and saying, Oh, this is why I am sucked into some of these stories so easily because they do mirror what I'm going through. And I am in certain situations that I am dealing with. Right now, I am in an absolute no man's land. I know people have gone through these things before me. I am finding the pieces that they have used, and some of the pieces that they have used are not very functional for me. So I'm looking for other stories, other people who have gone through these things or other representations of people who are going through these things that I can use to help me practice and be ready for them so that when I face them, I don't face them. Say, Well, Hale, I have no idea what I'm doing next I get a chance to say, Well, hell, not sure there's gonna work, but we'll try this and and for me, that's worth the time that I spent reading. That's worth the time that I spent listening. That's worth the time that I spent conversing with people about these ideas because that's that's what it's gonna be useful for. How do How do I make sure I I do as little damage as possible that I am as clear as possible at being ableto layout, what is desirable and what is not desirable in some of these situations as we face them. Moving forward.

spk_1:   31:50
There was a time in college that I was adapting a bunch of Children's fairy tales Children's theater piece, and they were, like, horrible. They were these German ones. They weren't the Grimm Brothers

spk_0:   32:01
German fairy tale.

spk_1:   32:03
There was this one. We're like the boy sucks his thumb. So the tailor comes and cuts his thumb. Yes, slovenly beater is what it's called if anyone wants to not sleep well tonight. But it's a whole collection of tails, and I was diving in

spk_0:   32:15
Was the butcher's tail in that one?

spk_1:   32:17
Um, I only remember the ones that I ended up using Okay, in the piece.

spk_0:   32:21
Yeah, the butcher's tell you would never have used. That was the one that he referred to in the book where the Yeah, when the kids were watching their father slaughter a pig and a little later on, they say, Let's play butcher you be the pig, and one boy stabs his brother in the in the throat and then screams. And so the mother comes down and pulls the sword, proposed the knife out of the little boy's neck and stabs the other little boy in the heart to kill him to punish him for having killed his brother. And then she runs back upstairs where she's left the baby in the tub

spk_1:   32:54
and the baby has drowned. And then the father comes home and kills the wife for having it's just horrible. Is this I'm like, uh, yeah, fairytales. Delightful, aren't they? I'm not sure what that is. Don't look, Don't look. A butcher's Ah. Is that why we stay away from pork? Uh, like some of them because of this need, we have to. I mean, sometimes we're learning from them, and sometimes we're having this emotional how catharsis sounds like such a weak word in this moment because we use it so much. But the book I was studying about these horrible fairytales and how I had to justify them to the dean of together, like you think I paid money to see that the conversation was just that like Children have to be scared senseless through fiction, because life scares them senseless on. They have to know that fear isn't the end of their lives. So if we tell them these scary things, not only do they relate to them because everything is so scary, everything's out of their control. Everyone wants to eat them. Everyone's at which like everyone. But do you see how we just move on from the scariest things under our bed? Yes, so I think, part of its memory, part of it's the narrative and part of It's just like This is how we develop grit.

spk_0:   34:19
Yes, and we do it young and we continue to do it throughout our lives. And I have noticed that as I stay, he talks about the idea that we are marinated in story all the time. He talks about dreams in this book and as ah, again from a from a psychology standpoint, I'm very familiar with some of the some of the different theories about how dreams work not the not the Floridian stuff, but the neurological pieces that the conscious part, the conscious part of our of our brain, ceases functioning for a period of time. The subconscious mind never does. We've got to clear out the mess from the day that was left behind. I in fact, I used to tell my students It's a story, Uh, but But it would help them understand why they needed to sleep and why. Sometimes things were weird. I would say that that basically what happens is all day long. The conscious mind is trying to handle every fire that comes along, and when it's done, it turns over the brain to the subconscious. Mind says,

spk_1:   35:17
I'll see you this morning and it goes asleep immediately. Right?

spk_0:   35:21
And the subconscious brain then pulls out the rubber gloves and says, Fine. I should clean up after him yet again and goes through and starts arranging all of the memories and tries to put them into things that make sense. And, you know, according to the book and according to certain kinds of a certain psychological research, that's how dreams happened. We're organizing and putting all those things, but

spk_1:   35:43
most of the

spk_0:   35:43
dreams we don't remember because of the

spk_1:   35:45
subconscious mind is one doing it. But every now and

spk_0:   35:47
again, the conscious mind wakes up when they when they talk about REM sleep conscious mind wakes up and says,

spk_1:   35:52
Hey, what you doing? Oh, my gosh, Those things don't go together like that.

spk_0:   35:56
And the the subconscious mind, I would say, turns around. Looks at him.

spk_1:   36:00
Get out. It's my filing job, not yours. That's

spk_0:   36:04
so that's so the conscious mind goes,

spk_1:   36:06
Okay, fine. Be that way. How did those

spk_0:   36:08
things go together? Make it into a story? You, um and that's where we get bizarre, the bizarre dreams. And probably also where we get some of the nightmares when he was talking about some of these kinds of theories and, of course, the theories. Because, uh, yeah, we can't really prove, um, we can't really prove him their stories. That scene on there we go again. Stories. They're stories that seem to fit the information that we have available to us. There's no way for us to know whether they're actually 100% true or not, at least at this point in time. Maybe one of these days technology will exist that allows us to do that. But right now, as we describe those makes it very easy to understand that even when we try to turn off this idea of carrying a narrative where we have to avoid trouble. We have to solve problems. We have to. We have to move forward and be successful at handling the trouble of life. Our brains were saying, Yeah, you know what? It happens all the time, and it happens in more ways than you know, and I'm gonna keep you as sharp as possible. So if that means that we dream horrible dreams at night and you wake up in a cold sweat, that's fine because it prepares you for tomorrow because you're not reading enough books. Maybe people read more books that have fewer nightmares,

spk_1:   37:18
I don't know.

spk_0:   37:20
But I know for me that kind of works.

spk_1:   37:21
That is, that is very interesting hypothesis. I

spk_0:   37:25
have way fewer nightmares now than I ever did when I was married, when I was spending lots of time in Ah, in my nonfiction studies. When I am, and that's partly got me a little bit afraid about going into a doctoral program, I'm gonna be spending all my time reading nonfiction again. I'm gonna have to make sure that I keep enough keeping a fiction around, watch enough movies and pay attention to the other stuff, I hope, because it seems to work.

spk_1:   37:47
Never, never Land keeps you safe.

spk_0:   37:49
Yes, it does. In so many ways,

spk_1:   37:51
Todd and I had more to say about Jonathan. Gotcha. Lt's book, The Storytelling Animal. How stories Make Us Human and you'll get to hear more of that conversation next week when in the telling brings you part two, I'll leave you today with the caption under an interesting picture on page seven of my copy of the storytelling animal, the picture has three gentlemen from a different time. One stares hands in his trench coat pockets at a wall of bookshelves. Another is riveted by a book in his hands. The third place is afoot gingerly on some rubble, his fingers tugging at one specific book on the shelf. The sky is visible, since all that remains of the roof is a few cross beams. The ground is a mess worthy of a big budget Hollywood disaster film. The caption reads. Quote. Londoners browse through the library at Holland House after an air raid during the blitz. Unlike other leisure activities such as quilting, gambling or sports, everyone does story in one form or another. We do story, even under the worst conditions, even during war. End quote. You can find out more about in the telling at Lizzie. Lizzie Liz dot com or check out the in the Telling Podcast channel on YouTube for bonus content. Theme music by Gordon Vetoes and the telling is hosted and produced by me. Liz Christiansen. Thank you for listening and stay safe.

spk_0:   39:16
Everybody one My favorite scenes in monuments men. That's what the guy says. You destroy people's art. You destroy their culture and their history and who they are. And while this is definitely just a minor Carone apocalypse, it is a reminder of how we consume art most often in social situations. And yet that's not always the case. You have. Shostakovich, who premiered his Seventh Symphony in Leningrad while they were being attacked by Nazis like this if he was being attacked, Rated If Anne Frank riding what she did in hiding, you have Shakespeare was never There's no evidence he was ever in quarantine, but hey did racking lier when there was a plague outbreak. Like sometimes these things modify and solidify art. I do worry that future generations will look back at this period and say OK, so means that's what it wa ce. But since so much of our art is shared in social media format, I think we're all relying on that right now as well, whether it be texting and group chats or just creating these things of humor, ensuring that way. But there still may be people out there painting and creating symphonies and methodical pick up a custom cake that someone is made for a friend of mine, which is her art form. So though it's hard for me to not have this functionality of going out in public and seen other people on seeing plays, I've been watching a lot of television shows I've had recommended to me For a while, I finally got around to reading a book that I've been holding onto, meaning to do that, and I've been making Oh, I've been making a lot of means and I think all of this is still art because it's almost like that line in Jurassic Park. But replace the word life with art. Art will

spk_1:   41:05
find a way