In business, storytelling is all the rage. Without a compelling story--we are told--our product, idea, or personal brand, is dead on arrival. People aren’t moved to action by spreadsheets, they're moved by emotion. Our ability to connect emotionally depends on the quality of our stories.

In this talk, Jonathan Gottschall leads a guided tour through the literature library and science lab to show why storytelling really is a uniquely powerful form of persuasive jujitsu. This talk zooms out to reveal the whole big picture of story’s role in human life, and then zooms in on specific business challenges, and how thinking like a storyteller can help us solve them. People are storytelling animals, and the surest way to change one mind or the whole world always begins with “Once upon a time.”

Humans are the storytelling animal. We thrill to an astonishing multitude of fictions on pages, on stages, and on screens: murder stories, sex stories, war stories, conspiracy stories, true stories and false. We are, as a species, addicted to story. But the addiction runs deeper than we think. We can walk away from our books and our screens, but not from story. We dream, fantasize, and socialize in stories. Story infiltrates every aspect of how we live and think. Did you know that fiction enhances our empathy? Did you know that stories have brought on wars, inspired atrocities, and driven massive social change? Did you know that we all boldly fictionalize the stories of our own lives? In this talk, Jonathan Gottschall leads a whirligig tour of a new science of stories—why we shape them, and how they shape us.