JONATHAN GOTTSCHALL

JONATHAN GOTTSCHALL

Praised by Steven Pinker as "our deepest thinker about the powerful role of stories in our lives," Jonathan Gottschall is a Distinguished Fellow in the English Department at Washington & Jefferson College. His writing at the intersection of science and art has been covered in-depth by The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Oprah Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Science, Nature, and on shows like Radiolab, Morning Edition, National Geographic's StarTalk with Neal de Grasse Tyson, and The Joe Rogan Experience. Jonathan is the author or editor of eight books, including The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them Down (Basic Books, November 2021), The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch (Penguin 2015), and The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Houghton 2012), a New York Times Editor’s Choice selection.

Speech topics

Think Like a Storyteller

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.”

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

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.

Books

The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them Down

We are storytelling animals. No other tool is as essential to human civilization as stories. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But in The Story Paradox, Jonathan Gottschall argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore.

The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch

An English professor begins training in the sport of mixed martial arts and explores the science and history behind the violence of men.

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling.

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