{"id":2077,"date":"2012-04-05T13:05:13","date_gmt":"2012-04-05T17:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=2077"},"modified":"2012-04-05T13:05:13","modified_gmt":"2012-04-05T17:05:13","slug":"listening-post-a-storied-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2012\/04\/05\/listening-post-a-storied-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening Post: A storied Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we want the lowdown on someone, we ask \u201cWhat\u2019s his<\/em> story?\u201d When we want to hear what\u2019s happening, we ask \u201cWhat\u2019s the story<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

One reason we want the story is that while a narrative may contain information, it\u2019s not just information. It\u2019s more. Just how much more has been the subject of recent research by psychologists and brain scientists. For example, by mapping brain activity while a person read a story<\/a>, they found that the mind actually simulated the action of the story, activating appropriate portions of the brain in sequence with the narrative.<\/p>\n

Our fascination with characters also has its roots in how we think. Brian Boyd, who has written much on the origin of stories, concludes that \u201cnarrative\u2013unlike mere communication\u2013is essentially a compression of social information,<\/strong> which in other words means that narrative overwhelmingly focuses our attention on \u2018strategic information.\u2019\u201d Narrative and the brain<\/a><\/em>, Michael Ferguson, postiveneuro.com<\/p>\n

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Neolithic journalists<\/p><\/div>\n

Boyd says, \u201cThe salient features of narrative are the strategic data, for example, of whether Jack is sleeping with Jill, rather than a metric of how deeply Jack is sleeping\u2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe therefore have an endless fascination with character information, since it helps us to predict the behavior of those we interact with\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as our continued craving for sweet and fat reflects old circumstances of our environment of evolutionary adaptation\u2026, likewise our often indiscriminate appetite for social information reflects an era in our evolutionary adaptation when we were likely to encounter repeatedly everyone we heard about.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, despite the protestation \u201cJust the facts, please!\u201d\u2014we\u2019re wired to want the facts in the form of a story. And that\u2019s why journalism, whatever its medium, will always be a subset of story-telling, not of information science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we want the lowdown on someone, we ask \u201cWhat\u2019s his story?\u201d When we want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2077"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}