Storytelling with Impact | Storytelling

Storytelling speaks to the craft of composing and presenting a story to an audience.

Embracing Narrative Transportation

April 5, 2025/in Narrative, Nonfiction, Personal Stories, Storytelling, Writing/by Mark Lovett

We’ve all had the experience of being pulled into a story — fiction or nonfiction — to the point where the rest of the world seems to fade away. Reading books and watching movies are common examples, but this phenomenon also occurs when we’re watching a play, listening to a podcast or watching a public speaker delivering a talk stage. In each case, we’ll experience the storyteller’s story. This doesn’t happen every time, of course, as a story must capture our attention to such an extent that the narrative’s world becomes our world. And although it’s often associated with fictional stories, it applies equally to personal stories.

So what do we mean by narrative?

Well, if you ask a dozen people and you’ll most likely get a dozen answers to that question, but here’s my take. In personal storytelling, a narrative builds a world in which you (and other characters) interact with life through the properties of space, time, and events. Beyond the characters, settings, and experiences, this narrative also touches on thoughts, emotions, insights, and reflections.

An impactful personal story, which is what I’m all about, seeks to present each narrative element, each story block, in a way that transforms a simple memory into a compelling and authentic story that conveys deeper truths about our life, values, beliefs, insights, and lessons learned.

When well-crafted, personal stories inform, inspire, connect, and engage others. But as I’ve mentioned, not all personal stories are equally effective in this regard. In the balance of this post, we’ll take a look at how we can create more impactful stories by understanding and using the principles of narrative transportation.

This is a subject that has been studied extensively during the past twenty years. Cognitive scientists & social psychologists, as well as literary & communication scholars, have all weighted in on this and a handful of related topics which I’ve included below to provide a fuller picture of what it all means.

Narrative Transportation is the psychological experience of being so fully immersed in a story that you temporarily feel transported into its world, losing awareness of your physical surroundings and experiencing the events alongside the characters. This powerful storytelling effect occurs when a narrative captures your imagination so completely that you emotionally respond to the story as if it were happening to you, often leading to stronger message retention, attitude changes, and even behavioral shifts after the story ends. When stories achieve narrative transportation, audiences don’t just understand the plot—they live it, making this phenomenon one of the most valuable tools in a storyteller’s arsenal.

Immersion in storytelling is the powerful sensation of being mentally and emotionally transported into a fictional world, where readers or viewers temporarily forget their surroundings and become deeply engaged with the characters and events unfolding before them. When a story successfully creates immersion, the audience experiences the narrative as if they were living through it themselves, with all their senses activated and their attention fully captured by the plot, setting, and characters. This state of being completely absorbed in a story world is what allows people to laugh, cry, or feel fear while experiencing fiction, making immersion one of the most sought-after qualities in effective storytelling across books, films, games, and other media.

Absorption in storytelling refers to the state where readers or viewers become so deeply engaged with a narrative that they lose awareness of their surroundings, experiencing a mental transportation into the story world. Effective storytelling creates this absorption by combining compelling characters, rich sensory details, emotional resonance, and well-paced action that captures attention so completely that time seems to pass unnoticed, leaving the audience fully immersed in the fictional experience rather than merely observing it from the outside.

Engagement in storytelling refers to the ability of a narrative to capture and hold a reader’s or audience’s attention, creating an emotional and intellectual connection that makes them invested in the story’s outcome. Effective engagement occurs when audiences become so immersed in the characters, plot, and world that they temporarily set aside their awareness of reality, experiencing genuine emotional responses—whether tension, joy, sadness, or surprise—and feeling compelled to continue following the story to its conclusion. This connection is achieved through relatable characters, meaningful conflicts, authentic dialogue, and pacing that balances revelation with anticipation, all working together to create an experience that resonates with the audience long after the story ends.

Involvement in storytelling refers to the ability of a narrative to emotionally engage and immerse its audience, creating a connection that makes readers or viewers feel invested in the characters and outcome. An effective story draws people in through relatable characters, compelling conflicts, and authentic emotional stakes that resonate with universal human experiences. When a story achieves strong involvement, the audience temporarily forgets they’re experiencing fiction—instead, they empathize with the characters’ struggles, celebrate their victories, and feel genuine concern for their wellbeing. This deep level of engagement is what separates forgettable tales from stories that linger in our minds and hearts long after they’ve ended.

I have captured a number of phrases from the above descriptions that illustrate the effect engrossing stories have on an audience. As you’ll see, while there’s an intellectual aspect to the process, the emphasis is largely on the emotional response that well-crafted stories invoke in an audience.

emotional resonance
emotionally engaging
psychological experience
transported into its world
fully immersed in the story
stronger message retention
achieves strong involvement
time seems to pass unnoticed
completely absorbed in a story world
mentally and emotionally transported
invested in the characters and outcome
empathizes with the characters’ struggles
losing awareness of physical surroundings
experiencing genuine emotional responses
resonates with universal human experiences
senses activated, and attention fully captured
deeply engaged with the characters and events
experiencing the events alongside the characters
creating an emotional and intellectual connection
experiencing a mental transportation into the story

How do these expressions align with your experiences? I think the concept of transportation is most appropriate, as there’s movement, a shift that occurs in our perception of reality. We care about what happens; we get excited and sad, we laugh and cry, we feel tension and relief.

But are these shifts temporary, or is there a longer term effect? Does the effect linger, or is the spell broken once the story ends? That depends on a number of factors, such as how relatable and relevant the story is, but the simple answer is that personal stories based on our experiences, as opposed to fictional stories built for entertainment, resonate more deeply, leaving a lasting impression.

During narrative transportation, our mental energies — encompassing attention, emotions, and imagery — become primarily focused on events unfolding within the story, and in turn, we will become cognitively, emotionally, and imaginatively absorbed in the narrative. By fostering connections with characters and evoking relevant emotions, personal stories can effectively influence how audiences feel about certain subjects or individuals.

What Factors Support Narrative Transportation?

I’m often asked what makes a personal story compelling, and the components of narrative transportation reveal a number of topics to consider. You’ll find some overlap in the list below, as the terms do relate to each other in important ways, but they’re worth considering individually, and they all play a role in telling your personal story.

fluency — refers to the smooth, effortless way a story flows, naturally transitioning between scenes and ideas, allowing readers or listeners to become fully immersed in the narrative world and lose awareness of their physical surroundings.
similarity — refers to the connection an audience feels between themselves and story elements, such as characters, experiences, backgrounds, cultures, beliefs, and values, making a story more relatable and engaging.
relevance — refers to how well a narrative connects with the audience’s existing experiences, values, or concerns, mirroring their own lives in important ways, making the story feel personally meaningful and relatable.
coherence — refers to the logical and meaningful connection between all elements of a narrative — characters, events, settings, and themes — with events unfolding in ways that make sense within the theme of the narrative.
familiarity — refers to the degree to which elements of a story, such as settings, characters, situations, or emotional truths, resonate with a reader’s existing knowledge, experiences, or expectations.
immersion — refers to the feeling of being mentally and emotionally absorbed into a story’s world, engaging our attention, imagination, and emotions to the point where the real world temporarily fades into the background.
logical flow — refers to the invisible thread that connects each scene to the next, each character decision to its consequences, without any inconsistencies that may force an audience to question why events are unfolding as they are.
anticipation — refers to the delightful tension or suspense created when an audience is made aware that something significant is about to happen, causing them to become emotionally invested in what comes next.
believability — refers to the quality that makes a narrative feel true, authentic, and coherent within its own internal logic, while not including any obvious errors or inconsistencies within the story.
engagement — refers to the emotional and mental connection created when an audience is fully immersed in a story and often results in increased empathy and a lasting impact on thoughts, attitudes, or behaviors.
identification — refers to the process by which an audience emotionally connects with a character or perspective within a story, allowing them to see themselves in the character’s experiences, values, or struggles.
sensory details — refers to the vivid descriptions of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures that help create a rich and engaging atmosphere, thus immersing an audience in the narrative.
mental imagery — refers to the process of mentally “seeing” the scenes, “hearing” the dialogue, or “feeling” the emotions described in a narrative, as if they were happening in real life.
narrative quality — refers to how well a story compasses elements like compelling characters, a coherent plot, vivid descriptions, and emotional resonance that draw people in and hold their attention.
engaging dialogue — refers to the artful construction of conversations within a story that reveals characters’ personalities, motivations, and relationships while maintaining authenticity and purpose.
mental simulation — refers to the cognitive process whereby individuals simulate a story’s events, actions, and emotions in order to feel they’re part of the story, thus enhancing understanding and emotional connection.
psychological realism — refers to authentically portraying the inner thoughts, emotions, and motivations of characters, which can foster empathy and engagement and influence beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
emotional connection — refers to the bond or resonance a person feels when hearing a story that evokes feelings such as empathy, joy, sadness, or excitement, making the story’s messages or lessons more memorable and impactful.
character development — refers to the process of creating and evolving characters in a story, revealing a character’s traits, motivations, and backstory over the arc of the narrative.
cultural appropriateness — refers to the alignment of a story’s themes, characters, language, and values with the cultural norms, beliefs, and experiences of its intended audience, making it more relatable.

A very consistent finding over a number of studies, across a number of different topics, by a number of different researchers is that transportation leads to greater attitude and belief change. So when people become immersed in these stories, they’re more likely to take the messages of the stories and apply it outward to the real world.
~ Dr. Melanie Green

Why Is Narrative Transportation Relevant?

Dr. Green’s quote explains it rather well, especially the ending. The point of an impactful personal story is to share your experiences, lessons learned, insights, or ideas in a way that fosters understanding, allowing others to take elements of your story and weave them into their story — apply it outward to the real world. The extent to which this happens is related to the extent to which they connect to you and your narrative. Narrative Transportation is how that happens, which is why reviewing the text above can help improve your story’s impact.

This improvement not happens during the writing / editing process, but during your rehearsals. Ideally, you’re able to rehearse your story in front of a trusted friend or family member. That’s when you can solicit feedback. Ask them what feelings arose while hearing your story, or what they were thinking. And if your narrative included descriptive prose, what did the “see”, what mental imagery came to mind?

What Factors Prevent Narrative Transportation?

It’s important to think about how the various aspects of narrative transportation can improve your story, but it’s also vital to consider what might reduce impact. Those factors that limit the positive effects. Here are a few things to consider.

Lack of coherence or clarity — anything in the story that doesn’t make sense?
Lack of realism — does your story depart from reality, or seem false at times?
Errors or inconsistencies — are there any notable mistakes in your narrative?
Confusing narrative structure — are there any disruptions to the story’s flow?
Audience alignment — does your story contradict the audience’s experiences?
Sense of being manipulated — do you come off as having a hidden agenda?

Such situations tend to pull people out of your narrative as they question what you’re saying or why you’re saying it. And as before, this is where feedback from the rehearsal process can identify if any of these issues are present. Ask them if there were times when something you said didn’t make sense, or seemed false in any way. Did it feel as though a certain element could be expanded upon for clarity, or if an important element was missing altogether?

Is There a Downside to Narrative Transportation?

Unfortunately, yes. When engrossed in the narrative world, individuals are less likely to critically evaluate the information presented, making them more open to accepting the story’s perspective. That’s a positive outcome for true stories, but when stories are based on lies — con artists, unscrupulous politicians, and dishonest business leaders, for example — people may be persuaded to adopt beliefs and ideologies that are harmful to themselves, and possibly society as a whole.

History — as well as present times — are full of examples where individuals, organizations, and governments intentionally lie in order to manipulate the thoughts, feels, and actions of the public. We’ll cover that aspect in a future article.

Conclusion

Since our desire is to maximize the impact when sharing our personal stories, reviewing your manuscript from the standpoint of narrative transportation is one way to make that happen!

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Science Storytelling with TILclimate – Farm to table, with a side of fossil fuels

March 6, 2025/in Climate Change, Education, Environment, Science, Storytelling/by Mark Lovett

Climate change stories can be complex, especially when they’re full of technical descriptions and lists of numbers. But when these stories are linked to our daily lives we can understand the issue more clearly. So I had to laugh when listening to this episode of the TILclimate Podcast as I happen to be a fan of tortilla chips — artisan style, of course — and this story highlights how fossil fuels are part of the journey, from start to finish, of tortilla chips traveling from the farm to store.

While this narrative involves a specific food product, you can easily see how the process applies, with minor variations, to a host of other items that end up on our table. In this case, we have farm machinery, giant fans, trucks, fermenters, grinders, dryers, fryers, fertilizer, and even the plastic bag the chips come in.

Instead of people, the cast of characters includes objects, chemicals, processes, but we get a visual sense of how everything works as raw ingredients are grown, processed, packaged and delivered. Instead of a, “This is what climate change is doing to the planet” story, we have a, “Behind the scenes look at how the things we consume contribute to the problem of climate change” type of story.

There are no villains here, no finger pointing or blame, just a real life example of how a food manufacturing process works. And since there are many steps in the tortilla chip supply chain, finding a more sustainable solution involves solving a number of problems.

If you’re working on a personal story that’s founded in science, think about how your technology or research can be explained within the context of a story that your audience can relate to. And if you need help creating and presenting that story, reach out, I enjoy working with scientists who are making an impact!

Transcript

LHF: Hello, and welcome to Today I Learned: Climate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I’m Laur Hesse Fisher.

If you’re like many of our listeners, you might be wondering: okay, so the CO₂ from burning fossil fuels is warming the planet, right? So why haven’t we just gotten rid of all these fossil fuels already?

Because we live in a world that’s currently dependent on fossil fuels, yet a lot of that dependence is invisible to us. So we collaborated with TABLE, an international coalition of universities that helps the public understand our food system. Their recent podcast miniseries is called Fuel to Fork, and it explores all the many ways that fossil fuels are involved in putting food on our plates.

And today, we’re going to get a glimpse into the hard work that is happening to eliminate pollution from the food system—and in doing so, explore the very real ways that our food now depends on fossil fuels.

Even to produce the simplest thing, like a tortilla chip.

JC: I love tortilla chips. In fact, I had some on the weekend, and they were very tasty.

LHF: That’s Jennifer Clapp.

JC: I’m a professor and Canada research chair in global food security and sustainability at the University of Waterloo in Canada. I’m also a member of IPES-Food, which is the international panel of experts on sustainable food systems.

LHF: She’s here to help us follow the journey of a tortilla chip from farm to grocery store, taking note of all the ways fossil fuels are used along the way. So let’s get started.

JP: Well, tortilla chips have relatively few ingredients. They’re made of corn, or in the rest of the world, it’s called maize.

LHF: Here in the U.S., we have over 90 million acres of cornfields. If that were a state, it would be the fifth largest, just barely behind Montana. And if you took a drive through this great state of corn, the first thing you might notice above the vast, waving expanses of green are the machines that tend the corn from planting to harvest.

JP: Farm machinery typically runs on Diesel fuel. And that’s the machinery used to plow the fields, drill the seeds, spread the fertilizer, spread the pesticides, spread the herbicides. Also for harvesting crops, big machinery is used, you know, combine harvesters and other kinds of machines that thresh the grain.

LHF: It’s probably no surprise that these great machines need fuel to run. But what about the quieter parts of a corn farm—like the barns?

JC: Corn has a lot of moisture in it. It’s a heavy crop, and to store it properly it needs to be dried. And farmers typically use giant fans in a barn to dry out the corn and typically heat those barns with propane fuel.

LHF: The two things we’ve mentioned so far—the farming machinery, and drying the crop—make up about half of the fossil energy use on a typical corn farm. There’s one last big chunk of emissions that we’re going to come back to a little bit later in this episode.

For now, though, we’re packing up our corn for sale.

JC: Commodities like corn do travel around a fair bit. If it’s trucked, it’s typically using diesel fuel. And also, if it’s shipped, it’s definitely using oil.

LHF: Those fossil fuels get our dried corn to a factory, where it will be turned into masa, the delicious dough that makes a tortilla.

JC: And what it involves is soaking and simmering, like cooking, these dried kernels of corn for up to 12 hours. And that process is called wet milling.

LHF: For our tortilla chips, this is almost the end of the line: the masa from the wet mill is ready to be shaped, baked and fried. Other corn products will keep passing through more screens and grinders and dryers and fermenters, on their way to becoming things like cornstarch, and corn syrup, and even the ethanol we add to gasoline.

There isn’t good recent data on this, but back in 2001 the US Energy Information Administration did a study of corn wet mills and found that they used 15% of all the energy in, not just corn, but the entire U.S. food industry.

JC: So that gives you a sense of just how energy consumptive it is.

LHF: When you hear about “ultra-processed” foods, this is what it means: the ingredients go through a whole bunch of machines to break them down to their proteins and fibers and oils and such. And it tends to use a lot of fossil fuels—and be less healthy for us, too.

With our tortilla chips, the last machine would be the fryer that makes them nice and crispy and snackable. But there’s one more step before they’re shipped to the grocery store, and that’s packaging.

JC: In my local community I can buy corn chips that come in a paper bag, which really makes me happy. But most corn chips that you’re going to find in a grocery store shelf are packaged in plastic.

LHF: And that plastic is made of—do you know? It’s oil!

Yeah, our food system doesn’t rely on fossil fuels just for energy. Tons of stuff—packaging, farm equipment—is also made of fossil fuels.

JC: You might have seen large sheets of plastic covering farm fields that sort of keep in moisture and keep temperatures warm in the soil, or covering a greenhouse, Herbicides, pesticides; they’re all fossil fuel sort of oil based chemicals. So when we think about fossil fuels on the farm, they’re just, they’re everywhere.

LHF: Remember earlier, when we found that the farming and drying machinery added up to about half of a farm’s fossil energy use? Well, most of the remaining half comes from just one of those fossil fuel-based chemicals alone.

JC: The fertilizer use is probably the biggest use of fossil energy when we’re talking about growing corn.

LHF: For as long as there’s been farming, people have been adding fertilizers like manure and wood ash to soil to revitalize it.

JC: These products really started to be used much more frequently after around the 1840s, when scientific developments led to an understanding about the importance of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium as key nutrients that plants need for better plant growth.

Phosphorus and potash are actually today typically mined from the earth and processed to make fertilizers.

LHF: But the third nutrient, nitrogen, is trickier: there’s no nitrogen rock that we can mine. On the other hand, there is one very abundant source of nitrogen very close to hand. It’s in the air we’re breathing. Earth’s atmosphere is almost 80% nitrogen gas.

JC: And scientists knew that nitrogen was in the air. They just didn’t know how to capture it and make it into a physical, usable form that could be applied to soil.

LHF: And then, in the early 1900s, two German chemists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, figured it out. If you react nitrogen with hydrogen, they mix to make NH₃, also known as ammonia. And this became the main ingredient for modern fertilizers.

The catch is that the hydrogen comes from yet another fossil fuel: natural gas.

JC: So the Haber Bosch process really changed everything because people didn’t have to worry about where the nitrogen was going to come from to fertilize crops. And the use of synthetic nitrogen increased massively.And what that’s meant is that more crops can be grown. More land around the world can be cultivated for agriculture, because the nutrients can be continually replenished.

LHF: And on that land, humans are supplying a regular stream of nitrogen, provided mostly by natural gas. Where, unfortunately, it continues to impact the climate in yet another way.

JC: There’s been a tendency to over-apply fertilizer. Just as kind of like an insurance policy that farmers want to be sure that they’re putting enough on the field to ensure plant growth.

But not all nitrogen that’s put down in the field is taken up by the plant. And then soil microbes eat up the nitrogen, and it converts it into a gas called nitrous oxide, which is more damaging than carbon dioxide when we’re talking about climate change. And corn uses a lot of fertilizer, so it has a lot of nitrous oxide emissions.

LHF: Fertilizer is by far the biggest way that humans create nitrous oxide, this highly climate-warming gas. If you add both the manufacturing process and the nitrous oxide, fertilizer has the same impact on the climate as a major country—in fact, it contributes as much to climate change each year as Japan does, which is the world’s seventh-largest climate polluter.

JC: So all in all, the fertilizer industry is pretty significant.

LHF: Okay, so what do we do about all this? You might ask: is it even possible to have our tortilla chips without the climate pollution?

JC: Can I imagine a fossil fuel free bag of corn chips? I think, in this current world that we live in, that’s a bit hard to imagine, given all of the places in the whole production process that have relied on and continue to rely on fossil energy.

LHF: Let’s take farming machinery for a moment. You might say, well, couldn’t we just run these machines on electricity, like switching a gas-powered car for an electric car? And, yeah—we probably could.

JC: But it’s not straightforward. Because a tractor has to have a lot of horsepower, especially for plowing, especially for these sort of harvesting and threshing activities.

LHF: That means that an electric tractor would need to hold a lot of energy in its battery. For the heaviest equipment like combine harvesters, the industry is still waiting on more powerful motors and batteries to hit the market—and to be affordable.

But don’t throw up your hands. There is a lot we can do right now. Like in the drying barns, which can be heated electrically, and the wet mills that can switch to clean power sources. Or what about the problem of overapplying nitrogen? That’s no good for anybody who cares about our climate—but it’s also especially bad for the people buying all this fertilizer that just ends up being wasted.

JC: Because it’s a big cost for farmers. And the big companies are all investing in digital technology that can analyze the type of soil and its fertility, and then provide advice to farmers that says you should only put this much fertilizer in this part of your field. Maybe you want to use a little bit more in that part of your field.

LHF: There are also these things called “slow release” fertilizers, which are coated in a slow-dissolving plastic so all the nitrogen doesn’t get dumped on the field at once. Or, could we produce the nitrogen our corn needs without using natural gas? There are emerging processes that use clean electricity instead, or even engineered microbes in the soil. All of these ideas are being actively pursued right now—and also studied to see what kinds of unintended effects might arise if we start doing things like treating our soils with plastics, or using a lot of energy for AI-powered digital farming tools.

So today, we wanted to highlight the often hidden fossil fuel use in our food system—but we also wanted to highlight the often-invisible solutions that are happening. Because as more and more of us get activated and equipped to tackle this issue, researchers, innovators, investors, and folks working across the food system get creative, and solutions like these become possible.

JC: So it’s a big ask to say, okay, throw that model out the window and start from scratch with something else. But there are models of other things that can work, such as agroecology, which is using nature’s own processes to provide the fertilization of soils by growing different crops next to each other. It’s a big change. And so it’s not going to happen overnight.

But I always think about the fact that the way that we ended up with the agriculture we have today took about 200 years. Farmers did adopt synthetic fertilizers. They did adopt hybrid seeds. You know all of the aspects that we think of as conventional farming today were at one point new technologies. So we shouldn’t think necessarily that farmers are going to be resistant to change. But that change has to be tangible for them in terms of the benefits, and it has to be easy, and it has to be affordable.

LHF: And that’s harder than just saying, keep the fossil fuels in the ground. But in the end, this hard, steady work is what it’s going to take to have a clean economy that offers us a good living and the things that we need. And even the things that we like, like a bag of chips.

That is our show. But if you’re interested in learning more about fossil fuels in the food system, I invite you to check out the entire Fuel to Fork miniseries from TABLE, in collaboration with IPES-Food and the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Just look up Fuel to Fork on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And hey, you can also look up TILclimate there and follow us—there are lots more episodes to brush up on your climate knowledge. Or get in touch and ask us your climate change questions! Email us at tilclimate@mit.edu, or leave us a voicemail at 617 253 3566.

TILclimate is the climate change podcast of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Aaron Krol is our Writer and Executive Producer. David Lishansky is our Audio Producer. Michelle Harris is our fact-checker. Grace Sawin is our Student Production Assistant. The music is by Blue Dot Sessions. And I’m your Host and Senior Editor, Laur Hesse Fisher.

A big thanks to Prof. Jennifer Clapp for speaking with us, and to you, our listeners. Keep up your climate curiosity.

And if you want to dive deeper into this topic:

Read more about Prof. Clapp.
For a deeper dive into where fossil fuels are used in the global food system, check out the Fuel to Fork podcast mini-series produced by TABLE, IPES-Food and the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.
For detailed data on the sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the global food system, see this scientific publication from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The data is also summarized in this report, and made available in an interactive tool where you can break down emissions by source, country, and type of greenhouse gas.
Learn more about how fertilizer is produced and why it contributes to climate change with this Explainer from the MIT Climate Portal.
This episode breaks down the use of fossil energy on a typical corn farm. You can find data on this question from the University of Minnesota and Iowa State University.
TILclimate has covered related topics in our episodes on farming a warmer planet and what I eat.
For an overview of climate change, check out our climate primer: Climate Science and Climate Risk (by Prof. Kerry Emanuel).
For more episodes of TILclimate by the MIT Climate Project, visit tilclimate.mit.edu.

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Storytelling And Your Moral Compass

January 16, 2025/in Identity, Moral Compass, Personal Stories, Storytelling/by Mark Lovett

I recently had a discussion with a client about the principles which form a story’s foundation. As we delved deeper into the subject, three principles came up over and over: Honor, Integrity, and Respect. We talked at some length and the next day I decided to summarize and share what these principles meant to us:

Honor — the story being told is true, told honestly, without embellishment or fabrication. In this light, the narrative faithfully represents the authenticity of the experiences being shared and reflects the story’s true meaning.
Integrity — the story aligns with one’s actions, words, and personal values. It respects the privacy of others involved in the story, and in some situations, requires consent from the other party. (or a notification of your intent)
Respect — the story is cognizant of personal and cultural issues regarding what is going to be included in the narrative. That could involve narrative boundaries plus an understanding of the story’s emotional impact on the storyteller and the audience.

At the intersection of honor, integrity, and respect

Another subject arose as we discussed how those principles interact with each other: moral compass. As we considered the term it seemed evident that our moral compass must be positive in nature, as it’s based (as we saw it) on the three principles of honor, integrity, and respect.

When we abandon our moral compass

But as we had to admit, people don’t always align with their moral compass. In some cases, outside influences that are not in alignment with our central values and beliefs come into play. Religious dogma or political ideology are often times out of sync with the morals we hold dear. Greed has a way of masking our idea of right and wrong if there’s the possibility of a significant financial gain, and the seductive nature of being in a position of power also has a way of obscuring our convictions. The effects of fear and intimidation, of being persecuted by others or ostracized for our beliefs can cause us to transition into preservation mode. That’s when the stories we tell ourselves and others may take a moral detour.

Silence is a story unto itself

While some folks engage in a form of moral hypocrisy due to social pressure or personal gain, others remain silent as they’re fearful of repercussions whenever they tell the truth or share their honest feelings. I get it. We’re always evaluating the potential benefit of a decision against any associated risks, and history is full of stories about people who suffered, both physically and mentally as a result of publicly sharing their values and beliefs.

It’s a time for self-awareness

I’m not here to issue a moral judgement on anyone. That’s not the point of this article. Instead, it’s a call for a moment of self-reflection when telling a personal story. To be aware of whether your story’s narrative stays in alignment with your moral compass, or has deviated in some way from your cherished principles to serve another purpose.

Dealing with the dark side

We also need to recognize that in some cases a person’s moral compass can be damaged, and as a result, they no longer believe in respecting other people. We have all seen that happen in many parts of the world as fascist governments will lie, cheat, steal, and implement policies that impair basic human rights. This isn’t an instant shift, but instead happens over time. It’s a brainwashing process that replaces respect with disrespect. When that happens, the stories that are told damage society instead of being beneficial. Not the impact we’re looking for.

When it’s time to speak up

In such cases it’s more important than ever for those people who operate from a position of Honor, Integrity, and Respect have their voice heard by all. Positive change in any society always begins with the telling of personal stories. So if at all possible, share a personal story that can change the world — for the better.

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AI, Information Networks, and Stories: Insights from Nexus, the latest book by Yuval Noah Harari

September 10, 2024/in AI, Artificial Intelligence, History, Humanity, Science, Storytelling/by Mark Lovett

Note: comments not attributed to the author constitute my personal opinions.

You may be familiar with Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the global bestseller, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Yuval has a way of taking very complex subjects, such as the history of humans, and presenting important highlights, digestible summations, and tangible examples to illustrate his personal views. This time he’s examining how human history has been shaped by information networks, including its most recent incarnation as artificial intelligence (AI) in Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.

In Nexus, Yuval leads us on a recap of human history (sounds familiar), but this time as a way to view our common journey on this planet in the context of how human networks and information networks evolved in tandem.

Information is increasingly seen by many philosophers and biologists, and even by some physicists, as the most basic building block of reality, more elementary than matter and energy.

It was interesting to consider the evolution of cultures from the perspective of how human networks evolved in parallel with information networks. With oral cultures, “…realities were created by telling a story that many people repeated with their mouths and remembered in their brains.” Before the advent of any writing system, personal storytelling was our exclusive information network.

Image by Franz Bachinger from Pixabay

Similar to how humans act in the modern world, prehistoric humans told each other stories on a daily basis. Many were soon forgotten, but sometimes they were committed to memory. Stories deemed to be important were retold as a way to spread their message, or shared with future generations as a way to enshrine their culture.

But we must also remember that the retelling of any story will introduce some inaccuracies, so in a sense, stories are living entities that, over time, stray from the truth. And beyond the changes that happen to stories unintentionally with retelling, at some point in time, humans figured out how to tell outright lies.

Misinformation is an honest mistake, occurring when someone tries to represent reality but gets it wrong. Disinformation is a deliberate lie, occurring when someone consciously intends to distort our view of reality.

So our information networks have never been completely accurate, but with the advent of writing systems, it was possible to capture a version of the story, such that many people could read the same words. Once again, there was no way to know if what was written was true, leaving humans left to wonder whether any written document was accurate, or was simply preserving another falsehood. Regardless, it was common for the written word to be widely adopted as true. Government decrees and religious texts being two common examples.

But whether true or false, written documents created new realities.

Writing, once performed by hand, was revolutionized by the printing press, then electrified by technology as information was transmitted on radio and television. The birth of the internet allowed us to transfer files and even send emails, while the inception of the world wide web allowed us to be publishers, and for a brief moment, it felt as though personal storytelling — the first information network — was having a renaissance of sorts. Once again, however, the powers that be — both political and corporate — came to control a large portion of the digital landscape, thus shaping the flow of information, both true and false.

All powerful information networks can do both good and ill, depending on how they are designed and used.

Thus it follows that human networks can become ill when they buy into the disinformation promoted by ill-intended information networks. Communist / fascist / marxist / stalinist governments are prime examples. And though the western world has long felt immune to such a fate, disinformation networks, increasingly powered by AI, are active at this very moment, with the intent of dismantling democracy.

We should not assume that delusional networks are doomed to failure. If we want to prevent their triumph, we will have to do the hard work ourselves.

Artificial intelligence is often seen as just another technological upgrade, but it’s fundamentally different. To date, the stories we share, whether they are true or false, or intended to do good or cause harm, were created and disseminated by humans. With AI, we must now confront the fact that “nonhuman intelligence” has that same capability. Are we ready for nonhuman wisdom?

The invention of AI is potentially more momentous than the invention of the telegraph, the printing press, or even writing, because AI is the first tool that is capable of making decisions and generating ideas by itself.

Pause for a moment and consider that concept. Rather than only consuming our information in order to paraphrase its meaning, AI creating content on its own is akin to it being a nonhuman storyteller. I’m not sure where this capability will go, but I fail to see the upside. As AI can’t experience anything in the real world, how will it craft a narrative? For example, a hurricane hitting a major city will result in a great deal of information being created — facts and figures, as well as various predictions, followed by news reports, interviews, and first hand accounts. Only humans will be able to tell those stories, right? Or will AI be able to generate its own version of what is happening? And how will we know the difference?

Image by Guilherme Christmann from Pexels

More than ever, the personal stories we share are of vital importance. The only way that positive change has ever occurred is by sharing our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. But with AI, is our birthright of being the sole source of stories at risk? For me, that question was top of mind after reading Nexus.

If a twenty-first-century totalitarian network succeeds in conquering the world, it may be run by nonhuman intelligence, rather than by a human dictator.

We’ve already seen cases where AI was used by humans to influence elections and stoke hatred between different cultures. What will happen if humans are removed from the equation altogether? It may be a long shot, but I’m thinking we need to create as many true, personal stories as we can for AI to consume. My hope is that in doing so, we can inject AI with a sense of human empathy, morality, compassion and respect.

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The Importance of Resonance and Relevance in Storytelling

January 1, 2023/in Audience, Narrative, Personal Stories, Society, Storytelling/by Mark Lovett

Welcome to 2023! The past few years have been quite an adventure. And what a story, or for most of us, a series of stories. But that tends to be the nature of life. Stories unfold. Sometimes with our direction, but often without our permission. Which would explain why so many people have recently told me that 2023 is the year they want to tell a personal story, one that can impact others, but they just don’t know where to start.

The first question that many of them ask me is: “What makes a talk memorable?” It’s not the easiest question to answer, as there are so many factors to consider when crafting and delivering a personal story. And while speaking skills are an important element, they are not the most important factors when it comes to impacting audiences. Begin your exploration here: Resonance and Relevance. Address these two words up front, in the Ideation phase.

Will the audience be interested in my topic,
and will they find my message useful?

People will listen to stories that capture their attention, when it’s a subject they want to hear about. First step is to ask yourself, “Why will the audience care?”

Don’t just think about the answer. Write it down. Make a list. That means you’ll need to know your audience. And if you’re telling your story to more than one group: general audience vs. scientists vs. academics vs. students, the answers will vary. And that’s okay. It’s a great way to discover new audiences.

Once you’re satisfied that your story will resonate with your audience, and you have shifted from the Ideation to the Narration phase, the body of your story needs to be relevant. Ask yourself, “What will the audience think, feel and do after they hear your story?” Each of your Story Blocks should be selected and written to accomplish your intended goals.

Will they feel inspired, have you added to their knowledge, shifted perceptions, challenged a preconceived notion, given them a new way to see themselves or the world around them? In short, is your narrative relevant to their life? What can they take away from your story that will help them going forward?

I do hope that all of you who have an impactful story to share do exactly that in 2023. Maybe it’s a keynote speech, or a talk on a TEDx stage, or maybe it’s for a local community group or at a breakfast meeting. Don’t worry about the size of the audience, as touching a single person is valuable. You never know how the impact will ripple out and touch others.

So if you have a personal story to tell, and need a bit of guidance along the way, send me a message and we’ll set up a complementary call to discuss your needs. I’ve coached hundreds of storytellers, from scientists to engineers, students and academics, creatives and business leaders, special forces and prison inmates.

Know that your story is important, and that it can change the world!

Hitting the bullseye for storytelling with impact

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