People like stories, particularly good stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end, a topic we’ll return to in commentary below. But for now, our old friend Joe Romm at ThinkProgress gives a few ideas of how better story-telling might benefit the environment and progressives:
“One hundred thousand years of human reliance on story has evolutionarily rewired the human brain to be predisposed to think in story terms,” as the author of a 2007 book, The Science Behind the Startling Power of Stories, explained. Yet very few schools teach the simple secret to telling a viral story: the “And-But-Therefore” (A-B-T) technique that marine biologist turned environmental filmmaker Randy Olson has been championing for years.
Boiled down to its essence, A-B-T is simply replacing the word “and” in your speech or writing with the word “but” (or equivalents like “yet”) wherever possible to introduce the kind of conflict and narrative tension we expect in our best stories. You also replace “and” with “therefore” (or equivalents like “so”) to introduce the resolution of that conflict and tension.
And speaking of story-telling, I have some input for a popular series on Hulu posted as commentary just below. Have a fun Fourth of July folks!
We can beat these bastards: and one way is for a not-so-underground railroad to be re-invigorated:
In a post-Roe America, states that still allow legal pregnancy terminations will be inundated with patients from near and far. Will you be ready to open your home to those who have to travel … Will you help to caravan patients who need to pass through multiple states to get to a clinic but can’t afford a bus or gas?
Speaking of fascist governments, the superb casting and acting on the popular sci-fi dystopia, The Handmaid’s Tale, all remain. Alas, some critique of this season’s story-lines and pace below the fold.
This season is the second in the series and it started great. But now it just seems to keep harping on the same “beginning,” more or less, with no middle or end of the many story-lines in sight. By now, believe me, we get that part. We get that Gilead is horrible, we get that the people running it are genocidal monsters, we get that life was better in the US before the take over via flashback after flashback. What we don’t get and don’t like is that almost nothing good happens to the good guys anymore and that almost nothing bad happens to any of the main bad guys—despite the fact that they deserve the worst possible torturous deaths with every fiber of their evil, wicked beings. Please, producers, pick up the damn pace, and while you’re at it, how about we actually start resolving some of the side stories instead of opening brand new ones, or taking an entire episode to shows events that can be summed up in a single sentence?