Sell Anything to Anyone: The Power of STORIES

6,797 views Wait, is this logic right? • Sep 27, 2024

Slog Reference: The Power of Storytelling

Description

Why is storytelling so important? Why do we trust stories more than facts and data? In this episode, we discuss why stories are so powerful and how they shape our minds. The ability to sell anything, be it a material thing or a narrative, simply with the power of words is both, a blessing and a curse. Stories can be captivating, inspire change and also be a danger to society in spreading misinformation. Either way, stories matter.

Click below to get a copy of the books mentioned in this episode:
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari: https://tapthe.link/iB5rYGs5i
One Red Paperclip by Kyle MacDonald: https://tapthe.link/Uaxz_qQS8

Here are more FIQ episodes that you may enjoy:
Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions? https://youtu.be/CBIm7TqXQ4w
Fighting Misinformation: https://youtu.be/_NVtf7-GNAg
Mastering Both Your Brains | System 1 vs System 2: https://youtu.be/DIVTMooO7o4
Why We Only Hear About The Winners?: https://youtu.be/QjDXyuBJ0UY
Why Do We Follow Social Norms?: https://youtu.be/_XhIECCt_P8

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

Chapters:
00:00 How to get away with anything with just words?
01:30 Sell story, sell trash
03:30 Can you buy a HOUSE with a story?!
04:50 Why are stories so powerful?
06:28 The danger of stories
07:55 Believing is Seeing
11:17 Is EVERYTHING just a story?

#futureiq

Related Slog Matches

The Power of Storytelling

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Transcript

- I'm going to talk about how stories are more powerful than Powerpoints and for that let me start with a story of my friend who got caught stealing mangoes and used stories to escape punishment this is interesting go on when I was young I lived in a place where there were a bunch of houses and every house had mango trees in their backyard okay okay now of course the owners of those mango trees hated it when somebody else stole their mangoes of course but that didn't stop as kids again of course so once my friend Karthik was stealing mangoes from one of the most sought after trees and he got caught now instead of just cing like the

0m 43s way the other kids used to do and try to apologize yeah Karthik said well Auntie you know what we are doing a community pickle we are taking one mango from every tree and we're going to make a pickle of it and uh that's why I was here the auntie's heart melted and she let him take the mango in fact she said you know what better you take that one that's a better mango okay oh Karthik was in a pickle he us the example of a pickle to get out of it but of course you realize there was no pickle karik went away and just ate the mango okay well it became a pickle in his stomach

1m 24s the truth is there was no pickle karik took the mango away and he just ate it okay there's another lovely example of the power of stories okay there are these researchers Who Sold trash for $3,600 trash what they did was they bought 100 items completely silly items from secondhand stores like unused birthday candles lost Keys okay things like this okay every item was around a dollar okay total 100 items cost less than1 $30 okay then they tried selling each of these items on eBay but instead of just describing the item oh these are birthday candles they wrote a story along with every item in fact what they did was they contacted some of the best

2m 14s authors they could get their handson and asked that author to write a story about that item and on eBay photo of the item and the story and the story no description of the item and you're just supposed to buy it oh and what happened yeah I would fall for it for sure oh yeah so for example a pink horse right came with a heartbreaking story poor woman with two daughters who could barely make ends meet and then one of the daughters died and the second daughter died and you know the pink horse was their favorite horse sold for $104 a ceramic horse was had a story about how the parents of this person met during a college dragging incident that

3m 02s involved something sexual okay $62 a little salt shaker in the shape of a bear right came with a story of like a you know epic poker game and uh full description of the poker game and how this person won and uh the other person had bet the salt shaker also because he was running short of money sold for $36 right W this actually reminds me of another thing that I had read on the internet called one red paper clip I don't know if you've heard of it is this the guy who was exchanging yeah he basically took one red paper clip and uh said I will exchange this with anything you have and in a series of 14 exchanges

3m 48s he exchanged it all the way to a house house a house started with a single red paper clip and got a house out of it 14 series of exchanges I'll put the link in the show notes description but it's a wonderful story because at each point he generated a story to go along with it the original story was of course that I want to exchange this one red paper clip into something of the highest value I can and the highest value he found was the TW storied house so yeah absolutely the power of stories I mean this wouldn't have happened if the story wasn't there to go with it absolutely absolutely in fact uh reminds me of

4m 29s Ernest Hemingway's short story six-word short story and imagine finding a listing with baby shoes and these six words for sale baby shoes never worn I bet you would buy that that's a short story by Ernest Hemingway six words for sale baby shoes never won breaks my heart every time stories are better than PowerPoints right I mean I love to think of you know what sh would be like if it was done using a PowerPoint presentation right can you can imagine oh first it starts with Road J and vu's background you are here problem definition intro to gabber intro to takur conflict intensifies you know you can I mean that's not nobody is going to go sit and

5m 12s watch it unless they're getting paid for it you just ruined shy for a lot of people including me but that actually brings back the original question why are stories better than or more powerful than PowerPoints actually it has to do with the nature of human memory okay okay uh statistics numbers these are not things that we grew up with in the African Savana those go to the front part of your brain the system to brain and we have difficulty remembering those things for a long time correct okay whereas stories have been with us for a long time so we remember stories for much longer for example and there is research showing this that if you want to get

5m 56s people to do something right and if you want them to do it right away give them statistics and numbers which will motivate them if you want them to do something much later give them a story because the statistics they're going to forget in a little while okay they're not going to remember the statistics but the story stays with you yeah so short-term motivation use statistics and numbers and hard data logic Etc longterm motivation use stories exactly yes all right uh but uh see the thing about sto is that stories can actually be dangerous they can be used to manipulate emotions stories are one of the most dangerous things on earth right because when you really think about it all

6m 41s misinformation is stories okay in fact we did an episode on misinformation and we pointed out that if it comes to you in the form of a story be very very suspicious it is likely to be misinformation whereas if it comes to you in the form of data and statistics and facts and things like that it is likely to be the truth right all misleading ads right are based on some story oh your son will shoot up and he will become a six-footer if he eats this right all scams right like the Nigerian prince who was suddenly arrested and his widow now has so many million dollars and she's trying to get it out right it's the story that draws you in and

7m 22s then you end up losing 83 lakhs right okay there he's right there's a perfect beginning middle and end to the the Nigerian scam story so all news right they are trying to sell you more stories because that's going to play with your emotions that's what you will remember that's what you're going to go with right so whereas statistics and facts don't make very interesting news right they're not going to make money on that that is true that is very very true uh we just evolved to be stupid story lovers I think and the the also the big problem here is that once you believe a story the facts stop mattering right I mean in another episode we called that

8m 08s believing is seeing right you believe a story now every new fact that comes in if it strengthens the story you will believe it and if it goes against the story you will say well that fact is wrong or the person saying it is lying or that that person is doing it out of bad intentions right you will reject you'll do everything to uphold the story that you've already built for yourself the story you've already accepted for yourself but the good thing about stories is that they're also absolutely necessary for human survival and flourishing okay in the book sapiens you all know a Harari argues that everything in Modern Life is based on stories right because getting a large number of human

8m 53s beings to agree on something and to work together on something that oh we are going to build a statue we are going to make a country here right all of them is a coordination problem and coordination problems are difficult to get everybody on the same page and working on the same thing you need a story that everybody believes right all of religion is a story it is it is absolutely a story the concept of a nation is a story right in fact it's an epic story we might as well say right because if you removed all the humans and you somebody came to Earth they would be able to tell what is a country and what is not a country right

9m 32s it's just in our heads um in fact when you really think about it belief in science is also a story right so I mean it just has a little more rigor to it riger to it but it's still a story Fair essentially like I was just saying we humans are story lovers we love our story another proof that storytelling is an important part of our Evolution comes from research of primitive tribes okay okay a whole bunch of hunter gatherer tribes people were asked who in your tribe would you really like to spend time with or live with okay okay and they collected information about who got the most votes huh most votes always received by the best storytellers not

10m 19s the best hunter not the best gatherer not the best medicine man okay okay but the best storyteller and when you think about it think about the most powerful man in your country right it's likely to be a Storyteller he sold you some story about the future right channel an investor venture capitalist once told me that when he's looking for Founders startups to invest in the most important thing he looks for is can the founder tell a story oh when you think about it again the greatest teachers are the ones who told you the most interesting stories about the material they are teaching right especially with history I have I'm yet to find a good history teacher who can tell history

11m 12s like a beautiful story which it is supposed to be but anyway go on and the other issue with humans is that if there is no story we will make one up right yeah I mean there's a bunch of random facts which just happened for no good reason but we will connect them up into story that explains all of astrology right that explains all of tabloids I was thinking more along the lines of my fourth standard maths textbook with all its illustrations we we actually concocted a story with each illustration and it was a very coherent story I don't remember what the story was but yeah we do take random assortment of facts or random assortment

11m 51s of things and make a story out check out our episodes on Fooled by Randomness all of those are examples of our brain taking random data and connecting them up into a story but that actually gives me an idea man if we can combine statistics data and I mean statistics data numbers logic whatever and storytelling we will be able to well be as powerful as we want but also more importantly remember facts for a longer period of time so there is a lovely Ted Talk by Hans rosling okay what he did he wanted to talk about how poverty has decreased how the world is getting better but didn't give a list of Statistics okay instead he told the

12m 32s story of his grandmother and how when she first saw a washing machine she was amazed at how much time will be saved for women yeah and then he connected that up into how a washing machine is the borderline between poor and not po poor if you have a washing machine you are not poor not poor uh and then he connected it up with statistics of people getting out of poverty women getting free time and so on right so uh check out the Ted talk we'll put a link here that's actually quite quite smart and quite nice yes everyone all of us need to learn these things yeah so but keep in mind the following things right

13m 14s stories about a double-edged sword that's true uh it's like nuclear power you can use it for horrible things and you can use it to save the world right so when you need to remember something use a story there are in fact people uh who do these amazing feats of memory right who can recite so many digits of pi and so on one of their important techniques is to convert the list of facts into a story right on the other hand if someone tells you a story try to unwrap it and see what are the underlying real facts yeah when you are trying to convince someone use stories and emotions instead of Statistics right I'm not not saying

13m 59s just have completely made up stuff yeah make stories which are based on the statistics send the statistics as a message afterwards like Hans rosling did like Hans rosling did but when you talk to them you tell the story and more importantly try to get better at telling stories important skill make you better than a hunter better than a gatherer better than a doctor yes medicine man I was going to say but sure better than hunter gatherer medicine man Storyteller we are storytellers here at Future IQ Shri Kant and naven are our names remember it