Why We Tell Stories (with Nic Weststrate)

Why do we spend so much time telling stories - about ourselves, about each other, even about fictional characters? If storytelling isn’t simply about information exchange, what role does it really play in our lives? Why do older people feel compelled to share their hard-earned wisdom with younger people? And do the younger people actually get anything from these exchanges? Nic Weststrate joins Igor and Charles to pull apart the real reasons we share stories. We discuss exploratory and redemptive processing of life-shattering events, the complex motivations behind Holocaust survivors recounting of the Jewish refugees on the St. Louis ship at the U.S. shore, and the Stonewall riots as the mythical origin story of the Gay Liberation movement. Igor questions the role of the omnipresent Netflix storytelling machine. Nic suggests that greater tolerance around sexuality can rob people of their once revolutionary identities. Charles learns that, when our lives are broken, we may have to choose between the path to wisdom and the path to happiness. Welcome to Episode 7.

• MS St. Louis - Voyage Of The Damned (Question Time Channel, YouTube)
• Collected Stories in the Life Narratives of Holocaust Survivors: Schiff, Noy, Cohler (2001)
• How the Stonewall Riots Sparked a Movement: The History Channel
• Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth: Crage, Armstrong (2006)
• The rise and fall of gay: A cultural-historical approach to gay identity development: Weststrate, McClean (2010)
• Intergenerational narratives and identity across Development: Merrill, Fivush (2016)
• Center for Practical Wisdom Research Forum: Nic M. Weststrate 2017 (Video)
• "It was the best worst day of my life": Narrative Content, Structure, and Process in Wisdom-Fostering Life Event Memories: Weststrate NM, Ferrari M, Fournier M, McLean K (2018)
• Hard-Earned Wisdom: Exploratory Processing of Difficult Life Experience Is Positively Associated With Wisdom: Weststrate, Glück (2017)