Ron Ploof argues that storytelling is how human brains actually learn. He shows a 1944 animation of shapes that everyone describes the same way, then cites neuroscientist Kendall Haven's research on oxytocin and dopamine to prove that stories trigger empathy and curiosity in ways nothing else does. For pitches, the lesson is simple: structure everything as narrative.
Chapters
Thank you. Thank you. Boy, after that oath, I'm all fired up here. That's awesome. I need to tell you how excited I am to be a storyteller standing in Draper University of Heroes.
Woo!
Because you see, there's a special relationship between storytellers and heroes. As a storyteller, I'm always putting my heroes in difficult situations. But I'm also giving them tools that they can use to help get themselves out of those difficult situations, to help them overcome obstacles. Well, you have an obstacle coming up— pitch day, right? So today I'm going to be your storyteller, you're going to be my heroes, and I'm going to give you some skills. Specifically, the skills that I am going to give you today are ways to make your pitch interesting, memorable, and persuasive. So if I give you those skills, by the end of our little hour together, will that be worth your time?
Yes.
All right. Well, let's get into it. So before I start, what I want to do is I want to show you a little animation. Now this animation is actually 72 years old. It was invented in 1944 by 2 psychologists, Heider and Simmel. And I just want you to watch the little animation. I want you to take notes, and then we're going to talk about it afterwards. Okay? It's about a minute and 30, so it's not that long, but just watch it, and here we go. Okay, so I want to ask you a question here. So what's going on? Anyone want to start out by trying to describe to me what you just saw? Who wants to give me a try?
Yes. So, The pink dot and the smaller blue arrow were attempting to lure the big— yeah, the big triangle, the big red triangle into the box. Or they were attempting to get inside of the box.
OK.
And be like safe from the big red triangle.
Okay, all right. Anything else?
Well, at first I thought the blue and the pink were against each other and that the red was coming up, but then the story changed for me where the red was more of like the bully.
Bully, okay.
For the pink dot, and then the blue one was trying to help the pink dot escape and hide from the Big red bully.
OK. Anybody else? Yes?
I saw a boy want to take a girl out for a date. And finally he did it. And his dad got really mad.
You're a romantic. All right. Very cool. Yes?
To me, I assigned parental conflict. And it looked like the picture I think the pink dot was like a daughter and that the dad was the red one and that the mom was the blue one.
Oh, okay, okay.
Anything else?
Okay, so there are actually 2 things that I find fascinating about this animation is that first of all, over 72 years Since this has been shown to different people, they all come up with essentially the same story. They end up landing on Story Street. They look at these shapes and they see a story. And it doesn't matter nationality, culture, race. Humans look at this video and they see a story. Now that should be amazing enough, right, that we all see the same thing. Here's what I find even weirder. Let's take it apart. I showed you a video with 3 shapes and 5 lines. Have you ever met a triangle that could think?
Mm-mm.
Have you ever met a circle or a, a dot that could be afraid? We gave these shapes intent. We gave them feelings. But all I showed you was shapes moving around. Why? I'm interested in why do we do that? Why everybody that looks at this can see there's an aggressor. Right? There's someone that's timid, right? There's the protector. We can see these things. Why? Starting to understand this why will help you figure out ways to connect with your audiences when you are creating your pitch. The first thing we need to know is that our brains We are programmed to believe that everything we see, actually everything that comes in through our senses, sight, smell, taste, touch, feel, hearing, has to make sense. When we look at shapes moving around a screen, we feel they have to make sense. What's also interesting is if we don't understand something, we'll still make sense. Our brains will make something up, which should be terrifying to you because if you are delivering a story, if you're delivering something to— during your pitch, if you're delivering this and they aren't getting it, they're making up their own story, and we don't want that to happen. So everything must make sense. That's what drives us and our brains, everybody's brains. Make sense? So what we do is we actually reconcile what we've seen before, our prior knowledge, with new information. We've been in situations where, let's say that all of a sudden someone came running up to you really quickly, right? We've recognized that as maybe an aggressive move. Maybe we flinch, maybe we come back. So if we've all seen that, if we've experienced someone making an aggressive move, If we see a triangle rushing to another triangle, we compare that with what we know and we say, ah, they must be aggressive. Right?
Yes.
We need to think about these. When we tell someone, when we use a word, when we use an analogy, what prior knowledge do they have that they might be Associating with it. One of my favorite authors, his name is Kendall Haven, and Kendall is a really cool guy. He is a scientist that has watched people's brains listening to stories. He's put EEG leads on people's brains and They've told them stories, and he's watched what their brains were doing while listening to stories. The other thing that he did was he swabbed their saliva— ick— to measure oxytocin, which is the hormone that's released when we feel empathy for somebody, to measure dopamine, which is the hormone that's released when we're interested in something. So he could watch people listening to stories and then see what was most interesting to them and what was most connecting in terms of empathy. And here's the most interesting part of his research. Kendall says that the only way that we as humans learn is through story. The That's the only way. You may think about how you learn. I mean, are you a visual learner? Do you learn through example? If you think about the fact that our brains are wired so that everything we look at must make sense, we must form our own story for how what is happening in front of me makes sense, that's how we learn.
