Paul Zach: Most of the stories that get told these days, we don't know fundamentally whether the stories we're making are good or bad. The question we asked is when do stories or experiences capture a large market? Could there be an indicator that there is demand for this kind of experience in a larger set of individuals? We were tasked by the US government to see if we can identify signals in the brain that in combination would predict accurately what people would do after a story or after an experience. What we ultimately discovered was a set of signals from the brain that I believe capture the value that our brains get from experiences with social content. No one's ever done that before at scale.
Creators, marketers, and other storytellers have long wondered: could there ever be an objective measurement of how moving our stories are to audiences? Neuroscientist and tech entrepreneur Paul J. Zak says yes— and he's studied 50,000 brains to back up his claims. Paul shares science-based insights on what makes stories effective from his new book, Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness, on this episode of the FoST podcast.
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© 2022 Future of StoryTelling, Corp.
Produced by Future of StoryTelling, Corp.
124 West 13th Street
New York, NY 10011
Founder and CEO, Charles Melcher
Director, Carolyn Merriman
Assistant Producer, Madison Brown
in collaboration with Charts & Leisure
Founder, Jason Oberholtzer
Executive Producer, Mike Rugnetta
Editor, Garrett Crowe
Mix and Music, Michael Simonelli
With special thanks to Paul J Zak, Bonnie Eldon, Meghal Janardan, Sarah Vitak, Elisabeth March, Michael Bass, Megan Worman, and Laura Cray.