Why We Still Need Storytelling

Among humans, storytelling is universal. It is what connects us to our humanity, links us to our history, and gives us a peek at our possible futures.

One legend is from northern Scotland in the United Kingdom, where a cold, murky and mysterious freshwater lake called Loch Ness is located. “Loch” is pronounced as “lock.” The word means “lake” in the Scottish language.

In modernity, magic has often been dismissed, ridiculed and banished as suspect, woo-woo nonsense. It can seem that only those people who are foolish, young and crazy deal in such things.

You can easily picture yourself riding a bicycle across the sky even though that’s not something that can actually happen.

Many people believe that creative thinking is difficult – that the ability to come up with ideas in novel and interesting ways graces only some talented individuals and not most others.

One of my fondest Christmas memories happened many years ago. We decided to do something extra special one year, so we worked up a volunteer army of helpers to feed the largest homeless shelter in Salt Lake City. I called upon...

Christmas has become a cultural event, associated with the giving of gifts and lavish meals with friends and family. But the traditional understanding of Christmas is that it’s a Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus.

The holiday season is here, and some may plan to go shopping along local Main Streets, popular city districts, malls or to enjoy time with friends and family in restaurants. 

Each season, the celebration of Christmas has religious leaders and conservatives publicly complaining about the commercialization of the holiday and the growing lack of Christian sentiment. Many people seem to believe that there was once a way to celebrate the birth of Christ in a more spiritual way.

If one presented you with a unknown melody and suddenly stopped it, you could be able to sing the note you think fit the best.

I have conducted research in locations like Papua New Guinea, Japan and Greece. The truth is fieldwork is often expensive, potentially dangerous and sometimes even life-threatening.

In the shadow of the climate crisis, a wave of speculative fiction, named the “new weird,” rethinks the role of agency and the natural world. It asks what it means to live in a world where everything is not an extractable resource — and where humans are not in control.

For the ancient Celts, there were only two seasons of the year: win­ter and summer. Winter began at Samhain (October 31–November 1), and summer began at Beltaine.

Over the course of six decades, Bob Dylan steadily brought together popular music and poetic excellence. Yet the guardians of literary culture have only rarely accepted Dylan’s legitimacy.

Dame Angela Lansbury was an icon of the stage and screen, but beneath this strong and lovable figure is a story filled with highs and lows that fuelled her talent and perseverance.

This story has a little bit of America in it and a little bit of Orkney in it. Orkney is at the very northern tip of Scotland; it is a collection of seventy islands. Everyone who lives in Orkney lives close to the sea.

Setting the series 20 years earlier allowed the creators to mask their criticisms behind a historical perspective – but most viewers realised the true context.

For many young people, retirement is a blip on the radar, if not a total unknown. This is particularly true during our cost of living crisis, when investing and contributing more to your pension might fall down the priority list behind paying rent.

Once you have chosen to value every minute, you can begin to create systems by which those precious minutes can be used.

On a 1968 episode of “Star Trek,” Nichelle Nichols, playing Lt. Uhura, locked lips with William Shatner’s Capt. Kirk in what’s widely thought to be first kiss between a Black woman and white man on American television.

But why do we travel in the first place? What is the allure of the open road?

Is music legend and ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney a creative genius? Not according to Edward P. Clapp, a principal investigator at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero

Presley never wrote a memoir. Nor did he keep a diary. Once, when informed of a potential biography in the works, he expressed doubt that there was even a story to tell.