Jonathan Gottschall - How Story Makes a People

Episode 83 of What Gives?—the Jewish Philanthropy Podcast from Jewish Funders Network, hosted by JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny. In this episode, Andrés speaks with Jonathan Gottschall, literary scholar and author of The Storytelling Animal. Jonathan has spent his career studying why human beings are wired for narrative, which he explored with attendees in a fascinating keynote at this year's JFN Conference in San Diego. In this conversation, Andrés and Jonathan explore the idea that we are not only Homo sapiens but Homo fictus, a species that lives its whole life inside stories. They talk about how stories bind people into groups far larger than kinship ever allowed. We talk about why human communities, whether a nation, a family, or the Jewish people itself, are held together by the stories they share even more than by borders or bloodlines, and what happens when those stories begin to fracture. They also get into the darker side of narrative: how stories can quietly replace reality, why antisemitism is one of the oldest and most destructive fictions ever told, and why the hardest discipline is turning our skepticism on our own stories. Take a listen.