Issue #46: Story Is Tissue
Weekly curated resources for movers, creatives, and coaches.
I recently found an interesting study about the Agta hunter-gatherer tribe in the Philippines. The study makes the case that storytellers within the tribe brought about greater cooperation, and that stories play an essential role in coordinating social behaviors.
What’s even more fascinating is that the researchers tested whether people would prefer to live in camps with more skilled storytellers by asking them who, in the camp, they would most like to live with. Those perceived as good storytellers were twice as likely to be nominated as future campmates.
“These results demonstrate that the Agta prefer to live in camps with skilled storytellers, who are even more valued than good foragers, which may reflect the importance of storytellers in promoting cooperation and bringing gains to all individuals in a camp.”
With that said, one big caveat they make is that these studies “are largely correlational and further studies are required to conclusively demonstrate that storytelling performs a causal role in facilitating cooperative behavior.” The study is far from perfect, given how complex and contextual this study is. Nonetheless, it’s a wonderful experiment on how storytelling is deeply woven into our DNA.
It reminds me a lot of the quote that “Most of us think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, but we are actually feeling creatures that think.”
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READ, WATCH, LISTEN ⤵
READ: Show Your Work, Book Notes →
(Reading Time: ~5-7 minutes)
Last week I shared some work from Austin Kleon’s Newspaper Blackout which some of you re-shared screenshots of. I wanted to take some time to share some notes from one of his books, Show Your Work. It seems fitting to continue the conversation from last week’s newsletter. Show Your Work is a beautiful manifesto on why sharing/showing your work can change your life. It was my inspiration for starting this newsletter and tell my story.
(Full disclosure, these are not my notes. Ali Abdaal shared them.)
Watch: Frank Forencich at Ancestral Health Symposium →
(Length: 2-5 minutes)
This talk is 42 minutes, but I’ve shared an interesting part of the talk where Frank talks about the body being an open system.
Biggest takeaway: Habitat is tissue. Story is tissue.
“Being hyper-social animals we are permeable to ideas, stories, memes, culture. All of this stuff goes into us all the time and it literally changes our bodies… Your body changes under the influence of the stories we tell each other. So our health and our performance are things we create in common. It’s not an individual enterprise.”
Aesthetically Pleasing 👀
Another weekend, another 🕳🐇
“Fuck Yeah Medical Diagrams” was an old Tumblr blog that curated a bunch of cool anatomy art and visuals. Below are some of my favorites.
Tiny Insight 🧠
Fire gave us power, movement gave us brains, and stories gave us purpose.
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On Purpose,
Galo Alfredo Naranjo
PS. How did you like this week’s issue? Your feedback helps me make it better.
Great • Good • Meh
thanks for pulling all this info into one place! I chuckled to myself reading the bit on story telling/tellers in the Agta communities.
This line is what felt humorous to me: “are largely correlational and further studies are required to conclusively demonstrate that storytelling performs a causal role in facilitating cooperative behavior.”
I appreciate their thoroughness but.....
Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, etc. Are these not blatant & already well documented examples of how story telling is used to organize cooperative behavior at massive scales?
The question that comes to me with this is how do these intact traditional cultures (read as hunter/gatherer) use storytelling differently than the the giant global players? And what can we learn from their methodology that can aid us in organizing ourselves in more sustainable ways?
Thanks for the laugh & the insightful pieces woven together here!