Storytelling: The Most Underrated Skill
How one man is turning all of us into performance nerds
“Congratulations, you’ve won VIP tickets to see Andrew Huberman!”
“What? Is this spam?”
If you’re like me, you never win raffles. Entering a raffle seems to have about the same effect as writing my name on a scrap of paper and lighting it on fire.
Needless to say, getting this email was shocking.
We reached the Beacon Theatre, and the first thing I noticed was all the performance nerds running to claim their tickets. Hundreds dressed in athleisure, wearing Lululemon backpacks, itching to see their favorite professor.
The banner of the Theatre read SOLD OUT in big bold-faced letters. I was skeptical. "That’s a bold-faced lie," I thought to myself. No way a show called The Brain Body Contract sold out.
We were early. As we got to our seats, I looked around and saw a sea of empty seats filled sparsely with performance nerds. “Knew it.”
I read my playbill and looked up to observe the flow of people coming in. As showtime approached, I noticed more seats starting to fill, to my disbelief. For every ten filled seats, there was now only one empty seat. Even the balcony seats were piling up.
Finally, Dr. Huberman stepped onto the stage to a crowd full of applause. His 2-hour talk was basically a live version of his podcast. Through stories, he carefully explained how we can manipulate our states of calmness and alertness.
There was one story Huberman shared that had us all on the edge of our seats. I wish I snuck in a recording because my words won’t do it justice.
Early in his career, Huberman was conducting a study on the bifocal vision of cuttlefish. He had 40 cuttlefish in a tank in the middle of his laboratory. One morning, as he strolled into his lab, he noticed the tank was empty… Where the hell did they all go?
He searched around his laboratory, but the cuttlefish were nowhere to be seen. Until, finally, he observed the tank closely to find the cuttlefish camouflaging with the items. Clever!
It gets better. As Huberman walked to the other side of the tank, the cuttlefish adjusted their camouflage to match the background of the laboratory. In other words, the fish were intelligent enough to know that they had to adjust to the human’s field of vision to remain hidden! Clearly, these creatures are far more intelligent than we give them credit for.
To this day, that story is one of the defining moments of Dr. Huberman’s career. It epitomized his love for science. As he shared the story, his love for his craft was tangible. The whole room could feel it.
It’s hard to put into words the level of admiration I have for someone who's obsessed with their craft. I genuinely believe that even if Huberman was offered $100M to stop conducting experiments, he’d turn it down. He can’t NOT do research and share his findings with the world.
As we exited the theater, I reflected on the mesmerizing storytelling I’d just witnessed. Something struck me at that moment.
I’d bet that a talk about ‘optimize alertness & restfulness’ would be a college lecture that most of us would skip. Andrew Huberman got 2,500 people to pay money to attend that very same talk.
The inflection in his voice was engaging. His stage presence was commendable. But what made the talk captivating was his storytelling.
His relatable stories make us care about topics in science that we slept through in college.
A good story taps into your deepest emotions. You ride the narrator’s highs and lows as if the story is about you. That’s what makes storytelling so powerful. Whether you’re a programmer or a lawyer, storytelling is the key to getting people interested in your work.
Huberman ends every podcast with a “thank you for your interest in science.”
We owe it to him to say “thank you for your interest in storytelling.”
Being both a Huberman and storytelling fan this article drew me in right away. You successfully conveyed both Dr Huberman's and your own enthusiasm for what's possible with storytelling. I think you're right that storytelling is an underrated skill for the average citizen. We give all of our storytelling authority away to celebrities, Hollywood, media empires, and popular authors, when we could be claiming the power of storytelling for ourselves just by practicing it more often in our own lives.
Great essay Arjun! Your storytelling pulled me in right away.