Storytelling: How to keep your audience engaged | Sebastian Junger | Big Think

New videos DAILY: https://bigth.ink/youtube Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The most important part of being a writer is feeling that you're not important and that the work you're doing is not about you. "A journalist is someone who is willing to disappoint themselves with the truth." Every piece of journalism has a narrative arc, and that arc is integral to any human storytelling. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SEBASTIAN JUNGER Sebastian Junger is the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of THE PERFECT STORM, FIRE, A DEATH IN BELMONT, WAR and TRIBE. As an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a special correspondent at ABC News, he has covered major international news stories around the world, and has received both a National Magazine Award and a Peabody Award. Junger is also a documentary filmmaker whose debut film "Restrepo", a feature-length documentary (co-directed with Tim Hetherington), was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Purchase "Tribe: On Homecoming & Belonging by Sebastian Junger" here: https://bigth.ink/Junger ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT: So I’m a journalist. I’ve been a journalist my whole life. And that means that when you write something the first step is to gather information about it. And you start gathering information because you have an idea about how the world works and you want to pursue that idea and see if, in fact, that’s true. The first thing that you have to do is be prepared to give up that idea and understand the world in a different way that you hadn’t anticipated. Someone once asked me what the definition of a journalist is and the best I could come up with but I think it’s a pretty good definition is a journalist is someone who’s willing to disappoint themselves with the truth. So you gather your information and you gather your stacks of studies and research and transcripts of interviews you’ve done. You’ve talked to everyone you can think of. And then you start to organize it in your mind. You start to map out this world that you’ve researched in a way that has a kind of internal coherence. And not only an internal coherence but a kind of narrative trajectory. Every piece of journalism has a narrative arc. The narrative arc is integral to any human storytelling. It’s been around surely since the Stone Age, since the invention of language. You have to make use of that in telling a long form journalistic story or people just won’t stay with you. Then once I have all of that together I ignore everything. I choose the scene that I’m opening my book or my story with. It’s got to be a compelling scene. It’s got to be a scene that I can’t wait to describe because it’s so intense. It’s so amazing. Like I can’t wait to get my hands on it and put words to it. If you don’t feel that way about the scene that you’re writing people aren’t going to feel that way about reading it. And then they’re not going to finish your book. And I just sit with that scene and it may be something I experienced personally or it may be something that I reported on and found out about that happened to other people. And I sit with that and I try to describe it in sort of – I try to think like a cinematographer. I basically say to myself if this were the opening of a movie what would the camera be looking at? What would the camera be lingering on? What would it pan to? Where would it zoom in? What would we want to see on the screen? And then I’m off and running and then you start to put in the more hard core research and then you never want to be in that hard core research place for too many pages because you’ll lose people and then you have to cut out to another scene that tells a kind of human story and you just keep toggling back and forth between sort of making people eat their spinach as it were. Take in this information that they need to know but maybe it’s a little tough going. You toggle back and forth between that and the sort of human stories that are amazing but if they’re not supported by evidence and by data and information they lose their credibility. You just keep toggling back and forth hoping to get the right mix and hoping to keep people with you until the very end of the book. Writing is such a – it’s like religion or something. It’s such a big sprawling complex weird topic that it’s hard to come up with rules about it. It’s hard to give advice. It’s like marriage advice or something like what works in one marriage doesn’t necessarily work in another.

PLAN YOUR 2020 - Qasim Ali Shah

In this video, Qasim Ali Shah talking about on the topic "PLAN YOUR 2020". He is also sharing his experience, wisdom and knowledge that will be helpful for all of those who want to know about this topic. ===== ABOUT Qasim Ali Shah ===== Qasim Ali Shah is a well-renowned teacher, an inspirational speaker and leader, a success coach and a practical educationist of Pakistan. He is amongst the top entrepreneurs of the country, a best -selling author of 12 influential books, a famous radio host, chairman of Bestival book fair Lahore, a director of native schools system, Tour ambassador of Uzbekistan government, and intellectual on T. v, He is the founder of Qasim Ali Shah Foundation which is working on the moto that Pakistan will transform if thought transforms. In a very short span of time, his motivational videos got viral on WhatsApp and Facebook with 1 million subscribers on YouTube and 2.1 million followers on the Facebook page and many other mediums, Shah’s endeavor is around the globe. His lectures are relatable among masses due to his regional language, style, examples, above all his journey of strength and resilience. He has delivered 1000s of inspirational seminars and sessions on various topics of self-help. He has trained thousands (1000s) of the judiciary including civil and session judges, thousands (1000s ) of highest placed private sectors, governmental institutes and departments, armed forces, Social Groups and NGOs, Educational Institutes, International and national tours. His live audience whom he has trained is approximately nine million (900,000) He has written hundreds (100s) of articles for several newspapers. Hundreds of articles, blogs, and podcasts have been written on his works and achievements at national and international level. ===== FOLLOW ME ON THE SOCIALS ===== - Qasim Ali Shah: https://goo.gl/6BKcxu - Google+: https://goo.gl/uPyGvT - Twitter: https://goo.gl/78MVoA - Website : https://goo.gl/Tgjy6u ===== Team Member: Waqas Nasir ===== #2020 #Planning #QasimAliShah

How To Free Yourself From Emotional Pain & Suffering

A lot of people dabble their way through life which leads to struggle, and ultimately, a lack of fulfillment. If you're ready to free yourself from emotional pain & suffering and master every area of your life, join my Life Mastery Accelerator program: https://ift.tt/2NsABPa 🤔 ABOUT THIS VIDEO 👇 In this video, I talk about how to free yourself from emotional pain & suffering. We’ve all experienced painful moments in our lives. When something bad happens, it’s easy to become emotionally charged. Nobody likes to feel pain. It’s a lot easier to suppress it and pretend that it doesn’t exist. However, if you don’t do the work to let go of past hurts, your emotional baggage will carry itself into your present and future. Are you ready to free yourself from emotional pain & suffering? It’s time to release the past and move forward. 🤓 VIEW THE BLOG POST 👇 https://ift.tt/385NXZx 🔔 SUBSCRIBE TO PROJECT LIFE MASTERY ON YOUTUBE 👇 https://ift.tt/2TYg0Dx ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 🗣️ TALK TO ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA 👇 Instagram ► https://ift.tt/2PPDJXK Facebook ► https://ift.tt/21u1H7j Twitter ► https://www.twitter.com/stefanjames23 ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 💥FOLLOW PROJECT LIFE MASTERY ON SOCIAL MEDIA 👇 Instagram ► https://ift.tt/2DfYbKy Facebook ► https://ift.tt/2BGhawg Twitter ► https://ift.tt/2TYg0U3 Podcast ► https://ift.tt/2XYj5WH ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 💻 MY PRODUCTS & COURSES 👇 https://ift.tt/36UkZM4 ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 🤔 ABOUT PROJECT LIFE MASTERY 😃 Stefan James from Project Life Mastery reveals his very best strategies to mastering and living life fully; everything from how to be motivated, his secrets to success, how to make money online, making passive income online, how to change your beliefs and mindset, being healthy and physically fit, being happy and productive, life management, cultivating relationships, spirituality, and much more! The Project Life Mastery YouTube channel contains Stefan's best strategies and principles that has now helped millions of people around the world. This YouTube channel is designed to help you make continual progress in each area of your life, so that you can have lasting growth and fulfillment. Website ► https://ift.tt/2NtqtFD ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 📚 RECOMMENDED RESOURCES 👇 https://ift.tt/2FQYTyb If you found this video valuable, give it a like. If you know someone who needs to see it, share it. Leave a comment below with your thoughts. Add it to a playlist if you want to watch it later. DISCLAIMER: The information contained on this YouTube Channel and the resources available for download/viewing through this YouTube Channel are for educational and informational purposes only.​ This description may contain affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever endorse products that I have personally used and benefitted from personally. Thank you for your support! #EMOTIONS #HAPPINESS #SUFFERING #PAIN #MINDSET

The psychology of magic: Where do we look for meaning in life? | Derren Brown | Big Think

New videos DAILY: https://bigth.ink/youtube Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DERREN BROWN Derren Brown began his UK television career in December 2000 with a series of specials called Mind Control. In the UK, his name is now pretty much synonymous with the art of psychological manipulation. Amongst a varied and notorious TV career, Derren has played Russian Roulette live, convinced middle-managers to commit armed robbery, led the nation in a séance, stuck viewers at home to their sofas, successfully predicted the National Lottery, motivated a shy man to land a packed passenger plane at 30,000 feet, hypnotised a man to assassinate Stephen Fry, and created a zombie apocalypse for an unsuspecting participant after seemingly ending the world. He has also written several best-selling books and has toured with eight sell-out one-man stage shows. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow Big Think here: 📰BigThink.com: https://bigth.ink 🧔Facebook: https://bigth.ink/facebook 🐦Twitter: https://bigth.ink/twitter 📸Instagram: https://bigth.ink/Instragram 📹YouTube: https://bigth.ink/youtube ✉ E-mail: info@bigthink.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transcript: We live in a world now where we’ve comfortably dispensed with most myth and superstition for the last few hundred years. That’s the enlightenment project, you know, we have embraced a very rational approach to life and that’s wonderful and it has brought us many great things, but it’s also left us with a sort of a meaning gap. So, for example, we’ve removed any meaning around the idea of death so particularly morbid superstitions are the first things that we sort of got rid of. So, if death now doesn’t really have any meaning it means we don’t live comfortably with the idea of death, death is an unwelcome and absurd and terrifying and alienating sort of stranger when it comes rather than a companion to life that’s something that’s present and in the background that we sort of make our peace with, which plenty of other cultures do. And then when it happens we really struggled for a narrative. The only narrative we have really is the brave battle that someone is fighting. That’s sort of our cultural narrative around death, which is really not helpful. It’s not helpful for the person that’s dying, it just adds failure to another list of problems that they’ve already got. It’s more helpful for the people around them. And that’s sort of the problem our need for narrative and meaning at that point has been, well it’s there but the narrative, our sense of authorship has been jettisoned and the people around us are making the decisions. They’re taking authorship of this point in our life when we need maximum authorship really. We start to feel like or can start to feel like a cameo part while the doctors and loved ones and people are making decisions. So, there’s an example of meaning and myth been taken out of something where it’s psychologically important, it’s important for us to have some kind of sense of meaning in those times. So, it’s no coincidence that psychics and spiritual mediums and all of that world come in with a fairly tawdry sense of meaning, they don’t really offer anything useful, but they kind of seem like they do so they become very popular in our sort of society where we’re desperate for something, we’re desperate for some sort of narrative that just gives us a sense of something bigger. So, I think that’s very important because magic is in a secular way is promising those kind of things. And we know it’s theatrical, we certainly do with a stage magician, we don’t if it’s a medium where perhaps we believe in them maybe. But I think they’re always going to tap into our need for that element of life, that kind of feeling of wonder, of the thing that’s bigger than ourselves, of transcendence. I mean that’s what it’s tapping into. And that’s a hugely important thing in life; you only find meaning in life by finding the thing that’s bigger than you and throwing yourself into that thing. That’s how you find meaning. And meaning is more important than happiness. When people’s lives mean nothing that’s when they throw themselves off buildings, which we all deal with unhappiness all the time so meaning is the most important. And when we lack a sense of transcendence or when we lack a sense of narratives that are bigger than us that we can lose ourselves in we’re going to try and find it where we can and magic in it’s silly vaudevillian often childish way I think tends to appeal to that.

Is love an addiction? | Helen Fisher | Big Think

New videos DAILY: https://bigth.ink/youtube Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Studies have shown that romantic love, while often positive, activates basic brain regions that are also triggered by cocaine addiction. Stalking, clinical depression, and even suicides have been attributed to love addictions. For better or worse, everybody at some time in their life has been or will be addicted to love. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HELEN FISHER Helen E. Fisher, Ph.D. biological anthropologist, is a Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and a Member of the Center For Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. She has written six books on the evolution, biology, and psychology of human sexuality, monogamy, adultery and divorce, gender differences in the brain, the neural chemistry of romantic love and attachment, human biologically-based personality styles, why we fall in love with one person rather than another, hooking up, friends with benefits, living together and other current trends, and the future of relationships — what she calls: slow love. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT BIG THINK: Smarter Faster™ Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content -- with thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, we help you get smarter, faster. S​ubscribe to learn from top minds like these daily. Get actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers & doers. Our experts are either disrupting or leading their respective fields. ​We aim to help you explore the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century, so you can apply them to the questions and challenges in your own life. Other Frequent contributors include Michio Kaku & Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Michio Kaku Playlist: https://bigth.ink/kaku Bill Nye Playlist: https://bigth.ink/BillNye Neil DeGrasse Tyson Playlist: https://bigth.ink/deGrasseTyson Read more at Bigthink.com for a multitude of articles just as informative and satisfying as our videos. New articles posted daily on a range of intellectual topics. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow Big Think here: 📰BigThink.com: https://bigth.ink 🧔Facebook: https://bigth.ink/facebook 🐦Twitter: https://bigth.ink/twitter 📸Instagram: https://bigth.ink/Instragram 📹YouTube: https://bigth.ink/youtube ✉ E-mail: info@bigthink.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transcript: I have long felt that romantic love was an addiction. It’s got so many of the characteristics of addiction. The focused attention, the obsessive thinking, the absolute craving, the willingness to do dangerous and inappropriate things to win somebody. Somebody’s camping in your head. It is an obsession and we were finally able to prove that romantic love does activate basic brain regions linked with all of the addictions. In fact romantic love triggers brain regions that are regularly triggered for cocaine addiction but for all of the addictions some of these brain circuits some of these brain circuits become active including romantic love. Romantic love can be a wonderful addiction when it’s going well and a perfectly horrible addiction when it’s going poorly. There are some differences between addiction to a person and addiction to a drug. Generally, you know, when you finally get off drugs you don’t kill yourself after you’re off the drug. A great many people really suffer after they’ve been rejected in love. The amount of stalking, clinical depression, suicide, homicide and all sorts of other crimes of passion are simply because somebody is addicted, love addicted, to somebody else. I would even call romantic addiction and attachment addiction as the mothers of all current modern addictions. And in fact I think that the modern addictions like cocaine or heroin or cigarettes or nicotine or things – are hijacking this ancient human brain circuitry for a positive addiction for romantic love. Not everybody gets addicted to cocaine or to heroin or to cigarettes or even to food or gambling. Everybody at some time in their life has been addicted to love, you know. None of us get out of love alive. We all have tremendous joy and really often sometimes some tremendous sorrow.

Cory Booker on political correctness: Is censoring others really the best way?

Cory Booker on political correctness: Is censoring others really the best way? New videos DAILY: https://bigth.ink/youtube Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CORY BOOKER Cory Booker is the junior United States senator from New Jersey. He was born in Washington, D.C., and his parents, who both worked for IBM, later relocated the family to Harrington Park, New Jersey. A star high school athlete, Booker received a football scholarship to Stanford University, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He then attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar before earning his law degree from Yale University. Booker won a special election to fill the term of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg to become New Jersey’s first African American senator and only the twenty-first person in American history to ascend directly from mayor to senator. Booker lives in Newark’s Central Ward. His book, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good, gives an account of his own political education that have shaped his particular civic vision for America. Purchase "United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good" here: https://bigth.ink/Booker ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT: CORY BOOKER: I wrote an article in college where I tried as a senior or fifth year student I tried to talk about my coming to grips with homophobia that I had as a teenager. And I was very honest in the article about my just twisted thoughts about gay Americans, discomfort, you know, in that area. And in the article I talk about this man who I still remember. I haven’t been in touch with him in years – a guy named Daniel Baugh, one of the more beautiful human beings I ever met. And I was working at a 24 hour crisis counseling center and a lot of the calls we would get would be men and women who were struggling with coming out. And it was devastating to me as a counselor I just had no idea the levels of suicide, physical abuse, kids that were homeless because of family reactions. The bullying and intimidation that gay Americans were enduring. It was like I was seen behind the veil of the realities. And it really called into question my own issues and I remember some nights I would sit with Daniel and question him in ways that now I think about I’ve experienced questions from people who aren’t black who ask me questions that I thought were sometimes just ignorant or if I had a dollar for every time when I was growing up the kids would ask me to touch my hair, you know. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT BIG THINK: Smarter Faster™ Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content -- with thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, we help you get smarter, faster. S​ubscribe to learn from top minds like these daily. Get actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers & doers. Our experts are either disrupting or leading their respective fields. ​We aim to help you explore the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century, so you can apply them to the questions and challenges in your own life. Other Frequent contributors include Michio Kaku & Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Michio Kaku Playlist: https://bigth.ink/kaku Bill Nye Playlist: https://bigth.ink/BillNye Neil DeGrasse Tyson Playlist: https://bigth.ink/deGrasseTyson Read more at Bigthink.com for a multitude of articles just as informative and satisfying as our videos. New articles posted daily on a range of intellectual topics. Join Big Think Edge, to gain access to an immense library of content. It features insight from many of the most celebrated and intelligent individuals in the world today. Topics on the platform are focused on: emotional intelligence, digital fluency, health and wellness, critical thinking, creativity, communication, career development, lifelong learning, management, problem solving & self-motivation. BIG THINK EDGE: https://bigth.ink/Edge If you're interested in licensing this or any other Big Think clip for commercial or private use, contact our licensing partner, Executive Interviews: https://bigth.ink/licensing ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow Big Think here: 📰BigThink.com: https://bigth.ink 🧔Facebook: https://bigth.ink/facebook 🐦Twitter: https://bigth.ink/twitter 📸Instagram: https://bigth.ink/Instragram 📹YouTube: https://bigth.ink/youtube ✉ E-mail: info@bigthink.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ethan Hawke: Why ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are fickle concepts in history

Ethan Hawke: Why ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are fickle concepts in history New videos DAILY: https://bigth.ink/youtube Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ETHAN HAWKE Purchase "Indeh: A Story of the Apache Wars" here: https://bigth.ink/Hawke ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT: Why I think Geronimo is such a wonderful figure unlike Pocahontas, unlike Sitting Bull, unlike Red Cloud, unlike some really amazing figures. Geronimo is really complicated. He’s a murderer. I mean he like cut off people’s eyelids and put ants on there. I mean we’re talking about – people often love to tell the story of Native Americans or any first nation peoples as if they’re Buddhist monks, you know. As if it’s the Dalai Lama himself riding a horse, you know. And it’s totally disrespectful to the culture and what it was. Whenever you want to make it simplistic you talk down to people and I have found in my experience from visiting reservations and things like that they’re just forced into their own pockets and their own communities. And there isn’t a lot of dialogue. I’m sure that this book will make many first nation people mad at me because that I don’t have the right to appropriate this story. And I’m sympathetic and I understand that. I respect it. I don’t want to appropriate anybody’s story. I try to focus the story on the war and from a historical point of view but try to see it from both sides. And what I love about using Geronimo is that he’s a very Shakespearian figure. He’s very complex. He’s good and he’s bad. Cochise is more of a typical hero. He was a great great leader and one of the last people ad that part of the world that could really unite a large group of people. Geronimo never really united. I mean Geronimo was never even chief for crying out loud. What I love about the book if I’m allowed to say such a thing is we end before Geronimo ever really becomes famous. We end the story. There’s a lot of bad behavior from white people and a lot of bad behavior from Mexicans and a lot of bad behavior from the Apache. It aspires to be a human, not some kind of white guilt book but a book about history and what happened. And there’s a lot of wonderful white people who did their best. There’s this guy General Howard. Maybe some people would question me calling him wonderful. In this context he worked for the service of good. He started Howard University for African Americans. He took the unwavering equality of mankind part of Christianity extremely seriously. And he was a very serious Christian who believed that all men were created equal. And so he strove to create that in his life. He had one arm. He lost an arm in the Civil War. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT BIG THINK: Smarter Faster™ Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content -- with thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, we help you get smarter, faster. S​ubscribe to learn from top minds like these daily. Get actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers & doers. Our experts are either disrupting or leading their respective fields. ​We aim to help you explore the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century, so you can apply them to the questions and challenges in your own life. Other Frequent contributors include Michio Kaku & Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Michio Kaku Playlist: https://bigth.ink/kaku Bill Nye Playlist: https://bigth.ink/BillNye Neil DeGrasse Tyson Playlist: https://bigth.ink/deGrasseTyson Read more at Bigthink.com for a multitude of articles just as informative and satisfying as our videos. New articles posted daily on a range of intellectual topics. Join Big Think Edge, to gain access to an immense library of content. It features insight from many of the most celebrated and intelligent individuals in the world today. Topics on the platform are focused on: emotional intelligence, digital fluency, health and wellness, critical thinking, creativity, communication, career development, lifelong learning, management, problem solving & self-motivation. BIG THINK EDGE: https://bigth.ink/Edge If you're interested in licensing this or any other Big Think clip for commercial or private use, contact our licensing partner, Executive Interviews: https://bigth.ink/licensing ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow Big Think here: 📰BigThink.com: https://bigth.ink 🧔Facebook: https://bigth.ink/facebook 🐦Twitter: https://bigth.ink/twitter 📸Instagram: https://bigth.ink/Instragram 📹YouTube: https://bigth.ink/youtube ✉ E-mail: info@bigthink.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------