You Are Not Ordinary

0:00This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the early days of Soviet cinema, a filmmaker conducted an experiment that would change our understanding of the human mind. Lev Kuleshov showed an audience a short film featuring a famous actor. The footage of the actor was always the same, a single, unmoving, and entirely neutral expression. But the filmmaker intercut the shot with three different images, a bowl of hot soup, a child in a coffin, and a woman reclining on a sofa.

0:33Even though the actor's face never changed, the audience was mesmerized by his performance.

0:40When paired with the soup, they saw a man gripped by hunger. When paired with the coffin, they saw a face transformed by grief. They didn't see a sequence of unrelated pictures. They saw an integrated story.

1:02The human brain is wired to make connections like this. We want to see the frames as part of a narrative. And so we invent the connective tissue. We turn frame one and an unrelated frame two into a cohesive story. This psychological tendency also shapes how we see our own lives. We are the editors of our own personal documentaries, constantly splicing together random, chaotic events into a narrative. Depending on our personalities and temperaments,

1:34our documentaries might be comedies or tragedies. They might be gripping tales or boring stories where nothing much happens. But all of this raises a question. If we are the ones sitting in the editing room, are we making the best use of the footage? Are we choosing to tell the right stories?

1:58This week on Hidden Brain, and in a companion story on Hidden Brain Plus, the tales we tell about our lives, and why some stories turn out to be better for us than others. Support for Hidden Brain comes from TikTok. On TikTok, people are breaking down physics, exploring geology, and explaining why the world works the way it does. You'll see impressive experiments, explanations that finally make sense,

2:29and connections you didn't expect. It's like having a lab, a lecture hall, and a science museum in your pocket. TikTok is where wonder is shared, where curiosity turns into discovery, and where millions learn something new every day.

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3:58we're in search of a good story. A narrative that will capture our imagination, transport us to a different world, offer a satisfying resolution. The best stories create this magic. How do they do this? At Boston College, Benjamin Rogers studies how narratives generate meaning and significance in our minds and the implications of the stories we tell about our own lives. Ben Rogers, welcome to Hidden Brain. Hi, Shankar. It's great to be here.

4:29Ben, I understand that starting when you were a teenager, you've been interested in stories. In the books that you've read about the craft, especially when it comes to the craft of filmmaking, you learned that there was one storytelling framework that audiences find especially compelling. Now, this framework shows up in ancient literature and modern tales. I'm wondering if we can start with a story like Harry Potter. How does the Harry Potter story follow this storytelling framework? Sure, yeah. So it starts off with Harry.

5:00At the time that you meet him, he's an orphan boy. He's living with his uncle and aunt and cousin. But he's just, you know, kind of put down upon, doesn't have anything special about him. But then mysterious things keep happening and then he ends up having a moment of shift. And that's when a series of wizards and wizard-adjacent people tell him that he's actually, unbeknownst to him, a wizard and he needs to go off to Hogwarts school to learn how to craft magic and to take up the mantle by his parents that he didn't know a lot about.

5:31And so over the course of the first story and over the series, he learns, he faces a series of challenges in terms of facing monsters and people who want to hurt him and hurt his friends. But he learns magic and he ends up transformed and really embracing the idea that he's there to help others and become someone who can stand up to fight for the little guy. And this is one of those stories that both within an individual novel or a movie, but across the entire series, he follows the main elements of what we call the hero's journey. One of the things that you and others have pointed out

6:13is a hallmark of the hero's journey is not just about the plot and the events and the narrative and the things that the hero does, but an internal change that happens within the hero. Talk about this, is that the internal change that happens within the person is as much the story of the hero's journey as much as the action of the plot, if you will. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's one of the secret powers of the hero's journey, or maybe one of the reasons it's such a popular framework,

6:44is this idea of it allows story writers to make manifest an internal change via some sort of external, obvious, sometimes fantastical version. So in the case of Harry Potter, we see this boy who does not feel like he has any powers, is not important or interesting in any way, and he comes to realize that actually there is something special about him, but that's not enough for the story. What needs to be more is he needs to learn what to do with that power, how he can make friends,

7:14how he can bring along people. And so the magic and his strength that he grows in that area ends up paralleling his internal transformation as he grows up into a young man and figures out how to be truly a hero, both in terms of how he treats other people, but the story represents that in terms of the challenges he faces and the literal transformation he has in terms of his powers. You know, I'm thinking about the story now for the first time in a slightly different fashion, because I've long known

7:45that the story of Harry Potter is a story of magic. It's a story about wizards and all kinds of magical spells. But as you're talking now, I'm realizing that part of what the magic really is about is about this internal realization, this transformation that happens within Harry when he realizes the power that he has within himself. That's where the magic actually is. Absolutely. And you see this sort of on two tracks, but the main focus is that, you know, while it's exciting to watch someone like Harry Potter face magical, you know,

8:15face down dragons and face down monsters and Voldemort. But what really brings people back to the story time and time again is this idea that you're watching someone transform and learn and figure out how to be an adult, how to be someone who is worth wanting to model your life after. And the hero's journey is the way to represent that psychological change on a broader, more adventurous, exciting way that people want to experience on both levels.

8:46In the 1940s, Ben, the mythologist Joseph Campbell looked at a variety of myths across different cultures. Tell me what he did and what he found. Yes. So Joseph Campbell was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College, and he worked in comparative mythology and religion. So he's looking at some of the most enduring ancient stories across the globe. So not just in terms of the West, but looking at all these stories

9:17across various areas and various cultures. And what he found was when he was looking at all of these myths and looking at these enduring stories, that there seemed to be the same basic plot line. And he ended up calling this the monomyth, but that's what we call the hero's journey. And what he attributes this to is this idea of, you know, birth and death and separating from yourself in the past. And these stories are able to represent this really profound human condition in a way that replicates and shows up. So while the individual aspects

9:48of the story might vary, Campbell was able to say, look, look at these various stories from all of these countries across the world. They actually follow the same plot line in a really interesting way, which he wrote in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is one of the most popular narrative psychology or narrative, maybe even philosophy books that exists today. And so if you look at a story like Homer's Odyssey or the Ramayana from India or the King Arthur story or even the Bible, Joseph Campbell would argue

10:19that in some ways, you know, perhaps some of these are religious texts and some of these are just stories, but they all follow the same basic arc, if you will. Absolutely. And if you ever read Hero with a Thousand Faces, I think what's most, what's really powerful about that book is it's told through examples from myths that you've heard of and from myths that at least I had not heard of or had not learned while I was in school. And I think that speaks to the power of this, this idea that all of these stories, even stories you may not

10:50have ever imagined or may not ever heard of otherwise, actually are all speaking the same language or using the same underlying plot. Hmm. I understand that Joseph Campbell's work has influenced generations of Hollywood screenwriters and directors, and that includes George Lucas who made Star Wars? Yes, absolutely. George Lucas really attributes a lot of the success of Star Wars to Joseph Campbell and I believe they became friends or at least George Lucas saw Campbell as a mentor

11:21as he went along and actually there was a speech that I really loved that George Lucas gave I think in 85 in which he mentioned that he had been working on many, many drafts of Star Wars and he just couldn't quite get it to work. There was something that wasn't clicking and maybe in his struggles in trying to figure out how to improve the story he actually came across the hero with a thousand faces and suddenly it all clicked and suddenly the story made sense. He knew how he needed to structure the plot and the overall arc of those first three films and he even went so far

11:52as to call Joseph Campbell his Yoda, the mentor that he looked to in terms of how to tell a good story.

12:00When we come back we'll use the example of Star Wars to unpack the discreet elements of the hero's journey. We'll also look at how this framework can shape the stories we tell about our own lives. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Support for Hidden Brain

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14:05This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. From time immemorial, people have told stories in which a brave but uncertain figure sets out on a quest, heading into the unknown in search of treasures both external and internal.

14:23At Boston College's Carroll School of Management, Ben Rogers studies the way people make meaning from their lives. He draws some of the inspiration for this work from great books and movies that show us how characters make meaning from their journeys.

14:42Ben, according to Joseph Campbell's framework, the hero's journey has 17 elements. When you and your collaborator studied the phenomenon, you condensed those elements into seven elements. The first is what you call the emergence of a protagonist. Let's use the Star Wars movies as an example. How does Luke Skywalker emerge as a protagonist of the story? So, yes, we begin with the idea of just someone having a clear and defined character and an identity. And specifically in a hero's journey,

15:13that often starts with the protagonist being relatively unknown or at least not remarkable in any way that they might be aware of. And Luke Skywalker, to me, is one of the prototypical examples of the protagonist. And when we meet him in Star Wars, he's a, I believe he's a farmer on a moisture farm on Tatooine, a very set-aside planet. He does not have anything that seems remarkable or magic about him. And in fact, when we first see him, he's really just dealing with the struggles and the chores that he has to face. And it does not seem like he's destined for greatness

15:44in any meaningful way. I want to play you a clip from that first Star Wars film called A New Hope. In this scene, the wise elder Obi-Wan Kenobi and the young farm boy Luke Skywalker have just viewed a holographic message from a desperate Princess Leia pleading with them for help. You must learn the ways of the Force if you're to come with me to Alderaan. Alderaan? I'm not going to Alderaan. I'm going to get home. It's late. I'm in for it as it is. I need your help, Luke. She needs your help.

16:15I'm getting too old for this sort of thing.

16:22I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire. I hate it, but there's nothing I can do about it right now. Talk about the idea that in many of these accounts of the hero's journey, the hero is initially reluctant to get involved, man. Yes. So in Joseph Campbell's version, this is called refusal of the call. And while it's not explicitly in our version of the condensed hero's journey, it's still a very significant part of this initial moment

16:53of shift or change that the protagonist faces. And I think it's important because people are often dealing with how do we handle huge changes in our lives? And we know from psychological research that's very difficult for people to do. And so I think that being such a key part of the hero's journey is really important because it feels authentic to the audience members. If they were imagining how they might experience someone going, actually, you think you're a farmer, but you're destined for greatness, you might initially go, whoa, I don't know if that's quite true. And so I think that

17:23being part of the hero's journey is supposed to mimic the human experience of how do we actually deal with these massive changes when they're thrust upon us. I'm going to play another clip from A New Hope. In this scene, Luke Skywalker returns home to his aunt and uncle's farm only to find the homestead destroyed and his relatives killed by imperial forces. Obi-Wan Kenobi consults him. There's nothing you could have done, Luke, had you been there. You'd have been killed, too. And the droids would now be in the hands of the Empire.

17:53I want to come with you to Alderaan. There's nothing for me here now. I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father.

18:05So this marks a moment where the reluctant hero is reluctant no longer, Ben. What's going on here in terms of the hero's journey? What's going on here is Luke, in this case, is finally being pushed beyond his refusal of the call. At a certain point, while he might be reluctant to embrace what has been thrust upon him in terms of potentially becoming a Jedi, now that his aunt and uncle have been killed and he has to figure out what to do next, his past life is no longer tenable.

18:36There's no way he can go back to what he wanted to, so he no longer is really able to refuse that call. And in a sense, this makes his quest very simple in terms of what he should do. He wants to avenge the murder of his aunt and uncle and become powerful and be able to do that. He's using this finally kick out the door in order of, I can't go back, but now I need to really embrace and grow and learn and eventually transform.

19:12And I think you see this again and again in different versions of the hero's story. The protagonist reaches effectively a point of no return. You know, there's no going back to the earlier life. That door has been closed. The only way to move now is forward. Yes. While all of us would like to think that when presented with a great opportunity that we wouldn't sort of shirk our duties and try to live on our current lives, often what happens in the real world and what's mirrored in our narratives is that we do need that push out the door.

19:42We need to be able to not go back and have the courage or at least the lack of fear to start facing the challenges. I think that's one of the things that's represented in the hero's journey that, like the refusal of the call, is really very authentic to the human experience. We talked earlier about how Star Wars was explicitly modeled on the hero's journey as described by the mythologist Joseph Campbell. Another classic hero's journey is found in The Lord of the Rings, the series of novels by J.R.R. Tolkien.

20:13In this tale, the protagonist, Frodo Baggins, undergoes a shift and sets out on a quest, but he doesn't go alone. He finds allies. Set up the premise of the story for us, Ben, and explain why finding allies is an important part of the hero's journey. Sure. So, in the telling of Lord of the Rings, and I'll make sure I try to represent it as accurately as I can, so Frodo is living at the Shire. He's living a pretty idyllic life, not really facing any monumental challenges

20:43or that many interesting stories. He is thrust upon him this challenge by Gandalf, who's a wizard, and he's told that he needs to help on this big quest to help destroy the One Ring to rule them all. Evil is stirring in Mordor. The ring has awoken. It's heard its master's call. But he was destroyed. Sauron was destroyed. No, Frodo.

21:15The spirit of Sauron endured. And Frodo obviously doesn't want to do that. He has enjoyed his life and is continuing to enjoy it, but he is pushed out by Gandalf. And along the way, he ends up making a series of other allies. Samwise Gamgee, Merry and Pip. Then he meets others like Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and lots of other people. And so this is representing this idea of allies is while we might think of the hero as like a solitary hero on a journey,

21:45what actually is an intimate part of the hero's journey is this idea that no hero walks alone. They often only reach the distances that they're trying to reach when they're helped along by other people. And in particular, that help can sometimes be kind support, but can also be sort of being pushed out the door towards greatness. Now, along the way, Frodo encounters innumerable challenges. And of course, this is an essential component of the hero's journey. Absolutely. Facing challenges is both representative

22:16of the human life, but it's also what makes a really interesting story. I have a young four-year-old daughter and we read lots of stories at night. And while the stories are fun and clever, they often don't have a lot of challenges or stakes about them. And so they're not stories that I'm always jumping to repeat. But Hero's Journeys, on the other hand, are these stories filled with monsters and nemeses and all of these different things that people are trying to overcome. And it gives it a sense of excitement, but also a sense of things could go wrong. We're riding a knife's edge here.

22:47And I think that's what makes a really powerful story. Talk about the idea that as the protagonist faces these challenges, the protagonist undergoes personal transformations. And in some ways, that is key to the hero's journey. So it'd be one thing to face challenges

23:17and just immediately win them. And that might be a satisfying story on some level, but that wouldn't be a story that people might come back to. What we really like to see in our protagonists is this idea that we face challenges, we face things that we don't know if we can overcome, and we realize that as a result of facing those challenges, we become transformed. Now, in a lot of stories, that's a literal transformation. So you might gain magical powers, gain superpowers in various superhero films, but that often parallels

23:47or goes along with a personal transformation of realizing maybe you're stronger than you thought you were, or realizing some sort of depth of character that might not have ever been apparent had you not had to face these challenges and figure out can you face them down on your own. And this is true for Frodo in The Lord of the Rings. He starts out being, you know, small and inexperienced and sheltered, and he eventually discovers in some ways the hero within. It's one of the things I love most about Lord of the Rings

24:18is the idea that Frodo as a hobbit, you know, is both sort of unknown and unremarkable in terms of his character at the start, but he's also pretty unremarkable in terms of his stature. The hobbits are literally small and what's great about The Lord of the Rings and the journey that he goes on is Frodo and some of the other hobbits as well end up being some of the most heroic characters. They're the ones who stand up to take the ring to try to destroy it at the end when other people are too nervous. So both in terms

24:48of their stature but also in terms of their character more importantly, they go through this transformation and end up being the ones that people really remember and identify with. So in the stories that we've talked about so far, you can see the similarities. You know, Harry Potter starts out as this orphan kid who basically has been ignored and discarded by society.

25:18Luke Skywalker starts off as this farm boy. Frodo Baggins is this unremarkable hobbit and you can start to see now why these stories appeal to so many people because people feel, you know, I am unremarkable, I am ordinary and what these stories are telling you is you are not. Absolutely. I think there is a strong degree of identification and the most powerful stories are the ones that while it might be circumstances that we never actually find ourselves in, it's really enjoyable

25:49to imagine what would I do in that case and the hero's journey kind of takes you from this unremarkable baseline protagonist, farmer, orphan, etc., to something more powerful and if you follow along in that journey as the reader, you're also going on that journey yourself where while you might not be the one who's literally gaining magical powers or superpowers, but you're in the perspective of the reader and it feels like you're developing some deep personal insight by following the steps

26:19of this journey.

26:21The seventh and final element of a hero's journey that you've identified involves leaving a legacy. What is this idea, Ben? Yes, the legacy is this idea of making some sort of positive impact and in a lot of hero's journeys, people might think that it ends where they become transformed, they gain some magical superpowers and they defeat their enemies but most of those

26:53stories don't end right there. They actually go on a little bit longer to show how the hero goes back to their home community to share either literal or metaphorical treasures with those around them. They often repair relationships that they had, they help people with whether that's the new depth of character or their new powers, they're able to give back in a really profound way to show that, yes, you've transformed personally, but that also can transform the communities around us.

27:21Does that happen with Frodo and the Lord of the Rings? Yes, so in the books, Frodo ends up going back and helping to restore the Shire. So as a result of the events that transpire in the story, the Shire is destroyed or at least put in terms of really bad circumstances and so Frodo actually returns back to his homeland at the end to help restore his homeland and sort of rescue his fellow hobbits. Just as screenwriters

27:56and directors make choices about how to tell a fictional story, all of us make choices about how we tell the stories of our lives. When we come back, applying the framework of the hero's journey to our own stories.

28:12In our companion episode on Hidden Brain Plus, we look at several practical techniques to help you discover the hero's journey in your own life story. If you're a subscriber, that episode is available right now. It's titled Discovering Your Inner Hero. If you're not yet a subscriber, please give it a try. You can get a free seven-day trial at support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. Your support does more than

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29:04You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Support for Hidden Brain comes from HBO Max. From the world and creators of The Big Bang Theory comes a new Max original comedy series, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. After accidentally creating a new multiverse, comic store owner Stuart Bloom