The Power of Story

People remember how stories make them feel, and are more inspired to take action than if they just heard facts and figures.

Stories are hardwired into our very biology. Our brains arrive filled with all the cognitive machinery needed to comprehend stories and share them with others. We are storytelling organisms that use narrative structures to organize our thoughts; because we use stories to recall facts, our knowledge is based on stories themselves. Little wonder, then, that our knowledge of early man shows evidence of storytelling—it was there from the start.

The Classic Storytellers

Since the origin of humankind, we have used stories as a way to entertain, inform, inspire, and provide cultural continuity. Storytelling emerged long before the written word, which on its arrival helped stories to grow and spread even further.

The Modern Storytellers

Much like our ancestors telling stories around a communal fire, Explorers come back from their sojourns with a tale to tell. Unlike legends of yore, their stories are grounded in scientific fact, but told with as much heart as ever.

Jahawi Bertolli

Imagine what music was like 50,000 years ago—how would it sound today? Explorer Jahawi Bertolli’s First Rock project merges recordings of ancient rock gongs with sounds of nature, shining a light on cultures and environments that we are at risk of losing. Jahawi wants to preserve and create awareness about this ancient music form by blending the rock gong sounds and his own compositions.

Malaika Vaz

Explorer Malaika Vaz is producing an upcoming feature documentary, Sacrifice Zone, that investigates the global impact of the world's largest, most profitable extractive industries—oil and gas, plastic, fast-fashion and coal—on communities of color in India, Colombia, Bangladesh and the United States. Aimed at shifting the narrative on environmental responsibility from consumer guilt to corporate accountability, the film examines the link between racial inequity and environmental exploitation, and the nexus between corporate power and government, and shines a light on the frontline communities fighting for justice.

Jaime Rojo

Every year, Monarch butterflies embark on an epic migration of over 2500 miles, flying routes between Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The butterflies face enormous environmental threats that impact their extraordinary life cycle, from loss of habitat to scarcity of food, and may soon be listed as Endangered. Explorer Jaime Rojo is documenting the Monarchs’ journey to inspire action to protect the butterflies and their habitat.

Luján Agusti

Explorer Luján Agusti is a visual storyteller based in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego. For the past eight years, she has been working on the connections that communities around the world have with their peatlands. This project is a starting point for exploring human interactions with less hegemonic ecosystems that have been historically mistreated, despite their importance to our livelihood on this planet.

Prasenjeet Yadav

For over a century, India has led global tiger conservation, doubling its tiger populations. But hunting and growing human settlements have cost tigers most of their historic range and isolated them in small areas that are not connected with other tiger populations. Explorer Prasenjeet Yadav is documenting the story of six “tiger islands” in India, showing the importance of connectivity and genetic diversity to ensure the tigers' future.

Laurel Chor

Explorer Laurel Chor is a journalist, photographer, filmmaker, and rugby player from Hong Kong. Her work explores people’s relationships with nature, society, and culture. She is interested in individuals’ embodied experiences of the global forces that affect these relationships, from conflict and disease to climate change. Through her storytelling, she hopes to remind people of their shared—and interconnected—vulnerability, power, and humanity.

The National Geographic Storytellers Collective continues the timeless tradition of storytelling by showing how to structure narratives to open hearts and change minds.

Photo credits: Karabo Moilwa, Aaron Huey, Elke Bertolli, Luis Antonio Rojas, Nitye Sood, Joshua Irwandi, Jerome Favre, Shashank Dalvi