The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Ancient gods, current panics. On conspiracy theories and other modern myths.
“In most cases, men willingly believe what they wish.”
— Julius Caesar, 52 B.C.
“It’s just the wind.”
You’ve probably thought that to yourself (or even said it out loud) when you were alone at home at night and heard an unexpected noise.
“It’s just the wind,” you say, as you try to convince yourself that there’s nothing to worry about.
Then, thinking that the wind couldn’t make that kind of a sound, you pivot: “Or maybe it’s a squirrel in the attic.”
You desperately want to try to outsmart the fear center in your brain. Maybe you succeed. Maybe you don’t. It depends on the kind of story you tell yourself.
Stories as Explainers
Aside from things that go bump in the night, the world can be a scary place.
Even now, amid advanced technology that connects us to each other's homes around the world, we don't know what the future will look like.
Imagine what it must have been like thousands of years ago, before calendars were in use, when weather forecasts were unheard of, and when we had no idea where we came from.
It’s human nature to want to simplify the complex, shape the world into a more orderly place, and make sense of things we don't understand.
So what do we do? We tell ourselves stories to explain away the inexplicable.
It’s been happening since we were first able to communicate. Humans developed myths, traditions, and stories that made sense out of a big and sometimes terrifying world.
“Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask, such as ‘Who made the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death?’…The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs.”
— Robert Graves, 1955
One of my favorite scenes from Disney’s 1940 classic Fantasia is the mythology sequence1 (no doubt because of my background both as a classics major and a devotee of Beethoven). It’s set to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral,” and in it, we experience an idyllic scene of centaurs, winged horses (recall there was only one original Pegasus), and Dionysus [Bacchus],2 the god of wine, all enjoying themselves.
Then the sky darkens and the dark clouds part, revealing an amused Zeus [Jupiter], who called to Hephaestus [Vulcan] to supply him with lightning bolts. The creatures scatter in fear, desperately seeking cover. Eventually, Zeus tires of this exercise, kicking off his sandals as he tucks in for a nap on a cloud. The storm recedes.
It’s a creative and illuminating mise-en-scène that literally illustrates how the ancients created stories to explain unexpected, unexplained, or confusing things in the world around them.
Modern Mythology
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise then, when surrounded by advanced technology — incomprehensible to some and awe-inspiring to others, all of whom are grappling with the tumult and uncertainty — that modern-day myths arise in the form of conspiracy theories.
From the moon landing to chemtrails, the suspicions that land on Freemasons to the desperate rantings of Flat-Earthers, the dangers of vaccinations and fluoride, and the sore-loser election-rigging claims, you can find people who are willing to believe fanciful stories that seemingly explain everything to them.
Everything is a conspiracy theory when you don’t understand how anything works.
The best leaders know how to rely on facts and data to guide their teams forward.3 It’s how I help them understand and implement the Working Together™ Leadership & Management System.
Danger arises when a leader is surrounded by sycophants.4 The best leaders include people with a variety of opinions, viewpoints, and experience, in order to arrive at a better plan.
When the guardrails are off and a person in power is never told “no,” they become isolated from reality, which in turn affects their ability to make decisions that affect the lives of others.5
Populism Rejects Facts
It’s astounding to see the degree to which people will go to contort facts and logical thinking into crazy theories to fit their worldview.
It may be rooted in a lack of understanding of scientific principles. In her book Democracy and Truth, Sophia Rosenfeld finds that conspiracy theories flourish in societies where there’s a gap between the governing and the governed classes. When populism takes hold, the public “tend to reject science and its methods as a source of directives.”6
Advances in modern science and technology call even more attention to the disparity between experts and non-experts, leading to the doubting of basic truths.
Thank Heaven We’ve Seen This Before
This isn’t necessarily a new phenomenon, though: in 1623, Galileo wrote about the same phenomenon in The Assayer, noting that his observations of the heavenly bodies were based on math:
“…what I had set forth was supported and proved by geometrical demonstrations; and such is the strength of men's passion that they failed to notice how the contradiction of geometry is a bald denial of truth.”
Galileo’s most significant challenge wasn’t wrestling with equations and figures. His was a battle for the mind, a struggle for a different perspective. He tried to convince people that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but rather than other scientific defenses, he was met with powerful emotions and biases — powerful defenses that prevented others from seeing the truth.
When we let our emotions overpower facts, we miss the opportunity to be enlightened.
In trying to persuade others, the best efforts take into account emotions, making our audience feel a certain way, creating the desire to change. When backed by facts, it’s even more powerful.
Isn’t this what the best stories do? They’re vessels for information that create an emotional connection.7
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
― Mark Twain, 1894
The world is complex. And we have experts who make it their business to try to understand it. We ought to put our trust and faith in them. There's no need to make up stories about things in order to assuage our fears.
The best antidote to fear is dealing with reality.
Anecdotes can come later.
“Very well. So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe.”
— Isaac Asimov, 1992
I.
Of course you’ve seen the President storm off of a news interview because he couldn’t handle difficult questions. The blow-up made the questions become the story, rather than the answers. (Art Jipson)
II.
A significant portion of leadership is accountability. In fact, we have an entire section on Accountability. (Timeless & Timely)
III.
Put plainly (and with some great links in the article), “Everything Is A Conspiracy Theory When You Don’t Bother to Educate Yourself.” (Techdirt)
“Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.”
— Joseph Joubert, 1811
The stories we tell ourselves about our food are some tall tales indeed.
I.
“Take a look at the 1928 painting used for early Land O’Lakes boxes. If you think the original butter maiden looks less like a Native American woman than the daughter of a Minnesota dairy farmer playing dress-up, you’d be right: that’s actually what she was.” Land O’Lakes finally changed the iconic image on their butter earlier this year. (The Baffler)
II.
Many foodies and soda lovers swear there’s a discernible difference between Coke made with sugar and Coke made with high-fructose corn syrup—a truer, less “chemical-y” taste; a realer real thing. The story behind Mexican Coke is more complex than you might think. (Smithsonian Magazine)
III.
Did you ever stop to think about how Triscuits got their name? This man did, and he was in for a big surprise. (Delish)
“The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.”
— Laurence Sterne, 1760
🎧 Myths and Legends brings you folklore that has shaped our world. Some are incredibly popular stories you think you know, but with surprising origins. Others are stories that might be new to you, but are definitely worth a listen. These are stories of magic, kings, Vikings, dragons, knights, princesses, and wizards from a time when the world beyond the map was a dangerous, wonderful, and terrifying place.
📘 Bulfinch’s Mythology offers approachable accounts of ancient legends in a compilation of the works of Thomas Bulfinch, banker and Latinist. This volume includes all three of Bulfinch’s original titles: The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry, and The Legends of Charlemagne. “Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature...who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation.”
Can you tell someone a story about how you found this newsletter?
There’s so much to learn,
This entry is tagged:
Truth, Communication, Trust, Emotional Intelligence
Walt Disney’s Fantasia — The Pastoral Symphony (YouTube)
The Greeks and Romans had a similar pantheon of gods. In this case, I’m using the Greek god names, with Roman gods in brackets
“The Data Sets You Free,” Timeless & Timely, August 7, 2025
A good deep-dive on sycophants vs. true advisors is found in “Leaders Need to Be Challenged,” Timeless & Timely, October 4, 2022.
Read “The Rumble Strips Are Gone,” which puts in plain speak our current state of affairs in 2026.
Democracy and Truth: A Short Story by Sophia Rosenfeld, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018
Incidentally, I’ve found a helpful site in working through some of these challenges is Your Bias Is. As the site states:
“Cognitive biases make our judgments irrational. We have evolved to use shortcuts in our thinking, which are often useful, but a cognitive bias means there’s a kind of misfiring going on causing us to lose objectivity. It has been designed to help you identify some of the most common biases stuffing up your thinking.”