Sep 18, 2026 · 53 min · 17 segments
Stories make us feel safe. But what waits beyond the firelight? Writer Laurence Scott joins us to explore storytelling’s double edge: its power to connect and console, but also to manipulate, exclude…
Laurence ScottGuestHostHostHostHostIn Vladimir Nabovkov's Lolita, the narrator, Humbot Humbot, tells us very early that his mother died when he was three.
The cause is given curtly, mid-sentence.
Picnic, comma, lightning.
And after a paragraph of tender analogies about his dim recollections of her, she is never mentioned again.
Picnic, Lightning, is after all a cellular story, a two-word drama, with all the detail and energy packed tightly inside it.
For me, it grows in my mind into a scene.
The edges of a dress are rippled from beneath by a blanket, which in turn is rippled from the grass below.
The year is either 1913 or 1914.
There are wicker baskets, a parasol, For now, the thunderheads are pretty, bleached cauliflowers are still the statues behind the escarpment.
At this point I hit pause, throwing down a comma, which can keep the lightning back, at least for the moment.
Picnic, Lightning.
So there is this book, Picnic, Lightning, which is over there, is it? Or is it here?
No, it's here.
It is written by Lawrence Scott.
So he talks about story.
Yeah, the cosiness of story and that story, what even the word story does to our brains.
When we hear the word story, that we feel cosy and we feel safe when we associate it.
And you just, you think of, I always think that of being a parent, actually, that reading your children books at bedtime or telling them stories at bedtime or in cosy moments is, helps them to have a positive relationship with books because they associate it with safety and coziness but actually this takes that way deeper that that what is it when you know you have generational trauma what's the opposite to generational trauma generational good stuff What is that? The opposite to generational trauma.
Yeah, generational.
Yeah, like Martin Shaw says, bone memory.
You know, it's like those things deep in your bones.
So when we are told a story, it's so ancient through hundreds of thousands of generations of humanity.
We've been told stories in that cozy space.
that it has an impact on our brain just to hear the word story, let alone actually be told a story.
In Vladimir Nabovkov's Lolita, the narrator, Humbot Humbot, tells us very early that his mother died when he was three.
The cause is given curtly, mid-sentence.
Picnic, comma, lightning.
And after a paragraph of tender analogies about his dim recollections of her, she is never mentioned again.
Picnic, Lightning, is after all a cellular story, a two-word drama, with all the detail and energy packed tightly inside it.
For me, it grows in my mind into a scene.
The edges of a dress are rippled from beneath by a blanket, which in turn is rippled from the grass below.
The year is either 1913 or 1914.
There are wicker baskets, a parasol, For now, the thunderheads are pretty, bleached cauliflowers are still the statues behind the escarpment.
At this point I hit pause, throwing down a comma, which can keep the lightning back, at least for the moment.
Picnic, Lightning.
So there is this book, Picnic, Lightning, which is over there, is it? Or is it here?
No, it's here.
It is written by Lawrence Scott.
So he talks about story.
Yeah, the cosiness of story and that story, what even the word story does to our brains.
When we hear the word story, that we feel cosy and we feel safe when we associate it.
And you just, you think of, I always think that of being a parent, actually, that reading your children books at bedtime or telling them stories at bedtime or in cosy moments is, helps them to have a positive relationship with books because they associate it with safety and coziness but actually this takes that way deeper that that what is it when you know you have generational trauma what's the opposite to generational trauma generational good stuff What is that? The opposite to generational trauma.
Yeah, generational.
Yeah, like Martin Shaw says, bone memory.
You know, it's like those things deep in your bones.
So when we are told a story, it's so ancient through hundreds of thousands of generations of humanity.
We've been told stories in that cozy space.
that it has an impact on our brain just to hear the word story, let alone actually be told a story.
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