The Fireside Papers

In the first installment of The Fireside Papers, we begin where all stories begin: at the beginning.

From cave paintings and oral traditions to novels, films, podcasts, and e-books, storytelling has followed humanity through every stage of its history. In “Stories, Tales, Fables, Myth—All Time Best Sellers,” Keven D. Stehl considers storytelling as one of our oldest and most distinctly human acts—how we use stories to preserve memory, pass down lessons, make sense of the unknown, and leave something of ourselves behind.

Technology changes. The medium changes. The fire remains.

From cave paintings to e-books, it’s all part of the same tradition.