Stories are a cultural universal — there isn’t a single country... that isn’t steeped in stories and storytelling. If something is universal, there’s a good chance it’s the product of evolution, not culture... stories, despite all their variety, contain some common essence ... Think of the structure as a bony skeleton that we rarely notice…stories…

what many of these movements’ followers share is the desire not just to disagree with their opponents, but to delegitimize, dehumanize, and ostracize those with whom they disagree... It is not their policies that these new populists share, but their emphasis on a new kind of identity politics... What would previously have been isolated cases o…