Facts Are the Front Gate. Story Is the Side Gate.
Platte and Jeff are back after a long hiatus, with a new music bed and a bone to pick. Jeff ran the opening section of his training manual through The Conviction Engine, and the engine told him he had too many facts. He dismissed it. Then he started wondering if it was right.
That question is the theme of the episode. Why does piling on data, case studies, and research make an argument feel weaker to the reader instead of stronger? Platte walks through what the brain does with incoming facts (it defends the story it already believes), a 2007 charitable-giving study where a single character’s story out-raised the statistics by two and a half times, and why the combination of story plus facts did worse than story alone.
Also in this episode: when training content should skip story entirely (airline checklists, nuclear reactors), why the trainers you remember were the storytellers, and Bandura’s three questions that decide whether anyone acts on what you wrote. Platte shares how he worked with Lisa Nichols on her forthcoming book Becoming Unforgettable (May 2027), including the interview question that put her grandmother, and a Harley, on the page. And he explains how the Romans actually lost the city to Alaric and the Visigoths, which may just be him feeling good about all those humanities student loan payments.
Try the Conviction Engine free at platteclark.com. Upload a chapter and see what it says about your facts.
