Matlock: The Quiet Power of the Underestimated Kathy Bates’s Madeline “Mattie” Matlock enters rooms as a sweet, slightly old-fashioned woman whom almost nobody takes seriously. That is her genius. In CBS’s Matlock, she turns being overlooked into an advantage, using warmth, humour, and apparent harmlessness to uncover the truths powerful people prefer to keep hidden….

The Unabomber and the Stories That Break Us Ted Kaczynski terrorized America for twenty years as the Unabomber, sending homemade bombs to scientists, technologists, and thinkers. Netflix’s new film Unabomber tries to explain how a brilliant, isolated Harvard student became a murderer—but explanation is not the same as understanding. When the Outlaw Becomes a Prison…

Cathy Ames and the Story We Choose Cathy Ames is one of literature’s most unsettling characters: a woman readers have argued over for decades, torn between seeing her as Steinbeck’s embodiment of evil or as a figure denied the depth every human story deserves. The new Netflix adaptation of East of Eden, with Florence Pugh’s…

The Man Who Wouldn’t Take the Envelope Serpico and the Idealist’s story Hollywood has a familiar story about young talent. A young actor has a hit, and the machine begins to offer him more of the same: safe roles, guaranteed audiences, a steady climb. Al Pacino had that moment after The Godfather. The scripts piled…

WHICH FAUDA CHARACTER ARE YOU LIVING RIGHT NOW? One unit. Twelve ways to lose yourself in the mission. You already know which one you are. You never said it out loud. But somewhere between a retired commander learning that his old enemy is still alive, an undercover team living inside someone else’s identity, and a…

WHICH SLOW HORSE ARE YOU LIVING RIGHT NOW? One team. Twelve ways to fail. You already know which one you are. You never said it out loud. But somewhere between a disgraced MI5 agent being sent to Slough House, Jackson Lamb insulting everyone in the room, and a supposedly useless team uncovering conspiracies that the…

The Monster in Every Town: What Reacher Teaches About the Story You Tell Yourself Jack Reacher is a former U.S. Army Military Police officer who wanders from town to town across the United States with nothing but a toothbrush and an expired library card. He prefers to be left alone. But trouble always seems to…

The Monster in the Mirror: What King Kong Teaches About the Story You Tell Yourself On good days I call Citizen Kane the defining film of the sound era. On bad days, it’s King Kong. Not because I dislike Orson Welles’s psychological puzzle, but because the low-rent monster movie from 1933—naive, creaky, and utterly convinced of its own…

The Last of Us: Love in the Ruins Some stories are about saving the world. The Last of Us is about the person we are willing to destroy the world for. Set twenty years after a fungal pandemic has collapsed civilization, the HBO series follows Joel Miller, a hardened survivor hired to escort fourteen-year-old Ellie…

The Father and Son Who Had to Face the Blood Some crime series begin with a murder. Blodsoffer—released internationally as Blood Sacrifice and in German as Blutopfer—begins with a much older wound: the wound between a father and his son. This Swedish Netflix thriller follows Stockholm detective Thomas Berg after two police officers are brutally…

The Woman Who Had to Recover Her Own Story Some stories begin with a person discovering a secret about the world. Others begin with a person discovering a secret about themselves. Den hemmelige kvinde—The Secret Woman—belongs to the second category. This Danish Netflix thriller follows a woman with amnesia who discovers that she has a…

The Agents Who Learned to Represent Themselves Some series are about the people who stand in the spotlight. Dix pour cent—known internationally as Call My Agent!—is about the people standing just outside it: the agents who negotiate, persuade, rescue, manipulate, encourage, and quietly make other people’s dreams possible. Set in the Paris talent agency ASK,…

The King Who Danced His Way Out of Power When I think of The King and I, I do not first think of the palace, the costumes, or even the unforgettable songs. I think of Yul Brynner standing at the center of the story like a man trapped inside his own crown. Brynner played King…

What Story about Happiness are You Living Now? By Peter de Kuster For centuries, we have looked at happiness as a destination—a final resting place at the end of a long struggle, a golden prize waiting at the finish line of ambition. We ask people: “Are you happy yet?” as if happiness were a static…

A Town of Widows and the Outlaw Who Found Redemption: Godless and the Prodigal Son Archetype Godless (Netflix, 2017) is a series that takes place at the intersection of vengeance, redemption, and survival. Those are three subjects that don’t always fit easily together. In 1884, a young outlaw on the run from his vengeful mentor…

The Last Ride: The Shootist and the Dying Hero Archetype He rides onscreen in The Shootist (1976) afraid that he is dying. Not afraid he’ll be killed, but afraid he’s dying, which is the last thing we anticipated a John Wayne character would do of his own accord. It is 1901: He has outlived his…

Blood, Fur, and Freedom: The Frontier and the Outlaw Hero Archetype Frontier (Netflix, 2016–2018) is a series that takes place at the intersection of empire, commerce, and survival. Those are three subjects that don’t always fit easily together. In 18th-century North America, ruthless trappers and entrepreneurs fight to wrest control of the fur trade from…

From Duke to Drug Baron: The Gentlemen and the Reluctant King Archetype Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen (Netflix, 2024) is a series that takes place at the intersection of aristocracy, organized crime, and dark comedy. Those are three subjects that don’t always fit easily together. In the show, a British Army captain named Eddie Horniman (Theo…

The Chessboard of Fate: The Killing and the Archetype of the Strategist Stanley Kubrick considered “The Killing” (1956) to be his first mature feature, after a couple of short warm-ups. He was 28 when it was released, having already been an obsessed chess player, a photographer for Look magazine, and a director of “March of…

The Intersection of Science, Faith, and the Search for Meaning: Contact and the Seeker Archetype “Contact” is a film that takes place at the intersection of science, politics, and faith. Those are three subjects that don’t always fit easily together. In the film, an alien intelligence transmits an image of three pages of encrypted symbols….

The Quest That Changed Everything: Around the World in 80 Days and the Hero’s Journey What a spectacle of ambition and artistry is Michael Todd’s Around the World in 80 Days (1956). It hasn’t aged into a relic of Hollywood excess, but still seems to be inventing itself as we watch it—a carnival of colors,…

The Art of Disguise: Some Like It Hot and the Trickster Archetype What a work of art and nature is Marilyn Monroe. She hasn’t aged into an icon, some citizen of the past, but still seems to be inventing herself as we watch her. She has the gift of appearing to hit on her lines…

The Casbah as a Prison of the Heart In Pépé le Moko (1937) starring Jean Gabin, one of the36 Dramatic Situations I identified in the great stories of humankind comes vividly to life: The Flight (situation 2: “Flight from punishment or misunderstanding”). Pépé is a notorious Parisian gangster who has been hiding for two years…

WHICH TONY SOPRANO ARE YOU LIVING RIGHT NOW? One man. Twelve faces. You already know which one you are. You never said it out loud. But somewhere across six seasons of a New Jersey backyard, a psychiatrist’s office, and a captain’s ill-fated racehorse, you recognized something in Tony Soprano that had nothing to do with…

WHICH SCORSESE CHARACTER ARE YOU LIVING RIGHT NOW? You already know which one it is. You never said it out loud. But somewhere across a kid narrating his own rise inside the mob with genuine wonder, a boxer destroying himself in the ring long after the real fight was over, or a broker turning a…

WHICH TARANTINO CHARACTER ARE YOU LIVING RIGHT NOW? You already know which one it is. You never said it out loud. But somewhere across a diner heist gone wrong, a briefcase nobody explains, a bride crawling out of a grave, or a fading actor sweating through take after take, you recognized something. Not the blood,…

WHICH GODFATHER CHARACTER ARE YOU LIVING RIGHT NOW? You already know which one it is. You never said it out loud. But somewhere across three long films spanning a family’s rise, its consolidation of power, and its slow reckoning with everything that power cost, you were watching one person specifically. Not necessarily the Don himself…

WHICH FELLINI CHARACTER ARE YOU LIVING RIGHT NOW? You already know which one it is. You never said it out loud. But somewhere across a clown on a tightrope, a director hiding from his own unfinished film, or a woman waiting on a roadside for a man who will never really see her, you recognized…

WHICH HITCHCOCK CHARACTER ARE YOU LIVING RIGHT NOW? You already know which one it is. You never said it out loud. But somewhere across a rainy afternoon of watching a man in a wheelchair spy on his neighbors, or a bride trying to fill a dead woman’s shoes, or a mother’s voice drifting up from…

WHICH BLACKLIST CHARACTER ARE YOU LIVING RIGHT NOW? You already know which one it is. You never said it out loud. But somewhere in the middle of a season, while everyone else was arguing about whether the mysterious man in the fedora could be trusted, you were quietly watching one specific person navigate an impossible…

WHICH BOARDWALK EMPIRE CHARACTER ARE YOU LIVING RIGHT NOW? You already know which one it is. You never said it out loud. But somewhere in the middle of a season, while everyone else was arguing about who’d end up on top, you were watching one person specifically — not the most powerful player at the…

“The Mask of Zorro” reveals something we rarely encounter in contemporary action cinema: a deep, almost archetypal sense of honor. This is not just a story of spectacle, but of moral positioning—good versus evil, legacy versus corruption, and the enduring weight of generational wounds. What makes it compelling is not only its zest, humor, energy,…

Voicemails for Isabelle: the power of your story after grief Grief can break us open. Love can do the same. And sometimes, when those two forces meet, a story appears that is not only romantic, but deeply human. Voicemails for Isabelle understands this beautifully. It is a film about loss, longing, and the strange way…

Welcome to The Power of Your Story Your story is your life. As human beings, we are constantly telling ourselves stories. Stories about who we are. Stories about what we can achieve. Stories about what is possible and what is impossible. Some stories are stories of success. Others are stories of failure. Some tell us…

The Power of Your Story Experience™ A 6-week journey to rewrite your story and transform your life and business You are the storyteller of your own life. Every great story has a moment when the main character realizes: The old story is no longer enough. A moment when the hero must look at the past…

Little Brother: the power of your story in a world that measures worth by money Some comedies make us laugh. The better ones also expose the story underneath the laughter. Little Brother does exactly that: it uses slapstick, profanity, embarrassment, and emotional absurdity to tell a far more serious story about status, inequality, family, and…

Enola Holmes 3: the power of your story, the courage to choose your own path Some stories entertain us. Others remind us who we are. Enola Holmes 3 belongs to that second category. It is playful, fast-moving, and full of energy, but beneath the wit and the puzzles lies something more important: a story about…

American Primeval: when the story is reduced to survival There are stories that entertain us, and there are stories that strip us bare. American Primeval belongs to the second kind. It does not invite us into comfort, beauty, or moral certainty. It throws us into a world where the landscape is harsh, the people are…

To step into the world of Backrooms—the viral phenomenon brought to feature-length life—is to enter the ultimate, terrifying power of your story. It is a descent into a liminal nightmare, a vast, recursive space that functions as the final, absolute double journey: the physical attempt to escape the labyrinth and the psychological descent into the…

The One Great Story: The Complete Map of Every Story You Have Ever Lived A Two-Day Masterclass for Entrepreneurs Who Want to Understand the Architecture of Their Own Life — and Use It to Transform What Comes Next There is a reason you have been drawn to certain stories your whole life. The films that…

To watch Maryam Touzani’s Calle Málaga is to confront the profound power of your story—specifically, the story of the places we inhabit and the ways they inhabit us in return. It is a tender, aching drama that explores the double journey of Maria Angeles (Carmen Maura): the outward struggle to remain anchored in her beloved…

The story of Carolina Caroline is an evocative invitation to explore the power of your story. Director Adam Rehmeier and writer Tom Dean have taken a classic framework—the lovers-on-the-run crime spree—and infused it with a deep, pulsating humanity that feels less like a cinematic trope and more like a visceral memory. It is a double…

Some films consciously engage with the present. Others function more like lightning rods, pulling in ambient bursts of cultural electricity and channeling them into films that crackle with the energy of their times. With Obsession, director Curry Barker has crafted a lightning rod for the 2020s—a film that distill’s the ambient gender-based resentment of our…

We’ve had three adaptations of John D. MacDonald’s 1957 novel The Executioners—two films and now an Apple TV series, all titled Cape Fear. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more impressive trio than the actors who have played the terrifying villain Max Cady: Robert Mitchum (1962), Robert De Niro (1991), and now Javier Bardem. All…

The man who made “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” has returned 25 years later with a film that’s essentially about the need for empathetic connection with other real people and the uniting power of a truthful image. It’s only one timely way that one could unpack Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” a movie that reminds viewers that blockbusters…

The landscape speaks before the men do. A blinding sun beats down on the colossal, rust-colored mesas of the Navajo Nation in 1971. Dust kicks up in choking plumes behind a lone tribal police cruiser crawling across an ocean of high desert. The horizon stretches forever, beautiful and profoundly indifferent. It is a land deeply…

The Man Who Seeks the Truth in the Dirt On The Little Things (John Lee Hancock, 2021) The film begins with a predatory glare in the dark. A lone woman drives down a desolate desert highway at night. Another car stalks her, corners her, forces her into the wilderness. She runs, screaming for her life,…

Lawmen: Bass Reeves — The Man Who Refuses the Cage The Unspoken Awakening The story begins in absolute subjugation. A young Black man stands in the dusty heat of the American Civil War. He wears a grey uniform, but he is not a soldier; he is property. He is forced to ride into a meat-grinder…

The Man Who Breaks the Clan On The Sicilian Clan (Le Clan des Siciliens, Henri Verneuil, 1969) The film begins with a breakout that is entirely silent, professional, and mechanical. A prison van moves through the dense, gray traffic of Paris. Inside, a prisoner uses a miniature, hidden circular saw to cut through the steel…

The Man Who Refuses the Cage On Escape from Alcatraz (Don Siegel, 1979) The film begins without a word. A boat crosses San Francisco Bay on a pitch-black, rain-soaked January night. Inside, chained below deck, sits a man. The camera watches him. He watches the darkness. Not a line of dialogue is spoken until he…