As we interact less and less with people outside our immediate circles, the narratives we see on our screens exert incredible influence on how we view the world. Right now, that view is overwhelmingly negative — but it doesn’t have to be. Sarah, an Emmy Award-winning storyteller, shows how the type of stories we create and consume not only shape our perceptions but our shared reality. As a Social Anthropologist (M.A.), Emmy-winning social impact producer and founder of Common Ground Studios, storytelling isn’t just “what I do”, but the only way I know how to experience and interact with the world. Over the past 15 years, my work has taken me into the Central American jungle, Hollywood studio lots, indigenous reservations, suburban high-schools, Appalachian coal-mines, SNL writers rooms, Wyoming cowboy conventions, the floor of the United Nations and quinceañera’s in the Bronx. As a second-generation American, Jewish-Uniterian Universalist who attended Catholic high school (but prayed to the gods of theater!) I have seen intimately the power of “belief” to either co-create or co-destroy the constructions of possible realities. And those beliefs have all been fed through the consumption of and commitment to a story. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx