The Story Close Reads
Unearth the hidden stories buried in world events and cultural phenomena.
- Latest post
- 30 Jun 2022
- Article Count
- 11

The climate is changing. Science fiction is too.
The climate crisis has sparked its own literary genre. Is it just morbid entertainment, or could ‘cli-fi’ actually help us avert disaster?
30/06/22

Storytelling is coming for your favourite sport. Is that a good thing?
Reality TV is bringing sports like F1 to the uninitiated. Fans say the format shines a light on a world usually hidden from view by media gatekeepers. Others aren’t so sure.
30/06/22

“Is this thing working?”: How Zelensky borrowed from comedy to capture the world’s attention
Before he was president of a country under siege, Volodymyr Zelensky was a comedian. Has he transferred the skills he learned on the comedy circuit to the diplomatic stage?
30/06/22

Democrats wanted the Jan. 6 hearings to be a blockbuster. So they hired a storyteller.
How do you turn 140,000 legal documents into a primetime TV phenomenon? You call James Goldston.
30/06/22

The island of Hy-Brasil never existed. So why did it appear on maps for nearly 700 years?
What the story of the “Irish Atlantis” says about our need to make sense of an uncertain world.
18/04/22

How to lose friends and influence people
Has Grace Tame’s refusal to bargain with power changed the rules around public advocacy in Australia?
18/04/22

12 steps for making “iconic” TV shows, according to noted storytelling genius Jeff Bezos
The bazillionaire once listed a dozen storytelling elements every Amazon TV show had to include. They say more about our obsession with rules than they do about making good TV.
18/04/22

Why country songs are the tabloid journalism of music (and tabloid journalism is the country music of news)
They're often derided for their ‘so bad they’re good’ wordplay. But there’s a skill to crafting the perfect country song title—and journalists would do well to take note.
18/04/22

Battle of the brands: how today’s politicians are sold as products on a shelf
If Labor versus Liberal sometimes feels like Campbell’s Soup verus Heinz, that’s no accident.
01/04/22

QAnon, fan fiction, and the blurry line between reality and fantasy
The conspiracy theory, which borrowed from the creative writing community to tell its story, has more in common with Harry Potter than you might think.
21/02/22

The dark side of happy ever after
The media is slowly abandoning the doom-and-gloom cliches associated with mental illness. But do the alternative narratives fall into the same trap?
30/11/21