Winter Book Club: The Story of Us?

0:00This message comes from 48 Hours with the 48 Hours Post Mortemortem podcast. Host Anne-Marie Green joins producers and correspondents to discuss key evidence, dead ends, and stranger-than-fiction twists they faced in the field. Listen on your favorite podcast app. Hi, Rund here. Somehow, we're almost at the end of 2025. A lot happened this year, and it's been a tough one for NPR and local stations. We lost federal funding for public media. We've seen relentless attacks on a free press. But we're not going anywhere. Here at ThruLine, we will keep bringing you immersive, entertaining stories that answer our guiding question.

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1:43So it's cozy season, and that means short days, cold nights, warm drinks, and books. I mean, we read all year, but come on, it's the best in the winter. And for the next few weeks, we're going to bring you a series of episodes we've made featuring books and authors we love, and that have stuck with us through many rereads. They're from all over the world, written across hundreds of years. This is through line after all. And we're excited to have you with us.

2:19The shape of the narrative is what it all comes down to in the end. History deals in facts, of course. But in history, those facts fundamentally serve a narrative. When we construct our story, we are inventing ourselves. That's what we were doing in those caves long ago. Gathered around the fire. Passing on to our children what we remembered about our grandparents. Reminiscing about life-changing adventures we'd shared. Arguing about which of us really killed the bear. and drawing conclusions about the meaning of life from the stars we saw above. For when ancient folks looked up at the night sky, they didn't just see stars, they saw constellations.

3:00They said, there's a bear. And they said, hey look, a mighty hunter. And their companions nodded. And as long as everybody in the group saw the bear and the mighty hunter, there they were. Tamim Ansari, The Invention of Yesterday

3:27Right now, in America, it feels impossible for people to agree on just about anything. You might find it comforting to think about how long ago, modern humans looked up at the stars and agreed on what it was they saw. But today, it feels like we're so far removed from that shared story. It's very clear that America has a history problem. There's no agreeing on how to tell the story of how we got to where we are today. No common narrative that unites us. Every American story. Well, who gets to decide what's included, what's left out, and what ultimately shapes our American story, our global story, as human beings on this earth?

4:10Some people look up at the night sky and see stars. Some see a bear and a mighty hunter. But who's to say? And what interpretation is passed down to future generations? What do you see? It may seem like a lost cause trying to tell a single human story that we all agree on. But knowing who we are and being able to visualize where we're going is based on where we've been. So maybe a common history is a key to bringing us all together. At least that's what Tamim Ansari thinks. You know, many years ago, I was a textbook editor. Eventually, my area was world history. Now, Tamim's a writer, teacher, and author of big histories.

4:54But he comes from the world of editing textbooks, framing the narrative. One month, I might have an assignment to write the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. And the next month I might have an assignment to write for some whole different textbook program, you know, the invention explosion of the 19th century in Europe and America. Doing this work, Tamim began to see unexpected connections across time and place and peoples. Because I was like skipping across, you know, like now the civil war in America and now, you know, the ancient Mesopotamian empires. I was seeing patterns that I might not have seen otherwise.

5:34Years later, all those patterns started to coalesce for him while reading three totally different history books at the same time. And one was about building the Great Wall of China. And one was about how nomads in Central Asia, you know, how their life went, what happened when they raided another nomadic camp. There was nothing to get that they didn't already have, so they would all join up and raid them. And then these rolling waves of marauding nomads would develop. You know, then I recognized from reading Roman history about, yeah, and these people, the Hans came out of the east and they sacked things that were part of the civilized Roman Empire.

6:16And I'm like, wait, all of those things, I read that. And then there were these guys in the middle. This is all part of the same big picture. So what is that picture? Well, Tamim started to create meaning from seemingly unrelated events across the world, connecting dots, building constellations. In other words, he started writing a story. The book that I think we're talking about today is called The Invention of Yesterday, a 50 ,000-year history of human culture, conflict, and connection. Tamim Ansari's book poses a fundamental question. What if the real story of human history is story itself?

6:57History is composed of facts the way that a cathedral is composed of bricks, let's say. But the bricks are not the cathedral. The cathedral is something about the way the bricks are put together. So history, in that sense, is a narrative, is a story. And I am undertaking to tell that story. And it's not the only way to tell it, but it's maybe one way. I like to think of Tamim as kind of a philosopher of history. Someone who studies and writes history, but also writes about history, thinks about what it really is and what it's made up of. And on ThruLine, that's the kind of thing we're always thinking about behind the scenes.

7:38We look for connections, try to discover the ways the stories we tell interact with one another across time and place. We're always asking what stories should be told, who should tell them, and why these moments from the past matter, why they're relevant to us today. And through that, we also start to see that history always boils down to one thing, the suffix of the word itself, story. And that's what Tamim tries to capture in his book, The Invention of Yesterday. It's a global history focused on the stories different civilizations have invented about themselves across time. Stories that tell thousands of years of experiences and encounters, memories, memoirs, that became history.

8:23Because to Tamim, history is really just a story we're telling one another, which obviously resonates with us. I'm trying to tell a single story that's the human story. And to do that, Tamim is searching for a history, a narrative that the whole world feels seen in, a past we can all agree on and claim. I think there's a global we that is trying to be born, and that inevitably will be born because we can't all just be in the same space without eventually speaking the same language. That's what humans do. But if you're trying to tell the story of this emerging global we, then you have to look past the details.

9:08I'm Randa Abdel Fattah. I'm Ramtin Adab Lui. And on this philosophical episode of Thulein from NPR, we're doing something a little different. We're getting inside the head of best-selling author Tamim Ansari and looking past the details to learn what inspires someone to write 50 ,000 years of history, why our shared history is a story we have to invent, and how the future of our species might depend on our ability to arrive at a story we can all see ourselves in.

9:44Hi, this is Brian Hoyle from Twinsburg, Ohio, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. This message is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. In 1998, L.A. County Sheriff's Deputy and Decorated SWAT Officer John O.J. set out for a run in California's Devil's Punchbowl and never came back. Family and fellow deputies insist the story doesn't add up. The Valley of Shadows podcast explores one of Southern California's most mysterious missing person cases. Available wherever you get podcasts.

10:19Part 1. The Power of the Powerful We do seem to be living through one of those periods of growing worldwide incoherence. Old narratives have lost their power. Atomized voices are trumpeting new ones, or refurbished versions of old ones. And if someone doesn't come up with something good, the many moving towards something bad will sow catastrophe. The danger is particularly sharp now because the quote-unquote society we're talking about is not this or that bunch of people, but the single intertangled spaghetti of human lives that constitutes all of humanity in this, our global age.

11:15One of the things Tamim Ansari argues is that human beings need to agree on a common story, a feeling of being part of a we, or in his words, an intertangled spaghetti of human lives in order to function. But who decides who the we is and what we can all agree on? If the old narratives have lost their power, who determines a new one? The narrative is our framework that allows us to actually just even operate. Now, when a society is in some more or less stable shape, the experiences or the data that challenges the narrative is shelved. It's considered irrelevant. And it's put on the back shelf where it'll be looked at later by someone who cares and nobody does.

12:00But when things stop working, you know, when there's more and more trouble arises, then some of those irrelevant facts, some people start to say, wait, maybe that's not so irrelevant. The narrative that keeps the powerful in place and keeps everybody else in place The function of the narrative is not just to do that, but it's to enable us to efficiently and correctly handle the data that's coming at us from out there. And it's not just random. It has to fit more. It has to kind of fit what's really out there. If it doesn't actually fit what's really out there, we are an extinct species. So our ability to keep correcting our narrative is our ability to function effectively in the environment.

12:56And when a society starts to not be able to cope with what's coming at it and what's happening, then the narrative starts to break down. And you see what's happening in, let's say, the United States today. It's like the narrative is breaking down. And as the narrative starts to break down, there are people who the long in place narrative that confirmed the power of the powerful, as those narrative threads weaken, people who have been victimized by the way things are over the course of history now begin to raise their voices and say, you know what, that story doesn't fit me. and or I don't recognize the character that is in that story that's supposed to be me.

13:43That's not me, that guy. So they start to try to tell a different story. Those stories depend on your point of view. Where do you come from? What do you see from where you are? Who's telling you about how the world works and what the world even is? Can you tell us a little bit about your story? You know, we all have a story. Sort of where do you come from? Where did you grow up? And how did you become interested in writing history? My father was an Afghan. My mother was an American. We could go a little deeper into that. My father was an Afghan from an eminent cultural, literary, intellectual family in Afghanistan.

14:26The poorest country on earth, you know, from some people's point of view. So he was at the top of the heap of the very, of the bottom of the heap. My mother was an American who was from a family of Finnish immigrants, and they were working class poor. And my mother and father met at the end of the Depression. It's a very complex tapestry. And when I work out my own story that has unfolded through my journey through the cultural universe of the world today, the anomaly of my parents is always a generating factor of the plot so to speak. So I grew up in Afghanistan. I lived there until I was 16.

15:09And then I came to the States and I've lived here ever since. So, you know, what ends up being a mainspring of my little story is actually just one thread in a bigger fabric than his history. So that's how come I write these things. can I write? As a result, kind of like me and Ramtin, Tamim grew up bicultural, straddling the fault line of the earth. I am both Afghan and American. I think I could also say I'm neither Afghan nor American. Somehow I'm standing outside both of these bubbles. And because, you know, I've been standing outside of these cultural bubbles, it gives me a perspective that gets me to look at what many of my people who are monocultural see as reality, I see it as a construct.

16:03I see it as one whole context that one could be outside of and be in another whole context. I have to say, I really love that. You know, honestly, partly the inspiration for Throughline came from exactly what you're talking about. Ramtin and I are both the children of refugees and we ourselves were not born here. And that was partly what prompted the show was that we were like trying to make sense of our individual stories, not only our origin country's history and then our new, you know, adopted country's history, but then the history of this entire like planet, right? That's like you're zooming out more and more and more.

16:43Yeah. When I find myself among Afghans, I am an Afghan. I am a certain somebody, you know, that I recognize. When I drift away from that and I'm in an American context with my American friends, then I'm an American and I recognize that self. And there is almost a sense that it's not the same self. So I've been fascinated by that, you know, by that anomaly or that experience. Which brings it back to this other fascination Tameem has, the concept of we. Who's being included in the narrative of human history? Who feels included in that story? And how we connect through a mutual understanding of what was and what is.

17:31When we say a history of the world, we're actually talking about the story of how we got to where we are today. and that there's an explanatory element to that. And what struck me was that embedded in that formulation, there's always some assumption about who is this we we're talking about that is here today. And because I came from another place and I've been in, you know, it's like my scrambled cultural odyssey made me remember from my Afghan side, living in Afghanistan and growing up in the schools there and hearing the history of the world, I was hearing a history of the world, not just the history of Afghanistan or the history of Islam or the history of some corner, you know, the periphery.

18:16That was the history of the world. And it included some of the events from the history of the world that I, as a textbook editor, creating world histories for kids in America. Some of the same events were in both of these histories. But it made a difference where you stood and the perspective you had on this entire collection of facts. And it made a difference in which facts you would leave out or which ones you would put in.

18:43But after that, I got to thinking about, you know, how globalization is now such a leading feature of life for everyone on the planet. It is the case that now any place you are in your experience of the world, you're going to be overlapping with people who look like they're in the safe way with you buying carrots and you're doing the same thing. But actually each of you have a constellation of memories and history and, you know, values and relationships that means you're not necessarily in the same world. Each of you is standing in your own world and there's misunderstandings and little sparks that trigger off of the fact that, you know, you think you're in the same place, but actually you're in two different worlds.

19:31And all of the different worlds that have grown up on earth over these many thousands of years are now all in the same space. They're in cyberspace, you know, that's a space that now exists, but also physically, people are migrating and, you know, everybody, you guys, you know, know what I'm talking about. So then I started to think, well, if you were to try to tell a story in which the we is this global we that isn't here yet, but is trying to be here, then you have to look past the details. You have to look past who's going to run for president next year or whether fascism is on the rise in Italy or these particular questions.

20:16You have to look for the mainsprings of the human story and what's generating this constant flow of events.

20:26I mean, obviously it would make sense why you would then become interested in doing this kind of larger meta history. But I just wanted to ask one thing. One of the things you talk about, and you hinted at here, is kind of the role of narrative in history. that ultimately all history can be boiled down to a story we tell ourselves, that the story is as important as quantifiable data or other information. With that said, what do you think of the old adage that the victors get to tell that story? You're right that in any given area, the story that's being told, let's back up a little. It serves the preservation of whatever the social configuration is at that point.

21:13And it allows a social entity or world to exist that can continue to meet the challenges of the environment. Now, in the history of the world, there has never been a time in which that has occurred without somebody being in power and others having less power. So the narrative has a tendency to preserve the power of whoever's powerful. And you can say that the narrative that preserves the power of the powerful is very appealing to the powerful. It sounds true. Right. Right. Right. And, you know, much expertise is mustered to show how and why it's true. And that's not just in terms of like stockpiling the appropriate and relevant facts that will prove this narrative to be true, but also the intellectual endeavors of, well, people like me who, you know, put the facts together and they make it sound right.

22:19How Tamim Ansari sifted through 50 ,000 years of human history to find the connective tissue and what he found when we come back.

22:32Hello, this is Rachel Lytle from Omaha, Nebraska. You are listening to ThruLine with NPR.

22:45Part 2. A Band of Relatives Human groups exist as social constellations, which interact with their environment as if those whole collections of individuals were cells of single entities. Once we started forming such group selves, one and all of which were constellations, webs of meaning that existed only in the minds of their members and not in the physical world as such, that's when the story of humankind truly began.

23:22In Tamim Ansari's book, The Invention of Yesterday, he says that the history of the world is the story that we're telling one another. That since the beginning of humankind, people have been inventing stories to find purpose, to explain mystery and wonder, to survive. And the interpretation of these stories over tens of thousands of years is the writing of history. And because Tamim writes about the writing of history, talk about being meta, he searched for some of the common threads and links that have connected people throughout the centuries. Threads that he was searching for as the braids that he wove together to form a collective human story.

24:00So, you know, I went through to thinking, well, there's money. Money. And bureaucracy is one of the things. Bureaucracy. You know, then religion would be one. And religion. Money, bureaucracy, and religion. But it all seemed not quite deep enough yet, you know? I'm looking for a deeper structure. And when I kept trying to get deeper, I finally got down to a sense of the factors that were driving the human story. You could bring it down to three actors, you know, three factors, actors that are constantly affecting each other's journey, so to speak. Factor number one, environment. So it struck me that every life form, you can say it's in some environment.

24:51And those two things are irreducible. There's, you know, wherever there's life, there's also an environment that's not the same as that life form. So there's always an in here and an out there. And the story occurs on the border between in here and out there. It's the interaction, always building the wall, reaching out, building the wall. That's one of the fundamental processes. As humans, we exist as clumps of individuals, you know. We have agency as social groups. And those social groups, just as much as an individual has a self that they can experience and identify and they pursue the interests of the self, social groups also have a self.

25:38It's a social self. And how do they have that? Well, there you get to the second factor. Factor number two, language. Maybe I should call it intercommunication. However it is that we do it from these internal selves that nobody knows about. You guys don't know what I'm thinking. You know, you can't get in here. But actually you can because we're all in this conversation together and we're all in some way thinking about this conversation that we're having. So the social event is something that we're all participating in. And to that extent that we're participating, there's a social self that exists even right here with the three of us.

26:20So these social selves exist, but they're not like biological selves because they can grow, they can merge with other social selves. So that's one of the driving factors of history is that these social selves are in a constant state of flux. Sometimes, originally, I think in the early in the human story, we were just bands of nomads, all of us related by blood ties. You know, we were a band of relatives roaming the world and doing all that stuff, interacting with the environment that I talked about. But tribes emerged and kingdoms and now we're countries and that's not the end of it. We're just in the middle of the story still.