WHY STORIES MATTER: Why and how are stories persuasive? In the “Future of Storytelling” video above, social psychologist and Stanford Business School professor Jennifer Aaker looks at clinical studies that answer that question. Aaker’s research on time, money and happiness focuses on questions such as, “What actually makes people happy, as opposed to what they think makes them happy?” Here’s a longer video of Aaker talking about stories.

“SENSORY STORIES” EXHIBIT: I finally had a chance to check out the “Sensory Stories” exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, and loved it. The show of “new narrative experiences” is curated by the Future of Storytelling. Among the experiences was “Clouds Over Sidra,” which gives users a 360-degree video view of the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, as shown to you by a 12-year-old girl who lives in the camp; it was produced by VRSE.works and presented in partnership with the United Nations. On a less serious note, the virtual-reality machine “Birdly” simulates the experience of flying over Manhattan, and there’s also a smell-o-vision version of Goldilocks!