As many of you know, I am on a quest to assign a dollar value to stories. I will not rest until there is a calculation a company can use that says “stories add X to our P&L each year.”

Why would something like this matter? It helps us make better decisions. Without a calculation, we don’t know if our decision to invest in the storytelling skill is worth it or not.

However, with a calculation, the decision goes like this:

“Acquiring the skill will cost us X, and it will bring us benefits of 0.3X, so it is not worth it.” Or “Acquiring the skill will cost us X, and it will bring us benefits of 4X, so we should do it.”

See? Better decisions. You’ve gone from not knowing if something is worth it, to knowing whether it’s worth it or not. You’re not just spending budget money anymore. Now you’re investing in the growth of your company.

So it is with great interest that I listened to a recent RadioLab episode called “Ghosts In The Green Machine.” The episode engages in what even RadioLab calls the “possibly foolhardy attempt to figure out the dollar value of the work of bats and bees,” and I wanted to see how they dealt with it. If they can grapple with putting a dollar value to bats and bees, I can certainly grapple with putting a dollar value to stories.

The episode is here:

Have you listened to RadioLab before? I started listening to them about 15 years ago, and in fact at one point I attended a show they recorded live in Seattle. I find the way they mix sounds together absolutely fascinating.

By the way, anytime I hear someone refer to a ghost in any sort of machine, I think of the Police album from 1981, probably my favorite Police album of all time. Actually, for me, The Police and The Talking Heads are two of those bands where my favorite album is whichever one I am listening to at the current moment, and I tried hard to identify my favorite song from Ghost In The Machine, but I couldn’t, so I will just link to the whole album here: