Primal Intelligence: You Are Smarter Than You Know

The national bestseller

Tap into your hidden intelligence and transform your life

How are some people so much smarter than the rest of us? Where do visionary creatives and savvy decision-makers like Vincent van Gogh, Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln, Maya Angelou, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Wayne Gretzky, Warren Buffett, and William Shakespeare get their extraordinary mental abilities?

In 2021, researchers at Ohio State’s Project Narrative, renowned for collaborations with NASA, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley, announced they had the answer. They named it Primal Intelligence. And they published scientific proof that Primal Intelligence was impossible for computers—but could be strengthened in humans.

Intrigued, U.S. Army Special Operations developed Primal training for its most classified units. The training succeeded. The Operators saw the future faster. They healed quicker from trauma. In life-and-death situations, they chose wiser.

The Army then authorized trials on civilian entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers, managers, salesforces, coaches, teachers, investors, and NFL players. Their leadership and innovation improved significantly. They coped better with change and uncertainty. They experienced less anger and anxiety. Finally, the Army provided Primal training to college and K-12 classrooms. It produced substantial effects in students as young as eight.

That revolutionary training is now available for the first time in this book. It’s not an optimization hack or a cheat code. It’s a different way of using your brain. It offers a new neuroscientific approach to intuition, imagination, emotion, and commonsense, helping you think more like van Gogh and Jobs, Lincoln and Shakespeare.

It’s your edge over AI. Your human genius. Your Primal Intelligence.

Angus Fletcher is a professor of story science at Ohio State's Project Narrative. His research has been called "life-changing" by Brene Brown and "mind blowing" by Malcolm Gladwell; has been endorsed by psychologists, neuroscientists, and doctors such as Martin Seligman and Antonio Damasio; and has been supported by institutions from the National Science Foundation to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2023, he was awarded the Commendation Medal by the U.S. Army for his "groundbreaking research" with U.S. Army Special Operations into primal intelligence.