He told strangers about his stillborn son to claim stories raise a trust hormone

The toy was already on the pillowcase.

A 5-year-old boy had bought it with coins he had set aside himself. For nine months, he had been preparing to become a big brother. He had helped his parents choose the wallpaper for the baby's room, and helped pick out the bedding, and he had left the gift where the baby would sleep.

With only a couple of days left until the scheduled caesarean, something felt wrong.

The father telling this was David JP Phillips, speaking to an audience about storytelling. His point, and the reason he shared such a painful memory, was his claim that feeling empathy during a story lifts levels of oxytocin, a brain chemical he links to generosity, trust, and bonding. That was an assertion made on stage, not a result measured in the room.

The parents had felt that something was off. By the day before the operation, Phillips said, there was no movement to feel and no heartbeat to hear. The couple went to the hospital in a rush, were placed on a bed, and a doctor examined the stomach.

The doctor found no heartbeat. The child had died.

"This was me, nine years ago," Phillips said. "It was the worst thing I've ever experienced in my entire life."

He then turned to the other child, still at home and waiting eagerly for a brother or sister who would never arrive. He asked the crowd to imagine having to explain that loss to a 5-year-old.

His lesson from the tragedy, he said, was that storytellers create that chemical response by building empathy for a character. He said talking about the loss is part of how he copes. And he closed by telling the listeners that hearing it had left them with "higher levels of oxytocin in your blood, whether you want it or not," in his words, which he described as making them feel more relaxed, more human, and more bonded to him.