The Greats Story Lab™
Sparking Wonder, Meaning, and Wisdom through Storytelling
The Greats Story Lab™ is a pioneering edumedia™ initiative: a not-for-profit creative research lab blending storytelling, emerging technologies, and the deep traditions of human wisdom to reimagine what education can be: a spark for joy and wonder.
We create and distribute media (films, XR, gaming) that cultivates wonder, inspires meaningful play, shapes character, and explores how stories shape our understanding of what it means to flourish as human beings.
By bridging past and future, screen and soul, you might think of us as a wonder engine for the human imagination.
Our Mission
We make the big questions that shape our lives accessible to everyone, everywhere. From early shorts recorded in a walk-in closet to internationally awarded studio productions, we’ve grown into a vibrant lab where research, narrative craft, beautiful visual storytelling, and cutting-edge technologies converge. Whether through short films, immersive media (like XR), or AI-assisted research partner projects, we’re creating Meaningful Realities™ designed not just to inform, but to transform. All of our content is freely available (under a Creative Commons 4.0 ND license) for classrooms, conversations, and lifelong learning.
Because education isn’t just for students. And wisdom isn’t just for the past.
How It Works
Beneath every film, VR experience, or digital drop lies a rigorous research pipeline and full-cycle ecosystem. Our academic partner, The Translatio Project, studies a growing library of core texts (like Boethius, Augustine, Marie de France, and Dante) and uses human-in the loop markup to tag and analyze core moments of awe and wonder, as well as character formation and source materials. By augmenting the text with key markers for moral decision-making and wisdom traditions, they can deploy statistical modeling to surface deeper patterns. While The Translatio Project (Directed by Profs. SJ Murray at Baylor University and Matthieu Boyd at Fairleigh Dickinson University) focuses on academic & research output such as peer-reviewed articles and white papers, here at The Greats Story Lab™, we focus on sparking awe, joy, and wonder with inspiring public edumedia™ content. Visit our two public-facing projects on Dante and Boethius, and learn more about our XR projects in development.
Building Community in an Age of Distraction
Already, we’re building a global community, with users in 53 countries (and counting). In 3 months, we were excited to reach over 100,000 YouTube views… and then at the six months mark, we reached over 1 Million. We’re grateful that our fellow industry creatives have recognized the creative excellence of our edumedia™ short films and YouTube series with 18 international juried awards (including gold Tellys and Communicator Awards of Excellence), and to have received the Logic for Peace Award for democratizing access to education (SDG4) at the United Nations in January 2025.
What’s Next
Dante Minutes drop on YouTube every Friday (with a break for holidays at the end of the year). We’ve wrapped production on our first feature-length edumedia™ unscripted film on Boethius and are in the edit, and have a couple of exciting XR projects in development. To date, we’ve made everything in-house, and we’re always upscaling. For example, over the past year, we’ve been deep-diving into advances in Virtual Production (VP) and Unreal Engine® to integrate into our workflow.
How You Can Help
We’re actively seeking introductions to foundations and private funders who can help support our initiatives, including: Season 2 of Dante Minutes (Purgatory), and our Dante and Boethius VR experiences. Individual gifts also help make this vision a reality, and no tax-deductible gift is too small. All proceeds go directly to the creation of our Greats Story Lab™ initiatives.
Join Us
Whether you’re a student, scholar, educator, creator, technologist—or simply someone who believes in the power of story—we invite you to join us by proposing a collaboration, and dreaming forward.
“We’re just getting started.” ~ Walt Disney