When I was little, I used to watch the same movies over and over again. At one point during my eleventh consecutive viewing of The Lion King, I asked myself why. What was the point of watching a story when I already knew the ending? At first I thought that it might be because I hoped that I could influence the outcome — somehow guide the characters away from pitfalls and lead them to triumph. Perhaps on some level that is why I’ve become a writer, but it’s not the answer to the question. Instead, the real answer likely has more to do with the way that our minds engage with stories and what we expect from them in the moment. The best stories are rarely about the what, but the how, and it is precisely the how of how Argo crafted a historical event into a binding suspense thriller that won it the Oscar for Best Picture.