Language and cognition are closely linked, with language playing a major role in how we understand others, known as social cognition. Whether stories can promote social cognition, either by honing social processes or communicating social knowledge, has long been of philosophical interest. Empirical research into this question has yielded many promising results, and just as many additional questions. This talk provides a critical survey of the available evidence that stories can help us to understand other people, with a special focus on the limitations of experimental approaches to answering this question. In closing, I present a survey of additional work from our lab relating language and cognition, highlighting a unique role for narrative fiction in terms of memory, and vocabulary development.