“Some amount of anchoring and mooring toward identity is important. But that’s the word – your identity should be a mooring: it tells you who you are and from there you can depart to wherever you want. It tells you where you started and which direction you want to go in. But if instead of being a mooring, it becomes a straitjacket – you are held together and your mooring is also a radius beyond which you cannot move, then it becomes naturally constraining.”
That is Nitin Pai, founder of the Takshashila Institution (A think-tank and school of Public Policy based in Bangalore). Nitin is a public policy intellectual and has been my go-to thinker on the topics of geopolitics, defence economics and public policy choices.
Nitin once said - “The stories we tell ourselves shape the reality we live in” – and it is this avatar of his as a teacher – and student - of narratives that I wanted to know more about on this podcast.
In this episode, we dive into several topics around narratives and storytelling:
We also geek out about the meaning and utility of frames and frameworks in storytelling.
Finally, Nitin shares why everyone should read philosophy and fiction.
It’s an eye-opening conversation.
Let’s dive in.
Show Notes:
Nitin Pai's website
Nitin on Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn
Takshashila Institution website and Nitin's interview on the organisation
Nitin's book, The Nitopadesa
His article on the Four Levels of Public Discourse