The Story Rules Podcast

The 'Story Rules Podcast': Learning from the best storytellers in the world

March 31, 2021 Ravishankar Episode 1
The Story Rules Podcast
The 'Story Rules Podcast': Learning from the best storytellers in the world
Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to The Story Rules Podcast. This is your host, Ravishankar Iyer and I’m launching this podcast with a very selfish motive - I want to learn from the best storytellers in the world.

I admire good storytelling wherever I see it… whether it’s: 
- Someone who creates start-up pitch decks that raise millions of dollars, or
- Someone who simplifies complex financial news into daily stories that are consumed by several hundred thousand readers, or 
- Those who craft investment theses that form the basis for billion-dollar investment portfolios, or 
- Folks who write non-fiction in a simple yet arresting manner… 

I feel that all of us can learn from these storytelling experts, and so I decided to pick their brains and unearth their secrets. 

In each episode of the podcast, we will have long, deep and meaningful conversations with some of the best storytellers in the world. We will explore their life story, discuss their storytelling philosophy and unearth the secrets of their craft. 

Listeners will get to learn, grow their own inner storytellers and finally, achieve better outcomes at work - by leveraging the power of story.

0:03  
Hello there and welcome to The Story Rules Podcast. 

0:07  
I'm your host Ravishankar Iyer. And I'm launching this podcast with a very selfish motive. I want to learn from the best storytellers in the world.

0:16  
I admire good storytelling wherever I see it, whether it's someone who creates a startup which takes that raise millions of dollars, or someone who simplifies complex financial news into daily stories that are consumed by several 100,000 readers, or those who craft investment theses that form the basis for billion-dollar investment portfolios are folks who write nonfiction in a simple, yet arresting manner. 

0:45  
I feel that all of us can learn from these storytelling experts, and so I decided to pick their brains and unearth their secrets. Now a few words about the format of this podcast. In today's age of dwindling attention spans, content creators are usually given one piece of advice, keep things short, snappy, and quick. I decided to do the opposite.

1:09  
I felt privileged greedy even to have gotten the time from such accomplished storytellers. And so I wanted to find out everything. Everything that made them the storytellers, they are. In fact, in order to find my podcast voice. I went ahead and recorded four episodes, all with diverse and accomplished storytellers. In each episode, I gave full throttle to my curiosity. That is, we stopped only when I had run out of interesting questions, not because there was an artificial time deadline.

1:42  
And so when I look back at these four long deep and meaningful conversations, I realized that my line of questions straddles three broad areas. Let's call them the three-piece, the personal, the philosophical, and the practical.

1:55  
In the personal story, I get the guests to open up about their life stories, their upbringing, the early influences the inciting incidents, the disappointments, the highs, the reflective periods will essentially go on a journey with the storyteller, to really find their story.

2:12  
At the philosophical level, we will explore their approach to storytelling, the ideas that make them tick. The big influences on their thinking and writing the core beliefs which guide their work, this session is to spark new insights in your mind about the possibilities of this craft.

2:28  
In the practical section, we will get super tactical and dive into some of the specific techniques rituals practices and tools that these storytellers use to tell such great stories. This part would be all about getting actionable insights that you can apply right away to your work.

2:45  
A simpler way to describe the three sections are, we get to know the who, the why and the how of these experts storytellers, of course, extracting these insights will not be easy. Often folks don't know how they do what they do. I guess that's up to my skill as an interviewer to gently coax out these insights from their beautiful minds. Wish me luck. And here's wishing you some great listening, let's dive right in.