The Story Rules Podcast
Storytelling is an ancient craft and humans are wired for story. Yet when it comes to telling the story of our work, we often fall short. My mission, through 'Story Rules', is to help you tell a better story of your work. I do that by tapping into the fascinating and wondrous world of Storytelling techniques. The Story Rules Podcast is a further step in that direction. In episodes 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.
Episodes
28 episodes
E26: Rama Bijapurkar - Foremost Expert On Consumer India
“Yeah, I think there's a little bit of a tyranny of "Or" that is implicit in your question, Numbers OR anecdotes, you know? As you say, in Indian spirituality, if you examine a problem deeply enough, the contradiction should vanish. So I'm ...
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1:43:34
E25: Nitin Seth - Mastering Data in the AI Age
“Storytelling is not about glibness. Storytelling is not about verbosity. Storytelling is not just about your confidence or doing it though it is an important aspect of it. Storytelling is fundamentally about the clarity of what you are say...
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1:54:55
E24: Anurag P and Nachammai S - Indus Valley Annual Report
“I think the biggest takeaway for me has to be about the storytelling bit of it and how important it is to tell a story. And I think I will not even take the credit for it. I will give most of the credit to Sajith because of driving the who...
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1:45:58
E23: Dharmesh Ba - The Art of the User Interview
"And he gave a very (interesting) thought experiment. He said, go to your Facebook, remove all your school friends, remove all your relatives, remove all your college friends, work friends. And, if you're able to get 10 people after removin...
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Episode 23
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1:59:02
Bonus: My Conversation on 'Causality in Storytelling' with Harish Bhamidipati
This is a different type of podcast episode: one where I'm the one being interviewed!“So, as a storyteller, you have three things in your hand to make an appeal right, you've got the data or the logic. You've got the emotional appea...
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1:44:04
E22: Karthik Srinivasan - Mastering Personal Branding
“When I do the corporate workshops, most people start from this point of view. They are about 35 to 50. They are probably in the peak of their career-related progress, they are doing well, they can easily get their next job. It's not a big ...
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2:01:55
E21: Nitin Pai - Public policy thought leader
“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 whi...
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1:06:29
E20: Rukmini S - Author and Data Journalist
“If the process and the methodology for collecting the data isn’t clearly explained, it becomes that much easier to bat that data away. I find that the best estimates we have on consumption expenditure which show that in 2017-18, if you spe...
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1:50:38
E19: Toshan Tamhane - Lessons from Mckinsey, Meetings and Marathons!
“Oftentimes people try to demonstrate how hard they have worked, so they try and show activity. You are expected to do that activity! If you didn’t do the hard work, don’t keep telling me “I met so many people” and so on. That’s at a very...
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1:59:48
E18: Paul Smith - Bestselling author of books on storytelling
“And then something amazing happened – what I heard from the audience was, “Ohh!” and then right after that, all of my conclusions started coming out of their mouths. And after that, all my recommendations started coming out of their mout...
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42:05
E17: Sajith Pai - Foremost thought-leader of India's Startup Ecosystem
“Whether It’s a start-up or not, narrative building is important. I think of it in terms of ‘lines, not dots.’ Whenever you see someone do a great presentation, sell a great story, etc., I don’t feel there’s an overnight success; that per...
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2:03:46
E16: Santosh Desai: Pre-eminent chronicler of India's culture
“The only thing I would say is ask fundamental questions; ask stupid questions; insight lies in interrogating the obvious. It lies in asking the obvious. It’s not new knowledge, it’s in the old knowledge. It’s in asking 'why' to the most basic ...
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1:50:05
E15: Crafting Data Narratives with Pramit Bhattacharya
“No data exists on its own; there has to be a story, or a theory, or a hypothesis which connects that and everything else that we know about the world or the subject matter of your story. When you say that these two states in northern India...
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1:09:45
E14: A curiosity masterclass with J Ramanand
"I think the message that I wanted to leave people with was “Can you swap anxiety with curiosity?” This is something I’ve been trying to do for myself: when you’re in an anxious situation, can you take a curious approach and say “What is going ...
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2:06:35
E13: Devaiah Bopanna, Writer of funny stories that go viral
Often at work, when I would get bored, I would press CMD-Tab on my Mac and head off to drown myself in the joys of the internet. Movie reviews on Rediff.com, Sports writing on Cricinfo, and funny videos and trailers on Youtube. (Of cour...
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Episode 13
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1:11:32
E12: Mahima Vashisht - Pre-eminent storyteller covering gender issues
“And their stories would suddenly be much more powerful than the story I triggered their thought with. So that's how I started speaking to women and collecting these stories. And the whole idea behind it, which seems...
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Episode 12
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1:27:59
E11: Brent Dykes - Author of seminal book on Data Storytelling
“I'm in the boardroom, he's in the middle; (There are) Managers around, listening to my presentation; I get to the slide with this insight or observation that I had found, and he tilts his head, looks at it, and then blurts out “Bullshit!”&...
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1:27:10
E10: Max Dickins - Using Improv principles for better storytelling
“So, I have this concept which I call ‘Listening to Ignite’, which is, you're listening for things that can really light up the other person. So, it's about what your curiosity clicks into. And can you ask a question that allows them a laun...
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1:08:42
E09: Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar - Chronicler of the India economic story
“You have to woo the reader. You have to persuade the person, first of all, to read what you have written that's the very first thing. If you have failed there then you've already failed. It doesn't matter what are the gems of wisdom. So th...
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1:04:36
E08: Aravind SA - Standup comedian and Storyteller extraordinaire
“So the best way to address this, I thought, is the tip I give any aspiring public speaker just whatever your fears are, tell them that. Put it out there. If you're thinking "Oh my god I'm gonna have a disaster tonight and I can't believe a...
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Episode 8
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1:10:18
E07: Praveen Gopal Krishnan: The Writer of India's largest paid newsletter
The guy with the most productive Friday evening in journalismMy most anticipated email of the week arrives every Saturday at 10 am. It's a weekly newsletter called The Nutgraf and it'...
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Episode 7
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1:44:44
E06: Prakash Iyer: Bestselling author and Leadership Coach
You know Deja Vu. But do you know Vuja de?“…there is deja vu. Where you see something new but you find it familiar, and you go to a place for the first time and you say wow, doesn't this remind me of (Something).... or ...
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Episode 6
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1:23:51
E05: Sowmya Rajendran: A Literary Torchbearer for India's Gender Movement
"So I used to tell her these fairy tales also, like Cinderella and Rapunzel and somehow when the story got to the part when Cinderella had to be rescued or Rapunzel had to be rescued, I would find myself changing the story because I didn't ...
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Episode 5
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1:41:30
E04: Mihir Dalal: The Writer of India's Best Business Book of 2020
"So when I would start writing every day at 10:30-11 am, the first two hours would just be spent on rewriting, and editing the previous day's work.... So it was not just once, I think I would have edited my own work at least 12-13 times"
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Episode 4
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1:21:33
E03: Swanand Kelkar: Writing investment theses for a $3B+ portfolio
"If you write something, it just clarifies your thinking. When you put pen to paper and you do it hand on your heart, and dig up data and try to make the argument robust why you're buying or selling the stock. I think it just clarifies your...
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Episode 3
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1:33:40
