We spent the last week of December in Bangalore. It's a city that's after my heart. If you keep aside the traffic (BIG if), there's so much to love. The endless greens of Cubbon Park and Lalbagh. The wonderfully consistent darshinis. The plethora of fabulous craft breweries. The city is blessed.

Two experiences stood out for us. One was a curated food walk by food expert (and distant relative!) Ajit Bhaskar. Ajit is a food scientist with a passion for running and food. He took us on a tour of some amazing eateries in south Bangalore (mostly Basavanagudi area).

The highlights -

Benne Kaali dose at a small eatery called Sri Sai Vasavi Tiffin Centre
Gojju Avalaki at South Kitchen
Green idli and podi masala dose at Namma SLN, Gandhi Market

If you are a foodie, please follow Ajit on Twitter or Insta and try to join him on one of the walks!

The second incredible experience we had (the same day) was when we visited the Indian Music Experience Museum. As the name says, it allows you to experience the history and key milestones of Indian music - right from the Vedas, to classical music, to western influences, to present day Bollywood and indie music.

There are amazing stories, some great experiential exhibits and lovely ways to interact and play with the music.

While our six-year old daughter was a bit tough to manage, my twelve-year-old son, my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

My only regret - we only had 2 hours to experience the space. Hopefully, we will come back later to spend a longer time.

Unforgettable experience - highly recommended!

And now, on to the newsletter.

Welcome to the ninety-seventh edition of '3-2-1 by Story Rules'.

A newsletter recommending good examples of storytelling across:

3 tweets
2 articles, and
1 long-form content piece

Let's dive in.

𝕏 3 Tweets of the week

Wow - 3 out of 4 finalists of the Intel Science Talent search were kids whose parents had worked on an H1-B visa.

Given the current tensions around immigration from India, is the great migrate-from-India-to-the-US-to-work phase seen its peak? (Would be interesting to see college admission stats over the years)

Sports can be so, so cruel. My heart goes out to Rohit Sharma. Such a selfless leader. Will forever remember his fearless batting leadership in the 2023 ODI WC and the successful 2024 T20 WC campaign.

Ooh, that's a good argument for reading fiction!

📄 2 Articles of the week

a. 'Zakir' by Shruti Rajagopalan

This is a lovely tribute to tabla legend, Zakir Hussain by economist (and clearly a music aficionado), Shruti Rajagopalan

Shruti provides an interesting counterfactual to describe what path Zakir Hussain might have taken:

Zakir, at his core, was syncretic – which was odd given his circumstances. Normally, the oldest son born to a legendary tabla player would have lived in an insular world – within the gharana. He would have received his musical education/taleem from his father, uncles, and cousins. Taught the younger cousins and nephews. Married within the kin. And performed with legends playing other instruments in his tradition. He would have earned his stripes and become an ‘ustad’ and eventually retired from public performances into a senior mentor role.

Such a beautiful description of the merging of different cultures through music:

Hindustani classical is not just the merging of Persian and Indian sound but also of Hindu and Islamic religious influences. Alla Rakha attributed the rhythms he whispered in Zakir’s ear to his devotion for Saraswati – the Hindu goddess of learning – and Shiva – whose cosmic beat was transcribed by Ganesha.

Zakir's influences were eclectic:

He mirrored the path of Ahmed Jan Thirakwa, synthesizing styles across gharanas into something singular. Zakir extended this fusion further, drawing from Brazilian shamans, Cuban percussion, and rock masters. He incorporated the Carnatic tani avartanam—a solo showcasing the percussionist’s creativity and technical skill that starts as a monologue and evolves into a collaborative, rhythmic dialogue.

A remarkable personal life too:

Zakir and Toni managed the impossible, having a wonderful family with their two daughters – Anisa and Isabella – with Zakir touring and playing 150 concerts every year for 50 years. And unlike other world-famous touring musicians who played over 150 concerts, not a whiff of drama or scandal. One never heard of a cancelled show, or a delayed start, or a tantrum or an affair.

This sounds so cool - I wish I was there for one of his concerts:

Zakir recites and explains complex thekas and chakradhars, describing in English or Hindustani the sounds he wants to evoke: a deer fleeing a hunter in the forest, a guest arriving for a meal, Lord Shiva’s damru, Lord Ganesha’s pakhawaj, and my favorite – the movement of the planets around the sun, a chakradhar he inherited from his father

b. 'Notes on China' by Dwarkesh Patel

Celebrated podcaster Dwarkesh Patel undertook a two-week visit to China and chronicled his experiences.

Lovely use of contrast to describe the difference between China and the US:

It’s funny how China has basically the inverse problem as America. We subsidize demand and restrict supply. They subsidize supply and restrict demand. We can’t rebuild fallen bridges. They build bridges to nowhere. In the most desirable cities in this country, every random Victorian house and park bench is a historic site that can’t be disturbed. There, they’ll bulldoze a 500 year old temple to build an endless skyscraper complex that no one wants to live in.

This is such a radical but thought-provoking suggestion for the US to win Chinese hearts (would definitely not work with the MAGA crowd though):

If I was the US President, and I wanted to win hearts and minds in China, here's what I'd do. In every single speech where I'm talking about China, I'd make a conspicuous effort to complement Chinese people, Chinese values, and Chinese culture. I'd talk about how my Chinese staffers are the smartest and most hardworking people I've ever worked with (which honestly is probably true). I'd talk about how much my daughter is obsessed with ancient Chinese dresses. I'd talk about how I'm learning Mandarin in my free time, and have a live "Aw shucks" conversation in Mandarin.

These clips would go viral on Bilibili and TikTok. And they'd probably stay up because it would just be a weird thing to censor. The CCP might even think that these displays of affection aggrandize them. But in reality, showing our admiration for Chinese people and their achievements (who genuinely are fucking killing it everywhere where they're not held down by communism), undermines the central narrative of the regime - that the West is hell bent on holding Chinese people back, that they have no respect or understanding of their culture, and that the CCP is a necessary bulwark against these imperialists

Dwarkesh ends on a philosophical note:

Another thing I noticed is more personal. Two weeks of being AFK*, and of having the excuse of using a burner phone to put off messages, helped me clear the cache of thoughts about sponsorships, logistics, growth, hiring, and a bunch of other practical minutiae. My shower thoughts wandered away from upcoming negotiations and towards interesting rabbit holes.

It's a good reminder that what's lacking in life is not time. It's focus. If you're working on what matters, you can advance leaps and bounds in 8 hours. And if you're just clearing the slog, you can spend a lifetime staying in the same place.

* AFK: Away from keyboard (I had to look it up)

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

a. 'How Mark Rober hides "science vegetables" in viral videos' on Rethinking with Adam Grant

That's right, two weeks, two Adam Grant convos. I can't seem to get enough of the world's most famous organisational psychology professor.

Here's how he introduces his celebrity guest:

If you don’t know ‪Mark Rober‬, your kids do. He’s best known for his viral engineering feats — like creating an obstacle course for squirrels, designing glitter bombs to get revenge on package thieves and building the world’s largest Nerf gun. Before launching YouTube’s most followed science channel, he was a NASA engineer, and he now runs his own company, ‪@CrunchLabs‬, designing monthly STEM subscription boxes that teach kids how to think, build, play and solve like engineers.

Rober (an engineer and ex-NASA employee who worked on the Mars Curiosity Rover) was used to tinkering from a young age:

I remember once - I was six years old helping prepare dinner, and my mom asked me to cut onions and I was like, started crying, you know, like you do. And then I ran upstairs and got like our swim goggles under the sink and I came back down and like, now that's like an understood life hack, but back then, you know, there was no Reddit.

I didn't see this anywhere. So this was like a novel way of approaching this problem. And I just remember her response was like, so positive and she just loved it. She, you know, she even took a picture that means it's an important moment 'cause you only have so many pictures back in the day, right? That was like a, a seminal moment. I remember that so well. And I kind of feel like I'm doing that still today as like, hey, I have this other cool idea I really love, I wanna put this out into the world and I want to share it with other people and get feedback and then make it better.

Rober makes science content interesting by 'hiding the science veggies' inside the YouTube goodies:

Adam Grant: Well, I think of a lot of your work as a giant Trojan horse, right? That you, you have these sensational videos like, I'm gonna watch a squirrel have to navigate a maze in order to get the food out of the bird feeder. Or I'm gonna wonder like what would happen if you built the world's largest jello pool. But what I'm really getting is a cool science lesson in the middle of that.

Mark Rober: I like to say like hiding the vegetables, right? And that's what we're doing, right? You get that clickbait title, you know, 15 ton jello pool. But then pretty soon you're learning about chemistry and the scientific method without realizing it.

Right? Between my channel and Crunch Labs getting like 500 million views a month. Which is bonkers, right? And people and kids are choosing to watch that. No one is forcing them. This isn't like they're in class and they're wheeling out the cart. And they're choosing to watch science content and then choosing to watch more of it.

Grant makes a fascinating point - our attention spans are not going down, instead our standards are going up:

(Emphasis mine in the extract):

Adam Grant: Like, like we're in a world where everything is getting shorter, and every time I hear that, I think of a recent meta-analysis. So I'm gonna nerd out on this one for a second. Uh, this is a synthesis of 179 studies across 32 countries looking at concentration tests that are given to people starting in 1990, all the way to 2021. And it turns out that adults have gotten better over time and kids have not gotten worse.

I think... it's so interesting, right? That this is not an ability issue. I think it's a motivation issue. And it's a shiny object problem in some ways that of course, we're distracted when there are lots of distractions in our environment, but we're fully capable of focusing on something that piques our interest.

What Rober says here is music to my ears:

Mark Rober: People know the difference between steak and popcorn, right? Like. Sometimes you want popcorn, but you very rarely feel good about that choice afterwards, right? But steak is like nourishing and you remember that and you can crave steak 'cause you're just like, I'm just in a mood for something hearty. What I try and deliver is steak. And people remember that. And you know, sometimes you're just sick of popcorn and you want something nourishing. And part of making it nourishing is storytelling. And it's hard to tell a full story in one to two minutes. In my opinion, like. I'm an okay engineer. There's lots of way, way smarter, better, more capable engineers out there. I do feel like I'm a pretty damn good storyteller, and I think that's, uh, something people don't realize is what's actually happening.

I still write every single one of my videos and it's a laborious, time-consuming process that uses a lot of my brain power, like that is a skill that I hopefully have gotten better and better over time.

One technique that Rober uses - make the audience feel something:

Mark Rober: Basically my criteria is just like, I want you to have never seen anything like what the video is coming from me before. In order for something to be remarkable, it has to be like able to be remarked about. To make a video go viral, you just have to have a visceral reaction, and generally that visceral reaction comes a lot from novelty. It has to make you feel something. You have to feel amazed. You have to feel empowered. Feel anger, you know, that's a trick that's being used a lot today. You just have to feel something. No one shares a video they didn't finish watching. This is why a lot of times it's like world's largest nerf gun, world's largest super soaker. So it's just like bonkers things you've never seen that stretch your brain that are wrapped in a story. And for me that's so creatively fulfilling because I can make a video about bedbugs. 'cause I've always been fascinated by them and we could still pull 40 million views on it.

It's a fun conversation with one of the world's most accomplished creators.

That's all from this week's edition.

Ravi

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Ravishankar Iyer

Science Storytelling Tips from Mark Rober (3-2-1 by Story Rules #97)

𝕏 3 Tweets of the week

📄 2 Articles of the week

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

Do Leaders Need to be Feared or Loved? (3-2-1 by Story Rules #96)

Damodaran on the Corporate Life Cycle (3-2-1 by Story Rules #95)

How to Introduce Yourself Better (3-2-1 by Story Rules #94)