It's a busy period for me now! Many companies are trying to get some training programs done during the gap between Diwali and Christmas. Lot's of travel coming up!

Meanwhile, while researching for my book, I remembered this delightful TED Talk by Shawn Achor - check out the hilarious opening story.

And now, on to the newsletter.

Welcome to the nintieth 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

Fascinating data point and such a simple way to show it. Note John's use of visual hierarchy (the sole red point in a sea of grey ones) to make the key data point stand out.

Wow, the code written by one engineer over a weekend was a key factor in making Google Maps 10x faster and one-third the size.

Crazy diversity of tribes - check out Nigeria especially! (not sure how accurate the map is though)

📄 2 Articles of the week

a. 'The Secret Sauce of the China-India Rivalry Is Education' by Andy Mukherjee

Andy Mukherjee summarises the key findings of a paper (written by Nitin Kumar Bharti and Li Yang, from the Paris School of Economics’ World Inequality Lab) which analysed the different approaches to education taken by China and India in the 20th century.

One surprising finding? More than India, China is the true 'land of engineers'. Starting as early as the 1950s, China made a major pivot to engineering (the black component in the chart below stands for share of Engineering students):

This difference could have manifested in China's manufacturing dominance, according to the paper's authors:

The common view, particularly in the US, is that India is the “land of engineers.” It’s true that many tech-industry founders and chief executives, including the CEOs of Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc., were born and educated in India. But the huge expansion of its high-speed train network — or the sophistication of its EVs — shows that Bharti and Yang may have zeroed in on an often-overlooked source of China’s competitiveness. “China’s higher share of engineering and vocational graduates, combined with a higher share of primary and secondary graduates, lends itself more readily to a focus on manufacturing,” the authors say.

One final finding that Andy shares makes a strong point - India should have (and still should) invest more in adult education:

One final finding in the Bharti-Yang paper proves the point: In 1976, China had 160 million people (who had missed out on regular schooling) in adult education programs, compared with just 1 million in India. The progeny of those 159 million extra minds to whom China gave literacy and numeracy may have played more than a small role in beating India at growth.

b. 'Can India reverse its Manufacturing decline?' by Arvind Subramanian

In a related article on Indian manufacturing, former CEA, Arvind Subramanian (with Josh Felman) argues that the rest of India can learn from Tamil Nadu, to grow its manufacturing footprint.

Here's the article in two images as shared by the author on X.

A staggering fact from the article? 40% of all women employed in factories in India... are in Tamil Nadu.

Also instructive point about the need to enable smooth exits of manufacturing businesses (not just entry).

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

a. 'Daniel Yergin – Oil Explains the Entire 20th Century' on the Dwarkesh Podcast

A fascinating conversation on the history of oil in the 20th century with Daniel Yergin, who wrote 'The Prize', a book which is the definitive account of this crucial commodity.

A lot of TILs for me.

For instance, how oil was primarily in the lighting business originally, not in mobility. And petrol (gasoline) was once a waste product:

People think of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil and they go: gasoline. It had nothing to do with gasoline. John D. Rockefeller was a lighting merchant. What they did is that they rolled back the darkness with kerosene, with lighting. Before that, the number one source of lighting was candles and whaling. The whaling industry was delivering lighting. For the first 30 or 40 years of the oil industry it was a lighting business. Then came along this other guy named Thomas Edison. Suddenly you have electric lights and you say, “That's going to be the end of the oil business.” But by the way, over here is Henry Ford and others. You're creating this whole new market in the 20th century for gasoline. In the 19th century gasoline was a waste product. It went for like three cents a gallon.

Another key turning point was World War I, when under Churchill, British ships switched to oil:

Churchill was the First Lord of the Admiralty. All the naval ships at that time ran on coal, which means you had to have people on board shoveling coal. It took a long time to get the coal on board. If you switched to oil, the ships would be faster. They wouldn't need to take the same time. They wouldn't need to carry the same people.

So he made the decision—obviously others like Admiral Jackie Fisher were pushing him—to convert the Royal Navy to oil. People were saying this is treacherous because we'll depend upon oil from far away, from Persia, rather than Welsh coal. He said, "This is the prize of the venture." That's where I got my title from.

And eventually, oil played a major role in the Allied victory in WW-I:

In 1912, the head of the Italian military said planes were interesting, but of no use in war. The war did begin with cavalry charges. The German military position was based upon the railroad and inflexible. Suddenly you had trucks, motorcycles, tanks, airplanes. A war that began with cavalry ended up with tanks and airplanes and trucks. World War I, in my reading and writing of The Prize, is what really established oil as a strategic commodity. The person who became Britain's Foreign Secretary said that the Allies floated to victory on a sea of oil.

If during WW-I oil became strategic, in WW-II it was pivotal:

When Hitler invaded Russia, he was not only going for Moscow, he was also going for the oil fields of Baku. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nimitz, who was the naval commander, said if they'd come back a third time and hit the oil tanks, World War II in the Pacific would have taken another two years.

There’s one big thing that was a real eye-opener for me. People have heard of kamikaze pilots who would fly their planes into aircraft carriers. One big reason they were doing that was to save fuel so they wouldn't have to fly back.

And now, we are moving from the age of oil to the age of electricity, which is making a big impact on mobility. But guess which other sector is showing a significant increase in its use of electricity?

There's one projection that 10% of US electricity by 2030, which is half a decade away, will be going to data centers. It's about 4% today. What a change it's been in the last year and a half in terms of thinking about data centers, AI, and electricity. It wasn't on the agenda a year and a half ago.

Finally, I'd like to leave you with this comment by Daniel, about how he sees himself as a storyteller :)

Yeah in one way, I see myself as a storyteller. I like narrative. I think that's the best way to communicate. I like writing about people and not just about abstractions. It's funny. When I was writing The Prize or writing these books, I almost see it like a movie when I'm writing. I see what's happening and that makes it more vivid for me.

That's all from this week's edition.

Ravi

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Ravishankar Iyer

The Fascinating Story of Oil (3-2-1 by Story Rules #90)

𝕏 3 Tweets of the week

📄 2 Articles of the week

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

India's Centre-State Fiscal Schisms (3-2-1 by Story Rules #89)

How to Build Lasting Memories with your Children (3-2-1 by Story Rules #88)

A Data Story on India's New Elites (3-2-1 by Story Rules #87)