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Speaker 1: Also media the phrase this man ruined the world. He

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Speaker 1: gets used a lot, particularly by me on this show

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Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, which is the podcast you're listening to.

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Speaker 1: But today, folks, friends, Romans, countrymen, actually people in Rome

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Speaker 1: are not allowed to listen to this podcast based on

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Speaker 1: a recent ruling by the Italian Supreme Court. But the

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Speaker 1: guy we're talking about today is the man who ruined

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Speaker 1: the world and his name is Steve Jobs. Now is

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Speaker 1: that a hyperbolic statement? Am I just lying to you

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Speaker 1: in order to get people to listen to try to

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Speaker 1: oversell this podcast? Of course, because I'm a hack and

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Speaker 1: a fraud. But you know it's not a hack and

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Speaker 1: a fraud. Is our guest today, ed Zitron.

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Speaker 2: Hello, and I am not a hack or a fraud.

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Speaker 1: That's true, That's right. We are, however, the host of

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Speaker 1: a podcast called Better Offline.

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Speaker 2: Also true, that's.

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Speaker 3: Part of this very cool zone media network, this very network.

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Speaker 2: I'm one of one of you.

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Speaker 1: Now, yeah, and he us want to Better Offline. You

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Speaker 1: train your gimlet. I towards the tech industry, which dominates

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Speaker 1: to a significant extent both the US economy and all

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Speaker 1: of our lives, and provide I think a necessarily jaundiced

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Speaker 1: look at what's going on there. And when you were

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Speaker 1: talking about why is the tech industry the way that

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Speaker 1: it is? Why are tech founders the way that they

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Speaker 1: are the most influential person to answer that question is

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Speaker 1: Steve Jobs, right, Like, there's really no competition for that title.

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Speaker 1: He is the er founder in a lot of ways,

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Speaker 1: and I want to get into him today. How much

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Speaker 1: do you know about Steve Jobs?

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Speaker 3: Like?

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Speaker 1: What is your actual information on him as a human

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Speaker 1: being and not just as like a CEO a founder.

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Speaker 2: As a human being. I know very I've not seen

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Speaker 2: the movies, I've not read the books. The idea of

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Speaker 2: Walter Isaacson telling me anything is kind of annoying as

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Speaker 2: a preface. Yes, but I do know that he was

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Speaker 2: a deadbeat dad.

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Speaker 1: He is a deadbeat dad. We'll be talking a lot

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Speaker 1: about that. There's a There are two big movies about him.

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Speaker 1: There's the The Ashton Kutcher one which is not very good.

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Speaker 3: What did you just how did you just pronounce that man?

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Speaker 1: Ashton Aston? I hate him. I hate him, Sophie, I

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Speaker 1: hate him.

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Speaker 2: Did you hear about the fashion social network that he

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Speaker 2: invests the end? Yes?

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Speaker 1: I do, Yes, I do also, and when we do

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Speaker 1: our episode on him. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: He also wrote a letter on behalf of his rapist seventy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Danny Masterson horrible man, disgusting, and I'll say this,

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Speaker 1: he's a bad Steve Jobs. He's not good in the movie.

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Speaker 1: It's not a good movie.

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Speaker 2: No.

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Speaker 1: Now, the worst sin is not him as Steve Jobs.

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Speaker 1: It's Josh gadd who I do not like very much

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Speaker 1: as Steve Wozniak.

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Speaker 2: No, now, you can't have Josh Gadders was.

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Speaker 1: No, there is as There is a much better movie.

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Speaker 1: And Seth Rogan plays Wosniak, and Rogan is great casting

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Speaker 1: for Wozniak. He is a really good was and that

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Speaker 1: is the better movie. Neither of them is accurate, though

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Speaker 1: neither of them is very accurate to the man's life.

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Speaker 1: We're going to try to do better here. One of

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Speaker 1: my sources for this episode is the book Becoming Steve

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Speaker 1: Jobs by journalist Brent Schlender. It is I don't love it.

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Speaker 1: It's slightly less dick righty than Walter Isaacson's biography, but

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Speaker 1: it's still a lot more dick righty than it ought

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Speaker 1: to be, which is why my favorite source on at

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Speaker 1: least the early life of Jobs and the founding of

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Speaker 1: Apple is the book Infinite Loop, which I think is

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Speaker 1: a far better work of journalism than either of those.

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Speaker 1: We also will talk a little bit about the Moritz book.

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Speaker 2: The book by.

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Speaker 1: Schlender, Becoming Steve Jobs has a forward or a preface.

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Speaker 1: It has both a forward and a preface, which I

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Speaker 1: find frustrating. But it's the forward or whatever is written

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Speaker 1: by Mark Andresen right today. Andrewesen is the CEO massive

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Speaker 1: venture capital guy, one of the big hypemen and investors

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Speaker 1: behind the AI revolution, and it addition to believing that

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Speaker 1: AI will literally become a god, he writes this quote,

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Speaker 1: if you pulled the thousands of founders, you'd find that

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Speaker 1: ninety nine point nine percent of them never met Steve.

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Speaker 1: You'd also find that a fairly large number of them

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Speaker 1: entered the tech industry after Steve passed away. But overwhelmingly,

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Speaker 1: if you ask them who their hero is, who they

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Speaker 1: have tried to learn the most from about how to

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Speaker 1: build a company and how to have an impact on

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Speaker 1: the world, Steve is number one on that list by

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Speaker 1: a very wide margin. I see Steve's influence in everything

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Speaker 1: they do. It's in their behavior in the polish and

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Speaker 1: flare of their pitches, it's in the design of their slides.

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Speaker 1: It's in the use of the word beautiful. Before Steve,

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Speaker 1: no startup ever use the word beautiful. Now everything has

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Speaker 1: to be beautiful. Every product needs to be fantastic out

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Speaker 1: of the gate. Every product has to live up to

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Speaker 1: its promise and bring delight to the lives of its users.

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Speaker 2: So he just fucking lied about everything he's ever invested in.

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Speaker 2: One of the things that Mark Andresen is responsible for

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Speaker 2: is the churn investment in startups, pumping him with money

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Speaker 2: to provide as much service as necessary to capture market

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Speaker 2: share so that they can destroy incumbents. That doesn't mean

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Speaker 2: perfect Christ, this man invested in Facebook.

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Speaker 1: A lot of what he's saying is nonsense. They're like,

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Speaker 1: I would say close to zero percent of tech products

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Speaker 1: instantly delight users upon release, and in fact the norm

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Speaker 1: is for them to be fucked up and for like

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Speaker 1: customers to be beta testers. Right, Like that is more

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Speaker 1: mostly how the industry works. But what Andresen is right

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Speaker 1: about there where there is a legitimate insight, there is

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Speaker 1: in his statement about jobs's influence on how founders see themselves,

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Speaker 1: right yes, the men and women who run the tech

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Speaker 1: industry today do not just admire Jobs, they want to

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Speaker 1: be him. And that's a problem because he was a

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Speaker 1: terrible person. So the story of Steve Jobs starts with

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Speaker 1: his biological parents, and I'm going to use some very

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Speaker 1: clinical terms for them for reasons that I think are appropriate.

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Speaker 1: The man who is effectively his sperm donor is Abdulphata Jandali,

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Speaker 1: who generally went by John Jendali, was a Syrian man

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Speaker 1: whose family were outrageously wealthy. How wealthy, Isaacson notes that

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Speaker 1: his father, Steve's grandfather, pretty much controlled the price of

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Speaker 1: wheat in Syria. So John becomes a teaching assistant at

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Speaker 1: the University of Wisconsin and he falls in love with

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Speaker 1: Joanne Schleebel, in whose womb the clump of cells that

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Speaker 1: would become Steve Jobs just stated. Joanne's family were German immigrants,

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Speaker 1: and her father was a rich entrepreneur who was also

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Speaker 1: kind of a piece of shit. He forbade his adult

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Speaker 1: daughter from marrying anyone who was not Catholic. He threatened

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Speaker 1: to cut Joanne off, which caused a problem because she

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Speaker 1: was already pregnant with Steve. Now Joanne's father was dying

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Speaker 1: but not fast enough, and she wasn't willing to risk

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Speaker 1: being cut out of the will. So in fifty five

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Speaker 1: she travels to San Francisco and she spends time with

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Speaker 1: a doctor whose specialty was women who wanted to have babies,

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Speaker 1: but not raise them. Right, they're going to give the

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Speaker 1: baby up for adoption, you know. And Joanne's requirement because

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Speaker 1: she's able to list some pretty strict requirements for who's

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Speaker 1: going to adopt her kid, and one of the things

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Speaker 1: she says is she wants them to be Catholics and

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Speaker 1: they have to be college graduates. Now, the first couple

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Speaker 1: that was going to take Steve they drop out, right like,

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Speaker 1: they agree to take him and then they back out.

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Speaker 1: They give him up basically right. I don't think we

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Speaker 1: know why. But the doctor kind of has to find

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Speaker 1: a family at the last minute who's going to take Steve,

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Speaker 1: and he goes with the family that Joanne is not

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Speaker 1: happy with because they are not college graduate Catholics. And

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Speaker 1: in fact, the guy who's going to become Steve Jobs's

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Speaker 1: father is a high school dropout, blue collar mechanic, and

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Speaker 1: the guy who's going to be his mother is a

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Speaker 1: high school graduate bookkeeper. Their names are Paul and Clara Jobs.

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Speaker 1: Isaacson writes of them. When Joanne found out that her

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Speaker 1: baby had been placed with a couple who had not

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Speaker 1: even graduated high school, she refused to sign the adoption papers.

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Speaker 1: The standoff lasted weeks, even after the baby had settled

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Speaker 1: into the Job's household. Eventually, Joanne relented with the stipulation

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Speaker 1: that the couple promise, indeed sign up pledge to fund

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Speaker 1: a savings account to pay for the boys college education.

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Speaker 1: And this is a messy situation. I've heard it said

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Speaker 1: that like his adoptive mother says like she wouldn't let

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Speaker 1: herself love him for the first like six months or

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Speaker 1: whatever that she had him. I think she's being a

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Speaker 1: little facetious there, but just because she doesn't know if

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Speaker 1: she's going to have to give him up right And

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Speaker 1: to be again perfectly clear, I've never heard any allegation,

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Speaker 1: including from Steve. Everyone seems to agree his adoptive parents

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Speaker 1: are deeply loving parents who dote on him rights. He

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Speaker 1: is the best case scenario for a child who was

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Speaker 1: adopted right where he is taken in very early by

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Speaker 1: parents who devote themselves to him, but there's going to

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Speaker 1: be a long debate over like how the fact that

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Speaker 1: he is given up both by his birth parents and

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Speaker 1: by this first couple that's going to adopt him, how

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Speaker 1: that influences him, right. And it's kind of complicated by

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Speaker 1: the fact that I think Isaacson is more sympathetic of

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Speaker 1: his his birth mother and father than I am. He'll

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Speaker 1: point out that like his birth mother, she's hoping to

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Speaker 1: take Steve back after her dad dies. She and Gendali Mary,

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Speaker 1: which is like, I think that's worse, right, Like that

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Speaker 1: you're not even committing to adopt it. You're trying to

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Speaker 1: give it up for a little while and then rip

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Speaker 1: it away from the family. That's that's like, that's bad, right,

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Speaker 1: That's pretty bad. And like, you have choice here. This

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Speaker 1: isn't a situation in which she had no agency. She

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Speaker 1: could have chose to like defy her father for her child,

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Speaker 1: and she she didn't, And I think that's like a mark.

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Speaker 1: That's bad. I would say, you know, yes, that's that's

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Speaker 1: where I land on this. I will say, as a result,

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Speaker 1: I think this kind of works out better for Steve

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Speaker 1: because Paul and Clara are devoted in stable parents and

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Speaker 1: Joanne and John Gendali are not right. They have one

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Speaker 1: more kid together, but then they divorce, so I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I feel like it's one of those situations where like,

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Speaker 1: the people who wind up raising him are the people

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Speaker 1: who are willing to commit to making him their priority,

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Speaker 1: and so, you know, as a parent should do, as

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Speaker 1: a parent should do. There's an interesting aside here, which

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Speaker 1: is that Steve's biological sister, who he's going to meet

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Speaker 1: like as a mature adult much later in life, winds

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Speaker 1: up being the author, Mona Simpson, which is interesting, like

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Speaker 1: she's like a fairly prominent author, and when I read

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Speaker 1: this that, like novelist Mona Simpson was his biological sister,

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Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, that's the name of Homer Simpson's mom.

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Speaker 1: And I was just going to bring this up as

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Speaker 1: a weird coincidence because I'm a Simpsons fan. But it

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Speaker 1: turns out Mona Simpson was married to the Simpson writer

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Speaker 1: who created the character that's Homer Simpson's mom, and the

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Speaker 1: character is literally named after her.

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Speaker 2: So there you God, yeah, that's kind of weird. These

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Speaker 2: are the real conspiracy theories. Yeah, yeah, this is the

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Speaker 2: actual shit that should be on above top se crew.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's this is a weird aside. There's a

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Speaker 1: bizarre number of people with names that are famous for

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Speaker 1: other reasons. Now in the Steve Job story that we'll

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Speaker 1: be getting into, it doesn't mean anything, but it's peculiar.

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Speaker 1: And this is the first.

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Speaker 2: Place behind the boss that's promis Yeah, exactly. So.

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Speaker 1: Steve is born February twenty fourth, nineteen fifty five, and

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Speaker 1: when he is adopted, he is eventually named Stephen Paul

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Speaker 1: Jobs by his adopted parents. Paul and Clara are kind

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Speaker 1: of lower middle class. I think probably by the time

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Speaker 1: he's in his late teens, they're like solidly middle class.

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Speaker 1: His dad is initially like a repoman for a finance company,

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Speaker 1: and the family lives in a suburb of Mountain View

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Speaker 1: because it's a lot more affordable than nearby Palo Alto,

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Speaker 1: right to make additional money. Paul, who is a very

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Speaker 1: gifted mechanic. Right, he's not a tech guy, he's not

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Speaker 1: an electronics guy, but he's great with cars. And one

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Speaker 1: of the things he commits to do because they promised

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Speaker 1: to start a college fund for Steve, he has a

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Speaker 1: side gig spends most of Steve's like childhood buying old cars,

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Speaker 1: fixing them up and selling them for a profit to

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Speaker 1: like fund Steve's college fund. Right, he also builds.

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Speaker 2: This is while entrepreneur is actually used to be.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he seems pretty cool. Yeah, and he is.

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Speaker 1: He is very much. He tries to inculcaid and Steve

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Speaker 1: a love for mechanical work, and it doesn't fully get over.

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Speaker 1: Steve's going to be reasonably competent with electronics, which his

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Speaker 1: dad doesn't like. Steve like learns how to fix cars

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Speaker 1: and stuff, but he never falls in love with it.

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Speaker 1: But he does like spending time with his dad and

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Speaker 1: his dad's workshop while his dad builds things. And what

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Speaker 1: does get transferred from Paul to Steve is the fact

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Speaker 1: that Paul isn't just someone who's good at fixing stuff.

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Speaker 1: He has an appreciation for the aesthetics of how things

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Speaker 1: are built. And Steve would later recall that, like his

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Speaker 1: dad builds most of the family furniture, and he's the

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Speaker 1: kind of guy who when he's making a bookcase, he

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Speaker 1: doesn't just put like a thin sheet of like board

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Speaker 1: like basically like like particle board at the back of

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Speaker 1: the bookcase. He uses like real wood for that too,

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Speaker 1: even though not really going to see it, because he's

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Speaker 1: one of those guys where he's like what it matters

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Speaker 1: how the whole thing is constructed, you know, And he's

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Speaker 1: going to one of the kind of the earliest lessons

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Speaker 1: Steve is going to learn is he's going to walk

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Speaker 1: him through like how cars are designed the way they are,

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Speaker 1: and like what stuff he appreciates about the industrial design

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Speaker 1: of cars, and Steve is going to be primarily an

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Speaker 1: aesthetics guy. When we talk about the stuff that Steve

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Speaker 1: Jobs was actually a genius at, it's understanding what people

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Speaker 1: want to hold in their hand, you know, Like that's

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Speaker 1: a thing that he was legitimately probably the best at

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Speaker 1: in the industry. Is like knowing people, this is what

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Speaker 1: people tactile in a tactile sense want, and he gets

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Speaker 1: that from his adopted father. Paul would note that he

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Speaker 1: wasn't really interested in getting his hands dirty, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: the two get a lot of bonding time in It's

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Speaker 1: pretty important to note the extent to which Paul gives

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Speaker 1: Steve kind of the skill that is going to be

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Speaker 1: like one of his primary assets when he's when he

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Speaker 1: gets into business. So it's a pretty good childhood that said,

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Speaker 1: he still deals with, you know, the fact that he

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Speaker 1: has adopted the fact that he was given up is

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Speaker 1: to some extent, kind of this cross he has to bear.

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Speaker 1: When Steve is six or seven, a girl on his

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Speaker 1: street finds out that he had been adopted and asks him, so,

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Speaker 1: does that mean your real parents didn't want you? Which

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Speaker 1: is the kind of like casually horrible thing children say.

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Speaker 2: To each other.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And Steve would later recall quote, lightning bolts

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Speaker 1: went off in my head. I remember running into the

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Speaker 1: house crying and my parents said, no, you have to understand.

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Speaker 1: They were very serious and looked me straight in the eye.

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Speaker 1: They said, we specifically picked you out. Both of my

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Speaker 1: parents said that and repeated it slowly to me, and

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Speaker 1: they put an emphasis on every word in that sentence.

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Speaker 1: And this is like there's a lot of argument. A

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Speaker 1: lot of people who were friends with him and knew

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Speaker 1: him will say that, like the fact that he was

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Speaker 1: given up causes this deep insecurity in him, and it's

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Speaker 1: kind of the root of a lot of the unpleasantness

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Speaker 1: in his personality. A lot of like the cruel stuff

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Speaker 1: that he'll do, is this damage she suffers as a

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Speaker 1: result being given up Steve never really admitst that himself.

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Speaker 1: He doesn't seem to feel that was the case. And

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Speaker 1: while he's not the most reliable source on himself, I

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Speaker 1: do think that, like it's kind of worth noting his

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Speaker 1: attitude is that, like I'd ever felt abandoned, I felt

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Speaker 1: chosen right.

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Speaker 2: Also, I would not be surprised if for the rest

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Speaker 2: of his life he thought of that girl who said

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Speaker 2: it knows her name, her social Security number, her address,

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Speaker 2: and she can't use iCloud.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I think it's it's probable that like both

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Speaker 1: of those things are are factors, right, that he is

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Speaker 1: both because of how other people treat him as a

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Speaker 1: result of this, Like he grows up with a chip

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Speaker 1: on his shoulder, and also he grows up feeling special

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Speaker 1: because unlike most kids, his parents like specifically picked him

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Speaker 1: as an individual, Like didn't just decide to have a kid,

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Speaker 1: but like saw him before he was their kid and

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Speaker 1: chose him. And that has an impact on how he

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Speaker 1: feels about himself. Right that said, You're going to get

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Speaker 1: a lot of different accounts on this. One of his

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Speaker 1: old friends told Isaacson, I think his desire for complete

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Speaker 1: control of whatever he makes derives directly from his personality

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Speaker 1: and the fact that he was abandoned at birth. He

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Speaker 1: wants to control this environment, and he sees the product

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Speaker 1: as an extension of himself. Isaacson quotes another friend who

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Speaker 1: claims this made Jobs independent because he was quote in

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Speaker 1: a different world than he was born into. I don't

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Speaker 1: know how much you want to take all of that seriously.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that feels like fantasy foot bullshit, Like you just

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Speaker 2: kind of guessing because you'll never get You would have

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Speaker 2: never got the truth out of Jobs, and you're certainly

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Speaker 2: not going to get so many people have been both

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Speaker 2: scorned and made rich by him. It's almost impossible to

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Speaker 2: gauge it is.

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Speaker 1: And it's like, yes, he is a control freak, but

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Speaker 1: most control freaks were not adopted, right, So I don't

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Speaker 1: know that we need to assume that's why, Right, you

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Speaker 1: could he could just as easily get it from the

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Speaker 1: fact that his parents. One thing you can criticize them

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Speaker 1: for is they're too doting on him, right, Like that

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Speaker 1: could just as easily be responsible for this kind of

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Speaker 1: trolling nature is the fact that he always has as

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Speaker 1: a child near total control of his environment because his

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Speaker 1: parents basically don't say no to the kid. Right, you know,

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Speaker 1: a couple of ways this could have gone. One of

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Speaker 1: the things that's a big influence on him is that

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Speaker 1: growing up where he did in California, most of his

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Speaker 1: neighbors are tech guys. Right. This is the tech industry

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Speaker 1: of the sixties the seventies, where the bulk of it

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Speaker 1: is centered around aerospace and defense. And several of these

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Speaker 1: guys take a shine to Steve and he'll go and

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Speaker 1: visit them as they're tinkering in their workshops and they're

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Speaker 1: tinkering Unlike his dad, who's like messing around with cars

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Speaker 1: and furniture, they're tinkering with like speakers, with electronics. Right.

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Speaker 1: So he learns a lot of lessons from them, and

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Speaker 1: at kind of one crucial point when he's a young kid,

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Speaker 1: he's talking to his dad about one of the projects

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Speaker 1: these guys has showed him, and his dad says, well,

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Speaker 1: that's not the way speakers work, and he like corrects

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Speaker 1: his father because he knows more about that stuff than

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Speaker 1: he does, and he kind of has this blinding realization,

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Speaker 1: which I do think maybe it's a little bit of narcissism.

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Speaker 1: He comes to this like blinding realization, Oh my God,

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Speaker 1: I'm smarter than my father, right, which.

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Speaker 2: I don't know that he really is, but what an

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Speaker 2: insane thing to think.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it gets to this the way tech guys

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Speaker 1: think about intelligence, which is it is entirely based around

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Speaker 1: how good you are at like knowing how to do

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Speaker 1: the two things they care about, as opposed to like,

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Speaker 1: but but you can't do all this other stuff, right,

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Speaker 1: Is the fact that you're good at coding make you

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Speaker 1: smarter than a guy who's a heart surgeon or a

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Speaker 1: guy who's a really good automotive mechanic. Well, no, those

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Speaker 1: are different things, and they're all intelligences, you know. But

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Speaker 1: Steve is going to be like, well, because I understood

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Speaker 1: electronics better than my dad did, even though there was

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Speaker 1: a lot of shit he knew better than me, I

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Speaker 1: realized I'm smarter than.

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Speaker 2: Him, right right? And because he did speak, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Because he knows speakers now, and he describes he feels

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Speaker 1: like shame for thinking this, and I'm I'm sure these

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Speaker 1: two things war for themselves in his young mind, but

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Speaker 1: it does kind of say a lot about him, and

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Speaker 1: that's how he interprets this. One's the that Steve does

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Speaker 1: understand at a pretty early age, his mom and dad

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Speaker 1: are kind of willing to roll over for him, you know,

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Speaker 1: and he is able to push them consciously for things

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Speaker 1: that he wants to get. He later recalls that they quote,

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Speaker 1: since I was special and were willing to defer to

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Speaker 1: my needs, and this feeling that he is special and

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Speaker 1: that the world and people around him will naturally ben

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Speaker 1: the need of his wishes. This is more critical, I

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Speaker 1: think than anything in creating Steve's conception of himself. Now,

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Speaker 1: while his parents coddled him, the rest of the world

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Speaker 1: is harsher to him. And the gap between those two realities,

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Speaker 1: the way his parents treat him and the way the

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Speaker 1: world is makes Steven a kind of a cry baby.

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Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote now from the book Infinite

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Speaker 1: Loop by Michael Malone. Steve was also a whiner when

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Speaker 1: he took swim classes at the Mountain View Dolphins Swim Club.

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Speaker 1: One of his classmates, Mark Wozniak, yet more evidence that

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Speaker 1: Silicon Valley has always been a very large small town,

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Speaker 1: would recall he was pretty much a cry baby. He'd

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Speaker 1: lose a race and go go off and cry. He

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Speaker 1: didn't quite fit in with everybody else. He wasn't one

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Speaker 1: of the guys. In fact, he was one of the

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Speaker 1: boys found in every class who get the stuffing knocked

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Speaker 1: out of them on a regular basis, And tears are

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Speaker 1: a constant thing in jobs relation with others. Every when

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Speaker 1: you read stories about him in the early days of Apple,

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Speaker 1: every like four pages he's weeping in a meeting because

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Speaker 1: somebody challenges him on something. He cries openly in business

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Speaker 1: meetings constantly. Anytime there's a fight and someone's like, Steve,

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Speaker 1: you're wrong, will start fucking crying.

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Speaker 2: That is actually the best thing I've ever heard is

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Speaker 2: Steve Joe's weeping the weepy weep way You've.

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Speaker 1: Got You've got two kinds of like big tech executives.

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Speaker 1: You've got Steve Jobs crying because someone disagreed with him

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Speaker 1: and then like going behind their back to get them fired.

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Speaker 1: And then you've got Steve Balmer, former CEO of Microsoft,

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Speaker 1: throwing chairs at people in staff meetings.

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Speaker 2: How just I don't want to skip ahead too much much,

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Speaker 2: but like, how long did he cry for? Did he

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Speaker 2: cry throughout his whole career or was it just the beginning.

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Speaker 1: I think it's just his first period of time at Apple, right,

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Speaker 1: because he's he's there for a while, he helps found it,

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Speaker 1: he against gets forced out, then he starts a couple

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Speaker 1: of companies, and we'll talk about all this later. I

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Speaker 1: don't think he's as much of a tears guy when

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Speaker 1: he comes back to lead out.

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Speaker 2: That's a huge shame because I would have really loved

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Speaker 2: it if he were just constantly crying.

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Speaker 1: He is well into his thirties, that guy, So we

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Speaker 1: can say Stacks now. His early memories. It's also worth

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Speaker 1: noting involve a fair amount of financial precarity, right, which

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Speaker 1: has a significant impact on him. Paul, when he's a

433
00:21:39,080 --> 00:21:41,399
Speaker 1: young kid, takes night classes to get a real estate

434
00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:45,040
Speaker 1: license in the hope of improving the family financial situation.

435
00:21:45,520 --> 00:21:47,679
Speaker 1: And then the bottom falls out of the market and

436
00:21:47,720 --> 00:21:49,959
Speaker 1: the job's family spends a year or so kind of

437
00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:53,359
Speaker 1: barely scraping by. His mom has to take on another job.

438
00:21:53,440 --> 00:21:55,720
Speaker 1: His family is to take out a second mortgage. There's

439
00:21:55,760 --> 00:21:58,560
Speaker 1: a moment when his fourth grade teacher asks him what

440
00:21:58,720 --> 00:22:00,879
Speaker 1: is it you don't understand about the universe, And his

441
00:22:00,960 --> 00:22:03,480
Speaker 1: response is, I don't understand why, all of a sudden,

442
00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:07,240
Speaker 1: my dad is so broke, and I identify with that.

443
00:22:07,320 --> 00:22:10,160
Speaker 1: I had a similar my dad took training to become

444
00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:12,919
Speaker 1: like an Oracle col database administrator, and like got a

445
00:22:12,920 --> 00:22:16,000
Speaker 1: new job in tech right as the tech industry collapsed

446
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:18,560
Speaker 1: in the first dot com crash, and it like ruined

447
00:22:18,600 --> 00:22:20,640
Speaker 1: our family for a while. My mom had to take

448
00:22:20,640 --> 00:22:23,520
Speaker 1: on extra Like that's a traumatic thing for a kid, right,

449
00:22:23,600 --> 00:22:26,600
Speaker 1: realizing that your parents are just scrambling to get by,

450
00:22:27,320 --> 00:22:28,960
Speaker 1: and that's going to have an impact on how he

451
00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:31,640
Speaker 1: treats money, which is, by the way, like a dick.

452
00:22:32,880 --> 00:22:36,280
Speaker 1: He is like weirdly stingy, especially to like his own child.

453
00:22:36,359 --> 00:22:40,440
Speaker 1: But we'll get to that. This combination of financial distress,

454
00:22:40,480 --> 00:22:42,960
Speaker 1: of feeling like you's smarter than everyone, and of being

455
00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:46,439
Speaker 1: bullied leads to a kid who kind of compulsively acts

456
00:22:46,520 --> 00:22:50,360
Speaker 1: out and as an adult jobs Tells his biographer Isaacson, quote,

457
00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:52,960
Speaker 1: I had a good friend named Rick Farentino, and we'd

458
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:55,440
Speaker 1: get into all kind sorts of trouble. We made little

459
00:22:55,440 --> 00:22:58,040
Speaker 1: posters announcing bring your pet to school day. It was

460
00:22:58,080 --> 00:23:01,040
Speaker 1: crazy with dogs chasing cats all over and the teachers

461
00:23:01,040 --> 00:23:04,199
Speaker 1: were beside themselves. Another time they convinced some kids to

462
00:23:04,200 --> 00:23:06,880
Speaker 1: tell them the accommodation numbers for their bike locks. Then

463
00:23:06,920 --> 00:23:09,080
Speaker 1: we went outside and switched all of the locks and

464
00:23:09,119 --> 00:23:11,600
Speaker 1: nobody could get their bikes. It took them until late

465
00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:14,159
Speaker 1: that night to straighten things out. When he was in

466
00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:16,920
Speaker 1: third grade, the pranks became a bit more dangerous. One time,

467
00:23:16,960 --> 00:23:19,240
Speaker 1: we set off an explosive under the chair of our teacher,

468
00:23:19,320 --> 00:23:22,360
Speaker 1: Miss Thurman. We gave her a nervous twitch. What the.

469
00:23:23,800 --> 00:23:25,120
Speaker 2: Steve jumps the djoko?

470
00:23:25,600 --> 00:23:30,600
Speaker 1: Yeah you would go to prison for that today, school

471
00:23:30,600 --> 00:23:32,520
Speaker 1: resource officer shoot you?

472
00:23:32,840 --> 00:23:36,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, how fuck o, little man.

473
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:39,520
Speaker 1: It's the My dad would tell me stories of like, yeah,

474
00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:41,679
Speaker 1: we used to all have everyone had a pocket knife

475
00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:44,960
Speaker 1: in school, and like, you know, my family, who grew

476
00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:47,800
Speaker 1: up more in Oklahoma when in like the seventies, was like, yeah,

477
00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:50,440
Speaker 1: kids would take their rifles to school, like and they

478
00:23:50,520 --> 00:23:52,719
Speaker 1: keep them in their cars and shit during deer season.

479
00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:54,920
Speaker 2: Would yeah, you don't.

480
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:56,600
Speaker 1: People just don't do that anymore.

481
00:23:56,880 --> 00:23:59,600
Speaker 2: You'll go to dude too woke, Yeah, dude of woke.

482
00:24:01,840 --> 00:24:04,600
Speaker 1: So this is all pretty I mean, I think that

483
00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:07,359
Speaker 1: is a little extreme even for the time, But neither

484
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:10,920
Speaker 1: Paul or Clara ever disciplined Steve for this behavior. Paul

485
00:24:10,960 --> 00:24:13,640
Speaker 1: even tells his teachers, if you can't keep him interested,

486
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:17,600
Speaker 1: it's your fault. Basically, if he's not challenged enough at school,

487
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:19,959
Speaker 1: it's because you guys are doing a bad job as teachers.

488
00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:22,879
Speaker 1: And whatever he does is justified, which is maybe not

489
00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:24,400
Speaker 1: the best lesson to teach him.

490
00:24:24,520 --> 00:24:26,359
Speaker 2: This is straight up what they told me with my

491
00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 2: Bengal cats. Yeah, if they're two bits, like if they're

492
00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:32,480
Speaker 2: meowing all the time, it's because you're not entertaining them. Like,

493
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:34,280
Speaker 2: that's right, Jesus.

494
00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:36,919
Speaker 1: If only someone had given Steve one of those like

495
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:38,800
Speaker 1: balls of yarn that you like, hang from the roof

496
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:41,680
Speaker 1: so he can big wheel. Yeah, it's real that he can.

497
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:45,760
Speaker 1: He can spin around. That's all he needed. Even when

498
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:47,639
Speaker 1: Steve he gets kicked out of the first grade at

499
00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:50,159
Speaker 1: one point, and he's still not punished for it, and

500
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:53,199
Speaker 1: so again he grows up. And I'm mixed about this.

501
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:56,760
Speaker 1: I think we generally kids are punished more often than

502
00:24:56,800 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: they ought to be for shit that they probably shouldn't

503
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:01,240
Speaker 1: be punished for. But also at a certain point, if

504
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:04,200
Speaker 1: you're putting explosives under your teacher's chair, you probably should

505
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:04,879
Speaker 1: be punished.

506
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:09,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like Palo Alta Kaita needs to be

507
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:13,679
Speaker 2: put down, like Jesus fucking So, there were signs early then.

508
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, that he was. He was he does

509
00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 1: not really care about how his actions harm other people, right,

510
00:25:20,520 --> 00:25:24,680
Speaker 1: pretty early. Thing that we can see happening here, and

511
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:26,560
Speaker 1: you know, part of what he's going to grow up

512
00:25:26,560 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 1: believing is that when he behaves badly at someone else's fault.

513
00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:31,840
Speaker 1: You know, it's the school's fault for making him memorize

514
00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:34,040
Speaker 1: stupid stuff rather than stimulating him.

515
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:34,480
Speaker 2: Right.

516
00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:39,240
Speaker 1: One teacher does eventually figure Jobs out right, and she's

517
00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:42,560
Speaker 1: able to turn him into an excellent student. And the

518
00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 1: way she does this, I've never heard of a teacher

519
00:25:44,119 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 1: doing this. She pays him when he does his homework,

520
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 1: She gives him money to do his homework, right, yeah,

521
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:52,879
Speaker 1: which is and eventually Shot transitions to like giving him

522
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:56,560
Speaker 1: little gifts, these like mechanical toys that he has to build,

523
00:25:57,200 --> 00:25:59,920
Speaker 1: and this works. It turns him into a good student.

524
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:03,400
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's necessarily the lesson you want

525
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:05,879
Speaker 1: to teach a kid, but Steve would later claim that

526
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:08,280
Speaker 1: without her, he thinks he would have gone to jail.

527
00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:11,560
Speaker 1: And I think there's this is actually something I think

528
00:26:11,560 --> 00:26:16,280
Speaker 1: Steve has some insight into himself about Steve Jobs very

529
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:19,360
Speaker 1: well could have become a criminal. Right, he has all

530
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:22,920
Speaker 1: of the things that a criminal needs. He doesn't quite

531
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:25,640
Speaker 1: go that way, but like he's willing to break the law,

532
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:28,960
Speaker 1: he's willing to hurt and cheat people. And maybe he's

533
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:31,280
Speaker 1: right that like this teacher, because she teaches him that

534
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:35,360
Speaker 1: like following within the lines leads to money, that's kind

535
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:37,880
Speaker 1: of the path he goes on the rest of his life.

536
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:38,720
Speaker 2: So maybe she.

537
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 1: Did stop him from being a criminal and turn him

538
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:43,200
Speaker 1: into something that maybe did more harm in the Laura,

539
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:47,159
Speaker 1: But I don't know, that's a debatable. Isaacson talked to

540
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:49,400
Speaker 1: this teacher decades later when he was writing his book

541
00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 1: about jobs, and her favorite memory of Steve was at

542
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:55,200
Speaker 1: the school's annual Hawaii Day, where everyone in the class

543
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:58,400
Speaker 1: got to wear a Hawaiian shirt. Steve showed up without one,

544
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:00,440
Speaker 1: but in pictures from the day he's wearing one because

545
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:02,880
Speaker 1: he convinces another kid to give him the shirt off

546
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:05,280
Speaker 1: of his back, which tells you the degree which he's

547
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:09,119
Speaker 1: already learning how to manipulate people quite well. So his

548
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:12,200
Speaker 1: teachers eventually advised his parents that he should be skipped

549
00:27:12,200 --> 00:27:15,000
Speaker 1: ahead two grades. Now they only move him ahead one grade.

550
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 1: I think his parents are like two is too far

551
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:19,199
Speaker 1: that's going to make him, which is probably, you know,

552
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:22,639
Speaker 1: a responsible call. This seems to have contributed to his

553
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:25,439
Speaker 1: parents viewing him as something of a marvel, and it

554
00:27:25,480 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 1: certainly adds to the bullying right before eighth grade starts.

555
00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:32,199
Speaker 1: In fact, the bullying is so bad that he's like,

556
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:35,240
Speaker 1: I refuse to go to school. Right fall comes around

557
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:36,520
Speaker 1: and they're about to start, and he's like, I'm not

558
00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:38,479
Speaker 1: going to go to school, like I will drop out.

559
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 1: I will refuse to attend unless you move us to

560
00:27:41,600 --> 00:27:45,040
Speaker 1: a more expensive neighborhood and enroll me in a better school. Right,

561
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:47,880
Speaker 1: and I'm going to quote from Michael Malone describing the

562
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:51,240
Speaker 1: threat he makes to his parents over this. When Steve

563
00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:54,399
Speaker 1: Jobs made his ultimatum, the most amazing thing happened. His

564
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: parents agreed. His family moved to a safer and more

565
00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,800
Speaker 1: expensive neighborhood in Sunny Vale, despite the fact that they

566
00:27:59,840 --> 00:28:02,960
Speaker 1: will working extra jobs just to stay solvent, despite the

567
00:28:02,960 --> 00:28:05,119
Speaker 1: fact that it meant an even longer commute for his father,

568
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 1: and pulled his sister out of elementary school. This was power,

569
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:13,679
Speaker 1: and Stephen Jobs learned its lesson great Yep, maybe not

570
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 1: a great lesson to teach this kid.

571
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:16,359
Speaker 2: Yep.

572
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:19,639
Speaker 1: But I by using threats, he can manipulate reality.

573
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:22,520
Speaker 2: None of this, and I've been in the tech industry

574
00:28:22,560 --> 00:28:25,520
Speaker 2: about fifteen years, none of this has ever come up

575
00:28:25,560 --> 00:28:29,000
Speaker 2: with People including people like o Malek or Walt Mossberg

576
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:31,399
Speaker 2: have talked about Steve Jobs so much their eyes blade.

577
00:28:31,880 --> 00:28:33,840
Speaker 2: No one ever talks about the fact that he is

578
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 2: some combination of like Dennis the Menace and the Joker.

579
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:41,320
Speaker 1: He has did it yet, just and that's next with

580
00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:44,640
Speaker 1: the fucking Joker. It's this is why I like I

581
00:28:45,400 --> 00:28:48,440
Speaker 1: use because Isaacson talks. One thing Isaacson is good at

582
00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 1: is getting access. So he does you have to use

583
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 1: his biography because there's a lot of stories you get

584
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 1: from people who grew up with Steve that you only

585
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 1: get in Isaacson's book.

586
00:28:56,360 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 2: Right.

587
00:28:57,040 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: But Malone's book Infinite Loop because Malone hasn't bought the

588
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 1: kool aid. And also, Infinite Loop is written before Jobs.

589
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: It's kind of published like a year or two after

590
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 1: he comes back to Apple, but it's before he's turned

591
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 1: Apple into the wealthiest and most powerful company in the world. Right,

592
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:19,640
Speaker 1: So the story of Steve Jobs is different. When Malone

593
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:21,440
Speaker 1: writes Infinite Loop, it's the story of a man who

594
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:24,000
Speaker 1: founds a company, makes a lot of money, makes a

595
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 1: series of horrible decisions, and almost drives the company into bankruptcy. Right,

596
00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:31,560
Speaker 1: And so as a result, it's a much more cynical

597
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 1: look at jobs, and so you get, I think, a

598
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 1: more tempered view of who he is as a person.

599
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:42,160
Speaker 1: It's not nearly as popular a book as Isaacson's, but

600
00:29:42,320 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 1: I think it's a better one. So anyway, we use

601
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:47,960
Speaker 1: a lot of books for these episodes. But you know

602
00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: who hates books and reading in general.

603
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:54,000
Speaker 3: Robert, what who are you referring to.

604
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 1: The sponsors of our podcast, Sophie?

605
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 3: You know, I hope it's an ad for public libraries

606
00:29:58,920 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 3: and how great they are.

607
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:02,160
Speaker 1: Listen, folks, you don't need to learn how to read.

608
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 1: All you need to know how to do is type

609
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:07,200
Speaker 1: your credit card information into the websites of our sponsors.

610
00:30:07,480 --> 00:30:10,760
Speaker 3: Did you see that that the public libraries in New

611
00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 3: York are closed on the weekends, but they had funding

612
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:15,440
Speaker 3: for the NYPD dance troupe?

613
00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were. They were terrible. They weren't. It

614
00:30:19,440 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 2: was it was they weren't.

615
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:25,400
Speaker 1: Even in time. Everyone's read Moby Dick. What we haven't

616
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 1: seen as cops fail at dancing.

617
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 2: Then someone just throws an kon onto the stage and

618
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:38,560
Speaker 2: they just unloaded that this thousand sty good stuff.

619
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 1: All right, here's ads and we're back. So, you know,

620
00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:52,760
Speaker 1: Steve is coming up. He's in school around the same

621
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 1: time Gates is, you know, around the same time that

622
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 1: whole first gin of tech founders is. And they all

623
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:00,440
Speaker 1: have a similar experience, which is they all in counter

624
00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:04,760
Speaker 1: computers early on and before most people in the country,

625
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:07,920
Speaker 1: including most adults, have any firsthand experience with computers. Bill Gates,

626
00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: it's because his parents send me to a fancy private

627
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:12,920
Speaker 1: school and they buy a computer for the school. In

628
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: Steve's case, it's because he joins the Explorers Club, which

629
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: is like, you know, Hewlett Packard, the company. Hewlett Packard

630
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 1: is like the chief sexy tech company of the day.

631
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 1: Right now, it's kind of a boring brand, but Hewlett

632
00:31:25,440 --> 00:31:29,320
Speaker 1: Packard is like innovative. They are like the smartest motherfuckers

633
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 1: in the state, right Like that's how people think about HP.

634
00:31:32,880 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 1: And HP has this thing that's like that. It's like

635
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:38,520
Speaker 1: HP's boy Scouts, right It's like a tech focused boy

636
00:31:38,520 --> 00:31:40,680
Speaker 1: Scouts where kids get you know, you can go into

637
00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:43,800
Speaker 1: the HP offices, and these kids can get access to

638
00:31:43,840 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 1: a computer and like code on it, put in. And

639
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:49,440
Speaker 1: at this point, people don't have individual computers. Computers are

640
00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:52,840
Speaker 1: things that are like owned by large institutions. You don't

641
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:54,760
Speaker 1: just like have one in your house, right, it's not

642
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:57,560
Speaker 1: really feasible, you know. And so the fact that Steve

643
00:31:57,600 --> 00:32:00,640
Speaker 1: gets first hand experienced with a computer here is really noteworthy,

644
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 1: and he falls in love with it. He's like fascinated

645
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 1: with this thing. And one of these things that Steve

646
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:08,680
Speaker 1: has from an early age is he has incredible intuition

647
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:14,720
Speaker 1: about certain things. Right, he understands what people want in technology,

648
00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 1: and he understands what's going to be big in technology,

649
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:19,959
Speaker 1: and as soon as he gets his hands on a computer,

650
00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:23,680
Speaker 1: he's like, this is the future. And he also from

651
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 1: an early age, is really good at getting what he

652
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: wants out of people. He's working on a project for

653
00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:31,400
Speaker 1: the Explorers Club at one point and he needs some

654
00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:35,120
Speaker 1: like hard to find parts that HP makes, and they're

655
00:32:35,120 --> 00:32:38,320
Speaker 1: not in any like catalogs. So he he finds the

656
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:42,280
Speaker 1: CEO of HP's home phone number and he calls him

657
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 1: and is like, hey, I need these parts. He like

658
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:47,680
Speaker 1: talks him into sending the parts over so that he

659
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:51,000
Speaker 1: can like finish this project. And you know the guy

660
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:52,960
Speaker 1: he's talking to is Bill Hewitt. You know, he's the

661
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: CEO and he's one of the founders of the company.

662
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:56,800
Speaker 1: And once he makes he doesn't just make this connection

663
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 1: get some parts out of him. He starts because Hewitt's

664
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 1: kind of pressed with this kid and his gumpchin. He

665
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:04,920
Speaker 1: pushes until Hewitt gives him a summer job at HP

666
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: as well. And this is going to be Steve's first job.

667
00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:11,040
Speaker 1: So you know, that's a pretty that shows fairly few

668
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:13,920
Speaker 1: children are able to do something like that, right have

669
00:33:13,960 --> 00:33:19,000
Speaker 1: the wherewithal to do that, Steve Dutz and that's noteworthy. Now,

670
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:22,240
Speaker 1: probably the single most important moment of his childhood comes

671
00:33:22,280 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 1: when he is sixteen, and this is when he meets

672
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:30,120
Speaker 1: another kid, another Steve named Steve Wohniak. The WAWS, as

673
00:33:30,160 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: he came to be known, is several years older than Steve,

674
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 1: and he is he is the kind of guy all

675
00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:39,200
Speaker 1: of these tech founders want to be Steve jobs all

676
00:33:39,280 --> 00:33:43,160
Speaker 1: of them also pretend to be Steve Wosniak, because Wosniak

677
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 1: is the thing that almost none of these guys are.

678
00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:49,320
Speaker 1: He is a legitimate technological genius and also a legitimately

679
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:51,720
Speaker 1: nice guy and a very nice a very nice man.

680
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:55,000
Speaker 1: I literally met him two weeks ago and we just

681
00:33:55,080 --> 00:33:57,880
Speaker 1: talked about tech shit for like an hour, and he

682
00:33:58,000 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 1: was the sweetest guy and knew what he was told

683
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:02,600
Speaker 1: and about ye like, and I've met a lot of

684
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 1: founders and I've met Steve Jobs obviously, and they're usually

685
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:09,839
Speaker 1: it's very fucking weird. He's just like a nice guy,

686
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:13,760
Speaker 1: like nice old man who's just like loves tak. Yeah

687
00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 1: that's a shame they know more of them like him. Yeah,

688
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:18,880
Speaker 1: it is a shame, and it's and he is one

689
00:34:18,920 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 1: of these guys. He is from a very early age,

690
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:26,239
Speaker 1: just an absolute genius at technology. He and Steve go

691
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 1: to the same high school. He's like, I think four

692
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:31,440
Speaker 1: or five years older than Steve, so he's graduated by

693
00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:33,440
Speaker 1: the time that they meet, but he's he's still he's

694
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:35,520
Speaker 1: hanging out with some of lower classmen that he knew

695
00:34:35,600 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 1: when he was still in school. And one of these

696
00:34:38,080 --> 00:34:40,200
Speaker 1: guys is a friend of Steve's. And that's how Steve

697
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: Jobs and Steve Wozniak meet. Now. The Waws is the

698
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:46,880
Speaker 1: son of a Lockheed engineer and he's he's one of

699
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: these people who's always innately brilliant with circuits and machines.

700
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:52,919
Speaker 1: One of the things he's famous for is he's he's

701
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:56,400
Speaker 1: able to a big part of early computing is figuring

702
00:34:56,440 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 1: out how to do things with fewer chips, basically, and

703
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 1: he is great at that at efficiency, because the more

704
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:06,279
Speaker 1: efficient you make it, the more shit you can fit

705
00:35:06,360 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 1: into a smaller package effectively. I'm people who are real

706
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 1: tickets are going to yell at me for like summarizing

707
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:14,279
Speaker 1: it that way, but he is like the best at

708
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:16,840
Speaker 1: optimizing shit to make it more efficient.

709
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 2: Right.

710
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:20,320
Speaker 1: One of the first things he builds is a digital

711
00:35:20,360 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 1: it's called a blue box, and it is at the time,

712
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:27,120
Speaker 1: the way the phone system works is phones send tones

713
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:31,040
Speaker 1: to each other in order to transmit commands, right, And

714
00:35:31,120 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 1: so if you can mimic the tone that a phone

715
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:38,120
Speaker 1: sends the central machine or whatever to say like authorize

716
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:40,959
Speaker 1: a long distance call, then you can get free long

717
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:45,200
Speaker 1: distance calls. And the box they basically Wosniak finds this

718
00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:48,480
Speaker 1: guide to how the phone company is like shit works,

719
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:51,200
Speaker 1: and he emulates all of these things. So he makes

720
00:35:51,239 --> 00:35:54,360
Speaker 1: this box that you can use to hack the phone system.

721
00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:56,279
Speaker 1: If you have one of these, you can make the

722
00:35:56,280 --> 00:35:58,799
Speaker 1: phones do whatever you want for free. Right, you can

723
00:35:58,800 --> 00:36:00,680
Speaker 1: get free calls, and that's a big deal because that's

724
00:36:00,719 --> 00:36:04,040
Speaker 1: a major expense at the time. Right Jobs works on

725
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:07,319
Speaker 1: the project with Wosniak. Wosniak's obviously the big technical mind,

726
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:09,680
Speaker 1: but it's like a thing that they do together. And

727
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:13,319
Speaker 1: for the Wosniak, he wants this thing for himself because

728
00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:15,319
Speaker 1: it's a nice gizmo to have and it's a fun

729
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 1: technical challenge. But that's kind of the extent of his

730
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:22,120
Speaker 1: interest in making this thing. Steve sees this differently. He's like,

731
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:25,360
Speaker 1: we can sell this, We can make some money with

732
00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 1: this invention of yours, and so he convinces Wosniak to

733
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:32,400
Speaker 1: mass produce and sell his blue box. This is a

734
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:36,160
Speaker 1: serious crime, right, you are hacking the phone system here.

735
00:36:36,400 --> 00:36:40,319
Speaker 1: This is so fucking illegal what they're doing. What Steve

736
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:42,719
Speaker 1: is saying is basically it is not any different from

737
00:36:42,719 --> 00:36:45,399
Speaker 1: in a legal sense, from saying we should sell Heroin, right,

738
00:36:45,840 --> 00:36:47,920
Speaker 1: like he is saying, we need to get into business

739
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:52,000
Speaker 1: committing a series of crimes. Right, And the two kind

740
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:54,959
Speaker 1: of get into this a lot like other kids treat

741
00:36:55,080 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 1: selling weed, Right, this is there like selling pot to

742
00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:00,399
Speaker 1: make pocket money. Thing of like when when Steve Jobs

743
00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:02,840
Speaker 1: as in high school and he doesn't know anything about

744
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 1: marketing yet, but he understands something about like what the

745
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 1: customer base is, and he knows that the people who

746
00:37:08,560 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 1: are going to want this thing most and be able

747
00:37:10,040 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 1: to afford it are college kids, right. They have some

748
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:15,160
Speaker 1: amount of money, some amount of financial independence, and they

749
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:18,720
Speaker 1: also are frustrated by how expensive it is to make calls.

750
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:20,719
Speaker 1: They can't make all the calls they want, they can't

751
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:22,560
Speaker 1: run their social life the way they want because using

752
00:37:22,560 --> 00:37:25,239
Speaker 1: your phone costs money. So if we can sell them

753
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 1: this device, this is the group that's going to be

754
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:28,800
Speaker 1: most interested in having it and willing to break the

755
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:31,439
Speaker 1: law to have it. So they go door to door

756
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:34,759
Speaker 1: at college campuses, knocking on dorms and offering these very

757
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:40,399
Speaker 1: illegal products to whoever opens the door. Wozniak relentlessly works

758
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:43,439
Speaker 1: to improve the device, whilst Jobs kind of smooths out

759
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,320
Speaker 1: the business side of things. One of his innovative crime

760
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, the crime part he writes out handwritten customer

761
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:55,040
Speaker 1: service guarantees. He like basically writes a warranty.

762
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:58,120
Speaker 2: An SLA for yeah for crime.

763
00:37:58,640 --> 00:38:02,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, he has a crime a crime warranty beautiful. Yeah,

764
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:04,400
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's awesome.

765
00:38:04,719 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, I take everything back. He's not a boss that

766
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:08,000
Speaker 2: he's genius.

767
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:11,479
Speaker 1: No, No, he is ahead of his time, and it's yeah,

768
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 1: you could argue maybe a bad idea for an illegal product,

769
00:38:14,440 --> 00:38:16,240
Speaker 1: but it's good business sense, you know, it makes people

770
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:19,240
Speaker 1: comfortable in the product. And he and Wosniak make about

771
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:22,200
Speaker 1: six thousand dollars selling these things, which is a lot

772
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 1: of money at the time, like that's good money. It

773
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:27,400
Speaker 1: all kind of falls apart when one customer pulls a

774
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:30,839
Speaker 1: gun on them and steals a device. Jobs is kind

775
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 1: of like, well, that's all the appetite for risk I have,

776
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 1: and he decides to quit at that point. Wosniak, maybe

777
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:42,560
Speaker 1: just because he's a little less wise about danger, continues

778
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:45,560
Speaker 1: selling these things for a while, and Jobs just takes

779
00:38:45,560 --> 00:38:47,879
Speaker 1: a cut even though he's no longer part of the work.

780
00:38:49,239 --> 00:38:52,440
Speaker 1: What makes Wosniak stop is that, like this elder phone

781
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:54,759
Speaker 1: freaker who'd helped him work out the blue box gets

782
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 1: arrested by the Feds, and Wosniak is like, oh shit,

783
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 1: maybe there are consequences for breaking federal laws. You gould stop. Yeah,

784
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:04,640
Speaker 1: crime's illegal.

785
00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:09,400
Speaker 2: No, just one more thing. It's a crime, an.

786
00:39:09,239 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: Insanely great crime. So the summer Steve and other Steve

787
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:18,200
Speaker 1: sold their blue boxes was the last summer of Jobs's childhood,

788
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:21,200
Speaker 1: and he was already quite independent. He'd fallen for a

789
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:24,319
Speaker 1: girl at his high school, Chrisanne Brennan. They had met

790
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:26,480
Speaker 1: at Homestead High School that same year, and she was

791
00:39:26,520 --> 00:39:30,040
Speaker 1: about a year below him. Their daughter Lisa, described their

792
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:33,360
Speaker 1: meat cute this way. On Wednesdays through the night, she

793
00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:35,680
Speaker 1: animated a student film in the high school quad with

794
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:37,919
Speaker 1: a group of friends. One of those nights, my father

795
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:40,239
Speaker 1: approached her in the spotlight where she stood waiting to

796
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:42,640
Speaker 1: move the claymation characters, and handed her a page of

797
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan lyrics he'd typed out sad eyed Lady of

798
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:48,640
Speaker 1: the Lowlands. I want it back when you're done, he said,

799
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:54,680
Speaker 1: and that weird anecdote would kind of symbolize the next

800
00:39:54,719 --> 00:39:57,360
Speaker 1: forty years of their relationship, him doing stuff that's like

801
00:39:57,440 --> 00:40:02,160
Speaker 1: almost sweet and then also we weirdly shitty's He's an

802
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:04,880
Speaker 1: odd man in terms of the way he courts people,

803
00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 1: but he is sweet at the start of things. He

804
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:10,640
Speaker 1: like flirts with her by showing up because she's this

805
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,640
Speaker 1: thing she's animating is like kind of risque, and the

806
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:16,279
Speaker 1: school doesn't really want them doing it, so they have

807
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:18,040
Speaker 1: to kind of do it in secret. And so he'll

808
00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:20,719
Speaker 1: show up to sessions where she's animating these figures and

809
00:40:20,760 --> 00:40:23,080
Speaker 1: he'll hold candles up while she works on them so

810
00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 1: that she can work in the dark, which is legitimately

811
00:40:26,040 --> 00:40:29,879
Speaker 1: pretty romantic. After he graduates, he asks her to move

812
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:32,600
Speaker 1: in with him in a cabin off in the countryside

813
00:40:32,640 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: a little bit for the summer, and his parents aren't

814
00:40:35,160 --> 00:40:38,520
Speaker 1: happy that he's like moving with this chick he met

815
00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:41,839
Speaker 1: into a cabin before starting college, but they can't really

816
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:42,799
Speaker 1: say no to their kids.

817
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:44,960
Speaker 2: So he should have thought about that before you trained

818
00:40:45,040 --> 00:40:47,040
Speaker 2: him that he can do whatever he wants forever.

819
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:49,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, this one's really on you, guys.

820
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:50,640
Speaker 2: Yeah.

821
00:40:50,719 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 1: So they have an idyllic summer together, funded by the

822
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:56,160
Speaker 1: illegal phone freaking boxes that Steve had been selling. Now,

823
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 1: he had already started smoking pot before they met, but

824
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: she introduced him to LSD and he's later going to

825
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:05,240
Speaker 1: say this is like maybe the most significant intellectual moment

826
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:07,760
Speaker 1: of his life. When he takes acid for the first time,

827
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:10,879
Speaker 1: which you know, I don't feel all that different about

828
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:12,480
Speaker 1: me taking acid for the first time. A lot of

829
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:16,040
Speaker 1: people have this experience, and like most kids who have

830
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 1: a profound experience taking acid in high school, he leaves

831
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 1: after graduating to go to Read College in Portland, Oregon.

832
00:41:24,640 --> 00:41:27,040
Speaker 1: And Read is that kind of college, right, It is

833
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: the like kind of hippie star child school that's like

834
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 1: a big part of its reputation. And chris Anne kind

835
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:37,360
Speaker 1: of breaks up with him before he leaves for school.

836
00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:40,719
Speaker 1: We don't really know entirely why it happens. I think

837
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 1: it's partly a result that like neither of them are

838
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:46,520
Speaker 1: good at communicating. So Steve doesn't say, hey, I want

839
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:49,239
Speaker 1: to make this thing more official, and chris Anne is

840
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:51,320
Speaker 1: kind of like, well then you know, I'm going to

841
00:41:51,400 --> 00:41:53,360
Speaker 1: go move on with my life, right, And she starts

842
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:56,560
Speaker 1: dating somebody else, but he's in love with her, and

843
00:41:56,640 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 1: so he's kind of devastated, and at least in the

844
00:42:00,320 --> 00:42:04,560
Speaker 1: account that chris Ann gives, he never really forgives her

845
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:06,400
Speaker 1: for breaking up with him. This is going to be

846
00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:08,319
Speaker 1: relevant because the person he's going to take this out

847
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 1: on primarily is the child they later have together, but

848
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:15,839
Speaker 1: that has not happened. Yet Steve goes to read He's

849
00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:19,200
Speaker 1: only in school for like six months, and then he

850
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 1: decides school is not for me because school is where

851
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:25,600
Speaker 1: people teach you things, and I don't have anything to

852
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:26,680
Speaker 1: learn from other people.

853
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:27,120
Speaker 2: Right.

854
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:31,520
Speaker 1: So he doesn't fully drop out, though, because Reid is

855
00:42:31,520 --> 00:42:34,960
Speaker 1: this kind of school where they're like, look, we cater

856
00:42:35,120 --> 00:42:39,080
Speaker 1: to weird people, right, like to folks who are off

857
00:42:39,120 --> 00:42:43,120
Speaker 1: the beaten path intellectually. The administrator there is like, well,

858
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:45,359
Speaker 1: if you're not in class and paying, you can still

859
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:48,200
Speaker 1: just show up to school classes that interest you. You know,

860
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:51,759
Speaker 1: that's fine. They call it auditing classes. I don't think

861
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 1: he's really auditing them, but he does kind of just

862
00:42:53,480 --> 00:42:57,040
Speaker 1: bum around campus for like a year, And the most

863
00:42:57,080 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 1: influential part of this is he winds up taking a

864
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: calligraphy class, and he will later claim this is why

865
00:43:03,080 --> 00:43:06,000
Speaker 1: when the Mac comes out, it allows multiple type phases,

866
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:08,240
Speaker 1: and it's like the I think the first personal computer

867
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:10,919
Speaker 1: where you can pick your font basically, and he would

868
00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:14,160
Speaker 1: later tell Isaacson, since Windows just copied the Mac, it's

869
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:16,799
Speaker 1: likely that no personal computer would have them if he

870
00:43:16,880 --> 00:43:20,080
Speaker 1: hadn't put them in the Mac. And it's arguable that

871
00:43:20,080 --> 00:43:23,359
Speaker 1: that's true. He definitely like cares more about that shit

872
00:43:23,440 --> 00:43:24,880
Speaker 1: than most of the people.

873
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:26,879
Speaker 2: But you're telling me, no, one would think, well, if

874
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 2: the rights look different in history, I think.

875
00:43:30,080 --> 00:43:34,520
Speaker 1: We would have eventually stumbled on to fonts. Steve he

876
00:43:34,520 --> 00:43:37,520
Speaker 1: didn't invent design, No, but he doesn't have an impact

877
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 1: on like why it's a priority for the.

878
00:43:39,640 --> 00:43:41,640
Speaker 2: Max, Right, and I can buy that.

879
00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:45,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, he makes some friends at READ, including some folks

880
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:49,600
Speaker 1: who'd become early Apple employees, like Elizabeth Holmes, the girl

881
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 1: friend of his first of his best friend in college.

882
00:43:52,640 --> 00:43:54,000
Speaker 1: Is what I was saying when like, there's a weird

883
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:57,120
Speaker 1: number of people who whose names are later famous because

884
00:43:57,120 --> 00:43:57,759
Speaker 1: of somebody else.

885
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:01,840
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Holmes. I thought she was much younger than Yeah.

886
00:44:01,920 --> 00:44:04,280
Speaker 1: This Elizabeth Holmes is a major part of the Steve

887
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:08,360
Speaker 1: Jobs story, which is funny because the criminal Elizabeth Holmes

888
00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:13,160
Speaker 1: patterns her entire image off of Steve Jobs, right, huh, Yeah,

889
00:44:13,239 --> 00:44:17,000
Speaker 1: it's a weird little quinky dink. Here's how Isaacson describes

890
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Holmes this one meeting Steve Jobs. He insulted her

891
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: at their first meeting by grilling her about how much

892
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:24,919
Speaker 1: money it would take to get her to have sex

893
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:25,640
Speaker 1: with another man.

894
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 2: What a charming fellow, Steve jobs this, Wait, what an

895
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:37,879
Speaker 2: insane conversation to have with anyone that's fucking nutsy? Hey,

896
00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:38,920
Speaker 2: what's up anyway?

897
00:44:40,239 --> 00:44:42,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, we get you to fuck that guy?

898
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:44,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, not me, just another guy.

899
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 1: And it's he's also in this being shitty to her

900
00:44:47,640 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 1: boyfriend because in front of him too, he's like, I

901
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:51,560
Speaker 1: wonder how much it would cost to get you to

902
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:54,080
Speaker 1: fuck someone else? Right, But her boyfriend is a guy

903
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 1: named Daniel Kottkey, and Dan is a Buddhist, right, and

904
00:44:57,239 --> 00:45:01,680
Speaker 1: he's a very mellow person. He is kind. He's one

905
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:04,520
Speaker 1: of the big early influences on Steve's growing interest in

906
00:45:04,560 --> 00:45:08,240
Speaker 1: Eastern spirituality, right, and he and Dan become best friends

907
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 1: for a while. Steve's biggest influence is a book that

908
00:45:11,239 --> 00:45:13,960
Speaker 1: they both love called be Here Now, which is a

909
00:45:14,000 --> 00:45:18,600
Speaker 1: guide to meditation and psychedelic drugs. Steve becomes particularly enthralled

910
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:21,440
Speaker 1: with Zen Buddhism, and particularly the importance that it places

911
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:24,399
Speaker 1: on intuition, which Steve has begun to believe matters more

912
00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:26,800
Speaker 1: than formal knowledge, because again, he's never going to be

913
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:30,200
Speaker 1: a guy who was an impressive formal knowledge credential. And

914
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:32,560
Speaker 1: if you're that kind of guy. It kind of behooves

915
00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:34,920
Speaker 1: you to think that what matters most is this kind

916
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:38,160
Speaker 1: of ineffable and unprovable sense that my intuition is better

917
00:45:38,200 --> 00:45:38,880
Speaker 1: than other people's.

918
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't need to be small, I need to

919
00:45:40,600 --> 00:45:42,320
Speaker 2: be right, I think is how he feels.

920
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:45,680
Speaker 1: Yes very much. And you know who else doesn't need

921
00:45:45,719 --> 00:45:51,200
Speaker 1: to be smart but is always right. Sponsors of this podcast,

922
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:03,040
Speaker 1: We're Back soh College is also aware in addition to

923
00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:06,799
Speaker 1: kind of getting into zen Buddhism, it's where Steve's dietary

924
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:10,239
Speaker 1: preferences take a spin off the beaten path that will

925
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: ultimately cause his death. Steve had always been a picky

926
00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:16,800
Speaker 1: eater as a kid, and he'd always kind of preferred

927
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 1: fruit and vegetables to anything else. He has this kind

928
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:22,800
Speaker 1: of natural aversion to I think, particularly like red meats

929
00:46:22,840 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 1: and also poultry, it seems like. But in his freshman

930
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:29,560
Speaker 1: year he reads a book called Diet for a Small Planet.

931
00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:33,840
Speaker 1: At the time, it's a fairly groundbreaking bestseller, advocating for

932
00:46:33,960 --> 00:46:36,840
Speaker 1: soy above meat as a protein source and condemning the

933
00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:39,319
Speaker 1: meat industry for its environmental impact. All of that is

934
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:43,319
Speaker 1: very good and perfectly fair, right, None of that's wrong. Steve, though,

935
00:46:43,400 --> 00:46:47,959
Speaker 1: has this tendency to take things too far right. While

936
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:49,759
Speaker 1: diet for a small planet, it spends a lot of

937
00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 1: time discussing necessary combinations of food to ensure optimal health.

938
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:55,080
Speaker 1: If you're going to cut meat out of your diet,

939
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:56,719
Speaker 1: there are things you need to make sure to do

940
00:46:56,840 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 1: so you don't have vitamin deficiencies, right. I think the

941
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 1: most obvious would be, like an iron deficiency. It's easier

942
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 1: to get enough iron if you're eating red meat. You

943
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:05,319
Speaker 1: don't have to eat red meat to have optimal health.

944
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:07,719
Speaker 1: It's healthier not to, but you do need to. You

945
00:47:07,760 --> 00:47:09,719
Speaker 1: do need to take some care in the combinations of

946
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:11,359
Speaker 1: food you have to ensure that you get like enough

947
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:15,759
Speaker 1: iron right. Jobs doesn't really take that part of the

948
00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:18,359
Speaker 1: book to heart, and he instead begins embarking on some

949
00:47:18,480 --> 00:47:23,200
Speaker 1: extreme and experimental diets. For example, sometimes he'll go weeks

950
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 1: eating nothing but fruit.

951
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:24,839
Speaker 2: Right.

952
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:28,120
Speaker 1: At one point, he lives entirely off of carrots and almonds.

953
00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:31,320
Speaker 1: Friends claim that during these periods of eating basically nothing

954
00:47:31,320 --> 00:47:33,960
Speaker 1: but carrots, he has this orange hue to his skin

955
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:38,040
Speaker 1: because of all the fucking carrots he's eating. This is

956
00:47:38,040 --> 00:47:41,319
Speaker 1: not good health, right, This is a level of extremity

957
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:45,000
Speaker 1: that is maladaptive. Right, this is an eating disorder. I

958
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:48,680
Speaker 1: think you could you could fairly characterize this. Yeah, And

959
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:51,960
Speaker 1: this bias towards the extreme leads him away from this

960
00:47:52,040 --> 00:47:54,560
Speaker 1: first book, which is a pretty reasonable book. I don't

961
00:47:54,560 --> 00:47:56,920
Speaker 1: think I've never heard any arguments that it's like wildly

962
00:47:56,960 --> 00:47:59,080
Speaker 1: wrong about anything. I think it's got some good information

963
00:47:59,160 --> 00:48:02,520
Speaker 1: in it him to a book that's significantly less well grounded,

964
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:07,399
Speaker 1: which is called Mucusless Diet Healing System. Now you can

965
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:09,759
Speaker 1: tell from the title that there's going to be some

966
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:12,160
Speaker 1: nonsense in that book, right.

967
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:15,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds like something you would get advertised to

968
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:16,600
Speaker 2: you on Twitter nowadays.

969
00:48:16,680 --> 00:48:18,880
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it sounds like the kind of thing Elon

970
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:22,600
Speaker 1: Musk would buy into and cause himself permanent, like lymphatic

971
00:48:22,719 --> 00:48:25,840
Speaker 1: damage or something. It was written in the early nineteen

972
00:48:25,920 --> 00:48:30,960
Speaker 1: hundreds by a German naturapath named Arnold Ritt. Arnold believed

973
00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:34,200
Speaker 1: that white blood cells were not part of the immune system,

974
00:48:34,480 --> 00:48:37,840
Speaker 1: but a byproduct of mucus producing foods that poison the

975
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:41,320
Speaker 1: blood Erit introduced the concept of an all fruit diet

976
00:48:41,360 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 1: combined with regular fasting in order to rid the body

977
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:48,640
Speaker 1: of dangerous mucus. In nineteen sixty three, a congressional report

978
00:48:48,719 --> 00:48:52,080
Speaker 1: described him as a cult leader whose followers quote believed

979
00:48:52,080 --> 00:48:54,760
Speaker 1: that women who adhered to the diet program of professional

980
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:59,640
Speaker 1: professor Arnold Ritt could expect immaculate conception. In other words,

981
00:48:59,800 --> 00:49:02,000
Speaker 1: if if you follow the diet, you will have a

982
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:07,120
Speaker 1: child without having sex. Right, your body will spontaneously produce

983
00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 1: something that might be a problem of some of the followers.

984
00:49:11,520 --> 00:49:14,799
Speaker 1: So yes, yeah, seems like maybe he was covering up

985
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: for something else. Eric's followers also believe that all mental

986
00:49:18,719 --> 00:49:23,280
Speaker 1: illness was caused by mucus decaying and causing gas pressure

987
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:26,960
Speaker 1: to build up in the brain. Look, folks, I'm not

988
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:30,040
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist, but I feel confident saying that's not what

989
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:34,719
Speaker 1: causes mental illness. That is mental illness.

990
00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:37,160
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna have to side with you on

991
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:40,400
Speaker 2: that one. That doesn't sound right to No.

992
00:49:41,719 --> 00:49:46,880
Speaker 1: I've never because the tech Press Corps is not always

993
00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:49,520
Speaker 1: doing all the work they ought to do, I haven't

994
00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:52,120
Speaker 1: ever run into anyone asking Steve Jobs, do you think

995
00:49:52,160 --> 00:49:55,120
Speaker 1: all mental illness is caused by decaying brain mucus brought

996
00:49:55,120 --> 00:49:56,080
Speaker 1: on by milk drinking.

997
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 2: But I wish they will.

998
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:01,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, why didn't you ask this moss bird?

999
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:06,000
Speaker 2: Oh uh yeah, did you do that? No? Yeah, believe

1000
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:07,880
Speaker 2: this about woman. I don't think he lost them a

1001
00:50:07,960 --> 00:50:08,680
Speaker 2: challenging question.

1002
00:50:09,239 --> 00:50:13,560
Speaker 1: Okay, no, it's very funny. So physicians have noted that

1003
00:50:13,600 --> 00:50:18,200
Speaker 1: the fruitarian diet that Jobs embraces does not contain sufficient protein,

1004
00:50:18,880 --> 00:50:22,600
Speaker 1: and that his fasting schedules could be extremely dangerous. Steve

1005
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:26,320
Speaker 1: Jobs based large portions of his life on this man's teachings,

1006
00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:29,239
Speaker 1: and because he was now eating nearly only fruit, he

1007
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:33,360
Speaker 1: stops bathing. And his belief is that body odor only

1008
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: happens if you eat nasty, mucus causing foods, So if

1009
00:50:37,160 --> 00:50:40,000
Speaker 1: he's not eating those foods, he has no need to bathe.

1010
00:50:40,239 --> 00:50:44,359
Speaker 1: Now everyone around him is tell it, spends twenty years

1011
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:48,319
Speaker 1: telling him, Steve, you smell like fucking dead ass, Like

1012
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 1: take a full crazy that, Yeah, but he is.

1013
00:50:52,800 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 2: He is.

1014
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:55,360
Speaker 1: It's this thing because this is a religious belief of his.

1015
00:50:55,440 --> 00:50:59,560
Speaker 1: He's like, no, I can't smell bad, right because I'm

1016
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:02,080
Speaker 1: not eating the foods that make you smell bad, So

1017
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:06,719
Speaker 1: I will never bathe. Like it's such a weird asshole

1018
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 1: thing to do the way that he insists on this.

1019
00:51:09,600 --> 00:51:12,520
Speaker 1: But this is like Steve Jobs will be the smelly

1020
00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:15,120
Speaker 1: guy for the next twenty years of his life, right.

1021
00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:19,080
Speaker 2: That's insane. Twenty years so well into his career. Apple.

1022
00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:22,040
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, they are constantly telling him, Steve, you have

1023
00:51:22,080 --> 00:51:23,719
Speaker 1: to bathe before we have this meeting with this guy

1024
00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:25,840
Speaker 1: who's going to invest millions of dollars in the company,

1025
00:51:26,200 --> 00:51:28,920
Speaker 1: Like these are serious financial people, Like you can't you

1026
00:51:28,960 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 1: smell like my religion?

1027
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:31,640
Speaker 2: I smell this way?

1028
00:51:31,719 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 1: Because no, it's more like I don't smell this way,

1029
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:37,160
Speaker 1: despite what all of you seem to think.

1030
00:51:37,760 --> 00:51:40,480
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, it's such.

1031
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:44,120
Speaker 1: A weird, unhinged thing to insist on. One of his

1032
00:51:44,200 --> 00:51:47,319
Speaker 1: closest friends while he's living in Oregon is Robert Friedland.

1033
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:51,120
Speaker 1: Now today Friedland is a billionaire mine owner, or at

1034
00:51:51,200 --> 00:51:52,919
Speaker 1: least he was. I don't know, maybe he's dead now,

1035
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:56,080
Speaker 1: but he becomes a billionaire mine owner. Right. But Friedland

1036
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:58,319
Speaker 1: at this point is a rich hippie kid, right, He's

1037
00:51:58,320 --> 00:52:02,120
Speaker 1: into all this Eastern spirituality that Jobs is, and he's

1038
00:52:02,120 --> 00:52:04,799
Speaker 1: got this like Land that's that he has access to

1039
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:08,160
Speaker 1: because he's a rich kid. Right. And Friedland meets Steve

1040
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:11,120
Speaker 1: Jobs when Steve is trying to sell him a typewriter,

1041
00:52:11,440 --> 00:52:14,719
Speaker 1: and he walks in on Friedland having sex with his girlfriend. Right,

1042
00:52:14,960 --> 00:52:17,520
Speaker 1: So he like comes into Friedland's house because he's invited

1043
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 1: there to sell him this typewriter and Friedland's having sex

1044
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:22,640
Speaker 1: and Jobs is like, oh shit, I'll come back later,

1045
00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:27,719
Speaker 1: and Friedland is like, no, wait, sit here, they'll be finish,

1046
00:52:27,760 --> 00:52:31,520
Speaker 1: and like makes Steve wait while he's having sex, and

1047
00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:33,840
Speaker 1: Steve is impressed by this. He's like, wow, that's a

1048
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:37,480
Speaker 1: power move, right, and that guy has sex. As a

1049
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 1: weird aside, Jobs is going to do this to people

1050
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:43,000
Speaker 1: when he is an adult, and the people he's going

1051
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:45,759
Speaker 1: to do this with is much much more fucked up

1052
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:48,920
Speaker 1: than what Friedland is doing here. But this becomes a

1053
00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:52,400
Speaker 1: weird part of Jobs's personality because Jobs is obsessed with

1054
00:52:52,520 --> 00:52:56,160
Speaker 1: Friedland for a while. Isaacson describes Friedland as almost being

1055
00:52:56,280 --> 00:52:59,480
Speaker 1: jobs as guru. Right, this is someone he patterns himself

1056
00:52:59,560 --> 00:53:03,240
Speaker 1: off of. So Friedland gets this farm outside of Portland

1057
00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:05,640
Speaker 1: and he turns it into a commune that kind of

1058
00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:10,400
Speaker 1: it's kind of a lower case C cult, right. People

1059
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:12,760
Speaker 1: tended to listen to Friedland and do what he said,

1060
00:53:13,520 --> 00:53:15,919
Speaker 1: and he has this gift for selling people on even

1061
00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:21,240
Speaker 1: pretty outlandish ideas. Jobs's friend Dan Kottkey later claims Friedland

1062
00:53:21,239 --> 00:53:24,920
Speaker 1: taught Steve the reality distortion field. He was charismatic and

1063
00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:27,399
Speaker 1: a bit of a con man and could bin situations

1064
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:30,920
Speaker 1: to his very strong will. He was mercurial, sure of himself,

1065
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:34,640
Speaker 1: a little dictatorial. Steve admired that, and he became more

1066
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:38,840
Speaker 1: like that after spending time with Robert. Now Friedland introduced

1067
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:42,480
Speaker 1: Jobs to the local Hari Krishna's and they put him

1068
00:53:42,480 --> 00:53:45,680
Speaker 1: to work helping out on the farm, which gradually morphed

1069
00:53:45,680 --> 00:53:48,640
Speaker 1: from a communal living experiment into more of a business.

1070
00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:51,640
Speaker 1: People start to leave at this point because Friedland becomes

1071
00:53:51,680 --> 00:53:54,760
Speaker 1: more of a tyrant, and Friedland eventually drops the hippie

1072
00:53:54,760 --> 00:53:57,240
Speaker 1: shit to acquire a series of gold and copper minds

1073
00:53:57,239 --> 00:54:00,720
Speaker 1: and become very wealthy. In an interview with Isaac, Jobs

1074
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:05,520
Speaker 1: described as old friend and unwittingly himself, Robert always portrayed

1075
00:54:05,600 --> 00:54:08,240
Speaker 1: himself as a spiritual person, but he crossed the line

1076
00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:11,000
Speaker 1: from being charismatic to being a con man. It was

1077
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:13,320
Speaker 1: a strange thing to have one of the spiritual people

1078
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:16,120
Speaker 1: in your young life turn out to be symbolically and

1079
00:54:16,160 --> 00:54:19,239
Speaker 1: in reality a gold miner. And what's funny about that

1080
00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:21,560
Speaker 1: is like that is Jobs too. All of this shit

1081
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:26,480
Speaker 1: about being into Eastern mysticism and spirituality is an esthetic

1082
00:54:26,800 --> 00:54:29,360
Speaker 1: choice he makes. It is not a deeply held belief.

1083
00:54:29,400 --> 00:54:32,160
Speaker 1: That's my contention, right, and we'll build to that as

1084
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:34,560
Speaker 1: we go on. But it's kind of noteworthy that he

1085
00:54:34,719 --> 00:54:37,360
Speaker 1: takes a lot of this from Robert Friedland, who is

1086
00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:41,239
Speaker 1: the same kind of guy. He enjoys the aesthetic of

1087
00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:47,280
Speaker 1: being enlightened of this kind of like Eastern non material spirituality,

1088
00:54:47,360 --> 00:54:52,120
Speaker 1: rejecting the crude pursuit of wealth while pursuing wealth, you know,

1089
00:54:52,239 --> 00:54:52,760
Speaker 1: and power.

1090
00:54:52,880 --> 00:54:57,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all about the finessing the customer into believing

1091
00:54:57,560 --> 00:54:59,240
Speaker 2: they're participating in culture.

1092
00:54:59,680 --> 00:55:02,439
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and Steve is going to be that kind

1093
00:55:02,440 --> 00:55:04,799
Speaker 1: of guy in the same way that Friedland is. So

1094
00:55:05,080 --> 00:55:09,320
Speaker 1: Jobs returns to California after he gives up fully on college,

1095
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:11,160
Speaker 1: and he talks his way again and the way that

1096
00:55:11,200 --> 00:55:14,319
Speaker 1: he's good at into a job working for Atari, and

1097
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:16,759
Speaker 1: the way the company founder describes it, Jobs comes in

1098
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:19,200
Speaker 1: one day and is basically like, I'm not leaving until

1099
00:55:19,239 --> 00:55:21,640
Speaker 1: you give me a job. And in the seventies that

1100
00:55:21,719 --> 00:55:24,839
Speaker 1: kind of thing worked. Steve got back together with Chris

1101
00:55:24,920 --> 00:55:28,880
Speaker 1: Ann in this period, and you know, they are doing

1102
00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:30,480
Speaker 1: well for a while. They're kind of got to have

1103
00:55:30,520 --> 00:55:33,120
Speaker 1: this on again, off again sort of thing for a

1104
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:36,799
Speaker 1: period of several years. He goes to India for an

1105
00:55:36,840 --> 00:55:39,400
Speaker 1: extended period of time, you know, kind of in the

1106
00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:41,960
Speaker 1: middle of this, he takes a leave of absence basically

1107
00:55:41,960 --> 00:55:44,880
Speaker 1: from Atari and he goes to India to like find himself.

1108
00:55:44,920 --> 00:55:47,120
Speaker 1: He's hoping to meet this guru he's a fan of

1109
00:55:47,440 --> 00:55:52,480
Speaker 1: named Maharajji, and this guy had been influential to several

1110
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:54,800
Speaker 1: of his friends. Kotky's a fan too, and he's traveling

1111
00:55:54,800 --> 00:55:58,800
Speaker 1: there with Katki. But the guru dies right before Jobs

1112
00:55:58,840 --> 00:56:01,160
Speaker 1: shows up, like a day or two before he arrives

1113
00:56:01,239 --> 00:56:05,520
Speaker 1: at this guy's like place. He passes, So instead Jobs

1114
00:56:05,560 --> 00:56:08,719
Speaker 1: attends the kum Mela. And the Mela is I've been

1115
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:11,359
Speaker 1: to the Mela. It's this event. I think it's every

1116
00:56:11,400 --> 00:56:15,760
Speaker 1: four years in one of this rotating set of cities

1117
00:56:15,800 --> 00:56:18,480
Speaker 1: in India, and every twelve years they do a mela

1118
00:56:18,560 --> 00:56:22,400
Speaker 1: in a Lahabad, which is like the holiest of the melas.

1119
00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:25,400
Speaker 1: And every time they do this thing, every time they

1120
00:56:25,480 --> 00:56:28,160
Speaker 1: do a kum Mela, it's the largest gathering of human

1121
00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:30,839
Speaker 1: beings for any purpose in the history of the human race.

1122
00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:33,880
Speaker 1: When Jobs is there, it's like ten million people.

1123
00:56:34,040 --> 00:56:34,200
Speaker 2: Right.

1124
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:36,920
Speaker 1: The Mela that I attended, and I think twenty thirteen

1125
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:40,239
Speaker 1: was like one hundred and ten million people. There were

1126
00:56:40,640 --> 00:56:42,239
Speaker 1: about and this is over the course of a month,

1127
00:56:42,280 --> 00:56:45,000
Speaker 1: but there were like forty million people in tents when

1128
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:47,359
Speaker 1: it was like three New York cities where the people

1129
00:56:47,360 --> 00:56:49,880
Speaker 1: intents when I was there. This is an intense event

1130
00:56:49,960 --> 00:56:52,359
Speaker 1: to go to, right, And it's one of those things

1131
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:55,359
Speaker 1: that like you can't you can't not be affected by it,

1132
00:56:55,480 --> 00:56:58,919
Speaker 1: just sheerly because of the sheer mass of huge scale. Yeah,

1133
00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:01,960
Speaker 1: it's there's nothing else that's ever been like it in

1134
00:57:02,000 --> 00:57:05,360
Speaker 1: the whole history of our species. Right, It's this totally

1135
00:57:05,440 --> 00:57:08,480
Speaker 1: unique event, and it has an impact on Jobs. He

1136
00:57:08,880 --> 00:57:11,360
Speaker 1: gets his head shaven, you know. While he's there, he

1137
00:57:11,440 --> 00:57:14,399
Speaker 1: reads this book called Autobiography of a Yogi, which he's

1138
00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:16,360
Speaker 1: going to reread every year of his life. It's like

1139
00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:19,960
Speaker 1: the only book on his iPad. And one friend claimed

1140
00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:22,880
Speaker 1: that he even considers becoming a Sadhu. And sad whos

1141
00:57:22,880 --> 00:57:27,280
Speaker 1: are these kind of wandering, itinerant Hindu monks. They're these

1142
00:57:27,400 --> 00:57:31,280
Speaker 1: very intense, like wandering religious wildmen in a certain way.

1143
00:57:31,920 --> 00:57:34,480
Speaker 1: They're kind of constantly smoking marijuana. It's a big thing,

1144
00:57:34,520 --> 00:57:36,360
Speaker 1: like the sod who's get this kind of exemption to

1145
00:57:36,360 --> 00:57:39,520
Speaker 1: the Indian laws for that, and you know, a lot

1146
00:57:39,560 --> 00:57:41,960
Speaker 1: of them show up at the MELA and Jobs claims

1147
00:57:41,960 --> 00:57:45,040
Speaker 1: that he like or claims through a friend basically that

1148
00:57:45,080 --> 00:57:48,680
Speaker 1: he was considering adopting this life for himself. I don't

1149
00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:53,080
Speaker 1: think that's ever a serious thing things about. Yeah, yeah,

1150
00:57:53,080 --> 00:57:54,080
Speaker 1: that is very see.

1151
00:57:55,720 --> 00:57:55,919
Speaker 3: That.

1152
00:57:56,040 --> 00:57:58,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's a version of the future that's maybe

1153
00:57:58,720 --> 00:58:02,560
Speaker 1: better where he does this. Jobs would later claim his

1154
00:58:02,640 --> 00:58:06,160
Speaker 1: time in India convinced him of the premium importance of intuition,

1155
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:09,720
Speaker 1: and he claims this in a very racist fashion. Here's

1156
00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:12,920
Speaker 1: what he writes to Isaacson. The people in the Indian

1157
00:58:12,960 --> 00:58:16,360
Speaker 1: countryside don't use their intellect like we do. First mistake,

1158
00:58:17,200 --> 00:58:21,160
Speaker 1: everybody uses their intellect for the same things, which is

1159
00:58:21,560 --> 00:58:24,720
Speaker 1: reasoning things out. But okay, he says, they use their

1160
00:58:24,760 --> 00:58:27,800
Speaker 1: intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than

1161
00:58:27,840 --> 00:58:30,040
Speaker 1: in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very

1162
00:58:30,080 --> 00:58:33,160
Speaker 1: powerful thing, more powerful than intellect. In my opinion. That's

1163
00:58:33,160 --> 00:58:35,840
Speaker 1: had a big impact on my work, Western rational thought

1164
00:58:35,880 --> 00:58:38,600
Speaker 1: is not an innate human characteristic. It is learned and

1165
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:41,320
Speaker 1: it is the great achievement of Western civilization. In the

1166
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:44,800
Speaker 1: villages of India, they never learned it. Yes they did.

1167
00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:49,320
Speaker 1: They have science, Steve, they build cities, there's a tech

1168
00:58:49,360 --> 00:58:53,680
Speaker 1: industry in India. They didn't never develop intellect, Like, what

1169
00:58:53,840 --> 00:58:54,520
Speaker 1: is wrong with you?

1170
00:58:54,760 --> 00:58:58,280
Speaker 2: Like, just to be clear, this man is insanely racist

1171
00:58:58,360 --> 00:59:01,680
Speaker 2: and wrong, yes, in so many ways, But it is

1172
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:05,280
Speaker 2: kind of interesting how he's running completely parallel to how

1173
00:59:05,320 --> 00:59:08,560
Speaker 2: people like Andresen think, who are very much like logic

1174
00:59:08,680 --> 00:59:11,760
Speaker 2: is what logic is, what's most important. Logic is the

1175
00:59:11,840 --> 00:59:15,880
Speaker 2: thing Elon Musk's same deal all of these like rationalist freaks.

1176
00:59:16,160 --> 00:59:19,240
Speaker 2: I think Steve Jobs is horrifying. It's just interesting seeing

1177
00:59:19,320 --> 00:59:20,880
Speaker 2: that kind of juxtaposition.

1178
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:24,480
Speaker 1: And it is he's wrong about like India, right, because

1179
00:59:24,480 --> 00:59:26,960
Speaker 1: India is completely you know, if you've read anything of

1180
00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:31,800
Speaker 1: Indian history, has a lot of history states right, like, yes,

1181
00:59:32,040 --> 00:59:35,040
Speaker 1: it's a large organized country and it has been a

1182
00:59:35,120 --> 00:59:37,840
Speaker 1: large organized region of the world for a very long time.

1183
00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:41,280
Speaker 1: The idea that like, yeah, they only have intuition over

1184
00:59:41,320 --> 00:59:45,480
Speaker 1: there is racist and nonsense. I will say to the

1185
00:59:45,720 --> 00:59:47,560
Speaker 1: because one of the things we'll be building towards in

1186
00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:50,439
Speaker 1: later episodes is Steve, unlike most of these guys, unlike

1187
00:59:50,440 --> 00:59:54,320
Speaker 1: andresen is legit, has a legitimate kind of genius, right,

1188
00:59:54,720 --> 00:59:56,320
Speaker 1: Maybe not in the way that he gets credit for,

1189
00:59:56,440 --> 00:59:58,760
Speaker 1: but he is really good at certain things, and he's

1190
00:59:58,760 --> 01:00:00,880
Speaker 1: good at certain things that these their founders who are

1191
01:00:00,880 --> 01:00:03,560
Speaker 1: aping him are not good at. And I think it

1192
01:00:03,640 --> 01:00:06,640
Speaker 1: is because they are all obsessed with being rational, and

1193
01:00:06,680 --> 01:00:08,600
Speaker 1: he is more obsessed with stuff that he's never even

1194
01:00:08,640 --> 01:00:11,720
Speaker 1: going to try to justify as rational. When Jobs is

1195
01:00:11,960 --> 01:00:15,520
Speaker 1: repeatedly turning back early iterations of the iPhone and saying,

1196
01:00:15,520 --> 01:00:17,760
Speaker 1: this isn't ready, This isn't ready, it's not because of

1197
01:00:17,760 --> 01:00:19,960
Speaker 1: anything he can prove objectively. It's because of this feeling

1198
01:00:20,000 --> 01:00:21,720
Speaker 1: that like, no, this is not yet what people want

1199
01:00:21,760 --> 01:00:23,680
Speaker 1: to put in their fucking pocket and have with them

1200
01:00:23,720 --> 01:00:25,840
Speaker 1: all the time, right. And so there is I think

1201
01:00:25,840 --> 01:00:28,840
Speaker 1: an extent to which you do have to understand. The

1202
01:00:29,200 --> 01:00:31,760
Speaker 1: kind of intuition that he has is crucial in his success.

1203
01:00:32,040 --> 01:00:36,720
Speaker 1: It's nuts what he thinks about intuition and regards to India.

1204
01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:40,240
Speaker 1: But like the fact that he is so focused on

1205
01:00:40,320 --> 01:00:42,720
Speaker 1: intuition is part of why he's good at the things

1206
01:00:42,720 --> 01:00:45,120
Speaker 1: he's good at, right, I think that is kind of

1207
01:00:45,120 --> 01:00:49,000
Speaker 1: important to understand. Now, the contrast between the cold hearted

1208
01:00:49,040 --> 01:00:51,840
Speaker 1: corporate maven and the hippie kid baffles a lot of

1209
01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:56,240
Speaker 1: people in jobs's orbit. One former Apple executive related this

1210
01:00:56,280 --> 01:00:59,520
Speaker 1: to Brn Schlnder. There was always the spiritual side which

1211
01:00:59,520 --> 01:01:02,000
Speaker 1: didn't seem to fit with anything else he was doing.

1212
01:01:02,760 --> 01:01:04,560
Speaker 1: And one thing that becomes clear when you study the

1213
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:07,080
Speaker 1: man is that the Buddhism and the hippie philosophizing, these

1214
01:01:07,120 --> 01:01:09,520
Speaker 1: are all aesthetics to jobs. He likes the way they

1215
01:01:09,560 --> 01:01:12,040
Speaker 1: feel and look, and the way that wrapping himself and

1216
01:01:12,080 --> 01:01:14,800
Speaker 1: then makes him feel. But at his center, he is

1217
01:01:14,800 --> 01:01:18,160
Speaker 1: still driven by a terrible and very mundane ambition, and

1218
01:01:18,240 --> 01:01:20,480
Speaker 1: so he leaves India. He does not become Asadu. He

1219
01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:23,320
Speaker 1: gets his job back at Atari when he returns, and

1220
01:01:23,360 --> 01:01:26,920
Speaker 1: he rekindles his friendship with Wozniak, who had started working

1221
01:01:26,960 --> 01:01:30,360
Speaker 1: for HP at the time. Now, while this is going on,

1222
01:01:30,480 --> 01:01:34,800
Speaker 1: computers are still things that corporations purchase to handle specific,

1223
01:01:34,920 --> 01:01:38,480
Speaker 1: limited tasks. There is a computer hobbyist scene that is

1224
01:01:38,520 --> 01:01:40,840
Speaker 1: starting to build, but it's small, and to be in

1225
01:01:40,880 --> 01:01:42,920
Speaker 1: it you can't just buy a computer and be a

1226
01:01:42,960 --> 01:01:45,800
Speaker 1: guy who's into computers. You're gonna have to build it, right,

1227
01:01:45,840 --> 01:01:47,880
Speaker 1: You're going to have to solder. We're not even talking

1228
01:01:47,880 --> 01:01:49,840
Speaker 1: building it the way you build one now, where you

1229
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:51,680
Speaker 1: buy a box and you buy pieces and you slot

1230
01:01:51,720 --> 01:01:56,919
Speaker 1: them and connect them. You are like soldering chips together. Right,

1231
01:01:57,720 --> 01:02:00,240
Speaker 1: That's the only way to have a machine that functions.

1232
01:02:00,280 --> 01:02:03,240
Speaker 1: In this period of time, personal computers are not a

1233
01:02:03,320 --> 01:02:06,880
Speaker 1: thing yet. It's not a concept really in most people's heads.

1234
01:02:07,360 --> 01:02:10,040
Speaker 1: In the book Becoming Steve Jobs, Schlnder notes that there

1235
01:02:10,120 --> 01:02:12,960
Speaker 1: was only one word processor on the market that a

1236
01:02:13,040 --> 01:02:16,280
Speaker 1: regular person might be able to afford. Jobs had a

1237
01:02:16,360 --> 01:02:18,600
Speaker 1: keen enough sense of the future that he knew this

1238
01:02:18,760 --> 01:02:21,680
Speaker 1: was going to change. He wanted to drive that change,

1239
01:02:21,880 --> 01:02:25,400
Speaker 1: but first he needed startup capital. Steve's boss at Atari

1240
01:02:25,480 --> 01:02:27,760
Speaker 1: had asked him to create a prototype for a new

1241
01:02:27,880 --> 01:02:30,560
Speaker 1: version of Pong, and it offered a sizeable bonus if

1242
01:02:30,560 --> 01:02:33,520
Speaker 1: he could reduce the number of chips required. This task

1243
01:02:33,680 --> 01:02:37,440
Speaker 1: was well beyond Steve, but not beyond Wosniak, who easily

1244
01:02:37,480 --> 01:02:40,760
Speaker 1: completed the job. The two were paid seven hundred dollars,

1245
01:02:40,760 --> 01:02:44,480
Speaker 1: which they split evenly. Then Jobs was given a bonus

1246
01:02:44,840 --> 01:02:48,360
Speaker 1: either five thousand or seven thousand dollars for completing it,

1247
01:02:48,440 --> 01:02:51,520
Speaker 1: you know the way that Wosniak completed it. So they

1248
01:02:51,560 --> 01:02:55,560
Speaker 1: get this massive bonus because Wosniak is able to hit

1249
01:02:55,640 --> 01:02:57,760
Speaker 1: these kind He's able to reduce the chips by a

1250
01:02:57,760 --> 01:03:01,760
Speaker 1: certain amount. Right, Steve doesn't hell Wosniac that they've been

1251
01:03:01,760 --> 01:03:04,720
Speaker 1: given a bonus. He splits the seven hundred with him,

1252
01:03:04,840 --> 01:03:07,920
Speaker 1: and he pockets five thousand or seven thousand dollars and

1253
01:03:08,040 --> 01:03:10,440
Speaker 1: lies about it to the guy who's supposed to be

1254
01:03:10,520 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 1: his best friend. Steve is at Wosniak does not find

1255
01:03:13,800 --> 01:03:15,960
Speaker 1: out about this betrayal for more than a decade, right,

1256
01:03:16,360 --> 01:03:18,760
Speaker 1: And in twenty eleven, he gives an interview about this

1257
01:03:18,800 --> 01:03:22,080
Speaker 1: on a BBC podcast, which The ib Time summarizes this way.

1258
01:03:22,560 --> 01:03:24,840
Speaker 1: When asked if he was bitter about the deal, Wozniak

1259
01:03:24,920 --> 01:03:28,000
Speaker 1: said no, but confessed I cried. I cried quite a

1260
01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:31,360
Speaker 1: bit when I read that in a book. And yeah,

1261
01:03:31,400 --> 01:03:32,280
Speaker 1: it's really sad.

1262
01:03:32,720 --> 01:03:35,640
Speaker 2: It's really sad. That means he actually like can't.

1263
01:03:35,800 --> 01:03:38,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was, he loved Jobs like this, This is

1264
01:03:38,960 --> 01:03:40,640
Speaker 1: finding best friend Steve.

1265
01:03:40,680 --> 01:03:44,280
Speaker 2: Jobs cried, Yes, this was relevant, mm hmm.

1266
01:03:45,080 --> 01:03:47,320
Speaker 1: A reason of finding out you've been betrayed like this. Yeah,

1267
01:03:47,320 --> 01:03:49,680
Speaker 1: there's a reason for some tears. And it's fucked up

1268
01:03:49,720 --> 01:03:52,800
Speaker 1: about this. At the very end of his life, Isaacson

1269
01:03:52,920 --> 01:03:56,400
Speaker 1: is going to press Jobs on this, and Jobs never

1270
01:03:56,520 --> 01:04:00,000
Speaker 1: admits to having robbed Wosniak. He's like, he misremembered it, right,

1271
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:04,720
Speaker 1: Steve Wozniak has a plane crash after Apple's IPO, right,

1272
01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:07,240
Speaker 1: and it does some brain damage to him. Wosniak suffers

1273
01:04:07,240 --> 01:04:09,840
Speaker 1: some damage as a result of this, and Jobs basically

1274
01:04:09,960 --> 01:04:12,120
Speaker 1: kind of tries to gaslight him and is like, he's

1275
01:04:12,160 --> 01:04:16,280
Speaker 1: misremembering it, right, you know, Christ he doesn't remember it properly,

1276
01:04:16,560 --> 01:04:20,800
Speaker 1: Andosniak is like, no, I remember what I got and like,

1277
01:04:21,360 --> 01:04:24,040
Speaker 1: And they've talked to biographers, have talked to the people

1278
01:04:24,040 --> 01:04:26,360
Speaker 1: at Atari who are like, no, yeah, we paid Jobs

1279
01:04:26,440 --> 01:04:29,720
Speaker 1: all this money. And if Wosniak says he didn't get it,

1280
01:04:29,800 --> 01:04:35,520
Speaker 1: he probably didn't get it right. So that's Yeah, that's

1281
01:04:35,600 --> 01:04:39,800
Speaker 1: probably the first real fucked up thing Jobs has done.

1282
01:04:39,920 --> 01:04:41,880
Speaker 1: And there's a lot more to other than the bombs

1283
01:04:41,920 --> 01:04:44,760
Speaker 1: at his school, other than the bombs at his school, right,

1284
01:04:44,800 --> 01:04:49,040
Speaker 1: other than bombing his teacher. Yeah, but we'll be getting

1285
01:04:49,040 --> 01:04:52,560
Speaker 1: in all of that and more in part due But first,

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01:04:53,000 --> 01:04:55,840
Speaker 1: do you have a podcast ed where people can listen

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01:04:55,880 --> 01:04:56,200
Speaker 1: to your?

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01:04:56,640 --> 01:04:59,040
Speaker 2: Do? I do? I have a podcast called Better Offline,

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01:04:59,040 --> 01:05:02,560
Speaker 2: a weekly tech show analyzing people like Steve Jobs, but

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01:05:02,600 --> 01:05:05,200
Speaker 2: the ones who are alive and doing stuff today. Yeah,

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01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:07,960
Speaker 2: and yeah, you can find a Better Offline dot com.

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01:05:07,960 --> 01:05:10,560
Speaker 2: You find it on iHeartRadio or wherever you get in

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01:05:10,600 --> 01:05:11,320
Speaker 2: your podcasts.

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01:05:11,480 --> 01:05:15,000
Speaker 1: Hell, yeah you can, and you can find us on

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Speaker 1: Thursday or we'll be continuing the Steve Jobs story. Goodbye, Goodbye.

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Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 3: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

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01:05:31,120 --> 01:05:35,080
Speaker 3: Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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01:05:35,160 --> 01:05:37,440
Speaker 3: Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast