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Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. I got offered three jobs that week, as

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Speaker 1: a matter of fact. One was Time Magazine, the other

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Speaker 1: was a guy named Rick Tonry had just been elected

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Speaker 1: to Congress. And the third, rather weirdly, a guy named

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Speaker 1: cord Meyer, ran counter intelligence in the CIA. I met

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Speaker 1: with him and he wanted to recruit me for the CIA.

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Speaker 1: He made one mistake though, he said, of course, we

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Speaker 1: wouldn't want you to be a double agent or a spy.

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Speaker 1: We'd want you to be an analyst at Langley, thinking

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Speaker 1: that would make it more appealing, and I thought, well,

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Speaker 1: that's boring, and I accepted the job. At times, I

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Speaker 1: am Bob Pittman, and welcome to Math and Magic, Stories

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Speaker 1: from the Frontiers and Marketing, where we explore marketing through

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Speaker 1: the stories and lessons of those on the front lines.

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Speaker 1: Before we jump in, I want to pause for just

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Speaker 1: a second to congratulate our I Heart podcasting team. Although

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Speaker 1: we've been the number one commercial podcaster for a while,

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Speaker 1: we just passed MPR and became the number one overall

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Speaker 1: podcaster in the month of August. According tood pod Track,

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Speaker 1: we had over a three increase in audience last year,

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Speaker 1: but also want to congratulate MPR and companies like Wondering

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Speaker 1: who are also growing at a fast space and working

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Speaker 1: together to build this new podcasting industry. Podcasting is probably

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Speaker 1: the hottest new medium, and I'd like to thank all

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Speaker 1: of you for listening. Now back to the fun stuff today,

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Speaker 1: we have someone who has studied those great minds and

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Speaker 1: people who have changed the world, as well as being

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Speaker 1: a creative and business practitioner himself, Walt Riz Excep. He

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Speaker 1: has probably known as the greatest biographer of our times,

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Speaker 1: and he has also had other important identities at other moments.

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Speaker 1: In time head of CNN had editorial Time magazine, in

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Speaker 1: Time Inc. Had the first efforts of a major media

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Speaker 1: company to join the emerging Internet revolution. He was in

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Speaker 1: the attack even as a kid in the days before

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Speaker 1: geeks built apps and made millions. Back then, they were

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Speaker 1: Ham radio operators and built heath Kit electronics with a

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Speaker 1: soldering iron. He's the former head of the Aspen Institute,

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Speaker 1: now professor at Tulane, and his native New Orleans he

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Speaker 1: played jazz clarinet and he might even know something about

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Speaker 1: voodoo and the Bayous of Louisiana. Let's welcome Walter. Good

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Speaker 1: to be with you, Bob after many years. Let's tell

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Speaker 1: our listeners and I go back, way back. We're going

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Speaker 1: to get into your story, but first I want to

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Speaker 1: do you in sixty seconds. If you don't mind, just

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Speaker 1: say the first thing that comes into your mind. So

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Speaker 1: do you prefer New York City or New Orleans? New

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Speaker 1: Orleans for the food? Louis Armstrong or Dr John Luis?

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Speaker 1: I'm strong Early Riser or night Owl. I'm definitely a

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Speaker 1: night owl E reader or paperback the reader, William Shay

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Speaker 1: Experience Tennessee, Williams Tennessee, Williams Tulane, Green Wave or Harvard

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Speaker 1: Crimson Tulane, Roll Wave, Bignet or Donut Ben You why

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Speaker 1: would you need the whole fiction or nonfiction? Alas I

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Speaker 1: read too much nonfiction, I probably should indulge in novels,

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Speaker 1: Oh Boy or Gumbo Gumbo. Smartest person you know Bill Gates,

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Speaker 1: childhood hero Walker Percy novelists from New Orleans area. Sure,

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Speaker 1: first job writing for The Times picking of New Orleans

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Speaker 1: Police Headquarters five am to noon beat Something you wish

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Speaker 1: you had written? I wish I had written a novel.

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Speaker 1: I keep trying you know my agent. She says, give

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Speaker 1: it up, give it up. Last vacation with my daughter,

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Speaker 1: we drove around Grant earlier in the summer. Favorite TV show,

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Speaker 1: The PPS News out, Favorite New Orleans jazz musician went in.

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Speaker 1: Marcellis most prized possession. Some of the art I bought

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Speaker 1: when I was a kid, when I could afford it.

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Speaker 1: Favorite book when you were a child, The movie Goer

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Speaker 1: by Walker Percy. Quote to live by Steve Jobs is

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Speaker 1: the people are crazy enough to think they can change

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Speaker 1: the world. Are the ones to do? Okay, we're in

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Speaker 1: theo with this one. Who would write your biography? The

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Speaker 1: only thing I desperately fear is that my daughter will

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Speaker 1: write my biography because he's a great writer. Okay, let's

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Speaker 1: start off. Let's go back in time, no pun intended.

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Speaker 1: You grew up in the nineteen fifties and sixties in

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Speaker 1: New Orleans. Can you paint the picture of what that

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Speaker 1: felt like and look like? Air conditioning had just come in. Well,

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Speaker 1: the cool thing about air conditioning coming in is that

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Speaker 1: my father, my uncle, and my granduncle had been engineers

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Speaker 1: for ice making companies, and they figured out how to

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Speaker 1: do industrial air conditioning for the department stores. And movie

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Speaker 1: theaters of New Orleans. So I got to watch them

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Speaker 1: build air conditioning, and of course it helped pay my

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Speaker 1: way through college. It's at the fifties and sixties that

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Speaker 1: they were air conditioning all these Right after World War Two,

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Speaker 1: my dad and my uncle's came home. We had a house.

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Speaker 1: My brother still lives there, right near here on Napoleon Avenue,

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Speaker 1: and they built a very long pool in order to

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Speaker 1: test out it was before Freon had been invented, to

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Speaker 1: test out air conditioning, you know, like cooling towers. But

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Speaker 1: it was just this huge pool, and it was a

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Speaker 1: swimming pool. Nobody had swimming pools back then. In ground.

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Speaker 1: Long swimming pools is not that deep. But we grew

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Speaker 1: up with this weird swimming pool because my family was

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Speaker 1: in the air conditioning because it must have been very popular.

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Speaker 1: That was particularly popular, so was my brother. When our

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Speaker 1: parents would go to Deston, Florida for the weekend. No,

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Speaker 1: we don't feel like going to Florida. So talk about

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Speaker 1: back then Louisiana politics, French Quarter, architecture, gumbo like poncha train.

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Speaker 1: I remember that long bridge, the old bridge Acrossolosolgical that

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Speaker 1: was very scary. To tell you what I remember most,

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Speaker 1: that's most important is race desegregation was just happening. We

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Speaker 1: lived in a very integrated neighborhood, Napoleon Avenue and Broadmoor.

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Speaker 1: Of the house I told you about, I rem remember

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Speaker 1: vividly the first time my cousin and I we were

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Speaker 1: walking to Ottoman Park and we were with a young

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Speaker 1: African American kid. You know, we're all about five or six.

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Speaker 1: My cousin said, hey, let's go to the merry go

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Speaker 1: round in the carousel. And then I remember just had

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Speaker 1: a sign which I had never figured out. I never

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Speaker 1: thought about what does it mean? Though I remember your

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Speaker 1: sign saying white only. I mean, I just learned how

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Speaker 1: to read, and it struck me at that moment. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I get it. They don't allow blacks into this park,

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Speaker 1: which is a private park. That's why I say I

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Speaker 1: don't want to go. I don't want to go because

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Speaker 1: I was embarrassed. But Alan insisted. I think all of

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Speaker 1: us who grew up in that era in the South

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Speaker 1: had that. I have my stories from Mississippi. When it

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Speaker 1: sort of dawns on you what's going on, as you say, embarrassment.

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Speaker 1: When we got a little bit older, I remember we

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Speaker 1: led a group of kids, a big march of black

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Speaker 1: and white kids together to reopen the pool, and it

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Speaker 1: was sort of my first little bit of activism. Any

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Speaker 1: voodoo down here, you know, I love going to St.

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Speaker 1: Louis Cemetery. That's where Marie Lavo is buried, so you

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Speaker 1: can always put a little cross on her grave. Allay

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Speaker 1: a little Gregory the dried bones, if you really have

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Speaker 1: to cast a spell doesn't work. It's worked for me

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Speaker 1: so far. I wouldn't be sitting here on a podcast

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Speaker 1: with you if the voodoo Gregory hadn't worked. So why

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Speaker 1: do so many storytellers come out of the Deep South?

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Speaker 1: Walker Percy, the guy I told you about, the novelist

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Speaker 1: to a sort of a mentor, I never quite knew

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Speaker 1: what he did. We would go over across like Poncho

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Speaker 1: Train to the Buga Fly where he and his daughter

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Speaker 1: who is my age all lived, and we'd go hunting

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Speaker 1: or water skiing or searching for turtles. We always just say, Anne,

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Speaker 1: what does your daddy do? He's always on the doc

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Speaker 1: drinking bourbon, eating hogside cheese. She would say, well, he's

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Speaker 1: a writer. I couldn't figure out what that man. I

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Speaker 1: knew you could be an engineer like my dad, or

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Speaker 1: a doctor or a fisherman. But writer. When I guess

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Speaker 1: I was about twelve, I read the movie Goer It

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Speaker 1: just come out. I realized what that meant. So I

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Speaker 1: asked Uncle Walker walcome person, tell me, because you're trying

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Speaker 1: to teach lessons, you're preaching some things in this book.

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Speaker 1: Tell me what it's about. And he said, there are

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Speaker 1: two types of people come out of Louisiana. Preachers and storytellers.

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Speaker 1: He said, if I haven't said be a storytelling, the

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Speaker 1: world's got far too many preachers. And so why do

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Speaker 1: you think the South has so many storytellers versus other

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Speaker 1: parts of the country. Maybe it's the Bourbon. Maybe it's

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Speaker 1: the fact that we lost into the loss of Civil War.

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Speaker 1: Maybe people sit on porches a lot. Alex Haley, who

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Speaker 1: wrote Roots, somebody once asked him said he was trying

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Speaker 1: to give a speech or something and he was scared.

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Speaker 1: You didn't know how to begin, And Hailey said, here's

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Speaker 1: the six words you have to know. Let me tell

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Speaker 1: you a story. Well, you know, it's funny. When I

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Speaker 1: was growing up, I had uncles who would tell stories,

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Speaker 1: and if you ask him a question, you get a

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Speaker 1: long story and the moral of the story was the

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Speaker 1: answer to your question. Do you think in this new

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Speaker 1: digitally connected world that goes on? Or is this storytelling

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Speaker 1: a lost art? Now? This is podcast is so important

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Speaker 1: why they're such a popular medium and why they're a

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Speaker 1: crucial medium for us to have now because of the

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Speaker 1: past twenty five thirty years in the digital age, we've

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Speaker 1: lost the art of narrative. Paper is a good technology

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Speaker 1: for narrative. You go page, have to page, you can't

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Speaker 1: hop around. Likewise, linear television, linear movies, they're great for narrative.

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Speaker 1: But digital media tends to be great for hopping around,

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Speaker 1: making links, jumping to gather more information, following and charting

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Speaker 1: your own course. It's interactive, which means you're not consuming

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Speaker 1: a narrative. Now that's fine. I love interactive media. I

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Speaker 1: love being able to hunt and peck and figure out

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Speaker 1: you know who the Saints are going to be playing,

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Speaker 1: and hear all the opinions about it. But every now

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Speaker 1: and then we need to get back to narrative and

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Speaker 1: to storytelling. I think it started for me listening to

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Speaker 1: this American Life was doing a podcast a long time ago.

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Speaker 1: I said, wow, they're gonna say the art of storytelling. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know what's interesting? Young people, teenagers, young adults are

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Speaker 1: flocking to it, whereas people thought, oh, talk shows, that's

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Speaker 1: for old people. And I think it's just turned everybody's

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Speaker 1: understanding upside down. It has sort of the best of

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Speaker 1: both worlds, meaning you get it on demand, you don't

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Speaker 1: have to tune in at nine am. On the other hand,

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Speaker 1: it's a narrative. You have to go with the flow.

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Speaker 1: So let's put you in context a little bit. You

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Speaker 1: played with electronics as a kid, building heath kits. You

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Speaker 1: were Ham operator. Was at w A five J T.

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Speaker 1: P w Ay very good. Yeah, in my basement of

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Speaker 1: our house w A five John Thomas Peter. Is that

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Speaker 1: what you said? Because I remember, I still remember being

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Speaker 1: a Ham radio dude. Can you still use morse code?

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Speaker 1: I no, no, But I had to learn it because

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Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, boy, you're bringing back some memories here.

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Speaker 1: You had to somehow another passive test and morse code.

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Speaker 1: I never got my operator's license because I could never

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Speaker 1: get my speed up a Morse code enough, and I

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Speaker 1: gave up. So I appreciate how hard it is to

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Speaker 1: do that. So let's do a factoid. Wire transistors better

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Speaker 1: than vacuum tubes because vacuum tubes use a lot of electricity,

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Speaker 1: they burn out their filaments. There he did. And a

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Speaker 1: transistor is a semiconductor. It's on a piece of silicon.

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Speaker 1: When I was growing up, I remember early radios and

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Speaker 1: we have a twelve transistor radio and you got twenty

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Speaker 1: four transistor radio and then you can make your own.

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Speaker 1: Remember that they were talking about the more transistors, the

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Speaker 1: better than the radio transistors. That I could hear w

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Speaker 1: l S which is this great station in Chicago where

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Speaker 1: I could hear Dodger games. You know, that was my

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Speaker 1: thing I was a kid. We saw the transistors onto

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Speaker 1: a circuit board. But what happens with Bob Moore and

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Speaker 1: others that Intel is they figured out, oh, we can

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Speaker 1: etch these on a chip of silicon. You can never

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Speaker 1: etch a vacuum tube on a chip. So where did

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Speaker 1: that builder's love come from engineering dad? Or did it

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Speaker 1: come from somewhere else? Yeah? I think it came from

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Speaker 1: having an engineering day. We all learned that the kneeds

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Speaker 1: of our parents. I'm just old enough to remember having

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Speaker 1: my earliest computers where you could open them up you

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Speaker 1: could jack in, you could put more memory, you knew

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Speaker 1: how the insides were. I think you get alienated from

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Speaker 1: your technology if you have no clue what a circuit is,

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Speaker 1: If you have no clue how a logical algorithm that

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Speaker 1: has yes, no, yes, no answers gets translated into on

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Speaker 1: off switches, which are basically transistors on a circuit board

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Speaker 1: in order to make something happen. No kid in my

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Speaker 1: two lane class today has any clue what goes on

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Speaker 1: inside of the computer. They don't even know what digital

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Speaker 1: really means, which is just an on off switch type circuits.

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Speaker 1: Do you think young people should all know coding? People

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Speaker 1: say you got to learn how to code as a kid.

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Speaker 1: They can get a job ten years from now. Now

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Speaker 1: you need to know how to think in algorithms. Ten

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Speaker 1: yearsome now, machines are gonna code for us. You is

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Speaker 1: gonna do it by voice, say turn on screen, make

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Speaker 1: trash can move to bottom right, It'll do the coding.

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Speaker 1: What you need is the creativity. And I also think

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Speaker 1: it's useful to know something about the hardware. One of

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Speaker 1: the first twist in your story is that you were

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Speaker 1: also popular. You were not the tech nerd outsider. You

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Speaker 1: were student body president. You're voted most likely to succeed,

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Speaker 1: one of the few that actually succeed. You're also very ambitious.

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Speaker 1: You interned in Washington for legendary House majority leader Hail Bogs.

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Speaker 1: You also worked for the local newspaper, and you're in

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Speaker 1: high school. Where did all that ambition come from? I

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Speaker 1: think one of the driving things for me was a

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Speaker 1: pretty keen sense of curiosity. I certainly wouldn't smarter than

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Speaker 1: the other kids I grew up with, especially at Newman.

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Speaker 1: You know your friend Michael Lewis. All these people went

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Speaker 1: to was a school with a lot of smart people.

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Speaker 1: But my dad was always curious as an engineer, and

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Speaker 1: he was always taking things apart to see how they worked.

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Speaker 1: And he loved of telling things like why is the

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Speaker 1: sky blue? And then we try to figure it out.

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Speaker 1: I was lucky enough when I worked with you many

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Speaker 1: many years ago. At Time Warner we had general interest

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Speaker 1: magazines like Time magazine where I worked, and so you

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Speaker 1: could be driven by curiosity about everything. One week I'd

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Speaker 1: be writing music. Next week I'll be writing the medicine section.

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Speaker 1: Next week I'd be writing in Foreign Affairs or the

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Speaker 1: Nation section. And so my success has not come from

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Speaker 1: being a great master of any field, but by having

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Speaker 1: more curiosity about more things than most people around me.

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Speaker 1: How did you make all this happen? Though, yes, you

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Speaker 1: were curious, but you wound up as an intern in Washington.

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Speaker 1: You wound up actually writing for the local newspaper. How

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Speaker 1: did that happen? As for the newspaper, this was in

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Speaker 1: the days when newspapers were flourishing, So as a summer job,

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Speaker 1: you know, I just went in. I didn't know the

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Speaker 1: editor publisher of the paper. But if you were willing

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Speaker 1: to be a reporter, the Times picked you and had

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty reporters. I did police headquarters, as I said,

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Speaker 1: were seventeen, you know, in high school. I know I

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Speaker 1: was in high school because I remember applying to college

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Speaker 1: and I already had a whole stack of newspaper clips,

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Speaker 1: including mostly crime stories. But I think by actually having

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Speaker 1: a bunch of front page newspaper clips that seemed to

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Speaker 1: impress the people who let you into college. Well, let's

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Speaker 1: talk about college for a minute. You went on to

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Speaker 1: Harvard and then you were a Rhodes scholared Oxford and

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Speaker 1: in that area geographic diversity for an ivy League was

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Speaker 1: much less than today. Why Harvard and not l s U.

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Speaker 1: Harvard was Harvard. You'd heard of it, and so I

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Speaker 1: went to my you know, high school guidance counsel, and

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Speaker 1: she said, okay, we'll try to get you into it.

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Speaker 1: And you know, I was lucky he had the newspaper clips.

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Speaker 1: But you're right, geographic diversity. You know, people who are

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Speaker 1: against affirmative action say I always reminded, say, we've always had.

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Speaker 1: I had affirmative action. Harvard was thought it was cool

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Speaker 1: to get a person from Louisiana and back then, so

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Speaker 1: you hit Boss. Then the IVY League. I guess it

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Speaker 1: was newly co ed about the time you went there,

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Speaker 1: and there was a long and honored traditions up there.

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Speaker 1: How did that change your view of the world New

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Speaker 1: Orleans versus Boston in that life that you I tell

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Speaker 1: you what ingrained in me when I went up to

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Speaker 1: Boston and Harvard and then Oxford. You learn tradition, You

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Speaker 1: learn to respect the past, which also comes from being

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Speaker 1: a Southerner and storyteller. You learn when you look at

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Speaker 1: Harvard Yard or the quad at Oxford where I was

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Speaker 1: that Oh my goodness, you know, Dr Johnson was in

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Speaker 1: this college. So it puts things in perspective, and that's

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Speaker 1: why to get to when you and I started working together,

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Speaker 1: I kind of went to Time magazine. It seemed like,

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Speaker 1: all right, that's an institution. I don't need to start

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Speaker 1: Spy magazine or start some new magazine. I kind of

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Speaker 1: like something that has a history and a tradition. Back then,

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Speaker 1: there was no such thing as a venture capitalists giving

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Speaker 1: you money. If you started something, you did it with

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Speaker 1: somebody else's money. MTV we started. I have one percent

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Speaker 1: of MTV and thought I was lucky, but you know,

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Speaker 1: you were somebody in that category. The first wave of

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Speaker 1: people I knew who said something like why don't we

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Speaker 1: start MTV. That's the downside of being the personality I

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Speaker 1: am with a reverence for institutions and history and preservation.

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Speaker 1: I don't wake up one morning and say, hell, let's

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Speaker 1: start a music video and I want to destroy the

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Speaker 1: institution engine you build them upways good to have both sorts,

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Speaker 1: especially in our friendship. And this time you were college

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Speaker 1: student developing who you were. What did you envision doing

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Speaker 1: for a living as an adult when you got out

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Speaker 1: of school. I studied philosophy for a while, both at

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Speaker 1: Harvard an Oxford, and I remember going back to the

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Speaker 1: greatest of all philosophy professors I've ever had was John

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Speaker 1: Rawls or a Theory of Justice, and I've done something

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Speaker 1: like that at auction. So I went back him and

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Speaker 1: showed him my Oxford dissertation, and I said to him,

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Speaker 1: I can't quite figure out what I should do. I'm

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Speaker 1: thinking I might want to become an academic philosopher, but

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Speaker 1: I also have a job. Offer to go back to

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Speaker 1: the newspaper in New Orleans where I worked, maybe I

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Speaker 1: want to be a journalist. He read the paper and

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Speaker 1: then he said to me, very politely, you'd make a

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Speaker 1: good journalist. And so I ended up becoming a journalist

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Speaker 1: again in New Orleans. As I say, I had done

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Speaker 1: it in high school and then at time it was

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Speaker 1: almost a placeholder, like Okay, I'll do this and then

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Speaker 1: I'll figure out what I want to be when I

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Speaker 1: grow up. But after about forty years I was I

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Speaker 1: kind of like I might be a journalist. Before we

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Speaker 1: jump to your time after college, narrow escapes or near

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Speaker 1: death experiences almost always have a lasting effect. You had

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Speaker 1: one back then. I think it was in Ireland when

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Speaker 1: you were covering. Oh yeah, oh yeah. I was covering

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Speaker 1: for the Sunday Times of London and I went to

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Speaker 1: Belfast with a guy named David Blundy, who was no

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Speaker 1: longer with us because he was killed by a sniper

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Speaker 1: and salvit. I remember we were in the Europa Hotel.

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Speaker 1: The Sunday Times, as the name implies, comes out only

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Speaker 1: on Sunday, and this is like a Wednesday, and David said, oh,

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Speaker 1: there's gonna be a mass protest down in this part

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Speaker 1: of Belfast. We gotta go. I said, David, it's a Wednesday.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's not like we have a paper to

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Speaker 1: write for. And I kept saying we should just go

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Speaker 1: to the bar and the Europa and have dinner. There

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Speaker 1: were a lot of other journalists there and he said no,

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Speaker 1: So he dragged me down there and it was totally safe.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there are protesters and all. And we get

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Speaker 1: back to the hotel. The hotel had been bombed, including

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Speaker 1: the pub on top of the hotel, and David said,

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Speaker 1: this is a lesson to you. You never know where

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Speaker 1: you're gonna be in danger. Alas he's the one we lost,

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Speaker 1: And did that have an impact on you to be

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Speaker 1: that close to being at the wrong place at the

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Speaker 1: wrong time. No, I think what had an impact on

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Speaker 1: me was the adrenaline that comes from covering something amazing.

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Speaker 1: There are always a people who run away from the

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Speaker 1: World Trade Center and the people who run towards it.

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Speaker 1: I always wanted to be there when things were happening,

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Speaker 1: even if they were somewhat dangerous. Remember, I'm almost looking

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Speaker 1: out of the window here. You can almost see it

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Speaker 1: from where we are. In New Orleans. There was a

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Speaker 1: Howard Johnson's was a sniper on it right down the

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Speaker 1: street in City Hall, and I remember hearing about it,

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Speaker 1: even though I was off duty. It was late afternoon,

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Speaker 1: going down there and wanting to cover it. So I

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Speaker 1: think that you know, we each have our braveries. Mind

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Speaker 1: is not very strong, but it is that curiosity that

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Speaker 1: drives me to be places, even places that might not

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Speaker 1: be the safest at times. Just hold on a second,

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Speaker 1: because we've got so much more to talk about. We'll

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Speaker 1: be back after a quick break. Welcome back to math

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Speaker 1: and magic. We're here with Walter is Sison. After school,

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Speaker 1: you came back to New Orleans. You went to work

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Speaker 1: for the newspaper, and through a mixture of right place

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Speaker 1: right Time and great talent. You get hired by Time

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Speaker 1: Magazine at a really age. This, by the way, was

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Speaker 1: when Time was absolutely one of the top news organizations

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Speaker 1: in the world. Why did they pick you? You know,

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Speaker 1: this is really the golden days of journalism, and I

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Speaker 1: guess it was the late eighties. They had sent a

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Speaker 1: senior editor around America to find talent out therehic diversity

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Speaker 1: into geographic diversity. They were recruiting. Time Magazine was growing

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Speaker 1: and wanted young people from around the country. I had

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Speaker 1: been covering city hall by that point in New Orleans

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Speaker 1: and had written columns about the mayor's race. Had called

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Speaker 1: the race, and so they were paper had been touting me.

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Speaker 1: A business editor of Time arrived and here's about me.

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Speaker 1: Takes me to lunch and I got offered three jobs

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Speaker 1: that week, as a matter of fact. One was Time Magazine,

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Speaker 1: the other was a guy named Rick Tonry had just

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Speaker 1: been elected to Congress wanted me to go up as

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Speaker 1: his administrative assistant. And the third, rather weirdly, the guy

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Speaker 1: named cord Meyer. Remember who he no. Corde Meyer was

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Speaker 1: a famous CI agent ran counter intelligence in the CIA.

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Speaker 1: He had been in the London Embassy and he had

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Speaker 1: met lots of kids from Oxford. We never quite figured

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Speaker 1: out why did Corde Meyer wanted me to us alve

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Speaker 1: But one day I got a call saying Corde Meyers

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Speaker 1: in New Orleans wants to meet you at the Hilton

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Speaker 1: Hotel next to the airport. I thought that's weird. I

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Speaker 1: met with him and he wanted to recruit me for

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Speaker 1: the CIA. He made one mistake though, He said, of

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Speaker 1: course we wouldn't want you to be a double agent

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Speaker 1: or spy. We'd want you to be an analyst at Langley,

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Speaker 1: thinking that would make it more appealing. And I thought,

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Speaker 1: well that's boring, and I accepted the job at time.

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Speaker 1: So you show up in New York and you've come

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Speaker 1: from the Times, pick a junior now at time? What

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Speaker 1: was the difference in journalism? What sort of struck you

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Speaker 1: that first impression of this is different? The writing was

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Speaker 1: done as a group. In other words, you had correspondence

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Speaker 1: to which and then things that'd be a writer who

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Speaker 1: would compile it. So it was all done as a collaborative,

429
00:22:58,720 --> 00:23:01,560
Speaker 1: collegial thing. Time to even have by lines back then,

430
00:23:01,920 --> 00:23:04,560
Speaker 1: and I like that notion of team mark. It made

431
00:23:04,560 --> 00:23:09,000
Speaker 1: it feel very magical and distilling huge amount of wisdom.

432
00:23:09,240 --> 00:23:12,719
Speaker 1: The other thing that struck me immediately was the power

433
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:16,720
Speaker 1: of this institution of time. If I wanted to meet

434
00:23:16,800 --> 00:23:18,760
Speaker 1: Garth Brooks because I heard he was an up and

435
00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:22,359
Speaker 1: coming country star, you just call some publicist or whatever

436
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:26,360
Speaker 1: and you'd be having And that was true of Ronald Reagan.

437
00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:32,480
Speaker 1: It was heavy, and for somebody who's adrenaline fix comes

438
00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:35,720
Speaker 1: from curiosity, it was just like a kid in the

439
00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:38,400
Speaker 1: candy store. I think I remember you telling me once

440
00:23:38,440 --> 00:23:42,000
Speaker 1: we were talking about impartiality and how important that was.

441
00:23:42,040 --> 00:23:44,240
Speaker 1: It was you or someone else said it's so important.

442
00:23:44,680 --> 00:23:47,400
Speaker 1: They didn't even vote. The entire time I was at

443
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:53,240
Speaker 1: Time magazine or CNN, I never voted in an election

444
00:23:53,359 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 1: that we might cover presidential race or even a Senate race.

445
00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:01,240
Speaker 1: I sometimes voted like city counts, of course, where it mattered,

446
00:24:01,320 --> 00:24:05,160
Speaker 1: or I knew somebody running. And the reason was if

447
00:24:05,200 --> 00:24:07,880
Speaker 1: you voted, you had to force yourself to figure out

448
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: which side do you want? If you knew you weren't

449
00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:14,480
Speaker 1: going to vote, you didn't join aside as easily, and

450
00:24:14,560 --> 00:24:17,720
Speaker 1: you really could keep an open mind better because you

451
00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:20,520
Speaker 1: hadn't push yourself to decide who am I going to vote?

452
00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:22,920
Speaker 1: For that stuck with me all these years. These days

453
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:25,520
Speaker 1: people would think it's ridiculous to be that way, and

454
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:28,919
Speaker 1: they'll say, oh, you can't be objective. Well yeah, you

455
00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:32,680
Speaker 1: can try, you can try real hard. I remember one

456
00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:35,159
Speaker 1: of the first cover stories I wrote at time was

457
00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:37,840
Speaker 1: about abortion, one of the big marches, you know, right

458
00:24:37,880 --> 00:24:41,639
Speaker 1: to life Mark and I wrote a cover story on

459
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:44,680
Speaker 1: abortion and which I tried to be one hand other

460
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:47,280
Speaker 1: different hands, many hands. This is what people are saying

461
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: the whole march, and I got and I still have it.

462
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:53,120
Speaker 1: I've treasured it, even though it was tough. Letter from

463
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 1: Walker Percy, the novelist who was a deep practicing Catholic,

464
00:24:57,200 --> 00:25:03,760
Speaker 1: very against abortion, and felt that I had betrayed the

465
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:07,320
Speaker 1: fact that I was pro choice, even though I tried

466
00:25:07,359 --> 00:25:09,840
Speaker 1: to be objected me even handed, and he just pointed

467
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:13,280
Speaker 1: out passages in this cover story in which it was

468
00:25:13,359 --> 00:25:19,199
Speaker 1: clear I didn't fully understand the anti abortion side as well.

469
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:22,000
Speaker 1: But I do think there's still for me a hunger

470
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:24,439
Speaker 1: for here's a journalist who's not trying to get in

471
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:26,800
Speaker 1: the way of wherever the facts lad him. You were

472
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:29,679
Speaker 1: one of the first to cover technology, and he became

473
00:25:29,760 --> 00:25:32,880
Speaker 1: one of the leading experts on it. You got Time Inc.

474
00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:35,600
Speaker 1: And Time Warner into this new world as the head

475
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:38,080
Speaker 1: of Pathfinder. When I arrived an America Online in the

476
00:25:38,119 --> 00:25:42,480
Speaker 1: mid nineties, you were the only major media company in

477
00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:48,199
Speaker 1: the space. Why I remember once I was editor and

478
00:25:48,680 --> 00:25:51,119
Speaker 1: we wanted to do a story of on the world

479
00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:53,560
Speaker 1: of online. It was before you had really pushed a

480
00:25:53,640 --> 00:25:56,159
Speaker 1: O L to be what it was. I tried to

481
00:25:56,240 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 1: understand cyberspace, what was this? And I guess it's just

482
00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:01,879
Speaker 1: because I was interested in engineering. I was interested in

483
00:26:01,920 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 1: the network. Back then it was the well What's an Email?

484
00:26:05,359 --> 00:26:08,280
Speaker 1: Had an email account at the Well and Stewart branded

485
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:10,960
Speaker 1: helped creative and it said you own your own words,

486
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:13,720
Speaker 1: which I tell my students now because that's what it

487
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:16,159
Speaker 1: said when the screen opened up, and it meant you

488
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:19,600
Speaker 1: had to take responsibility for which is said unlike nowadays

489
00:26:19,640 --> 00:26:23,199
Speaker 1: on Twitter, you know, many other places. So I became

490
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:27,359
Speaker 1: mesmerized by this online world. And that's how I met you.

491
00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 1: That's how I'm at Steve Case. That I'm at ted leonsis.

492
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 1: Back then, Time Magazine in nine one, I think, was

493
00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:40,920
Speaker 1: the first publication outlet to go online. And when it

494
00:26:41,040 --> 00:26:43,200
Speaker 1: was online, not the internet, back then is not until

495
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 1: the Gore Act that you have dot com that it's

496
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:50,400
Speaker 1: open to the public. Up until nine, when the Gore

497
00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:54,560
Speaker 1: Act goes into effect, it was limited to research. Mark

498
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:58,200
Speaker 1: and Reeson writes the browser and becomes easy and oh,

499
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:00,520
Speaker 1: by the way, our board meetings at a o L

500
00:27:00,520 --> 00:27:02,560
Speaker 1: in those days where should we embrace the internet or

501
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:04,640
Speaker 1: should we fight it? In our meetings at time where

502
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:06,720
Speaker 1: should we embrace the internet or should we fight it?

503
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:09,640
Speaker 1: You did a great job stewarding a o L. So

504
00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:13,760
Speaker 1: what did the Pathfinder success and failures teach you and

505
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 1: teach the company about the new digital world. I think

506
00:27:17,840 --> 00:27:23,120
Speaker 1: we embraced it very fast. One mistake we and everybody

507
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 1: made in nine when the web comes along and we

508
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:31,719
Speaker 1: move from proprietary online having websites. Pathfinder and road Runer.

509
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:35,399
Speaker 1: My childhood nickname in Orlenge is Pathfinder. That's why we

510
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:38,760
Speaker 1: named it that. And road Runner was a Warner Brothers.

511
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:42,760
Speaker 1: So those are the tune services we created. We decided

512
00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:45,560
Speaker 1: it was gonna be like everything Time magazine did. You

513
00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 1: could subscribe and pay money. You could get it by

514
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 1: the you know, by by the drink. We'd call it

515
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:52,679
Speaker 1: mean a newsstand sales. You could just buy an issue

516
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 1: for dollar, and we had advertising revenue, so we have

517
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:59,480
Speaker 1: three revenue streams. And then we blew it because people

518
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 1: coming a Madison Avenue almost carrying sacks of cash wanting

519
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 1: to buy advertising, banner ads, and so we said, well,

520
00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 1: let's make all the content free so we'll have more

521
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:13,960
Speaker 1: eyeballs to sell to advertisers. That was a doomed business model.

522
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:16,040
Speaker 1: By the way. It turned out for real well too,

523
00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 1: when they dropped subscriptions and they went free. With sort

524
00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:22,480
Speaker 1: of the demise our founder Henry Lose, he said in

525
00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:29,479
Speaker 1: his perspectives, any magazine that only has advertising revenue and

526
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:35,040
Speaker 1: doesn't have subscriber revenue, that's not only economically self defeating,

527
00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 1: it's morally abhorrent. Now having known about Henry Lose, I

528
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 1: think the economically self defeating was a more important But

529
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: he realized that the controlled cirque magazines, you'd call it,

530
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 1: you become beholden to advertisers but not beholden to readers.

531
00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 1: You lose your focus. If the water ice extent of

532
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:55,400
Speaker 1: nine could see the world today, what would be the

533
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 1: biggest surprise mobile? I remember early cell phone because I

534
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 1: was on the road and the amazing thing to be

535
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:05,720
Speaker 1: able to be somewhere and be able to call. I'm

536
00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:08,000
Speaker 1: calling you on the phone on a cell phone. And

537
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:10,040
Speaker 1: this is why I think Steve Jobs is the most

538
00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 1: transformative leader of our day. In generation, I didn't realize

539
00:29:16,280 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 1: the notion that we could all be connected at all

540
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:23,720
Speaker 1: times on our mobile devices and have GPS, and that

541
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 1: could help create ubers and lifts and for that matter, airbnbs.

542
00:29:28,680 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: So in two thousand and one I convinced you to

543
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:34,520
Speaker 1: go run CNN as chairman and c you know, what

544
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 1: skills did you bring to that and how do you

545
00:29:37,040 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: envision CNN's future. And before we get to that, I

546
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:42,360
Speaker 1: do want to give you this credit, which I suspect

547
00:29:42,400 --> 00:29:45,640
Speaker 1: you don't often get. But you know the little ticker

548
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 1: along the bottom of the news services that was you scroll.

549
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:51,240
Speaker 1: We called it, I mean, a sad thing, but after

550
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: nine eleven, to keep the news so much news, we

551
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: wanted people to be able to read it. Other news

552
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,520
Speaker 1: networks soon copied it. But that was sort of your

553
00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 1: lasting agacy because it's still here today. Well, I guess

554
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 1: I just wasn't really suited to run CNN. I was

555
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:10,360
Speaker 1: not a TV person, So when I was at Time

556
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:12,400
Speaker 1: magazine and we wanted to do a layout, and I

557
00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:14,160
Speaker 1: wanted a picture to be a certain win. They said

558
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 1: we can't do that. Say, yeah, you can just crop

559
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 1: it here and run it over the God and bleed

560
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:20,080
Speaker 1: it on the sides. I knew what I was doing.

561
00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 1: I didn't have that fingertip field for television. Right after

562
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 1: I came nine eleven happened, and I did have the passion,

563
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 1: the curiosity wanting to know everything I wanted you to

564
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 1: know about al Qaeda, wanting to know him, about the whole.

565
00:30:34,480 --> 00:30:37,840
Speaker 1: Sooni shea divide getting Christian. I'm in port, Nick Robertson.

566
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:41,840
Speaker 1: So I had a driving editorial curiosity. There are a

567
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:44,440
Speaker 1: couple of things you learn at a certain point in

568
00:30:44,440 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 1: life that you wish you had learned earlier. I am

569
00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 1: very good at content and ideas. I am not a

570
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 1: great manager executive. I've watched you because you were the

571
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 1: co president. I think of this entire empire of the

572
00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:02,880
Speaker 1: all time Warner of which I reported up to you.

573
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:06,520
Speaker 1: You really knew how to manage and run a big enterprise.

574
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:12,040
Speaker 1: I was not as crisp as a executive or somebody

575
00:31:12,080 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: could run an enterprise. It was like overwhelmed every day

576
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 1: by the thousands of management things. And then after the

577
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:22,480
Speaker 1: war and after my contract was up, it was like,

578
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to spend the rest of

579
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 1: my life as a manager. There are people really good

580
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 1: at this. People can be great CEOs and chief operating officers.

581
00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: I'd rather make the content have somebody have to manage

582
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 1: me than have to manage a whole lot of content.

583
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:38,640
Speaker 1: Although I must say having you at the top of

584
00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: CNN gave everybody in New York great comfort that we

585
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:45,160
Speaker 1: were not going to lose the journalistic standards. And if

586
00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 1: you were called that moment in time, there was a

587
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:50,000
Speaker 1: real danger of that. Yeah, and that's when Fox and

588
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: then MSNBC we're coming up. At least with nine eleven.

589
00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 1: It was absolutely clear that we had to just report

590
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:01,040
Speaker 1: this straight down the middle. But even then it became

591
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 1: Foxes running flags all over their thing, and we're not

592
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: putting the American flag up enough. And it was always okay,

593
00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 1: we have to figure out and wrestle with the partisan thing,

594
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: not just getting the story right. I think CNN has

595
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:17,680
Speaker 1: great people, so love Wolf Blitter and all the people there.

596
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:21,000
Speaker 1: I do think that there is a hunger for a

597
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 1: network that just says, let me report it. I think

598
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 1: we've become too opinionated in cable news if you've talked

599
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: to people, and obviously we do in our business because

600
00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 1: we do a lot of news and opinion on all sides.

601
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: I think what is missing is, let me give you

602
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 1: all the information you need to make a good decision.

603
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 1: Let me lower your blood pressure instead of elevating your

604
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:44,880
Speaker 1: blood pressure. Most of TV today is by elevate your

605
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:47,360
Speaker 1: blood pressure. I get more response, I get more passionate,

606
00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:50,160
Speaker 1: I get a better rating. I think the algorithms of

607
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 1: the digital age, and especially of social media, but also

608
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:57,720
Speaker 1: the ratings on digital media and television reward what they

609
00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:03,040
Speaker 1: euphemistically call engagement, meaning you retweet, you put a little likes.

610
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:06,760
Speaker 1: It shouldn't be called just engagement, it's enragement because if

611
00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:09,800
Speaker 1: you enrage people with something, they're more likely to say,

612
00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 1: can you believe this, or respond to it, retweet it,

613
00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 1: or stay tuned. I'm watching in the gym today, Fox

614
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:23,040
Speaker 1: and MSNBC and CNN, and they're not trying to parse

615
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:25,920
Speaker 1: it and enlighten They're trying to stoke you up, get

616
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:27,960
Speaker 1: your blood pressure up right. That's why I'll go to

617
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: the swimming pool because there's no TV in the pool.

618
00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:34,400
Speaker 1: From the Wise Men to Leonardo Daventia, including Steve Jobs

619
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 1: in between, you've studied great successful people. Were these people

620
00:33:39,160 --> 00:33:42,640
Speaker 1: also great at marketing their ideas and themselves? Was that

621
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:45,080
Speaker 1: part of the success? I mean, obviously Steve was the

622
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 1: greatest marketer of our our tration. He was a marketer

623
00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 1: not just because he can make an Apple add like

624
00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:55,520
Speaker 1: here's to the crazy Ones that misfits the Rebels, or

625
00:33:55,640 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 1: do the four ad which introduces the Macintosh. His marketing

626
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:04,080
Speaker 1: was things like I will get the perfect color slate

627
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 1: to the floor of this store, and I will have

628
00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:11,480
Speaker 1: beautiful big panes of glass, and I want this type

629
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:14,120
Speaker 1: of wood, and I want you to feel this way

630
00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 1: when you walk in. All the Apple Store is is

631
00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:21,360
Speaker 1: just the greatest piece of marketing Steve. When he was

632
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:24,319
Speaker 1: building that Apple store is first one. He first wanted

633
00:34:24,320 --> 00:34:25,920
Speaker 1: it to be in the Time Warner Center which was

634
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:28,439
Speaker 1: just going up, and they didn't want a computer store

635
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 1: there and they told him no. So he called me

636
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 1: and said, I need you to see if you could

637
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 1: get the store. So, in typical Steve fashion, I use

638
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:37,920
Speaker 1: every favor I've got. We call it in and probably

639
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:40,239
Speaker 1: say okay, we'll put in an Apple store, and he goes,

640
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 1: never mind, I have another idea. Before Steve died, one

641
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:46,840
Speaker 1: of his last things was I want those glass panes.

642
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:48,839
Speaker 1: There are too many of them. I think they were

643
00:34:48,880 --> 00:34:51,719
Speaker 1: like twelve on the side, and so he said I

644
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:54,840
Speaker 1: wanted to be three. And we're making them build clays

645
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:57,799
Speaker 1: and China. Who can make the glass that big? And

646
00:34:57,840 --> 00:34:59,680
Speaker 1: when it opened a few weeks ago and I went

647
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:02,680
Speaker 1: to see it, I got tears and I got choked up, saying,

648
00:35:02,719 --> 00:35:06,080
Speaker 1: you know, nobody knows this. That weird passion for perfection

649
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 1: is why the reopening of the Apple store. You know,

650
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin also as a marketer. I mean, what I

651
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:13,840
Speaker 1: love about him is when he comes to Philadelphia and

652
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:17,120
Speaker 1: he opens a media company, meaning he's a printer, publisher,

653
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 1: Poor Richard's Almanac, even postal service. He likes a distribution.

654
00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:24,680
Speaker 1: He takes the rolls of paper he needs and puts

655
00:35:24,680 --> 00:35:26,759
Speaker 1: them in a wheelbar and marches up and down the

656
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:29,360
Speaker 1: street because he wants people to see how early in

657
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:31,839
Speaker 1: the morning he is up and how industrious he is.

658
00:35:32,120 --> 00:35:34,640
Speaker 1: And even as an old man in Paris, he's marketing

659
00:35:34,640 --> 00:35:37,880
Speaker 1: the United States he's wearing a coonskin coat and a

660
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 1: fur hat, which you know he had never been off

661
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:43,840
Speaker 1: of Market Street in Philadelphia or Craven Street in London.

662
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:47,520
Speaker 1: But he wants to be the backwoodsman. And Leonardo was

663
00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:50,440
Speaker 1: the master at it too. I mean, the best piece

664
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:53,359
Speaker 1: of marketing for who you are, what you do, and

665
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 1: what you look like and how you fit in is

666
00:35:56,120 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: Patruvian man. That Leonardo drawing of a nude guy, the

667
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 1: jumping jack's in the circle in the square. It's a

668
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:06,840
Speaker 1: self portrait and it's almost Leonardo saying, here's our essence.

669
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:09,239
Speaker 1: So they all have a mission, and they all had

670
00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:11,560
Speaker 1: a purpose which drove them. They had a couple of things.

671
00:36:11,560 --> 00:36:14,399
Speaker 1: The mission was that they were curious about everything, which

672
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:17,400
Speaker 1: is I say, why it reflects my own curiosity. And

673
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:19,680
Speaker 1: they love to stand at the intersection of the arts

674
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:23,759
Speaker 1: and sciences. When Steve Jobs launched a product, the last

675
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:26,279
Speaker 1: slide on the screen would always be street signs of

676
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:30,279
Speaker 1: the arts and technology. He said, you stand at that intersection,

677
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:33,319
Speaker 1: that's where creativity occurs. And he's the one who said

678
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:36,600
Speaker 1: the ultimate in doing that was Leonardo da Vinci. Because

679
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:39,800
Speaker 1: Leonardo is an engineer as much as he's an artist.

680
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:42,839
Speaker 1: He calls himself the engineer, an artist to the Duke

681
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 1: of Milan, and that's when he draws Vitruvian Man, which

682
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 1: is not just a work of art, it's a work

683
00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:51,919
Speaker 1: of engineering and spirituality. What life lessons do you see

684
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:56,160
Speaker 1: emerging from an examination of these greats. I think that

685
00:36:56,239 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: you should try to stand at the intersection of many disciplines,

686
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:05,160
Speaker 1: that people who can see across disciplines see the patterns

687
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 1: of nature and tend to be more creative. That is

688
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:11,520
Speaker 1: not just about the engineering. Where's about the beauty. Steve

689
00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 1: Jobs taught us a simple two word lesson, which is

690
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:18,120
Speaker 1: beauty matters. And he did it because he took calligraphy

691
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:21,960
Speaker 1: and dance and art and poetry at read whereas Bill Gates,

692
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: who's much morder. You know, greater computer scientists, only took

693
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:30,080
Speaker 1: applied bath. So I think that lesson is to love

694
00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:33,400
Speaker 1: the arts and the sciences. When you ran the Aspen Institute,

695
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:36,880
Speaker 1: you created the now iconic Aspen Ideas Festival. What was

696
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:40,000
Speaker 1: motivation for that? Part of it was in the digital aid.

697
00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:43,640
Speaker 1: We were all getting our ideas electronically. We were all

698
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:46,759
Speaker 1: part of communities, but they were virtual. We all had

699
00:37:46,840 --> 00:37:51,080
Speaker 1: Facebook friends that we all debated things on Twitter, and

700
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:55,280
Speaker 1: I felt a hunger and a need that people should

701
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 1: get together every now and then. That the blood pressure

702
00:37:58,080 --> 00:38:00,560
Speaker 1: lowers a bit and the hair quick it's going on

703
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:03,600
Speaker 1: fire when you're sitting in a room and it maybe

704
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:06,720
Speaker 1: Dick Cheney there and you know John Carey or something,

705
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 1: but you're listening to people in the flesh. I think

706
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:13,080
Speaker 1: that's one of the things we had lost in the

707
00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: digital age. Also, we had lost that ability to just

708
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:21,080
Speaker 1: be open minded and curious. The idea Assescil was just that,

709
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 1: let me tell you about Christopher gene editing technology, but

710
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:28,520
Speaker 1: also about how France is dealing with labor issues, or

711
00:38:28,600 --> 00:38:33,400
Speaker 1: whether the universe is expanding, or what type of tax

712
00:38:33,800 --> 00:38:37,399
Speaker 1: might be you know, Elizabeth Warren's new idea and so

713
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 1: as for people who just wanted to hear ideas, and

714
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:42,359
Speaker 1: I think there's a hunger for that as well. That's

715
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:45,320
Speaker 1: what podcasts are. Well. The last ten or fifteen years,

716
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:49,520
Speaker 1: you've seen a squelching of dissenting opinions no matter where

717
00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 1: you are. It's almost as if people don't want to

718
00:38:52,080 --> 00:38:55,840
Speaker 1: hear the other opinion and study them. It aspen institutes

719
00:38:55,920 --> 00:38:59,360
Speaker 1: you brought people together who were often polar opposites and

720
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:02,800
Speaker 1: you managed to get them together. Is this lost to

721
00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:05,360
Speaker 1: us forever? Are we going through? Just we're going to

722
00:39:05,440 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 1: a phase. We're going to a really bad phase. It's

723
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:09,640
Speaker 1: getting worse and worse. I mean, we never used to

724
00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:12,839
Speaker 1: have it where the parties would deeply polarized on pure

725
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:15,600
Speaker 1: ideological lines. It used to be you could have liberal

726
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:19,600
Speaker 1: Republicans and you've got conservative Democrats, and people put together

727
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:24,080
Speaker 1: civil rights bills. By getting coalitions, we become much more polarized.

728
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 1: And as partly our media, because we each go to

729
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:29,240
Speaker 1: our end of the talk radio dial to be yelled

730
00:39:29,280 --> 00:39:31,960
Speaker 1: at by our favorite talk radio hosts, or we go

731
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 1: to our cable news station that we like the most,

732
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:37,879
Speaker 1: and we find parts of the blogosphere. Well, we get

733
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:41,800
Speaker 1: our opinions reinforced. And so that's why having people together

734
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 1: face to face often allows you to get out of

735
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:48,200
Speaker 1: that bubble that you're allowed to be in in the

736
00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:51,080
Speaker 1: virtual world. Do you think there are other forums emerging

737
00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 1: to pull opinions together as opposed to shut them off. No,

738
00:39:56,440 --> 00:39:59,040
Speaker 1: I think that's what we're lacking right now. I tell

739
00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:03,839
Speaker 1: my students that too. Lane Zuckerberg invented Facebook to connect us,

740
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:06,680
Speaker 1: to make us all understand each other better and to

741
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:09,920
Speaker 1: be connected, and likewise Twitter we're supposed to do. Then

742
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:13,680
Speaker 1: some of the other ones they failed miserably in the end,

743
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:16,479
Speaker 1: the algorithms and scented people to get into their own

744
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:20,319
Speaker 1: corners and share enraged information to each other. And that's

745
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:24,200
Speaker 1: why I think social media has ended up being more

746
00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:28,120
Speaker 1: polarizing than connecting. And I say to my students, Okay,

747
00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:31,719
Speaker 1: why is it the anonymity that does it? Is that

748
00:40:32,080 --> 00:40:34,839
Speaker 1: the algorithms said, oh, you just said this. You might

749
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:38,400
Speaker 1: like following Hugh Hewitt, or you might like Bob Pittman's podcast,

750
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:42,040
Speaker 1: in which the algorithms almost push you to hear more

751
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 1: of what you apparently like. And so my final challenge

752
00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:48,320
Speaker 1: to them at the end of the course, which is

753
00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:50,759
Speaker 1: of course, on the digital revolution, is how would you

754
00:40:50,840 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 1: invent a social network that actually healed and brought us

755
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:58,040
Speaker 1: together as opposed to divide us the way social networks do. Now,

756
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:01,800
Speaker 1: So what would history see just it's going to happen

757
00:41:02,200 --> 00:41:04,480
Speaker 1: to pull us back together? Or does this keep going?

758
00:41:05,080 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 1: Einstein once said when he watched the McCarthy era happened

759
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,319
Speaker 1: in which people are like his friend Jay Robert Oppenheimer,

760
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:14,399
Speaker 1: were being accused of being communist. He said, I've seen

761
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:16,319
Speaker 1: this before. I saw it when the Nazis took over

762
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 1: in Germany. So when the Communists took over, America is

763
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:22,600
Speaker 1: about to go off the cliff. And then Edward Armorrow,

764
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:26,719
Speaker 1: Dwight Eisenhower, a whole lot of people knock McCarthy off

765
00:41:26,719 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 1: the stage, and Einstein writes to his son, you know,

766
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:33,880
Speaker 1: America democracy has a weird gyroscope in it. When you

767
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:36,560
Speaker 1: think it's gonna fall over, it rights itself. So I

768
00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:39,920
Speaker 1: think it will take people like the Edward Lmorrows and

769
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:43,480
Speaker 1: the Dwight Eisenhower's to say I'm not just there to

770
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:46,759
Speaker 1: win my primary or to win ratings, but I'm there

771
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 1: playing for history. In the end, the enemy is us,

772
00:41:50,840 --> 00:41:56,319
Speaker 1: meaning unless we as people as a nation want high

773
00:41:56,440 --> 00:41:59,880
Speaker 1: value information and want to be open minded, then the

774
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: people who are politicians and our media stars, they're not

775
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 1: gonna be that way. We'll get them media and we'll

776
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:10,320
Speaker 1: get the politicians we deserve. So we all have to

777
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:12,880
Speaker 1: wake up each morning and say what can I do

778
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:15,759
Speaker 1: to be just a little bit more embracive, a little

779
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:19,200
Speaker 1: bit more tolerant to help bring people together. I think

780
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 1: it's starting at a community level. I moved out of

781
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:24,040
Speaker 1: Washington three or four years ago. I said, man, this

782
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:29,439
Speaker 1: divisiveness is getting brutal. Our country will build back its

783
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 1: civic spirit from the bottom up, meaning city by city,

784
00:42:33,600 --> 00:42:36,080
Speaker 1: town by town, which is why I moved back here

785
00:42:36,280 --> 00:42:38,680
Speaker 1: and have tried to get involved in the politics here.

786
00:42:39,040 --> 00:42:43,000
Speaker 1: One more scary topic is tech destroying more jobs than

787
00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:46,480
Speaker 1: it's creating. Now. Tech never has done that ever since

788
00:42:46,560 --> 00:42:49,520
Speaker 1: Ada Lovelace came up with the first computer algorithm. Her

789
00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 1: father was Lord Byron, who was a lot I literally

790
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:56,000
Speaker 1: because his only speech in the House of Lord was

791
00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:58,719
Speaker 1: defending the followers of Ned Lad, who thought that the

792
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:02,759
Speaker 1: weaving machines using punch cards that made these patterns would

793
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 1: put weavers out of work, and therefore they were smashing

794
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:10,000
Speaker 1: the mechanical looms. They were wrong. The mechanical looms do

795
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:13,880
Speaker 1: find there's about a hundred times greater number of jobs

796
00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:16,600
Speaker 1: in the fashion and textile industry at the beginning of

797
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:19,400
Speaker 1: nineteen than there were in eighteen forty when Lad was

798
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 1: smashing them. I think technology increases productivity by definition, and

799
00:43:25,600 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: if you increase productivity you'll have more demand for more things.

800
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:34,720
Speaker 1: Who would have thought there would be a demand for podcasts.

801
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:36,719
Speaker 1: We did not know when you asked me to go

802
00:43:36,760 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 1: back to that there would be a demand for people

803
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:44,760
Speaker 1: to make services that you could do on mobile phones.

804
00:43:45,200 --> 00:43:48,040
Speaker 1: And people would say, Okay, I'm gonna make a food

805
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 1: delivery service, or I'm gonna make a car service, or

806
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a share your house service. These are

807
00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:58,800
Speaker 1: the jobs we didn't know would exist. And I'm clueless

808
00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 1: about what jobs are going to be twenty years from now,

809
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:03,560
Speaker 1: but I tell my students, don't worry. There will be

810
00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:05,839
Speaker 1: new jobs, and it will go to the people who

811
00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:09,840
Speaker 1: are creative and open minded and curious, not just people

812
00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:11,799
Speaker 1: who have just learned how to code. Let's go to

813
00:44:11,840 --> 00:44:16,200
Speaker 1: Walter today, how's the life of a college professor? It's good.

814
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:18,719
Speaker 1: I mean, I love two Lane because the students are

815
00:44:18,800 --> 00:44:21,920
Speaker 1: not the way you said many students are on campus

816
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,760
Speaker 1: where they get closed minded and they're always curious about something.

817
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 1: The students at two Lane seem to have a earnest curiosity,

818
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 1: So I love that part of it. I love being

819
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:35,759
Speaker 1: involved in the community. We end each episode with our

820
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:38,680
Speaker 1: shoutouts to the people who have made a contribution to

821
00:44:38,719 --> 00:44:42,239
Speaker 1: marketing on the math side and the creative side. You've

822
00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: studied and met the best who is the greatest analytics

823
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:49,120
Speaker 1: person the math side of marketing and business? And then

824
00:44:49,239 --> 00:44:53,920
Speaker 1: Bill Gates ctually understood that software ward rule and was

825
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 1: able when he created the original Doss operating system to

826
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:03,440
Speaker 1: make the hardware manufacturers use it. But then he would

827
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,080
Speaker 1: study how it was being used because nothing, with all

828
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:08,319
Speaker 1: due respect to Microsoft, that they make at first the

829
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:11,160
Speaker 1: one point, others are never very good. But he really

830
00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:14,920
Speaker 1: is good at gathering data and improving the product. So

831
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 1: who is the greatest creative The magician ste of course

832
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: has the course. And the interesting thing is he and

833
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:23,760
Speaker 1: Bill Gates are both born the same, you know, nineteen

834
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: fifty five. They're like twin stars in the universe there

835
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:31,279
Speaker 1: captured by each other's gravitational field. And one was the

836
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 1: most creative and one was the most analytic person. And

837
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 1: by spending together they create the computer revolution, perfect for

838
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 1: math and magic. Walter, You've got a perspective no one does.

839
00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 1: Thanks for sharing it, Thank you, Bob. Here are a

840
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:47,360
Speaker 1: few things I picked up for my conversation with Walter.

841
00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:50,880
Speaker 1: One While Walter thinks it's useful to learn to code,

842
00:45:51,160 --> 00:45:53,640
Speaker 1: he believes it's more useful to learn to think creatively

843
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:56,759
Speaker 1: and conceptually. That's one skill, as he puts it, that

844
00:45:56,840 --> 00:45:59,719
Speaker 1: will always be in the band. Two. Walter is a

845
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 1: big opponent of multiple revenue streams. Being too focused on

846
00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 1: ad revenue can make you lose touch with your consumers. Three.

847
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 1: Talented creatives don't always make the best executives. While Walter

848
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:14,239
Speaker 1: was a remarkable executive, he says he would rather have

849
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 1: a spart manager manage him so he can stick to

850
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 1: doing what he truly thinks he's good at, or be

851
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 1: curious and a field like journalism. Walter says curiosity is

852
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 1: more important than mastering anyone's skill. Thanks for listening. I'm

853
00:46:29,040 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: Bob Pittman. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much

854
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:36,239
Speaker 1: for listening to Math and Magic, a production of I

855
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:39,760
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. This show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special

856
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:42,920
Speaker 1: thanks to Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent,

857
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:47,080
Speaker 1: which is no small feat Nikkiatore for pulling research bill plaques,

858
00:46:47,160 --> 00:46:50,560
Speaker 1: and Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch,

859
00:46:50,680 --> 00:46:54,279
Speaker 1: and of course Gayl Raoul Eric Angel, Noel Mango, and

860
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:57,400
Speaker 1: everyone who helped bring this show to your ears. Until

861
00:46:57,440 --> 00:46:57,919
Speaker 1: next time,