Speaker 1: There are six words that I have inscribed above my computer,
Speaker 1: which I just mentioned a moment ago, which is let
Speaker 1: me tell you a story.
Speaker 2: Walter Isaacson is the prolific, profound biographer of geniuses past
Speaker 2: and present. He has written about Ben Franklin, Henry Kissinger,
Speaker 2: Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Jennifer Duadna, and
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, and all of his works have become the
Speaker 2: definitive stories of these leaders. Walter was the editor of
Speaker 2: Time Magazine, the CEO of CNN, and then the Espen Institute. Today,
Speaker 2: he co hosts the show a Mampur and Company, hosts
Speaker 2: a podcast, and teaches at Tulaine. Walter joins me today
Speaker 2: at the CDM Studios in New York City. Welcome Walter.
Speaker 2: It's so nice to see you.
Speaker 1: Again after all these years. We go way back, Mark,
Speaker 1: that's so nice of you to have me.
Speaker 2: Can you remember when we first met?
Speaker 3: I think we met in the Hamptons.
Speaker 1: It must have been well, let's not say how many
Speaker 1: years ago, but we met.
Speaker 2: I don't mind talking about years, because that's all part
Speaker 2: of history. Yes, right, yeah, we met probably at mort
Speaker 2: Zuckerman's house, or at one of those other fancy lunches
Speaker 2: that used to occur weekly in the Hamptons. I kind
Speaker 2: of miss those days.
Speaker 1: I was a very young reporter for Time Magazine, and
Speaker 1: I was from Louisiana, and boy, it was a different
Speaker 1: world for me. All of a sudden, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: with a bunch of journalists and We're having lunch in
Speaker 1: these grand houses with interesting people.
Speaker 2: And every weekend there was another interesting group of people
Speaker 2: showing up. Well, you're the biographer of our generation. What
Speaker 2: attracts you to the subjects that you have written about?
Speaker 1: You and I worked together in some ways at Time
Speaker 1: Incorporated when you did Marthas do It Living and we
Speaker 1: had the ghost of Henry Lewis in the building he
Speaker 1: had founded Time Magis and he said, always tell the
Speaker 1: story of our time through the people who make it.
Speaker 1: And so when I was at Time Magazine, and then
Speaker 1: when I ran Time, I tried to put a person
Speaker 1: on the cover every week, and so you could tell
Speaker 1: the story you mentioned James Watson, I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: doing covers on the people who were discovering the structures
Speaker 1: of DNA, doing many things, and so it was I
Speaker 1: think LUs was once asked, are you creating personality journalism.
Speaker 1: He said, no, that's the way we tell history through people.
Speaker 1: That's the way the Bible does it. So I began
Speaker 1: to want to be able to write biography as a
Speaker 1: way to give people a glimpse into everything from science
Speaker 1: to music to art.
Speaker 2: Well Ben Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Jennifer Duardner, Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs.
Speaker 3: What are the.
Speaker 2: Common traits between the people that you've profiled.
Speaker 1: I think that they're very, very creative. You know, people
Speaker 1: say you write about smart people. Well, no, you and
Speaker 1: I know from how many years in the business that
Speaker 1: smart people are a dime a dozen. They don't always
Speaker 1: amount to much. What matters is being creative, being imaginative,
Speaker 1: being able to think out of the box. So whether
Speaker 1: it's Leonardo da Vinci coming from this small village to
Speaker 1: the town of Florence and really helping to create a
Speaker 1: renaissance in both engineering and art because he thought different
Speaker 1: all the way to Elon Musk, these are people who
Speaker 1: are disruptors and that makes them disruptive, which sometimes is
Speaker 1: not very pretty sight, but it also makes him push,
Speaker 1: as Steve Jobs say, they push the human race forward.
Speaker 2: You started with historical figures. First of all, I think
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger, Ben Franklin.
Speaker 1: You have to remember when I did Henry Kissinger, he
Speaker 1: was still very much active.
Speaker 2: Was he still in office?
Speaker 1: No, he wasn't in office. He had left being Secretary
Speaker 1: of State. This was in the early eighties, but he
Speaker 1: was still very much a player on the scene, as
Speaker 1: he was until his death.
Speaker 3: You know, a few months ago.
Speaker 2: Do you know where I met him? I sat on
Speaker 2: the REVL on board with Henry Kissinger, right what he
Speaker 2: did a lot of boards. What was he doing on
Speaker 2: that board?
Speaker 3: You know, he.
Speaker 1: Loved being a player, being in power, and he I
Speaker 1: assume had a consulting contract to with Kissinger associates, and
Speaker 1: you know he wanted to always be a player.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting in celebrity.
Speaker 1: What you and I have watched over the years, there's
Speaker 1: a concept like there is in physics of half life, like, okay,
Speaker 1: somebody was secretary of State, how many years will it
Speaker 1: be before he's half as famous? Well, Kissinger's half life
Speaker 1: was very, very long, like fifty years. He was still
Speaker 1: almost as famous as he was when he was in office.
Speaker 2: And in great a man as a raconteur, as a storyteller,
Speaker 2: as a groff voice. I remember trying. The first thing
Speaker 2: I said to him when I sat when I joined
Speaker 2: the board was what are you doing here? You know,
Speaker 2: what do you know about women's makeup? For God's see?
Speaker 2: It was very odd.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the thing I learned about doing Henry Kissinger,
Speaker 1: which you know continues to this day with an Elon Mosque,
Speaker 1: is people can be brilliant, but they can also have
Speaker 1: sometimes tragic flaws or they as I felt with doctor Kissinger,
Speaker 1: he did not have a feel for the values that
Speaker 1: are supposed to underpin our foreign policy. He had a
Speaker 1: feel for power and realism, democracy not democracy, and human
Speaker 1: rights and those things. And when I wrote about him,
Speaker 1: he was very controversial. Half the people hated him. Half
Speaker 1: the people, you know, thought he was the most brilliant,
Speaker 1: wonderful person. And I tried to do a book that
Speaker 1: showed the good and the bad. He was not particularly
Speaker 1: happy with it. I think somebody asked him did he
Speaker 1: like the book? And he said, well, I like the title.
Speaker 1: But the same as Elon Musk. You know, they're very controversial,
Speaker 1: and in our day and age, we try to put
Speaker 1: people in binary categories. Their heroes or they're villains. We
Speaker 1: have to have a hot tach and now sometimes humans
Speaker 1: are complex. Shakespeare teaches us that, well, what about Ben Franklin,
Speaker 1: What attry to you to Ben? You know, after I
Speaker 1: did Henry Kissinger. One of his strengths was understanding balance
Speaker 1: of power diplomacy, being a realist. He could balance China
Speaker 1: off against Russia when he had the openings to both.
Speaker 1: And I was looking for the roots of what you
Speaker 1: would call real politique, you know, sort of European realism
Speaker 1: and American foreign policy, and we don't have that many.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of Woodrow Wilson's who make the
Speaker 1: world safe for democracy and care about values, but we
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of realists running foreign policy. And
Speaker 1: one of the ones I went back and studied was
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin, who, during the Revolution is in France and
Speaker 1: he's playing a balance of power game with the Bourbon
Speaker 1: pack nations meaning you know, France and Spain and the
Speaker 1: Netherlands again and the English Alliance. And I realize that
Speaker 1: he wasn't just some you know, doddering dude flying a
Speaker 1: kite in the rain and saying a penny saved as
Speaker 1: a penny earned. He was interested in everything. So I
Speaker 1: decided Also I decided to do him next. But also
Speaker 1: I will say, after dealing with Henry Kissinger, I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to do somebody.
Speaker 3: He's been dead for two hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 2: Well, it's such a brilliant biography. And Benjamin Franklin is
Speaker 2: like a hero to so many of us.
Speaker 1: You know, Franklin was great because, as I said about
Speaker 1: Kissinger and as I said about Elon Muskin, to some
Speaker 1: extense Steve.
Speaker 3: Jobs, they are mixed bag.
Speaker 1: You take the good and the bad, and the ugly
Speaker 1: and the wonderful altogether. Benjamin Franklin was just a nice guy.
Speaker 1: He brought people together.
Speaker 2: But his accomplishments appeal to you.
Speaker 1: Well, my daughter, who I think you've met, Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: said all biography is autobiography. I think Emerson said it
Speaker 1: before she did, and said, what do you mean? Said, well,
Speaker 1: when you're writing about ben Franklin, you're writing about yourself,
Speaker 1: somebody who was an upwardly striving media person, you know,
Speaker 1: ran a magazine in a print shop, but also was
Speaker 1: interested in science and wanted to be involved in public affairs.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I found Franklin to be an inspiration.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a very good book for anyone why it
Speaker 2: should get into biography, modern biography.
Speaker 1: It's also a very good book for this day and age.
Speaker 1: Not to tout it too much when people forget why
Speaker 1: democracy matters. Yeah, and we're losing this sense that free speech,
Speaker 1: freedom of religion, tolerance, tolerance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good word.
Speaker 1: And you know, Benjamin Franklin during his lifetime, donated to
Speaker 1: the building fund of each and.
Speaker 3: Every church built in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: At one point they were building a new hall, so
Speaker 1: called a new Hall, and he said, even if the
Speaker 1: muffed eye of Constantinople were to send somebody here to
Speaker 1: teach us about Mohammedism and the prophet Moham, we should
Speaker 1: offer a pulpit. And then he in his death, bet
Speaker 1: he's the largest individual contributor to the Macvasiel Synagogue, the
Speaker 1: first synagogue built. So when he dies, all thirty five preachers, priests,
Speaker 1: ministers of Philadelphia link arms with the Rabbi of the
Speaker 1: Jews and march with him to the grave. That is
Speaker 1: the type of democracy they were fighting for back then,
Speaker 1: and we're still fighting for.
Speaker 2: And is under such siege right now, right with what's
Speaker 2: going on here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I would love to just republish parts
Speaker 1: of my Ben Franklin book and say here is what
Speaker 1: you need to remember about what our founders gave to us.
Speaker 2: Well, starting with Steve Jobs. With that biography, you move
Speaker 2: deeply into the technology world. Why the shift?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: When I was at Time Magazine, we used to pick
Speaker 1: a Person of the Year, and we always tended to
Speaker 1: the President of the United States, or the head of
Speaker 1: China or Russia, or the head of the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 1: And I realized that people doing technology and science were
Speaker 1: changing our world in ways we'd remember fifty one hundred
Speaker 1: years from now more than whoever was Secretary of State
Speaker 1: at the time. And I look back at Time magazines
Speaker 1: people of the year. We never did Filo Farnsworth were
Speaker 1: inventing television. We never did even I think Watson and
Speaker 1: Criek for the structure of DNA, And so I started
Speaker 1: trying to get more scientists and technology.
Speaker 3: We did Andy.
Speaker 1: Grove one year's Person of the Year for bringing us
Speaker 1: to the era of microchips.
Speaker 2: We did Intel, that's fe Intel.
Speaker 1: And doctor David Hoe for doing the AIDS vaccine, and
Speaker 1: Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos for bringing us into the
Speaker 1: world of online shopping. So other historians were writing about presidents.
Speaker 1: I mean there were more books being done on Lincoln
Speaker 1: and Jefferson in Washington at the time.
Speaker 3: I wanted to do books.
Speaker 1: Well, I could go out and report, because that's what
Speaker 1: I was bringing to the party. Somebody can go out
Speaker 1: to Silicon Valley and spend months there interviewing people, So
Speaker 1: I wanted to do that with Steve Jobs.
Speaker 2: Well, when you read that Google just had its twentieth
Speaker 2: anniversary twenty years only, then you realize that what you're
Speaker 2: writing about is so new and so different and change
Speaker 2: the world in ways that no one ever imagined twenty
Speaker 2: five thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a free enormous three revolutions we've been
Speaker 1: going through. One was Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and people
Speaker 1: we all knew in the seventies who brought us into
Speaker 1: the air of the personal computer revolution.
Speaker 3: Then we have the life sciences revolution.
Speaker 1: With the editing of the human genes and Jennifer Dawna
Speaker 1: as we talked about. And now we're into a new
Speaker 1: revolution with artificial intelligence, robotics, electric vehicles, stainable energy. And
Speaker 1: that's why I did Elon Mossen.
Speaker 2: Right, you're right on the pulse of what's going on,
Speaker 2: Wilter Isaacson. As usual, you had an impressive career in
Speaker 2: journalism at Time, in CNN among other outlets. How much
Speaker 2: of the ethics process and goals of journalism applied to
Speaker 2: writing a biography?
Speaker 1: Well, when I went through Time Magazine, we did. And
Speaker 1: you know people push back on this, but we did
Speaker 1: try very hard to be objective rather than opinionated. Now,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of opinions in Time. But if
Speaker 1: I did a story about Bill Gates in Time Magazine,
Speaker 1: or even a story about Jimmy Carter in Time Magazine,
Speaker 1: I was not bringing to it all of my biases
Speaker 1: and opinions.
Speaker 3: I was trying to filter those out. Now. Can't be
Speaker 3: perfect at it.
Speaker 1: But we were doing what we thought was objective journalism. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: a lot of people do a much more opinionated journalism.
Speaker 1: They go on cable TV or they have podcasts to
Speaker 1: give you their opinions. I still, and you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about it before on my Elon Musk book.
Speaker 3: My job was just to report.
Speaker 1: When I was growing up in Louisiana, there was a
Speaker 1: mentor of mine, Walker Percy, and he said that two
Speaker 1: types of people come out of Louisiana preachers and storytellers.
Speaker 1: He said, for Heaven's sake, be a storyteller. This world's
Speaker 1: got too many preachers. And so coming out of my time,
Speaker 1: whether it was at the Times, pickyun or CNN or
Speaker 1: Time magazine, is like, I'm not there to preach at you.
Speaker 1: I'm there to tell you the story.
Speaker 2: You choose a subject. How do you approach these massive,
Speaker 2: dense projects.
Speaker 1: Well, there are six words that I have inscribed above
Speaker 1: my computer, which I just mentioned a moment ago, which is,
Speaker 1: let me tell you a story. And the point of
Speaker 1: that is to say, it's going to be as if
Speaker 1: I'm at dinner, as if I'm hanging around New Orleans
Speaker 1: with my friends. And story tends to be chronological. It
Speaker 1: tends to be about the growth of some idea or person.
Speaker 1: It tends to be about change over time and what happened.
Speaker 1: And so all my books are pretty simple. They begin
Speaker 1: at the beginning with Steve Jobs being born or Ben
Speaker 1: Franklin being born, and you go through the life and
Speaker 1: whenever I'm trying to make a point like how the chronological, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they tend to be Alice Mayhew, who you knew? Who
Speaker 1: is my editor for thirty years at Timon in Houston.
Speaker 1: In the very first book I did with a friend
Speaker 1: was called The Wise Men, and it was about foreign
Speaker 1: policy in the forties. And she kept writing in the
Speaker 1: margin all things in good time, I take to her.
Speaker 1: She would just abbreviate it, and it was keep it chronological.
Speaker 1: That's the way the Bible does it. If it's good
Speaker 1: enough of the Bible, it's good enough for you. And
Speaker 1: that's the way we live our lives, which is chronological.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm just about to start an autobiography, and
Speaker 2: I am taking notes, mental notes as I talked.
Speaker 3: To you, because you're a storyteller by heart, you know.
Speaker 1: You know, whenever you want to make a point, like
Speaker 1: if I wanted to make a point about how did
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs go about choosing a design aesthetic.
Speaker 2: What about those awful colors that he chose? Yeah, oh pan,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Right, And instead of talking about these colors are awful,
Speaker 1: I say to myself mentally, let me tell you a story.
Speaker 1: And then I talk about going into the design studio
Speaker 1: having the Pantone catalog, him getting mad that the blue
Speaker 1: is not blue enough.
Speaker 2: And the green, oh, that horrible green.
Speaker 1: He chose, and I tell you the story as opposed
Speaker 1: I say, what happened in that design studio? How was
Speaker 1: he at the Whole Foods getting a smooth but yelling
Speaker 1: on his phone that blue isn't blue enough? And then
Speaker 1: he kept saying the white isn't white enough. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know that was Steve. And by telling you a story,
Speaker 1: you see how the person's mind operates.
Speaker 3: So you will have a great time.
Speaker 1: Your memo will be chronological, it'll be anecdotal, and it'll
Speaker 1: be driven by people and photos.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, photos, I have so many great photos I
Speaker 2: want to put Do you think photos are important?
Speaker 1: I think photos are very important, especially when a they
Speaker 1: tell a story. In other words, it is not just
Speaker 1: a mugshot. And secondly, when you make people feel you're
Speaker 1: a little bit behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: I don't like.
Speaker 1: Those pictures where it's six people posing against a step
Speaker 1: and repeat that says time CNN on the backdrop.
Speaker 3: I kind of like the pictures in which you see Andy.
Speaker 1: Grove huddling with Gordon Moore in the early days of Intel.
Speaker 2: Right now, have you been a Time one hundred person?
Speaker 3: You guys all have? Actually you have? Yeah? Good?
Speaker 2: Oh, you were but I was, but I just wondered
Speaker 2: I couldn't. I don't remember that you were. But that's
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: After our left Time magazine, and my friends John Hughey
Speaker 1: and Rick Stingle somewhat surprised me by one year, saying,
Speaker 1: all right, because I had helped in the nineties invent
Speaker 1: the time one hundred for a hundredth I mean for
Speaker 1: the seventy fifth animate of Time, and we had a
Speaker 1: big party on the hundredth being seventy fifth anniversary, but
Speaker 1: we created the hundred most important People of the Century,
Speaker 1: and then we extended it. And so one day John
Speaker 1: and Rick called and said, Okay, you're going to be
Speaker 1: in it, and they got Madeline Albright to write a
Speaker 1: nice little.
Speaker 2: Piece that is so great, so great, I'm going to
Speaker 2: go look that up because because I think you're absolutely
Speaker 2: belong in that pantheon.
Speaker 3: It I don't think that.
Speaker 2: But crazy people that have been rich single.
Speaker 1: The editor who chose it had a wonderful book called Flattery,
Speaker 1: and I think it was a Michael Kensley line, but
Speaker 1: he said, insincere flattery actually better than real flattery because
Speaker 1: it shows people care enough to go the extra mile
Speaker 1: to make you feel good. So I think that was
Speaker 1: sort of flattering that they did that, even though I
Speaker 1: don't think it was deserved.
Speaker 2: Well, when you go to interview in Steve Jobs or
Speaker 2: an Elon Musk, how did you develop the trust that
Speaker 2: it takes to enable you to follow them around, meet
Speaker 2: everybody in their lives, watch and listen to their movements.
Speaker 1: When I was a reporter on the time, speaking on
Speaker 1: my very first day on the job in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: there was a murder and I was sent out to
Speaker 1: cover it five am and I've had to go down
Speaker 1: to the pay phone afterwards after the police gave me
Speaker 1: the facts, and I phoned it into the rewrite man
Speaker 1: and he said, well, did you talk to the family?
Speaker 1: I said, well, no, you know, there was just a
Speaker 1: murder in the man he said, go knock on the door.
Speaker 1: And I had to take a deep breath, walk back down,
Speaker 1: knock on the door, and it just surprised me. They
Speaker 1: opened the door and they wanted to talk. I didn't
Speaker 1: have to ask many questions. I just sat while they talked.
Speaker 2: Who was it the father?
Speaker 3: Yeah, father than the mother.
Speaker 2: They pulled out, but who got killed?
Speaker 1: A daughter and a family? Yeah? And they pulled out
Speaker 1: the yearbook, pictures and many things. And I realized people
Speaker 1: want to talk if you want to listen. And I've
Speaker 1: always had the luxury, whether I was doing Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: or elon Moscow Jennifer Dunda, I was saying, I don't
Speaker 1: want to do this based on five or ten interviews
Speaker 1: or fifteen interviews. I just want to be by your
Speaker 1: side days on end, twelve hours a day if need
Speaker 1: be in the background watching. And I had that luxury.
Speaker 2: So how long did you say with Steve Jobs? Were
Speaker 2: you there before he got sick or before he knew
Speaker 2: he was sick.
Speaker 1: I had done Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein, and I
Speaker 1: was taking a walk with Steve Jobs, who had come
Speaker 1: to the party of that John door through for the
Speaker 1: Einstein book, and he said, do me next, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's a bit full, you know Ben frank Then Albert Eines,
Speaker 1: I think I said, I'll do you in twenty thirty
Speaker 1: years when you retire maybe. And then I was told,
Speaker 1: if you're going to do Steve, you got to do
Speaker 1: him now. And I said, well, I didn't know he'd
Speaker 1: been diagnosed. He said, no, he spoke to you the
Speaker 1: day after he'd gotten his cancer diagnosis. So that's when
Speaker 1: I realized I had this important calling, almost to take
Speaker 1: the person who had done most to shape the world
Speaker 1: we lived in at that time, meaning brought us into
Speaker 1: the era of the friendly personal computer, of the iPhone,
Speaker 1: of the app economy, of a thousand songs in our pocket,
Speaker 1: retail stores, Pixar digital animation of movies.
Speaker 2: Time.
Speaker 1: And I was going to get to be up close
Speaker 1: and watch him and how he operated, and go to
Speaker 1: the design studios with him, and be at meetings with him,
Speaker 1: and be at dinners with him.
Speaker 3: And I said, man, I can't.
Speaker 1: This is almost not only a duty, but a joy
Speaker 1: to be able to look at such a brilliant mind.
Speaker 2: Well, I spoke to him. During that time. I knew
Speaker 2: all those guys on all the tech guys because of
Speaker 2: my affiliation with a man who worked at Microsoft and Steve.
Speaker 2: I remember calling him after he was diagnosed with pancreatic
Speaker 2: cancer and to ask him for a friend, about his
Speaker 2: treatment and what was working, what wasn't working. He responded immediately.
Speaker 2: He was so open. I found he was both the
Speaker 2: nicest person and the gruffest person. At times he could
Speaker 2: bite people's heads off, or he could just have a
Speaker 2: spiritual bonding with people. And that's always the difficulty sometimes
Speaker 2: of writing, whether it's Kissinger or Elon Musk or Steve Job,
Speaker 2: is that they're a little bit more vibrant than most people.
Speaker 3: They have more ups and more down prickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if I've tried to capture it, I think
Speaker 1: some people very close to Steve said, well, you did
Speaker 1: too much on the prickly side, Steve. And some people say, well,
Speaker 1: you sugarcoated him too much, And I say, man, I
Speaker 1: just tried pretty hard to be honest.
Speaker 3: I didn't have an agenda. Now.
Speaker 2: Did Steve want control with his It.
Speaker 1: Was amazing to me that when we talked, I said, ya,
Speaker 1: I want to do it. I want to be by
Speaker 1: your side, but I don't want you to control the book.
Speaker 1: You don't get to approve it in advance. And he
Speaker 1: said that's the only way it should be, because if
Speaker 1: it's improved in advance and he has control over it,
Speaker 1: nobody will pay attention to it. But he said, if
Speaker 1: it's done honestly and I don't have control, it'll be
Speaker 1: considered more of a historical biography. The one piece of
Speaker 1: control he wanted was the cover, really, and he picked
Speaker 1: that iconic picture of the cover. I think it was
Speaker 1: Albert Watson did the photograph gets a white background, the
Speaker 1: black turtleneck, black turtleneck, it was, and he wanted it
Speaker 1: in black and white, and he had his design team
Speaker 1: work on it. Even the font, the Sorcery font, it
Speaker 1: just says Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. And he obsessed
Speaker 1: over making that cover almost like an Apple product, stark beautiful,
Speaker 1: with simplicity being the ultimate sophistication. Other than that, he
Speaker 1: didn't near the end of his life when he was sick,
Speaker 1: I read long passages to him.
Speaker 3: I read him the last chapter.
Speaker 1: I read him things that I thought he might be
Speaker 1: upset by, because I didn't want to upset him, but
Speaker 1: I want to give him the chance to correct it,
Speaker 1: like not giving stock options to some of the early employees,
Speaker 1: or you know, times he was wrong and he didn't
Speaker 1: push for any corrections.
Speaker 3: And he particularly liked the concluding chapter.
Speaker 2: Amazing, just amazing. Now that book was the inspiration for
Speaker 2: the movie, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for the Aaron movie. I think there're a couple
Speaker 3: of movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, brilliant. Well what about Elon? Did he release control?
Speaker 2: That control free?
Speaker 1: I mean so I was out visiting our friends Joel
Speaker 1: Klein and Nicole Seligman and sag Harbor a few years ago,
Speaker 1: just like in the old days when we used to
Speaker 1: hang around sag.
Speaker 3: Harbor, and.
Speaker 1: I thought, for my next subject, I really wanted to
Speaker 1: do somebody bringing us into the air, sustainable energy, space travel, robotics.
Speaker 3: Obviously Musk was a choice.
Speaker 1: And so somebody put us together on a phone call.
Speaker 1: We didn't run across each other a few times, and
Speaker 1: we talked for two hours. I remember being upstairs at
Speaker 1: Joel and Nichole's house and I said, here's the deals
Speaker 1: with my books. Number one, I don't want to do
Speaker 1: it based on interviews. I want to be by your
Speaker 1: side for two years whenever I want to be.
Speaker 3: He went okay.
Speaker 1: And then I said, and you have no control over it.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to let you read it in advance.
Speaker 1: He went okay. So I thought wow. And so I
Speaker 1: went downstairs and there were a few people hanging out,
Speaker 1: and a few minutes later, by sort of buzzing and
Speaker 1: said what happened? He said, well, Elon just tweeted out
Speaker 1: Walter's writing my biography.
Speaker 3: And I said, oh, I guess.
Speaker 2: I've got the time by the tail X. Yeah, did
Speaker 2: you have X by then?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, no, although.
Speaker 1: He had started a company called X twenty years earlier,
Speaker 1: and he told me at the time, he said, someday
Speaker 1: I want to revive the original X, which was a
Speaker 1: became PayPal, but it was a payments platform that he
Speaker 1: thought should be connected to a social media platform.
Speaker 2: So what's it like on your end to have control
Speaker 2: like that? Do you feel all powerful or I mean,
Speaker 2: you're really setting the historical record for these guys.
Speaker 3: Well, you know it goes back by the way I.
Speaker 2: Say, guys, you only you did one woman, right?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did Jennifer Doubtna and I did a book
Speaker 1: called The Innovators, which I kind of liked, but I
Speaker 1: don't think people read, which was about how teams of
Speaker 1: people do things. And it begins with Ada Lovelace and
Speaker 1: ends with Ada Lovelace. She's a framing device. But what
Speaker 1: it does for me when I feel okay, I have
Speaker 1: control over the narrative.
Speaker 2: Is I do try to go back to this.
Speaker 1: Let me just tell you the story and let me
Speaker 1: just report it exactly as I saw it, with no agenda,
Speaker 1: and you open yourself up to some criticism. You know,
Speaker 1: we talked about Kara Swisher, who I love and was
Speaker 1: on a podcast, Great old friend, But she said, how
Speaker 1: come you didn't you want my judgmental?
Speaker 3: You didn't say what a jurky is? I said, I
Speaker 3: tell you the story, you can come to your own judgment.
Speaker 1: So I think, if I'm going to get that incredibly
Speaker 1: close up access, the value I can bring to the
Speaker 1: party is to just try to report it as honestly
Speaker 1: as I can, as up close as I can, and
Speaker 1: not filter it through too many layers of my own opinions,
Speaker 1: because there'll be really smart people from Kara to hundreds
Speaker 1: of others who will be able to analyze it and
Speaker 1: offer a pen onions. But I feel that if I'm
Speaker 1: going to get that much access, I should just try
Speaker 1: to report the hell out of it.
Speaker 2: Well, I was looking back counting the years between your books,
Speaker 2: and it's about three and a half four years between
Speaker 2: a book. Is that what you give yourself?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 1: It takes me about a year and a half or
Speaker 1: two years of immersing myself in a subject and then
Speaker 1: about a year to write it. In the case of
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, I was doing both at the same time,
Speaker 1: meaning I was writing while I was reporting.
Speaker 2: That's a big, fat book? Is that your biggest book?
Speaker 2: In number two?
Speaker 1: Now, they're all approximately the same, all about six hundred pages,
Speaker 1: but with Elon in particular, very short chapters, because I
Speaker 1: wanted to recreate what it was like to be writing
Speaker 1: by a side where you'd spend an hour focusing on
Speaker 1: a leak in the Raptor engine, then on unprotected left
Speaker 1: turns and full self drive, and then on something that
Speaker 1: was happening on Twitter, and then with Grimes his girlfriend
Speaker 1: Claire Bouchet, what was happening and his boom boom boom,
Speaker 1: boom boom. And I try to keep it sparse so
Speaker 1: it's not me doing a whole lot of my own pontificating.
Speaker 3: It's a fast paced narrative.
Speaker 2: Does he have anybody telling him what he should or
Speaker 2: should not do?
Speaker 1: He doesn't have enough people around him to say no.
Speaker 1: And I know, you know, you've been a great manager.
Speaker 1: And when I was running things, I always tried to
Speaker 1: have strong people who would say that's a really bad idea,
Speaker 1: or we can fix that idea maybe. And he does
Speaker 1: have Gwynn shot Well, who has run SpaceX for more
Speaker 1: than twenty years. And I describe in the book how
Speaker 1: she says no, which is the way to say no
Speaker 1: to Elon. Didn't just to say that's a dumb idea. No,
Speaker 1: it's there were And I tell stories. Given an alternative, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean i'd do it through storytelling. I'll give one
Speaker 1: real quick, which is Elon to force them to get Starship,
Speaker 1: this huge rocket that he's now tested twice.
Speaker 3: Yes, and do it.
Speaker 1: And that's the way he does it first time, is
Speaker 1: littlest rocket at the very beginning, three explosions before he
Speaker 1: got it right. But that's why he gets rockets up
Speaker 1: and Boeing doesn't or NASA doesn't, because he's willing to
Speaker 1: take risks and then learn from them. And so he said,
Speaker 1: we have Falcon Heavy, which is then the heavy rocket
Speaker 1: that they were using to get communications satellites into high
Speaker 1: Earth orbit. He said, we're going to cancel it because
Speaker 1: that'll force us to go faster with Starship. And everybody's
Speaker 1: in the meeting ard, oh my god, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: a nightmare. And they text Gwyn Shotwell, who's in her
Speaker 1: cubicle nearby, and she comes running in says, okay, I
Speaker 1: understand what you want to do. He want us to
Speaker 1: go faster with Starship and I understand you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it. You want to cancel off. And so
Speaker 1: let's go through the numbers. Here, we have this many
Speaker 1: satellite launches. We have to get these military satellites up.
Speaker 1: Let's make a chart of what we have to do.
Speaker 1: And she just innundates him with engineering facts, and by
Speaker 1: the end of it, he says, Okay, we'll keep Falcon
Speaker 1: Heavy going for a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It wasn't just he.
Speaker 2: Needs to be talked to. He needs to have raw
Speaker 2: engineering and numbers. His mind works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not very good at emotional or human interaction.
Speaker 1: He's you know the types quite well. But you give
Speaker 1: him a whole lot of data and he processes. He's
Speaker 1: a geek. He's on the autism spectrum. He is very headstrong.
Speaker 1: And I think if you've hung around people from as
Speaker 1: you have, from Microsoft to other places, you know the type.
Speaker 2: They should all wear the T shirt that my old
Speaker 2: boyfriend Charles Simoni had printed eminence geek. Yes, right right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to send you one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: You are a geek of biography, now you are A
Speaker 2: sense of mission is a big theme among your subjects,
Speaker 2: What is the mission that drives your kenon of rating.
Speaker 1: I think that the most important thing we can do
Speaker 1: as a species is learned how to be creative and
Speaker 1: to connect our creativity to humanity, and so I tend
Speaker 1: to want to write about people who connect the humanities
Speaker 1: to our technology, the sciences, to our arts. Leonardo, of course,
Speaker 1: is the patron saint of that. That's what Vitruvian man is.
Speaker 2: And how amazing that you started kind of with that.
Speaker 1: Well so interesting, Yeah, but I mean you look at
Speaker 1: what Steve Jobs brings to the party.
Speaker 3: The model always ended his.
Speaker 1: Product presentations with a slide of a street signs that intersected,
Speaker 1: and it was the art and technology, or sometimes the
Speaker 1: arts and the sciences. He said, at that intersections where
Speaker 1: creativity occurs. So my mission is, I know, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to be a Steve Jobs or Leonardo da Vinci,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you the story about how creativity occurs.
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger died last November. What came to mind when
Speaker 2: you heard that news?
Speaker 1: Did you read all the r Yeah, I definitely read
Speaker 1: all the commentary, and it surprised me. Actually it didn't
Speaker 1: surprise me, but I was interested that the controversies of
Speaker 1: his entire life were still there at the end. The
Speaker 1: obituaries were either fawning in praise, which I found highly critical,
Speaker 1: or war criminal type accusations. And it reminded me of
Speaker 1: what we talked about a little earlier that when you're
Speaker 1: writing about a Kissinger, if you're writing about a jobs
Speaker 1: or a musque, that trying to put them into one category,
Speaker 1: to say they're evil or their saints. Now our day
Speaker 1: and age, we sometimes want to have a quick take
Speaker 1: on people.
Speaker 3: People don't read Shakespeare enough.
Speaker 1: And at the end of Measure from Measure he says,
Speaker 1: you know, even the best are molded out of faults.
Speaker 1: And if you look at any of them, the greatest
Speaker 1: heroes in Shakespeare, Henry the Fifth Man, he kills all
Speaker 1: the prisoners, you know, and he's deeply flawed and the
Speaker 1: villains Othello is kind of complex, lear very complex. I
Speaker 1: think in the cable TV, shout show, blogosphere, quick take,
Speaker 1: social media era, when you read about Henry Kissinger, you say, WHOA.
Speaker 1: People haven't kept up with the ability to hold contradictory
Speaker 1: or conflicting ideas in their head.
Speaker 3: But if you are trying to understand people.
Speaker 1: There's sometimes a lot of conflicting themes.
Speaker 2: Surprises many people. And I don't always just fiberguess or
Speaker 2: that an author like you, a writer like you, can
Speaker 2: dissect the work of an Einstein, for example. I mean
Speaker 2: you made us understand that was part of the mission,
Speaker 2: which was such a great mission though, because you finish
Speaker 2: reading and you think, oh, you know, maybe I do
Speaker 2: understand what Einstein was talking.
Speaker 1: Well, what Einstein did that wasn't great when they didn't
Speaker 1: do it intentionally was if you were in the era
Speaker 1: of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, you were supposed to
Speaker 1: understand science. You would be considered a philistine if you
Speaker 1: didn't understand checks and balances and Newtonian mechanics. Well, Einstein
Speaker 1: comes along and he makes science seem like you have
Speaker 1: to be an Einstein understand it. It's relativity and uncertainty
Speaker 1: and chaos. And I wanted to say, how did it
Speaker 1: come up with relativity theory? Tell me the story. Swiss
Speaker 1: patent clerk looking at devices to synchronize clocks. He's doing
Speaker 1: a thought experiment. If you're traveling really fast, what would
Speaker 1: look synchronized to you? Is it different than for some
Speaker 1: somebody else and he comes up with the theory of relativity.
Speaker 1: Why did I want to do that? I wanted to
Speaker 1: demystify science because those of us who love the humanities
Speaker 1: would think you were totally a philosine if you didn't
Speaker 1: know the difference between you know, Picasso and Rembrand. But
Speaker 1: we would happily admit we don't know the difference between
Speaker 1: a transistor and a capacitor, or a differential equation, or
Speaker 1: a gene in a chromosome. And so I wanted to
Speaker 1: do Einstein to say physics is really beautiful. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to do Jennifer Dowden and to say biology is
Speaker 1: really beautiful. I'm going to explain to you how you
Speaker 1: would edit a piece of genetic code and how that
Speaker 1: would change it, and likewise would do it so well, Well,
Speaker 1: my dad was an engineer. I was a science lover growing.
Speaker 2: Up, and you have people sit down with you.
Speaker 1: Well, when I did Einstein, Brian Green, whom you know,
Speaker 1: was enormously helpful, So was a late Murray Galmont. And
Speaker 1: I even took a math class to try to understand that.
Speaker 3: Although I don't put the math.
Speaker 1: In the book, but to me, it's a joy if
Speaker 1: I look at the people I've admired the most I've
Speaker 1: written about Ben Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, one of the
Speaker 1: things they have in common is they wanted to know
Speaker 1: as much as possible about everything knowable.
Speaker 3: I have this amazingly.
Speaker 1: Lucky thing in life, which is I actually can make
Speaker 1: money by learning new things. I can learn what is
Speaker 1: special relativity, what's general relativity, what is quantum mechanics? Try
Speaker 1: to explain it in a storytelling fashion, such a joy
Speaker 1: and it helps us because if we're going to be
Speaker 1: part of a debate about how we should edit our genes,
Speaker 1: it helps to know what crisper how it works.
Speaker 2: Tell us about Crisper well.
Speaker 1: Jennifer DOWDNA to me is one of the most delightful
Speaker 1: characters because when all of the alpha may are trying
Speaker 1: to do as old is Jennifer. Jennifer is in her
Speaker 1: fifties now, I think, but she focused on RNA when
Speaker 1: all the men were doing the Human Genome Project and
Speaker 1: focusing on DNA and a group of women Jillian Banfield,
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Sharpenjay Katti Koichko, Jennifer Dowd thought, well, RNA is
Speaker 1: the more interesting molecule.
Speaker 3: It actually does work.
Speaker 1: DNA just sits there in ourselves and curates information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the RNA goes and figures out how do you
Speaker 1: build proteins from that information? And it goes and builds
Speaker 1: the proteins. And so you can use it to make
Speaker 1: a spike protein from a COVID virus that will become
Speaker 1: a vaccine, or you can use it the way bacteria
Speaker 1: do to cut up viruses and to.
Speaker 3: Edit the DNA.
Speaker 1: And so they come up with this amazing tool called Crisper,
Speaker 1: which allows people to edit our DNA. And just last
Speaker 1: week they got FDA approval to treat sickle cell, which
Speaker 1: is just a one letter mutation of DNA that causes
Speaker 1: enormous pain and suffering if you have sickle cell anemia.
Speaker 1: And now they can cure it. And now it can
Speaker 1: be cured just by editing the DNA and the stem
Speaker 1: cells of the person who has it. And eventually, and
Speaker 1: this is where we get into the moral territory, you'll
Speaker 1: be able to edit it in embryos and sperm so
Speaker 1: that you'll be able to make inheritable edit so we
Speaker 1: will never have children ever again who have sickle cell.
Speaker 1: And that sounds great, but you get into moral territory,
Speaker 1: which is we're going to edit our babies. What if
Speaker 1: we give them the ability to carry more oxygen in
Speaker 1: their blood? Will I be able to get somebody who's
Speaker 1: going to be an Olympic athlete if I edit my children.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you will.
Speaker 1: And that the way it's going, and that's going to
Speaker 1: be the moral issue over the next twenty years is
Speaker 1: how much are we going to use gena editing, not
Speaker 1: just secure diseases, but.
Speaker 3: To enhance our children.
Speaker 1: And if you're going to be part of that debate,
Speaker 1: it does help to know what is a gene, what
Speaker 1: is a chromosome, and exactly how can you edit DNA?
Speaker 2: So you have to write another book about Jennifer.
Speaker 1: Well It ends with her winning the Nobel Prize, and
Speaker 1: it ends with the picture of Victoria Gray, the first
Speaker 1: person to be treated for sickle cell anemia, and it
Speaker 1: ends with.
Speaker 2: And she's nowhere near finished, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's sometimes why I go back in history, like, okay,
Speaker 1: now let me do a Leonardo da vinci Is, because
Speaker 1: you know they're finished.
Speaker 3: But I think, as a person who likes history.
Speaker 1: And journalism, one of the things I can bring to
Speaker 1: the party is reporting about people who are still active,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, there's a danger to that, Jennifer DOWDNA
Speaker 1: may invent something new, but I think people will understand
Speaker 1: the new era of life's sciences were coming into from
Speaker 1: that book.
Speaker 2: So all the subjects that you've covered, all these human subjects,
Speaker 2: what kind of childhood is there any? Are there any
Speaker 2: traits in their childhood? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, almost all of them were misfits as kids, meaning
Speaker 1: they had rough childhoods because they didn't fit in. Whether
Speaker 1: it was Einstein and Kissinger each growing up Jewish in Germany,
Speaker 1: whether it was Leonardo coming from a small village where
Speaker 1: he's illegitimate, his father want legitimate him. He's gay, he's
Speaker 1: left handed, and he goes from the village of Vencei
Speaker 1: to the town of Florence and has to deal with
Speaker 1: the demons of childhood. Elon Musk being beaten up all
Speaker 1: the time and psychologically abused by his father, coming with
Speaker 1: a lot of demons you see in Elon today, some
Speaker 1: of which he harnesses into drives and some of which
Speaker 1: drive him and Steve Jobs going through an awkward childhood
Speaker 1: where he didn't fit in, adopted by a wonderful family,
Speaker 1: but one who'd never gone to college.
Speaker 3: And so I think that having a sense of.
Speaker 1: Being an outsider, of being who you don't totally fit in,
Speaker 1: can help spur creativity. Is not a one to one correlation.
Speaker 1: A lot of people would misfit childhoods that turned out
Speaker 1: to be nar to wells, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: with pretty happy childhoods. But even Ben Franklin runs away
Speaker 1: from being apprenticed to his brother famously, you know, three
Speaker 1: coins in his pocket, leaves secretly to Philadelphia. Now I
Speaker 1: look at myself. I had a real happy childhood. My
Speaker 1: parents were the nicest people I know. And so maybe
Speaker 1: that didn't make me a disruptor, but it made me
Speaker 1: perhaps somebody could write about disruptors. So that's a common thread.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people I've written about they've had
Speaker 1: disrupted childhoods and they become disruptors themselves.
Speaker 2: So you write these fantastic books, take about four years
Speaker 2: on a subject. Your editor, How often do you meet
Speaker 2: with your editor? Well, with Alice Mayhew, whom you knew,
Speaker 2: it was a symbiotic relationship. You just go to lunch,
Speaker 2: you'd hang out on her back porch and she would
Speaker 2: have read everything incredibly carefully, and she'd line at it
Speaker 2: and also tell you you're getting boring here, you're not
Speaker 2: telling a story, you're losing your narrative.
Speaker 3: Priscilla Payton, who took over from her.
Speaker 1: I worked with Priscilla had Time magazine for so long,
Speaker 1: dear dear friend, and now she's the editor.
Speaker 2: And she did the Musk book.
Speaker 1: She did the Musk Book, and she did the second
Speaker 1: half of the Jennifer Dowdner book. Alice died when I
Speaker 1: was doing the Code Breaker about Jennifer Dowder and Priscilla
Speaker 1: is the same way. Priscilla can spot structural problems, she
Speaker 1: can spot bad leaps of logic.
Speaker 3: She can tell you when you're boring, and she's intense.
Speaker 3: And I love the fact that both Alice and Priscilla
Speaker 3: have an intensity to them that's levined by a sense
Speaker 3: of humor.
Speaker 2: I don't know where you're going. The XPOY was going
Speaker 2: to ask you, it's my last question, what's the next book?
Speaker 2: Do you know?
Speaker 3: Yet?
Speaker 2: I think I want to go back in history again.
Speaker 1: As I say, after you've been dealing with a living person,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, shall we go on the way back
Speaker 1: machine and take.
Speaker 3: A breath, and.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking. I haven't totally decided. I've talked to
Speaker 1: Priscilla about it. Of doing Madame Curie Marie Currey, I
Speaker 1: would love that, Yeah, because Marie Currey is a much
Speaker 1: better scientist than maybe in your grade school books you
Speaker 1: thought of her. I mean understanding that chemistry is basically
Speaker 1: just physics. It's about how electrons are going around in
Speaker 1: an atom and how they radiate, and what radiation means,
Speaker 1: and how you can film in the periodic chart by
Speaker 1: discovering things like polonium and radium and then applying it
Speaker 1: as she did, and being a woman pioneer where she
Speaker 1: wins and the first of Nobel Prize winner who's a woman,
Speaker 1: but they won't let her into the economy France as
Speaker 1: because they don't allow women, and how you they won't
Speaker 1: allow her when she's growing up in Poland to go
Speaker 1: to university because they didn't allow women to go. So
Speaker 1: she went to an underground called the Flying University, where
Speaker 1: they had to secretly meet women who were studying physics
Speaker 1: and chemistry. So it's about the true pioneers in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Well, I think we're ready for a book with the
Speaker 2: popularity of Lessons in Chemistry, that novel and the TV
Speaker 2: show which you probably haven't watched.
Speaker 3: No, but.
Speaker 2: Chemistry has all of a sudden become a very interesting subject.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, well I'll tell her that because it's sort
Speaker 1: of the forgotten science. We've talked about biology and editing
Speaker 1: our genes and physics and micro chips, and.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm in the kitchen. Chemistry is a very important
Speaker 2: science to people interested in cooking and creating.
Speaker 1: And it's a wonderful course that they teach at Harvard
Speaker 1: that you should be part of, which is called the
Speaker 1: Chemistry of Cooking.
Speaker 3: That's the chemistry.
Speaker 2: Course, and that's what listens in chemistry is all about.
Speaker 2: A chemistry becomes a cook and explains everything in chemistry terms.
Speaker 1: And of course, Marie Curry wins her first Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: in physics, and then after her husband dies and she's
Speaker 1: having an affair with her husband's student, Paul Langevain, and
Speaker 1: it's a big controversy, she gets a Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Speaker 1: She's the only person to have won two Nobel Prizes
Speaker 1: in science.
Speaker 2: Boy, how fabulous. Well, it's just incredible what you're doing
Speaker 2: for us. And our knowledge of people who are disruptors,
Speaker 2: who are important, who are in the public mind. And
Speaker 2: I can't wait for your next book. I think that
Speaker 2: we have to celebrate your latest book, the Elon Musk Biography,
Speaker 2: and I can only wish you well.
Speaker 3: It's great saying you get.
Speaker 2: Thank you, and you're just such an interesting person. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much.
Speaker 1: You know, Benjamin Franklin had a trick. He made people
Speaker 1: around them seem more interesting. You do that very well.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: You're so nice. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Walter