Latest / INSPIRE STORY / The SECRET To Success All Starts With This ONE TRAIT

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The SECRET To Success All Starts With This ONE TRAIT · INSPIRE STORY

0:00
Speaker 1: I think people's minds are being open to well, maybe
0:03
using genetic edits to make us less susceptible to viruses.
0:07
Remind me again, what's wrong with that? Chrispher is also
0:10
being used more specifically for detection technologies. Both Jennifer down
0:15
in his group and her competitors out in the Broad
0:18
Institute at MIT and Harvard have produced these small at
0:22
home testing kits, which will roll out in the next
0:25
few months, that can test for any genetic sequence.
0:34
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one
0:37
health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every
0:40
one of you that come back every week to listen,
0:43
learn and grow. Now, it's not often that I get
0:46
to sit down with someone whose work I've studied as
0:50
deeply as our guest today. But some of the books
0:53
that I recommend the most in my life that have
0:55
been life changing for all of you when you're saying
0:57
to me, Jay, what's your favorite books of them? Come
1:00
from today's author. So today's guest is none other than
1:05
Walter Isaacson, who has been a journalist and author and
1:10
professor of history at Tulane. He's the past CEO of
1:13
the Aspen Institute, where he is now a Distinguished Fellow
1:16
and has been the chairman of CNN and the editor
1:19
of Time magazine. Walter is the author of best selling
1:22
biographies on Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, and Steve Jobs, and
1:26
has a new book out today which is called The Codebreaker.
1:30
Jennifer Dowdner Gene Editing and the Future of the Human
1:34
Race Walter, I'm so excited to have you on the show.
1:38
Like I said, your biography is on Steve Jobs and
1:41
Einstein particularly go down as two of my favorite books
1:45
of all time, and this one has been the most
1:49
intriguing reader. I was not expecting you to do this,
1:52
but thank you so much for doing the show.
1:53
Speaker 1: Jay, thank you for all you just said.
1:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean every word. I put the Steve Jobs
1:59
biography to my top three books of all time.
2:03
Speaker 1: Well that's because of Steve Jobs. I just tried to
2:06
report and he's the one who led the interesting life.
2:09
Speaker 2: No, absolutely, but you captured it splendidly and beautifully. But
2:14
I wanted to start somewhere a bit more wild card Walter.
2:17
I wanted to ask you that I've noticed that you
2:19
have a keen interest in basketball, and you retweet these
2:23
little basketball videos all the Time, When did you fall
2:26
in love with the sport? And who's your team?
2:28
Speaker 1: I just actually liked the New Orleans Pelicans, so I'm
2:31
very much a New Orleans person, and I'm in mourning
2:35
about Drew Brees retiring from the Saints. I love Zion
2:39
and the Pelicans. So I can't really help you as
2:43
being a brilliant. I'm not going to do the final
2:47
four for you, and I'm not going to do any brackets.
2:50
Speaker 2: Who's been your favorite player of all time?
2:52
Speaker 1: You know, my favorite player in some ways was Bill
2:55
Bradley for many reasons, including a wonderful book about him
3:00
that John McPhee wrote, which is about a sense of place.
3:03
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, no, I asked, because we've We've had some
3:05
incredible basketball players and athletes on the podcast before. Kobe
3:10
Bryant and Dennis Rodman were both in.
3:13
Speaker 1: Also, I mean obviously Michael Jordan when I was editor
3:16
of Time, and he was in that last it was
3:19
going to be his last series of games, and they
3:23
were in the playoffs, and it was a Sunday night
3:26
game and Time magazine had to go to press on
3:30
a Saturday night. But I knew he was going to win.
3:34
I don't know if you remember that Sunday night, I knew
3:36
he was going to win. And on Saturday night I
3:39
did a cover. We did a cover at time, and
3:42
I know authorized it. It's a beautiful picture of him
3:46
and says we may never see his like again. And
3:49
then I had to stay up on Sunday night biting
3:52
my fingernails. But of course he won the game in
3:54
the last few seconds, and I knew he would.
3:59
Speaker 2: That's incre that's when you had to predict the news right.
4:02
You had to predict the outcome when you were making
4:05
decisions and papers that you got it right. But there
4:08
was plenty of interesting events of fake news then.
4:11
Speaker 1: Now I don't go on podcasts and tell you all
4:13
the times I made mistakes. I'll just tell you the
4:16
time I got it right with Michael Jordan.
4:18
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it well. Well, Walter, like
4:20
I said before, you've written some incredible biographies and I
4:24
can't wait to talk about The Code Breaker today as well.
4:27
But how did you get into actually writing about geniuses, icons, innovators,
4:34
Because it's it's a real task to get so intimately
4:38
deep into someone's life and be able to share their
4:41
life in such an authentic way. How did you first
4:44
find that fascination and then secondly develop the skill in
4:47
the art of storytelling.
4:49
Speaker 1: Well, I'll come out of Louisiana here, and I had
4:51
a mentor, a novelist named Walker Percy, not that famous,
4:56
but a great novelist. He said that two types of
4:58
people come out of Louisiana, preachers and storytellers. For having's sake,
5:03
be a storyteller. The world's got far too many preachers.
5:06
And I think that's the best way to tell a story,
5:09
even a story about gene editing. And you know RNA
5:13
vaccines is not just doing an analytical story or opinion
5:19
piece or whatever. Is instead, say, let me tell you
5:22
a story, and you make it a journey of discovery.
5:26
And so what I like to write are journeys of
5:28
discovery about creative people. Now, you know, in my career,
5:32
I've known a lot of smart people, but at a
5:34
certain point I realized smart people are a diame a dozen.
5:37
They don't amount too much. You have to be like
5:39
Steve Jobs and think different. And so what is it
5:42
that makes people creative? And so with any of my subjects,
5:45
we go hand in hand on a journey and I'd
5:49
almost call it an adventure in which we say, Okay,
5:53
you know here, we're going to go through this together.
5:56
We're going to grow, we're going to learn things, and
5:59
we're going to see how the creative process works. So
6:02
if I have a aim, it's what is creativity and
6:07
how do people achieve it? And the best way to
6:10
do it is not say here's seven Lessons to creativity
6:15
or the twelve Secrets the Creativity. Now, I don't those
6:18
books don't appeal to me. What appeals to me is
6:21
the way the Bible does it. It's the way biographers
6:24
have always done it is let me tell you a story,
6:27
and you explain creativity to the journey of a person,
6:32
whether it be Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs, or Jennifer Dowdner
6:36
or Leonardo da Vinci.
6:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was absolutely No. I love that. That's such
6:41
a great answer. And obviously some of these people you've
6:44
actually spent time with, and some of them, of course,
6:47
you didn't spend time with. What's the difference between that
6:51
opportunity and what's the difference in the process, Because I
6:53
can imagine that not spending time with someone and researching
6:56
their life is far more difficult. But at the same time,
6:59
It's quite challenging to be so intimated someone without judging
7:03
and projecting your own view of them onto them. So
7:06
how are you able to balance both of them? Yeah?
7:08
Speaker 1: You do end up. When you spend a lot of
7:11
time with somebody, you bond with them. And in some ways,
7:15
even though Steve Jobs had a lot of rough edges,
7:18
I tried to put it in such a context because
7:20
I so thought he was an amazing person that I said, Okay,
7:24
he drove people mad, he drove them crazy, but he
7:26
also drove them to do things that they never knew
7:29
they would be able to do. And when you're able
7:31
to walk alongside somebody actually in real life like I
7:36
did with Steve Jobs or with Jennifer Dowton, you know
7:40
about a thousand times more than you can ever know
7:43
about a Ben Franklin or Leonardo where you're looking through
7:47
notebooks and looking through letters to figure out what happened.
7:51
I mean, Steve Jobs would spend hours going over his
7:54
iPod playlist with me. And why you know two different
7:59
versions of you know, Glenn Gould's variations or you know
8:03
both sides now and the Joni Collins and Judy you
8:08
know Judy Collins Joni Mitchell versions all these things, and
8:12
even like on the iPod, why the curves or the
8:15
champers on the case were done the way it was
8:18
for the fingers and each other. So, I mean, I
8:20
just knew a zillion things about everything he did. The
8:24
interesting thing about doing with Jennifer Dowd is we were
8:28
doing it in real time. It wasn't like me saying,
8:30
explain to me, you know what it was like to
8:34
start apple in the garage, or what was wosni act
8:37
like when you first met him. When I was doing
8:39
Jennifer dowdener, things were happening in real times. She had
8:43
turned her attention, you know, to fighting the COVID epidemic,
8:47
and I would be with her in her lab, or
8:50
I'd be on her slack channels, or I'd be you know,
8:53
lurking at her Zoom meetings. And so the book, actually,
8:57
I hope, unfolds as if you're part of a drama
9:01
that's unfolding for all of us in real time.
9:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a special thing about this book actually,
9:06
because you're right that when we remember events or people
9:11
in hindsight, it's always clouded with hindsight, like there's always
9:16
a different skew or a different perception, whereas I definitely
9:19
feel in this book, you're absolutely right there with Jennifer
9:22
Dudner and also an individual that we don't know so
9:25
much about. So I remember seeing her TED Talk back
9:27
in twenty fifteen. That's when i'd first come across her,
9:30
and then when I saw your book, I thought, oh wow,
9:33
this is incredible. But it's also someone that we all
9:36
don't know much about outside of the fields that she's
9:40
the number one expert innovator in, and that's why I
9:44
felt like it was more of a discovery as well.
9:46
When did you start working with her and when did
9:47
you get fascinated by her work?
9:49
Speaker 1: Well, I got fascinated about ten years ago with the
9:52
life sciences because I had done the physics revolution with Einstein,
9:56
the digital revolution with Steve job and I realized the
10:00
revolution that will affect the current time, the first half
10:04
of the twenty first century and our kids will not
10:07
be the digital revolution, but the life sciences revolution. So,
10:10
as you said, around twenty fifteen she was doing the
10:12
TED Talk, she also came to the Aspen Institute where
10:15
I worked, and I realized she would be a very
10:18
good central character because it was not just about the
10:21
gene editing technology of Crisper. It was about the fact
10:24
that even as a young girl, she had been reading
10:27
things like the Double Helix and wanted to become a scientist.
10:30
But her school counselor says, well, no, girls don't become scientists,
10:34
and so she pushes on that and everybody else. In
10:37
the nineteen nineties it seemed in the field of biology
10:41
was chasing DNA in the Human Genome Project, and she
10:45
and a few women like Jillian Banfield, said, actually, RNA
10:48
is the more interesting molecule. And then when she discovers
10:52
how you can use RNA as a guide to edit
10:54
our own genes, she has this nightmare that Hitler summons
10:59
her learn how to use it, and so she becomes
11:02
one of the leaders in the moral and ethical and
11:05
policy debates. And the more I talked to her, and
11:09
the more I heard about her, I said, well, she's
11:11
great as a central character. Now, there are many other
11:14
characters in the book. There's Fong Jiang, and there's George Church,
11:17
and there's Emmanuel Sharpenchay, but Jennifer as a central character
11:22
helps connect it back to the you know, the time
11:26
when watching and Kraik wrote the double helix all the
11:30
way through the current period where day by day we're
11:33
trying to create these new anti viral technologies and detection
11:38
technologies using crisper.
11:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard a talk about In that talk, I
11:42
remember she was speaking about how scared she was about
11:46
how gene editing could be misused and you know, used unethically.
11:50
But we'll get to that. Let's start by you explaining
11:54
to us what crisper is, because I think for people
11:58
to really understand the power of this book and the
12:02
work that you're doing, they really do need to understand
12:05
about how central this is going to be in the
12:07
next revolution.
12:08
Speaker 1: As you said, right, and it's a pretty simple system.
12:11
Bacteria have been using it for a billion years, and
12:14
they're not all that smart. What they do is whenever
12:18
they get attacked by a virus, and that war between
12:21
bacteria and viruses is a worse war than even our
12:24
war against viruses. So whenever a virus attacks a bacteria
12:28
or some of these bacteria, the bacteria take a small
12:32
mug shot of some of the genetic code of the
12:35
attacking virus, and the bacteria puts it in its own
12:38
genetic sequence in these clustered repeated sequences known as crispus.
12:44
And so if they ever have the virus attack them again,
12:48
they got this mug shot and they can use a
12:51
tiny snippet of RNA as a guide to go and
12:56
use an enzyme to chop up the attacking virus. So,
13:00
in other words, it's an immune system that bacteria have
13:03
developed and can adapt to each new wave a virus. Well,
13:07
that's really useful these days when it's happening to us.
13:11
But what's also useful is that Jennifer Dowdner and Emmanuel
13:14
Sharpenay with their colleagues, figured out, Oh, I can take
13:20
that guide that's moving the enzyme to cut DNA, and
13:25
I can reprogram it and I can make it cut
13:29
DNA whatever I tell it to and boom. That was
13:34
an AHA moment in the lab because they said it
13:38
could be used as a gene editing tool on humans.
13:43
So when we talk about Chris vernw we're talking about
13:45
a pretty simple system that simply has a guide RNA
13:49
and an enzyme that cuts DNA, and it's a system
13:54
to edit our DNA, a system to edit our genes.
14:00
Speaker 2: To us, how that editing system was used during the
14:03
pandemic was being used right now, because I think sometimes
14:06
when you hear about these ideas, you kind of think, oh,
14:08
that's a sci fi movie, that's probably something's going to
14:11
happen in the future, or a lot of people's minds
14:13
will postpone that being practical. But it's been used right now,
14:17
it's been used in the last twelve months.
14:19
Speaker 1: Well, it's been used recently to cure genetic diseases such
14:23
as sickle cell anemia. In my book, there's a wonderful
14:25
person named Victoria Gray in Mississippi. She's suffered sickle celler
14:30
whole life. She had Crisper used on her blood cells,
14:33
and she doesn't suffer from sickle cell. Now there's a
14:36
young kid, David Sanchez, seventeen years old, loves playing basketball
14:41
except for when he doubles over with sickle cell. And
14:43
they say, okay, we could also edit your reproductive cells
14:48
so your children will never have sickle cell. In other words,
14:51
we can make inheritable edit. It'll be passed down throughout
14:55
the species. A Chinese doctor did that two years ago
14:58
and made inheritable edit on embryos so that the resulting
15:02
twin girls didn't have the receptor for HIV, the virus
15:06
that causes AIDS. Now, everybody, including Jennifer Dowd and was upset.
15:10
We don't want to be making inheritable edits yet, we
15:13
don't know if it's safe and we don't know if
15:15
it's ethical. But now that we're being hit with a
15:19
virus pandemic, I think people's minds are being open to well,
15:23
maybe using genetic edits to make us less susceptible to viruses.
15:28
Remind me again what's wrong with that? So we have
15:31
to keep our minds open now. In terms of the coronavirus,
15:36
chrispher is also being used more specifically for detection technologies.
15:41
Both Jennifer Dowd and his group and her competitors out
15:45
in the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard have produced
15:49
these small at home testing kits which will roll out
15:53
in the next few months, that can test for any
15:56
genetic sequence you know in our saliva. You just have
15:59
top into a low cartridge and so you can say,
16:02
do I have coronavirus? Does my kit have strapped throat?
16:06
Is that cancer recurring? Is to have a bacterial infection,
16:11
and you know my gut microbiome, you know biome should
16:15
I be eating better yogurt. It also can be used
16:19
to directly kill viruses with vaccines, we're using our own
16:25
immune system and kicking them into gear to fight a virus.
16:28
If we get infected. That's okay. But our immune systems,
16:32
as we are finding out, are rather tricky, and it
16:35
would be better just to have anti virals and to
16:38
use Crisper the way bacteria do, which is, let's just
16:44
use it to directly chop up any viruses that we
16:47
target in our system. That's not quite ready yet, but
16:51
it's working in the lab and will eventually be the
16:54
better way we fight viruses.
16:56
Speaker 2: What are Jennifer's pros and consud crisper and gene editing
17:01
that where does she feel it's adding value and where
17:04
does she start to feel this is actually, as you said,
17:08
you know, ethically challenged. This is posing negative usage challenges
17:14
depending on whose hands this is in. What are the
17:16
pros and cons that she sees that you were able
17:19
to observe, and what were you shocked and surprised by
17:22
and what were you happy about as you saw this
17:25
journey unfold.
17:26
Speaker 1: Right, And that's a good way to put it, because
17:28
it was a journey that unfolded. What Jennifer feels now
17:33
just like what I feel now, and I hope what
17:35
everybody feels now. It's a little different than we felt
17:37
two or three or four years ago. After she had
17:40
the nightmare. She's gathering scientists and ethicists and religious leaders
17:44
and saying, how do we stop inherited gene editing? How
17:49
do we stop things unless they're really medically necessary. I think,
17:54
and you'll read in the book there's no final answer here.
17:58
This is a journey. So instead of saying you can't
18:02
just turn to the last chapter of my book and say,
18:04
let me see the answer key here to tell me
18:06
what we should do. I think all of us have
18:09
to have a feel for this technology, have a feel
18:12
for our own humanity, for our own children or nephews
18:15
or nieces or you know, and say, all right, how
18:18
do I feel? And I think our thinking will evolve,
18:22
as even the pandemic has made it. Of all, as
18:25
for Jennifer and for me, thinking has evolved somewhat. I
18:29
was totally against any germline meaning inheritable gene edit and
18:35
I was very much against any genetic editing except for
18:40
very clear simple diseases. But even before the pandemic. When
18:46
Jennifer gave those talks you mentioned, like the Ted talk,
18:50
or when I was talking about this in a chat
18:52
room somewhere, i'dn't always have, and she'd always have people
18:56
come up afterwards or in the chatroom and they'd say
18:59
something like, you know, I have a twelve year old
19:00
granddaughter and I think she's gonna die in three years.
19:04
I've been told she's got a degenerative nerve disease. Can
19:07
you get me in touch with Jennifer Dowd now maybe
19:10
she can fix it. Or I've got a son and
19:12
the son has, you know, muscular dystrophy, and it's a
19:16
simple gene mutation. Can that be fixed? So I think
19:19
sometimes instead of saying, wouldn't it be immoral to use
19:24
gene editing, you know in certain cases, I also have
19:27
to get my mind in the other director and say,
19:30
wouldn't it be immoral not to use it in some cases?
19:35
So I don't want to preach, as I said, there's
19:39
storytellers and preachers. I'm just telling you a story. But
19:43
you're going to walk in this story with Jennifer Downer
19:46
and many other people and say, all right, I get it.
19:50
It's complicated. Maybe we should do simple diseases like sickle
19:55
selling muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis and tastes Sacksington's. Maybe
20:01
there are other things we can do, including making us
20:04
less susceptible to viruses. I think I would personally pause.
20:09
It'd be pretty easy to add height to your children
20:12
or muscle mass. I mean, myostatin, as you know, can
20:15
be regulated genetically, and so you could have more muscular
20:20
children if you decide. I'd draw the line before doing that.
20:25
I think enhancements. I think rich people buying better jeans
20:28
for their kids and poor people is a horror that
20:32
we have to avoid, just like in Brave New World
20:37
or Gatica. And I think editing out the diversity of
20:40
our species. I love the balcony behind me on Royal
20:44
Street in the French Quarter here in New Orleans. I
20:46
just look down and see people tall and short, and
20:51
you know, black and white and creole, and you know,
20:55
various hues and fat and skinny and gay and straight
20:58
and trans, you know, cited and blind and you know,
21:03
And I think, Okay, the diversity of our species is
21:06
a really cool thing. Let's not mess with that.
21:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's That's fascinating because yeah, as soon as you're
21:13
getting into the esthetic enhancements, it's it's different for its
21:17
use from serving. But yeah, it's such a subjective thing, well,
21:22
to you know, of what someone thinks is important and
21:25
what is available to someone. One of the things that
21:27
I love that you've helped me do personally, and something
21:31
that I like to encourage my listeners to do is
21:34
to study people's lives. You know, I really believe, as
21:39
you were saying, that the religious text the spiritual texts,
21:42
they regularly introduce us to stories of people that we
21:45
can study. I wonder, what have you learned from Jennifer
21:50
Dowdner Beyond uh, of course the ideas of crisper and
21:54
gene editing. What are some of the things you learned
21:56
about the way she lives and the way she thinks
21:59
that you may have started to imbibe yourself, or something
22:01
that you admire and that you're passing on. What are
22:03
some of those more softer aspects.
22:06
Speaker 1: One of the things is that creativity is a collaborative effort,
22:09
and innovation is a team sport. And I realize that
22:13
likes Steve Jobs, She's very good at creating teams Unlike
22:17
Steve Jobs, she has a different method, which is she
22:22
likes her teams to really like each other. She always
22:25
if she's gonna have somebody come into her lab or
22:28
be a postdoc or be hired, they have to meet
22:30
everybody else and there has to be a chemistry where
22:32
they all click. That's one form of leadership and team building,
22:36
and it works for her. If you read Doris Kern's
22:39
Goodwin's Team of Rivals or about Franklin Roosevelt or Steve Jobs,
22:44
they often like to have more creative tension within the team. Well,
22:48
you know what that works too. What I learned from
22:51
Jennifer Dowdner is you have to look inside yourself and say,
22:55
what is my best approach at being a collaborator a
23:00
creative team builder, and I'm going to do it my
23:05
way and you know, be comfortable with it. And I
23:10
learned that I'm not a particularly great manager. I like
23:14
teaching and I like writing, but when they asked me
23:16
to run a big company like CNN, you know, I'm
23:20
not good at being the boss every day and managing
23:25
a lot of high maintenance people all the time. So
23:28
I watched Jennifer down and I say, well, play to
23:30
your strangths. Here have creative, small teams that get along well,
23:35
and that's different from people are going to be managing
23:38
huge enterprises with a lot of creative tension. But each
23:42
is a way to make a contribution to creativity.
23:46
Speaker 2: I love that your answer is not singular, it's not
23:48
one dimensional. It's the idea that certain people liked creative
23:52
tension in teams and that's how they succeeded, and other
23:54
people loved creative chemistry and that succeeded. Because I often
23:58
think it's so easy to be like this is the
24:00
only way that teams could thrive and teams can be successful.
24:03
But you're seeing from two phenomenal individuals and their teams
24:08
that actually both have worked before.
24:10
Speaker 1: And I look at Ben Franklin. You know, he wasn't
24:12
the smartest of the founders, and he wasn't the you
24:16
know that was Jefferson and Madison, and he wasn't the
24:18
most passionate that Sam Adams or his cousin John, but
24:23
he was a team builder. He's the one who can
24:25
bring them all together. And you know, and as I said,
24:30
I really don't like those books that have on their cover,
24:34
you know, the seven secrets of building teams or something,
24:39
or you know, creative team building and twelve years EO lessons.
24:44
I think you have to learn that different people do
24:46
it in different ways. I did it differently at Time
24:49
magazine and CNN than you know other people did when
24:53
they were running publications. But I learned from Jennifer make
24:58
sure you understand what you're I was comfortable with and
25:01
lead with that strength.
25:03
Speaker 2: That seems to be a recurring theme. The idea of
25:06
repeating strengths or emphasizing or going all in on your
25:11
strength seems to be a recurring theme. Was what was
25:14
it about Steve Jobs that you think rubbed off on you?
25:16
What part of that energy or abilities or skills or
25:20
things you saw did any of it, if any of
25:22
it rub off on you?
25:23
Speaker 1: Well, there were many lessons from the book. I wish
25:26
more of them had rubbed off on me. I'd love
25:28
to be more like Steve Jobs or though perhaps kinder
25:31
and gentler at times. But one of the things that
25:35
impressed me was his passion for perfection and for the product.
25:40
When he was a young kid, his dad was building
25:45
a fence around the backyard of the house, and young
25:47
Steve was helping with his hammer, and his father said,
25:50
we have to make the back of the fence just
25:52
as beautiful as the front. And Steve said, well, it
25:54
faces these woods in Marshland. Nobody will ever see it.
25:57
Nobody will know. His father said, well you will know,
26:01
and so Steve jobs even when it came to the
26:03
circuit board and the original Macintosh, wanted it to look beautiful,
26:08
even though he had made the mac into an appliance
26:10
that the ordinary user couldn't open. I mean, you know,
26:13
it didn't have we didn't have a screw you could
26:16
open up the back and see the circuit board. But
26:19
Steve always felt that if you care enough about the
26:21
beauty of the parts unseen, you're going to have a
26:24
passion for making a great product. I think far too
26:28
often people are trying hard to make a profit, or
26:34
they're trying hard to get a product out the door.
26:37
They don't pause and say, I could sacrifice a little
26:41
of the profits, and even sacrifice a little of the rush,
26:45
but I could make it really beautiful, and even in
26:47
a small way. I mean, that's why I hold my
26:49
books for a year, you know, longer than I need to,
26:53
because I just want to go over and over again
26:55
each thing, but in a small way. For example, the
26:58
paper quality of the book. I kept pushing the publisher.
27:01
I want color pictures throughout. I don't want it to
27:05
be this little insert of things, and I want high
27:07
quality paper. I learned that with the Leonardo da Vinci book,
27:11
and so this book, I said, you know, take it
27:14
out of my royalties. We're going to split the cost
27:17
of this. But I don't want you to charge more
27:21
than most books. I want it to be, you know,
27:23
less than most books. But I want you to use
27:25
high quality paper, have color pictures throughout, a lot of pictures,
27:30
because I just want people to feel the book and
27:33
look at it and say, oh, that's a nice product,
27:36
even if they you know, leaving aside whether I got
27:39
the words all right, I want the product to look good.
27:42
I want, as Steve Jobs said, even the parts unseen.
27:46
Most readers don't know the paper stock and the weight
27:51
of the paper stock and the count. And I know
27:53
that from the magazine world, the matting and the you know,
27:56
the coding and stuff, but they sense even the heart
28:00
so that they can't fully see, they sense, Okay, you
28:03
tried to make it high quality. That's what I did
28:06
with this book, and yeah, you don't charge more, but
28:09
you just say it's going to be high quality.
28:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, you definitely feel that you've done a fantastic job with.
28:15
Speaker 1: The color pictures. I don't know, beautiful, yeah.
28:17
Speaker 2: Even inside like this, this is even yeah, even this
28:20
is stunning.
28:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, even the beautiful.
28:25
Speaker 2: And here are some of the color pictures. I do
28:27
want people to see it. It's it's absolutely beautiful to see,
28:32
you know.
28:32
Speaker 1: The Remember a few people are on a podcast, they're
28:34
gonna be looking at them.
28:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone who's listening to this, I am showing pictures
28:38
of the book, So you have to get the book
28:40
in order to see the pictures. This one's great. I
28:42
love this picture.
28:44
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, her in a lab holding the test too. Yeah.
28:48
Speaker 2: Tell me a bit about her when it came to
28:49
that moment in her life when she was told girls
28:52
don't become scientists. How does she genuinely remember that moment.
28:57
Was she someone just completely unaffected by it?
28:59
Speaker 1: Or oh no, she was affected by it. And you
29:02
know what you'll see in the book. And I hope
29:05
she'll forgive me for saying so. She still got that
29:07
streak of insecurity of having been a sixth grader and
29:11
told no, you can't do this. And when she's in
29:15
college you showed that picture of her holding the test
29:17
tube at the Pomona College chemistry lab. She thought, well,
29:21
maybe I can't do it, maybe I should be a
29:23
French major. But she possess And so that's another lesson
29:28
in this book. And all the way through we all
29:32
overcome some obstacles. We all feel like outsiders at times.
29:36
You know, maybe there are a few of us who
29:39
don't have any insecurities, but I've not met any, and
29:43
so I think we have to know the insecurities instead
29:47
of ignoring them.
29:48
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's what really helped me when I
29:50
was reading your work on both Einstein and Steve Jobs,
29:53
was around the number of failures and rejections and setbacks,
29:59
and not just the ones that make it onto movies
30:01
or not just the ones that you know get glamorized
30:04
in Hollywood, but the deep understanding of just how crazy
30:09
this is for someone to go through these events. That's
30:12
given me a lot of confidence that whenever I face
30:14
failures and rejections, I'm like, oh, on the same path
30:16
as as Steve. Josh was like, you know, it's the
30:18
same feeling of I can relate as opposed to thinking, well,
30:23
oh well, my life shouldn't have any challenges because Steve's
30:25
didn't have any challenges. Often we're not aware when it
30:28
comes to someone like Jennifer Dowdner. What are the biggest
30:31
challenges she's up against today from the world of science,
30:36
What are the challenges she's having to process from her
30:40
own industry and her own work right now?
30:42
Speaker 1: Well, she's having a good year right now, having just
30:44
won the Nobel Prize, and somewhat of a surprise, it
30:48
came rather quickly. It usually takes some decades to give
30:51
a Nobel Prize to a field. And she's really reduced
30:55
the amount of rivalry in competition with her why team
31:00
at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, because they're
31:03
both working on crisper detection technologies. And I think it
31:07
reminded all of us, including all the scientists, and I
31:09
hope all the young readers and old readers of this book,
31:13
that sometimes when you're in a race, when you're in
31:15
a rival, when you're being competitive, that's great, it spurs
31:19
you on, but then you get reminders that there's a
31:22
noble reason you're doing this as well. There's a higher
31:25
calling helping humanity, and so I think that she is
31:30
driven right now, and her setbacks are she still doesn't
31:35
have that home testing kit totally approved and ready to
31:39
be bought at your local drug store. That the anti
31:43
viral cast thirteen it's called, you know, Christopher cast thirteen.
31:48
Is she's got it licked. They know how to make
31:50
it work, but it's hard to deliver it into the
31:53
affected cells in the body. So with science, there's always
31:57
another hurdle to overcome. But the cool thing about science,
32:01
and wow, I like writing about this is a scientific
32:04
method reminds us you got to keep an open mind.
32:07
You're going to do an experiment and it's going to fail,
32:11
and that means you're gonna have to revise your theories. Well,
32:14
you know what, we've been pretty bad at doing that
32:17
in our politics and our civil discourse to be able
32:20
to say, well, I actually have this belief in theory,
32:24
but I'm seeing new evidence, so maybe I'll revise it.
32:28
You know, we used to do that. Ben Franklin did that.
32:30
That was the whole heart of his scientific method of
32:33
forming a republic. Nowadays, we don't do that in our
32:38
society as much or a cable TV shout shows as much.
32:41
That's why we have podcasts because people can actually think
32:44
things through.
32:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that as a cross pollination of an
32:49
idea and a methodology and of how things are processed.
32:52
And I think that's such a deep lesson both from
32:57
a micro and a macro level of thinking, whether we
32:59
are talking about policy or government, or whether we are
33:02
talking about our own lives, the ability to review our
33:05
own beliefs, to review our own patterns, And that is
33:09
one of the reasons why I actually love podcasts, because
33:11
we can think things through and and not have to define,
33:15
and not have to make something definitive, and allow ourselves
33:18
to explore and experience something. When I'm when you, when
33:21
you're writing these books and mapping out people's lives, at
33:27
what kind of measures do you have to take to
33:32
to not project your subconscious beliefs onto them and onto
33:36
the book, Because I find like that must be To me,
33:39
that sounds like one of the most difficult things to
33:40
do is to is to because you must have really
33:43
learned the skill of realizing that there is no truth,
33:48
There is only both people's perception of the experience. Would
33:52
you agree with that or would you say there's always
33:53
a fact.
33:54
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to agree with you on that. I
33:57
don't know that we'll ever get to absolute truth at
34:00
all times, and sometimes we think we get it the
34:02
truth and we have to revise it. But I think
34:05
that's your load, star, that's where you set your compass needle,
34:08
which is, there's going to be some truth in here somewhere,
34:12
and I just have to listen to all the different
34:15
sides and look at all the different evidence. I mean,
34:19
I've got the patent battle in my book between Jennifer
34:23
Dowden and Fong Jiang. Well, I spend a lot of
34:26
time looking at evidence. People may disagree with my conclusions
34:32
about that epic battle they're going through over the patent
34:36
for the use of this gene editing tool, but I
34:39
hope I'm keeping my eye on the ball of trying
34:43
to get to the truth on this, and even though
34:47
I may miss occasionally, I hope I keep enough of
34:52
an open mind that somebody says, well, you actually miss
34:55
this point. Here's some more facts. We calibrate a bit.
35:00
But I grew up in a tradition of journalism that
35:02
now seems antiquated, which is, it's not about me it's
35:06
not about my opinions. I got to make sure I
35:08
keep my opinions as far as possible out of the way,
35:11
except for when I'm forming my opinions based on my
35:16
reporting and the facts. So I'm not trying to say
35:20
I'm coming at this with a bias that I believe
35:24
we should gene edit for Tay Sachs and not Sickle
35:27
sell or something or vice versa. I feel that I've
35:32
got to be objective, and people say, well, there's no
35:36
such thing as objectivity. I go, yeah, there are actually
35:40
things you can test and see what's right and what's wrong.
35:44
And even though we'll never get it absolute truth and
35:47
we'll never get it being absolutely objective, we can always
35:51
say that's what we're aiming for.
35:54
Speaker 2: I think that's a really good answer to difficult area
36:01
to understand. When it comes to those skills, Walter, what
36:04
are the what you do a lot of listening in
36:07
your line of work, when you're listening to people, you're observing,
36:10
people you're researching. Give us your best tip on listening
36:15
and being present that people can actually use in their life,
36:18
because that's a skill that you've obviously honed and developed
36:21
to work with some of the most incredible people on
36:23
the planet. How are you listening in such a way
36:26
that you're truly understanding them. I think that's a skill
36:29
we all need to learn.
36:30
Speaker 1: I think a skill that I have, if I may
36:32
be so bold as to claim it, is I'm good
36:36
at getting people to talk. You know, whether it's a
36:40
Jennifer Downer or a Henry Kissinger, or you know, people
36:44
I wrote about years and years ago, or Steve Jobs,
36:47
or I just sit there, sit there by his bed
36:50
when he was ailing, and I can get him to talk.
36:54
And one secret is just let him talk. You know,
36:57
you don't have to ask a whole lot of law questions.
37:01
You can just say, tell me about it. Secondly, you
37:04
just have to be truly curious. And all the creative
37:08
people I know have a natural curiosity. And I think
37:12
I may say I'm blessed with it, but so is
37:16
everybody on the planet. We're all blessed with curiosity. It's
37:19
just sometimes we outgrow our wonder years. We lose our
37:23
sense of curiosity. We think we know it all. And
37:27
I mean, I'm looking. I can look out of my
37:29
window now and the clouds have parted, and the sky
37:31
is blue, and I still, like Leonardo da Vinci did,
37:35
like Einstein did, AM curious about why the sky is
37:40
blue and why it gets a darker blue at a
37:42
certain time, and that curiosity causes me to ask questions.
37:49
And sometimes when the journalist asks a question, they got
37:52
a goal in mind. They want to play gotcha. They
37:55
asking a question to try to get a piece of news.
37:58
I try to make sure that every time I ask
38:01
a question, it's a very simple question, and I'm asking
38:04
it because I'm actually curious to know the answer.
38:08
Speaker 2: You know. I think that listening and understanding people to
38:12
the hardest things that we do, but they're things that
38:15
we have to do every single day. And so any
38:17
tips we can take on that, What about tips on
38:19
answer asking questions? You said they're asking simple questions. What's
38:22
probably the most interesting question you've asked someone? Is it
38:25
as simple as tell me about it? Or is there
38:27
something more to that art of questioning that has allowed
38:30
you to unlock someone's uh, you know, their deeper essence
38:35
through questioning.
38:36
Speaker 1: Short and simple. And sometimes I'll ask a question of
38:42
why did you do that? And it could be an
38:45
inventor could be a hedge fund man, you know, somebody
38:47
created an algorithm to you know, beat the market or whatever.
38:51
I'll say, why why do you do that? And they say, okay,
38:54
because I can make money this way, because I can
38:56
do I say, yeah, but why why did you do that?
39:00
And I like peeling back the onion a bit so
39:04
that people have to say, well, I hadn't really thought
39:08
about deeper motivations or whatever. But the only way those
39:13
questions work is if you're actually generally genuinely curious. And
39:21
so I was reading recently just because there was this
39:26
new movie about Woody Allen. If you're intrepid, you can
39:30
go find it on the internet. But when I was
39:32
at Time magazine is when Woody Allen Sunny Brevin scandal
39:38
broke or whatever, and so I went some reason or another,
39:42
you know, I'm going to get people to talk. He said,
39:44
come on over, I'll talk to you. And he talked
39:46
to me for like two hours in the middle of
39:48
the scandal was all breaking, and at a certain point
39:54
I just asked, why did you do that? You know,
39:57
come on, and it was like and he got more
40:00
and more reflective. He at one point said, the heart
40:04
wants what it wants, And I just kind of remember
40:10
that time, because it wasn't that I was so smart
40:13
about asking the questions. I didn't go in with smart questions.
40:17
Is when I was looking at him, I really became curious.
40:21
I really wanted to know, excuse me, why did you?
40:24
What were you thinking? Why'd you do that?
40:27
Speaker 2: The best part about that answer is that it's available
40:29
to everyone. As you said about curiosity, is the skill
40:33
is simply being curious. As you rightly pointed out, it's
40:36
you know, everyone can ask that question to their friend,
40:39
their family member, or mentor and interesting person. We talk
40:42
a lot about mentors on this podcast and being able
40:46
to understand the most from our mentors and guides or teachers,
40:50
and sometimes we think we have to have this phenomenal,
40:53
mind blowing question to ask that's going to be earth shattering.
40:57
And the truth as you don't. The truth is you
41:00
simply want to understand more curiously. And I love that
41:03
and I want everyoneho's listening and watching to adopt that.
41:06
This week is to ask someone a simple, short question
41:10
in their life so that you can learn something new
41:12
about them or learn something different about them. So I
41:15
love how accessible and practical that is.
41:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, not all of us are going to ever have
41:20
Einstein's mental processing power or Leonardo da Vinci's artistic talent,
41:27
but all of us, if we really want to, can
41:29
be just as curious about things, about all the wonders
41:33
around us. And that pure curiosity lead a graduate student
41:39
in Spain to say, why do bacteria have these clustered,
41:43
repeated sequences, and Jennifer Dowden to say, well, what does
41:48
the RNA do in order to get it to the
41:51
right place to make the cut? And that wasn't done
41:55
because they were trying to make a gene editing tool
41:57
or trying to make a vaccine. Kind of curious like
42:01
whoa nature is beautiful? Let's try to figure it out.
42:05
Speaker 2: That's really resonated with me because same with the other
42:09
individuals you spoke about and have written about, and Jennifer
42:12
Doudner too, they weren't trying to necessarily solve something for
42:17
a particular goal. It was the curiosity that led to it.
42:21
Do you think that that's an approach that we need
42:25
to encourage more in education in the scientific in both
42:31
spiritual fields. Is that something that we're losing? Is that
42:33
something you saw more of when you were studying people
42:36
of the past, or is that just a trait that
42:38
comes along once in a while where you find an
42:40
incredible icon like this who just thinks completely from a
42:45
curious place as opposed to a consumer or a creative
42:49
space of active creating something tangible.
42:51
Speaker 1: I think the most important application of that is in
42:55
our policy, meaning you know, government funding university research. Every
43:01
now and then you get politicians who bark at research
43:07
funding by the US government, which has happened since World
43:10
War Two, and sometimes they make fun of like, oh,
43:13
they're studying the DNA of bacteria, why are they doing that?
43:18
And I think part of the message of this book
43:23
is that basic research, curiosity driven research. We don't know
43:28
where it's going to lead, but that's where you got
43:31
to begin, and eventually it'll lead to discoveries, and those
43:36
discoveries might lead to inventions, and those inventions might be useful.
43:40
When they were, you know, Einstein's colleagues were figuring out
43:47
how do electrons dance on the surface of semiconducting materials
43:53
and how does quantum theory apply to surface states. They
43:58
weren't doing it to invent the transistor, but eventually when
44:03
they figure it out at Bell Labs, theoretical physicists you know,
44:08
like John Bardeen and William Shockley, who understand the quantum
44:12
surface states of semiconducting materials, suddenly have changed the entire
44:18
world by creating the transistor and then the microchip. That's
44:23
true of my book now, which is this adventure to
44:27
figure out, you know, how are molecules working in our bodies.
44:33
Lens leads to things like editing tools and vaccines.
44:38
Speaker 2: Absolutely authorizing. Thank you so much for spending time with
44:42
us today to have this conversation. I want to encourage
44:45
everyone who's deeply fascinated, curious and intrigue to go and
44:49
get a copy of The Codebreaker. It's available right now
44:53
when you hear this episode. And I truly believe that
44:57
you know well, you're very humble and modest, and I
45:00
that makes me appreciate you even more. But you have
45:04
a really unique ability to be able to really get
45:06
into people's lives in a really deep and intimate way
45:10
and take us on a journey through their life in
45:13
a very three sixty whole way. I feel like you're
45:16
great at telling us about the whole person rather than
45:19
just the part that's often the most popular part. And
45:21
I really really value your approach and the way you
45:24
do that. We end every interview with a final five Walter,
45:28
which is a fast five, So you have to answer
45:30
each question in one word or one sentence maximum. So
45:34
if you're ready, this is your fast five. Are you ready?
45:37
Speaker 1: Yeah? I'm not prepared.
45:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely not prepared. Okay. If there's one person you
45:42
could have dinner with that's no longer with us, who
45:44
would it be?
45:46
Speaker 1: Leonardo? Wow? Because he was the person who most wanted
45:50
to know everything you could know about everything that was knowable,
45:54
and it's like, WHOA tell me about it?
45:56
Speaker 2: What do you think was the most interesting discovery he
45:59
made through your research?
46:01
Speaker 1: I think his most interesting thing he did was connect
46:05
the arts and the sciences. And that's an inspiration for
46:08
Steve Jobs, who convinced me to write about Leonardo da Vinci.
46:11
That's what the Truvian man that naked day doing the
46:14
jumping Jackson the circle and square is supposed to symbolize
46:18
is the connection of art and science. And that's why
46:21
the Mona Lisa has the most amazing smile. It's because
46:24
he studied optics, he studied nerves, he studied perspective, and
46:29
he was able to meld art and science to make
46:32
the greatest painting ever.
46:34
Speaker 2: I love that. That was only one question. By the way,
46:36
I got excited, I got curious. I got curious. So yeah,
46:40
when I get curious, we can break the rules. The
46:43
second the second ression, who alive would you most love
46:46
to have dinner with?
46:47
Speaker 1: Probably Elon Musk. You know, I've actually, because of what
46:54
I do, I've been able to have dinner with really
46:56
interesting people, and I admire the hell out of Bill
47:00
Gates Jeff Bezos, but I've actually been able to pick
47:03
their brains. Before Elon, I'd like to figure him out.
47:07
Speaker 2: I see about what would you ask him? What do
47:09
you think is the most fascinating discovery you'd like to
47:12
make there? Or what are you curious about?
47:14
Speaker 1: With him? I would drill down on battery technology, because
47:20
I often find that truly being curious about something they're
47:24
curious about is a way to connect.
47:27
Speaker 2: Absolutely beautiful. I love that, all right. The third question,
47:30
we're only a question three, even though I've asked like
47:32
four questions already. Question number three is what's the biggest
47:35
thing you learned about yourself in the last twelve months.
47:39
Speaker 1: I can't remember whether Arisubtle or Plato said it. But
47:42
you know, we're a social animal, and it's really hard
47:46
for me to be locked down. I was not great
47:51
during this pandemic. I still went out to dinner with
47:55
friends outside socially distanced, but I need to be around
48:00
and other people. I recharge my battery by listening to
48:03
other people.
48:04
Speaker 2: Beautiful question number four. As a prolific author, what's your
48:08
favorite book? And if you can't give me one, you
48:10
can have three. What are your top three favorite reads
48:13
in your own life and your own journey?
48:16
Speaker 1: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy, because it's about like any
48:19
great book, including nonfiction, it's about a person goes on
48:24
a journey, and we're all on a journey, and that
48:28
book gets it. And speaking of great journeys, Moby Dick,
48:34
I think you could pick Huck Finn, but Moby Dick
48:37
is the same sort of thing, and so is The Odyssey.
48:40
It's a person goes on a journey, and Moby Dick.
48:44
It just grabs me because the detail and the curiosity
48:48
and the passion and a third book, let me pause.
48:58
I've answered too much, and I mean I'll I've said
49:00
too many sentences. I love a lot of other books.
49:03
I'm not trying to want to put them in the
49:05
pantheon with Moby Dick.
49:06
Speaker 2: For me, that's fine, that's beautiful. And the fifth and.
49:08
Speaker 1: Fourth I did just read for the you know recently
49:12
James Baldwin I've gotten into and tell me how long
49:16
the train's been gone? My dad wanted me to read
49:18
it before he died. And I read Eddie Gloud's book
49:24
on James Baldwin.
49:26
Speaker 2: Wow, that's beautiful. Thank you. And then the fifth and
49:29
final question, if you could create one law that everyone
49:32
in the world had to follow, what would it be?
49:35
Speaker 1: Be nice?
49:37
Speaker 2: Be nice? I love it everyone. Walter Isaacson a new book,
49:41
The Codebreaker, available right now. Go and grab a copy.
49:44
We will put the link in the description. Please please
49:48
please go and read about Jennifer Dowd and I promise
49:50
you you won't regret it. And to be honest, I
49:53
do think this is probably the most challenging challenging one
49:59
for me in the sense that because it's happening right now,
50:03
it presents so many more interesting conversations and questions in
50:06
a way that I've never been challenged before. So thank
50:08
you so much for all the work you've done, Walter.
50:11
I remain a fan and supporter and really loved meeting
50:14
you today and appreciate your energy through the screen. I
50:17
look forward to have dinner having dinner with you hopefully
50:19
one day, and again I appreciate you so much. Is
50:22
there anything else you'd like to share with our audience
50:24
today that I haven't asked you about.
50:26
Speaker 1: You're a great interviewer. I think you know all the
50:29
ways of being curious, so thank you. And also you're
50:33
good at following my one rule, which is very nice.
50:37
Speaker 3: If you want even more videos just like this one,
50:40
make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here.
50:43
I'm also excited to let you know that you can
50:45
now get my book Think Like a Monk from thinklik
50:49
amnkbook dot com.
50:51
Speaker 2: Check below in the description to make sure you order today.