What You Can Learn From History's Greatest Innovators | Walter Isaacson | The Knowledge Project 121

What do Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Jennifer Doudna all have in common? Celebrated journalist and author Walter Isaacson calls upon his years of research to explain how curiosity has always fueled creativity among history’s greatest innovators, and how each of those individuals shaped the world around them. On this episode Issacson dives deep into the curious obsessions of Jobs, da Vinci’s ability to develop a brilliant mind, Ada Lovelace and how she developed the algorithm, and how Doudna’s work with gene editing could shape the future to come.

A journalist by trade, Issacson served as the editor of Time and then chairman and CEO of CNN before eventually spending 15 years as president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, the international research institute and think tank. Isaacson has also written bestselling biographies on Jobs, da Vinci, Franklin and Albert Einstein, and in 2021 released his latest biography, The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.

00:00 - Intro
01:27 - Why did you choose to study who you did?
02:22 - What’s your method for studying people and telling a story about them?
03:07 - Isaacson explains his editing process
03:41 - Steve Jobs and “imputing”
06:08 - What lessons can we learn from Steve Jobs?
07:58 - Where did Jobs’ intensity come from?
09:27 - How did Jobs’ perfectionism help and hurt him?
11:05 - What “wow” moments did you have while researching Jobs?
12:31 - What did you censor from Steve Jobs’ book?
13:52 - What would Steve think of remote work?
17:16 - Why do pockets of creativity burn out?
21:49 - How did Steve stay grounded to himself?
23:02 - Have we lost intellectual honesty?
26:07 - What happened at CNN and what lessons did you learn?
30:37 - On Leonardo DaVinci:
38:11 - Davinci’s Relationship with Michelangelo
41:08 - How is perfect the enemy of good?
45:40 - What surprised you the most about DaVinci through your study of him?
46:39 - Ada Lovelace
51:25 - What lessons can we observe from innovators?
52:50 - Writing about different subjects
54:51 - On Einstein
56:15 - How important are primary sources?
59:27 - How do you get information from people?
1:00:00 - What is CRSPR?
1:02:30 - What are the ethical implications of CRSPR?
1:12:02 - The great race for CRSPR
1:21:59 - How do you want your work to be remembered?
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