Walter Isaacson Returns (biographer & historian) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

What this episode is about

Walter Isaacson discusses his new book, "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written," which analyzes the key sentence of the Declaration of Independence, exploring its historical importance and the nuanced compromises embedded within its wording. The conversation highlights Isaacson's extensive career, including his past role as CEO of CNN, and emphasizes his expertise as a biographer and historian.

Key takeaways

• Walter Isaacson's meticulous breakdown reveals that even great declarations have their compromises; sometimes, a word matters more than you'd think.
• The couch debate: A polarizing aesthetic decision that sheds light on societal comfort—how do you define living beauty?
• Decorative pillows: The ultimate meta-commentary on modern living—an act of beauty or ritualized futility?
• In-person interviews enrich narratives; AI lacks the subtle dynamics that only real human connections can provide.
• The Heisenberg effect—how observation alters reality—could explain why we're all so humbly obsessed with aesthetics in our nests.

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 15:00: Walter Isacson, Heisenberg effect, Michael Lewis, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written
2. 15:00 – 30:00: Michael Lewis, Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin)
3. 30:00 – 45:00: Michael Lewis, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00: Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin), Clifford Death Row Jefferson, David Hume, Hobbes
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00: Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin), Clifford Death Row Jefferson
6. 1:15:00 – 1:30:00: Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin), Clifford Death Row Jefferson, Penn University, Thomas Jefferson
7. 1:30:00 – 1:45:00: Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin), Abe Lincoln, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written
8. 1:45:00 – 2:00:00: Sapiens
9. 2:00:00 – 2:08:08: Chili's, Mary Maxwell Gates, Max and Irma's

Notable quotes from "Walter Isaacson Returns (biographer & historian) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard"

• Read the Elon one afterwards. All to say, he's back with a new book called The Greatest Sentence Ever Written. I got to add, in case you didn't listen to the first, Walter, which you should.

  about The Greatest Sentence Ever Written · at 0:20

• Okay. You mentioned this. I watched you doing a Michael Lewis sit down which was really fascinating. We adore him as well.

  about Michael Lewis · at 5:38

• Formula. But there is a through line of all the people I've written about Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Job, well Steve is a little bit different, but Elon Musk is they…

  about Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin) · at 7:36

• People as one unit? And there's some stuff that predates our country. there's Hobbes and Lock. There's people that propose this notion of a social contract. And you're going to leave the wild where you have unlimited rights.

  about Hobbes · at 45:13

• Philadelphia. It's the social contract that we've decided to have. And our founders, particularly Jefferson, Franklin, and to some extent John Adams, they were reading the people of that time and you mentioned John Lockach, you.

  about Clifford Death Row Jefferson · at 46:05

• But four score and seven years later, meaning when Lincoln is at the battle ground of Gettysburg at when they're consecrating the cemetery there, he harks back and he says, a nation founded on the proposition that.

  about Abe Lincoln · at 52:49

• Both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson start universities.

  about Thomas Jefferson · at 1:24:45

• But they're watching a movie. I don't know. Like anyway and now he's reading Sapiens. I got bought him that too.

  about Sapiens · at 1:57:51

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin) — Person · 30 mentions · first at 7:41
• Clifford Death Row Jefferson — Person · 20 mentions · first at 46:11
• Michael Lewis — Person · 5 mentions · first at 5:40
• Walter Isacson — Person · 3 mentions · first at 0:10
  Recently married to our guest, Walter Isacson is back. We had him on last time to talk about the Elon book, I believe. Is that what he was here for?
• David Hume — Person · 3 mentions · first at 46:22
  Time and you mentioned John Lockach, David Hume. Yeah. the people are saying how did we come out [clears throat] of a state of nature in the prehistoric times we're all fighting each other and how did we agree on how.
• Hobbes — Person · 2 mentions · first at 45:20
• Abe Lincoln — Person · 2 mentions · first at 52:53
• Sally Hemings — Person · 1 mention · first at 52:38
  Sally but part of the agreement with his mistress Sally Hemings who was enslaved was that they he would have freed their children and he does.
• Thomas Jefferson — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:24:45
• Mary Maxwell Gates — Person · 1 mention · first at 2:06:38
  Oh, is Bill Gates's That's tricky. mom named Mary. Yes. Mary Maxwell Gates.
• ASHFORTH H ADAMS — Person · 1 mention
• Michael Sandel — Person · 1 mention
• P.J. Locke — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

• The Greatest Sentence Ever Written — Book · 5 mentions · first at 0:24
• Sapiens — Book · 1 mention · first at 1:57:56

Companies & orgs

• Penn University — Company · 1 mention · first at 1:24:54
  University of Virginia and the Academy for the Education of Youth and Pennsylvania that becomes Penn University of Pennsylvania and they have different mission statements. What Jefferson says is the point is we are going to.
• Max and Irma's — Company · 1 mention · first at 2:06:44
  Did you have Max and Irma's down there in Georgia?
• Chili's — Company · 1 mention · first at 2:06:55
  Like there was no such thing as a Chili's in my youth and then around my teenage years all of a sudden and it was the most exciting thing in the world.
• CNN — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

• iPod — Product · 1 mention
• Zoom — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

• Heisenberg effect — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 5:47
  And you mentioned I guess it's the Heisenberg effect. Is that what it's called?

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Isacson.

0:07 Whoa. Recently married to our guest, uh, Walter Isacson is back. We had him on last time to talk about the Elon book, I believe. Is that what he was here for?

0:17 Oh, Dana. Jennifer Dow. Oh, right. Jennifer Down. And then I read the Elon one afterwards. All to say, he's back with a new book called The Greatest Sentence Ever Written. I got to add, in case you didn't listen to the first, Walter, which you should. Yeah,

0:30 Walter in his own right is the most fascinating person and I said this in the first interview, he deserves his own biography cuz he was the CEO or president of CNN.

0:38 Yeah, he has a whole crazy epic career before he was a biographer. I know. So cool.

0:44 His new book is called The Greatest Sentence Ever Written and it's about the most powerful sentence in the Declaration of Independence. And he just breaks it down word by word and how meticulous it was. It's extremely fascinating.

0:56 Fascinating. All the compromises that are just within the sentence. Yeah. Fascinating. Please enjoy Walter Isacson.

1:10 He's an observance. Don't say anything. That's one of my questions. Is it there? Can I use this?

1:28 We can't nail now with a couch. This is the third iteration. We put pillows out and

1:33 what we have found is that there's no unifying uh comfort level architecture for a couch.

1:39 There's like no one there's nothing universal that everyone agrees on. It's always going to be polarizing a couch.

1:45 I know. And I used to hate throw pillows. My wife has always got why do people have these? And now suddenly I'm like hey there's a pillow. That's cool. I have the same anger about the pillows mostly on the bed. Like decorative. I hate decorative.

2:01 The fact that you're just going to pitch it on the floor every night and we're going to repeat this busy work.

2:06 Right. Right. Right. You guys, you and I have the same. I'll bring my wife next time. You can convince us. Even at our house, we have like four throw pillars on the bed. I said, "Nobody's going to come see the bedroom. Why are we?" Yes.

2:18 You know, it's not for show. Yeah. There's pretty. We need a good social scientist to tackle this. like what is going on? What evolutionary

2:26 probably could do it for you. Dubner knows everything. He's been on your show quite a bit, right?

2:31 Yeah. Yeah. We love him. I I would throw Duckworth in the mix, too. I feel like I want her eyes on this to Angela Duckworth, who he

2:38 I mean, I it's it's an aesthetic. It's It's making your nest look nice. And that's where I think the work would lie is like the value of aesthetic. What aesthetic do you prioritize? It is interesting

2:53 fascinating that an aesthetic would be an essential pursuit. Well, you see an aesthetic with no usefulness is that now there's a vin diagram in which something is aesthetic and useful. Are not there

3:07 living with me? I just bought this little tray yesterday. It's for nothing. Like well I don't know what I'm going to use it for and but it's so cute. So now it's just sitting on my counter and I have to find a use for It's like a little candle on the table, which is you're not really going to like that.

3:24 Yeah. Like I think we would agree like decorative columns on a structure is offensive

3:30 if they don't really bear any weight or they don't serve any purpose. Maybe I you're pro column.

3:36 Well, my dad was an engineer and we grew up in New Orleans and from our house heavy.

3:42 Column heavy. But they are weightbearing columns because um Yes. I mean, so they're necessary,

3:48 right? As we learned in Hurricane Katrina where occasionally a color would it also might be a deep like this is a nice space. It's inviting so you're included into gatherings or you're you become an integral part of the community

4:06 if you present a beautiful environment people are drawn to. Yeah. like that it would facilitate gathering and fellowship and concert.

4:14 Those are the rooms called in the Arab world that are just the whole couch on the outside and lots of beautiful cushions. Uh

4:22 oh. It's a it's a room where people gather. So, and it's designed to facilitate

4:28 and beautiful throw pillows. Yeah. Okay. So, we saw each other. I don't know. Did we Did you sign an NDA about that birthday party? Are we allowed to say we were at it? It's just reputational cost to ourselves.

4:40 I think it's reputational cost. I would uh I don't know. Through my birthday party, I'd say don't tell people you were there.

4:47 Well, we've been very public about our um ongoing relationship with Bill Gates, so I have nothing to hide. But I did see you there, which was a delight cuz when we interviewed you, I guess 5 years ago or close to 5 years ago, it was over Zoom, which is never really quite the thing.

5:02 It's amazing that you now get this in person because it is so much of a different dynamic. Yes. Like you can just imagine having shadowed Elon on a screen that someone held. It wouldn't really work, right?

5:14 And I think that in the days of AI, we're going to learn that actually physically being there counts. And when I was doing Steve Jobs, when I was doing Elon Musk, doing Jennifer Dana, and I did the show with you on it. My rule was I don't do it based on interviews. I do it based on you letting me embed myself in your life for two years and just watch you and shadow you. And so then you can make it a narrative.

5:38 Okay. You mentioned this. I watched you doing a Michael Lewis sit down which was really fascinating. We adore him as well.

5:44 Yeah. Uh and you mentioned I guess it's the Heisenberg effect. Is that what it's called?

5:49 Yeah. Which is when you observe something. Heisenberg said if you observe the particle that's now you know it's a quantum mechanical thing

5:56 whether it's a a particle or a wavelength. Exactly. And so the question that Michael Lewis and I have because we both have the same method which is I'm just going to ride alongside you and watch is by watching somebody are you changing their behavior and to some extent yes but surprisingly for me with Elon Musk in particular me being there did not seem to change him at all cuz I would talk to all of his team and they say you got to come to this meeting cuz he's going to really come down hard on us and we want to make sure that you know you were there taking notes come and he'd and they'd say, "Well, that didn't help any you being there." Yeah. Yeah. Well, you even saw like interpersonal relationship feuds and stuff like that that you were privy to.

6:41 Right. Right. I mean, uh, especially with Grimes, which is a very interesting relationship, the mother of um, you know, some of his children um, and Siobhan Zillis. These are all really smart, talented people. And you know, I didn't want to wallow in the personal life, but the personal life is connected to the professional passion and just to the inner person.

7:06 Yeah, that's huge. Well, I think it it it approaches the most fascinating question we all kind of have with these unique geniuses is like how are they shifting gears into interpersonal familial cuz they are in an environment most of their day where their opinion is the most important and they make uh you know they declare things they don't really debate things so like

7:29 yeah I think all of us are quite interested is like how does that work in quote real life how does that work

7:35 well you know there's no one form formula. But there is a through line of all the people I've written about Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Job, well Steve is a little bit different, but Elon Musk is they aren't perfect in their personal lives. And I shouldn't put Steve Jobs in that category. He had a great uh personal life. But you know, Ben Franklin sort of sets up household in London with another woman. He leaves Deborah back home. Einstein was not ever going to win husband of the year award. Yeah.

8:05 And uh Elon, enough said. Yeah. Yeah. Could you rank your subjects in most susceptible to Heisenberg effect in in least uh susceptible? It seems like Elon's at the top as far as he was least

8:18 least susceptible because he doesn't have emotional EQ incoming signals very well. In other words, I'm sitting here looking at you all and you know, we kind of know what each other thinks.

8:29 Yeah. Elon as his brother Kimble said, Kimell said that he was the one who got the empathy gene. Kimble. And so sometimes Elon, he just doesn't have those receptors. Secondly,

8:43 and he said this to me very strongly, he said, "If you worry about what people think about you, you'll never succeed." He said, "That's the problem with empathy. Sometimes empathy is really vanity because you care what other people think and you want them to like you." And he said of me,

9:00 which wasn't particularly nice, he said, "That's why you screwed up running CNN. You cared too much that the people there liked you and you should have gotten rid of half of them."

9:09 And empathy is not your friend when you're running something. Yeah. So, A, how did you take that criticism? And B, how true

9:17 it had the odious smell of truth to it? Because, you know, I look into myself. I'm never gonna get a rocket into orbit or people to Mars or change a whole electric vehicle or AI world. And I think it's partly because

9:35 you have to just be hellbent, passionate, and intense and not you have to care what people think of you. You have to build teams, but you have to not obsess over wanting everybody to like you. I

9:47 I want to share this with you because I think you would get a kick out of it. Maybe he already told you personally, but um so yeah, we're on this trip with Bill to India and

9:54 Bills to India for his foundation work. Yeah. Yes. And so we're traveling around with him on his plane all week and those are really special moments cuz there's really no other obligation which he has many. Um you can really just shoot the [ __ ] And of course, I had just read your Elon book and I wanted so bad to know if he had read it what he thought

10:13 because obviously for people don't know, Elon really, at least at one point, hated Bill and they had a very ill- fated tour of SpaceX where he started confronting him about shorting his stock and then went on a tweeting campaign. So um

10:28 all true. We're sitting there and I said, um, you love Walter Isacson, right? And he's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I really like Walter. We're friends." And I said, uh, I said, "So, did you read uh uh uh Elon book?" And he goes, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was great. I really liked it." And I was like, "Okay, great. This is like,

10:44 wow." In a little bit where their overlap is like again, Bill also the criticism from Elon just doesn't really register. It doesn't seem it seems easily, you know, he has a similar gift and that he's not terribly affected by these opinions. Well, I think Bill has a lot of incoming criticism and he has to have a bit of a thick skin. Although I think Bill Gates actually feels it. He has a lot more empathy than people would think.

11:09 I think he does. But I also think he correctly says of Elon Musk, "Oh, he just runs down everybody and he writes he says nasty things about everybody. You just got to live with it." And that is true.

11:19 Yeah. He's not taking it personally. Yes. and he said, "Oh," and then my favorite part of the book is he goes on to talk about the chapter where he had invited the CEO and the head engineer of the solar panel company he had purchased to come down and install the solar panels on the roof of his house in Cape Canaveral, wherever the hell he launches the and Bill was trying to explain the part where he starts yelling at them on the roof at midnight. Why did you make that part? What is that designed for? That doesn't even go with that. Have you guys ever insulted Bill's enjoyment of incompetence being exposed?

11:55 Yeah. Was incredibly telling. Well, I'm so interested to hear this cuz you Bill Gates never told me that. And it is totally true. And that's why you have to embed yourself. I remember being on that roof in mid at midnight in Bokeh Chica, Texas. And he's he goes into what's called demon mode, Elon does. And he's like, "Why are there these parts that have to do it?" He said, "The best part is no part. You got to get and they said, well, we can't because and he turned out to be right." And that's the sort of secret sauce of Elon Musk is he understands the details of engineering.

12:33 And I think Bill Gates would appreciate that. Yes. And again, and you have to have you have to build in a little bit of um I think compassion and just um understanding despite the fact that they're so enriched and successful, which is I think it's easy to overlook the frustration that exists when you when you truly are often the smartest person in the room. And I think what I got a glimpse in of like, oh yeah, Bill has lived on a planet where he's been trying his hardest to get everyone to catch up to his speed and that is frustrating. So to for him to have observed another guy going through it and then letting it rip in that fashion and how much enjoyment, humor he got out of it, I was like, "Oh yeah, this is very illuminating."

13:19 You know, it's particularly [snorts] interesting because those are the two smartest people I've ever dealt with. you know Elon Musk I mean in some ways there there are others and different types of intelligence but Elon's intelligence is understanding material science and engineering

13:34 and engineering is a lot different than pure science or you know running a company and Bill understands physics understands science so well

13:44 but he's never been a pure physical engineer I'm not talking about software engineer right

13:50 and they had a big they had many big disputes It's Elon Musk and Bill Gates. Uh, one of them in which Elon turned out to be more right than Bill was that you could have EVs doing things like semi uh trucks that you could make batteries that could do it. And I think it's almost because Musk can visualize lithium ion batteries and how much power they could have and how you would make the engineering. And it's an important trait because our country is now missing this ability to totally manufacture things and learn from the manufacturing process.

14:25 For example, uh Steve Jobs, he had so much beauty embedded in everything he did. His design sensibility was great. His ability to understand human emotions, inter interactions, Steve Jobs, much better than Musk. I mean, Musk builds a Cyber Truck, which still doesn't speak to most people emotions.

14:46 Back to aesthetics. Yeah. Where the aesthetics of Steve Jobs, I mean, I remember walking around the design studio as he's trying to figure out what he called the chamers, the curves on the iPhone and stuff, making it beautiful. But what Steve then did was it was then sent to uh China to be manufactured.

15:07 Yeah. Whereas Musk says, "No, I've got to make my own manufacturing lines. I got to put my desk, my engineers, and my designers right on the manufacturing lines so that they can have the instant feedback of the engineering."

15:22 You know, how do you But how do you write about these people who are the most brilliant people in the world? Because then you yourself have to understand what they're talking about.

15:32 Well, that's the joy of doing the book. I mean, we talked about it when I talked to you all about Jennifer Dow and the codereaker and crisper. Well, learning a little bit of biology and learning the chemistry of it.

15:45 You can learn anything. I mean, this is almost a theme of your show, armchair expert.

15:49 I was going to say, I think we do a similar thing, which is like, oh, we have a physicist in two hours. I got to brush up on that, right?

15:55 I got to be able to be an intermediary between the lay person and the expert. And one of the things your show does is you can be an expert on physics at this point, music at that point, you know, and psychology the next time. I think people who dive into many different subjects tend to see the patterns of nature and that's where creativity comes from.

16:17 Yes. So I'm quite envious again. We just had a very tiny dose of it. We had a week of it and you've had at times years of it with people and I remember we said out loud to each other all the time like this is an insane privilege like we're getting to go meet with all of the heads of tech in India and go to a secret room where it's chatamouse rules and we're getting to hear like I don't know six of the 20 smartest people on the planet about this topic discuss how they're going to tackle it and it's such a unique and special thing to be a fly on the wall of

16:49 right uh of all these subjects, which one did you find yourself just um kind of endlessly grateful?

16:56 I think it was the one I talked to you about, which is biochemistry and understanding how our cells work. And we talk about coding and the AI and stuff. Well, in the next 20 years, uh uh cells are going to be molecules are going to be the new things we have to code and engineer. So, it was fun to learn that. I struggled a bit uh with Einstein even though I think my father's an engineer, my grandfather, my uncle. So I grew up with some of this. Uh I was okay with the physics. It was the tensor calculus I was trying to learn for general relativity. And that may have been the wall I kind of hit

17:34 so hard. It's humbling when you hit that wall, right? Cuz you can be like cruising along

17:38 because you keep saying to yourself, as I said to you, you can learn anything. them, wait a minute, the tensor calculus of general and I had Brian Green and others oh and I don't understand it he'd explain it to me and then 20 minutes later I'd say wait I can't I can't figure it out again Bill Gates is that way and you saw it on your trip to India if there's anybody who dives in and to be curious about everything including you know

18:01 you know from malaria and public health to uh nuclear power and new ways of doing it uh he dives Ever since I think even in the 1970s or so, he'd take these think weeks and he'd bring books with him and he would just learn everything you could about a subject.

18:23 Leonardo da Vinci was that way. It's like I need to learn everything about a subject

18:28 and he would dive into uh uh Uklid. There would be a book because the printing press had just come to pass in 1500 in uh Florence and he'd say, "I've got to get the Uklid book that's in the bookshop down by the bridge so he could learn that and then he'd learn botany and then he'd learn optics." And there are certain people in this world

18:54 who try to learn as much as possible about everything knowable from Aristotle to Leonardo da Vinci to Bill Gates to Ben Franklin. Those are people who are interesting.

19:07 Yeah. you get this sense that oh boy they kind of have a comprehensive view of all the things all the dynamics that are at play which is so many things to juggle but yeah we asked him hey of these longevity uh promising longevity techs that are on the horizon which do you think is the most promising and he's like well we have a company that we work with that we thinking doing a lot of good work but you got to remember the earth is 5.2 2 billion years old. In the first cells, we have two independent cells. And Walter, he took us through the evolution of every single cell till we got to mammal. Also incorporating all of the geology that was happening and all the chemistry that was happening in the atmosphere and how everything was changing. And I was like, I mean, my god, this guy had to tell us the history of the planet to bring us up to speed to say where we're going next. And it took an hour. It's interesting as you look at

19:59 AI which will be able to absorb billions of you know uh bits of information. Yeah.

20:06 And the question is seeing the patterns and that's what a great human can do is learn so many different things

20:14 and then abstract patterns. And I've just been reading books about AI which is how do you get to that level where you get the abstraction of patterns uh that the AI can do.

20:26 You can juggle so much data sort of an intuition too. I mean Einstein once said that every great advance is a leap of intuition but every leap of intuition comes from years of having absorbed data.

20:41 Yeah that's so true. Okay. So all this to say why have you not ever done bill? First of all, I I tend to think childhood is the sweet spot you want. I mean, whether it's Elon's difficult childhood in South Africa,

20:53 oh, the wilderness camps he was sent to define them. Yeah. And that we biographers believe that dad and childhood are two keys to understanding. Well, source code, which is Bill Gates's first of I think a trilogy of memoirs,

21:09 that is as good as it gets when it comes to memoirs. There'll be there'll be a certain point I'll write something about Bill Gates, but I can't top that book.

21:18 Okay, that makes sense. Now, you just circled the point I wanted to explore, which is certainly with Elon, the whole thing is just driven by this relationship with his father. This kind of that's the fuel in the tank as was Steve Jobs in some interesting way and that right he was adopted and that whole story. So, of your subjects, all are male except for DNA. Was her driving force a a mother conflict?

21:48 No, it was actually a father, too. Now, that I don't want to say that's a pattern of everybody. But is Barack Obama who's been on your show, his first line is, I think every successful person is either trying to live up to the expectations of his father or live down uh you know, the sins of the father. Yeah. And the same is true of me is what he said. Um so Jennifer had a very very uh supportive father who just believed she could do science and took her on explorations and I think um I think that was a key to the childhood there but she had she felt like an outsider. All my uh I think I'm handicapped like Michael Lewis my friend grew up with him in New Orleans. We had magical childhoods.

22:35 We're growing up in New Orleans with wonderful parents and friends. I think sometimes having a rough childhood and feeling like a misfit, feeling like an outsider instills in you a bit of that drive of how do I fit in? And you look at Leonardo who's born out of wedlock and is not legitimated by his father and he's gay and he's left-handed and he's distracted and he goes in this small village of Veni and finally goes to Florence where the Meduche uh embrace him. Uh but you could do it Einstein being Jewish in Germany you know in that period that's not that's yeah you feel like an outsider and uh you go down the line

23:15 or just even alienated by their genius as well. I mean that's They feel a misfit in who they are. And Elon Musk

23:23 being bullied as a kid, having a father who was psychologically abusive to him, who took the sides of the bullies who beat up Elon. Elon is, you know, slightly on the I'm not very good with social signals scale. So, he's sitting there in the corner of the bookstore growing up all alone reading Azimov, reading Highland. I saw one of the books, Stranger in a Strange Land. that was it's on your shelf there. You know, Elon would read these things and he'd feel like a stranger in a strange land.

23:54 Yeah. Just to remind folks of one of the stories in that book about Elon, right? As he had at this wilderness camp got beat up so severely by another boy that he was in the hospital for 4 days

24:04 and when he came home and was presented to his father, his father proceeded to shame him for losing the fight

24:10 for hours. I mean, just made him stand in front and say, "You're a loser. You'll never amount to anything." while Kimell, the younger brother, had to watch. And Kimell says it's still the most searing experience of her life.

24:22 And it's not to excuse things, but it's a minimally when you're when you're evaluating these crazy things you observe, it is useful to remind yourself of what

24:31 he's a person. People are people. Humans are humans. Exactly. Right. He was forged.

24:37 Forged by fire. I think that's a title of my first chapter. But uh yeah, I I get some push back and so does Michael Lewis sometimes of oh you're trying to explain away you know Elon being demon driven and stuff. I say no I'm trying to explain it.

24:54 Exactly. People get very they conflate an excuse and explanation. They say you're trying to excuse them and I say I'm trying to explain them.

25:01 Yeah. You can be the judge but I'm going to tell you what it was like how it was growing up. And I think successful people have some demons in them. And the question for anybody like that, and we probably all do, even those of us with good childhoods have a few demons. Do you harness your demons or do your demons harness you? And Elon has spent a lifetime struggling harnessing his demons. It's not even helpful to have a story that's that doesn't show all the pieces because it's a cautionary tale too like to read you know like you need to hear about the father and the bullying and stuff so that whoever reads it moving forward knows that results in this

25:44 May Musk who's just this wonderful person the mother of Elon you've probably watched her she's a fashion model in her 70s but she said to me at the very beginning and we were talking about her ex-husband, Elon's father, saying the uh the the challenge for Elon is the danger that Elon becomes his father.

26:07 And you see that struggle and you see it in Luke Skywalker learning that the dark side of the force, well, hey, you know, uh that's my father.

26:16 And that's a pretty ancient struggle. Uh and you're right. You you you want to explain all the sides so people understand where the demons, but you don't have a lot of drives that are insane drives unless you have a few demons. I know.

26:34 And maybe that's why I'm a better observer of people than somebody's going to shoot rockets to Mars. Cuz you know, I got some drives, but they're not insane.

26:43 Yeah. But they're not going to change the world the way Steve Jobs did, the way Elon Mus did, the way Einstein did.

26:48 [snorts] I I guess I guess Bill's comforting in that way that his parents were by all accounts spectacular.

26:54 His father and mother were that's what source code this book he did about his childhood and the Tio camp that they used to go to the games that they played. Now he was very competitive and ambitious.

27:07 But his father who just died maybe what five or six years ago has got to have been one of the wisest sweetest people.

27:15 Yeah. a gentle giant, an enormous man with a big heart. And he did one of the great things for Bill Gates was he helped negotiate that original IBM contract that says, "And you get to keep the source code."

27:26 Yes. Incredible. Yes. Um uh and then the mother's incredibly admirable proportionality of pushing him to be social and then surrendering to who he was.

27:37 Big in the United Way, understanding that it's not just about taking things, it's about giving back. But yeah, I did do years ago a cover story in Time magazine on Bill and it begins with the mother

27:52 and the mother taking Bill to a psychologist because Bill is always resisting her, always refusing to do things and the psychologist saying to the mother, I think Mary her name was, "Give it up. Just let him be who he is." Cuz if you struggle with him, he's going to win. And that's why I think Bill turned out a turns out a little bit differently. He has incredible drives. Early years of Microsoft, I mean he is

28:18 psychopathic. Yeah. Yeah. Admittedly he says so but he has been somebody who has been then

28:27 uh it's it's about something larger like taking you to India and explaining why it's about something large. And all the people I've written about at a certain point [snorts] realize it's not just about me and my success. It's about connecting my success to something larger than myself.

28:42 Interesting. Okay. So, now having studied all these people, here's I guess my fear uh and my conclusion is like

28:49 they don't come in the shape we'd like. And I think our current society has lost a little bit of tolerance um for what comes with these once in a generation types. I think that we want them to also be perfect and I think that's unrealistic. What do you think about the the reality of what makes these people and and what kind of tolerance we have to have society? I think you have to have tolerances for geniuses. And that's when I was uh doing the Elon Musk, you know, being interviewed about him, you know, people who just really hated him and say, "Wait a minute. Do you want a society without Elon Musk?" Or George Packer wrote a great book on Richard Hullbrook, who's not quite up there with Elon Musk, but this diplomat who was just such a pain in the ass. And yet, as Packer ends the book is the way I end the Elon book, could you have had a kinder and gentler, you know, subject, still being the one

29:42 getting the date in Accord, shooting the rocket to Mars, whatever it may be. So, I think we have to

29:48 tolerate and you know, people push back at me, but tolerate sometimes the craziness of genius. That said, I think there was a period up until about four or five years ago where we had become quite intolerant of say Picasso. And I think that

30:08 as we got into an age where in 140 characters you had to declare somebody a hero or a villain and you couldn't say wait a minute with Picasso it's more complicated than that with DSLA is more complicated than that. You know,

30:22 Michael Jackson. Exactly. And so we became a society in which either because of the algorithms of social media or the um talk radio or cable news, you had to immediately declare somebody was either totally evil or totally great. Yeah. Everything binary and you couldn't sort of explain, well, it's a little bit more complicated. As you said, these are humans. And

30:50 exactly. Uh, do you want to have a planet in which the people who are pushing us forward

30:57 also have great bedside manners? Yeah. Steve Jobs wrote when he came back to Apple, having been sent into the wilderness in the '9s, he wrote this ad to declare what Apple was all about. And I remember late in his life, he recited to me and started crying. Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the round pegs in the square hole, the ones who think different. And it goes on and then it ends with because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. So, are you going to be tolerant of the misfits, the rebels, the crazy ones?

31:32 Well, yes, but you also have to remember that you can decry the bad parts of them. I mean Shakespeare teaches that and we you know we're not in our current age everything's so binary we don't understand that

31:47 look at Shakespeare's great heroes um even Henry V you know Aen core speech whatever he kills all the prisoners in the French prisoners he does horrible likewise even the villains in Shakespeare Iago they all have backstories and nobody says hey Shakespeare you shouldn't try to explain away their flaws Because

32:09 yeah, I think we need to get back to understanding the complexity of human nature.

32:14 Yeah, I agree. Or just pick that I don't want anything new. Anything incredibly hard done.

32:20 Now, I will say I think that sort of cancel culture and everything else pendulum has swung away from that recently and maybe too far. I mean, you can look at whether it be Donald Trump or many other people in public eye. I don't mean to get political here. They are breaking all sorts of guard rails and maybe we should be now saying, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Don't go there."

32:41 Yeah. Yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. We are supported by All State. Checking All State first could save you hundreds on car insurance. That's smart. Not checking which platform you watch that new show on. So frustrating. 15 minutes later, you've logged into seven apps, reset two passwords, and still haven't found it. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check All State first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with All State. Potential savings vary subject to terms, conditions, and availability. All State North American Insurance Co. and affiliates, North Brook, Illinois. We are supported by Inowit Turbo Tax. You know that feeling when you drop your taxes off with somebody and then nothing. You're just sitting there wondering if they've even started, if there's a problem, if you're getting everything you're owed. It's like sending your car to the shop and never

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34:28 Now my question on the father thing just to land that is um you personally I can't imagine you're attracted to these stories that have this driving force of a father-son relationship and you yourself not have thoughts on yours.

34:43 Oh my father was the smartest person I've ever met. The nicest person I've ever met. The most loving person I ever met.

34:52 [ __ ] you, I guess is what I want to say. And my mother too was like one of the smartest people I ever knew and the most supportive. And I joke with Michael Lewis who also had a great family is that well maybe that's why we're the observers and they're the ones shooting the rockets to Mars. Uh my father was an engineer

35:12 mechanical. Well he was an electrical was his main thing but he had an engineering firm that did electrical mechanical and structural. Yeah.

35:21 And so one of the things about it was he taught me you can learn everything as I said and this is I think should be the tagline of our chair expert. you can learn it which is in our house which is still our family home in New Orleans on Napoleon Avenue on the sort of basement huge basement and we had you know uh workshops but it was also electronics and vac I'm kind of old we remember test we tubes and you could test the tubes and change them in the radio and soldering irons and heat kits and we'd spend so much time doing hardware engineering and stuff so I learned a love of science and engineering from him and I think I went astray because then I studied uh history and literature and college and stuff. I should have become if I had had to do it over again I would have become an engineer like my dad.

36:16 You wish you had. Yes. Because you can always engineers can appreciate the beauty of history and poetry but sometimes the humanists I know they get all you know I love uh Shakespeare or I love uh this part of history but then you say something about a circuit and exactly what a resistor does or why a transistor makes no oh no I can never do science I can never well yeah you can maybe not at the same pace your your colleagues in class did which is I think what informs people whether can or cannot do something. It's like, oh, did I pick it up at the same rate as the people around me? No, it's not for me.

36:52 That's a really good point because when I went to college, I was going to do math and physics and science.

36:57 And it was hard. And if you went to a, you know, Steven Greenblad teaching Shakespeare, whoever you were, you'd be welcome. If you went to a physics course, and I took a couple and I took a biochem course, and you weren't a scientist, you were made to feel you just don't get it. You'll never get it. So, they were not as inviting as they should have been.

37:17 Yeah. Well, do you think maybe then you felt like I'm not going to be as good at as my dad at this, so I might as well pivot?

37:25 No. No. I I I I don't quite know what it was, but I do think that um nowadays being able to fully understand the beauty of science and engineering is crucial to being part of the political and phil philosophical conversation. And what I've tried to do in my books like uh J James Watson another person who's complex and has been cancelled but he writes a double helix and it's a fun beautiful tale inspired Jennifer Dner but he smuggles in a lot of science so to try to make like Einstein's special relativity. Here's this patent clerk who can't get a job at a university or anything, but he's trying to learn how to synchronize clocks because people are having patent applications because the Swiss are pretty, you know, insistent that you can clocks be synchronized. And he's saying, well, what if I wrote alongside the signal that was synchronizing the clocks? Would time be the same to me? So, understanding

38:30 through the life of a person trying to convey that science to me has a certain beauty to it.

38:36 Yeah. Okay. Hey, I wanted to ask your opinion as a professor at Tain whose current enrollment, I looked it up this morning, is 62% female, 38% boys.

38:47 No, I didn't know that, but that's interesting. Is that something that you've observed in your time there? Are you worried about that? What are your thoughts on the changing kind of demographics of college students?

38:58 That's a good question. I'd not noticed it in particular. One [snorts] of the things that I have noticed is that when people came in five, six, seven years ago, their parents would say, I I just want them to learn coding. You know, I want my boy or girl to, you know, be a great software engineer so that they'll have a job. AI comes along and Chad GPT can code better than 99% of most college coding students. But in some ways connecting human feelings and emotions to the technology that's the skill I've started with some of my students including students who do AI and or computer science students but also my history students. I'm pairing them and we've created a company called Boswell in company. And what it does is it believes that everybody's got a story worth telling and it uses Google's Gemini um notebook but also anthropic to gather all the data and my students interview people and their families and

40:08 we put it all together and we produce a biography for them. The reason I say this is because the people who can connect the humanities to the technology will succeed. And people say AI will destroy jobs. No, AI is going to open up whole new fields and maybe 500 people get a biography or memoir written each year. It should be 5 million. Everybody should be able to do it. So we will have whole new products and our little company which is doing it for people we know who ask us commissioners to do it.

40:40 Yeah. that will be I think will just show how this AI combined with the humanities will find new products and new jobs for people.

40:53 Yeah. It's almost a tall order cuz that's I guess what everyone already recognizes about him. What makes Job so unique was that he [snorts] seemingly had the emotionality of the interaction being a priority as much as how good the product itself functioned. Like it seemed like he was very smart at recognizing you have to emotionally connect to this device.

41:19 And one reason was just who he was a great genius at that. But when he went to college to read before dropping out, he didn't sit there studying uh computer software engineering. He studied calligraphy, dance, music, art. And he really got a grounding in the humanities and a sense, just a two-word sense that's so important. Beauty matters. Just what you said. You said aesthetics matters, but he made beauty matters.

41:51 And we're talking about Bill. I mean, Bill made some great products, but they both made a MP3 music player approximately the same time. Yes.

42:00 And Microsoft made the Zoom, which was really good in many ways, but Steve made the iPod, which was an object of desire.

42:09 Yes. It was a declaration of your identity. Exactly. And even those ads and the earbuds and everything. So understanding the emotional connection, the humanities connection

42:20 is what made the iPod beat out the zoom. Okay. So you're not sitting at two lane going where are the boys and what's happening and we got a problem. I haven't thought about that. Now I'm going to have to go back.

42:31 Yeah, I generally don't desire more boys to be around either. But we probably have a problem in our society uh which is the K through 12 education and everything else which is uh I it used to be a sense that the world was going to be a better place for each new generation.

42:55 For example, if you're born when I was in the 1950s Yeah. you had an 80% chance of having a better life than your parents. Mhm.

43:05 If you're born when my students were born, say, you know, I hate to say it, but like the year 2000

43:11 or even in the book, you said '8s. In the book, I say in the 80s, right? But also in the year 2000, you have less than a 50% chance of doing better than your parents.

43:20 And so this explains a whole alienation of a new generation, but it also explains, I think, the resentments in our politics and other things. So, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written is your new book, and it is conveniently coming out a month or two before we enter our 250th year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in the

43:43 country. Yeah. In the country. Happy birthday. Yeah. [clears throat] So, that would be a very obvious reason to write this book, but um I don't think that's the primary goal of the book. It was a definitely a goal and a thought which is you're about to have a birthday party and I don't know about your my family's pretty well but you know if I have a big extended birthday party there people I hardly can speak to on some of my cousins

44:05 but you put it aside on your birthday and you say we're family we're common ground here's what we share. [snorts] We have had this happening in our society maybe for the past 8 to 10 years where it just gets more and more polarized so that anything that happens like should I wear a mask in co should I you know anything becomes so political and partisan that we polarize ourselves on it. Well, we're about to have a birthday party. Wouldn't it be nice if we could say well here's what we all agree on. Here's what the common ground is. And so I wanted to do something that says what is our mission statement as a nation and let's read it, understand it, and for a year at least get along a little bit better to say, well, yeah, we do hold these truths to be self-evident.

44:53 Yeah. Yeah. So I I think there's a lot and we're we're going to go through each one. It's so cleverly broken down, but I will say what what strikes me immediately is I think we do suffer from not knowing history. Ask yourself, well, how did it come about? How did we learn to live in in a group of 330 million people as one unit? And there's some stuff that predates our country. Um, there's Hobbes and Lock. There's people that propose this notion of a social contract. And you're going to leave the wild where you have unlimited rights.

45:29 You see something you don't like, kill it. Who cares? Take what you want. we're going to give up some liberty that because we believe the benefit overall uh the net benefit is going to be much larger if we give up some of our liberty so that we can coexist peacefully. So maybe just even that notion is maybe a bit more foreign to people than I think would be helpful.

45:51 Yeah, you've read the book which is great. I love that because that is how we begin because we're doing a parsing of the sentence. We hold these truths to be self-evident and you start with the word we and what does that mean? Well, it's not we, the 62 people gathered in Philadelphia. It's the social contract that we've decided to have. And our founders, particularly Jefferson, Franklin, and to some extent John Adams, they were reading the people of that time

46:20 and you mentioned John Lockach, you know, David Hume. Yeah. uh the people are saying how did we come out [clears throat] of a state of nature in the prehistoric times we're all fighting each other and how did we agree on how to have a government

46:37 and that's what the social contract is Rouso writes a book Hobbes writes the book on it uh lock writes it and these founders who are doing this declaration of independence they base it on that enlightenment period meaning these philosophers like John Lock who said, "How is it we come together as a society?"

46:58 Yeah. I think people, a lot of people at least have this notion that I will live in this society and I will give up nothing to do so. That it needs to be exactly how I think it should be. And anything short of that is unacceptable. It's like there's not even the original buy in is not floating around. It's like, "Oh, no, no, I'll be giving things up to reap the rewards of all this."

47:20 Yeah. I mean, it's like when I'm driving here and there's a red light. Okay. I agree. I generally stop it rather.

47:25 It's inconvenient to me. And that's part of the social contract. Yeah. And if you're going to have a society, a contract isn't just I get everything. It's here's the deal. We all hold hands and make. So if you look at the Declaration of Independence and you look at the sentence that I call the greatest sentence, it's, you know, we hold these truths and that's a contract that we've made. And if we all realize that maybe that just that understanding it's a social contract and that we have common ground that helps reduce the temperature a little bit of some of our partisan poisonous debates at the moment.

48:03 Yes. So as a historian lay out a little bit of the context in which they're going to write this document because I think people might think of it as being more monolithic than it was. Like it was anything but a uh a unified group that had inhabited the colonies. Yeah, there isn't even a total consensus in January of 1776 that we're going to break away from the crown. But at a certain point, ingrained in us is this notion of individual liberty. That's what lock brings us with the social contract is we're all in a state of nature as autonomous individuals and then we make

48:40 sort of let's hold hands and create a society. Yeah. So it's based on individual rights rather than the rights of the king or the divine rights of kings or the conqueror. And I think that notion of individual rights is so important.

48:54 First of all, I don't know that everyone would just know who wrote it. You know, the wonderful thing, especially those of us who've been editors in our time, is that this greatest sentence, you know, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, is not one person. They went through four drafts and then a final version. And of course, Jefferson is the first author. He's gets to write the first draft. But you have a committee. The Continental Congress says, "Okay, we're about to declare independence. Let's, you know, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind means we got to say why."

49:29 Yeah. And so they appoint a committee. It may be the last time Congress appointed a good committee, but it has Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams on it.

49:37 All making notes. all making notes, scratching things out. Scratching things out. And so, in fact, can I grab the book, please, please?

49:44 Right here, we do it as the opening thing. This is the first draft. I don't know where your cameras are. Oh, yeah.

49:51 And you can see it's a mess. There is a total mess, but here it is. We hold these truths. And then you see Jefferson, he writes to be sacred.

50:00 Ah, and Benjamin Franklin was a printer. So, he had a dark back black uh pen that did backslashes. is the way a printer and he writes in self-evident. And so part of the book is just explaining that sometimes innovation is a team sport. Sometimes creativity, you know, is a collective endeavor. And that's what this sentence is about.

50:23 In the forces at play, you already have burbling. You have the South's entire economy dependent on cotton production and slavery,

50:34 right? And you have Jefferson as author who's enslaving 400 people at the time.

50:39 You have the uh the wealthiest part of the country is the South that's dependent on slavery. You have already people in the north calling for an end of slavery in their colonies. So there that's already a very contentious issue. And so the way we word this is all incredibly important. And compromises are happening in all these sentences that I don't know if people will be so

51:01 and as Franklin said, you know, compromises may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies. You got to compromise. And one of the problems though, cuz it's not all great comp sometimes you make a compromise that becomes a sort of an original stain on the nation. And they have to do that in even the declaration. They're writing all men are created equal.

51:25 Yeah. Now I [snorts] try to explain it. Uh they call it a self-evident truth because we all come from the state of nature. But how could they write that when one of them uh Jefferson, you know, is a major uh slaveholder,

51:41 he's had children with one of his very under person who is in Philadelphia in that room when he has his mahogany desk and he has Franklin and Adams there is Thomas Hemings. you know, the brother of his enslaved mistress, also as slave. Yeah.

51:59 You know, they they wrestle with this. Yeah. And they start the original draft in Virginia was that all men are and they're endowed with certain inalienable rights when they enter into a society. And that was supposed to exclude the slaves. Jefferson knew you just can't that just doesn't wash. And so you have the great contradiction if he just says all men are created equal.

52:25 Yes. And yet even at his death he doesn't free a slaves or his own ch children.

52:30 Yeah. They well he doesn't sally but uh part of the agreement with his mistress Sally Hemings who was enslaved uh was that they he would have freed their children and he does.

52:44 [snorts] So it's all once again human and complex. Yes. But four score and seven years later, meaning when Lincoln is at the battle uh ground of Gettysburg uh at when they're consecrating the cemetery there, he he harks back and he says, you know, a nation founded on the proposition that all men are created equal. So you see the power of the sentence.

53:12 Yeah. pushing us to progress. Yeah. We I just want to put one more bullet point on wei, which is um important.

53:21 Prior to this, governments, as everyone knew, were pretty much ordained by either God or a royalty that had been anointed by God.

53:30 So, they were never by the people. So, we is like very, very powerful. We use it. By the way, that same word begins the greatest sentence ever written and it begins our constitution. We the people. So you got to understand that this isn't the divine right of kings or the the power of conquerors. It's uh this notion of a society that says we will create common ground. And that's why I wrote this because I want us to understand the the struggle to create the common ground

54:02 in the self-evident truths. Um, you explained how Hume, David Hume, who Franklin was friends with and and and admired, said there's two kinds of truths. There's synthetic and those are based on facts. The example you give is like Philadelphia is bigger than Boston. Well, we're going to have to go out and do some census work to find out the answer to that versus analytic truth, which is all bachelors are unmarried. We don't need to go survey bachelors to find out if they're unmarried. the premise of the statement is in itself

54:34 self-evident self-evident so uh that's the distinction and then uh yeah all all men obviously we're not including women we're not including Native Americans um you point out in the book at that moment a fifth of all people in the colonies were slaves

54:51 right and so to start with the self-evident which is you know in uh Jefferson had written uh we hold these truths to be sacred and Franklin has been staying with David Hume in Scotland, the greatest philosopher of the time, as he said, somebody who wrote about contract theory and had come up with this notion of self-evident truths, all bachelors are unmarried versus truths you had to go around and look. Well, when you say are created equal, Franklin says that has to be a self-evident thing because if you actually go around and look, you'll say, "Wait a minute. I just talked to Magic Johnson and he's got he's he ain't equal to Walter is not equal to him you know being able to do this and in you know and somebody's not equal to Einstein

55:35 but what is self-evident is that we all had autonomy in the state of nature and we came together as society we all had this notion of coming together as a country so politically we're created equal but as you point out they leave out a lot of people and so The arc of American history is delivering on the aspirations of that sentence. And even Benjamin Franklin to me, I mean, years ago, I wrote a book about Benjamin Franklin. He's still a hero.

56:06 Yeah. He had two slaves when he was a young printer in Philadelphia. Just walked in his print shop and then he realizes that's bad. They wander off. He, you know, doesn't try to keep them, but he just knows it's something he's done wrong. And his whole life he keeps a ledger of the Arata he had made and how he rectified it like he ran away when he was apprenticed and was I mean sort of to his brother he uh breaks the indenture to his brother and runs away. He rectifies it years later by educating his brother. So anyway he realizes the great sin was having once owned a couple of slaves.

56:45 Yes. And so he becomes president of the society for the abolition of slavery. He helps create schools for you know blacks and freed slaves in America. And his own personal arc to me sort of uh is analogous to the arc of American history that eventually we have to say is all men will know. That's an expansive term. It mean all humanity. That's what all men should mean. And likewise, if you're going to say created equal, you got to make sure black or white or any female, female, whatever it may be,

57:23 we all have equal rights. And I was shocked to read this in the book that um Jefferson called slavery moral depravity.

57:33 Absolutely. And hideous blot. yet is one of in my opinion as I read about all the forefathers uh you know the most repugnant behavior in regards to his slavery. I mean traveling Europe with a 14year-old yes

57:49 that you impregnate is to me about his [ __ ] love as a kid. So it's interesting to acknowledge that he had this contradiction that was very much alive

57:58 deep and it goes back to what we were saying at the very beginning is that uh you know even the heroes have great flaws even the villains have backstories and we shouldn't just say somebody's all or nothing. Yeah,

58:13 wrestling with the complexity of Jefferson is so important. And you know, we went through a period where either every monument had to be taken down or turned whatever. Yes. But we probably should understand the contradictions and the dark sides of some of these people. I mean, I tend to write about Franklin because he was very self-reflective and

58:36 who you want him to be. Yeah. He follows the great arc of humanity, right? But you can't totally dismiss Jefferson. And you know, you should have uh Annette Gordon Reed. I don't know if she's been on this show, and she wrote The Hemings of Montichello. She's at Harvard, African-American historian knows, but she has this wonderfully complex view of Jefferson.

59:00 I need that. I've been saying I need to read something pro-Jfferson because I've only read pretty much has a somewhat uh nuance thing and and obviously in that Gordon Reed's book is extraordinarily good in this book. I'm trying to say man this is as you just said this is outrageous. He, you know, he's taking his enslaved mistress even as he's

59:21 written this declaration, but I try to say yes, but look at these people who together created this sentence and is for all of their flaws. They gave us our mission and now it's 250 years our birthday of that mission. Let's reflect because we can all agree on that sentence. Let's reflect on it. So another major tension of the time which is not foreign to us in 2025 is there was quite a bit of tension over how religious this text would be. That's the endowed by their creator. The next line,

59:58 right? And as I say begins with Franklin crossing out sacred and putting in self-evident and we hold these truths. And then the sentence goes on and you know I have it in the book there. You can look at the edits and it [snorts] says, you know, and they're because of their they're endowed with certain inalienable rights. And then you have what I think is John Adams's handwriting because he's the most conventionally religious and he puts endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. So even in the editing of one half of this greatest sentence ever written,

1:00:32 yeah, you see them balancing the role of rationality and reason Uhhuh. with the dictates of religion.

1:00:40 Yes. And uh the uh basically the divine providence that we had as a nation. They're creating a balance. We've lost that today. Nowadays it's like put the ten commandment or you know you're using the ten commandments to divide us. I was at CNN when I was first studying the sentence because I was doing it for my Ben Franklin book and I'm go in one morning and somebody says, "Oh, we have a great crossfire show. Judge Roy Moore has put the Ten Commandments in his courthouse in Alabama. A federal judge says, "Take it down." Yeah. And they're gonna have to send in the marshals.

1:01:14 Everybody says, "Great. Who are we going to get in favor of the Ten Commandments? Who are we going to get against the T?"

1:01:19 And I'm thinking, "Oh, good. We have a good crossfire tonight." Yeah. And then when I went back and I was saying, "The founders are using religion and rationality to balance us." And here we were in the press and there they were the politicians using the ten commandments to divide us. So that's another lesson we can learn from the founders is this balance of the role of religion, the role of rationality and the role of tolerance.

1:01:48 Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. I'm embarrassed to say I had never even heard the term deists until I was reading this chapter. Then many of them were deists. What are deists?

1:02:08 The deists were very big in both Europe and the United States in the 1700s. Voltater is to some extent Jefferson and Franklin are.

1:02:20 Yeah. And what deism is which was basically the creed of most of the people who wrote the declaration in the north at least is you believe in God. Do you believe in God as a great creator? But he set the universe in motion. Their laws

1:02:37 and he stepped out. It stepped out and Einstein you know believes in that too which is he said beautiful laws and a wondrous cosmos for us to live in but he doesn't go around intervening

1:02:52 picking World Series outcomes. Yeah. That the Saints who were here yesterday to play the Rams. I could pray as hard as I want that the Saints were going to beat the Rams. But there's no God who says, "All right, I owe Walter one. You know, let's have the Saints beat the Rams."

1:03:08 He doesn't intervene. That's the deist that seems to have died out entirely. I think a lot of people Francis Collins a great scientist you know who believes in God who's a Christian um there are many people I think who believe in a benevolent creator

1:03:29 endowed by the creator as our sentence writers put it believe that the world and the universe has a miraculous set of laws but there aren't miracles in which suddenly the laws of the universe are broken because you prayed hard enough.

1:03:46 Yeah. It was a creator, not a super. It's not managing the apartment. It's just

1:03:50 Yeah. Exactly. And it was also it was called, you know, providence. In other words, the good Lord sets up a creation.

1:04:00 Yeah. And we owe it to divine providence to understand the beauty of that creation. But it's not individual providence where the, you know, the good Lord is intervening every day and deciding, all right, uh, I'm going to help you out today.

1:04:16 And they were even specifically saying I'm I'm not in for that Jesus was the son of that thing. And

1:04:24 I think they're all very rational. When I say all, let's pick Jefferson and Franklin because those are the two who talk about it. It's in the book a bit. They uh, Franklin is the best really because he's a very rational person. and he uh believes in the creator and he believes that worshiping is good for a society. But Ezra Styles who was president of Yale right when Franklin is dying says, "Okay, but do you accept the divinity of Jesus Christ?"

1:04:53 Yes. And Franklin writes back and he says, "You know, I've sort of looked at that my whole life and I've never decided to proitize to preach on it because I'm just not sure and it's not something I know." He said, "And I've quit worrying about it because I'm going to learn soon enough the real answer." Maybe he, you know, he was dying soon. Yeah.

1:05:12 So, I think if you look even at John Adams, he's that way, which is they believe in the creator, but the notion of the divinity of Christ is something that some take on faith, but others feel they're not sure about it. And, you know, Jefferson in particular. Yeah.

1:05:35 takes the Bible and he creates what's called the Jefferson Bible where he keeps in all of the great wise things of Jesus, all of the principles and the moral principles of Jesus, but he actually takes a razor and cuts out the miracle parts because Jefferson is such a deist and such a rationalist. He thinks that the Bible would be better if we just listen to the moral preachings, but didn't worry about how do you make, you know, loaves and fishes.

1:06:06 He sent that that book to his nephew or something. The Jefferson Bible, you can see it in monitor. It actually exists and it has the razor cutouts. I, you know, it's once again something I don't proitize on. I think everybody should have their own set of beliefs. But I think the key there

1:06:22 is to be tolerant. And this is what Franklin was saying. whatever is different people are going to understand the divinity of Jesus differently whatever I think they all felt that we should have a respect for a great creator

1:06:38 who uh a divine power that created us but otherwise we should be tolerant. Yeah. So, it's interesting. You got these three dudes that are really um nitpicking over all the wording and you have even in this group of three, you've got a really wide range of how religious like Adams is definitely more.

1:06:57 He's definitely more of an abolitionist than is Jefferson. So, it's like you're sitting down with what would seem to be kind of unbridgegable differences.

1:07:06 They would seem more unbridgegable than our differences today. Yeah. Our difference today is

1:07:11 okay how much health care should be considered into something that's a uh Medicaid Medicare we want immigrants but how many

1:07:22 exactly so we're arguing over what should be in the commons how much health care should be in the commons how much police protection whatever it may be

1:07:32 that's those are pretty simple enough arguments compared to the ones our founders had to deal with and they success uccessfully craft the sentence and then craft a declaration and then craft what may be the most astonishingly successful constitution imaginable. And as Franklin says at the end of uh when they finish that sentence, they're voting on the declaration. Uh and then he does it with the Constitution as well. He said, you know, I I never thought this was perfect, but it's it's as good as can humans can do.

1:08:08 Yeah. And so with all of its flaws, let's be humble and hold hands and say, "We have endowed this."

1:08:15 Yeah. And I that's another thing I think we've lost the appetite for a little bit is like some places are just a good place to start.

1:08:22 Like we're not there, but we need to start somewhere so the improvements can come.

1:08:27 Also, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin thing that you said where he like, you know, was very much like writing his wrongs over time. Nowadays, I feel like what's so upsetting is we would look, not we, but a lot of people would look at it and be like, "Oh, he was wishywashy." Or, "Oh, he's flip flip flop." It's so flip-flopped on. And that's that's a unforgivable sin to

1:08:53 Exactly. Again, on both sides, we do this of the political spectrum. We're like, "Oh, now they changed their mind. You can't trust them." It's like, that's called growth. Like, we should be able to let people change their mind.

1:09:05 I learn more. I change my mind. What do you do? And that's an old line many of you

1:09:09 we are stuck right now. We are stuck in this like right and I think we don't tolerate compromises or people who grow. We say oh you know that's and that's what this book about is about too is we started a nation with a certain aspiration but we had to grow and we had to get there

1:09:29 and yeah that's that's the core of it. Yeah. Okay. And then we get into what I think is the most moving part of the book and the thing that I appreciated reading most and that is just about common ground in the pursuit of the American dream. So let's kind of define these things like people are very familiar with the term common ground but it had a literal beginning common ground

1:09:53 right common ground back when they back in feudal times whatever was you know the land owners and the great dukes and the Earls and the land but there was a certain parts of the land that were put in commons. They were called the commons and people everybody could graze their herds or grow things there and it was for what we then called commoners. That's how we get the name commoners. They were the ones who didn't own land but they could graze on the commons. And it comes even from John Lockach. John Lock is a strong believer of private property. He believes that if you mix your labor with things you find in nature, you have a right to make that your private property. He is the philosopher who gives us the notion of free markets and private property. But he does say he has a caveat that says as long as there is enough and is good left in the commons. So even in Boston, Philadelphia and in Cambridge in

1:10:59 colonial times there was Boston Common, Cambridge Common and you know we think okay Boston Common is beautiful and it has you know a place where the swans go. No, but that was a commons where people could do it. So for me that's the metaphor

1:11:18 that is at the core of this sentence. What is this sentence talking about? It's saying a common ground. And so what they did back then was they put not just land in the common for people to graze on, but they said we're going to put certain things in the common. Ben Franklin did. He said, "Okay, we're going to put a library services in the common."

1:11:40 And this is Ben Franklin and his little group in Philadelphia. You need to do two seconds on the um what a paradigm breaker that was having libraries. I don't think people understand the importance of just having access to books. how much that opened up your opportunity.

1:11:54 It is the great symbolic nature of the commons and American dream that everybody has access to information. And Franklin said when he created the free library of Philadelphia, which is the first sort of library where everybody could come and use it, he said, "We're going to create a society where even uh the anybody whatever their stage, whatever their birth, whatever their, you know, background will be able to learn as much as the wealthiest people." And that allows everybody the opportunity. That's what America's about, having the opportunity.

1:12:31 Yeah. Because they were books were elite. You had to be rich to own books. And Franklin goes around as a young tradesman in Philadelphia and he goes to all the wealthy people and he says, "Put your book in books in this library. Which ones can we borrow for it so we can create a community?" So that was a symbolic commons.

1:12:51 Likewise, he says, "Let's do a fire core, you know, volunteer fire department." Even when he died, he still had his bucket by his bed because you had to keep your bucket if you were a vi volunteer fireman by your bed. So in his deathbed, he still has it. But when he's like 18 years old, his friends are creating a volunteer fire. And they say, well, should it be for people who pay for it or should it be in the commons? Meaning, they said, wait, it's not a good idea if we let some houses burn and some don't. That's not going to help the city. So we put that in the commons. We put the uh police Yeah. the uh night watchman corn police in the comments and he even does a hospital that's a public private partnership done by people who donate but there's a matching from the legislature and there's a lottery to pay for it cuz he wants to put some healthcare in the commons. So think about it that's still what we're trying

1:13:45 to do is argue how much health [clears throat] care should be in the commons. Should there be free hospitals, charity hospitals? Should there be Medicare, Medicaid? And if we realize that our debates are simply about how much gets put in the commons, then we can disagree. But at least we know it's not some existential fight. It's just a question of balance.

1:14:09 Yeah. I needed to read this part and be reminded of this part because what I hear mostly in our public discourse is just this hatred for billionaires. That's like a very common hatred and we're seeing some cities move to maybe more socialist measures. So I think I'm I'm kind of living in the defense of the free market a lot in my head and and I am someone who thinks to Lock's point if I make a pottery out of the clay I found in the ground is that your bowl you know I I do believe that.

1:14:40 Absolutely. And you've got Lock exactly right. The principle I was choosing not to look at is um the American dream, the core of it is I can transcend my class. I mean that's really when we get into why did we form this country? We were rebelling in many ways against a very hierarchical class structure that was hereditary. I'm born into nobility. I'm born into aristocracy. I'm born into and so we would all agree that's that's not how it should be. So the fundamental reason we didn't want anything to do with them is we wanted a merit-based system that would allow you to transcend. And when I'm reminded of that, I I I do think yes, the common goods are what ensure that and they're hugely important because if we are not a place uh that you can transcend your social class, then we are a in a nobility. We are we are in a we might as well be in a monarchy. And we have seen and I acknowledge this increased elitism

1:15:44 is now functioning virtually the same as inherited class when we look at the real statistics. So I just think this is a very important part of the book and I was really really grateful to be reminded what its purpose is. Yeah. moral purpose even no matter how much you believe in private property or anything else there's a moral purpose of saying there'll be certain things that every kid has uh the opportunity to have every kid has access to every person and that could be K through 12 education we put that generally in the commons now to some extent there's currently yeah police protection we put in the commons some extent healthcare

1:16:28 but why do we do it Not just because we're being sweet and generous, but because we want to be a land of opportunity, which means whatever class you're born into, we're not like the old aristocracy we were fighting against when we created this country in which if you were born into the aristocracy with land, you'd always stay there. And if you were born a commoner, it was hard to rise.

1:16:51 We want to be a land of opportunity. And it got called the American dream. And that is the that's the goal and the fundamental moral purpose of saying what do we put in the commons and what do we not well we could debate that but without having some things in the it's not socialist to say hey police protection and defense should be in the commons it should protect everybody

1:17:15 and likewise debating how much health care should be in the commons how much higher education should uh community colleges or for that matter state uh colleges and universities be free. Is that something we want to put in the comments?

1:17:30 Well, we can debate that like no, maybe we shouldn't. And we can incrementally try things

1:17:37 and we can balance things and we can say, yes, but we're going into a new, you know, when we went from the agricultural age to the industrial age 100 years ago, we put into the commons a lot more like high school education should be in the commons. Everybody should get it for free. started with the industrial revolution.

1:17:57 Yeah. When we were trying to go into an industrial age, we realized, well, now we're going into a new age of AI and other things. Well, perhaps

1:18:06 more is required. More is required to put in the commons. But that doesn't make you a socialist to say we should put

1:18:14 in order to have a land of opportunity have more access to education. And you don't have to make it all or nothing. We could take some of these hugely poisonous fights we're having and saying, well, it's just a question of calibrating. You know, how much healthcare should be in the commons? How much public education should be in the commons? Let's not make these existential fights. Let's look at it through the lens of what makes us a land of opportunity, what makes sure that we all have share some common ground. Because the moral purpose of the commons was not just to make things a land of opportunity, but it was also to give everybody a stake in society. Yeah. Like look, look, you may not have been born wealthy or something, but you all have a stake in keeping this society.

1:19:07 And nowadays, some of the resentment comes because people enclose things. They make special VIP entrances.

1:19:18 Well, hold on that. Yeah, I want I have a whole section on the sky boxification. I think this is fascinating. But I just want to say yes, if we don't have that principle that anyone here can become anything they want,

1:19:29 we don't really have a unique take on anything. I think that is the quintessential ingredient. And as it erodess, it's good to remember. No, that's actually what we have. Go. That's the thing we should all feel pride on that we have to protect. For the past 50 years, we've been the engine of innovation for this world or I mean since World War II.

1:19:49 And yes, that notion of an American dream where everybody can rise, that was Ben Franklin's core principle when he's helping write this sentence.

1:20:00 And if you lose that, you lose something moral, which is every kid, every person deserves an opportunity to do the best they can. But you also from a practical sense you erode the buy in people have for our system. They become resentful and they end up voting on the extreme populist movements. The

1:20:22 populist movements come up or you know left-wing uh movements. Yeah. And so if you erode the sense that we all have a stake in society

1:20:33 then communism does start looking attractive. Correct. or socialism or fascism or authoritarianism.

1:20:41 And we're seeing that not just the United States but in even in Japan but western all of Europe.

1:20:47 And so that's even if you don't believe in the moral reasons for having a commons which is that everybody should get an education be able to do well. You say, "Okay, but just for practical purposes, if we don't want to undermine democracy, yes,

1:21:04 we ought to make sure everybody buys into it." Absolutely. Okay. So, now talk, let's talk about the skyboxification.

1:21:11 Yeah. This is a bummer to read and it's so true and so evident and I am a beneficiary.

1:21:16 I'm going to do this afternoon when I go to LAX and I'm not I'm going to use the PSA

1:21:21 TSA. First, let's give Michael Sandell, the greatest public philosopher of our time, credit. He came up with the notion of skyboxification, which it's easy enough to understand. When I was young and went to Fenway Park, including with Michael Sandell, we'd all go in the same entrance. We'd eat the same soggy hot dogs. We'd sit in the stands together. Now, even when you go and when I go, we probably get to the VIP entrance maybe, or you do at least, and maybe we're invited to the sky boxes, and we don't all sit in the same stand. That's a metaphor for so many things in our society.

1:22:01 And I got to add, wow. Yeah. It's a dramatic difference to the degree that now that I've been invited. I mean, I grew up looking at the outside of the red uh rope, but now on the inside of it, I can tell you it's so dramatically different that there are things that I wouldn't even do otherwise. Now, it's so spoiling and so much and the gap is so big in the experience that people are right. Yeah. I guess uh right to be pissed is another way of saying resentment, which is the way I put it. But you know, sometimes it happens to me. You go to the airport and you're in the priority lane or the clear lane or whatever and people waiting in line are giving you that look like there's a slight resentment.

1:22:42 These build up resentments. I'm not saying I don't I probably when I go this afternoon to LAX I'm going to not say well let me give up the uh you know TSA preline or whatever it's called.

1:22:55 Yeah. But it happens in so many different ways. It used to be my father and grandfather growing up exactly where I did in New Orleans all went to the public high school right in the neighborhood.

1:23:08 Yeah. now even K through2 education there's sort of a velvet rope that certain people get

1:23:15 yeah private is huge now uh health care you name it and it goes back like many things and I mentioned in the book this book is not heavy philosophy book but there's a paragraph that mentions it from John Lockach which is in that period they had what was called the enclosure laws and what they did was they had the commons everybody got to graze their sheep on the commons But they decided that certain people could have the right to enclose part of the commons and make it private.

1:23:46 That has a really good impact in many ways. It allows, you know, you get a lot more productivity. If it's private, the yields go up. You have a huge agricultural revolution.

1:23:57 However, if you put if you enclose off, if you fence off, if you velvet rope off

1:24:03 too many things, it has a bad impact. And so whether it's our understanding of our founders personalities or of Elon's personality or of these things, we have to realize it's not all or nothing. There's a certain balance that yes, we want people to be able to enclose things. We want maybe even to have velvet ropes.

1:24:24 Yeah. But if you do it too much, you get a resentful society and a society in which people cannot rise to their own talents. Maybe interesting or not, but Jefferson was weirdly he he favored a a meritocratic elite. Yes, it's not his he doesn't come off perfectly in this book.

1:24:45 Both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson start universities. University of Virginia and the Academy for the Education of Youth and Pennsylvania that becomes Penn University of Pennsylvania and they have different mission statements. What Jefferson says is the point is we are going to take the best 40 50 people kids and we are going to groom a new meritocratic elite.

1:25:16 Yeah. And those people are going to become the leaders of society. Franklin on the other hand says no the university's purpose is to have everybody whatever their innate talents be

1:25:30 to have a chance to do the best they can with whatever assets they have and we want everybody to move up well creating a meritocratic elite it wasn't I don't blame Jefferson for all of this but I blame my generation which is at a certain point Maybe 50 years ago, we created a meritocracy of credentialed people who went to the right schools

1:25:58 and whose children most importantly and then their children in practice it became hereditary.

1:26:02 Yeah. How is it mar is how is it? Yeah. We call it meritocratic because that was what you know James Conan Bryant did when they invent the SAT and they say that's merit. People say well I believe in meritage. What do you mean merit? I mean is the ability to ace an SAT score? Well, that pretty useful,

1:26:21 but is that true merit? Franklin answers by saying, "No, true merit is the ability to better serve your community and your country. That's what we call true merit."

1:26:32 And so, he was fighting Jefferson on that. And so we created, and I mean by we, sort of a baby boom generation after World War II, a credentialed elite who went to the best colleges and got their kids in the quote best colleges,

1:26:50 SAT tutors, became the ones who thought that they could understand foreign policy better. And once again, Michael Sandell has a good book, you got to get him on the show, called, you know, the tyranny of the meritocracy. because the meritocracy got a lot wrong after a while, including forever wars and things they got us into. But anyway, there is that notion that we created a new elite

1:27:17 and that wasn't the best thing to happen and it really starts happening in the ' 50s 60s,7s. Uh, and that elite looked at it happened in the Clinton years. Whatever you may think of the Clinton years, it was bureitocratic. And people, including Hillary Clinton, would say things like, "Well, you should just go to college and that way you won't be left behind in society." What made the 65% of the people who don't finish college look down upon

1:27:45 and that elite view of the credentialed should run our society was a bad thing.

1:27:52 Yes, I think that's a big issue we've not yet figured out how to tackle. In general, I see that as an enormous problem the left has that they are seemingly unwilling to confront.

1:28:04 Well, it's not necessarily the left. It's sort of the neoliberal liberalism of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, which is you'll be fine if you just go to college, and if you don't, it's your fault.

1:28:18 Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And then some assumption that you had the same odds of attending college as everyone else, which is the

1:28:26 Oh, yeah. And frankly, that if you went to an Ivy League college, somehow you had more merit. And we have to try to understand, and this is what this book is about, too.

1:28:36 There has been a backlash. Yes. Populism on the left and the right and globally as you

1:28:42 and globally. there certain people in the old neoliberal consensus who look down on the populist backlash and I'm saying no no no no there's really a lot of reasons people to use your technical term are pissed and uh the reason they're pissed

1:29:00 is we started losing the common ground we started losing the American dream we started losing the notion that we should be a land of opportunity and that's why if we're going to heal this great divide I just hope for our 200 150th. You don't have to read my book. Just read the sentence. We hold each other. And everybody should understand this sentence. Say, "Okay, I get it now. Let's live by it."

1:29:21 Yeah. Talk about going forward. That's the last thing I wanted to talk about. Um Franklin said, "Yes, we must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately. How can we all hang together?"

1:29:34 I think Franklin is the great guidepost because he is a great entrepreneur. He believes like you do and many of you. Yes, you do. And yes, you can succeed with private property. You can make things. He

1:29:49 gets to Philadelphia as a runaway with because he's running away from being an indentured to his brother. He's got three coins in his pocket. It's the most wonderful scene. He tips the boatman, buys the three puffy rolls, gives one away. He says, "When you're really poor, you're always more generous cuz you want people not to think you're poor." So he's with the street coins being generous and he comes into Philadelphia

1:30:13 and it becomes a land of opportunity for him, Market Street. And he becomes from that penniles, almost not penniless, three pennies, but uh kid to in some ways one of the wealthiest people in America. It's hard to count land owning and slave ownership and all that, but for somebody who creates, you know, printing shops and franchises them up and down the coast and it becomes a publisher, he becomes enormously successful. Yeah.

1:30:42 And so that's the point of Franklin. But then he creates a group in his community and says, "Okay, how are we going to serve the common ground?" M

1:30:54 and that's when he forms with his leather apron club he calls it because it's people who go to their shops each morning put on their le leather apron it's not the elite it's not the you know whatever it's the shopkeepers and art he says we the middling people shopkeepers artisans those of us who go to work every day we not only have the opportunity to succeed we have to figure out what should we put in common so we become a land of opportunity so I say if we're going forward try to be like Franklin and I talk about at the end of the book which is he starts as I said a street sweeping corps a police corps a volunteer fire department a hospital and of course the library an insurance fund for widows and orphans where everybody chips in almost like you'd have social security today he said

1:31:44 that's good for everybody if we put these in the commons but he also has a revolving loan fund for entrepreneurs who want to start businesses that's still today in Philadelphia and Boston, those revolving loan funds that he started are still helping people in East Philadelphia start little businesses. So, he's trying he is a believer in capitalism, believer in

1:32:05 enterprise, but also in making sure everybody has an opportunity. And then he does many other things, not just these loan funds, but during his lifetime, he donates to the building fund of each and every church built in Philadelphia. And then at one point they're building a new hall which is still next to independence hall still called the new hall. He writes a fundraising document and it says even if the muftai of Constantinople were to send somebody here to preach [ __ ] to us we should offer a pulpit and we should listen for we might learn something.

1:32:41 And then on his deathbed he's the largest individual contributor to the congregation Mikvah Israel the first synagogue built in Philadelphia. Yeah.

1:32:51 So when he dies, instead of his minister accompanying his casket to the grave, all 35 ministers, preachers, and priests link arms with the rabbi of the Jews in Philadelphia and march with him to the grave.

1:33:05 Did you say 22,000? Is that the number in the book? That's a number of people who were at the funeral procession. And then it's led by the clergy of all.

1:33:14 They're witnessing this. They're witnessing this. And that's the type of nation

1:33:19 they were trying to create 250 years ago. That's what they were fighting for 250 years ago. And that's what we're still fighting for today. And the sentence can still guide us.

1:33:30 You know, so many people have hardons for the founding fathers. You know, these young dudes who I don't know if they've read any of the stuff, but like I want them to know this. Like if you want to idolize these guys, please idolize the right stuff about these guys. Yeah. That's incredible. And you have to realize when people read my biographies, they might say, "I'm just like Elon." You know, when people do something that sucks. Say, "Wait a minute. Have you ever sent a rocket into orbit?" You're not

1:33:57 5,000. My books are not howto manuals. They are real people. So, learn from the good.

1:34:05 Yeah. Yeah. Also, learn from the bad. Learn the cautionary parts. But in this case, you know, the greatest sentence ever written, there were deep flaws when they said all men are created equal, but they did set us on the right mission.

1:34:20 Yeah, absolutely. You're right. The greatest sentence ever written. I very much encourage you.

1:34:25 Very short. I was going to say if you have a short attention, this is the Isacson book for you to take on. Um

1:34:32 Walter, it's so great to have you. Such such a difference. I really really enjoyed getting to sit down with you face to face and I love this

1:34:39 you did this. This is really important and I needed to hear that. I think we all should um you say how can we do going forward the two of you have a great platform to do it but everybody listening has a great platform every day wake up and say at least for our 250th birthday I'm going to try to think what can I do that helps bring us together and unite us versus being part of the things that polarize us. We're on We're on the same mission, Malter. Um, what a delight. I can't wait to have you back when you write your next book.

1:35:10 Can't wait to be back. All right. Be well. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes.

1:35:22 Oh, should we tell everyone um our incredible discovery last night flying back from Nashville?

1:35:26 Yeah. As we were checking into our flight. Yeah. that if Delta grows up and and starts a company.

1:35:34 Yeah. It's like Delta Company, but then she abbreviates it to Delta Co. of course,

1:35:39 Delta Co. is Del Taco. Yeah. Oh, I can't wait for her to start. I wonder if Del Taco will come after her for infringement. And she'll go, I've had this name. This is my name.

1:35:48 This has been my name my whole life. I count her Sue. They can't come after her because it's Delta Co. It's just pronounced Delta.

1:35:55 Del Taco. Yeah. I mean, this is great. She has to start one now. Like, she has no other option. I

1:36:04 actually should look into incorporating her immediately. You really should. Well, that's Sometimes you just get a little blessing lands in your lap. And that's what it felt like last night.

1:36:11 I agree. Um, do you want to talk about the fact that I'm platinum? That was embarrassing. That was pretty embarrassing. So, yes, we flew back last night because we had a really fun interview that we did in Nashville and then we came um back home. You, me, and the kids had come home earlier.

1:36:32 Yeah. And we're in line ready to, you know, check our bags and somehow we got on the subject. Oh, I think Lincoln asked, "Are you platinum?"

1:36:42 She said, "What are you or something like what rank?" Yeah. Which why on earth would she have brought that up? I don't even know if she knows about the frequent frequent flyer runs on the ladder. Well, now she does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:36:54 I think they just overheard something. They asked me and I said, "Well, I'm platinum." But it was it was a sim because I had written down already that I wanted to talk to you about this because on when I was flying out on my way to Nashville, there was a man in front of me, a young man, young fit man.

1:37:15 Uhhuh. Um who You left out the fit part. I did, but I did. How young? 18. No, no, no. Like my age.

1:37:26 Oh, Jesus. Okay. So, middle-aged. How dare you? Um, no. Because he he was young to to have when the lady checked him in say, "Thank you for being a diamond member or whatever."

1:37:44 Yeah. What are they even saying? I forget. Diamond Club. Yeah. And I overheard it and I was like, "Diamond?" Whoa. But I'm platinum. Like that's the highest. So like maybe diamond's right below it. But I don't remember them ever saying diamond to me. A lot was going on through my head.

1:37:59 So then, you know, I checked in. Thank you for being a platinum flyer. Remember, whatever. And then I went and uh had to look it up. Diamonds that above platinum.

1:38:12 Did you do you remember how many miles you have to fly to earn that status? Over 50 million.

1:38:17 Yeah. Let's Rob, do you want to look? Yep. Rob, do you know how to look? Lifetime is 3 million actual miles.

1:38:24 Lifetime. Okay. You need to spend $28,000 in medallion qualification dollars each year.

1:38:31 MQ, what are we talking about? MQD. Medallion, not just miles flown. It's like 11 per dollar.

1:38:40 Okay, I know nothing. Well, I looked it up and I was like, you know what, this guy and then it got me so curious. I was like, who's this guy? like he flies so much and he's so young

1:38:52 and he's so fit, but also so the youth was interesting cuz it's like oh he he flies a lot. It's not like he's like 80 then diamond might make sense,

1:39:05 right? You know, it's like this was born in an airplane. Yeah. So this was very curious. Do you know I have a friend who and maybe I've already told you the story, but he had it must have been diamond status or something right?

1:39:18 Elusive. And when you have that one, you get the free upgrade like every time, right?

1:39:24 You can buy a coach ticket if you're diamond, you will get upgraded to first class almost all the time. He had this crazy status and he liked to travel and he wasn't rich.

1:39:33 Yeah. And his weird thing was, and I remember one time it was like the the end of the year was approaching and he needed another 15,000 miles and he went online and he found like just started searching for like the longest trip possible uh for the cheapest.

1:39:50 Uhhuh. I want to say on like December 30th, he flew to Malaysia and then just [ __ ] flew back.

1:39:58 No, that's where it's so he could keep his diamond status. Oh, but see, I get it. I get you want you want it. It's very

1:40:05 You don't want to lose it. It's the by loss bias or whatever they call it. Exactly. Exactly. You have a little bit of glitter. I see. Um

1:40:13 Yeah. You know, I put on that birthday hat at Bricktop and I still have glitter in all these places. Yeah. That that thing got everywhere somehow. [gasps]

1:40:26 I have washed my face, rest assured. I don't know like it's embedded or maybe I I have consumed some and they're now getting expressed out of the pores.

1:40:35 I think that's fun. Maybe all year there's just going to be glitter popping out.

1:40:39 So, back to line. We discover your um platinum and we discover I'm gold. Well, I tell you, oh that's weird. just got an email and I'm terrible at logging putting my number in when I fly and I got a whole reason why and you know it's so boring but it's like every time I've ever tried to use those miles it's a [ __ ] joke every time it's a blackout every it ends up when I've used it ends up being like 120,000 miles to get a coach seat or something and I'm like this thing's a [ __ ] racket that

1:41:08 now a lot of people have great luck with it and I and I concede to that all to say I go up to the counter first with the girls to check in and the woman behind the counter at some point says like, "Thank you for your gold status." And then you start laughing immediately kind of behind and then I like look at you and then obviously she clocks this whole thing somehow. And so then I step away. I've checked in the bags and now you step up and we're like whatever 8 feet away from you and when she checks you she's like,

1:41:36 "Oh my, we are so delighted to have your platinum status." Does she like scream platinum status?

1:41:44 Really funny. She hit platinum status like three times. She was a party. She was It was really fun and it was very funny. Um and then

1:41:54 the flight. Yeah. Me holding in the farts and the pee. Well, yeah. You you had a lot of farts and pee that you kept in.

1:42:01 The girl next to me was asleep. Yeah. And um boy, she looked like she was really peacefully sleeping. I could not bring myself to wake her up to to get out.

1:42:09 Yeah. And a couple things happened. One, I had to pee really bad. Yeah. Two, I had a fart so bad. And [snorts]

1:42:15 I'm just really surprised you didn't do it. I couldn't do it cuz I was like, if this woman wakes up cuz she smells something. I I just I I couldn't do it. And I had a bad hunch it was going to be aromatic,

1:42:28 right? So, I held it and it was so uncomfortable. And then, additionally, mid-flight, Delta comes up to my seat and she goes, "Will you get my bag down, daddy?" And I go, "I can't cuz she's sleepy and I can't step over, blah blah blah." and she looked like kind of frustrated to the point where I felt really bad.

1:42:45 Yeah. So, she left. She went back to her seat and I was thinking I was like, "God, if you're a little person and you just can't reach your bag, how powerless that is." But you have a daddy. And so, you ask him and he says, "No." I started feeling really kind of quite bad about it to the degree that when we landed, I wanted I said to her, "Hey, if I were you and I were little and I couldn't reach my bag and I I'd be very frustrated and I'm really really sorry, but I just really didn't want to make." And then she hit us with she had had an enormous calamity in

1:43:13 back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She had she had poured an orange juice all over her shirt, all over her pants,

1:43:19 through her underwear. So this poor girl when she was wanted her luggage, she was soaking wet with apple juice and sticky. And then the best part is she was explaining to us how she dealt with it, which again I'm kind of glad I didn't get her bag cuz she just had to deal with it.

1:43:31 Yeah, true. And she I think she told us she was pulling her pants down. Yeah. But no one could see air out.

1:43:39 I just imagine like walking by an uh one of the rows and there's just this little kid with their pants down.

1:43:45 Yeah. Just watching their iPad with their pants down. I'm not watching 10 Things I Hate About You.

1:43:50 Yeah. [snorts] Um but Okay. So, there was a guy next to me on the flight and um

1:43:56 Oh, I peeped them. Oh, you did? Yeah. I mean, I saw that there was You were sitting

1:44:00 Yeah. I was sitting next to this man and in the middle of the flight Sorry. Okay. I did receive a text message at one point before we took off and I looked and it was a text message from my friend Monica who was several rows behind me and she just said, "I heard you cough. [gasps]

1:44:19 I am the worst, man. I'm just I am the worst. It's distinct your cough, but I just know your cough ever everyone no one else everyone just hears people coughing. I just really can't figure out if it's a tick or I have a condition cuz I have a lot of stuff. It's not like I'm just dry coughing. God, this is disgusting.

1:44:39 I'm so happy you say you're saying this out loud cuz I didn't feel like I could ever say this to you.

1:44:44 I think you've already said this to me. I have. Yeah, about the nose blowing. I just think you have some t I Yeah, I have ticks. you have we all have things but like

1:44:55 I think you have um I know I notice it in editing that's when I really notice it where I'm like

1:45:04 he's not he it's it's like it's a tick the you're coughing and like um clearing and stuff and like nose blowing and stuff because because No, I'm not. It's like anthropologically interesting.

1:45:18 It's not annoying. It's fine. But is it chicken or the egg? I think I have like some issues. I had asthma.

1:45:25 Yeah. I don't think it's like out of nowhere, right? It's not entirely psychosmatic.

1:45:30 It's not, but it's 5050. Is it's 8020. It might be 8020. [snorts] I mean, in here sometimes I feel like it happens.

1:45:40 Oh, you're really scared to say this. I can tell. Well, like either you're like

1:45:44 a little if you get a little like agitated or something. I think I think like something

1:45:49 even you saying I was like [cough] like I know that face I just felt like I was like oh

1:45:58 yeah it's really funny we all we have so many I just want to thank everyone in my life like clearly everyone in my life is very tolerant of the amount of noises I'm making

1:46:07 that's fine who cares anyway so there was a guy next to me and and he was young

1:46:14 yeah [clears throat] and what did you say fit yeah no He was like, he seemed a little younger than me, so he was prime.

1:46:22 Um, and he was reading his book and stuff. He was it seemed like he was solo, right? Yeah.

1:46:29 Some point in the flight, like look over and he's talking to the a girl, a young woman, um, next to him on but I was on that, too. Okay. Yeah. He was reading his book and he was just like being I he wasn't talking to her until all of a sudden he was and to me in the middle of the flight like

1:46:53 I look over and he's just like talking, you know, and and I kind of am looking and I'm trying to listen a little bit but I have um so I couldn't really hear but it seemed to me they were meeting.

1:47:06 Oh me cute. And I was I was like, "Oh my god, I'm I'm a me cute is happening." Yeah. Yeah.

1:47:12 And at then, this is funny. Yeah. Then I was like, you got jealous? Yeah, I did. I did.

1:47:20 I was like, what the [ __ ] I'm sitting right here. Hey, hello. I'm sitting right here.

1:47:26 Diamond status. Platinum. What are you platinum? I'm sitt he hates me so much. I'm so gross. He has to go across the aisle. He'd rather cross the aisle.

1:47:38 Exactly. No, but hold on now. You I got to Yeah. You can't build this argument because I was already witnessing it before you ever sat down.

1:47:46 I know, but listen. Okay. The trolley had left the station. So So they're falling in like, you know, they're they're flirting. So they're chitchatting and I was like, "Oh my god, a meat cute." And I was like,

1:47:57 "Oh man, I feel conflicted about this cuz I love meat cute." So, like I'm happy for them, but also like

1:48:05 hello. I'm right here. Like, this is so rude. It's so rude. So, and then Well, could have turned into a challenger situation.

1:48:12 Oh [ __ ] I know. And I looked for the movie on the plane. It wasn't funny. That's your safest.

1:48:17 So, so [gasps and laughter] then I would have really got his attention. Yeah. Yeah. You nudged [clears throat] him and you pointed during the three-way. And then you nudged him and said, "Nudge her. Hey, you see what's happening here?

1:48:31 Um, does this interest you? This concept of three people getting together intimately.

1:48:38 Okay. So then at one point and I am an observant and I am kind of closing my eyes a lot in the flight. So this is part of it I guess. So then at one point I look over and I'm like, "Oh, he has a wine." He hadn't had a wine

1:48:55 or a drink or anything, but his date was going great. Exactly. I was like, "Oh my god, he has a wine now." Like they're like literally on a date. But then I look over and I was like, "Oh, she's not there anymore." Okay.

1:49:06 Then I was like, "Oh my god, she went to the bathroom. She asked him to hold her wine." I was like, "What a move."

1:49:18 Hold on [snorts] a second. Well, that's an interesting conclusion. Why Why isn't it his wine?

1:49:24 You think you would have saw him order it? I was like, I would have known that.

1:49:28 I got you. You look over and the wine had just materialized. I got you. That's more

1:49:32 It had materialized. It was a white wine. I was like, I know her. She was like, do you mind holding my wine? Like she didn't want to leave it out in the open like with this other stranger like the counterpart to me. Think how that guy felt.

1:49:46 I know. I felt horrible for him. What if you two would have caught eyes and rolled your eyes?

1:49:50 We got to meet you. That would be fun. But what would be more fun is if you guys just caught you guys were both watching them and then you caught eyes with each other and you both rolled your eyes like these these two losers cuz you were hurt.

1:50:02 Yeah, exactly. These two [ __ ] What the [ __ ] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. So I I was like I put it together. I was like, "Oh my god, what a move. Can you rewind?" But it's also scary move cuz she doesn't know him. Like he could put something in there.

1:50:29 She should have asked me if she was being smart. But anyway, and then I do see her come back and she, you know, she's smiling at him and then she sits down and I I am I'm watching at this point. I'm watching them my show, my TV show. And he gives her the wine.

1:50:48 You were right. I was right. Oh wow. Thank you. And then I really in my head was like they are just mean. Like the way she said thank you did not feel like if you held my wine.

1:51:01 Right. Right. Right. Right. And I was like oh my god it's for sure meet Q. How do you know they weren't together

1:51:10 then? Oh I forgot. We're in a Seinfeld episode. I stop stop cutting to the end. Stop fast forwarding. So then [clears throat]

1:51:22 I'm, you know, stewing. Mhm. Wow. You had a lot going on back there. I did. And I was like, God, I you know, I can't get a stylist. No one wants

1:51:32 to meet me. And um and and then there was like a second of turbulence. Like not very long.

1:51:42 Yeah. And I don't even remember it. Exactly. And you know, I'm kind of like just close my eyes and then I look over. They're holding hands.

1:51:49 Monica, they were already together. Nope. They're holding hands across the I was like, "Oh my, they've gone from strangers to in love."

1:51:59 There's no way. They just went on the flight and they were holding hands during the turbulence.

1:52:03 This went from 0 to 100 so fast. And then I did have to think, wait, how are they did they come together? But how? because like he was just reading his book. He wasn't talking to her pre-flight at all.

1:52:17 Mhm. I don't know. And and it's still unclear. But I do think they went home together.

1:52:23 Yeah, cuz they came together. No, cuz they fell in love. It was an eventful flight.

1:52:28 It was a lot happened. We got home very late. We did. Very, very late. We really did.

1:52:32 But we had so much fun in Nashville. Yes, we did. Yes. We had a very fun birthday party.

1:52:38 Yeah. It was your birthday. We went to your favorite restaurant. It was so good.

1:52:43 It was so delicious. And I want to give a shout out to my neighbor Nate. I'm I got so [ __ ] lucky with our neighbors in Nashville.

1:52:50 Yeah. Uh one of them is Nate, my neighbor, who were the same age. Yeah. I kind of like that.

1:52:57 That's fun. Yeah, it is. I really like it. But he has grandkids. Oh, wow. Cuz he started real early.

1:53:04 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In some ways, we're living different lives cuz he already has grandkids. But I just I guess if I see a guy my age that's like crazy active with his grandkids, he's so active with his grandkids.

1:53:15 I just immediately go like that's a [ __ ] guy right there. That's a standup dude.

1:53:20 Yeah. And my experience having neighbors in Michigan way different than my experience is having neighbors in LA.

1:53:27 In general, I don't know people that are friends with their neighbor. I don't have a single friend in LA and I have 35,

1:53:33 right? They do not hang out with their neighbors. That's true. I'm friendly to my neighbors, but when I go back to Aaron's house in Michigan, there's no fences in the backyards. And when it's summertime, like everyone's grilling, everyone's talking, people are walking back and forth in the yards.

1:53:49 You know, it's a community here. We're just very anonymous. You know, there's just so many of us and we're very anonymous. And so,

1:53:56 um, whatever. It's just been 30 years since I had that kind of neighborly feeling. And I really love it. It's special. It feels like protective

1:54:05 like I got your back. I'm watching out for Hey, I noticed this thing at your house and I, you know.

1:54:09 Yeah, it's very nice. I like it. Yeah, actually. Yeah, that's funny. I noticed that when I was in when I was home in Georgia, I was at my friend's house,

1:54:18 Christina. Kids were coming over and I was like, that's so cute. And I did have that growing up also in Georgia and in Tennessee. We would just like go to each other's houses

1:54:29 just in general. I do I do cherish that whole neighborhood vibe with a bunch of little kids.

1:54:34 It is really nice. I agree. I think we need to do one last thing. Okay. And it's a New Year's resolution update because it's pretty comical. [snorts]

1:54:42 Okay. Which is if people remember my my resolutions were sprints. Yes. And um and not being affected by people's emotions.

1:54:50 Yeah. And so January 2nd on my birthday. Yes. And I this part I feel a little guilty about, but I didn't ask anyone to do it. But I think people did sprints cuz it was my birthday.

1:55:02 Sure they did. Yeah. So it turns out like six of us. Not me. Not. You knew better. And mind you, we made a ton of jokes about don't get hurt. Also, I laid out this whole strategy. Like anytime I get back into sprints, I like to do like 70% the first time, then 80. And I build my maybe my fifth time doing sprints, I'm full out.

1:55:20 Yeah. There were six of us. Yeah. And my f I my competitiveness took over. And Eric was like I could hear Eric behind me. So, I was like turning on the turbo jets.

1:55:31 And the goal was to do six 30 second sprints, which again, too long. Not to bore anyone. When I've done sprints in the past, it's generally like 40 yard dash.

1:55:40 Yeah. A 30 second sprint's like 200 m. I I said this on the last I was like, that's too long.

1:55:45 It's too long. Anyways, on the fourth one, we're walking back and I'm like, oo, my cal feels dicey, but I can get through two more sprints. And then on that same walk back, Eric was like, I'm out. Just tore something in my pocket.

1:56:06 And I'm like, I'm still in and I got a third of the way through my fifth sprint. I was like, oh my god, I got to stop. I think I might be tearing something.

1:56:13 Yeah, I'm glad you stopped. All to say, the sprinting resolution is is [clears throat] proving to be more challenging. We're hoping That was Friday. I'm hoping by this Friday, my calf feels good enough to resume.

1:56:24 You're going to do it again. Got to. Okay. But it was very comedic to wake up the following morning and Eric and I can't walk. We're both like hobbling around the house like welcome to 50s.

1:56:37 50s? No. That I said I said no one above 35 should be doing this. It is hard on the body. Really too hard.

1:56:47 Anyway, yeah. So that's over. Also, I want to give an update too. Um I do have a stylist now.

1:56:54 Yay. So, um, and I'm really really excited about her and she seems awesome and so we're gonna we're gonna give it a whirl. Um, all right. Well, let's do some facts.

1:57:04 Yes, ma'am. Okay. So, Walter, um, I got my dad this book for Christmas and he read it all. Read the whole thing in an hour. It's a small book. Um, but yeah, he he blew through it

1:57:17 and um, he loved it. He loved it. Yeah. What did he Well, like when he reads a book like that, will he then want to talk about some of the things he learned in it or he just wants to say he liked it?

1:57:27 He does want to talk about it, but I had to go to my room cuz I was tired. So, he did want to talk about it.

1:57:36 No, he just said, "Oh, I read one of the books." And you're, "Okay, I'm going to bed. [snorts] Wake me up when you don't want to talk about that book."

1:57:45 No, he just was like, "Yeah, it was really interesting." And I mean he said a few things about it.

1:57:51 Yeah. Um but they're watching a movie. I don't know. Like anyway and now he's reading Sapiens. I got bought him that too.

1:57:57 He had not ever read it. He doesn't read a lot. Not a big reader. He's busy. But now that he's fake retired.

1:58:03 Exactly. That was sort of it. He was like, you know, I want to We had a riot talking about his retirement last night.

1:58:08 Yeah. Yeah. My sweet dad. I was saying because your dad is retiring, but he's also coming back as an a consultant.

1:58:16 Yeah. A contract. He's Yeah. contractor, whatever. Contractor. And I was saying I would be a little mad if I was one of his co-workers

1:58:24 and we threw a big retirement party on Friday. Everyone got hammered and they had a hangover. And then you got to work on money and you saw Shoke sitting at his desk drinking coffee. You be like, "What? That's not how this works."

1:58:36 I know. I know. Luckily, no one threw him a party. Well, exactly. Does he sad about that? Did you

1:58:44 He doesn't care about anything. He doesn't care about anything. I love how you like we both agree your dad's one of the smartest people on the planet, but then you also make room for him being the one of the dumbest people on the planet.

1:58:53 Not dumb. Not dumb. Just unaware. Just not like what he's not interested in, he's not interested in,

1:59:02 right, at all. Like he he doesn't care about a lot of things. Oh, you know what's fun? You just don't get to see your parents in other environments often than than them being your parent.

1:59:15 You don't get to see them with their other identities. Exactly. But one of my dad's co-workers came over to pick something up and but she's a friend of my dad's too and they worked together for a long time but now she's in another department or something. But anyway, um she was chatting with us and like it was so fun to see like him in with her talking about their work and their history and like you know my the her friend was like I'm glad I'm not in that department anymore. It would be too sad to know you were retiring.

1:59:53 Yeah. And like also she loved working with your dad. Yeah. Yeah. And then even talking about like

2:00:00 how my dad is and I mean I shouldn't be surprised by this, but like the best one there.

2:00:06 Yeah. No joke. Yeah. No doubt. Yeah. Oh, your dad must have loved hearing that.

2:00:11 I know. Yeah. And um and I was so proud of him. Yeah. Yeah. You got a very good one.

2:00:19 I know. There's a lot of them out there. And you got a very good I got a really good pair. I have to say I even so I was getting my nails done this morning and I was talking to the nail esthetician

2:00:33 and um yeah, we got on the subject of my parents and we because I was talking about moving into the house

2:00:42 and and she was like, "Wow, that's such a big deal." And I was like, "Yeah, it is exciting." And she was asking about like why I came and I was like, "Oh, for acting and commercials, whatever." And I was talking about my first commercial, my first big commercial, the Herbal Essence commercial. And I had forgotten some details, but I was telling the story, and I was remembering that, you know, I had like it was like three callbacks for that commercial. My agent called me and was like, "Can you be here in like two? Can you come in in like two hours? We're doing another call back.

2:01:15 It's like three people. It's down to three people. you and two other people. And my parents were in town and I was with them. We were in Santa Barbara.

2:01:23 Oh. Their favorite place. Yes. India. And [clears throat] I said, "I'm in Santa Barbara with my parents." Like, "No, I can't."

2:01:34 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, my dad was like, "What's going on?" And I was like, "Well, there's a call back and you know, I can't." He was like, "We're going."

2:01:42 Yeah. [snorts] Right now. And I was like, "What?" I was like, "I don't think we" and he was like, "We're going." Like I you didn't come out here

2:01:50 to do this to to quit on the 99th line to hang out in Santa Barbara. Like so he drove us back immediately and then you know I booked it and that was my first big commercial and they were there

2:02:05 and they were there for my booking and my dad said he said on that trip cuz you know obviously we had been driving around LA and looking at houses and all these things and he said

2:02:14 you're going to have one of those houses one day and I'm about to move into it. So, and then I was telling her this and I was like she was like that's she was like what what a good dad. I was like he is like they are and I really do not.

2:02:33 You're right. As the child I don't I don't think about those specificities. I know and I know like how good I have it but those things it's like yeah they're just really good ones

2:02:47 and I'm very very very lucky. But yes, but I hate when you finish. But they drive me nuts.

2:02:55 Sure. They're family. But that's cuz [snorts] they're family. But I I I love them very much. So anyway,

2:02:59 well, I'm emotional now. I understand. I understand. They're nice people. Well, I have a birthday present for you.

2:03:07 You do? Yeah. Oh my god. Oh my goodness. This is fun. This is a um unconventional size box. I know. you like generally when you get me something it's a clothing item and it's in a bigger box.

2:03:23 Okay. It's a shirt. It is a clothing item in a tiny box. Oh my god. No way. [screaming]

2:03:35 A Kmart shirt. It's a Kmart shirt, but it's also a DARE shirt. Oh my god. Kids against drugs. Lame. I know. I thought it was a double whammy for you.

2:03:51 Yeah. The bumper says Kmart kids race against drugs. There's a lot going on here. Why are they Kmart kids? Exactly.

2:03:58 How does one race drugs? Correct. How do you race? You can race on drugs. Yeah. Um it was a race. It was a race where they were against drugs.

2:04:08 Do you know how old you were when this shirt was made? No. You were 11 years old.

2:04:14 Oh wow. You were just about to start racing against drugs. I Oh, I had been racing. I've had been racing since I was five against drugs.

2:04:22 And in ' 98, I was 23. I was on drugs. The kids were really doing it for you, though. You know,

2:04:29 they're racing me, but they couldn't keep up. No, they couldn't. Oh my god, this is great.

2:04:34 I just It's a Kmart shirt. You had to have it. Yes. Oh, I love it. I was just telling you that I watched a YouTube video on the history. Uh it wasn't it wasn't like the history of Kmart. It was just this graph that changed and it gave you the amount of Kmarts in different states starting I think 63 or 8.

2:04:55 Yeah. And when it occurred to me I had no idea and I'm bummed about it. Yeah. It started in Michigan and there were so many more in Michigan all the way up until the 80s.

2:05:06 Yeah. We were like blowing the rest of the country away. Eventually, it got passed by maybe California or a couple, but it stayed really high. And I was like, "Oh, yeah. I I I was um my opinion of Kmart skewed by being born in Michigan." Blood.

2:05:18 I thought it was like as ubiquitous as Walmart, right? We had a lot of them in Georgia, but maybe later.

2:05:24 Yeah, I think later. And and um and in Michigan, they were more numerous than Walmarts.

2:05:30 Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's in your history and your lineage. But you told me that story, but I had already I your shirt already. exciting.

2:05:38 Yeah. Um, okay. So, Walter, so he mentioned a room where people gather that has a couch on the outside and cushions in the middle. It kind of sounds like a riddle. You know,

2:05:50 it does, but I looked it up. It says, "The room design you were describing is commonly known as a conversation pit or a sunken seating area."

2:05:58 I want one of those so bad. Yes, they're kind of making a comeback I saw in some architectural magazine.

2:06:03 Oh, wow. But as a kid, those were big in the ' 70s. Oh, and so when I was a kid, they kind of had gone out of vogue, but you could still bump into them. And I was like, I want a sunken in living room so bad.

2:06:14 Oh, yeah. I don't really know about them. Yeah. Like just imagine the floor levels this and then it drops down another 2 and 1/2 ft so that the couch hole area square is like so your shoulders are like just above the floor line.

2:06:27 Interesting. Oh, I love it. Okay. Well, that's what he's talking about. It was on the back of TV Guide a lot.

2:06:32 Oh, is Bill Gates's That's tricky. Uh, mom named Mary. Yes. Mary Maxwell Gates.

2:06:42 Mary Maxwell Gates. I like that. Maxwell. Did you have Max and Irma's down there in Georgia?

2:06:46 Yes, we did. Yeah. Yes, we did have Max and Irma. We were alive at the bullseye of the franchise restaurant.

2:06:53 I know. Like there was no such thing as a Chili's in my youth and then around my teenage years all of a sudden and it was the most exciting thing in the world. Listen, I we was by a Chili's last week and I asked my mom. I was like, have you guys been to Chili's lat? She was like, we went last week.

2:07:10 Oh, great. I was like, yeah. And I kind of I was like, I want to go. It's [ __ ] delicious.

2:07:14 I know. I loved it. Yeah. They used to have chicken tacos, but they took them off the menu.

2:07:19 They did? Yeah. Oh, no. I know. Yeah. Not caloric enough. Yeah, I guess not. Okay. Well, so that is all the facts.

2:07:28 That concludes the fact portion of the program. Yeah. He's too smart. What are we gonna do?

2:07:33 Thank you for my Kmart shirt, Monica. You're welcome. Thank you so much. It was fun to open up a box.

2:07:40 It was a trick because it was a big shirt in a small box. Yeah, I liked that. That's a metaphor.

2:07:46 Yeah. Big things come in very small packages. Yeah. Yeah. We got there. All right. Love you. Love you.

Questions about this episode

What is "Walter Isaacson Returns (biographer & historian) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard" about?

Walter Isaacson discusses his new book, "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written," which analyzes the key sentence of the Declaration of Independence, exploring its historical importance and the nuanced compromises embedded within its wording. The conversation highlights Isaacson's extensive career, including his past role as CEO of CNN, and emphasizes his expertise as a biographer and historian.

What is mentioned in this Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard episode?

22 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Benny (grandson of Benjamin Franklin), Clifford Death Row Jefferson, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, Michael Lewis, Walter Isacson, David Hume. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Walter Isaacson Returns (biographer & historian) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard"?

The episode runs 2 h 8 min; the transcript is about 23,582 words in 512 timestamped sections.

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