How Do You Extract Information From Other People?

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When i was about 17 and had a summer job, i went and somebody had a young woman, a young girl, had been killed. My editor said, what happened when you interviewed the parents? A so i didn't go bother the parents. And he said, go knock on the door and interview the parents. So i took a deep breath and i did it. And i learned my first lesson, which is people like to talk, and they liked to talk about themselves. They got to feel to fill the silence, and they talk. If sometimes they don't answer my question, i just stay there and listen, and i'm silent. It's better than trying to explain things

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

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

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