What Are Some of the Lessons of Your Great Innovators?

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

"Be curious about everything. Don't specialize to on be able to go deep on a few subjects, but make sure you can also go wide" "If you put your mind to it, you can pretty much be familiar with many different fields," he says of learning the math of general relativity from his high school algebra class. 'I think there's room for people like myself who are just passionately curious and will take the time ... to drill deep into a subject'

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.

-- Go Premium: Members receive early access to episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/

Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/

Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish