The Myth of "Great Men" - with Walter Isaacson

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know —

Episode: The Myth of "Great Men" with Walter Isaacson

Date: July 22, 2026
Hosts/Guests: Hasan Minhaj (Host), Walter Isaacson (Guest)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the persistent myth of "great men"—the idea that history is moved by singular, exceptional individuals, mostly men, whose vision and willpower reshape the world. Through a questioning, often humorous conversation with acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson, Hasan Minhaj interrogates whether this narrative holds true and what we lose by ignoring the broader forces, collaborators, and social movements that enable change. The episode further explores how to reckon with the moral ambiguities and flaws of celebrated figures—from tech mavericks like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk to the Founding Fathers—especially in light of democracy, empathy, and America's founding ideals.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The "Great Man" Theory vs. Structural Forces

• Timestamp: 02:45–10:53
• Minhaj opens by satirizing the glorification of figures like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin (02:37), referencing Thomas Carlyle's famous dictum: "The history of what man has accomplished in this world is, at bottom, the history of the great men." Minhaj critiques the simplicity and ideological purpose of this perspective, inviting Isaacson to discuss the limits of biographical storytelling.
  • Minhaj: "The history of America was basically the biographies of Columbus, George Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and JFK. Boom. Done. God bless America. Support the troops. Don’t forget to tip your bar and wait staff." (03:24)
• Isaacson admits biographers distort history, overemphasizing the power of individuals at the expense of context and collective action.
  • Isaacson: "If you don’t want to understand humans in their complexity, go on social media. Don’t read biographies." (04:45)
  • Isaacson: "We biographers distort history a little by emphasizing the role singular individuals do." (11:17)

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2. The Allure and the Limits of Individual Genius

• Timestamp: 06:40–12:24
• Isaacson shares anecdotes about Steve Jobs: Jobs didn’t allow his kids to use iPads or iPhones at dinner out of concern for attention, not addiction (06:40–07:51). He expresses deep admiration for visionaries who sit “at the intersection of technology and the humanities” (10:15), describing creative people who "think different" as his main subjects.
  • Isaacson: _“It’s not just smart people. Smart people are a dime a dozen... But people who, as Steve Jobs would say, 'think different,' who think out of the box—they’re the ones who make the imaginative leaps."* (10:15)

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3. Costs of Greatness: Genius, Empathy, and Their Human Toll

• Timestamp: 12:24–18:18
• Minhaj presses Isaacson on the subtext of his Jobs and Musk biographies—that greatness seems to require ruthlessness, ego, and harm to others.
  • Minhaj: “There is this myth that history is built by people that are these singular, heroic figures. Do you think that’s a myth?” (10:53)
• Isaacson discusses Musk’s claim that “empathy’s not your friend” if you want to colonize Mars or revolutionize transportation (12:38). He recounts Musk criticizing him for being too concerned with others’ feelings to make radical moves like mass firings at CNN.
  • Isaacson: “He said, ‘You cared too much whether they liked you and that’s why you weren’t good at running CNN.’” (13:25)
• Isaacson’s self-awareness: “That’s true. But what price would I want to pay in my life in order to maybe have made CNN more radical, more quickly? ...I’m not built to be a disruptive, creative person who screws everybody else over. ...The row I hoe in life is I write about people who are crazier than me.” (13:43)
• Explores Jobs’ and Musk’s dark sides as intertwined with their achievements, not merely trade-offs but ingredients of their impact.

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4. Myth, Subtext, and Misinterpretation

• Timestamp: 14:27–19:57
• Minhaj and Isaacson discuss how audiences may misread these biographies as instruction manuals for success, echoing the way some idolize movie antiheroes.
  • Isaacson: “People were taking the wrong message from the [Jobs] book—they’d come up to me and say, ‘I’m just like Steve Jobs. If somebody does something that sucks I tell them it sucks, you know?’ ...I said, wait a minute, have you ever invented the iPod?” (18:55)

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5. Lessons from Biographies (Beyond "Be an Asshole")

• Timestamp: 19:59–21:28
• Isaacson clarifies: the real lessons are about curiosity, risk-taking, and the creative power of the "reality distortion field”—not about imitating their bad behavior.
  • Isaacson: “One of the lessons in a lot of my books is the power of pure curiosity, the power of reality distortion, the ability to take risks—to bet the farm, as Steve Jobs said, or take risks...” (19:59)
• He distinguishes Jobs, who had empathy and “a spiritual feel for human desires,” from Musk, whose “demon mode” can be bluntly destructive (20:41). Yet both are complex, not caricatures.

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6. The System: Does It Require Ruthlessness?

• Timestamp: 24:20–26:49
• Minhaj: “You can’t become a billionaire without being an asshole. Do you agree?” (24:20)
• Isaacson responds that being “driven” can lead to running over people, but the system rewards it; the real question is if that price is worth it, individually or for society.
  • Isaacson: “Our system incentivizes drive—that runs over people at times. ...But if you screw it up and you mess around with people too badly, you’re going to be a failure.” (24:59)
  • On Musk: “Maybe society would be better off without Elon Musk. ...But if somebody like you just comes to me and says... look at all those tweets he did and how horrible they’ve been, cutting USAID—society would be better off without any Elon Musk.” (26:49)

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7. America’s Founding Ideals: The Greatest Sentence Ever Written

• Timestamp: 27:23–34:40
• Isaacson’s new book is about the Declaration of Independence’s “greatest sentence”: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” (27:51)
• They discuss the aspirational nature of this sentence, which was not true for much of America—20% enslaved, women excluded. Isaacson: “That sentence becomes a forcing mechanism for each new generation... to try to make that sentence more true.” (28:30–29:00)
• Minhaj highlights the phrase’s exclusive language and continuous struggle:
  • Minhaj: “I think I know what the subtext of the 'all men are created equal' thing is. ...Talking about men. Property-owning men, women, not so much." (28:06)
• They reference how abolitionists, suffragists, and civil rights leaders have all invoked this sentence to push America toward fuller equality.

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8. Complexity, Reckoning, and Empathy

• Timestamp: 34:40–46:48
• They connect the need to “grapple” with moral complexity—from Founders who owned slaves, to contemporary billionaires who exploit or ignore others.
  • Isaacson: “If you don’t want to understand humans in their complexity, then go on social media. Don’t read biographies.” (31:26)
• Discussion on how the Supreme Court and society are “backsliding” from these ideals, and that “the arc of history does not bend toward justice. It has to be bent by each new generation.” (32:20)
• The concept of the commons as the way to balance opportunity and inequality—education, healthcare, public goods—stems from America's founding and the writings of Locke.
  • Isaacson: “The library is a symbol of the common. ...We have to make sure everybody has safe streets, good schools, health care, everything you need to have the opportunity for each new generation to do better than the last.” (41:06)

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9. Empathy and the Moral Mission

• Timestamp: 45:13–46:48
• Minhaj notes the "irony" that Isaacson’s biographies of billionaires often profile those who scoff at empathy, while his civic vision depends on it.
  • Isaacson: “One trait you need for a good society is empathy. ...That’s what the greatest sentence ever written gives us. Our moral mission is to create a society in which every kid has an opportunity to be successful.” (45:25, 46:10)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Biographies and Real Complexity:
  • “If you don’t want to understand humans in their complexity, go on social media. Don’t read biographies.” (Isaacson, 04:45)
• On Empathy and Leadership:
  • “He [Musk] said, ‘You cared too much whether they liked you and that’s why you weren’t good at running CNN.’” (Isaacson, 13:25)
  • “The row I hoe in life is I write about people who are crazier than me.” (Isaacson, 13:43)
• On Misreading "Great Men":
  • “People were taking the wrong message from the [Jobs] book—they’d come up to me and say, ‘I’m just like Steve Jobs…’ I said, wait a minute, have you ever invented the iPod?” (Isaacson, 18:55)
• On the Price of Greatness:
  • “Do the audaciousness and hubris that drive him to attempt epic feats excuse his bad behavior? The answer is no, of course not. …It can be hard to remove the dark ones without unraveling the whole cloth.” (Minhaj/Isaacson, 17:02)
• On America’s Founding Ideals:
  • “The reason that sentence is great... is that it’s a forcing mechanism for each new generation to try to make that sentence more true.” (Isaacson, 29:00)
  • “The arc of history does not bend towards justice. It has to be bent towards justice by each new generation.” (Isaacson, 32:22)
• On the "Commons":
  • “The library is a symbol of the common. So what can we do now to make sure we remain a land of opportunity?... Let’s make sure everybody has housing, has healthcare, has safe streets, is free from hunger.” (Isaacson, 41:06)
• On Empathy:
  • “One trait you need for a good society is empathy...you have to care about people other than yourself in order to have a good society.” (Isaacson, 45:25)

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Important Timestamps for Deep Dives

• 02:45 – The origins and appeal of the "great man" theory of history
• 06:40 – Steve Jobs, technology, and family rules
• 11:17 – Isaacson on biographers distorting history
• 12:38 – Empathy, leadership, and what it costs to be "great"
• 14:27 – Misinterpretation of "great man" biographies
• 19:59 – What Isaacson really seeks in his books: curiosity, creativity, risk
• 24:20 – Is becoming a billionaire synonymous with being ruthless?
• 27:51 – Parsing the “greatest sentence” of the Declaration of Independence
• 31:26–32:22 – The work of reckoning with moral complexity and social progress
• 41:06 – Wealth, the "commons," and maintaining opportunity
• 45:13 – Isaacson and Minhaj discuss empathy as a central civic value

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Conclusion

In a searching, good-humored, and sometimes barbed conversation, Hasan Minhaj and Walter Isaacson destabilize the myth that history’s engine is the exceptional “great man.” They probe the real mechanics of innovation, the messy knot of virtue and vice in human character, and the urgent need to build a more empathetic, equitable society centering on the “commons” and America’s founding ideals. The conversation is notable for its candor, moral seriousness, and a willingness to challenge both hagiography and cynicism.

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Transcript

[Host]

Lemonade.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Lawmakers are fighting to stop the Trump administration's dismantling of a $386 million ocean observatory project. This project has been collecting data on ocean circulation, marine ecosystems, and extreme weather patterns for the last decade. Donald Trump wants to scale back the initiative by 55%, removing many of the system's instruments, leaving coastal communities vulnerable and impacting our ability to monitor El Nino. Just another day in paradise, folks. I read about this farce On Ground News, HMDK's favorite independent news platform. Ground News shows a breakdown of publications reporting on a story in which way each tends to lean politically. It's not about completely eliminating bias. We all have our biases. But Ground News helps us see more of the whole picture, making us more informed consumers of the news. I was not surprised to see that very few right leaning publications were reporting on the story. Dare I say it's because it makes Donald Trump look like a bumbling oaf. But hey, that's just my interpretation. Let's let's cut through the noise together. Go to groundnews.com hussan to subscribe and get 40% off the unlimited Access Vantage plan, which breaks down to just five bucks a month with my discount. That's groundnews.comhusn picture this. You're finally taking time to clean out your gutters. Not fun, but hey, good for you. Your elbow's deep in soggy leaves. And then suddenly the smoke alarm starts blaring from inside. Smoke pours out the window. What do you do? ADTs do it yourself systems are built for those moments in your life when everything turns on a D. They're affordable, easy to set up, and the ADT app keeps you in control 24. 7 from virtually anywhere. Tackle your to do list knowing that your home is protected. When every second Counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com or call 1-800-ADT ASAP. America recently celebrated the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And if your timeline is anything like mine, you saw a deluge it a bukkake of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Greatness Porn. How amazing these guys were. How great these guys were. How without their greatness, America would not be what it is today. It's a way of thinking about history that isn't new. Back in 1840, the influential historian Thomas Carlyle wrote, the history of what man has accomplished in this world is, at bottom, the history of the great men. All things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result of things, thoughts that dwelt in the great men sent into the world. Tldr dudes. Fucking rock. And this perspective has informed how Americans were taught their history for years. The history of America was basically the biographies of Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, FDR and jfk. Boom. Done. God bless America. Support the troops. Don't forget to tip your bar and wait staff. But if you just read those books, you would probably walk away thinking that civilization was moved forward, forward only by single individuals, and that those individuals weren't assholes, they were good men. But there's a whole different approach to history which started becoming more dominant in the 1970s and the 1980s that gives more credit to social and structural forces and collective action, AKA a bunch of people working together to get a desired result to benefit humanity. So yes, Abraham Lincoln was important to ending slavery, but the abolitionist movement had been working on it since the previous century. Yes, FDR passed the New Deal, but that was the final chapter of a fight that started decades earlier with farmer protests in the late 1800s and labor activism in the early 1900s. You could even argue that the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in 1911 was a more important origin story of the New Deal than the election of fdr. But even if there might be more nuance and complexity to those kinds of historical narratives, there's still a huge temptation to explain history through the influence of influence of powerful people, mainly men. I'm talking about Henry kissinger, Ronald Reagan, G.W. bezos, Musk beast. It's simple, it's easy. But is it true? To talk more about this, I sat down with one of the most famous biographers out there right now, Mr. Walter Isaacson. His books have mostly focused on singular individuals who have made a big impact in the tradition of this great man style of history. His first book was literally called the Wise Men. And he has written biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and also a woman biochemist, Jennifer Doudna. Shout out to the ladies. But unlike many of his predecessors, Walter will both highlight the accomplishments of people and also call them assholes. So I sat down with the Walter Isaacson to talk about why he thinks biographies are important.

[Walter Isaacson]

If you don't want to understand humans in their complexity, go on social media. Don't read biographies.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Why? Those books aren't in and of themselves enough to really understand history.

[Walter Isaacson]

I do think we biographers distort history

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

a little and I ask him about some of the psychos that he has spent a lot of time with and written about. Hey, you wrote a biography about Henry Kissinger. Do you think he's in hell? He didn't have an answer, but I think. We know, we know.

[Walter Isaacson]

Hurry right away.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

No delays are there.

[Walter Isaacson]

Make your daddy glad to have

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Lawmakers are fighting to stop the Trump administration's dismantling of a $386 million ocean observatory project. This project has been collecting data on ocean circulation, marine ecosystems and extreme weather patterns for the last decade. Donald Trump wants to scale back the initiative by 55%, removing many of the system's instruments, leaving coastal communities vulnerable and impacting our ability to monitor El Nino. Just another day in paradise, folks. I read about this farce On Ground News, HMDK's favorite independent news platform. Ground News shows a breakdown of publications reporting on a story in which way each tends to lean politically. It's not about completely eliminating bias. We all have our biases. But Ground News helps us see more of the whole picture, making us more informed consumers of the news. I was not surprised to see that very few right leaning publications were reporting on the story. Dare I say it's because it makes Donald Trump look like a bumbling oaf. But hey, that's just my interpretation. Let's cut through the noise together. Go to groundnews.com hussan to subscribe and get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan, which breaks down to just five bucks a month with my discount. That's groundnews.com Hussin have you heard these rumors about Apple employees who make the Apple devices? They don't let any of their children use it.

[Walter Isaacson]

Oh well, Steve Jobs told me that he wouldn't let it. I remember sitting around Steve's kitchen table, which is where they ate dinner. And the rule was no devices. It was right after the iPhone was really big, but both iPads and iPhones, no way.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Hey, when I read that, what was the subtext? Did he at any point say that it's about addiction?

[Walter Isaacson]

No. Basically it's about attention and either you're in the moment or you're on your phone. He also was not a believer in social media, which is if you look at the things Apple did, it's amazing. But then you can look at a few things it did not do. It thought of creating a social media network back in the days when MySpace was around and Facebook and MySpace was a little bit dedicated to music. That's how it began as a social network. And there were people at Apple said let's do our Own social network. We've got itunes. We've got the ipod. And he was not a big believer in social media. He thought it would be disconnecting to people.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Was there any reason why he didn't end up doing the car? That was something that was also, the

[Walter Isaacson]

car was hard, and they haven't done it yet. One reason he wanted to is as a biographer, you know, it's all about dad. His father was a car mechanic or his adoptive father, but that was his father. And they would sit in the garage and repair old cars and do the designing and help redo the finishing until they finally had to move the cars out so he could start Apple in that garage. But he was always interested in cars, especially the design of cars. I think had he lived, he would have done three things. Four things. One is he would have done a car. Number two, he would have done television. Let's say, not like Apple tv, which still is not that grand of a product, but he would have made watching TV as simple as getting a song on your ipod. You'd say, I want to watch the Late show, and you'd just say it to your tv and it would pop up. You didn't have to say, are you subscribing to Netflix? Do you know if it's on, you know, cbs? Is it an Amazon Prime?

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Minority Report Meets the Jetsons? Just. Just yell at the tv.

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

And then what was number three and number three?

[Walter Isaacson]

Well, actually, three and four. There's a car, TV camera. Now, Bill Atkinson, who I think just died, one of the brilliant people at Apple, he always thought the camera could be much, much better, and it could capture 100 or so images in a millisecond and then use an algorithm to put it together. Right. And you now kind of have that on the iPhone. So that finally happens. And then the more arcane one is he wanted to just disrupt the textbook market. He said there's no reason that certain publishers who are trying to get their textbooks approved in both Texas and Massachusetts and have to do it. He said textbooks should all be digital. They should all be on the iPad, and they should all be very inexpensive.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Your books, you love to focus on singular visionaries. Is that true?

[Walter Isaacson]

I like people who are creative and imaginative. People say I write about geniuses. Well, it's not just smart people. Smart people are a dime a dozen. They generally don't amount to much. But people can do, as Steve Jobs would say, think different, who think out of the box. They're the ones who make the imaginative leaps. I also like to write. People stand at the intersection of technology and the humanities. Talked about user interfaces. If you're going to be great at user interfaces, you got to be somebody who has a feel for the human, for humans, not just the technology.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

There's a subtext that I could really feel when I read both Jobs and when I read Musk. The subtext that I took away from it as a reader is that these guys are just built different than you and I. It almost creates the narrative that there is this myth that history is built by people that are these singular, heroic figures. Do you think that's a myth?

[Walter Isaacson]

Well, I do think we biographers distort history a little by emphasizing the role singular individuals do. I wrote a couple of books. They don't sell as well as biographies, but one called the Innovators, which was after I did Steve Jobs. I said, you know, I made it seem like one guy went into a garage, had a light bulb moment, and the digital age happened. So it was about the teams of people that built intel, that even built Apple or Microsoft, because it's not. It's, you know, creativity is a team sport. It's a collaborative effort. So you can't make it just seem like singular individuals. But one of my very first books was on Henry Kissinger. And the very first line I wrote in the very first book was a quote from Kissinger that he said off the record to a correspondent once covering his Middle east shuttles. He said, when I was an academic, I used to think history was made by big forces. Now I see what a difference individuals make. And so I think part of biography is, say, yeah, individuals can make a difference.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

I've read both Jobs and Musk, and you definitely focus on the achievements. The costs are there, but oftentimes it feels like they're there to provide context to the achievements. Is that fair?

[Walter Isaacson]

Well, I look at the cost that they paid for their achievements. And I remember Elon Musk saying to me, because I would ask him at times, you've got no empathy. You don't seem to, you know, care about other people's feelings. And he said, well, empathy's not your friend when you're trying to get to Mars, when you're trying to get to the era of electric vehicles. He said, you had the luxury of maybe having a whole lot of empathy, but he said it was basically a vanity on your part. He was saying this to me because it wasn't that you just cared about other people's feelings. You wanted them to like you, and you cared too much. Whether they liked you and that's why you weren't good at running cnn. He told me.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

He told you that?

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah, he said, because you should have just fired everybody, you shouldn't have given a shit about their feelings. And I started thinking, and I write a bit about it in the Musk book. What is the price you pay, are willing to pay?

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Did that hurt your feelings?

[Walter Isaacson]

Did that hurt my feelings?

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Yeah. When he basically said that, no.

[Walter Isaacson]

It had the odious smell of truth to it. And so, you know, I'm self aware enough to know that it made me think, that's true. But what price would I want to pay in my life in order to maybe have made CNN more radical more quickly? And I thought, this is not who I am. I'm not built to be a disruptive, creative person who screws everybody else over. And it means I'm not going to be great, but I'm going to have enough empathy to be able to write about people who are great. And so the row I hoe in life is I write about people who are crazier than me.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

I think this conversation is about subtext. You opened the Elon Musk book with two quotes. Let's take a look at them again. You don't have a ton of pictures in your book, but I've read them. Size 8 font. To anyone I've offended, I just wanna say I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Do you think I was gonna also be a chill, normal dude? This is from his SNL monologue. And then of course this is from the beginning of the Jobs book as well. But this was a very famous quote by Steve Jobs. The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. You also reuse this quote at the end of the Musk book as well. You evoke that language. But the subtext that I'm hearing is, hey, the bad stuff is the price of admission to get the good stuff.

[Walter Isaacson]

It's not the price of admission, it's the reality of the human. And sometimes you have to take a person as a whole. Shakespeare understands how to do this. His heroes, they have dark strands. Henry V kills all the French prisoners that he has, just kills him. They leave that out of the movie. And even the villains have backstories. Shylock, Iago. We're not very good in the age of postings on X and cable tv, of knowing that the dark sides and the light sides coexist, whether it's in Thomas Jefferson, Elon Musk, whatever it may be. The complicated thing is not to say, well, Elon had some really, really dark strands in him, has some. And he's got some amazing things. Like he could look at the Raptor engine and say, here's how we have to change that heat shield. And he would get that into orbit. The complicated thing is not to separate those two strands, but to show, and this was your question, that actually you don't get one without the other. They are interwoven. Now, you may say, well, that's bad. You shouldn't say that. But it's true.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

I think you set this up in the book with this idea of Elon Musk hinged versus unhinged. What would happen? Would a restrained must accomplish as much as Musk unbound? Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him hinged and unhinged? This is the big convo around Elon and Kanye. Hey, to get the great music, you got to be a little unhinged. To get. To get Falcon 9 all the way up there, you got to be. You gotta deal with the unhinged aspect of him.

[Walter Isaacson]

Right?

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Let's go to the next quote, how it's all interwoven. You say, do the audaciousness and hubris that drive him to attempt epic feats excuse his bad behavior? The answer is no, of course not.

[Walter Isaacson]

Of course not.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

But it's also important to understand how the strands are woven together, sometimes tightly. It can be hard to remove the Dark Ones without unraveling the whole cloth. Do you really believe that?

[Walter Isaacson]

Totally true and totally true of Moscow. And look at him now. He is the only person who can reliably get tonnage into orbit, get astronauts to the space station, reliably make electric vehicles. And it's partly because he's unhinged at times. He does. Absolutely. And it's partly because he's unfiltered. You know that quote you read about the. You know what? It'd be nice to think of a Musk with a filter. That's his brother, the one who got the empathy gene. Kimball.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

You're talking about Kimball?

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Who.

[Walter Isaacson]

When the. When starship is first being launched and we're just marveling at it, he said, I could just wish I could put a filter on his Twitter. I could take away his phone.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

You've brought this up in interviews. People who are driven by demons get shit done. He would not be who he was in terms of the enterprises if he hadn't had the deficit of the empathy gene. It's your quote. I actually try to be nice to people, but I'm never going to invent the ipod. I'm never going to send somebody to Mars.

[Walter Isaacson]

That's true. I mean, let's look. You talked about how it affects me. I thought Musk was right when he said, you know, you don't want to offend people. And I think, okay, that's true. And I'm going to lead a pretty fulfilled life. I mean, it's a good way to lead the life, which is being nice to other people, making their lives happier. But I got to know, I'm never going to get a rocket into orbit. I'm never going to invent the ipod, the iPad, the Tesla.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Do you think sometimes people may read your books and get the wrong message from it?

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah, I think, yeah.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

I had. I had friends that did this with Scarface. Yeah, they love Scarface. I'm like, you have? He's the bad guy. Don't you understand?

[Walter Isaacson]

That's right. There was a cover story to Wired magazine, right? When after the Steve Jobs biography came out, and it was titled do youo have to Be an Asshole? And people were taking the wrong message from the book, they'd come up to me and say, I'm just like Steve Jobs. So what do you mean? If somebody does something that sucks, I tell them it sucks, you know? And I said, wait a minute. Have you ever invented the ipod? Have you ever invented the iPhone? Maybe you don't have a right even to think of doing that. And by the way, that's not the way you should be leading your life. And I think people some. And I say, my books are not how to books. You're not supposed to read the Elon Musk book and say, I'm going to go around being like Elon Musk. A, you can't, because you're not. You don't have some of the genius he has. And B, that's not. You're supposed to be yourself. I'm just telling you, here's a really interesting guy and you can learn some lessons, but it's not a how to book.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

What are some of the lessons that you're trying to learn?

[Walter Isaacson]

Well, one of the lessons in a lot of my books is the power of pure curiosity, the power of reality distortion, the ability to take risks to bet the farm, as Steve Jobs said, or take risks. Elon, in the book over and over again, talks about, we used to be a nation of risk takers. Now we're a Nation of regulators and lawyers who tell you you can't do that. So you have to have passion, you have to care that beauty matters. All these things are lessons in my book. But it isn't a lesson that you have to be an asshole.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

One of the things in a question that.

[Walter Isaacson]

Well, let me modify that a bit too.

[Host]

Sure.

[Walter Isaacson]

Please. I don't want people to go away thinking that. I think, especially with Steve Jobs, that he was an asshole because he was rough and tough on people. He could be mean to the person making the smoothie at the whole food store and he could be mean to people in the office, but he wasn't an asshole. He truly understood and had a spiritual feel for human desires, and that's what made him great. Musk goes into demon mode, which is what Grimes calls it. Yeah, yeah. And he can be a real asshole in demon mode, but that doesn't mean that you totally just say, oh, asshole. And you put it in a category. You say, okay, there are times he could be a real asshole, but there are times he could be real inspiring.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

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[Host]

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[Interviewer (Hussan)]

I think we have some healthy disagreements here. But here's something that I think we both you and I agree on. You can't become a billionaire without being an asshole. Do you agree with that statement?

[Walter Isaacson]

I don't know. I'd have to look at the data points. I mean, are there non. I mean there are not that many people have become billionaires who aren't driven. And being driven means you're going to drive over people at times I wouldn't say they're all assholes, but I'm saying at times they can be assholes.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Do you see it as almost like an indictment on the system at large, that the system incentivizes that behavior? I think that in order to win, you have to.

[Walter Isaacson]

Our system incentivizes drive. It incentivizes a drive that runs over people at times. Of course it disincentivizes that if you screw it up and you mess around with people too badly, you're going to be a failure.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Is the price worth the admission?

[Walter Isaacson]

Right. And for me, the answer is no, as I say in the Musk book, and for me personally, but for society at large, the answer is no. Now for society at large, that's what

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

I'd love your insight.

[Walter Isaacson]

You have really. Let's take the auto industry. You've had very nice people running the auto industry. You can look at Ford, gm, you can look at Mary Baron, whatever. Have they in any way been able to break the mold and get us to the era of electric vehicles? No. There are very good people, nice people who've run Boeing and run many companies. Is it worth the price for society to have moved into the era of electric vehicles? Is it worth the price to society to having gotten back into space and be able to get our own astronauts back from the space station?

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

I mean, is the cost worth the admission? He supported the AfD and Nazi adjacent Right party in Germany. That's fucking crazy. After calling USAID a viper's nest of radical left Marxists who hate America, he oversaw its destruction, which last year alone has been estimated to have caused the deaths of over a quarter million adults and over half a million children. Who knows what that death toll will be in the years to come. And most recently, I don't know if you saw this on Twitter, he went on to cheer racist mobs in the UK who are setting immigrants homes on fire. I don't know if all of this is worth it to. To colonize Mars.

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah, I think you that's a good argument to make that maybe society at large, maybe society is better off without Elon Musk. You could make that argument. It takes me 600 pages to make the argument more complex and to say it ain't all that simple. But if somebody like you did just comes to me and says, look at all those tweets he did and how horrible they've been cutting usaid, society would be better off without any Elon Musk. So you can read my book and you can come to that valid Judgment. Or you can read my book and say it's more complicated.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

We're having this interview shortly before July 4, which will mark the 250th anniversary since the second Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence.

[Walter Isaacson]

Your latest book, the Greatest Sentence Ever Written.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Very short book.

[Walter Isaacson]

It's a long sentence. Short book, very quick read, same length as Thomas Paine's On Common Sense, which helped start the revolution.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

It is about the second sentence of the Declaration.

[Walter Isaacson]

We hold these truths.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Let's take a look. We hold these truths. Go ahead.

[Walter Isaacson]

To be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Walter, I think you and I may be in agreement on this, which is this whole conversation is a bit about subtext. I think I know what the subtext of the all men are created equal thing is. You know, there's a little bit of the underlining of talking about men. Property owning men, women, not so much.

[Walter Isaacson]

That second sentence was a sentence that did not Describe America in 1776. One fifth of the continent was enslaved. Women were not included in that sentence. So what the sentence becomes, we get to Thomas Jefferson, who, as I say, is one of those characters in history, is very complex, really dark sense. He's writing that sentence in a room with Ben Franklin and John Adams, saying all men are created equal. And in the room is Robert Hemings, his 19 year old valet. So close to Frank, to Jefferson that he shaves Jefferson every morning. And he's enslaved. And Jefferson's going to have an affair with Sally, the younger sister of Robert Hemings, and have children. So you're dealing with a very dark, complex man. The reason that sentence is great and what my book is about is that it's a forcing mechanism for each new generation, including ours, to try to make that sentence more true. It was not true at the time. Four score and seven years after they write it, Lincoln invokes it at Gettysburg, saying, a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. He's not just doing it for a Gettysburg address, they're burying 7,058 young men who died to make that sentence more true. Seneca Falls Declaration. The women invoke it and they get the right to vote. Eventually, Martin Luther King invokes it. So my point about it being the greatest sentence is it becomes an aspiration. Even the founders had it as an aspiration. Even though maybe 2/3 of the people at the Continental Congress had Owned slaves. But it's a forcing mechanism. And you know what? We still haven't gotten it right yet, but it's still forcing. And that's the subtext of my book, which is, after 250 years, remember what is our mission statement and what are we going to do to make it more true?

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

I mean, you even talk about Abigail Adams.

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah. Remember the ladies, one of the wives

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

of the Founding Fathers, basically calling out Adams's hypocrisy with this quote. Abigail Adams famously urged her husband John in 1776 to remember the ladies and not give men unlimited power over women. But John wrote back, I cannot but laugh. We know better than to repeal our.

[Walter Isaacson]

And then at the Seneca Falls meeting, when the women's rights movement is being born, they fling that sentence in the face of the rest of the Americans and say, you got to include us in that sentence.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

How do we. And how did you reconcile this? Kind of putting the Founding Fathers up on a pedestal, even though John Adams is out here on a pedestal acting like Andrew Tate. What's going on here?

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah, I think the whole point is to remember that they're humans, that we're not trying to say they're made of marble and we're not. I'm not sure we should rip them off all their pedestals. I'm not sure I'd take down Jefferson Memorial. But we shouldn't just look at them as saints on a pedestal. We look at them as very human people, very conflicted. And it gets back to all the people I've written about. The theme of our conversation today, which is, if you don't want to understand humans in their complexity, then go on social media. Don't read biographies.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Are you basically trying to say it's about reckoning and grappling with this even 250 years later? And it's the grappling with it. It's not about.

[Walter Isaacson]

Absolutely. And look at how we're grappling.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

And

[Walter Isaacson]

Theodore Parker, the great abolitionist, had a sentence that Martin Luther King then adapted, which is about the arc of history. Bends towards justice. Well, it doesn't bend towards justice. It has to be bent towards justice by each new generation. And sometimes we backslide. Subtext of this book. Maybe we're backsliding. We need to be reminded of this sentence. We need to be reminded of the narrative that is ingrained in the heritage of this country instead of fighting over the heritage of this country. And to say, okay, am I getting up each morning in a way to embrace the common values that are our country. Which are that all men are created equal and they're endowed and by the creator of certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Earlier on, you talked about a land of great inequalities of wealth and whether or not that hindered the pursuit of happiness of our population. Paraphrasing, you said, is it a good thing that, well, that's where we are today, which is, how do we allow individual liberty but also make it so that it's a land of opportunity in which all have the right to define? I mean, the way the sentence was written in John Locke's Second Treatise and in George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights was life, liberty and property. Oh, it was not pursuit of property. It was not pursuit of happiness. Jefferson changes that to pursuit of happiness. He wants to make it broader so we each, as individuals, get to decide how best can I lead a. A fulfilled life. Is it by serving other people, by serving the good Lord, by making money, by having property, by sending rockets into orbit? We give each person liberty to do it, but we have a shared sense of values that we want a country in which everybody has the opportunity to pursue happiness.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

How do you think the founding Fathers would look at what the Supreme Court is doing right now? Certainly, many civil liberties are backsliding to the way things were.

[Walter Isaacson]

I think the deepest issue we have in the country now was the deepest issue we had 250 years ago, which is the issue of race and the issue of how do we create a diverse society in which everybody has the right and the opportunity to pursue happiness, and how do we guarantee individual rights on that? If you look at the, I mean, I assume the Supreme Court things, you're mainly talking about voting rights to do with voting rights, gerrymandering, whatever. And yes, when Lyndon Johnson signs the Voting Rights act, what sentence does he quote? He quotes this greatest sentence that, you know, all men are created equal.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

He.

[Walter Isaacson]

That's the core of what? The Voting Rights Act. The court walking it back. You could have legal scholars on. I'm not going to try to be a legal parser of it, but yeah, I'm writing this book saying, are we doing everything possible to live up to these values? Are we backsliding a bit?

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

What I took away from it also is what you're highlighting right now. It's what you take away from it as the individual. What does it all men are created equal mean to you by that? Do you mean men as in all of humanity? People have this with religious text as well, by the way. Similarly, you Have a reminder at the end of the book where you talk about this idea of we need to come together. You evoke Benjamin Franklin saying, we must hang together or we'll hang separately, most assuredly.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Now, how do we do that in 2026 when half the country wants to hang? Mike Pence.

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah, this is why I wrote the book, which is reminding us that we have to hang together and that we have a whole segment of our society that believes in a divisive, combative way of dealing with politics. Benjamin Franklin created civic institutions in which we had shared common ground. That's what the book is about. How do you make common ground? He did with a library. He did it with the street sweeping corps. He did it with the militia police. He did it with the school system, others. These were common grounds that we all had access to. And he donated to the building fund of each and every church that was built in Philadelphia at one point. They're building a new hall, still called the New Hall. To the left of Independence hall writes the fundraising. Even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send somebody here to preach Muhammadism to us, we should offer a pulpit. We should listen, and we must learn. His deathbed. He's the largest individual contributor to the congregation Mikveh Israel, the first synagogue built in Philadelphia. That was the type of common ground and values that they were trying to. This is new on this planet. In 1776, of course, you didn't have countries that were multicultural that respected all different values and religion. Sentence. It's hard. We're still fighting to do that. But that's what they were fighting for now. That's what we're still fighting for today. And my little book on this sentence is supposed to be the manifesto for that fight.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Got a Sam's Cafe pizza. Order up.

[Walter Isaacson]

You know the best part about this spicy Italian sausage? I voted for this topic. Yeah, just another perk of being a member. Come join us. Sam's Club.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Would you argue? You know, there's many people that have read read your books, but your two most popular books are Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. And I felt this where many people in America currently feel when they hold up their iPhone, no matter what button they push or how they swipe, no matter what they do, they are just making eight autistic billionaires richer. I can swipe this way or click on this and I'm still helping them. What advice would you have to the powerlessness that many of us feel?

[Walter Isaacson]

Well, when we create new technologies, they can either create new opportunities or lead to an aggregation of power and wealth. I think it's important people say, isn't it really horrible that Elon Musk has so dominant that 90% of all satellites go up? Or his. I say, yeah, we need more people who are shooting up rockets and making satellites. And so my hope would be we have a society with more competition, less monopoly, less concentration of wealth. And there are many ways to do that, but one is to have a society more people taking risks, more people being innovative, more people trying to start rocket companies, or at the very least, starting social media apps that.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Oh, God, please, no, please, Walter. You don't even believe.

[Walter Isaacson]

I don't believe that.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

16 the remote control for. Walter. Walter, please.

[Walter Isaacson]

But I do think that with AI, we have a chance of a reset. And people who apply AI to various enterprises can probably create value. And we have to make sure AI is not something that's just the realm of a concentrated few.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

What's interesting is that both the books that you've written about the great technology mavericks have been able to accumulate inordinate amounts of wealth. While that's happened, obviously the Citizens United decision has happened. And then you've most recently written a book about democracy. Now that you've seen money's impact on politics, do you think billionaires or trillionaires should exist?

[Walter Isaacson]

When I did this book, I talk about the concept of the common ground.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Yeah.

[Walter Isaacson]

And it comes from John Locke, where he talks about disparities of great wealth. Now, maybe there weren't billionaires back then,

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

and now we have trillionaires. Now we have a trillion.

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah, but back in John Locke's time, there was just as much of a disparity of wealth. Maybe 5% of the people owned 99% of the land. That type of disparity. So what do our founders come up with? What does John Locke come up with? They come up with the notion of the common. Now, when I went to Boston the first time, I saw the Boston Common, and I thought, okay, it's a nice park. And then I realized it wasn't a park. It was the land that wealthy landowners put in common. So people who didn't own land, who are called commoners, got to graze their herds, bury their dead, plant their gardens. We put things in common so that each new generation can have opportunity. What does Ben Franklin and the other founders, Cotton Mather, John Adam, what do they do? They put more things in the common. They put healthcare in the common. They put Academy for the educated. They put education in the common. Safe streets in the common, they put street treatment corps, militias. The library is a symbol of the common. So what can we do now to make sure we remain a land of opportunity? When as in throughout human history and in John Locke's time, there's disparities of great wealth, we have to decide to put more things in the common. We have to make sure everybody has safe streets, safe schools, good schools, health care, everything. You need to have the opportunity for each new generation to do better than the last. You could say, well, let's try to do it by banning the concept of having a billion dollars. Or you could say, no, let's take and do it through taxation, do it through progressive taxation. These are policy decisions. But let's make sure everybody has housing, has health care, has safe streets, is free from hunger. This isn't that hard. But it takes a willfulness to say we will allow the right for there to be disparities of wealth. We'll even make it so. We're a society where people can hit a billion or trillion, but we have to make sure there's an and this is John Locke's phrase, not mine, you can do it as long as there is as good and enough left in common. Now, you do it partly because John Locke says you gotta make sure people don't pick up the pitchforks and tear down the government. So you gotta put enough in common that I can be mad, but I think there's a moral reason we put things in common. And part of it is because we're decent. We don't want people not to have housing, healthcare, whatever. So that would be a moral reason you'd argue with the common. And I would also argue there's a third reason which I call the American dream in this book, which is a goal everybody I think can buy into, is that each new generation should have the chance to do better than the previous one. We have lost that in the past 30 years. Sure, this new generations are more likely to be poorer than richer than their parents. Never happened in our history before. So one reason you keep a common is you have really good education. We don't have that now. We have two, three different types of education systems. Some people get really good education, some don't. We should have really good health care. I don't know all the mechanisms that do that. Right, but certainly our founders set that in motion with the notion that we would create the commons in order to have a stable and moral society.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Can I tell you what? I think the subtext of those three things that you just outlined Are this idea of commons decency, the next generation being better? There is also a subtext of empathy in all of that understanding. There may be others in future generations that will have less than you.

[Walter Isaacson]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Don't you find it a little ironic you're evoking empathy?

[Walter Isaacson]

I'm a believer. Many of the billionaires and trillionaires that

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

you've done biographies about completely laugh at.

[Walter Isaacson]

One trait you need for a good society is empathy. You find that in the Bible, you find it in Plato, you find it in others, which is you have to care about people other than yourself in order to have a good society. That's what our founders bequeath. That's what this sentence is all about, which is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not just my life, my liberty, my pursuit of happiness. It's a society in which these are the. This is the aim, the mission of the country we created.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

And may you know, this is a beautiful message to end our conversation on. May empathy grow in all of our hearts, even the psychos.

[Walter Isaacson]

Yeah, well, you know, I hope my books aren't read as an argument against empathy because I'm the one who probably will never get a rocket into orbit. But I believe that caring and believing that you're part of something larger than yourself is crucial to society. And that's what the greatest sentence ever written gives us. Our moral mission is to create a society in which every kid has an opportunity to be successful. And by the way, to have safe streets, good schools.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Amen. In Jesus name we pray.

[Walter Isaacson]

All right.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

Hey, you wrote a biography about Henry Kissinger. Do you think he's in hell?

[Walter Isaacson]

I have no clue.

[Interviewer (Hussan)]

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[Interviewer (Hussan)]

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