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- [00:00]
Ron Chernow
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- [01:16]
Ron Chernow
Discover more@swepe.com whenever I speak to would be biographers. I always say to them that the choice of subject is a little like marriage. If you pick the right person, nothing can go wrong. If you pick the wrong person, nothing can go right.
- [01:36]
Adam Grant
Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant.
- [01:38]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
Welcome back to Rethinking My Podcast with.
- [01:40]
Adam Grant
Ted on the Science of what Makes Us Tick.
- [01:42]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.
- [01:54]
Adam Grant
My guest today is biographer extraordinaire Ron Chernow. He's an expert on the craft of illuminating the lives of towering figures.
- [02:01]
Ron Chernow
It's the most exciting job in the world because you start out with thousands of pieces of evidence and then gradually, almost like in the old fashioned photographic development, you see the image starting to emerge. And that's where I think, you know, biography becomes as much art as science.
- [02:18]
Adam Grant
Ron's work has deepened our understanding of the men who made history in America. He's won the Pulitzer Prize in biography.
- [02:23]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
For his book on George Washington. And he's written meticulously research bestsellers about Ulysses S. Grant, John D. Rockefeller, Alexander.
- [02:31]
Adam Grant
Hamilton, and now Mark Twain. You are one of the great biographers of our time.
- [02:39]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
How do you decide who you write about?
- [02:42]
Adam Grant
And is the goal to inspire another Lin Manuel Miranda musical part of the process?
- [02:49]
Ron Chernow
Well, I think we can safely say that none of my books is going to inspire another Lin Manuel Miranda musical. No, actually, the choice of subject, as a biographer, that's the single most important choice that I make. So much flows from that decision. And so what I've looked for is not simply people who had colorful or fascinating lives. I've looked for people who really created the building blocks of American culture. And I think also I have something of a contrarian streak. What happens in history is that a consent forms around someone's image. And if I feel that that consensus somehow is missing, something that to me is very, very tempting to wade in and take another look at this figure. Arthur Schlesinger once said, history is an argument without an end. And so there's always need for another biography, another take on these major historical figures.
- [03:45]
Adam Grant
That's fascinating. So where do you get the sense that something might be missing or wrong?
- [03:49]
Ron Chernow
Well, you know, in the case of Alexander Hamilton, for instance, almost all of the books up until the show portrayed Jefferson was this saintly figure and Hamilton was this, you know, villainous character. And yet the more I read about him, not only was it far and away the most dramatic personal story of any of the founders, but his accomplishments were really second to none. So that was a good example. And it was interesting, Adam, because when I decided to do the Hamilton book, all the average person knew about Hamilton was that he was on the $10 bill and he'd been shot by a guy named Aaron Burr, and he had become the least known of the Founders. He was fading into historical obscurity. And so it's been delightful. Between the book and the show, he's become everyone's favorite founders. That was not the case when I decided in 1998 to write that biography.
- [04:44]
Adam Grant
One of the things I'm really curious about in terms of how you work is as a psychologist, I find it hard enough to get to know a living person. How in the world do you get inside the mind of someone who's no longer alive?
- [04:57]
Ron Chernow
Well, I'm basically a documents person. And so with all of the people that I've written about, there were thousands upon thousands of letters and diary entries. And I immerse myself into this. To give you some idea, this may sound masochistic. When I describe my working methods, I put everything on four by six, index core, and by the time I sit down to Write, I have approximately 25,000 cards which then I arrange in these index card boxes. Actually work out the flow and the narrative. There's a certain kind of, what do the Germans call it, Fingerspitzen gefreuhl, you know, fingertip, feel for it. That you have to, almost like an actor, be psychologically projecting yourself into the mind to get inside the skin of this person.
- [05:44]
Adam Grant
In a sense, you're doing this like a true scientist would, which is instead of starting with a hypothesis and then looking for facts to confirm it, you're actually collecting all the facts and then forming and reforming hypotheses.
- [05:59]
Ron Chernow
Yeah. And I think very, very important is just to completely open yourself up to the experience of what you're finding. I'll tell you an experience that had a profound impact on me when I was doing my biography of John D. Rockefeller. It was the first biography of Rockefeller where the author had access to Rockefeller's Standard Oil correspondence. And I was going up every week I would spend two or three days at the Rockefeller Archive center north of New York. And I imagined when I started going through Rockefeller's papers that it was going to be full of startling revelations. Instead, every letter that he wrote was about two or three lines long. A typical letter would be, dear sir, received, yours of the 27th, would proceed with all due caution. Signed John D. Rockefeller. And there were thousands, there were tens of thousands of these very brief and completely mysterious little letters. Well, I remember I came home from one of these trips and I was having dinner with my wife and I was saying, this book is going to be a full blown disaster. She said, why? I said, because these papers are not yielding anything. This man, he was running the biggest business operation in the world. This man has trained himself to write every single letter as if it might someday fall into the hands of an investigative committee or a prosecutor or district attorney. He was running this vast. The biggest business enterprise in the world. And he was running it through all of these winks and nods. And I'm getting angry and angry as I'm telling my wife, and she's. Her smile is getting broader and broader. I said, why are you smiling? This is a disaster in the making. And she said to me, she said, what you're describing is absolutely fascinating. She said, you're kind of trying to go behind this man to discover these things, but the story is staring you in the face. And you know what it taught me at it was that even when we're trying to hide, we reveal ourselves in the methods by which we try to hide. And There was actually nothing that taught me more about his personality than this fact that he had trained himself to write all these letters without using a proper name. So that was a wonderful lesson for me in terms of follow the story where it leads, and it may lead you in a much more interesting place than the one that you had originally expected to go.
- [08:20]
Adam Grant
It's such a great insight, and it tracks for me with one of the most powerful lessons that I've learned in psychology, which is people will often say, why would you trust what people say about themselves? Of course they're motivated. They're trying to create an image. I'm like, yes, I want to learn how they want to be seen. And that teaches me something about who they are.
- [08:41]
Ron Chernow
One thing that's interesting, I think, interests you, with your background in psychology, is that I find with all of my books, I've tried to create a coherent picture, but that coherent picture is made up of very heterogeneous elements. And it may seem counterintuitive, but this is the way that we know people, because, you know, we have friends or family members, colleagues. We've seen them in a lot of different moods, in a lot of different situations. We're hearing rumors about them, and gossip also may, you know, contradict what we think we know. But somehow our mind is able to process all of these disparate elements into a portrait that works. And people are inherently contradictory. We understand that. You know, we know that. And so readers, instead of being thrown by that, actually find it more convincing because everyone they know is as contradictory and confused as the person you're writing about. Goes with the territory.
- [09:41]
Adam Grant
That's a relief in some ways, to know that even after pouring out 700 pages about a person, you still feel the contradictions.
- [09:49]
Ron Chernow
Yeah. And also, what happens as a biographer, you're peeling away layer after layer after layer. I would always say to people, I knew more about George Washington than Martha did, you know, I knew more about Hamilton than Eliza did, et cetera. But after you've peeled away all the letters, you never get to the bottom of it. Even someone as chatty and verbal as Alexander Hamilton or Mark Twain, for that matter. There's always a secret corner to the life and, of course, the silences. It's not what they're, you know, they want to tell you. It's what they're trying very hard not to tell you about. You know, you don't have the luxury as a biographer of putting your subject on the analytic couch. I mean, for instance, one thing that I found interesting, all the Books that I've written about in terms of a surprising consistency is that all my subjects have been men. All of them had fathers who were difficult and distant and domineering the 3Ds. And so that was something that surprised me when I saw that trend. And in all of those cases, almost without exception, they never talked about their fathers. The father was a figure of fear and hatred. In fact, John D. Rockefeller, when he became the richest world in the man and his father was money mad, must have driven his father crazy. Rockefeller pretended that his father was dead. When the reporters asked me, I mean, he literally edited his father out of existence. Mark Twain can't get a chattier figure than that. Had this very cold, distant father. And he left two comments on his relationship with his father. One, our relationship amounted to little more than an introduction. And the other comment was we existed in a state of armed neutrality. You know, if he suddenly came back, I think that would be the first thing that I would want to ask him about because, you know, the shadow of the absent father is always there. Washington's father died at 11. Poor Grant had this very pushy, domineering father who was always pushing him forward against his will. But I think that what happens is I started thinking about this consistent strain in my book was that by having to protect yourself or push back against a dominant father, I think you become maybe more precocious, you become tougher. In a number of the cases, you know, the teenage son became the father of the house. So they're kind of precocious in that way. But it's an interesting parallel, isn't it? It surprised me when I saw is.
- [12:41]
Adam Grant
Interesting and it's obviously not what I would recommend if you want to raise a high achieving child. But there is something to be said for that kind of adversity. But just as we're thinking about this compare and contrast exercise, you know, when you think about Washington to Hamilton to Grant to Rockefeller to Morgan, are there other commonalities or differences that have really stuck with you as you've studied them?
- [13:06]
Ron Chernow
It's a good question. I mean, one thing that I've learned is that there are certain figures in history, some of whom I've written about, where you feel from the beginning they're built for success. They have a drive and a discipline, focus, maybe a brilliance. And I think that one quality that I see in common is there was a clarity of vision, there was a single mindedness of purpose, of an ability to focus on a goal and then harness all of their energy to achieve that goal, and not only to have that clarity of vision, but to be able to communicate that to the people around them. And it's been interesting because I know we both have been interested in leadership. And one thing that I've seen again and again is that in terms of leaders, courage is contagious and fear is no less contagious.
- [13:59]
Adam Grant
Well, this is personally interesting in part because I have a vested interest in the life of anyone named Grant because people assume we're related. I did joke before our son was born that I was gonna name him Ulysses, which.
- [14:14]
Ron Chernow
It's a good thing you did.
- [14:15]
Adam Grant
Yeah, my wife was not enthusiastic about that at all. But your commentary about his vision, I think, helps to explain a little bit why he wasn't that much of a standout as a cadet, but, you know, became a great commander because he seemed to be a better leader than a doer. If that's the case, why was he such a mediocre president? We think that the skills of a great military commander would also lend themselves to being successful in the White House.
- [14:44]
Ron Chernow
Grant in the Civil War, he perfectly meshes with his historical moment. There's a desperate need for generals. He's been in West Point. He's been in the Mexican War. He's trained all of these people. So he meshes perfectly with his moment. He meshes very imperfectly with his historical moment. When it comes to his presidency, what.
- [15:07]
Adam Grant
Do you think prevented him from being a greater president or a great one?
- [15:12]
Ron Chernow
Well, Grant was very naive. He was very innocent. Mark Twain said that he was the most lovable great child in the world. And he's the only person that I've written about whom I would describe as naive in certain ways. I can't. It's one of those things that I was never able to fully figure out, because when it came to his evaluating, you know, other generals and officers in the Civil War, he was extremely shrewd and insightful. He knew them. He knew their history. And yet when he got into the. Into the White House, I guess that it was an environment that was unknown or alien to him, and he seemed to be completely blind. But I have to say, you know, I think partly because of my book and partly because other books written on Grant, he keeps rising now in polls of historians. You know, he was last. I think it was up to around number 22. He used to be in the bottom three with maybe Warren Hardick. It's an ongoing conversation that we have with history, and it's very kind of nice, and people pick up a biography and they open themselves up to the possibility of seeing this person in different terms.
- [16:20]
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- [18:19]
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- [19:20]
Adam Grant
Let'S, let's talk about opening ourselves up to a different view of Samuel Clemens or Mark Twain. I'd love to hear a little bit about how you chose him. And based on your earlier comment, what, did you have a hunch that we've gotten wrong about him?
- [19:35]
Ron Chernow
I said that I chose people who've created building blocks of American society. And I think that in terms of our culture, he was absolutely indispensable. He wrote about people in the heartland. Here was this kind of, you know, wild, throbbing energy in small towns and rural areas across the country. He wrote about ordinary people. He wrote using the vernacular of those people. Twain once said that he didn't write for the cultivated classes, they could go to theater and opera. He wrote for the masses. And one of my favorite Twain lines is he said that fine literature is like wine. My writing is like, but everyone drinks water, you know. So I think that he infused this new democratic spirit into American letters. Whereas, you know, American fiction had been very much dominated by kind of, you know, Eastern Seaboard elites up until that time. And so he opens up, you know, a vast continent. But I think some people are very, very surprised, as I was, that he spent 11 years of his life outside the United States. You know, he was the most worldly and well traveled American writer by far.
- [20:50]
Adam Grant
Well, I think it might be fair to say that you never really understand a place until you've stepped outside of it and seen it from a distance.
- [20:57]
Ron Chernow
One of many, many surprises about Mark Twain was that even though he immortalized this town and immortalized his boyhood, he almost never went back. It was as if he wanted to preserve all those memories in amber. I think that his nostalgia was less for place than for his own boyhood. And it was such a happy boyhood almost ruined his life. He was asked in later years if he would like to live his life over again. He said, I would like to relive my youth and then drown myself. You know, like adult life was a disappointment after this. These boyhood adventures that nothing could ever quite match.
- [21:43]
Adam Grant
Oh, that's brutal. Given how accomplished he was as an adult and what an interesting.
- [21:49]
Ron Chernow
It's funny I think that Mark Twain in many ways fits the stereotype of the funny man where there's an underlying sadness. And in fact we have this image of the man in the white suit smoking cigars, dispensing witticisms. But he was a very volatile personality. There was a lot of melancholy under the surface. He didn't say life was a comedy, he said life was a tragedy with comedy distributed here and there in order to heighten the pain and magnify it. By contrast, it's quite a statement, but I think that he was a case, kind of a classic case of someone of kind of a depressive personality who was constantly relieving that stress and anxiety through humor. And the humor is always there right until the end of his life. He's somebody who had a quip for every occasion, for everything that happened.
- [22:46]
Adam Grant
Well, that goes to one of the things I was wondering about, which is, after doing a careful study of Twain's life, what do you think are the qualities that most propelled his success?
- [22:56]
Ron Chernow
That's a good question, because it's an almost sort of manic creativity that is pouring out of him. You know, he was very, very lucky that we know him as a writer, but he's first a printer, then he's a steamboat pilot, then he's a miner, then he's a journalist, then he's a novelist, then he's a lecturer, then he's an investor, then he's an inventor and kind of goes on and on. And I think that he had this need to kind of transmute all of this experience into fiction and story. You know, he's a tough nut to figure out, but one of the things motivating him was that he loved what he called notoriety and notice. And I think his unbelievable facility with words and language and storytelling was one way that he drew the attention of the world. But you know, the other figures that I've written about in history, there was this kind of clarity of vision and there was this single minded pursuit of a goal that's not Mark Twain at all. In fact, I did speak to a friend who is a psychologist and I was describing Mark Twain. She said, oh, attention deficit disorder. He was disorganized. He himself said that he would go to these volcanic extremes. He would go from mood to mood. And I've made a point of never in the books using modern psychiatric language. One, I feel uncomfortable analyzing people in that way at a distance. And also I think that our categories fit us. They may not fit, you know, a Victorian man, but I think that there Was some. Some truth to that, because everyone particularly who saw him in his early years said that, you know, his room would have papers everywhere and cigar butts and, you know, pipes and ashes. He just would kind of live in the midst of this chaos. He always said that he was very, very lazy. And yet he left behind 9,000 letters, you know, 50 notebooks, hundreds of unpublished manuscripts. People just know him from Tom or Huck or Life on the Mississippi. You know, he published two dozen books, somewhere between a thousand and two thousand magazine articles, gave thousands of lectures, gave thousands of interviews. It was really kind of an embarrassment of Rich's story from this man who claimed that he was lazy, but he had this mind that was kind of a hive, you know, like a buzzing bees buzzing with these words and stories and images. He did have a lot of trouble with insomnia. I think it was very, very difficult for him to. His problem was, he said in order to write, he needed to smoke. And then he would smoke 40 cigars a day, and then he couldn't sleep at night, so then he would try to drink himself to sleep. The classic mistake of insomn.
- [25:57]
Adam Grant
It does strike me that if Twain were alive today, he would go viral every day, and people would be logging into social media just to read his latest quip.
- [26:07]
Ron Chernow
Absolutely.
- [26:08]
Adam Grant
What do you think he would make of our current vices and virtues? What would his commentary be on our time?
- [26:15]
Ron Chernow
Well, I think that there are a few places where he's really important today. You know, one, we're having an ongoing debate in terms of what constitutes patriotism. And, you know, Twain said he was driven up the wall by the saying that was common in his time, My country, right or wrong. And he said that this is sacrificing our most valuable asset. He said, you know, our country we should always support and our government whenever it deserves it. So I think that that's important. I think he's also. He was infuriated by the hyper partisanship of his own time. He said that the partisanship had become so extreme that if the Democrats incorporated the multiplication table into their electoral platform, the Republicans would vote it down at the next election. You know, so he saw all these people, you know, marching in lockstep. And I think kind of my third area where his views are very important today have to do with the press, and the press is constantly under siege. And he felt that as a humorist, that he had a very important role. He said that irreverence is the champion of liberty, and it's sure's defense and Then one of my favorite Twain lines, he said, the devil's aversion to holy water is light matter compared to the dread of a despot at a newspaper that laughs. And so I think he really was functioning as the conscience of America. He himself wrestled with this idea of being outspoken. And he said, almost in so many words, the need to make a living and support a family makes all of us cowards. And he felt that there were a lot of different issues that, at least in the early years, he was not speaking out on because of that fear, you know, so in a moment where there's fear of people speaking out, I think that he sets an important example of someone who showed a lot of courage. My God. You know, in his later years, he opposed the American occupation of the Philippines. And he made this speech. He said this at a banquet. He was the toastmaster. He said that our soldiers are marching with disgraced musket under a polluted flag. Well, the audience gasped in shock. They were really horrified. You could imagine how difficult in the middle of a war it was to oppose government policy. So he increasingly was willing to stick his neck out.
- [28:43]
Adam Grant
I wonder how much courage that really took in the sense that he'd amassed a lot of cultural power. It would have been pretty difficult to cancel him in his day. And some of that power came from being contrarian. And so it was. It was expected from him. Was he really putting himself at risk?
- [29:00]
Ron Chernow
That's a good question, Adam, because I think that it's really the last 10 years of his life when he becomes the most outspoken politically. So I think that when one has been. Been such a beloved figure to so many people, and then he kind of made a transition into a much more controversial figure. And I think that that can be for anyone, you know, no matter how rich or famous that person is. I think it'd be a very difficult transition.
- [29:27]
Adam Grant
Yeah, I think that makes sense.
- [29:29]
Ron Chernow
Yeah.
- [29:30]
Adam Grant
Now, coming back to the theme of laziness.
- [29:34]
Ron Chernow
Yeah.
- [29:35]
Adam Grant
One of my longstanding favorite Twain quips is, never put off till tomorrow what you can do the after tomorrow.
- [29:41]
Ron Chernow
After tomorrow.
- [29:42]
Adam Grant
What I didn't know was that he wrote that making fun of Ben Franklin's aphorisms.
- [29:48]
Ron Chernow
Yeah. Also, I think what people don't realize, you know, in terms of all the Mark Twain quotes, was they were created as Mark Twain quotes. You know, he started when he published a novel called Pudd' nhead Wilson. As the epigraph to each chapter, he printed one of these aphorisms. And he was certainly mocking Ben Franklin because he felt Franklin had produced all these sort of do Gooder quotes. And he would do these quotes that started out sounding like do Gooder. And then they would have this kind of, you know, wicked tale, this wicked twist.
- [30:22]
Adam Grant
So the other question that raised for me is Twain is alive at the time that most of your other subjects are. He has a relationship with Grant Rockefeller. Morgan, what did you learn from looking at sort of Twain through their eyes?
- [30:40]
Ron Chernow
Well, I mean, the most interesting relationship is the one with Ulysses S. Grant. And there was a lot of stuff that I have in the Mark Twain book that I wish I had had in the Ulysses S. Grant book. Because at first glance, Twain and Grant seem to be complete polar opposites. You know, Twain has fought for two weeks in this Confederate militia and then retreated. He made all these jokes about his own cowardice. He said, I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating, you know. And then he comes upon Ulysses S. Grant, who was genuinely courageous and fearless person. But the two men form a bond, which is quite remarkable because Twain is really getting to know Grant in this deep way as Grant is dying. And Mark Twain said that Julius S. Grant was the greatest person he ever knew. And then he makes this beautiful statement because he was watching Grant throughout this illness and death. He said, manifestly dying is nothing to a really great and brave man, you know, which was just a beautiful tribute. And he thought that Grant. This is interesting because again, talking earlier, you know, Adam, about you go in and there's a consensus. There's a stereotype about people and one of the stereotypes about from the Civil War was Grant the butcher. And yet Mark Twain said that Ulysses S. Grant was the kindest and sweetest man he had ever met.
- [32:07]
Adam Grant
Wow.
- [32:12]
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- [33:39]
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- [34:40]
Adam Grant
In our last few minutes, I wanna do a lightning round if you're up for it. Okay, first question is, what was the biggest thing you changed your mind about on Twain or any of your other subjects?
- [34:52]
Ron Chernow
I think the thing that most shocked me really was his business life. You know, he said, I must speculate, it is in my nature. And he fails at one business after another. There is no learning curve. And Mark Twain could have led a very beautiful, serene, placid life. He makes a fortune from his book royalties, his lecture fees, marries an heiress, but it's just one self inflicted wound after another.
- [35:23]
Adam Grant
Wow.
- [35:23]
Ron Chernow
That's the tragedy. Wow.
- [35:25]
Adam Grant
Such a misapplication of intelligence.
- [35:27]
Ron Chernow
Yeah.
- [35:28]
Adam Grant
What is the worst advice that Mark Twain gave?
- [35:32]
Ron Chernow
Mark Twain's story, It's not an inspirational tale, it's a cautionary tale. And the lesson of his life Is when you're hurt. Let it go.
- [35:41]
Adam Grant
Oh, that's such an important lesson to learn from him.
- [35:44]
Ron Chernow
Yeah.
- [35:45]
Adam Grant
Okay. Thinking ahead, if you were going to write a biography of a great American woman, who would be on your radar?
- [35:53]
Ron Chernow
Well, the three who would interest me the most, and I would have done them, but they were done well already, would be Abigail Adams, Harriet Tubman, and Eleanor Roosevelt. And I have to say I'm. Because I've been criticized for years, people saying, Mr. Chernow, why don't you do women? In this book, five of the six main characters are. There's Twain, there's his wife Livy, there are three daughters, and then also his secretary, Isabel Lyon, who's a very significant figure later on. So that was actually one of the pleasures of doing this book. I got to, you know, write extensively about the women characters, and you can.
- [36:28]
Adam Grant
See in the book their influence on him. This is not just a story about Mark Twain.
- [36:32]
Ron Chernow
Yeah. I thought it was kind of one of the great stories in terms of a marriage, because his wife, Livy, is, you know, she's very prim and proper. You know, she had to teach him when he wrote an angry letter instead of sending it to put it in the desk. It even reached the point where they had this system of cards at a dinner party. Like, you know, red card meant, why don't you stop monopolizing the woman who's sitting to your right? A blue card would mean, are you gonna sit back and say nothing all evening? You know, so she's constantly.
- [37:01]
Adam Grant
She has cards to signal appropriate behavior to him.
- [37:04]
Ron Chernow
Yes, she. Wow. And he never learned. And the three daughters used to sit on the stairs kind of watching this. They called it mother dusting off father. But he never learned, you know, and she had. She was very socially skillful. He was not. And she really gave him a life.
- [37:25]
Adam Grant
Oh, that's fascinating. Okay, what's the question you have for me?
- [37:31]
Ron Chernow
You know, with all of your psychological training, I'm very curious about your analysis of Mark Twain. I don't know if you want to kind of pin a label on him or a diagnosis of something. I'm really curious how you reacted to the character.
- [37:46]
Adam Grant
Well, it was interesting as I was reading the book, because the first thing that came to mind was maybe manic depressive, and, you know, I'm not qualified to diagnose, let alone from a distance. But the patterns felt familiar in that way. You know, the extreme highs and then, you know, kind of the lasting lows and the repetition of those cycles. The other thing that had crossed My mind is, as I was reading about his reluctance to comment on his own greatness. Yeah, I actually wondered about COVID narcissism. I think there was, you know, both a tremendous sense of insecurity that comes through in your portrayal of him, but also an extremely high opinion of himself that he's able to conceal for the most part. But it just, it made me wonder a little bit about, okay, is there a, you know, an inflated but fragile ego that's constantly seeking, you know, actually, well, you know.
- [38:44]
Ron Chernow
You know, one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes is he said, good breeding consists in hiding how little we think of other people and how much we think of ourselves. And actually the vanity. He himself was constantly talking about his vanity. It was very hard for his family when. My favorite Mark Twain story is that the middle daughter, Clara, pursued a career as a singer. And so when she had her first recital in Connecticut, you know, she was torn whether to invite her father than to invite him up on the stage. She finally decides to do it and, you know, Twain comes out with her at the curtain calls and he starts telling the audience about the first time that he ever appeared on a stage. And he talked for about 15 or 20 minutes. And all of the press coverage afterwards was about Mark Twain talking about his debut as a lecture, you know, to his daughter's heart. But that daughter, Clara, felt completely smothered by him. She said that she was reduced in social situations to Mark Twain's daughter. And she had a very kind of revealing sentence. She said, you know, we would be at a party or reception and father would come in. And she said he would flood the room with his talk. So he was a difficult person to live with. He had a, you know, an adoring and long suffering wife who knew exactly how to handle him. But I think with the daughters saw father as this magical figure when they were young, but he could never make the transition to dealing with them as they were maturing and became adults. So there's a strange blindness, I say somewhere towards the end of the book that it was a tragic blindness that he had. And it led him into all sorts of disasters that he should have foreseen coming, which he couldn't.
- [40:33]
Adam Grant
I think that's a great cautionary tale for all of us to be better than that.
- [40:38]
Ron Chernow
Yeah. That someone who's so brilliant could be so blind.
- [40:42]
Adam Grant
Ron, this has been great fun to learn about your process and also just to experience the curiosity and the fascination that you have with other people's lives.
- [40:53]
Ron Chernow
I feel very, very lucky because I get to project myself into people and lives much more interesting than my own.
- [41:02]
Adam Grant
Well, I'm grateful that you choose to do it, and I think it's a great way for all of us to gain more insight and more empathy too, for the people around us.
- [41:11]
Ron Chernow
Thank you. This has been great fun. Adam, thanks for having me on.
- [41:16]
Adam Grant
I love the visual Ron gave us of trying to understand a person being similar to holding a Polaroid photo and watching the image gradually appear. People are full of contradictions, and if.
- [41:28]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
We want to get a full picture.
- [41:29]
Adam Grant
Of them, we have to allow time for that image to emerge. Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant.
- [41:40]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glaser, our editor is Alejandra Salazar, our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson, our technical director is Jacob Winick, and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hylash, Banban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale sue and Alison Layton Brown Crown.
- [42:08]
Ron Chernow
I think just to have to fall back on your own resources at an early age was important with all these people because all the figures that I've written about, they felt a tremendous sense of responsibility for the fate of their followers or the country, whatever. And so I think that that started early on with being the surrogate father in the family. How's that for a piece of armchair psychology for you?
- [42:35]
Adam Grant
I will not object.
- [42:40]
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