Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…As problematic as he was and became later in his life, Shockley was one of the most brilliant people in America in the 40s, and the highest and best calling that he did was he stopped all of his commercial activity and he went to work for the War Department. Yeah. I found this book to be three things. One, kind of crazy to read at this moment that we're in right now; two, a really good explanation of how working for the government got the brand that it has right now, despite I don't think that really is true. I think like public servants, and especially people that aren't elected, but go into public service, just to work on hard problems that exist in the government to serve everyone. The brilliant, thoughtful, driven people are totally mismarketed or misbranded. The third piece of it is really understanding what a lot of the pieces of the federal government are for—of course, this is a very US-centric view—that I just never really understood before. By no means comprehensive, but it's an interesting several slices of instructions on how to run the government. I never had a more surface-level understanding, but reverence for why infrastructure and an organization like that need to exist. Totally. I remember when it came out, and just like you said, I was like, “Oh, Michael Lewis book. I loved Michael Lewis’ books.” I just missed that one. I have to go back and read it. Lots of people should, too. Mine is Notion. The hot, buzzy, productivity company that just raised $50 million at a $2 billion valuation, and mostly they raised an angel round $10 million and an $800 million valuation before that.…

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