Walter Isaacson: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah. So that’s just genuine curiosity. But there’s something when you talk about just one-on-one interaction, whether it’s Elon or Steve Jobs or there’s something beautiful about that person’s mind, and it feels like it’s possible to reveal that, to discover that together efficiently and that’s kind of the goal of a conversation. Well, look, you are amongst the top podcasters and interviewers in the world today. You have an earnestness to you. Ben Franklin is the person who taught me by reading him the most about on conversation. He wrote a wonderful essay on that. It includes on silence, but it includes trying to ask sincere questions rather than get a point across. It’s somewhat Socratic, but whenever he wondered or wanted to start a Fireman’s Corps in Philadelphia, he would go to his group that he called the Leather Apron Club, and they would pose a question, why don’t we have it? What would it take? What would be good? And then the second part is to make sure that you listen. And if somebody has even just the germ of an idea, give them credit for it. As Joe said, the real problem is this. And I do think that if I’m in situations and I just mean even at dinner or something, I’m with somebody, I’m usually curious and the conversation will proceed with questions. And I guess it’s also because I’m pretty interested in what anybody’s doing, whoever I happen to be with. And so that’s a talent you have, which is, you’re pretty genuine in your interests. There are people like Benjamin Franklin, like the, I’ll say Charlie Rose, even though he’s in disfavor who are interested in huge number of subjects, and I think that helps as well to be interested in basketball and opera and physics and metaphysics. That was a Ben Franklin. That was a Leonardo trick, which is they wanted to know everything you could possibly know about every subject knowable. But there’s a different aspect of this, which is that I would love to hear how you’ve solved it or if you’ve faced it, that you’re certainly disarming. See, I’m like peppering you with compliments here, trying to get you to open-…

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