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Published · transcript-backed

Walter Isaacson: evaluation

10 Sept 2023 Lex Fridman Podcast #395 – Walter Isaacson: Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Einstein, Da Vinci & Ben Franklin

“It’s not hardcore, it’s not intense. And so for better and for worse, I think he’s taking acts into the hardcore realm with people who post hardcore things with people with hardcore views.”

— Walter Isaacson

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Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Walter Isaacson
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
evaluation
Recorded
10 Sept 2023
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

Transcript context

…Versus psychological safety and too many birds everywhere. Oh yeah. A lot of times Musk did things and I go, what the hell? Among them was changing the name Twitter and getting rid of the birds? Man, it’s a lot invested in that brand. But when I watched him, he thought, okay, these sweet little chirpy birds tweeting away in the name Twitter. It’s not hardcore, it’s not intense. And so for better and for worse, I think he’s taking acts into the hardcore realm with people who post hardcore things with people with hardcore views. It’s not a polite play pen for the blue checked anointed elite. And I thought, okay, this is going to be bad. The whole thing’s going to fall apart. Well, it has had problems, but the hardcore intensity of it’s also meant that there’s new things happening there. So it’s very Elon Musk to not like the sweetness of birds chirping and tweeting and saying, I want something more hardcore. As you’ve written in referring to the previous Twitter CEO, Elon said Twitter needs a fire breathing dragon. I think this is a good opportunity to maybe go through some of the memorable moments of the Twitter saga as you’ve written about extensively in your book from the early days of considering the acquisition to how it went through to the details of like you mentioned, the engineering teams.…

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