Founders - #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Phil very much wanted to go to the farm for a break from the hospital and had started to work on the doctors to obtain their permission. There was a sharp difference of opinion among the doctors about whether this was a good idea, but no one ever asked me if there was liquor or sleeping pills at the farm, nor did I think to mention the guns we had there. I, who certainly knew the farm was stocked with guns that Phil used for sport, was completely deluded by his seeming progress, lack of visible depression, and his determination to get well. In fact, I was optimistic about his ability to do so. And I must say I was glad. He wanted so much to go to the farm, and I got caught up in thinking how good it would be for him. On Saturday, August 3rd, Phil's driver picked him up and then they came to get me. We had lunch on the back porch while chatting and listening to some classical records.

Starting point is 00:00:54 After lunch, we went upstairs to our bedroom for a nap. After a short while, Phil got up, saying he wanted to lie down in a separate bedroom that he sometimes used. A few minutes later, there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. I bolted out of the room and ran around in a frenzy looking for him. When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. It was so profoundly shocking and traumatizing. He was so obviously dead, and the wounds were so ghastly to look at, that I just ran into the next room and buried my head in my hands, trying to absorb that

Starting point is 00:01:33 this had really happened. This dreadful thing that had hung over us for the last six years, which he had discussed with me and with his doctors, but which he had not been talking about in recent weeks, when he was obviously most seriously thinking about it. The sight had been so appalling that I knew I couldn't go back in. What I was agonizing about was that I had let him leave the bedroom alone. I can only say that he seemed so much better that I stupidly was not worried enough. It never occurred to me that he must have planned the whole day at the farm to get to his guns as a way of freeing himself forever from the watchful eyes of the doctors and the world.

Starting point is 00:02:21 He left no note of any kind. And that was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Personal History, the Autobiography of Catherine Graham. Before I jump into the book, I want to tell you how I came to discover. I actually was listening to Jeff Bezos talk. And he actually, before he bought the Washington Post, which is the business that Catherine's now going to run after the suicide of her husband. He read this book. He said it was a fantastic book. It won the Pulitzer, I think, in 1998.

Starting point is 00:02:53 It's one of the highest reviewed books that I've ever come across. And I could see why. It was an absolutely fantastic read. So I heard Jeff Bezos say that later on when I was reading the biography of Warren Buffett, Snowball. I think I covered that on Founders number 100. Catherine Graham is a I wouldn't say a main character, but she's definitely she's in the book a lot. She's a supporting character in the biography of Warren Buffett because he makes an investment in the 1970s in the Post. And he becomes a very close friend. Some say they had an affair,

Starting point is 00:03:26 actually, of Catherine Graham. And so he talks in the biography, I guess he's not the one writing it, but the author talks a lot about the relationship that Catherine Graham had. And it was in that book, Snowball, that he discovered the story of Catherine Graham, where she's in her 40s, she has four kids. She's married to Phil Graham. Her father had bought The Washington Post a couple of decades earlier. At the time, there was very uncommon for women to be running large companies. In fact, Catherine Graham is the first ever CEO of Fortune 500 company, a female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. But her father, when he's ready to retire he

Starting point is 00:04:06 actually passes the business instead of giving it to her he gives it to her husband and so her husband is running that up until the point that he commits suicide so the reason i was interested in reading the book besides bezos obviously saying hey you should read this book which is usually a good enough reason on its own right is i is I just I cannot imagine what what that experience must have been like. She did not see this coming. I'll talk more about that as we get into the book. But this idea where you could be in your 40s, you know, not really have at the time it was she was involved in her family civic activities, but did not have any business experience. Your husband kills himself. You discover it. You see the aftermath. And then now not only you have to take over the family

Starting point is 00:04:51 company because no one else is there to run it while taking care of your kids and yourself. I just cannot imagine what that experience would be like. And so reading that this book is my way of finding out what that experience is like and i i think the title personal history is really interesting because this this book is a it's a large book it's six i have the paperback version it's 625 pages and what this feels like you're reading is her personal diary where she goes into great detail of her life mostly in chronological order and it feels like you're the first note I left as I you know maybe 100 pages into the book I was like you know this

Starting point is 00:05:30 book really does it tells the inner monologue of someone that is not at all comfortable with herself and where she fits in with others and that this this this refreshing honesty that I think most people hide might be the main reason to read the book. So let me go ahead and jump into the book right now. Okay, so this is a description of her early life. She says, As the fourth of five children, I was oddly shielded from the rigors of living with parents who demanded perfection and from some of the eccentricities of our curious upbringing.

Starting point is 00:06:06 Luck helped me be a survivor and gave me strength. My difficulties were much more tied to a lack of guiding personal relationships, for I had more or less to bring myself up emotionally and figure out how to deal with whatever situations confronted me. So I'm going to talk about that in a minute because her mom is, she, her mom's almost like, I would compare the way she presents her mom in this book to almost like the, the way like a Disney evil stepmother would be portrayed. Extremely selfish, egotistical, demeaning to the kids, even though they're her biological kids. Just not a, not a good mother figure at all. At the same time, I was surrounded by extreme luxury.

Starting point is 00:06:47 I led a life structured and in many ways Spartan, circumcised by schools and lessons, travel and study. So it talks about, there's a lot going on in these two paragraphs. One is talking about demanding perfection. Her father was a very, very formidable person. He was an investor, an entrepreneur. By the time she is born, she was born in 1917. Her father had already accumulated a fortune somewhere around 40 to 60 million dollars. So the equivalent of today, you know, that could be hundreds of millions, if not more. He was extremely wealthy. Once being president of the World Bank, he has actually I would I'm going to look for a biography on him because I found him such an interesting and intelligent person. But as many fathers during this time period, rather absent.

Starting point is 00:07:29 He does develop a very close relationship with her, but he also just assumes that she's not going to be able to run a business, which is the way, unfortunately, women were looked at during this time period. And that's why he gravitated towards her husband instead of her. I would say that even though the father's busy, he's absent a lot, as you can imagine. He did, I think he was the better of the two parents. And so I want to talk a little bit about her mom, who, you know, I didn't, based on the descriptions that Catherine has in the book uh just not a good person uh so a lot of this book has just amazing how many letters uh between the family that they saved

Starting point is 00:08:15 there's a lot of written material in here and in this one case she's writing I think to her friend her mother's writing to a friend talking about I don't even know if she ever wanted to be a mom I I she's talking listen to this sentence she friend talking about, I don't even know if she ever wanted to be a mom. She's talking, listen to this sentence. She's talking about the difference of having between having two or three kids. She was distressed at the difficulties of three, meaning children, as opposed to two children, comparing them to a basket of eels. Now, I don't think her mother was a bad person. I think she led an interesting life, but she was just focused on her own life. And I think part of being a good family member, just like being a good friend, is you have to have some level of selflessness, right?

Starting point is 00:08:49 You can't just be selfish. That doesn't mean that she wasn't intelligent, that she couldn't pass along a lot of wisdom to her children. This is, in my opinion, this is going to come from the diary of her mother when she's mountain climbing in the Canadian Rockies in 1926. And this is a lesson, one of my opinion, the best lesson that her mother could teach her, which is don't quit. You can do more than you think you can. And I think that's really important to tell Catherine that because Catherine was extremely, she had a very low self-esteem. Interesting enough, Warren Buffett is going to play a major role. And I'm going to talk a lot about him today. And he she credits him with actually being the one to to make her believe

Starting point is 00:09:34 in herself, which is very interesting how he did it. And this is not the Warren Buffett we think of today. The Warren that we're going to talk about today is mainly the 1970s. It's like 50 year old Warren. But he's got a lot of good advice, just like, you know, of course, 90-year-old Warren does as well. But this is, first, before I get there, this is the excerpt from her mother's diary. The fatigue of the climb was great, but it is interesting to learn once more how much further one can go on one second wind. I think that this is an important lesson for everyone to

Starting point is 00:10:07 learn, for it should also be applied to one's mental efforts. I couldn't agree more. Most people go through life without ever discovering the existence of that field of endeavor which we describe as a second wind. Whether mentally or physically occupied, most people give up at the first appearance of exhaustion. So I talked about this last week. I feel we talked about this over and over again. One of the benefits of reading biographies and autobiographies is you realize that they have troubles just like you and I do. The difference is they don't quit. Whereas most of our peers, most of our colleagues, most of the people that we interact with don't have that. Most humans in history don't have that. We give up way too easily, and that's what our mother is saying.

Starting point is 00:10:46 Whether mentally or physically occupied, most people give up at the first appearance of exhaustion. Thus, they never learn the glory and the exhilaration of genuine effort. That is a fantastic lesson that our parents could instill in us, and that's what she's doing right there. And using the analogy of climbing a mountain and how physically difficult that was, and using and how you can apply what you learn from exhausting yourself physically to obviously mental and your professional life and everything else. Okay, so this next section is her right at the end of high school. There's a ton of paragraphs spread throughout the entire years. I don't think she felt completely comfortable with who she was until she was probably 50, maybe 60 years old.

Starting point is 00:11:33 So it says, apparently my classmates didn't see me the way I saw myself. My class prophecy read, K is a big shot in the newspaper racket, but I envision no such future for myself or in fact any specific future at all rather than creating my own way what i was trying to do all the time was figure out how to adjust to whatever life to whatever life i found and a few pages later we see another paragraph which just it continues to expound on the main theme of this book which is she has a serious lack of self-esteem which i think people would find surprising, given how much she had later accomplished in her life. I was, I thought, realistic about my own assets.

Starting point is 00:12:11 I hate that word. Realistic, that is. I thought realistic about my own assets and abilities as I grew older. I was not very pretty. I seemed ungainly to myself. I didn't think I could excel. And I was sure I'd never attract a man whom I would like and who would not be viewed with condensation by my parents and siblings. So that goes back to what she was saying. Her parents had, and her entire family, had extremely high standards or high expectations of everybody else. But this is just very

Starting point is 00:12:41 distressing. This idea that, she talks about it, You know, she doesn't she says it might have been on a subconscious level, but she was taught that her role in life is to find find a man, get him to marry you and then raise the children and be happy and content in your in your life doing that. But to not have any desire to excel professionally. And I think obviously, you know, now we live in a world that's much different than that, albeit not perfect. But this idea where, you know, 50% of human beings alive were taught not to try to fulfill their potential, I think is devastating. So also spread throughout the book is just some advice that her father, and this is as they start to grow, as she got older, they start to grow closer. And this is just a some advice that her father this is as they start to grow as she got older they start to grow closer and this is just a great quote from her father um when others he had already purchased uh the washington post at this point um he's it's really a passion project for him it's something he wanted to keep in his family to pass on to generations um and that's

Starting point is 00:13:39 exactly what wound up happening um but this is just a quote when others are predicting that he's going to fail, trying to resurrect the Washington Post. And he didn't have that belief at all. And he says, when an idea is right, nothing can stop it. That's one of my favorite sentences in the entire book. Now, something that's interesting to me and why I wanted to start the podcast with Phil's suicide, that's Phil Graham, her husband's suicide, is because I feel that was the line of demarcation in her life. The beginning, the first, she's in her 40s at the time. She lives to 84, so it's roughly the halfway mark of her life as well. And I feel the first 40 years of her life were more unhappy.

Starting point is 00:14:22 I don't think she knew who she was as a person. I don't think she was living the life that she actually wanted to. And something I found really interesting is, you know, we see excerpts from her diary when she's much younger. She worked at newspapers before she got married. She had a deep love of the newspaper industry and the post. And that's what I'm going to read to you here real quick. Let me read the paragraph first. I'll leave the note I left myself because I wasn't sure what was taking place at this point in the book so it says much later the depth of my caring was pointed out to me by Phil's psychiatrist who told me that Phil and I both had a problem we cared too much about

Starting point is 00:14:54 the Washington Post I told him in one of the great understatements of my life that I feared there was little he could do about that so she wanted this becomes a and the Washington Post actually when she starts to run it and she runs it up and you know she's heavily involved up until she dies even though her son winds up taking over after her but that was the deep love of her life she never gets remarried she becomes married to her career and I think that's secretly what she wanted her entire life but she was told that you shouldn't want that. Do you see what I mean here? Where it's very it's almost like she's she's not she's it's the difference between an inner and an outer scorecard. So he talks about he admired his father because he had an inner scorecard, meaning that he chose what his life was going to be.

Starting point is 00:15:51 And if people didn't agree or they didn't think he'd succeed, that's fine. If as long as he was comfortable with the results of his own thinking. And if he wanted to pursue something, even if others made fun of him or thought it would fail, it didn't matter. His mom, who Warren Buffett was, I would say, almost terrified of, was the opposite, the outer scorecard. She was worried about what others would think of her. Others would think of her family if Warren got in trouble or whatever the case was. And Warren, I think, correctly arrives at the conclusion that if you want to have a happy life, you have to be dictated by your inner scorecard.

Starting point is 00:16:20 And if you want to be miserable, you have to, you should go after an outer scorecard, right? Be so concerned with other people think that, that it kind of dulls who you are as a person. I would say the first half of her life, she definitely had, Catherine Graham definitely has an outer scorecard. I don't know if she ever completely switched over to an inner scorecard up until right before she dies. She, you know, she talks about, you don't want, there's a lot of negatives of aging, but one of the benefits is, you know, you don't have worry. You're just, you're finally free to do what you really want to do. Unfortunately, at that point, where she realizes that she only has about four or five more years left. But going back to this part about deep caring deeply, which is so bizarre to me why she just accepted her father's decision

Starting point is 00:17:04 to not just to give it to Phil, not even think about her. So the note I left myself is when does this deep love for the post begin? And the reason I wrote that is because now looking back, I highly suspect she always had that deep love, but she buried it because it wasn't even it was such a remote possibility in her mind. It's just, of course, I don't have the skills. I can't run a business. I can't do anything. This is what men do. And I think, again, that's just a devastating way to live your life.

Starting point is 00:17:33 Okay, so right after college, she's working in the newspaper industry. And she gets advice from her father. And it's something that she's writing about 60 years after it happened, and I thought it was really good advice, so I want to read it to you as well. My father wrote me back at once, thanking me for my letter and concluding with what is one of the simplest and best precepts for parents to live by that I have ever read. It meant a lot to me then as it does even today. What parents may sometimes do, this is now her father writing to her, what parents may sometimes do in a helpful way

Starting point is 00:18:09 is to point out certain principles of action. I do not think I would be helpful in advising you too strongly. I do not even feel the need of doing that because I have so much confidence in your having really good judgment. The way her father talks to her is completely different than the way her mother does. Her mother would diminish her accomplishments,

Starting point is 00:18:27 make Catherine seem that she wasn't as smart as her mom was, wasn't as driven, so on and so forth. So I really appreciate what her father is saying here. Let me go back to what he was saying. I have so much confidence in you for having really good judgment. I believe that what I can do for you once in a while is to point out certain principles that have developed in my mind as sound and practical, leaving it for you yourself to apply them if your own mind grasps and approves those principles. That's fantastic advice. It's really interesting now that I reread that section knowing what happens later on in the book, essentially she is taught. Warren Buffett essentially gives her a one-on-one course in how to run a business.

Starting point is 00:19:11 Can you imagine being mentored on a one-on-one basis from Warren Buffett, who his entire life has been about, I don't know if there's anybody alive today that has studied and read and learned more about all the different businesses was extremely helpful. But what happened is and something that her father saying here that Warren also echoes later is she started to become too reliant on it. Like she'd call him two, three, four times a day with just basic questions. And at one point, they're thinking of, you know, the Washington Post company is very different from just running the Washington Post. They own radio stations and TV networks and other newspapers and all kinds of other stuff. It's a gigantic business, right? And they're about

Starting point is 00:19:50 to buy, she wants to buy another, later on in the book, they talk about she wants to buy another newspaper. And she insisted that Warren be involved in the negotiations. And he refused at that point. He's like, you are competent enough. You can do it. I'm not going to do it for you. And that wind up, that message to her was like, oh, that was extremely, it built her up. It gave her more confidence and she wound up buying something at a good, good rate and wound up being a good deal. And they made money on it later on in life too. But I thought that was very, I think that's just very good advice from Warren and very good advice from her father.

Starting point is 00:20:25 It's like, listen, I can teach you the lessons and the principles and the things I discovered over my long career. But unless you, like, unless they make sense in the context of your life, unless you actually want to, unless you understand them and then want to apply them, like, that's something no one can do for you. You have to apply them. You have to do that for your life. And I think that's something no one can do for you you have to apply them you have to do that for your life and i think that's just a fantastic parenting okay so now i want to tell you about this is i'm going to read a couple excerpts from this is a letter that she wrote in college and this is what i was referencing earlier she knows what she wants but is full of doubt and as i read this to you this reminded me when i when i read this letter that

Starting point is 00:21:05 she wrote um i saw a talk kobe bryant gave in china to in china and he was talking about what the biggest fear that we usually have in life is not things that are external it's like it's internal it's that we know deep in our heart that we want to do something but you know we're afraid to to attempt it what happened what does it say about us if we go all in and we fail? You know, and he says the biggest, the scariest thing. I think the different quote from him was, you know, the scariest thing is admitting to yourself. I want that. And then going forward. And his whole point, the reason he's telling this audience, a lot of young kids in the audience is you have to overcome that fear.

Starting point is 00:21:43 If you've identified this is what you want to do in life, this is what you want your life to be, you have to go forward no matter what. And we see her kind of, she's admitting that she loves the newspaper industry, but again, she's just been brainwashed that it's just not in the cards for her because she was born female. I think I want to go into the newspaper business. The fact remains that what I am most interested in doing is reporting, possibly working up to political reporting later. As you can see, this is no help to Dad. He wants and needs someone who is willing to go through the whole mill.

Starting point is 00:22:15 So they're talking about the reason he winds up passing down the paper to Phil Graham is because they can take care of circulation and management problems and run the actual business and deal with the editorials and the politicians and everything else and she's saying well i just have a love of reporting i and then this this is what she says here again if you have a feeling like this she's the way she feels in this next sentence if phil graham never killed himself she would have never had the career that she had right which is the most tragic single most tragic thing that ever happened to her but but in a weird way and i hate to say like this might be the best thing that ever happened uh phil has some serious problems uh manic depression he was extremely troubled but he

Starting point is 00:22:59 also was not i don't know if she would agree with this statement but reading this book he was not a good husband he would belittle her he cheated her. Six months before he kills himself, he leaves her for his employee. And then he admits to her in one of his like, it's almost like what we see. He just he has these like rants, which is like, oh, yeah, it's not just Robin, which is his mistress. It's like, you know, it's this person, this person. She didn't know any of this. And he was just carrying on all these relationships. He was good friends with JFK. He had a lot of JFK in him, actually, is the way I would put it.

Starting point is 00:23:32 Because JFK was doing the same things to Jackie Kennedy. But this is the sentence. I doubt my ability to carry a load like the Washington Post. From dad's point of view, I think it would mean something. I may be flattering myself, but I think it would mean several things, such as companionship, a living connection with the next generation, and the knowledge that all that he was slaving to build was not going to stop. And she's talking about it would mean a lot to dad if I had the ability to do this. She's not married yet, so she doesn't know that her husband's going to be the one fulfilling this position where she's saying the one that she's talking about

Starting point is 00:24:04 that secretly she probably really wants, but she doesn't feel she's good enough for. And that's what he was, he wanted the Washington Post to be a family business. Eventually they go public, but it was run. Warren Buffett writes her a letter when he invests before they have a relationship. He buys like 10% of the company. He's like, listen, I'm fine that it's Graham run and Graham owned, meaning Graham family and Graham managed. I'm fine that it's Graham run and Graham owned, meaning Graham family and Graham managed.

Starting point is 00:24:26 I'm fine with that. So he says, in the knowledge that he was not slaving to build something that was not going to stop with him, from my point of view, would be giving up a position that is fair to say thousands would fight for, that is an influential position and an influential paper in the capital of the world's most important country. If I find for some reason that I'm not fitted to the newspaper work and this may happen among other things, I function a little on the slow side. Again, she's so demeaning to herself. She's called herself ugly.

Starting point is 00:24:57 She doesn't think she's motivated enough. Now she's saying she's not smart enough. I function a little on the slow side, which is not good. I shall get out and consider it no disgrace. And so I would just stop and think about what she just said there. She would consider it no disgrace. So this is something that she wants to do, something that she doesn't think she can do, something that would be good for her family, yet saying that if it didn't happen, it'd be no disgrace.

Starting point is 00:25:22 I don't know if I agree with that. If we only have one shot at life, isn't it a disgrace to not actually do what you truly want to do? And I just have one sentence for you. This is the way she summarized working at a newspaper in San Francisco before going back to Washington.

Starting point is 00:25:37 This is right after she graduated from college, if I'm not mistaken. And this gives you an insight. She really did love this industry, which is so... Which, again, I just want to keep houndingounding on while she was meant to do what she like this is what she loved to do and yet she her lack of self-confidence prevented her from doing that i loved those months i spent in san francisco as i have loved very few times in my life. Keep in mind, she's 79 years old when she's writing those words.

Starting point is 00:26:08 This is, you know, she might be 22 at the time. I love those months I spent in San Francisco as I loved few times in my life. So I love this one paragraph because it's Phil Graham. Really what he's saying here is if you have a problem, maybe you benefit from looking at it from a different perspective. And this is right before America starts jumping into World War II. So this is one exchange between us. I had deplored the fact that we had the bad luck to live in a world with Hitler, to which Phil responded.

Starting point is 00:26:41 I don't know. Maybe it's a privilege to have to fight the biggest son of a bitch in history so after the war her father starts broaching the subject of hey um you know i want to keep the post in the family and i think phil's the best route to do that they're married at this time and i'm going to read to you this section but really listen to her response which which is, again, I think sometimes we can be blind and we just accept something is true. That's in this case, we find out it's definitely not true, but she didn't even question it, which I think is very like a, it's a lesson that we can take. Like what are the things that we think are true in our lives that if we dig a little deeper,

Starting point is 00:27:18 we find are false. And there's a way to put that shortly after this, my father seems to have brought up with both of us, the possibility of Phil's working at the paper after the war. Certainly, he saw the whole endeavor as useless unless he could project a future for the post in the family. In those days, of course, the only possible heir would have been male. And since my brother was in medicine and had shown little or no interest in the business, my father naturally thought of Phil. Now, this is her reaction. Far from troubling me personally that my father thought of my husband and not me, it pleased me. In fact, it never crossed my mind that he might have viewed me as someone to take on an important job at the paper. So at the time Phil takes over the paper, it's losing money. Her father is still

Starting point is 00:28:07 to the tune of usually like a couple hundred thousand dollars every year, is still paying up the losses out of his pocket. And so they realize, hey, we need to get better on our reporting, better on editorial. And at the same time, we've really got to focus on increasing our ad revenue. And so something that Phil does, because the Post, you know, Washington Post now is very widely known. At this time, it was like the fourth. It was in fourth place out of the five main Washington, D.C. newspapers. So Phil does something that's a really good idea. He's actually cold calling heads of major companies and executives and asking them for their business. So it says Phil became one of the Post's best ad salesmen.

Starting point is 00:28:49 This is, again, he's running the entire company. So it talks about how important this aspect of the business was. Often writing letters to company executives around the country, giving forceful evidence for why the Post was a logical, cost-effective choice for their advertising dollars. And that winds up being a good idea. It winds up recruiting people and companies that started to spend money with the Washington Post that either didn't even realize that there was an opportunity or didn't come up with that idea on their own.

Starting point is 00:29:16 So I thought it was a really good idea. Phil also does something that's really smart, which is what you and I are doing right now, which is learning from and then drawing inspiration from biographies. So at this time, their larger, more profitable competitor was just purchased by another formidable, successful newspaper publishers. And so this is the guys, the guys that wind up buying the competitor are the guys he's reading a biography about. And what's interesting is their biography actually gives him the strength to carry on because he realizes I'm now in the position they were when they started their career. And if they did it, I can do it. That's a very, very valuable lesson to learn.

Starting point is 00:29:50 One night, a week or so after the takeover, I woke up at two in the morning to find Phil smoking and finishing a book on the lives and careers of the newspaper magnates Colonel McCormick and Captain Joe Patterson. These are the people that just bought their main competitor. Phil said, you know, they put the company together when they were in their 30s. Now they're in their 60s and I'm in my 30s. I think we can make it another way. With that simple conclusion, Phil got over the terrible blow of being defeated in a deal on which we thought our life depended. So what happened is they were both, I covered this in the William Hurst and Joseph Pulitzer podcasts, but it was very common to increase your overall circulation by buying a competitor that was either going out of business or was up for sale for some reason.

Starting point is 00:30:34 In this case, if they would have successfully bought, I think it was the Washington, the Times Herald maybe, they would have doubled their circulation overnight. And they needed that because they were still losing money this time. Now, eight years later or maybe five or eight years later, they wind up buying the paper from these these two guys that he's reading a story on. So he was actually right. But his point that he says, OK, you know what? I can do what they did and I think we can make it another way. With that simple conclusion, Phil got over the terrible blow of being defeated in a deal on which we thought our life depended. That's his whole point. He's like, okay, well, we missed it on this one deal. Does that mean we're going to go out of business? No. That sucks. Let's have a pity party for a few minutes and then let's overcome and find another route. And they wind up doing

Starting point is 00:31:16 that. So something she talks about a great deal is the fact that Phil drank a lot. When he drank, he'd get, I don't know if he ever hit her, but he would get, he would yell, break stuff. You know, he was just not pleasant to be around. In fact, right before he's committed to the mental hospital, this is like six, maybe six, nine months before he went committing suicide. He goes on one of his rants, he's giving a speech. And again, he was friends with, wrote speeches for Lyndon Johnson, once being a friend and advisor of jfk and he just at this speech he just starts talking about oh yeah jfk is sleeping with you know i think it was a ci director's ex-wife or something like that i looked into it um she winds up getting killed uh shot a few months later then and to this day it's still an unsolved case um and this a few months after that j to this day, it's still an unsolved case. And a few months after that,

Starting point is 00:32:06 JFK gets killed. There's just a lot of craziness that's going on in Washington at this time. And so throughout this entire book, there's definitely stories that set up what Phil winds up doing, right? He's clearly unhinged in a lot of ways. But what was very interesting to me and I just put, wow, is the only note I left here is this sentence. I never suspected that Phil was either ill or depressed. Now, in hindsight, they would diagnose somebody like Phil Graham as a manic depressive. Right. She did not. But he hid that he did. They just thought it was erratic behavior, maybe caused by alcohol or something like that. They just thought it was erratic behavior, maybe caused by alcohol or something like that. But he wouldn't talk about his depression. And like she said, the day he committed suicide, she thought she was optimistic. She's like, oh, we've turned the corner. We're going to get back to being a loving family, not realizing that he had other ideas. But this idea, I'd never suspected that Phil was either ill or depressed. So it just makes what happened even more shocking.

Starting point is 00:33:05 Now, a large part of this book is the struggles to make The Washington Post a viable company. It goes, you know, maybe a decade of struggle, if not more. And so she puts out this paragraph, I think, talks about that. Like there's a lot of people today that are working The Washington Post. I think we just, you know, we were bestowed with this great franchise now realizing that we had to work really hard to get it on solid footing. So it says, there's no doubt in my mind that the struggle to survive was good for us. In business, you have to know what it is to be poor and stretched and fighting for your life against great odds. That's a description of the ideas of the Washington Post.

Starting point is 00:33:40 Many of the young people in the paper today tend to think that the franchise was bestowed on the Post and they take it for granted. We all had a deep fear that, like the star, Washington's star family, there's one of their main competitors that wound up going out of business after like 128 years, we would someday become self-satisfied. That fear permeates our family. And now here's another paragraph that I mentioned earlier, that the book is just full of paragraphs just like this separated by years multiple decades of her being insecure later on she feels she has imposter

Starting point is 00:34:09 syndrome that she doesn't belong despite my pleasure in the life I was leading during these years I can now see that I was having problems I didn't acknowledge I was growing shyer and less confident as I got older I still didn't know how to look my best or to handle myself in social situations I was afraid of being boring and went on believing that people related to us entirely because of Phil. So what she's really saying there is, you know, we this time they may be coming friends with politicians, presidents, congressmen, senators, all kinds of ambassadors and everything else. But they don't really care about me. They're only talking to me because they're only talking to me because I'm married to Phil. And that's, again, just a devastating way to go through life. So something that exacerbated Phil's mental illness is the fact that he burned the candle at both ends,

Starting point is 00:34:53 did not take care of his health at all. The note of myself in this way, just take care of your health or nothing else matters. And he had to be hospitalized a couple of times. Sometimes he would just have to take two or three weeks where he couldn't talk to anybody but Catherine he was just so distraught and and so um just tightly wound and under a great deal of stress so this is one of his uh this is one of this is a family friend of Phil's family who grew up uh I think in South Dakota his family's from South Dakota and Florida so it's talking about you know you got to take care of your health because look what happened your your dad. His dad just slaved away trying to build like this dairy business in like the Everglades or something like that.

Starting point is 00:35:31 So it says, you no doubt have been congratulated and toasted by many great and important people on your last adventure. None more sincerely than by one who has been privileged to sit on the sidelines and watch the developments since long ago in Terry. That's Terry, South Dakota. That's where Phil's family is from. When I look back now over the many years of tremendous effort your father expended in building his land empire, which has now wrecked a fine physical specimen of a man, I cannot but be skeptical of such attainment. So he's saying your father built this great business, but he did so at the consequence of not taking care of his health. I hope you have learned over the years to cast aside such responsibilities that accompany such business as yours and not follow the footsteps of your father

Starting point is 00:36:11 and work at it 24 hours each and every day. There is no greater wealth than health. And that's advice that Phil never heeded. In fact, as he got the sicker he got, the busier he got. And I think that contributed to his eventual suicide. Now we're already on the point of the story where on the other side of that line of demarcation, and now she has to make this decision, you know, because Phil dies. Everybody assumes, okay, well, they're going to sell the paper, you know, no one's there to run it. And

Starting point is 00:36:41 then this is where she's making the decision. I have to be the one that runs the company. I have to be the leader of the family here on in. She says, I recall walking into a room where the all male board was gathered, was gathered to a man. They almost looked as stricken as I was. They also seem to be looking at me hard to decipher what was there. Oz Elliott, one of the board members, later recalled what I said better than I could. You said you appreciated very much how everybody had handled this very difficult situation with professionalism. And you just wanted to say that you knew rumors were around and would be around that the company would be for sale or that some part of it would be. And you said that you wanted to make it clear that it was not for sale. No part of it was for sale.

Starting point is 00:37:21 This was a family enterprise and there was a new generation coming along okay so now we start to see the very first inkling of her where she's building up her own strength and this is as the years continue that you know this is not an overnight process i think 10 years after 10 years into running the company she's still having serious self-doubts but she says knowledge of that new generation, which were my children, was what led me, however hesitantly, to the decision I made then to try and hold onto the company by going to work. And her children at this time, if I'm not mistaken, by the time Phil commits suicide, I think they have four kids ranging from ages of 11 to 19, I think. So very, very young. This is just a great sentence. Sometimes

Starting point is 00:38:05 you don't really decide. You just move forward. And that is what I did. Moved forward blindly and mindlessly into a new and unknown life. And again, I just want to remind you, I really feel this second, the second part of her life was much more enjoyable and much more authentic to who she really was than the first part. Obviously, unfortunately, she had to go through such a severe tragedy to get to that second part. So now in this section, she's going to talk about, you know, I don't know anything about running a business. But really what I left out on myself is she has passion and commitment. She can learn everything else.

Starting point is 00:38:40 She can hire other people to teach her these things. But she has the two most important things. I'm not giving up. This is a family business and I'm extremely passionate about it. I cared so much about the paper and about keeping in the family that despite my lack of knowledge and feelings of insecurity, I felt I had to make it work. Throughout the first weeks, I felt I was wandering around in a fog, trying to grasp the rudiments. Who did what, when, why, where, and how. It's hard to describe how abysmally ignorant I was. I knew neither the substance of the business, neither the substance of the business, and journalistic worlds in which I was moving, nor the processes through which these worlds

Starting point is 00:39:16 operated. Despite my father's expertise and experience, I knew next to nothing about business and absolutely nothing about accounting. Her father knew everything, but now he's passed away. So this is the role, not a father figure role, but a mentor role that Warren's actually going to fulfill. I couldn't read or understand a balance sheet. I remember my complete befuddlement and my inability in the beginning to follow technical financial discussions. The mere mention of terms like liquidity made my eyes glaze over. I was also uneducated in the basics of the working world, how to relate to people professionally, how to tell people things that they might not want to hear, how to give praise as well as criticism, how to use time to the best effect.

Starting point is 00:39:54 Things that people learned automatically in their workplace or in graduate schools, I didn't know. And this next part has nothing to do with the story other than it's just an odd occurrence. Imagine, this is another myself. Imagine getting yelled at by the president of the United States while he undresses. So this is Lyndon Johnson. Phil, again, was very close to Lyndon, wrote way before Lyndon was vice president or anything else, wrote speeches for him, everything else. This is kind of, you know, Lyndon has been known to be a bit of a dick is the way I would put it. That's being light.

Starting point is 00:40:27 You know, a lot of people describe him in very terrible ways. So he's yelling at her. He's at the White House yelling at her because he doesn't like the coverage. You know, every single politician in this book complains about the coverage. Nixon, Lyndon. I don't know if JFK did. JFK comes off really likable actually in the book. But as he was yelling at me, he started to undress, flinging his clothes off onto a chair on the

Starting point is 00:40:49 floor, his coat, his tie, his shirt. When I was reading this, I was like, oh my God, where's this going? I thought it was going to become like sexual in nature. Finally, he was down to his pants. I was frozen with dismay and baffled about what to do. I remember thinking to myself, this can't be me being bawled out by the President of the United States while he's undressing. Suddenly he bellowed, turn around.

Starting point is 00:41:10 I did so obediently and gratefully. And he went right on with his angry monologue until I turned back at his command to find him in his pajamas. He bid the two of us a curt goodnight and I turned around on my heels and vanished. During this time, I thought this was very interesting. I think a lot of people are under the same delusion.

Starting point is 00:41:31 She thought she was the only one making mistakes, that if people were in jobs, they were obviously qualified for that job. They weren't doubting themselves, not realizing that most people do. I made mistakes and suffered great distress from them, partly because I believed that if you worked diligently enough, you wouldn't make mistakes. That's ridiculous. I truly believed that other people in my position didn't make mistakes also ridiculous i couldn't see that everybody makes them even people with great experience what i did that i'm certain my male counterparts did not and which was particularly tormenting was to lie awake at night reliving events of the day going over and over certain scenes wondering how i could have managed whatever it was differently she's's saying that male counterparts do that. That's not true. I've

Starting point is 00:42:07 done that before. I think you might have as well. Everybody does this. Now I want to fast forward 10 years. 10 years she's been running the Post. Okay, now we're in the mid-1970s. This is where Warren's going to get involved. But listen to this. Given this is how she felt, it's amazing that she succeeded. My expectations far exceeded my accomplishments. In fact, the years from the mid-1960s, when she took over the paper, to the mid-1970s, rich and full as they were, were depressing. I seem to be carrying inadequacy as baggage. We are now on page 416. This is 400 pages of her talking about how inadequate she was. This is amazing. I still felt like a pretender to the throne.

Starting point is 00:42:46 There's imposter syndrome, right? Still takes place to this day. Very much on trial. I felt I was always taking an exam and I would fail if I missed a single answer. What most got in the way of my doing the kind of job I wanted to do was my insecurity. I adopted the assumption of many of my generation that women were intellectually inferior to men, that we were not capable of governing, leading, managing anything but our homes and our children. She believes that even though at the time she's already had a decade of running a very complex and gigantic business and doing so while she believes she can't do so. Okay, so even though this is a family business, she's eventually talked into by other people. This is pre-Buffett to go public. And so she goes public,

Starting point is 00:43:34 and this is the first time in the book that Warren Buffett is mentioned. And then from here on in, he is a, I would say, you know, not a main character because this is her obviously main story he's the next most important supporting character from the rest for the rest of the book i think he's mentioned 25 times in the last 150 pages and including one like seven page section where it just talks about her relationship with them um how important he was to her he's extremely

Starting point is 00:44:02 extremely important in this story. So it says, Warren Buffett, whose company, Berkshire Hathaway, bought about 10% of the company's B shares in 1973, later told me that he didn't think we really had to go public, but was glad that we had. He was essentially telling her the advice that you were getting

Starting point is 00:44:18 from these other people were incorrect. In fact, a lot of other board members considered Warren an adversary, told her over and over not to trust him. And, you know, he's dangerous. And she keeps building a relationship with him, you know, talking more and more to him. She's like, I don't think your assessment of him is accurate. In fact, I feel he's very, very wise. In fact, I was glad we had two. I was glad we had two, meaning going public, although i still dislike some of the responsibilities being public entails the advent of warren was only one of the positive things that resulted from our going public it also gave us proper discipline about profit margins

Starting point is 00:44:54 so remember the context of all this what i'm reading to you right now she's 10 years in and she's still not confident so she's going to talk more about but that and i'm going to read from this letter that she kept that warren wrote to her about why he made such a large investment in the company. Now, keep in mind, this book, like you might have known Catherine Graham before this podcast because Watergate, Pentagon Papers. There was a movie I watched with Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep plays the character of Catherine Graham. I think it's called The Post and it's about Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. So that's a large part of the book. I think it's called The Post, and it's about Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. So that's a large part of the book I'm obviously omitting. I'm going to focus

Starting point is 00:45:29 from here on in about the advice, the business advice, and things that Catherine learned. But that's also in the book as well, which is really fascinating. Because again, it's like reading her diary, her journal, and it's a ton. She's in Washington, D.C. for – she's running the company for almost 40 years. She lived there 20-something years before that, so 60-something years of history, of political history in the United States that's contained in this book. That's also very, very interesting to read. Because I still had vast problems with self-confidence in public situations, I feared dealing with industry and with Wall Street, especially the excruciating ordeal of speaking to financial analysts. And again, she says, Good luck was again on my side coming just when I needed it. It was my good fortune that Warren Buffett bought into the company beginning a whole new phase of my life. And again, she says over and over again how important Warren was to the success. Later on, he compares.

Starting point is 00:46:36 He's like, you know, I put $10 million to your company. Let's compare how you like the performance of the company under your leadership compared to other alternative investments they could have made at the time. Other newspapers, media properties, et cetera. And he's like, your return has been 3,000%. The other ones have averaged like 1,000%. And she's like, yeah, but you're discounting the role that you played in that as well.

Starting point is 00:46:59 And again, they seem to have a very genuine friendship. The letter helped explain why he bought the stock. This is now her telling her, him writing to her why he bought 230,000 shares. This purchase represents a sizable commitment to us and an explicitly quantified compliment to the Post as a business enterprise and you as its chief executive.

Starting point is 00:47:21 Writing a check, it's so important for how other people believe in you. Like how valuable does this wind up being to Catherine Graham? Writing a check it's so important for how other people believe in you like how valuable this might have been to katherine graham writing a check separates oh this is such a great sentence he is again his if you haven't listened to my podcast i did when i read every single one of his shareholder letters i'm looking at the freaking book right now it's like a textbook it was the hardest thing i ever did and if i could do that again i recorded in one sitting imagine sitting by yourself talking for three three hours straight um i would have if I could do that again, I recorded it in one sitting. Imagine sitting by yourself talking for three hours straight. If I could do it again, I would have recorded it multiple times and edited it together because it was so difficult.

Starting point is 00:47:51 I didn't know any better. But in any case, he's just a great writer. And listen to this sentence. Writing a check separates conviction from conversation. I recognize that the post is gram-controlled and gram-managed, and that suits me fine. So anyways, I didn't finish that thought. I think it the post is Graham controlled and Graham managed, and that suits me fine. So anyways, I didn't finish that thought. I think it's number 88, 81. It's in the 80s. If you haven't listened to that, it's the longest Founders episode I ever did. I don't think I'll ever do an episode again that long, but you should listen to it. It's really interesting.

Starting point is 00:48:18 Some years back, a partnership which I managed made a significant investment in the stock of Walt Disney. The stock was ridiculously cheap based upon earnings. I think he paid like 55 cents a share. I can't remember. He talks about his shareholder. So it was insane. And he wound up selling it. Asset values and capability of management.

Starting point is 00:48:35 That alone was enough to make my pulse quicken and my pocketbook open. But there was also an important extra dimension to the investment. In its field, this is the reason I'm reading this to you, because it's fantastic and I love Walt Disney. He's one of my favorite founders ever. In its field, Disney simply was the finest hands down. Anything that didn't reflect his best efforts, anything that might leave the customer feeling shortchanged just wasn't acceptable to Walt Disney. He melded energetic creativity with a discipline regarding profitability and achieved something unique in entertainment. Now, why am I reading

Starting point is 00:49:12 those to you? Because this very next sentence, think about how beneficial this would have been to Catherine Graham. At this time, she's running a company for 10 years, still very deeply insecure. And he says, I feel the same way about the Washington Post. Okay, the letter continues. I'm going to move on to another section. This is her talking about Warren becoming important to her business. They're at a dinner at the time, they're starting to with other people. They're starting very early in their days of trying to build a relationship. So this this guy named Howard makes he asked a question that makes Catherine feel like like an imposter. And so this is where Warren jumps in.

Starting point is 00:49:48 Look, Howard looked at me and said, now, Catherine, how does the amortization of goodwill work? The conversation stopped for a second. Warren recalled, I could see the look on your face like he asked you to explain Einstein's theory of relativity. Here was my chance to be a hero. So I jumped in and explained in a fairly succinct way how it worked. I think this was the real beginning of my knowing how much Warren would mean to me. After lunch, he and I spent an hour together, during which he offered to stop buying our stock because he perceived it was worrying me. He described his bite, that's in quotation marks,

Starting point is 00:50:23 of the company as baby teeth, also in quotation marks, but added, if they look like wolf's fangs, I will take them out. Warren wrote me a few days after lunch saying, when you can obtain total participation by talented and intellectually diverse people without diluting authority, and at the same time, enjoy yourself immensely, you are achieving something so he's talking about what she's doing she's learning she's getting investors like him on her side she's hiring good executives she's running the company herself again when you obtain i'm going to read that sentence again because it's really interesting when you obtain total participation

Starting point is 00:50:56 by talented and intellectually diverse people without diluting authority meaning you're still in charge and at the same time enjoy yourself because she has a passion about what she's working on immensely you are achieving something. That's fantastic advice from a youngish Warren Buffett. This theme continues. This is more on Warren as a mentor and a teacher. Remember, that's how he views himself. Yes, he's an investor, but he considers his shareholders, his ability to teach everything he knows about business.

Starting point is 00:51:21 Again, I know the book is the size of a textbook. You don't have to read it in one sitting. I think I read it in a week. That was very unwise. I would not do that again. But I do think buying the book, and you can get the Kindle version. I have both.

Starting point is 00:51:33 I have the Kindle version that goes up until 2018, and I have the physical version that goes from 2014. The Kindle version is like $2.99. Are you serious? Warren was sending me a constant flow of helpful memos with advice and occasionally alerting me to problems of which I was unaware. In the beginning, I didn't realize how fortunate Are you serious? which I had so longed. I started to call him two or three times a day. Imagine having one-on-one tutelage from Warren Buffett. That's insane. More on this, you know, kind of own business school of sorts,

Starting point is 00:52:13 this personal curriculum that she's developing with Warren. Again, I'm not reading from the same pages. This is spread out by maybe 40, 50 pages. This goes on and on. My business education began in earnest. He literally took me to business school, which was just what I needed. How lucky I was to be educated by Warren Buffett and how many people would have given anything for the same experience. How much if you could even pay for

Starting point is 00:52:36 something like that? I mean, you can't because essentially it's priceless. But, you know, people would pay a ton of money for that. He brought with him to our meetings as many annual reports as he could carry and took me through them, describing different kinds of businesses. This is what I really love because, you know, they go back in time, him and Charlie, and they read about, you know, their biography. That's both of them. But they read about businesses well before they were born. I know I mentioned him earlier, but I just saw Coach K, which is one of the most famous basketball coaches of all time, talking about when he was something that was unique about Kobe Bryant was the fact that all players would study tape of current players. But Kobe would say, hey, go back and find tape on Oscar Robinson. Go study Jerry West. Find what made these guys great. Again, what Kobe was doing for basketball, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett and others were doing for business and their craft, their professional lives,

Starting point is 00:53:31 which I think is really good. But I interrupted myself here, so let me go back to that. He brought a bunch of annual reports describing different kinds of businesses, illustrating his main points with real world companies, noting why one was a good business and another bad, teaching me specifics in the process of imparting a great deal of his highly developed philosophy. He told me real world companies, noting why one was a good business and another bad, teaching me specifics in the process of imparting a great deal of his highly developed philosophy. He told me, whereas Otis Chandler, I don't know who that is, collected antique cars, he himself collected antique financial statements. What the hell? That is really interesting. I've never even heard somebody say that. He himself collected antique financial statements because just as with

Starting point is 00:54:04 Geography of Humans, it's interesting to take a snapshot of a business. This is a quote from I haven't heard somebody say that. He himself collected antique financial statements because, just as with geography or humans, it's interesting to take a snapshot of a business. This is a quote from Warren now. It's interesting to take a snapshot of a business at widely different points in time and reflect on what factors produce change as well as what differentiates this specific pattern of development from others also observed. This is a hell of a sentence. Warren's effect on my life is central to everything that followed, while mine on his is largely peripheral. So again,

Starting point is 00:54:33 the first part of that sentence, of course, if you're going to get one-on-one lessons from Warren Buffett, of course, it's going to have an effect on your business and your profession. Guess what? You can do that too. You just got to read his biographies and read his shareholder letters. But the second part, again, is she's still not, you know, downplaying. My effect on his life is largely peripheral. Well, you were a main, I mean, she doesn't know this because Snowball was published after she died, but you know, you're a rather large character in his life as well. So again, don't downplay yourself. Let your light shine bright here. Just a few more highlights. This is her describing Warren and then Charlie Munger's orangutan theory, which I don't think I've ever heard. And I've read a lot about Munger and I really love.

Starting point is 00:55:13 So this is her description of Warren, why he does what he does. Warren is only happy when he's unconstrained, totally in control of his own life, not forced to go to meetings or dinners that he doesn't want to, or see people who don't interest him or do things he doesn't enjoy. That's Warren Buffett, right? I feel the same way. You probably do as well. This idea that Munger talks about, you know, talking about why he left. He didn't want to be an attorney anymore. He wanted to be an investor. He's like, I desperately wanted to be rich. And he's like, i didn't want ferraris i wanted freedom i wanted independence and i think that's what katherine graham is describing here in terms of warren buffett oh oh i skipped over one more sentence before i get to charlie munger's

Starting point is 00:55:55 orangutan theory warren has done so many things for me but among the most important are the inroads he made on my insecurities. Warren is humanly wise. He was humanly wise, too. So naturally, I began to share with him things in my private life. His comments always helped me. So this is great. This is before. Let me finish this, and then I'll get to Munger's orangutan theory. I can't believe I almost skipped over this.

Starting point is 00:56:24 This is really important. Just talk about, you know, I'm sharing him things in our private life. He helped me not be so insecure anymore. You know, what's the value of that? It's priceless. Again, he once told me that something, and this is fantastic advice.

Starting point is 00:56:35 He once told me that someone in a Dale Carnegie course had said to him, just remember, we're not going to teach you how to keep your knees from knocking. All we're going to do is teach you how to talk while your knees knock. That's when he then turned around and passed on to me. He helped me learn how to talk while my knees knocked. Now this is Charlie Munger's orangutan theory, which is freaking fantastic.

Starting point is 00:56:59 Warren summed up our learning relationship by suggesting that I seemed to go around as though I was seeing myself through the distorting mirrors of a carnival fun house. He saw it as his task to get me a better mirror that could eliminate the distortions. He later told me that he subscribed to Charlie Munger's orangutan theory, which essentially contended that if a smart person goes into a room with an orangutan and explains whatever his or her ideas, the orangutan just sits there eating his banana and at the end of the conversation the person explaining comes out smarter warren warren claimed to be my orangutan and in a way he was i heard myself talk when i was with him and i always get a better idea of what I was saying.

Starting point is 00:57:45 Okay, so now I've reached towards the end. And again, I've said this before, I really can't encourage you enough, and I don't even think you need my encouragement, to read as many biographies. And I always prefer autobiographies. So if there's an autobiography, I always read that first. I'll obviously read biographies in addition to that. But reading this book and like any other autobiography, it's having a one-sided conversation. I had a 20-hour one-sided conversation with someone that's been dead for 20 years. If she was alive today, she'd be 103, 104, something like that.

Starting point is 00:58:23 And I think autobiographies especially um especially people that have passed on already um it's the great the greatest illustration of that quote i always talk about i always think about the carl sagan quote what an astonishing thing a book is it's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles but one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person maybe somebody dead for thousands of years across the millennia. An author speaking clearly and silently inside your head directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other. Citizens of distant epochs.

Starting point is 00:58:56 Books break the shackle of time. A book's proof that humans are capable of working magic. And again, I just think the more we study interesting historical figures almost every one of them does the same thing that we can do that's available to us they can read biographies and autobiographies of great people and learn every time it's such i got to this book and it's that same melt that same feeling it's just you're it's a bittersweet melancholic happiness feeling where it's like all right i'm I'm better off having this conversation with Catherine Graham than I was if I didn't have that conversation. And so maybe her life interests you.

Starting point is 00:59:30 If not, there's 150 something other books to pick from. The ones I've covered, obviously, grab any ones that interest you. But it's no surprise to me why some of the smartest, most productive people in the world do exactly this activity because it's one of the highest value activities you can do in the world. It's fantastic. Why dare write a book? What makes us think that someone else would be interested in stories from our own past? For me, there was a mixture of motives. I've been thinking about my parents, who with their drive, discipline, eccentricity, and wealth might be of interest even to non-family people. But I also felt that Phil's story had not been told. His brains,

Starting point is 01:00:05 ability, and charm were legendary among his friends, but no one had written fully about him and his accomplishments, as well about his devastation by his largely untreated manic depression. Partly, I wanted to look at my own life, because my personal history contains elements that were both unexpected and unrepeatable. I recognize the inherent danger of being self-serving and having tried to retain as much detachment as possible, but I wanted to tell people what happened just as I saw it. And in that process, I hope to arrive at some understanding of how people are formed by the way they grow up and further molded by the way they spend their days. That's a great sentence. I'm going to read it again at the end of the sentence. I hope to arrive at some

Starting point is 01:00:50 understanding of how people are formed by the way they grow up and further modeled, excuse me, further molded by the ways they spend their days. This is where she talks about aging and what's really important. It is my family and the engrossing pleasures that I've mentioned that help me face the unavoidable problems of age and the inevitable loss of friends. I will be publishing this book when I'm 79. I've been fortunate, but old age is no barrel of laughs. Even if you are generally healthy, there are things, your heart, your hips, the general slowing down mentally and physically

Starting point is 01:01:23 that make denying of aging an impossibility. At the same time, there are positive aspects to being old. Worry, if not gone altogether, no longer haunts you in the middle of the night, and you are free or freer to turn down the things that bore you and spend time on matters and with people you enjoy. I am grateful to be able to go on working and to like my new life so well that I don't miss the old one. It's dangerous when you're older to start living in the past.

Starting point is 01:01:55 Now that it's out of my system, I intend to live in the present, looking forward to the future. I think that's fantastic advice to close on. We can learn from the past, but we're not going to spend any time there. Let's focus on the present and the future. I think that's fantastic advice to close on. We can learn from the past, but we're not going to spend any time there. Let's focus on the present and the future. I love that. That is where I'm going to leave the story for the full book for the full book for the full story. Read the book. It's fantastic. You can go to amazon.com for shop for founders podcast. And you can buy this book or any other books. You'd be helping out the podcast

Starting point is 01:02:25 at the same time because I get a small percentage of the sale. I also leave that link in the show notes that you can just tap on your podcast player. And you can go to founderspodcast.com and get the link there. So however you want to do that. One other favor to ask you, please, sometime this week, find a friend or two or ten that you have not already told about the podcast and please help spread the word uh that would help very much and that is 140 152 books down somebody pointed out to me that's actually more than 152 books because i haven't been counting the bonus episodes so it's technically technically 157. But I'm going to keep up with just looking at the number of the episode and going with that. But you know, there's other books out there as well. 152 books down 1000 to go and I will talk to you

Starting point is 01:03:15 again soon.

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Founders - #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post)

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