Founders - #270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action)

Starting point is 00:00:00 In Pieces of the Action, Vannevar Bush, engineer, inventor, educator, and public face of government-funded science, offers an inside account of one of the most innovative research and development ecosystems of the 20th century. As the architect and administrator of an R&D pipeline that efficiently coordinated the work of civilian scientists and the military during World War II, he was central to catalyzing the development of radar and the proximity fuse, the mass production of penicillin, and the initiation of the Manhattan Project. Pieces of the Action offers his hard-won lessons on how to operate and manage effectively within complex organizations, build bridges between people and disciplines, and drive ambitious, unprecedented programs to fruition. Originally published in 1970, this updated edition includes a foreword from Ben Reinhart

Starting point is 00:00:53 that contextualizes the lessons pieces of the action can offer to contemporary readers. These lessons include that change depends both on heroic individuals and effective organizations. That a leader's job is one of coordination and that the path from idea to innovation is a long and winding one, inextricably bound to those involved, those enduring figures who have a piece of the action. That is a description of the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Pieces of the Action, and it was written by Vannevar Bush. So Stripe, the payments company, actually started their own publishing division. And what they're doing is they're bringing back these lesser known and sometimes out of print or hard to find books, and they're updating them and

Starting point is 00:01:37 then publishing them. So I'm going to leave a link to the website that I was just reading off of. That came from Stripe Press's product description of the book that I'm holding in my hand. It's well worth checking out. All of the books that they publish are on this idea of ideas for progress, but they are also some of the most beautiful books that I've ever come across. So I have this book. I ordered another book, or I have another book called The Dream Machine, which eventually will turn into a podcast in the future. And then I just ordered another one of Stripe Press's books, which is The Making of the Prince of Persia. And I'll leave all those links down below, of course. So this is the second book that I've read about Vannevar Bush.

Starting point is 00:02:12 This is from his perspective. He wrote the words when he was 80 years old. There have been something like 10 or 15 books over the years that I've read to completion and I never made podcasts on. And one of those books was a biography of Vannevar Bush. It's called Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century, written by G. Pascal Zachary. That book is excellent. The quality is not why I didn't turn it into a podcast is because Vannevar Bush is such an important and impressive figure that I didn't feel comfortable making a podcast on because I didn't think I actually understood how impactful he was,

Starting point is 00:02:41 even though he appears. So I've probably read, if you read any book on, let's say post-World War II, and for this podcast, I've probably read, you know, 50 books on that because of the giant wealth explosion that occurred after World War II. Every single one of those books will mention Vannevar Bush. So now that I've spent time reading Bush's own words and then going back and rereading all of my highlights from Endless Frontier. I feel I have a way better understanding of who Bush was as a person and why some of his ideas are so important that Stripe would feel the need to invest money and reprint his very hard to find autobiography. So with that, I want to jump into the forward of the book. The forward of the book is written by Ben Reinhart. And so Ben writes the forward of the book from a fantastic perspective. He's like, this is what I

Starting point is 00:03:24 got out of reading this book. And so he starts off right away. This is why Van Bush, everybody called him Van, by the way, because they couldn't pronounce his first name. This is why Van Bush should be studied. Anybody who is serious about creating enduring change realizes that it's critical to understand the origins of the institutions that shape our world. Any exploration of the institutions that shape how we do research, generate discoveries,

Starting point is 00:03:45 create inventions, and turn ideas into innovations inevitably leads back to Van Bush. That is a hell of a statement. Why does he say that? Because he was the conceptual architect of what we now call the innovation pipeline, in which basic research leads to applied research, which is then commercialized. And that last part is exactly, there's a ton of engineers, a ton of scientists that will read this book, but it's why founders should be studying Van Bush and why so many of the founders that you and I have studied on this podcast, at least my guess would be 50 of them, their lives interacted with Bush's. And to illustrate this point, I'm going to pull out another quote that comes from the other book called The Endless Frontier. And it says, no American has had greater influence

Starting point is 00:04:29 in the growth of science and technology than Vannevar Bush. Back to pieces of the action. To this day, the ideas bearing Bush's fingerprints that emerge in this time exert a massive influence on research institutions around the world, both in science and technology. And then Ben repeats his point on why you should be studying Bush, and really a main thesis behind the entire existence of this podcast, right? You need to understand the origins of things that you want to change. Some digging led me to this book, Pieces of Action, which Bush had written near the end of his life.

Starting point is 00:05:02 Its subtitle, this is a fantastic subtitle. I wonder why Stripe doesn't include it in any of the printing of the book. It's fantastic. So it says, its subtitle is especially promising. The personal record of 60 event-filled years by the distinguished scientist who took an active and decisive part in shaping them. And so that's why I'm heavily going to encourage you to order this book, because when you pick it up and you read it, you're reading the words of an 80

Starting point is 00:05:29 year old genius, one of the most formidable and accomplished people that have ever lived. And all he's doing in like 300 pages is laying out what he learned over his six decade career. And so let's go back to Ben discovering the book for the first time. He says the book was out of print and the internet was devoid of any additional context. I felt like I had discovered a secret, powerful, buried relic from another time.

Starting point is 00:05:55 Pieces of the Action is well worth reading and rereading. It provides an inside view of arguably some of the most effective people and processes in history from someone who played a pivotal role. And his next sentence is something I noticed as well after I finished reading the book. All of this is rendered at a level of detail that could only come from someone who was in the room where it happened. We'll go into more detail later,

Starting point is 00:06:21 but like Vannevar Bush is like the Forrest Gump of World War II in science and technology. He's like, he's at every single important thing that happens. He's there. So it says Bush packs in timeless lessons for leaders and technologists and of course for founders. Bush's life was defined by change. This is wild. Check this out. His life was defined by change.

Starting point is 00:06:46 It neatly bracketed the creation of the world we live in today. A quick list of things that did not exist when he was born in 1890 and which had become mainstream by his death in 1974. It includes diesel engines, airplanes. He winds up having dinner, spends an entire night with Orville Wright from the Wright Brothers. We're going to talk about that later. It's so fantastic. I absolutely love it. So it says diesel engines, airplanes, antibiotic drugs, space flight, the transistor, integrated circuits, plumbing and electrical systems for most of the United States, email, and ARPANET, the network of link computers that would become the internet. And this is Ben's punchline and absolutely fantastic.

Starting point is 00:07:16 The world in which Bush wrote pieces of the action was unimaginable when he was born. And then I just have one sentence I'm going to have to fit in here that really has nothing to do with the other narrative other than I try to bring up Claude Shannon whenever I can. He advised a number of graduate students who would themselves go on to have illustrious careers, including Claude Shannon.

Starting point is 00:07:39 So I read Claude Shannon's biography written by my friend Jimmy Soni. That's all the way back on Founders number 95. If you have not listened to that episode, listen to it after you're done with this one. And the reason this is important is because Van Bush is the first person to see Claude Shannon for who he was, which was a near universal genius. And he picked up on that when Claude was like 21 or 22 years old. Absolutely incredible. So then he continues, all the people that Bush inspired.

Starting point is 00:08:06 This guy, Douglas Engelbart. I have a book on him coming very soon. It's actually sitting underneath my feet right now. He read Bush's, Bush has a bunch of these seminal essays he wrote. One of them is called As We May Think. So it says, I would call As We May Think a resounding success.

Starting point is 00:08:23 Douglas Engelbart explicitly cited it as the inspiration for the work that led to his mother of all demos, which you can actually watch on YouTube, which in turn laid out the agenda for almost every aspect of the personal computing environments that now pervade our lives. That is not hyperbolic. It's saying, hey, Bush inspired Engelbart. Engelbart inspired us all. What do I mean on that? So all the way back on 157, I read Walter Isaacson's book, The Innovators, How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. OK, so that's that's episode 157. Let's do it. There was a entire section on these people that played really important roles in the foundation of the modern technology industry as we think of it, okay? Douglas is in there, and they have a hell of a statement about Douglas. And I'll go into more detail when I actually do the biography of Douglas. I just want to read you this quote that comes from The Innovators. It's by Alan Kay, and it's why you and I have to study this guy. It says,

Starting point is 00:09:17 I don't know what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug's ideas. Some of these ideas include on-screen graphics, multiple windows on a screen, digital publishing, blog-like journals, wiki-like collaborations, document sharing, email, instant messaging, hypertext linking, Skype-like video conferencing, and the formatting of documents. In other words, the world that you and I live in today.

Starting point is 00:09:39 It is incredible and will never cease to amaze me how generations of humans inspire the next generation. And this chain of inspiration literally changes and forms the world that future generations inhabit. It's incredible. Okay, let's go back to this. This is, again, I'm skipping over. I'm only pulling out a couple highlights from the forward, obviously, because I want to get into as much of Bush's own words as possible. And you'll see why.

Starting point is 00:10:03 Wait till we get into his personality. It's wild. The reason to study Bush is because he was effective so it says the research organizations that he led were shockingly effective exclamation point we continue to cite so many world war ii era anecdotes about what effective research and development looks like from radar to the manhattan project to penicillin for a. And then Ben picks up on this phenomenon that you and I have seen over and over again that you can use the past success as inspiration. So, you know, there's some things that are relevant to the day that the book was written in

Starting point is 00:10:36 where you have where like Bush and the people in the world at that time were deeply concerned with like the same chronic problems that you see a lot of people, like crime and waste and, oh my God, is the world going to be overpopulated but the lesson that ben took that that ben saw that van took from history was a powerful one he says the fact that old threats had been declawed encourages me to share bush's optimism that we can defeat them especially considering considering that he in turn based his optimism on his vantage point looking at old threats and another way to think about what he's saying there's like van understood that people in history had these worries they were concerned

Starting point is 00:11:15 they were like insurmountable problems they use their intelligence and their technological advancements to solve these problems we can do so we can do the exact same thing for the problems that we are facing and then bush is an advocate So he's going to wind up being very close friends with Edwin Land, who I refuse to and will never shut up about. And I think my constant, I always say reputation is persuasive. It's working because I get a ton of messages now saying, hey, I didn't know who Edwin Land was. Thank you so much. I got a text actually from another founder the other day who said, you have completely pilled me on Edwin Land, by the way. I got a text actually from another founder the other day who said, you have completely pilled me on Edwin Land, by the way. I cannot stop researching the guy.

Starting point is 00:11:49 But what Bush and Land had in common is that they believed in the power of the individual. And so Bush points out the tipping points often rests with far-seeing energetic individuals. We can be those individuals. And then just a few more things before we get into Bush's own words. This I really like because one thing I understand about reading all these biographies is that we don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. And so he says a beautiful thing about the book not having a precise thesis is that we will each notice different things. One of the elements I especially appreciated was how Bush's personality comes through. Relentlessly curious, shockingly cheeky, and quietly humble.

Starting point is 00:12:33 Two things that jump out to me about that sentence. Ben may be the only person to ever describe Van Bush as humble. And the second part is shockingly cheeky. That's certainly one way to put it. You're going to notice his personality. He has a bite to him. He likes to fight and he is super smart and he knows that he's super smart. Bush's aggressive nature shines through in the words that he uses. Another thing that's cool about the book is that he references 237 historical figures. And then in the the book there's first of

Starting point is 00:13:06 all there's footnotes so when he mentions somebody he'll number it and then you can go to the back because he has you know i don't know 40 pages actually 27 pages with like paragraph descriptions of who this person was and why they're important and so it says he devotes over two dozen pages of the book not to himself but to biographical notes on some 200 plus people who played important roles and whom he worried might be lost to history. And then this is the last part and maybe the most important part of the forward, because this is exactly how I feel, like books are a way to gain mentors in historical context. And he says, I went into this book with little more than a name and came out with the closest thing to a mentor. Someone you've never

Starting point is 00:13:42 met can be. This book hints at powerful artifacts of the past that we can use to build the world of tomorrow. And with that, we'll go to Van Bush's own words. He has a very short preface that he wrote in the book. It's three paragraphs. I'm going to pull out the last sentence because it's absolutely fantastic. We are not the first to face problems. And as we face them, we can hold our heads high. In such spirit was this book written. And so his first chapter is titled 60 years, which is how long his career has lasted. And he says, a lot has happened in the last 60 years. Today, as I write, I find people are worried. What do we worry about? Well, just about everything. And so to me, what he's really saying

Starting point is 00:14:21 in this section is that history doesn't repeat. Human nature does. I remind myself, the note I left myself is I remind myself of this all the time. Why are you worrying, David? This is not unique to your life experience. Youth has always been in rebellion and should be if society is not to become static. And then he says something that was true in 1970 that you see still here today. Respect for us as a country has overseas has dwindled. Yet, as I look back, we have always been worried about something and often about the same things that we worry about now that is so important such an important observation from studying history let's let's read it again as i look back we have

Starting point is 00:14:54 always been worried about something and often about the same things that we worry about now and then he's going to repeat things that you hear people say today that they told him when he was young. And he was young in like the 1940s. This is, I think 1945 is when he wrote this first essay. And this is going to sound again, a lot like his friend, Edwin Land. So it says, I remember when I was told that the frontier had been occupied, that all of man's wants and needs have been met. I was also told that all industry was now in the hands of a few great companies, meaning great big companies, monopolies, right? And that no innovator could break their grip. So that's what they're telling a young Van Bush. And what he's saying is like,

Starting point is 00:15:34 in my own lifetime, it's been proven that this is not true, just like it's not true today. Today, there are thousands of small companies making money on new things right in the shadow of the giants. Some of them make the same sort of stir as Xerox or Polaroid or IBM, all of which are making products that were unheard of when I was young. And then he has a line that's really important that I've already mentioned one time. And he says, there will be no ordered account of my life in this book. This is considered his autobiography. But it leaves out a ton about his personal life.

Starting point is 00:16:08 He's going to talk about his dad. And in many ways, his dad was a hero to him. But the way I think about the book and the way I want to talk to you about it is like, listen, we're just getting together right now. And we're going to have this 80-year-old genius that's had one of the most unique life experiences of any human that ever lived. And he's going to sit here and say, hey, this is what I went through. This is what I learned about it. This may be helpful in your journey because he's at the end of his life.

Starting point is 00:16:30 He dies four years from now. And he's unfortunately in very poor health and kind of lost his spirit shortly after he published this book. And so I think about it's like these are the ideas that were useful for my life. My life's at the end. I'm documenting them. So future generations, it may help you with your journey as you progress through your life. And so some of this is just random highlights that I thought, hey, this is really smart.

Starting point is 00:16:52 I want to remember it. And if I want to remember it, I might as well tell you. And one of the main themes that he talks about over and over again is the importance of education and how he defines it is fantastic. So he said, learn it hand. And that's the guy's actual name. He's actually a judge. He was a U.S. Circuit Court judge. So Van Bush is about to quote from him.

Starting point is 00:17:09 So he said, Learned Hand remarked that while both men and monkeys are curious and monkey around, man remembers and transmits his experiences to the next generation, which is exactly what Bush is doing, right? And the monkey does not. So in the end, man keeps the monkey in a cage. The writing of this book is so crisp. Like, I hope you buy it. This is a fantastic paragraph. The essence, and to me, this is the end of the paragraph.

Starting point is 00:17:34 To me, he is really defining what he, like, his definition of education, right? The essence of civilization is the transmission of the findings of each generation to the next and then he's going to talk about this process you and i are going to fit into this group you and i fit into the group currently one day we will be the older generation transmitting all that we learned to the next generation but right now we're the many young people so he says many young men like to get the oldsters talking, provided the talk helps them pick up a better grasp of human nature, to discern neat ways around obstacles, and to realize how the formal relations of men are intertwined with personal relations.

Starting point is 00:18:19 I'm not done with the paragraph. I want to pause there. So he's saying, why are young people learning from old people? Because they're hoping to learn something that helps them through life. We mean, you just covered that, right? But this idea is something he repeats over and over again. He thinks of him primarily himself, primarily as an engineer. And so something he's also going to repeat is that it's not good enough just to have great, to build great inventions, to grow great products, great research organizations. You have to understand the ways of men. And that is the first hint that he gives us that, hey, you need to realize that formal relations of men, what we think is professional relationships are actually intertwined with the personal relationships behind

Starting point is 00:18:55 the professional relationships. And he'll remark time and time again, how malleable the world is when you have a personal relationship with somebody in power and that learning how to cultivate these relationships is fundamental to having to actually achieving the goal that you have and so somebody that he wound up having a professional relationship and then had to learn how to build a fundamentally profound personal relationship was FDR and he says listen I didn't like FDR's political theories or his policies, but that was irrelevant. I had to build a personal relationship with him because we were working together and he was the person in charge. He could make me, just on the basis of our personal relationship, he could make me effective

Starting point is 00:19:35 or ineffective. So given that series of choices, what do you do? You build that personal relationship. That is a main theme that I picked up on in the book. So let's go back to this paragraph because the second half of the paragraph is really exactly why founders exist and why you and I get together and go over these books, right? It may well be worthwhile to recite a few events here and there with the thought that through them, meaning his experiences, some chap, I love that he calls everybody a chap, by the way, some chap coming along a similar road may learn something. Not be taught, but learn something that will ease his journey. And then I have to include one sentence because you might get to this podcast like, David, why didn't you talk about the Manhattan Project? Why didn't you talk about the development of radar, which is what Van Bush is, you know, he's tied to these things. And his point is like, listen, nothing in this book I'm going to cover if it had if it's been covered exhaustively and extensively elsewhere so he says i do not review in any detail the drive towards control of the atom or the birth of radar for those have been described many times and then

Starting point is 00:20:32 from here we just have like random sentences or thoughts and in some cases they might turn in aphorisms into your brain that are just going to be helpful that i thought were interesting this is just a great line we cannot help the weak unless we are strong. Therefore, much of this book will be devoted to how we can keep our business rolling in the right direction. He wants you to be on an individual basis and on a country level, rich and strong and smart. So he's constantly talking about using technology to grow the size of the economy. Another random piece of advice. Humans are always going to claim to know things that they can't or they don't know. And so at this point in history, they're saying, hey, by the year 2000,

Starting point is 00:21:11 there's going to be so many people, we're not going to be able to feed them. And this is what Van said about that. I hear that by the year 2000, there will be so many people on Earth that they can't possibly be fed. I don't believe it. And he uses the basis of not believing that as the fact that these predicted disasters throughout human history have been overcome through intelligence and innovation. And then we get to a

Starting point is 00:21:30 point where he has explicit advice for us. Really think about this next paragraph is like, this is what Van Bush wants us to do. And this is why if you're going to pick a mentor, if you're going to pick up a book in hopes of getting a mentor, he's one of the best people you can actually use to serve that function in your life because he holds you to a very high standard. We need a revival of the essence of the old pioneer spirit that conquered the forests and the plains, that looked at its difficulties with a steady eye, labored and fought, and left its thinking and its philosophy for later and quieter times. This is not a call for optimism. It is a call for determination. A lot of the book has to do with what's taking place in World War II.

Starting point is 00:22:09 He's seeing what is an effective organization, what is an effective government, what is an effective leadership, and what is not. And this he's about to talk about on a country level or maybe even on an organization level. I think it applies for the purposes of you and I on a company level. There are two primary ways in which to lose a battle or a campaign, assuming nearly equal antagonists. One is to have confused lines of authority. And so he repeats that over and over again. You have to have one person in charge, and everybody else has to know that they're in charge. I think he uses an example of like Truman, President Truman doing this effectively later, where they're having like a cabinet meeting and one of the cabinet members like, hey, we're going to you know, we're seeking consensus.

Starting point is 00:22:46 It's like, no, Truman. Truman's like, no, that's not what we're doing at all. You guys are here to give me advice, but I get to make the decision and I will make the decision. This is not, oh, there's 10 of us and we have to get to six of us to agree. And so Bush is going to use examples over and over again of that. He's like, you cannot have confused lines of authority and says the other is to have a top. This is how you lose is to have a top commander with poor judgment. History is lines of authority. And says the other is to have a top, this is how you lose, is to have a top commander with poor judgment. History is full of examples.

Starting point is 00:23:10 And so he uses the example a few times in the book. Even if you assume the Germans and the Americans were equal military might, the Germans were going to lose because they had Hitler in charge. You had a top commander with extremely poor judgment, and most likely high out of his mind, by the way. And one example of his poor judgment that Bush uses and that you and I have talked about in past podcasts is the fact that a lot of the scientific achievements in the world happening at this time came from Jewish scientists and physicists, and Hitler expelled them out of the country,

Starting point is 00:23:38 and many of their ideas flowed to the Allies. So let's go over that real quick. You need two ways that you're going to lose is you have confused lines of authority. That's number one. And the other is you have the top commander with poor judgment. And so then he talks about telling a story about how organizations kind of get bureaucratic and they move really slow. And even during times of war, you had to overcome this where you had better technology. So he tells the story of something called like the Orla Khan gun and the different countries adopted this superior technology at different times and that the difference was the individual.

Starting point is 00:24:09 And so I'm just going to give you the punch line here because the story goes on for a long time. But he says it is pleasant to turn to situations where conservatism or lethargy was overcome by far seeing energetic individuals. Amen. The way I think about what he's talking about there is like, listen, this roadblock, right, was overcome by a person, one person, a far-seeing and energetic individual. This reminds me of what my friend Sam Hinckley says. One of the best lines I've ever heard him say is that people are really a power law and that the best ones can change everything. And so then Bush is describing what the state of affairs was before America jumps into the war. And really, you could think about this is the problem. You know, he's working hand in hand. He's coordinating private engineering

Starting point is 00:24:57 and science with the government. Right. So the way I think about this paragraph is this is the problem that he had to solve. We were agreed that the war was bound to break out into an intense struggle, that America was sure to get into it one way or another sooner or later, and that it would be highly technical struggle, and that we were by no means prepared in this regard. And most importantly, that the military system as it existed and as it had operated during World War I would never fully produce the new instruments that we would certainly need. So in other words, how do we win a highly technical war? We do it with engineering, innovation, and science.

Starting point is 00:25:34 So then looking back after the war, he's like, okay, well, who actually made the technical contributions during World War II? And you can think about it like, who makes the actual innovations that turn into products today? And so he says, I had plenty to do. Second, I made no technical contribution whatsoever to the war effort.

Starting point is 00:25:50 Not a single technical idea of mine ever amounted to shucks. At times, I have been called an atomic scientist. This is hilarious. This is the first indication of this cheeky, you know, that's one way to put it, irreverent personality that Bush had. It would be fully as accurate to call me a child psychologist. Now he's going to tell us where the actual technical ideas came from. The key ideas arose in the special groups that were working for months and years with the problems. And they arose from nowhere else.

Starting point is 00:26:23 So you can think of half the book as, hey, how do you make yourself into a formidable individual? And then formidable individuals to be truly effective, they have to know how to build organizations that can actually function. And so he's going to go back and forth between those two messages. This is the first example. I wrote companies are benevolent dictatorships. And then Jeff Bezos' idea that slow decision making can actually push away good people, which I'll get to. This is now Bush talking. There should never be throughout an organization any doubt as to where authority for making decisions resides or any doubt that they will be promptly made. And then he gives us an example and then you'll see his personality. I remember one time when a section

Starting point is 00:27:01 walked into my office and resigned as a body, so a group of people, okay? So I just told them, one does not resign in a time of war. You chaps, get the hell out of here and get back to work, and I will look into it. They did, and I did. And so his point being, they knew that he was the one in charge. Jeff Bezos has this idea, so he says, okay, first of all, there can be no doubt. They have to know where the authority for making decisions lies, right? And then not only that, once you have the decision, you cannot make decisions slowly. This is something that Jeff Bezos realized in building

Starting point is 00:27:32 Amazon. And he has this, this comes from the book, Invent and Wander. It's number 155, episode 155 of Founders, which is all of Jeff Bezos' shareholder letters, but also transcripts of his speeches. It's a fantastic book. If you don't have it already, I'd order it right away. And then, of course, listen to the episode 155. But this is Jeff Bezos on why slow decision-making repels A players. And Jeff says, you can drive away great people by making the speed of decision-making really slow. Why would great people stay in an organization where they can't get things done? They look around after a while and they're like, look, I love the mission, but I can't get my job

Starting point is 00:28:08 done because our speed of decision-making is too slow. And then another piece of advice is demonstrated through his interaction with FDR. And he thought that FDR was one of the best bosses you could ever have, even if he didn't like his politics. And he said, I told FDR that he had handed me a hot potato and I might have to go bump some heads together. He said, you go ahead and bump them and I'm going to back you up. I had been appalled. He's talking about previously before I had a personal relationship with FDR. I had been appalled at some of FDR's political theory and practice. But when war came, I took the attitude that loyalty to the chief must be absolute and untarnished.

Starting point is 00:28:42 That is the get rid of anyone that is not loyal to you and your company mission. Part of the advice. And he talks about why he thought FDR was a great leader. He gave me a tough job to do, never interfere with me, and always back me up in a pinch. What more could one ask? So the idea is you give your team a tough job to do, you don't interfere with them, you actually allow them to do the job you hired them to do. And then you always back them up when need be. And the end result is Bush had fierce loyalty to FDR. Then he talks about how do you deal with personal biases and personal quirks of humanity? And so one case, like you have this older generation that had come from World War I. Now they're still around during World War II. And they had a mistaken view in Bush's eyes of what

Starting point is 00:29:23 an engineer actually does. So the way he gets around that is he renames his engineers. He is leading a group of engineers, and he just calls them scientists to get around this personal human bias. Among older military men, the engineer was at first regarded as a thinly disguised salesman, and hence they kept them at arm's length. In this mistaken view, the engineer was a kind of second-class citizen compared to the scientist. This is the way things were at first in our relations with the military in our war effort. So all of my personnel were promptly renamed scientists. And the result was now the military man was like, oh, okay. I mean, the same exact person goes to present to the people in charge of the military,

Starting point is 00:30:02 and they say, hey, I'm an engineer, and they're dismissed. That same person is now a scientist and they're listened to. So then he has an entire chapter dedicated to getting around stumbling blocks, right? So anything that gets in the way of what you're trying to achieve on an individual or an organizational level. I'm going to read the last sentence of this paragraph at the beginning because I think it is actually really important to understand. He's telling us how to get around these stumbling blocks. And he says, the justification of what you're doing, okay, is the importance of the work and the depth of one's commitment to it. So that's how this ends. This is how it begins. When he knows that stumbling blocks may get in the way of a joint effort in which he is engaged, a man who is light on his

Starting point is 00:30:42 feet tries to anticipate them, to figure out where they may arise and why, and how best to evade them. This means that he tries to figure out strategies to get them out of the way so that the work can go ahead. Planning strategies means taking into account the personal quirks of some individual who almost always is the source of the blockade. So he says usually you could trace these blocks, these people that are getting in your way down to a single individual. He says you take into account the personal quirks of some individual who almost always is the source of the blockade and devise ways to annul his blockade by disarming him, by avoiding him, or if by necessary,

Starting point is 00:31:20 knocking him on the head, figuratively of course. The justification for your actions is the importance of the work and the depth of your commitment to it. A few pages later, just one line I want to call here. This is very similar to how Steve Jobs organized Apple. And Bush says, Rigid lines of authority do not produce the best innovations. When I just reread for episode 265,

Starting point is 00:31:44 I read Becoming Steve Jobs, The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader. It's a biography of Steve Jobs that I've read now for the second time. I came across this thing I missed the first time, and that's Steve the Synthesizer. And so it says, research projects, you're talking inside Apple now, right? So Bush just told us, hey, rigid lines of authority don't produce the best innovations. Research projects flowered in pockets all around the company, many of them without Steve's blessing or even awareness. They would come to Steve's attention only if one of his key managers decided

Starting point is 00:32:13 that the project or technology showed real potential. In that case, Steve would check it out, and the information he would glean would go into the learning machine that was his brain. Sometimes that's where it would sit and nothing would happen. Sometimes, on the other hand, he'd concoct a way to combine it with something else that he'd seen, or perhaps to twist it in a way to benefit an entirely different project altogether. This was one of his great talents, the ability to synthesize separate developments and technologies into something previously unimaginable. And I think

Starting point is 00:32:46 a way to summarize what's taking place in that Steve Jobs biography is using the words of Van Bush, rigid lines of authority do not produce the best innovations. And so then he's got a great story about some of the people that he works with. I think this guy actually reports to him. And the note I put myself on this page is be like Putnam. This guy's fantastic. So it says, now Putnam, he was a go-getter. In fact, so much, so much so that I had occasional demands from the more unadventurous individuals in our organization that Putnam be tamed or suppressed. Demands which, of course, never budged me. Putnam had some of the characteristics of the best type of promoter in industry. He was well-liked by men with lots of drive and often disliked by those with less.

Starting point is 00:33:27 What a great line. He was well-liked by men with lots of drive and often disliked by those with less. That brought to mind one of my favorite books I've ever read for the podcast. It was actually his biography on Joseph Pulitzer, the guy that the Pulitzer Prize is named after. It's episode 135 if you haven't listened to it yet. But in the early days of his career when he's starting out, the people that he worked with didn't like him because he outworked them so much. And there's a great line in that book that I have saved on my phone and it's describing a young Joseph Pulitzer and it says he was so industrious that he became a

Starting point is 00:33:59 positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work. Be like Putnam, be like Pulitzer. And then I want to give you an illustration of his personality in that Bush is not backing down. He is going to fight you. And so he gets into a lot of rows, which that's the term he uses for fight. He gets into good rows is the way he says it. So he gets into a fight with actually the admiral, the head admiral of the Navy. And so he's describing a typical interaction that he has with Admiral King. And he says, characteristically, our discussion opened as follows. King would scowl and say, I have agreed to meet with you, but this is a military question and it must be decided on a military basis to which you can hardly contribute. So I told him it is a combined military and technical question.

Starting point is 00:34:43 And on the latter, you are a babe in arms and not entitled to an opinion. This was a good start to our discussion. And then we see a little bit of his ego. This is why I said I don't think anybody would actually describe him as humble. In fact, some of the people that worked with him and fought with him the most and wound up respecting him said that he was a vain man, a very, very vain man, but he had a right to be vain. And so Bush is talking, said that he was a vain man, a very, very vain man, but he had a right to be vain. And so Bush is talking about the role he was playing. He's like, listen, my rank,

Starting point is 00:35:09 he didn't say, listen, that was me. He said, my rank in the hierarchy of war was never defined, but it certainly was not minor. And so Alfred Lee Loomis, who I read a biography about, it was back on Founders 143. Alfred Lee Loomis is probably the most interesting man that most people don't know about. He wound up making an entire fortune on Wall Street and then retiring with a bag full of money right after the Depression and opening this palace of science that is called Tuxedo Park. So that's what the entire book is about. It's episode 143. And he played a role in developing technology and science that was used by the allies in World War II. And he also happened to be the cousin of the secretary of war who had fdr's ear so anyways the reason i bring this up to you is because i don't think that bush was just being

Starting point is 00:35:55 arrogant when he says listen just because my my role in the war was not my like my hierarchy was never accurately defined doesn't mean it was minor because Because Alfred Lee Loomis is on record saying, hey, out of every single American that if they died, their death would cause the greatest setback to the American war effort in World War II. Number one is FDR. And he says Van Bush would be second or third. And so then he has an entire chapter where he puts people into categories of this thing called Tyro, an amateur and a professional. And this is one of the this is one of tyro, an amateur, and a professional. This is one of the longer highlights, actually. This is a very fast thing.

Starting point is 00:36:29 I think you'll like this. This chapter has to do with tyros, amateurs, and professionals. And it is necessary to define the terms as I use them here. The tyro is a freewheeler in an organization. He also got this name because the Romans would call a new recruit a tyro. The tyro is a freewheeler in an organization who gums up the work. He hates tyros. I should tell you that before he describes them. Who gums up the works because of his arrogant ignorance, often because he filches authority that does not belong to him. He operates because his boss doesn't know what he is doing or knows and doesn't care. He can throw any organization into confusion. So that is why he hates Tyros. His breed should be exterminated

Starting point is 00:37:11 for the good of society. And then he makes the point that if you've worked in a complex organization, you've run into this type of person. Everyone who has ever worked in a complex pyramid organization recognizes that there are occasionally appears somewhere on the ladder of authority a dumb cluck who had to be circumvented if there's to be any progress whatsoever. So that is the Tyro. Then he's going to define what he feels is an amateur and a professional. And obviously you and I, I think, are striving to be professionals by this definition. The amateur is a far different breed of cat.

Starting point is 00:37:41 He is operating in a field in which he is at first in ignorance, but he can learn and he often does. And then he could become a professional. And a professional is a master of his craft. And then he makes the point to run an effective organization. You might have masters of your craft, of their craft working for you.

Starting point is 00:38:00 You may never master it to the level they will, but if you're a good judge, if one, you're doing the necessary research so you can actually understand what they're doing, even if it's a level below theirs, you can get ahead of by being an effective judge of the quality of the individual and their level of talent. So I'm just going to read this whole paragraph to you because I thought it was fantastic. A man of intelligence and only such will fill the need. So he's like, listen, if you're not smart, don't even attempt to do this because you're not going to be able to. So a man of intelligence and only such will fit the need can become well acquainted with a subject in a surprisingly short time if he puts his mind to it.

Starting point is 00:38:28 This is not to master it, but to arrive at a point where he speaks the language and can judge whether a proposal before him has been thought through. If a man is a good judge of men, he can go far on that skill alone. Then he's got good advice for leaders that you have to control your emotions. You should not be showing your emotions to the outside. I made plenty of mistakes and the worst one was that I got mad. It is all right to get mad and it's all wrong to show it. I showed it. So in this book, he mentions a bunch of people that I've done past podcasts on and I'll leave in the show notes on your podcast player and also at founderspodcast.com. I'll leave anybody he mentions that I've done a podcast on, I'll leave the name and the episode

Starting point is 00:39:09 number. One of them is J. Robert Oppenheimer. And he wanted, he actually spoke about him quite a bit because he thought that the way he was treated after the war was disgraceful. And so he describes Oppenheimer. He says, as an example of an able man's genius and adaptability, I turned to Robert Oppenheimer. And the reason I select him among a thousand will be clear to all his friends. He did a grand job for us, and after the war, we treated him shamefully. His was a profoundly complex character. A character, in fact, which could be analyzed only by one who knew him well and who was equally profound.

Starting point is 00:39:43 Certainly, many of his fellow citizens failed to understand him. And then this takes a surprising turn. So he says, so my comment will be brief. I simply record a poem which he recited to me two nights before Alamogordo. So he's referencing the first ever explosion of the atomic bomb. And this is the poem that Oppenheimer is reading to Bush two days before this happens. In battle, in the forest, at the precipice in the mountains, on the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows, in sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame, the good deeds a man has done before defend him. And then he has an entire chapter on inventions and inventors. And the way I think about Bush is he's an ally and an evangelist for entrepreneurship.

Starting point is 00:40:33 And so next to this sentence, I just wrote, amen. We need to pioneer by creating new things, new small companies, and new ways of competing in international trade. And then he goes into why it's so important and why it's so difficult. Industrial progress is essential if the nation is to be strong and industrial progress in no small measure depends upon the creative ingenuity of individuals who can generate new ideas. The whole history of the United States

Starting point is 00:40:56 has been marked by that fact from the days of Benjamin Franklin or Eli Whitney to our own. But then here's the problem. But the nature of inventors and inventions is not well understood. That is that was the case in 1970 when he's writing this or 1970s when he's writing this too. And it's still the case today by the nature of there's really no formula for it. If you really think about what what the problem is, the nature of

Starting point is 00:41:19 inventors and inventions is not well understood. Difficulties often encountered in bringing an invention into production and use. And maybe you could even rewrite that sentence that difficulty is always encountered. It's not often, it's always encountered in bringing a new idea into production and use. Industries can get bogged down and stagnate. And so to ensure that things move forward, the rise of small independent companies is essential.

Starting point is 00:41:43 And on the next page, he continues to expound on this idea. And I wrote, holy shit, this is good. And so Bush writes, an invention has some of the characteristics of a poem. It is said that a poet may derive real joy out of making a poem, even if it's never published. Even if he does not recite it to his friends. Even if it is not a very good poem. No doubt, one has to is not a very good poem. No doubt one has to be a poet to understand this. And so for our purposes, one has to be a founder or at least

Starting point is 00:42:10 have founder mentality to understand this. In the same way, an inventor can derive real satisfaction out of making an invention, even if he never expects to make a nickel out of it, even if he knows it's a bit foolish, provided he feels it involves ingenuity and insight an inventor invents because he cannot help it and also because he gets quiet fun out of doing so sometimes he even makes money at it but not by himself one has to be an inventor to understand this that may be my favorite paragraph in the book. And then he goes right into this night that he has with Orville Wright. So he's talking about, he starts out, he says,

Starting point is 00:42:49 hey, listen, an invention has some of the characteristics of a poem. And to understand that, you have to be a poet. Then he talks, he ties that idea to why a poem is similar to an invention. And to understand that, you have to be an inventor. And then he says, hey, guess what? I'm an inventor, and so was Wright. And we're having dinner, and this is what happened. One evening in Dayton, I dined alone with Orville Wright. During a long evening, we discussed inventions we had made

Starting point is 00:43:11 that had never amounted to anything. He took me up to his attic and showed me models of various weird gadgets. I had plenty of similar efforts to tell him about. Neither of us would have thus spilled things except to a him about. Neither of us would have thus spilled things except to a fellow practitioner. One who had enjoyed the elation of creation and who,

Starting point is 00:43:33 damn, that's another good line. One who enjoyed the elation of creation and who knew that such elation is to a true devotee independent of practical results. So it is also, I understand, with poets. I'm going to leave that entire two paragraphs in the show notes. I think you should copy and keep it. That's

Starting point is 00:43:55 fantastic. Then he spends a lot of time talking about like, where does innovation occur and why do we see it constantly occurring from outside? And so he says, in an industry that has become closely standardized, where nearly all competing companies are comfortably making profits, minor improvements can readily be introduced. But major improvements are up against a stone wall. The prosperous company sees no need to change. The borderline company cannot afford the cost. And so the example I always use for this is think about the incentives.

Starting point is 00:44:26 When James Dyson, this is episode 200, I think I tell the story on. When James Dyson invents the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner, he initially tries to sell his invention to the companies that are currently making, that at the time were making $500 million a year selling vacuum bags. And then he couldn't understand. He's like, why don't you want to buy my new superior invention? It's a better vacuum cleaner. And all he had to think about was their incentives because if they bought your vacuum cleaner, then they can't make $500 million a year selling bags.

Starting point is 00:44:56 And so then Bush continues his point that this trend is pronounced in maturing industries. And he says, it is also true that in the young industry, there are usually plenty of courageous pioneers. He loves that word, pioneers. There are usually plenty of courageous pioneers. And the old industry tends to go to sleep. I mentioned on a past episode,

Starting point is 00:45:15 I don't even remember which one, recently in the last month or so, that when I was reading Mark Andreessen's 200-page blog archive, all the way back on Founders Number 50, that he has this great heuristic on deciding on what industry you should work in. And he says, when picking an industry to enter, my favorite rule of thumb is this. Pick an industry where the founders of the industry,

Starting point is 00:45:38 which is the founders of the important companies in the industry, are still alive and actively involved. Bush is saying something similar here, that old industry tends to go to sleep. You're not going to find a lot of courageous young pioneers in old industries. And since he's talking about inventing and inventors, he's saying, being an inventor is not enough. And we understand this because founders have to learn this. If you're a successful founder, you've already learned what he's about to tell us here. The point is that an invention is valueless unless it is joined with a number of other accomplishments, promotion, financing,

Starting point is 00:46:14 development, engineering, marketing, and so on. If the independent inventor believes otherwise, his invention will turn out to be a liability. So Bush doesn't spend too much time in the fact that he helped co-found Raytheon, which wound up being a giant company that lasted almost 100 years. But he does talk about some time, like he's working at this thing called AMRAD. AMRAD was the American Radio and Research Corporation. Out of AMRAD and some of the work that he was doing at the time comes this invention of these radio tubes. That invention and the formation of the company is what makes Bush wealthy later on. But I just want to point, he doesn't really talk about that too much in the book, but I want to point out something that he discovered when he

Starting point is 00:46:53 was a young researcher at AMRAD. And it's this very unusual way to interview somebody for a job interview. And his interview process is like, hey, I can't figure something out. I have a problem. If you could solve it, you can get hired. It's actually pretty smart. At Amrad, I hired a young physicist from Texas named C.G. Smith. The way I hired him is interesting. An interview of that sort, like a job interview of that sort, is always likely to be on an artificial basis and somewhat embarrassing. So I discussed with him a technical point on which then I was genuinely puzzled. The next day he came in with a neat solution. And so I hired him at once. I think that's actually way better than a normal job interview. Like I actually liked that idea a lot. It's like, Hey, I got this problem. I can't solve the company

Starting point is 00:47:36 that I'm working with or working for needs a solution. You want a job, solve the problem. I love that idea. And then later on, he's talking about Alexander Graham Bell and the invention of the telephone. He goes and talks about Thomas Edison. But he makes the point, like, you may have one individual that we know. Everybody knows Bell's name. But for Bell to actually achieve what he, like, to bring his invention to market and to make it actually useful so that it could benefit people, right? You need all these people you never hear of. And so he continues this, like, he's, like, preaching this gospel of, hey, we need industrial progress. And to have industrial progress, you need hear of. And so he continues this, he's like preaching this gospel of, hey,

Starting point is 00:48:05 we need industrial progress and to have industrial progress, you need industrial pioneers. And some of them you're going to know their name of, and some of them you won't, but they should be celebrated. And so he talks about, it's like, why do I keep bringing up? It's recited because it would be well if people recognize the debt that society owes to the quiet workers whom we never hear of, especially those who are led on by their curiosity and their desire to explore with very little thought about a claim or fortune. It would also be well if people in this country generally regarded with more respect the industrial pioneers who are willing to take a chance and who furnish a very necessary element in commercial progress. If these people are not present and active, very little progress is likely to happen.

Starting point is 00:48:51 Then he has more advice for inventors or, in my opinion, company builders. And he says, if you wish to invent usefully, you must not attempt to do it in isolation or to shield yourself from criticism. Criticism is inevitable. I mean, you go to the early episodes of Founders, and every time I had this section called Critics Don't Know Shit, because you had people telling, you know, like the famous examples. You had Sam Walton was working at JCPenney. His manager saying, Sam, sorry to tell you this,

Starting point is 00:49:16 but you're just not cut out for retail. He told maybe the greatest retailer of all time that he's not good enough to do it. It's silliness. So Bush's point, and I think the larger point in these stories that you can derive yourself, is that it's a constant. It should be expected. So don't try to run away from it. So he says, you must not attempt to do this in isolation or shield yourself from criticism. The world is full, and this is why he's telling us this, the world is full of would-be inventors who do just that. They never invent anything

Starting point is 00:49:43 worthwhile. And then Bush brings up his friend, Edwin Land. He's going to say some crazy stuff here. And this makes me feel good. Like it feels like, it makes me feel like I'm on the right track that I keep like evangelizing. Hey, founders, please study Edwin Land. You have literally like the guy that Steve Jobs meets when he's in his twenties. Steve is in his twenties. Edwin Land's in his 70s saying, hey, this guy's my hero. Takes a ton of ideas that Edwin Land used to build Polaroid and then builds Apple, which is one of the most valuable companies that have ever been in existence. Why if Jobs studied him, why aren't we? And so this is crazy because Van Bush, who's one of the most formidable people you can come across, is saying to you and I right now in this book, hey, my friend Edwin Land, he's one of the most ingenious and wisest person

Starting point is 00:50:26 I've ever met. That's insane. And I'm so happy I found this paragraph. The background to this paragraph, he's talking about patents. So it says, certainly if a company operates only under patents it owns and infringes on no others, its monopoly should not be disturbed

Starting point is 00:50:39 and the courts should hold that view. An excellent example is Polaroid Corporation, founded by Edwin Land, one of the most ingenious men I ever knew, and also one of the wisest. Polaroid has grown and prospered because of his inventions and those of his team. No one will deny that this accomplishment has benefited the country, and it demonstrates the operation of the patent system at its best so again he's saying hey edwin land is one of the most ingenious think about the people that bush interacted with over his lifetime and for him to say that edwin land is the most ingenious man and also one of the wisest people i've ever met if you haven't listened

Starting point is 00:51:21 to any of the podcasts i've made i've read like five or six five books on edwin land multi i've done i think seven podcasts on him just go back to the ones i've did recently and then you could go deeper if you want to it's a 264 and 263 in those podcasts i will mention all the other podcasts i did on them as well but again if if jobs is studying land then why aren't you and i promise once you dive in edwin land you're like oh i should have been reading about this guy the whole time. And then he ends this absolutely fantastic chapter. Even if you buy the book, first of all, I paid $24 for this thing. Come on. Even if you just read chapter four, or excuse me, it's called chapter five of Inventions and Inventors. I think it's worth the price of admission. And in the forward, Ben makes the point that you actually don't have to

Starting point is 00:52:02 read the book in chronological order. I read the book in chronological order. But after I finished, I realized that he was correct. But even if you just picked it up to read, and they're rather long chapters. It's only like eight chapters, the entire book, I think. But my point being is like the price of admission for the book, just to read chapter five of Inventions and Inventors for Founders makes perfect sense. This is the way he ends the chapter is fantastic. I just wrote one incredible paragraph. We need inventors and inventions,

Starting point is 00:52:28 and we need to encourage them. In particular, we need to encourage the entrepreneurs, those who supply venture capital, those who have the nerve to take inventions over the initial bumps to create new companies, to offset our trend toward industrial giants. Incidentally, we must discourage parasites and wheeler-dealers in this area as well as others. But above all, we need better understanding of the whole complex affair, on the part of legislators, the court, and the public. There will be no lack of inventions. Genuine inventors just can't help inventing. But we want more successful ones. And to get them requires better understanding.

Starting point is 00:53:10 And then he has an interesting story from when he was teaching a graduate course at MIT as the professor. And to me, it's a really illustration of as we age and go through life, we're going to play different roles. And to make sure that we're helping the next generation as possible and not setting up blockades for them. And so in this field of study, Van Bush had gone from being able to write a textbook on it to realizing that his students have now surpassed their teacher. So he says, one spring I received a shock. With these two chaps, I was putting together a final examination. So he's got teaching assistants, okay? Those are the two chaps that he's referencing.

Starting point is 00:53:44 So he says, I was putting together the final examination with these chaps. Suddenly I came to the realization that they knew more about the subject than I did. In some ways, this was not strange. They were concentrating on it, and I was getting involved in other things. But it hit me hard, and right there I decided that I was not going to get in the way of younger men. And that when the time came that I could not compete genuinely with them, I would get out. I have acted in accord with that decision many times since and in the process of doing so have found stimulation in trying to learn new things,

Starting point is 00:54:17 relief in not being in competition with younger men, and satisfaction in watching those men succeed without having me as an obstacle. So I've come across that idea before. I read P.T. Barnum's biography. It's all the way back on Founders number 137. And I read P.T. Barnum's biography because if you're studying the history of entrepreneurship, you'd be surprised. If I could take every single book and have a way to search it, I think the name P.T. Barnum comes up more frequently than any other name. It's almost become like shorthand for somebody good at promotion and showmanship. And so I had heard the name, you know, I heard Barnum and Bailey Circus. So I'm reading the whole book and I get to the end. I'm like, where the hell is

Starting point is 00:54:59 where's this Bailey guy? Like, when are you guys going to start the circus? Barnum had all these other businesses that he was world famous from. He might've been one of the most famous people in the world at the time when there was almost no such thing as a celebrity. But anyways, he winds up at the very, like, it's like the last few chapters, he winds up meeting and competing with other people that are trying to put on circuses and it's Barnum. And I think he's got two other partners. And so Barnum initially tries to compete with these younger men. They're like a generation or two younger than him. And they're kind of kicking his ass.

Starting point is 00:55:26 And he does something smart. First, he says something I'm going to read from the book. He says, Barnum was also impressed by how well the three younger men had turned the tables on him. They were using his own methods against him. And this is what he said. They were foes worthy of my steel. So once he realized, okay, they're worthy competitors. I can't be dismissive just because I'm famous and rich. And he had like all these ups and downs with his

Starting point is 00:55:48 finances, but that's really beside the point, I guess I'm making here, but he just thinks, sorry, he's like, okay, they're worthy adversaries. They're foes worthy of my steel. And then he's like, I'm not going to try to compete with these younger men, which is exactly what Bush is saying. He's like, in Barnum's case, like we're going to partner. And so they wind up, that's where Barnum and Bailey circus comes from. This decision by PT Barnum is like, let Barnum's case, like we're going to partner. And so they wind up, that's where Barnum and Bailey circus comes from. This decision by PT Barnum is like, let's not compete. You're my equal in this domain. Let's partner up.

Starting point is 00:56:11 And so that's what popped to mind, to my mind, when I read this paragraph about him making this decision. It's like, okay, I was a pioneer in the beginning of this field of study, so much so that I could write a book on it. But now the students have become the teachers. They have surpassed me. So let me get out of their way. So another thing Bush is an advocate for is having hobbies. In fact, he has an entire chapter dedicated on his love of engines and hobbies and all these things. But he's also talking about what I'm going to point the section I want to

Starting point is 00:56:41 pull out to you on this chapter is on growing old and he thinks hobbies become even more important as you grow old he says the essence of hobbies is the fact that one does not have to take a thing seriously in order to get fun out of it there has been a lot written about hobbies they provide release when one is working intensely and they save lives when men retire there is nothing more pathetic than the man who retires and does not then know what to do. Adverse aspects of growing old and retiring press heavily upon us. The joints creak, the eyes grow dim, memory falters, and skills become obsolete. But there are some bright compensations.

Starting point is 00:57:24 One can sit in the shade and watch young men sweat under the sun. Timetables are discarded. One can look out at the snow and decide not to go to the office today. Beauty of nature, the beauty of women, lose none of their benediction. They penetrate deeper into consciousness when the hot pace is over. And then he has an entire chapter on teachers and teaching, and he opens it up with just absolutely incredible writing. Life on this earth is becoming hectic. We marvel at the rockets and spaceships. We are fascinated and mystified by computers that run machines to build more computers.

Starting point is 00:58:02 We fret about a possible supersonic transport trailing supersonic booms across the nation, yet are eager for its great speed. We are staggered by the immensity of the universe as great telescopes and marvelously intricate space probes display it for us. We smile to ourselves as the cosmologists get the universe all sorted out to their satisfaction

Starting point is 00:58:23 and then find quasars that may make them start all over again. The physicists build atom smashers a mile long and discover so many sub-particles that they don't know what to do with them. The logicians struggle to pin down their language so that it will finally be precise, and then question whether it means anything whatsoever. We cure disease and face population explosion. We struggle to modify our legal and political systems to cope with the changes all around And then he goes into why he thinks teaching is a high calling, that the more we probe, the faster our field of ignorance expands.

Starting point is 00:59:09 And then he goes into why he thinks teaching is a high calling, and then he relates it to a personal experience, which he does not really expound on too much in this book, considering it's technically an autobiography. And he talks about the greatest teacher he ever had was his father. In writing this chapter, I've turned back to the memory of teachers I have known or suffered under, to some who I now recognize as men who had a genuine influence on my life. I doubt if how to teach can be taught. Techniques can be taught, but not the art. And the art, or its absence, is what makes the difference between good teaching and bad. When I think of teachers who have molded my own patterns of

Starting point is 00:59:41 thought, I think at once of my father. I acquired much from him, although I hardly realized it at the time. A lot of what he's picking up to his father is told through stories, and the lesson is not always explicitly stated. He expects you to read between the lines, and so it talks about when his own father was a young man. His family were strict Methodists, and religious strife in this area was intense. I remember my grandfather telling me about how one crowd wanted to build a church and brought the lumber in by ship. One of the competing Protestant faiths proceeded to burn all the lumber. They started again, brought in new lumber, and this time they sat over the lumber night and

Starting point is 01:00:21 day with shotguns until they got the building framed. And so the church was built. And one of the main lessons he learned from his father was that even though they picked different professions, his father was a clergyman, his father knew how to deal with people, which is a main theme throughout the book that Van repeats over and over again. He had an interest in all the people around him, and he understood them well. He had an uncanny sense of how to work with people of all sorts and I saw him do it. And then I double underline this sentence. I had pride in my father. I was fortunate in having, this is how he described his dad, this is the last he mentions of him,

Starting point is 01:00:58 I was fortunate in having right at hand the opportunity to observe a true teacher in action. Then he tells the story of one of the best professors and teachers he ever had. He actually does, Van does something really smart here. He actually reads the textbook before taking the class. So he says he used the textbook and in the summer before I was to take the course, I read it. Then I went to him in the fall and told him what I had done and asked if I could make some time available for other things I had in mind by taking the final exam in the course when it occurred. And if I remember

Starting point is 01:01:29 the story from the other book, The Endless Frontier, I'm pretty sure that he needed to work. He didn't have a lot of money early in his life. And so he's saying, hey, I already read the book. When the final exam happens, can I just get credit for the course by taking the final exam? And so instead, the professor's like, I'll just give it to you right now. So it says he gave me an examination right there. And then I went into the next room and worked on it. When I came back, he read it. Then he touched me on the shoulder and said he would ask the faculty to give me the credit at once, which they did. Now, this made an enormous impression on me. Think of this. This is happening 60, close to 60 years before he's writing this down. Or in other words words he's remembering this 60 years after

Starting point is 01:02:06 the fact think about how big of an impression something has to make has to make on you that you remember it six decades later and so he says now this made an enormous impression on me and he became my idol and the man i wanted to be like and the reason because he took a genuine personal interest in me and showed it i revere his. He was a cultured gentleman, proud of his profession, happy in the exercise of it. Subtly, by an obscure process of osmosis, some of his idealism became embedded in my subconscious mentality. He taught me pride of scholarly accomplishment, and he never said a word to me on that subject. And it's from these experiences and the other life experiences he has that he comes with a very unique way to think about education. So this is the way he says, that distinguishes man from beast. That ability began when the period of youthful dependence was lengthened

Starting point is 01:03:06 and family structure was strengthened for protection. It stepped ahead mightily when language developed to include abstract symbolism and when the written word supplanted speech. The expansion is still going on today as we build machines that handle data and communicate with one another. And then he goes back to the idea that being a truly great teacher cannot be taught. It is more art than anything else. Here we come to the criterion of which I spoke earlier, the interlinked qualities of primary importance in our evaluation of teachers. This is the spirit of success, the ability, the deep, subtle ability

Starting point is 01:03:46 to transmit the mysterious characteristic which inspires to emulation. And then I'll end here with Van's description of what a great teacher does. What is true in the college classroom is true in kindergarten as well. Every teacher, no matter the subject, needs to remember

Starting point is 01:04:05 that he is preparing most of his students for a life marked by a great duality. One part as a tiny element in a complex social structure, the other in informal relations with their fellows. As he remembers this and puts it to work in all he does, as he leads his student to be useful, but also to find joy in life, he is a great teacher. And that is where I'll leave it. For the full story, I highly recommend buying the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player,

Starting point is 01:04:37 you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. I will also leave a link to all the books available on Stripe Press. Check them out if you want. They're truly beautiful books. And as you buy more books and as you read more, if you want to remember more of what you read and you want to use the app that I use to save all my highlights and my notes, it's an app called Readwise. If you go to readwise.io forward slash founders, you can actually try Readwise for 60 days free. It's the best app I use. It's the best app that I pay for. And you can see if it's right for you 60 days for free. That is 270 books down 1000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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