从拿破仑、Steve Jobs、圣女贞德及其他领袖身上汲取的经验｜Ben Wilson
- 《How to Take Over the World》创作者Ben Wilson透露，自己确诊4期转移性神经内分泌癌。最初预后是1年；他查到，按自己的癌症类型和转移范围，5年生存率为0%。化疗让病情有所缓解，他即将开始使用tarlatamab。有一部分与他患同类癌症的患者已经用药2年，但药效还能持续多久仍不确定。如果药物失效，临床试验可能是一个选择；他也在研究定制mRNA疫苗能否增强药效。他的态度是：「同时过两种人生」（live two lives at once）——一种是自己可能在未来1年内离世，另一种是自己还有20年。
- 本期最具普适性的框架，是打破取舍困局：伟大的成果，往往始于想清楚什么不重要。Jobs在NeXT试图满足“所有优先事项”，结果做出一款延期、超支、过度设计的失败产品；10年后，他接受了iPod在某些方面的不足，因为除了用户体验，他认为“那些都不重要”。莱特兄弟把重点放在操控上，而非当时更显而易见的升力问题。
- Wilson提炼出征服者、艺术家和企业家身上的共同特质：愿景、沟通、专注；Senra则补上第4项——痴迷。Wilson最喜欢的愿景名言出自成吉思汗：“没有目标的愿景，一个人连自己的生活都无法掌控，更遑论他人的生活。”Wilson判断一个人是否痴迷的方法是看他对食物的态度：拿破仑、Jobs、Putin和圣女贞德都被描述为吃得很少，而“显然，重点不在食物”。
- 亚里士多德所说的“热忱”，是一种能推动成就的“痛苦”：21岁的Edison通宵读完Faraday传记后，宣称“我要努力拼搏”。Wilson希望节目里的各种故事能让听众找到一面历史镜子，产生“那个人和我很像。我也能做到他做过的事，只是我还没做到”的共鸣。
- 决心和真诚信念至关重要。Ben说Musk和Jobs都不是各自公司里最聪明的人，却有着非凡的决心：“乐观、悲观，都去他的。我就是要把它做成。”Phil Knight卖百科全书和共同基金屡屡碰壁，却成功卖出了Tiger鞋：“我想，关键是信念。信念势不可挡。”Senra把半信半疑的人称作“心怀二意”；Ben认为，成就大事需要真正的信念。
- 愿景清晰，就更容易得到帮助——Daniel Ek在Senra节目中说：“你很容易让人看明白，所以也很容易得到帮助。”Goethe的名言是Ben联系到Arnold Schwarzenegger故事时引用的：“当你下定决心的那一刻，整个宇宙都会合力相助。”Arnold明确说出目标后，午餐桌上的人纷纷主动帮忙，甚至把牛奶也给了他。
- Wilson的求助：赞助商Ramp、AppLovin和Deel没有投广告，而是向他的GoFundMe捐款；Senra则呼吁大家提供药物、引荐或捐款——“我们只需要再争取几年”。Wilson感谢Huntsman Cancer Institute为他提供了出色的治疗，也请听众想想是否有其他人比他更需要帮助。
1. 热忱是亚里士多德所说的“一种痛苦”——也是这档播客诞生的原因之一
- Wilson引用亚里士多德对热忱的定义：当你看到一个天性与你相近的人，已经做成了你有能力做到、却还没做到的了不起的事，就会感到“一种痛苦”。他最喜欢的例子是21岁的电报员Thomas Edison：他通宵读完Michael Faraday的传记，合上书后说：“Faraday做成了这么多事。我已经21岁了，可能活到50岁。我能做到和他一样多吗？我要努力拼搏。”凯撒仰望Alexander、Rockefeller立志成为Amos Lawrence那样的人，也都是同一种模式。
- Senra补充了一个佐证：有人问Edison，如果能用留声机复活一位逝者的声音，他会选谁；Edison跳过了Jesus，选了Napoleon——“我喜欢实干派”。
- Ben选择这种方式做节目，是因为热忱需要相似感。他对da Vinci毫无感觉——“研究他就像研究外星人”——所以希望《How to Take Over the World》丰富多样的故事，能让听众找到产生共鸣的那一个：“不，那个人和我很像。我也能做到他做过的事，只是我还没做到。”
2. 心智帝国：Wilson为何认同Disney，而非da Vinci
- Walt Disney“创造了心智帝国”：他算不上出色的插画师，却是能让人们认同某种美学愿景的创意领袖。Ben举自己的创作能力为例：节目的片头音乐是他用GarageBand自己做的——“60分钟的魔法”。两者的区别在于，da Vinci好奇的是事物本来的样子；Walt和Ben感兴趣的则是“事物可以变成什么样，以及从未有过的样子”。
- 说到创作过程，Newton的“废纸簿”——字面意思就是记废料的本子——可以给所有人借鉴：找个没有压力的地方把想法倒出来，或许就能有新发现。Senra转述Rick Rubin谈Eminem时的说法：Eminem写了几百本笔记本，最后“几乎一页都没用上”。Ben应对空白页的办法，是先故意写一个糟糕透顶的开头，比如“Leonardo da Vinci是位艺术家”，之后再改。
- Senra顺带谈到片头音乐，拿Jobs称上网本是“烂笔记本电脑”、转而把资源投向iPad作比，说明不该做不必要的产品。Ben的片头是“唯一一个让我觉得‘这个真棒’的例子”。
3. 两档播客源于同一个念头：“做死人版Tim Ferriss”
- 2018年，Ben一边跑步一边读Andrew Roberts写的Napoleon传记，正赶上连续听了几期自己并不感兴趣的Tim Ferriss访谈，他突然想到：“我可以做死人版Tim Ferriss”（Tim Ferriss for dead people）。他搜了一圈，发现没有这样的节目——即便只做出来给自己听，他也会很满足——于是就动手做了：先讲Napoleon，再讲Steve Jobs，“接下来8年的人生公式就此定了”。
- 两位创作者的起点彼此呼应：Senra回忆一段2012年的Musk视频，说Musk曾表示自己没有导师，于是去历史中寻找榜样。Senra把这种知识压缩的价值概括为：一个人40年的职业生涯，加上传记作者多年记录，读者用40小时读完，再用45分钟讲出来——对时间稀缺的人来说，“价值高得惊人”。
4. 打破取舍：最重要的顿悟，往往是知道什么不该做
- Jobs在NeXT的经历是反面教材：Carmel静修会上，创始团队讨论5项优先事项，Jobs拍板说“答案是全部都要”。结果机器延期交付、超出预算、设计过度，差点让NeXT破产，Jobs最终卖掉了硬件部门。Senra称之为“挣扎了13年”。两人都推荐《Steve Jobs in Exile》。
- 10年后，Jobs的思路彻底反转：和竞争对手的MP3播放器相比，iPod在存储容量和文件格式上都有缺陷，但Jobs说，除了让用户轻松找到音乐，“我不认为那些有多重要”（I don’t think any of that matters）。iPod最终成为史上最成功的产品之一。Musk在最初的Roadster上则做了相反的取舍：选择高端路线，而不是优先考虑续航和价格亲民；要让车跑得快、够酷、够“性感”。
- 莱特兄弟的故事最初给了Senra这个思路：飞行是“当时的AI”，几十个团队都在研究升力和推进力。Wilbur观察到鸟每秒都在微调动作，于是判断操控才是难点。兄弟俩在多风的North Carolina花了几年时间研究滑翔机；后来，Senra说：“他基本上把发动机装上去，事情就成了。”
- 这个道理之所以深刻，是因为如果把所有健康建议都照单全收——瑜伽、举铁、写日记、冥想——“你的晨间例行安排会一直排到下午1:00”。Ben引用Jobs那句“专注意味着说不”，讲自己的取舍：他不再帮别人制作播客，包括《My First Million》，关闭了自己的经纪公司，把精力放回自己的节目。
5. 伟大领袖的共同特质：愿景、沟通、专注，再加上痴迷
- Ben说，征服者、艺术家和企业家身上没有太多普遍规律，但有3项共通点：愿景、用适合自己的媒介传达愿景的能力，以及专注。他最喜欢的愿景名言出自成吉思汗，听起来“像2010年硅谷大师的建议”：“没有目标的愿景，一个人连自己的生活都无法掌控，更遑论他人的生活。”Ben认为Edwin Land和Jobs也有同样的特质。
- Senra提出第4项——痴迷；Ben表示认同：“人们不会写书讲那些普通、身心平衡的人。”之后还浮现出第5项：传道能力。Senra说Rockefeller想要“给混乱带来秩序”，并且能说服同一行业里已经成功的创始人出售公司、加入他的事业。
6. Edison≈Elon、清淡饮食、锐利眼神：软木板上的连线
- Musk自己也提过Edison的类比：“汽车公司叫Tesla，但很多方面我更像Thomas Edison。”Ben把两人的相似之处串在一起：他们小时候都被认为不聪明（Edison大多时候听不见；Ben猜测Elon可能有自闭症，也可能不善沟通）。David讲过一个故事：Edison的父亲贴出告示，邀请全镇来看他打年幼的儿子；据节目讨论的说法，Elon的父亲则在他大约10岁时对他连续吼了好几个小时。两人的祖父都是牧师，故事也惊人相似：他们分别朝相反方向逃过美加边境；Ben说，这种联系“会让你相信轮回”。
- 清淡饮食的规律让Ben觉得自己像个“在软木板上把线索一一连起来的人”：拿破仑说“想快点吃完，就跟我一起吃饭”（他15分钟就吃完晚餐）；Jobs曾连续几个月只吃苹果；Putin只吃一个水煮蛋；圣女贞德禁食——类似故事大约有20个。Ben的结论是：“显然，重点不在食物”；忘了吃饭是判断一个人是否痴迷的“很好的试金石”。
- 另一个相似之处是眼神锐利。Paul Johnson指出，《新约》经常写到Jesus看向哪里；Ben把这种特别的凝视也联系到了Jobs和Alexander Hamilton。（还有个奇怪的规律：他们往往脑袋很大，Oprah也算在内。）
7. Arnold、承诺，以及让自己更容易得到帮助
- Ben每年重读的书是《Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder》——只看前120页，后面都是训练内容——因为它不像回顾性传记，而是写于作者“正处在”那股痴迷之中。30岁的Arnold在书里讲述，自己打算把登上健美巅峰的那套方法用来建立商业帝国、在电影界取得成功。Senra说，Arnold回忆自己刚开始健美时，整个Austria只有5个健美运动员。Ben后来还提到，Arnold当上了California州长；在他看来，这基本上是一个在国外出生的人所能达到的最高公职。
- Goethe说：“当你下定决心的那一刻，整个宇宙都会合力相助。”Arnold说清自己的目标后，午餐桌上的人开始主动帮他，甚至把牛奶也给了他。
- Senra引用Daniel Ek的话补充道：“你很容易让人看明白，所以也很容易得到帮助。”Jobs从19岁到55岁，传达的信息始终清晰易懂；Senra录音桌上唯一一张便利贴写着：“极致出色的产品”。
8. 圣女贞德、Brigham Young、Jesus：清晰、坚持与复利
- Ben用圣女贞德说明什么叫目标清晰：在挥剑作战的中世纪，一个大约15岁、营养不良的女孩只有一个优先事项——“上帝站在我们这边。跟我来，我们必将胜利。”而法国国王、公爵和战场元帅各有各的盘算。法国人开始跟随她之后，战局就有了起色；她“除了专注和清晰的愿景，其他什么都没有”，但这就足够了。Ben说，她的故事“会让你开始相信神性”。
- 决心胜过智力：Senra提到Paul Graham的思想实验——智力拉满但没有决心，结果会是“聪明却无所作为”；反过来，决心足够强但智力不高，也可能成为靠垃圾清运生意发家的富人。Ben说Musk和Jobs不是各自公司里最聪明的人，却有着非凡的决心：“乐观、悲观，都去他的。我就是要把它做成。”
- Ben的曾曾祖父Brigham Young体现了“持续不断地行动”。The Strokes主唱谈到信奉摩门教、滴酒不沾的Brandon Flowers时说，别的乐队忙着派对，The Killers却又发了一张专辑——“你们能不能消停一会儿？”Ben说，竞争者发出这种抱怨，恰恰说明一个人有多坚持。
- Jesus让Ben看到复利的力量：早期基督教没有什么“一夜爆红”，而是几个世纪里每年增长约50%——这和《Shoe Dog》里Nike的发展轨迹类似。Senra说，他想找一本传记，讲清人们所知的Jesus，同时不依赖超自然说法，并推荐了Paul Johnson的传记。
9. 征服者站在人类成就的顶端；真诚信念不可或缺
- 如果只能研究一个类别，Ben会选征服者：人生由层层等级构成，而“最高的等级……就是暴力的等级”。征服者会委托创作伟大的艺术品，连最成功的商人最终也要听命于政治。“这就是人类成就的巅峰。”
- 除了Arnold的书，Ben每年还会重读《Ender’s Game》作为消遣，也会重读《Mind of Napoleon》。Senra说Napoleon把命运视作上帝；Ben引用Napoleon的话：“命运必须实现。这是我的首要信条。”Senra还说，Jobs真诚地信奉加州佛教，这份信念的真诚也是他们得以成功的原因之一。
- 反面例子是“心怀二意”——“心怀二意的人，所行的一切都不稳定”——就像那位为保住王位而改信新教的法国国王，他说“巴黎值得一场弥撒”，却没能成为伟大的征服者。正面例子是Phil Knight：他卖百科全书和共同基金时屡屡碰壁，卖Tiger鞋却异常成功。“我想，关键是信念。信念势不可挡。”
10. 确诊：4期神经内分泌癌，发现时几乎已经太晚
- Ben当时甚至没有家庭医生，因为不明原因的体重持续下降了几个月，才去看医生。医生按了按他的肝脏，问“这是什么？”，马上让他去做扫描。他已经瘦了40磅，肿瘤科医生问他怎么还能正常生活；Ben的回答是，疼痛和不适以前总会自行好转。他也提醒大家：“很多男性都会这样……身体感觉不对劲就去检查。”
- Ben明确把及时分诊归功于Claude：他输入自己的症状后，Claude告诉他不要等一周，马上就医或去急诊。“Claude说对了”：如果不治疗，他可能几个月内就会去世。按Ben查到的数据，最初预后是1年；按他的癌症类型和转移范围，5年生存率为0%。
- 具体来说，他患的是原发性神经内分泌癌，已到4期并发生转移：癌症最初出现在肺部，侵袭性不强，后来扩散到肝脏并转为侵袭性癌症。肺、脊柱和脑部也都有病灶（“脑部可能是眼下最大的问题”）。化疗暂时控制住了部分癌症，目前疗程结束；Ben感觉好得多，即将开始使用tarlatamab。
11. 争取更多时间——以及为什么他仍愿意再过一次这样的人生
- tarlatamab严格来说不是免疫疗法，但作用机制类似；对于小细胞肺癌患者，它能把预期寿命延长约6个月到1年。Ben这类癌症的部分患者已经使用2年且仍有效；药物随时可能失效，但也可能继续有效。他的保险起初不报销；本月一项新研究给出积极信号后，保险将予以覆盖。如果药物失效，他可能参加临床试验；他说自己的标志物叫“SMARCA或SMARCA4”，目前针对它的疗法还不多。他也在研究定制mRNA疫苗能否增强tarlatamab的效果。Senra把眼下的目标概括为：“我们只需要再争取几年”（we just need to buy more years）。
- Ben的态度是：“同时过两种人生：一种是我可能在未来1年内离世，另一种是我还有20年。”既为家人做好准备，也同时尽情生活。
- 历史能带来慰藉：Napoleon的军队最终靠15岁、16岁的新兵补充兵力——“一群在鸡群间乱跑的孩子”——他们骑着没有受过战斗训练的马匹奔赴战场。“研究历史久了，你就会发现，我的人生已经非常精彩……我仍会选择再过一次这样的人生。”但他坚持补上一句：“我也有难熬的时候……癌症这期节目里的积极态度，可能会让人留下错误印象。”
- 最后，Ben感谢亿万富翁Jon Huntsman创办的Utah顶尖癌症研究所为他提供了出色的治疗。他把大家的善意转向可能更需要帮助的人，并请听众考虑支持Huntsman Cancer Institute或其他癌症研究。Senra的赞助商Ramp、AppLovin和Deel没有投广告，而是向GoFundMe捐款；他最后对Ben说：“你是个好人，只是手气不好。”
完整逐字稿
Ben Wilson has stage 4 cancer and 4 small kids. I wanted to have him on the podcast to talk about his work on the How to Take Over the World podcast, which is, in my opinion, one of the best podcasts ever created, and to talk about what it’s like dealing with terminal cancer at such a young age. I also want to ask you for help in any way that you can. Ben is a good man, and he's been dealt a bad hand. Please watch this podcast and see if you can help with medicine, introductions, or donations. It doesn't matter if you have $5 to spare or $5,000. Any little bit can help Ben's family through this devastating time. He's a good guy and a close friend. Please help in any way that you can. All right, talk to me about zeal.
Zeal is a word we all use, right? Nowadays, zeal means that you are—
Well, first of all, “we all use”? No. I don’t think it’s in everybody’s everyday vocabulary.
1. Zeal as Competitive Pain
Well, it means that you get excited about something, right? You’re zealous for something. But it had a very specific definition to the ancient Greeks. Aristotle defined zeal as a type of pain felt by someone when they see another person who is like them in nature, who has accomplished good or admirable things that the other person is capable of but has not yet achieved.
You can see it in a lot of famous historical people. One of my favorite stories of zeal is Thomas Edison. He’s 21 years old, a telegraph operator, a young, smart guy. Those are like the programmers, tech guys of their age. He’s reading a biography of Michael Faraday, an inventor from the generation before.
His roommate goes to bed. When his roommate wakes up in the morning, Edison is just finishing the biography. He stayed up all night reading it. He slams the biography shut, throws it on the table, and says, “Faraday accomplished so much. I am already 21 years old. I might live to be 50. Can I accomplish as much as he did? I am going to hustle.” That’s what he says: “I’m going to hustle.” I love that line.
He really felt this pain because he recognized someone who was like him—Faraday—who had accomplished so much more than he had. He wanted to compete with him across the generations. You see that same story play out with Julius Caesar looking at Alexander the Great. You see it with Rockefeller and the generation that came before. Amos Lawrence was the first person Rockefeller really aspired to be like.
It’s a very unique source of inspiration: zeal, seeing someone who came before you and wanting to compete with them because they accomplished so much. But it’s very common among the great achievers across all domains.
Yeah, I love the fact that anytime you read biographies of Edison, he’s obsessed with the word “hustle.”
Yeah.
When he invented the phonograph, he was talking to some guy, and the guy asked, “If you could hear any historical figure’s voice who’s long since dead, who would you choose?” The guy asking the question says, “I would choose Jesus.” And Edison says, “I would choose Napoleon.” The guy asks, “Why Napoleon?” Edison says, “I like the hustler.”
“I like a hustler,” yeah. Yeah.
2. Finding Your Historical Mirror
What are some other examples of zeal? How do you think about the work that you do personally? You’re studying people with zeal. I guess we should back up and give people some context. I’ve been telling people for years that I think you’re one of the best podcasters in the world. How to Take Over the World is another solo history podcast. I think there’s a lot of overlap between the work you did with How to Take Over the World and the work I did with Founders.
We wind up studying a lot of the same people, reading a lot of the same books. We’ve been texting back and forth for years about book recommendations. I understand the presence of zeal in these historical figures. I see it just like you do when I read these books. But how do you think about it in your own life?
I think I’ve made it my life mission to help people with that, because you need to find people who are like you in character to have that sort of connection. For example, if I read about Leonardo da Vinci, it’s an amazing story, and I love it. I can learn a lot, but fundamentally, I don’t feel that sense of zeal because his brain is so different from mine. It’s like studying an alien. I could never do what he did.
By presenting all these different stories on How to Take Over the World, I’m hoping you can listen and think, “Okay, cool. Interesting, but not really for me.” But you find one of those stories that resonates deep in your heart and soul and gives you that moment of, “No, that person is like me. I could accomplish what they did, but I haven’t yet.” It gives you that pain and that sort of motivation to start on that journey. That’s how I think about the process.
Wait, if you don’t identify with da Vinci, who do you identify with?
Someone like Walt Disney, for example. I read that story and think, “Ooh, I could accomplish something like that.” He’s obviously an enormously talented person, but that’s someone whose personality feels more similar to mine, so it gives me a little bit more of that feeling.
Tell me more about the similarities in personality between you and Walt.
Walt was a very creative person, of course. That’s the first thing anyone knows about Walt Disney. But he was someone who created empires of the mind, a creative leader who got people to buy into a certain aesthetic vision. I think on some level I have that ability to do that. One of the most famous things about my podcast is the intro music that people know and get very excited about. I was able to do that myself, just messing around in GarageBand.
I’m very anti-podcast intro.
I know you are, yeah.
I’m always just like, well, we’re—It’s always the worst version of something. I think about when Steve Jobs came back to Apple. I know you’ve done a ton of episodes on Steve Jobs, too. Netbooks were really popular, and people were pressuring Steve. Even his friend Larry Ellison was like, “Why aren’t you building netbooks?” Steve was like, “Netbooks?” And he goes, “Because they’re just shitty laptops.”
Instead of taking resources and building a shitty laptop, a product that shouldn’t exist, he redirected them, and they wound up inventing the iPad. I thought that shift was very interesting. That’s the way I feel about intro music for podcasts. Yours is the lone example where I’m like, “This is excellent.” I didn’t know until just now that you were the one who made that.
Yeah. In a fit of inspiration—and it’s funny because people early on tried to hire me to make intro music for other podcasts, and I just couldn’t do it. It was really just 60 minutes of magic. That’s how long it took me. I figured out the beat, the vocal tone I liked, grabbed a few quotes, and boom, it was done in a flash.
When I think about someone like da Vinci in terms of actual artistic skill, because Walt was an okay artist—
He was not a great animator.
—an illustrator, but he was not a great animator.
Yeah.
Da Vinci was exceptional. He just had that kind of eye-hand coordination that I guess I lack, and the ability to perceive things in a certain way. I just don’t think I see the world the way he does. His curiosity goes in a different direction. Walt was also an extremely curious person, but he was curious about things that never were, about things that could be created. Da Vinci was curious about things as they are in the world, and I think I lean more toward that Walt Disney model of things as they could be and never have been before.
Yeah, I remember poking a little fun at you through text message a few months ago because I was going to Tuscany. I said, “I read Isaacson’s biography of da Vinci,” which is great, but it’s like 800 pages. I was like, “Give me the best da Vinci book you ever read.” I was in Tuscany, and it was so bad I literally left it at the hotel.
Yeah, the Clark biography.
Like, “Here, have this.” I was like, “Ben, what the hell was that?” It was pages and pages about the way he would draw a bent hand. I was like, “Why did you tell me to read this?”
I really enjoyed that part.
I think that’s an interesting observation: essentially, he had the most attention to detail of things that ever existed. His notebooks are famous for all the little details in, for example, a leaf.
Yeah.
Where Walt was like, “I want to invent things and bring things to life that don’t exist,” or what you called “empires of the mind.”
3. The Waste Book Method
Da Vinci and Isaac Newton did it in different ways, which I thought was interesting. Da Vinci would write in his notebook, “Describe,” and then he would write something, whereas Isaac Newton would write out actual questions—
Hmm.
…of things that he wanted to answer. The thing that I love about Isaac Newton’s notebooks, which are similar to da Vinci’s in some ways, is that he called his a waste book. In other words, his trash book, his book of scraps and notes.
I think everyone should have a waste book, because it really takes the pressure off what you’re thinking about, right? I don’t have to come up with anything refined or insightful. This is just where I’m going to dump my wasteful thoughts. I think it’s in those moments of unimpeded creativity that you have some of your most insightful realizations.
Do you have notebooks? Do you have journals? Do you do this?
Tons, yeah.
What’s in them?
Waste. A lot of trash.
Work, personal? What is this, though?
I have one for each. I keep a journal, and I started keeping a very detailed journal since I got diagnosed with cancer. I also have a lot of creative notebooks where I’ll draw very poorly, plan out episodes, or just start writing thoughts on historical figures, their place in history, and how they might relate to my own life.
They’re little essays, just a paragraph long. I get some of my best insights from those, and I end up pulling them out and putting them into scripts for episodes.
I talked to Rick Rubin about this, because he said he’s worked with some of the most talented artists that have ever existed in music. He said something interesting one time: Eminem might be the most obsessive artist he’s ever worked with.
I asked him to elaborate, and he said, “Well, he’s just constantly writing.” Eminem has hundreds of notebooks. Rick asked him one day, “How much of what you’re writing do you actually use?” He said, “Almost none of it.”
Again, it gives you that feeling of openness, which I think is really essential in any creative pursuit. Of course, there comes a time for refining and polishing, but if you try to start there, nothing good happens.
I think everyone’s had that feeling, at least in high school, when you’re trying to write an essay and you get that blank page, and you have no idea where to start. For me, the introductions to my episodes are the hardest part. If I let myself get stuck there, then nothing good ever happens.
I’ll just write the most garbage introduction: “Leonardo da Vinci was an artist.” Just terrible introductions, so I can get into the meat of the episode and get the juices flowing. Then I can return to the intro and work on it later.
4. Building a Podcast From History
Why did you start How to Take Over the World to begin with?
Because I wanted it to exist in the world. I was reading this biography of Napoleon, and I found myself extremely inspired. At the time, I was listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast. I love Tim, and he had done 3 or 4 interviews in a row that I just wasn’t interested in.
I started thinking to myself, “Who do I wish Tim Ferriss would interview?” I realized I wished Tim Ferriss could interview Napoleon. Obviously, that was impossible, but I immediately had the realization: I could do that. I could be Tim Ferriss for dead people. That was the idea that popped into my mind.
I immediately went and searched for who was already doing this. I really would’ve been content just to find a podcast and start listening to it. But I couldn’t find it, and so I thought, “Okay, there’s no way that I’m the only person who’s interested in this, so I’ll make it.” That’s where the idea came from.
What year was this?
2018.
Was Napoleon your first episode?
Napoleon was my first episode.
Which biography?
Andrew Roberts.
Of course.
Yeah, great biography. Napoleon was the first one. I decided to call it How to Take Over the World, but I didn’t want people to get the idea that it was just conquerors. So, from there, it was Napoleon and then Steve Jobs, and the formula was set for the next 8 years of my life.
What are some more of the ideas that you learned from studying these people and reading these books that you applied to your own life, whether it’s work or personal?
It’s a big question, right? I do think there’s so much, and as life goes on, certain lessons stand out to you more at certain times. I know you do a lot of the same biographies, right? Reading them with a fresh set of eyes—
Oh, you mean—
—it’s just an entirely new experience.
You mean rereading the books?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rereading the books.
Yeah.
It’s a new experience. Some of the things I’ve been thinking about recently: I think you do an exceptional job of this with Founders, which is that the most important realizations are negative realizations—things that you should not do or should not focus on.
One great example is Steve Jobs at NeXT. He leaves Apple, founds NeXT, and they go to this retreat in Carmel with his founding team. They lay out their 5 top priorities for a NeXT machine: it has to be under $10,000, it has to come out by a certain date, it has to have certain computing capabilities, and it has to have certain other capabilities. Five things.
He asks the founding team, “Of these, which is the highest priority? What is the most important?” They go around and discuss it. Everyone makes the case for the thing they’re working on. Their CMO advocates for something, their head of software advocates for something else, and their head of hardware advocates for something else.
They get to the end, and he says, “Okay, the answer is all of the priorities. We have to have all of these things.” As a result, it comes out late, over budget—
Yeah.
—it comes out over-engineered. The NeXT machine is a terrible machine.
It was so bad, it almost put them out of business, and then he had to sell off his hardware division. People don’t know there was a time in Steve Jobs’ life when he was a software entrepreneur—
Yeah, yeah.
—against his own wishes.
Yes, and even the software itself should’ve been really successful, and he almost submarines that as well. He manages to get an okay exit out of NeXT, but he tanks it. It’s terrible.
Yeah, 13 years of struggle. We just read the book, I think it’s called Steve Jobs in Exile.
Steve Jobs in Exile.
Which I’d highly recommend.
Really good book.
Okay, and so then you fast-forward 10 years—
So, at this point in time, he’s a terrible executive. That’s objectively true, both in the way he’s leading and in the results he gets in the market.
Fast-forward 10 years: he has returned to Apple, and his mindset has totally changed. Now he’s able to make trade-offs. He looks at the iPod and says, “Okay, this is a device that is under-engineered in a lot of ways.” There are already other MP3 players on the market that have more storage capacity, can read more file formats, and can do more. They’re just more robust MP3 players.
He says, “I don’t think any of that matters. I think the only thing that matters is getting a great user experience that makes it easy for people to quickly get to their music.” They go to market with this iPod, this MP3 player that is deficient in all these ways, and then it’s one of the most successful products of all time because he’s able to make that trade-off, saying, “All these things don’t matter.”
I think every great product, every great leader, every great decision comes from understanding that trade-off and realizing what does not matter. Like I said at the beginning, you do a great job with this because Founders doesn’t have intro music. There’s so much that it lacks that, especially 10 years ago, people would’ve told you was necessary to a successful podcast. You stripped all that away and said, “I actually don’t think any of that matters. The only thing that matters is connecting people to these stories, the founders, and the insights.”
You and I had a conversation about this probably 3 years ago, because you script way more than I do. I have my notes and highlights, but I could literally record an episode of Founders today on the same book, do it again tomorrow, and it’s going to be a different episode. It’s whatever happens to be top of mind at that time as I’m reacting live to what’s going on.
And your whole thing was, “Yeah, but what about some kind of cohesive story?” I was like, “That’s not what I do.”
That’s why I think our podcasts are different in a subtle way, and that’s fine, right? It’s going to be a different thing because you can think about how the iPod was sort of under-engineered from a hardware standpoint, but had really elegant software that connected people. For other people, it’s going to be the opposite trade-off. You can look at Elon Musk with the original Tesla, the Roadster. People said, “It needs great range. It needs to be affordable because people who go for electric cars are very cost-conscious. They do it because they don’t want to spend money on gas,” and that sort of thing. He had the opposite realization: “No, actually, we can go way upmarket. People don’t care about any of that stuff as long as it goes fast and it’s cool and beautiful.”
Yeah, I think he said “sexy.”
“Sexy.”
That’s the way he wanted it to look.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
You can think of multiple examples from history, but—
This idea of breaking trade-offs that you and I have talked about in the past is really interesting. Your example of the Wright brothers is another great way to describe the idea you’re talking about. Do you want to say that?
That’s where I had the original realization: reading about the Wright brothers. At the time they were trying to solve flight, dozens of other people were trying to solve flight. It was popular at the time, like AI is today. A lot of different people were working on it, and everyone realized it was the future. So why did they succeed? Everyone was doing the obvious thing. What’s the obvious thing? You’re trying to get something in the air, so you focus on propulsion and lift. You’re focused on trying to make something fly, and Wilbur Wright realizes that’s actually an easy problem to solve. The hard problem to solve is control: once you’re in the air, can you stay in the air?
He realizes this by looking at birds. He sees them making multiple micro-adjustments every second. They’re shifting their wings, moving up and down—they’re moving all the time. He realizes, “We don’t need to focus on lift or getting into the air at all. We need to focus on, once we’re in the air, how do we stay in the air?” So he goes to North Carolina, builds gliders, and for multiple years they work on control: once we’re in the air, how do we stay there?
A glider really is like a big kite—
A big kite.
—that’s the way to think about it. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exactly. They go to North Carolina because there’s wind coming off the ocean all the time. Someone on the ground holds a rope while he’s in this giant kite, figuring out, “All right, how do I steer? How do we change this thing so that we can stay in the air?” At the end, he basically slaps an engine on it, and it’s done. He was right: once you figure out how to stay in the air, the problem of lift was trivial. That realization—that lift isn’t an important problem to solve—allows them to focus on the more important thing.
So why do you think breaking trade-offs is such a profound idea?
Especially today, there are all sorts of ideas about things that matter. For example, people will tell you yoga is important for your daily routine, lifting weights is important, journaling is important, and meditating is important. You’ll find people telling you all these things. If you took all that advice, your morning routine would go until 1:00 in the afternoon. You would never get anything accomplished, right? You have to be able to say, “Okay, one of these things is so important that it’s worth cutting out this and this and this and this in order to do it.”
Until you’re able to make a trade-off, until you’re able to say, “This is more valuable than that,” things don’t really matter. There are so many priorities competing for your time and attention. You have to be able to make trade-offs if you’re going to be successful.
How have you done that?
As Steve Jobs said, “Focus means saying no.” It’s about all the things I don’t do—all the opportunities people bring you as a podcaster that I’m sure you experience too, where you just say, “No, I’m not going to do that.” Early on, people came to me and said, “We want you to design our intro music.” At the beginning, I was trying to do a lot of that work because it was money, and early on I needed money so I could keep podcasting. But as time went on, I realized I needed to stop producing other people’s podcasts and—
You were producing—
My First Million.
Yeah.
Eventually, I just told them—
That’s how I found you.
Yeah. I was like, “I need to get out of here. I need to focus on my own.” I have to stop producing for other people. I have to stop launching these side businesses. I have to stop my agency, which I ended up shutting down, and just focus on this one thing so that it can be as successful as it can be.
Hey, real quick, instead of having ads in today's episode, my partners Ramp, AppLovin, and Deel are donating to Ben Wilson's GoFundMe. If you are in the position to do so, please consider donating as well. The link to do so is in our show notes. I would greatly appreciate it. Okay, so we have a handful of ideas that you picked up from the 8 years you’ve been doing this project. Zero was one. The importance of breaking trade-offs is another. What else do you have?
What makes someone a great leader? In many ways, that’s the question.
That you’re trying to answer over and over again—
That I’m trying to answer.
—through telling the life stories of these people.
That’s right.
Yeah.
In some ways, it’s different, right? I study conquerors and artists and entrepreneurs, but the thing I’ve been looking for is the through lines that connect all those people. There aren’t that many, because people are very different. There are different archetypes and different types of leaders. But there are a couple, and I think the most important one is that they have vision.
One of my favorite quotes about vision comes from Genghis Khan, and I love it because it’s from Genghis Khan. It sounds like Silicon Valley guru advice from 2010, but his quote is, “Without the vision of a goal, a man cannot hope to manage his own life, let alone the life of others.”
Mm-hmm.
When I saw that, I thought, “Wow, it really is true that the same thing that makes Genghis Khan a great leader is the same thing that makes Edwin Land or Steve Jobs a great leader.” They have vision. They have a goal. The second thing is that they’re able to express or communicate that goal. Across any domain, these people are excellent communicators. The medium changes. Some are great writers, some are great speakers, some are great at writing essays, and some are better at long-form. Some are great one-on-one, and some are great at mass communication. In any situation, in some way, they’re great communicators. They have a vision, and they’re able to communicate it to a lot of people.
The third thing I’d say is they’re able to focus, so they’re able to shut out everything else. To me, those are the 3 great through lines of great leaders across industries and domains—conquerors, artists, and entrepreneurs. That’s what links them.
As you’re studying these people, do you notice where you might be deficient in these traits? And are you able to change your behavior once you have access to that new information?
I hope so. I’m trying to communicate it to other people. I’m trying to be helpful as a Sherpa, connecting other people to great leaders, but I hope I’m able to internalize those things. I try to. I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that I’m doing it as well. I’m sure you do too, right? You’re trying to implement what you’re learning into Founders Podcast.
Yeah, the whole activity is just completely selfish. I didn’t have positive examples from childhood. I didn’t have a mentor or anything. Founders is going to be 10 years old this month, in about 10 days.
Wow.
The whole idea came from this random interview with Elon Musk. I saw him in 2012, and he was asked, “You come to this country with no money…”
You didn't know anybody. Did you have mentors? Who helped you? And he was like, “No, I didn't have mentors. I looked for mentors in a historical context.” He said, “I thought reading biographies and autobiographies were helpful.”
At the time, I was a huge Tesla fan, and they only had the Model S. He mentioned Henry Ford and Nikola Tesla, and now I can't even remember the other people in there. I've probably seen this clip—
Edison, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Edison and Ben Franklin—
He and Edison are basically the same person, by the way.
—and Ben Franklin, which is another one. I wanted you to say more about that in one second. I was like, “Oh, I should just read more biographies and autobiographies.” Then you start doing that, and you're like, “Oh, this is super valuable,” because this person lives an entire life. Essentially, the way I think about it is somebody had a 40-year career, and somebody spent multiple years writing about that, documenting all the lessons that person learned. I can read it in 40 hours, and then turn it into a podcast that you can listen to in 45 minutes. That compression is insanely valuable for people whose time is excessively valuable and scarce.
Yeah.
Why do you think Edison and Elon are similar?
Their lives are just linked in really remarkable ways. Musk himself has pointed this out. He said, “The car company is called Tesla, but in many ways I'm more similar to Thomas Edison than I am to Nikola Tesla,” because he is a great inventor, but more than that, he's also a great industrialist. He's great at bringing products to market and making them successful.
Their personalities are extremely similar. Their backgrounds are extremely similar. Their physiognomy—they look very similar. They both have these massive heads that people would comment on. There's even this one: their fathers are very similar. They're both entrepreneurial but kind of crazy, and they don't have a great relationship with them.
Yeah. There are some wild stories in Edison's biographies, because he was the most famous person when he was alive. He was the most famous person in America.
Right.
Walt Disney said Edison was his hero. Jeff Bezos said Edison was his hero. You hear this over and over again. I remember reading this book on Edison, I think it was published in 1957. When he was five or six years old, he misbehaved, and they lived in this little town or village. They literally put up a note saying, “Come to the town square Saturday morning and watch me beat the shit out of my kid.” That literally happened to him.
Then you hear Elon tell these crazy stories. I think Eric Jorgenson was on this podcast earlier about his book on Elon, and Elon relates a story where his dad gets in his face when Elon is about 10, screaming for hours about how stupid and useless he is and how he'll never be successful.
Both of them were considered actually kind of dumb as kids. In Elon's case, it's probably because he's a little autistic and has trouble communicating with people and emoting with them. In Edison's case, it was because he was mostly deaf, and so had trouble communicating with people for that reason. They weren't shepherded toward greatness as children. They kind of had to fight for it because people didn't think they were bright initially.
There's even one weird biographical element: Elon is from South Africa, but his mother's family are transplants. He has deep roots in America and Canada. Elon's family was in Canada, and he had a great-grandfather who was a politically minded preacher who got in trouble with the government, so he fled over the border from Canada to the U.S. and ended up living in Minnesota or Iowa.
Edison had a grandfather on his maternal side who was the exact same kind of person. He was in the U.S., kind of a preacher, and got in trouble with the government. People ran him out of town, and they had to move to Canada across the border. There are weird biographical things between the two of them that make you wonder if it's the same person reborn, reincarnated. It makes you believe in reincarnation.
You collect these things even more than I do. You pick up on these weird things. Like you just said, a lot of these people have giant heads. People talk about how big their head is.
Oprah's one of those, by the way.
Who?
Oprah.
Yeah.
When she was an actress, they couldn't find hats for her that were big enough to fit over her head.
I was tormented when I was a kid because my head was basically this size, but I kind of grew into it as I got older. My brother's friends were over when I was in elementary school, and one of them was like, “Shut up, basketball head.” I was like, “Oh no, he said the nickname.” Then they brought it back to school, and they called me Lollipop because I was super skinny and had this giant round head.
Yeah, yeah.
You mentioned the big-headed thing. You mentioned that they had weird diets. Didn't Edison just drink milk or something?
Milk. He was very into milk for a while. Yeah, he would only drink milk.
So they had weird diets, and then insane levels of energy, though—
Yeah.
—is another thing that—
Yeah.
—you would pick up on. Again, it's just mentioned. Sometimes it's not even a main part of a book. You're just like, “Oh, that's weird.” It's mentioned a few times that this guy has unusual levels of energy. Napoleon, same thing: unusual levels of energy.
I felt like I was going crazy, like a person with a corkboard who's connecting all the strings. The first five biographies I did, Napoleon has a quote: “If you want to dine well, dine with Campos Sarras. If you want to dine poorly, dine with Lebrun. If you want to dine quickly, dine with me,” because he would eat dinner in 15 minutes and get back to work.
But his dinner was a whole chicken.
Well, no, because he ate— As he got older, he got kind of portly, but when he was young, he was known for being a peckish eater. Not only would he eat quickly, but he would eat light. He would not eat very much at all, and it was commented on how little he ate.
Then you read about Steve Jobs, and he has all these weird diets. He eats almost nothing. He'll go on diets where he only eats apples for months at a time, and he eats very little. Then you read about Vladimir Putin, and this is someone who would eat a boiled egg a day as his entire diet. Then you read about Joan of Arc, and she fasts all the time and barely eats anything.
Before I realized it, I've got about 20 stories of all these people who are all extremely light eaters, and it's like, “Wow, something weird is going on here.” The realization I've come to is it's obviously not about the food. But what it is, I think food is a good test for whether you're obsessed with something. Do you find yourself skipping meals? Do you find yourself forgetting to eat? That's a really good litmus test for whether you are truly obsessed with something or not, and all these people are obsessives. So, yes, they eat very peckishly—
I—
—because they're so obsessed with something else.
I think when you had these three ideas that you were connecting, the fourth one—you said focus and maybe obsession could be interchangeable. But I think the fourth leg of that would have to be obsession.
Obsession. Right.
They just don't write books about normal, well-adjusted people. They're all obsessive. If you look back even on that counter, there's probably 25 books. I see John D. Rockefeller looking at me right now. Every single person they wrote a book about is just obsessive about weird shit.
For me, I would love to know what book you think best communicates that obsession. For me, there are a few books I reread, but there's one I reread every year, and it is Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder.
It's literally right back there. It's on the right shelf, one, two, three, five books up. I can see it from here.
Yeah. A lot of these biographies or autobiographies are written retrospectively, and Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder is written right in the middle of it. You can just feel the obsession. This is someone who was obsessed in the past and has now gotten to a better place. This is someone who is obsessed right now, who can't stop thinking about bodybuilding and his craft. And so, even though I'm not—
No, you—
You were jacked.
Yeah, I was more jacked. Yeah.
But anyway, that level of obsession comes through. I don't think I've found anyone who's better able to communicate what it feels like to be in that moment than Education of a Bodybuilder.
But I think he also does in that book, because it's the first—
Yeah.
The first 120 pages, you only have to read the first 120 pages, because the second half of the book is literally his workouts.
Yeah, yeah. I don't read that.
I think he's 30 when the book is published, and I figure it's an autobiography of the first 30 years of his life. But how you were just connecting all of these traits that appear across whether they're a conqueror or an artist, living in different parts of history and different parts of the country or the world—there's a through line there. He identified the same way that I got to the top of this weird, obscure profession, because at the time, being a bodybuilder was like being a freak.
Yeah.
You were a weirdo. There was almost no money in it. It was like, “What are you doing?” I think when he started in Austria, he said there were 5 bodybuilders in the entire country.
Right.
His parents literally thought something was wrong with him.
Yeah.
And he's like, “Well, actually, if you break down where I started and where I'm at, and then look at all the things I used to get there,” he's like, “I'm going to use the same exact playbook that got me to the top of bodybuilding to build a business empire,” he talks about, “and to get to the top of movies.” He didn't mention politics, I don't think. But he's like, “No, I'm just going to take that same playbook,” and he's calling his shot before he does it.
Yeah.
He's only 30, and he's like, “I'm just going to run the same playbook and these same traits. If I apply this discipline and obsession to whatever I aim it at, I will be successful.” It's incredible.
Yeah. Well, on the point about politics, as a foreign-born person, he cannot be president of the United States. Governor of California is basically the highest office someone from his background can achieve, and he achieved it, right? So, across 4 domains, he does it. And he says that he is obsessed with the stories of Alexander the Great and Napoleon and people like that.
Charlemagne.
And Charlemagne. Yeah, he loves that stuff. It's interesting because, as you talked about, it was kind of looked down on. His parents were concerned. It was viewed as shady and weird. But having said that, he talks about how once he is locked into a vision, a goal for himself, everyone starts helping him, right? People at lunch at his middle school—or I guess at this point he's in high school—are like, “Hey, Arnold, you need to get bigger. Have my milk.”
Mm-hmm.
You know? “Oh, you need to rest up for your competition. Let me carry that for you.” People are doing stuff. There's this good quote by Goethe, the author. He says, “At the moment of commitment, the entire universe conspires to assist you.”
I love that.
It's such a good quote. And you see that in the life of Arnold. When he commits, and he has that vision and articulates it to everyone, he's like, “Hey, I know you guys think this is freakish, but I am going to achieve this,” everyone is like, “Okay, what can I do to help?” All these strangers are helping him.
I'm so glad you said that. I think that's such an important point. My friend Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, said this about me: “You're very easy to understand, so therefore you're very easy to help.”
Yeah.
He's like, “All you care about is podcasting. That's it.” So if somebody wants to help you, and you have this passion that you try to preach to other people, you're very legible. It's not like, “Oh, how can I help this guy?” It's like, well, he's just obsessed with podcasts, so there are a million different ways that you could help him in that domain. And I feel the great founders do this too. They're able to explain in just a handful of words what's important to them. The example I always use is, if you went to the studio back there in the other house and saw the desk where I record Founders, there's just 1 sticky note right in front of me. I don't even think you could see it on camera, and it says 3 words: “Insanely great products.” Steve Jobs was able to describe what was important to him from when he was 19 to when he was 55: “Insanely great products. Do you want to make insanely great products? Then come with me. If you're not interested in this, remove yourself from my life.” He's very easy to understand.
Yeah. I love that idea. That's a great framework: make yourself easy to help.
Yeah.
Because that's connected, of course, to having a very clear vision. And once you do have a clear vision, and once you make yourself easy to help, it really does feel like people are conspiring to assist you. Stuff just starts popping out of the woodwork to get you where you want to go.
5. Faith Conquest and Influence
Tell me, you've studied way more religious figures than I have. You've done more episodes on them. Tell me what you've learned from reading about these kinds of people.
Yeah, I've done a few religious figures: Jesus, Brigham Young, Joan of Arc. Even though I'm a Latter-day Saint, Brigham Young and Jesus are the most connected to my faith tradition. Joan of Arc, even though she was Catholic, is maybe the one that's captured my attention the most. How much do you know about Joan of Arc?
Almost nothing.
Really interesting—
I listened to the episode, but it was a year ago, three years ago.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a long time ago.
So, yeah.
I mean, really interesting, a really interesting person. She's a great example of what we're talking about, right? She comes onto the scene when she's about 15 years old. She's a girl. It's the Middle Ages. People are literally swinging swords and throwing spears, right? She has no place on a battlefield. She's so young, and besides being young, she fasts a lot. She's malnourished. She's this thin, right? She's little. And the French have been trying to kick the English out of France for years and years and years, making no progress. She shows up, and immediately, once the French start following her, they have success. And it's impossible to explain. It is actually one of those things that makes you start to believe in the divine, because you're like, “Whoa, what is going on here?” But if you want to explain it in a material sense, there's only 1 thing that's different about her and everyone else. Before her, the King of France, the dukes assisting him, and all these field marshals have competing priorities and all this stuff they're trying to do. Then here comes along this young girl who says, “I have 1 priority. That 1 priority is winning this war against the English. God is on our side. Follow me. We will be victorious.” So she has that clarity of vision. Then everyone lines up behind her, and they immediately start having success because of that clarity. It's a remarkable example: she lacks literally everything else except for focus and clarity of vision, and having only that is enough to be victorious.
I don't know why, but there's this great essay by Paul Graham that comes to mind when I hear you speak about this. He asks, “What's more predictive of success, intelligence or determination?” And he has this thought experiment in there. He's like, “Well, let's say you started out with 1 person that's 100 out of 100 with intelligence and 100 out of 100 with determination.” It doesn't take long if you keep the intelligence and take away determination: you have this brilliant yet ineffectual person. He's writing to entrepreneurs, and he goes, “If you do the reverse, where you keep determination at 100 out of 100, but you take away intelligence,” he's like, “You have someone that winds up rich, but they have trash-hauling businesses or something.”
Right, right, right.
They just won't stop—
Yeah.
—so they eventually stumble into something, a way to serve other people, and they just keep doing it because their determination is at 100, at max level.
Well, you look at these people. I don't think Elon Musk is the smartest person at any of his companies. He's very, very smart. Don't get me wrong. He's extremely smart. But you could probably find an engineer with a higher IQ at Tesla, and definitely at SpaceX, than Elon. The same thing with Steve Jobs. He was not the smartest person at his company. But they are the most determined. You just don't find people like that. They are insane in how determined they are. Elon has a great quote. Someone asks him, “How do you stay an optimist about...” Because he's trying to accomplish these big things. He's trying to go to Mars. He's trying to save the world in terms of saving our climate with electric cars, and save the world from AI with Grok.
And so they say, “How do you keep your optimism?” He says, “Optimism, pessimism, screw that. I’m going to get it done.” That’s it. That’s the level of determination. He doesn’t think about optimism, whether he can do it or can’t do it. It’s just, “I have to do it. It has to be done.” That feeling, that level of determination, is what separates these people from everyone else.
I thought your Brigham Young episodes—you did two or three?—were excellent.
Yeah, I did multiple parts.
If that was your main takeaway from Joan of Arc, what would your main takeaway from Brigham be? Aren’t you related to him?
Yeah, he is my great-great-grandfather. From Brigham, I think my main takeaway was, first, finding something you believe in. He was a true believer. Number two, unceasing action. He wasn’t that smart. A lot of the people who followed him were a lot smarter than him, but he was unbelievably determined and relentless. He just would not stop.
There’s a good quote about another Latter-day Saint, Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of The Killers. The Killers were part of a group of bands that got big in the early 2000s. There was The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes, and others; they all had albums that hit it big around the same time. Brandon Flowers is Mormon; he doesn’t drink, do drugs, or smoke, and he doesn’t really party.
I think they were interviewing the lead singer of The Strokes, and he said, “We all had these hit albums at the same time. We have a hit album, and we’re touring, partying, and having a good time. I’m in the middle of this, and all of a sudden I read that The Killers have put out another album. I’m like, ‘Will you please calm down? We’re trying to enjoy the fruits of our labor here.’”
Yeah.
That feeling of relentlessness is what you get when competitors talk about these people who succeed. It’s always, “Will you please slow down? Will you please act like a normal person?” The level of determination and relentless action they take is not normal.
And you saw that in Brigham?
I saw that in Brigham Young. He had more of that relentlessness than almost anyone I’ve ever read about.
What about Jesus?
Jesus, of course, is, depending on your belief, part God, and it’s difficult to square him with everyone else. One of the things you see in early Christianity is something similar to Nike. I remember reading about Nike, reading the biography of Phil Knight. You’re kind of waiting for this moment of, “All right, when does stuff really change?” Then you realize nothing changes. The company grows 50 percent every year for about 20 years, and it’s just this idea of compounding.
It’s the same thing with Jesus. You’re waiting for the big break of Christianity, and it never really happens. Christianity grows about 50 percent per year, every year, for centuries until it becomes the dominant ideology in the entire world. Jesus’s ability to persuade is the number one thing I took away from him. There was something about him, and we can get into some of it. The Paul Johnson biography does a really good job of—
That’s the one I read, because it’s a biography of Jesus written by a believer. My mom was a fundamental Christian, you know. Unfortunately, she took it to a very extreme level. She got diagnosed with cancer and tried to pray her cancer away. It took me two years to convince her to go to an oncologist.
At that point, I was living in Miami and she was in Orlando. I had to drive up there to go to every appointment with her, because if I didn’t go, she would just skip the appointments. I have a hard time reconciling this even to this day, because I went to church every single Sunday against my will, and in many cases on Wednesday night. My point was that I wanted to make an episode—not… I wanted to make an episode so that if you believe Jesus is Christ and God, you would get something out of it, and if you don’t believe that—
Right.
—what are the facts that we don’t… Nothing supernatural, just what do we actually know about the person who we know existed?
Right.
I think Paul Johnson’s biography is the best book to read if you want that story.
Well, Paul Johnson talks about how often the eyes of Jesus are described. All the time in the New Testament, it’s talking about, “And Jesus looked,” and, “Jesus beheld.” It’s always talking about where he’s looking and his eyes. This is another one that’s kind of like the light-eater thing, where you’re like, “Whoa, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.” So many of these people are light eaters. People talk about their eyes.
They have these intense stares.
They have these intense eyes and these intense stares, whether it’s Steve Jobs, Alexander Hamilton, or Jesus. All these people have remarkable stares.
Out of the conquerors, the dictators, the religious figures, the artists, and the entrepreneurs, if you could only study one category of these people, what do you find most fascinating?
Probably the conquerors. I think life is made of hierarchies. We’re all competing in these different hierarchies, whether social, career, economic, athletic, or artistic. People compete; that’s what people do, and it forms these hierarchies.
But the highest hierarchy, the one at the top of everything else, is the hierarchy of violence: the people who can most effectively channel violence. That’s conquerors. They’re the ones who sit atop the artists. They commission all the great art. The great merchants, entrepreneurs, and founders ultimately have to be responsive to politics at the end of the day. I think those are the most interesting stories, because conquest is the pinnacle of human achievement.
Are there any other books that you reread every year? You said you reread The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
One I read for fun every year is Ender’s Game. Have you read Ender’s Game?
I don’t think so.
That’s fiction you would love.
Yeah. I’ve listened to the audiobook.
Okay.
I was really interested in Sean Parker for a while. This was probably 10 years ago. He popped up on Twitter one time and had this epic run, then kind of disappeared, and I was like, “What is going on here?” I remember hearing him in an interview talk about Ender’s Game, and I think I listened to the audiobook about a decade ago.
Yeah, yeah. And then Mind of Napoleon—since I discovered it, I’ve reread that every year.
I just did another episode on it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I saw it.
Again, same thing: 300 pages of just Napoleon, in his own words, published in, again, 1956, 1957. It’s one of the best books you could ever read.
One of the things I think you highlighted well, and that I’ve been thinking about recently, is that Napoleon was an unbelievably religious person. That’s obviously not true in a traditional sense. He was not very Catholic. He was not a believing Christian by any stretch of the imagination, but the way he talks about destiny—destiny was clearly his God.
He says, “Destiny must be fulfilled. That is my chief doctrine.”
Yes. He treated destiny like God. He had this unbelievable faith in it. I actually think Steve Jobs was an incredibly religious person too. He was a believer, even though it wasn’t traditional. It was kind of this California—
Yeah.
—atheistic, agnostic Buddhism, right? But he really, really believed in it, and I think that sincerity of belief is part of what allowed them to be successful. I think people who are double-minded are always unstable and unable to make—
What do you mean by double-minded?
People who espouse things they don’t really believe in, who maybe believe only lukewarmly in what they’re actually trying to pursue. You’re a great example of a real believer. You believe in Founders, in the mission of founders and what it’s trying to accomplish. You can tell there are certain podcasters you listen to who mostly believe, but don’t totally believe in what they’re doing.
We had a podcaster dinner last night, and you should see the text. My partner and co-founder, Rob Moore, is sitting behind me. The text I sent him at about 6:00 this morning about this was, “Oh, boy.”
Well, for example, Napoleon was a true believer.
He was able to cast aside Christianity because he didn’t really believe in it, and have this other religion that he very sincerely believed in. There was another—I can’t remember which king of France it was—but he was a Protestant. He’d grown up a Protestant, and they wouldn’t accept him as king as a Protestant, so he had to convert to Catholicism. So he said, “Paris is worth a mass,” and he converted to Catholicism.
That king, of course, was not a great conqueror. You’re never going to accomplish great things in life if you don’t have a genuine, sincere belief at the heart of what you do.
I love the summary of that idea as “double-minded.” That’s really great.
That’s a phrase from the Bible. I didn’t come up with that. I think it’s in the Old Testament: “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”
Yeah, the way I think about this is, we talked about a couple of traits, and now we’ve added obsession as the fourth one. Maybe a fifth one would be the ability to evangelize.
Yeah.
It doesn’t matter what it happens to be. I’m thinking of Rockefeller, because I see his face right now, and I’m like, “What does he evangelize?” He wanted to impose order on what he saw as chaos. And the fact is, he controlled not just a commodity, but an entire industry that was brand new, which he got into essentially from day one.
Yeah.
He was able to evangelize highly successful founders in that same industry to sell their businesses and come with him on this mission of imposing order on the chaos.
Rockefeller has these 2 influences in his life. His father has a mania for money; his father is obsessed with money, and he is—
And having multiple families.
—and having multiple families, right? But he—
He’s a bigamist.
He’s a bigamist. He’s a huckster. He’s always selling these fake cures or whatever. He has a mania for money, and his mother is incredibly religious, right? She’s old Puritan stock, a real Christian woman. He discovers this biography of Amos Lawrence, who gives away crisp dollar bills, is what he says, and gives away $100,000 in his lifetime. Rockefeller is about 10 years old, and he tells his childhood friend, “I’m going to be worth $100,000 someday. I’m going to do it, too.”
Amos Lawrence was a guy who gave away $100,000, and Rockefeller found in that the ability to bring together his 2 passions, which were money and Christianity. He was able to justify those 2 things and have this very sincere belief. I think my favorite quote about belief comes from Phil Knight. In Shoe Dog, he talks about trying to sell encyclopedias and then trying to sell—
Mutual funds.
Yep, mutual funds.
Yeah.
He’s not that great of a salesman. Then he starts trying to sell Tiger shoes, and he’s an exceptional salesman. He’d sell like crazy.
Can’t keep them in stock.
Yes. He says, “What is the difference between the first 2 things and the third?” And he says, “Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.” I love that quote. “Belief is irresistible,” and it’s so true. When you find someone who really believes, it’s irresistible.
Yeah, passion is infectious.
Yeah.
There’s a guy I always talk about named Steve Rinella. He’s a podcaster and a writer. He makes a show on Netflix and does a bunch of things. I think he might primarily describe himself as a writer, and his writing is incredible. But he has a passion for the out- the life of outdoors: hunting, fishing, camping. These are things I don’t even do. The guy is so intelligent, mission-driven, and passionate.
I said one time, “This guy could make a podcast reading the phone book, and I would just listen to him.” I’m not even interested in the same subject he is, but his passion has infected me. He’s also taught me a ton about the natural world and history, and about all these other people who played a role in the frontier and all the crazy stuff—much of it American history. I got completely wrapped up in this guy’s passion—
Yeah.
—and he made me part of his mission, even if I didn’t care.
That’s what’s irresistible about it, right?
Yeah.
It’s not even something you care about, and yet, for that moment, you get sucked into this vortex of passion.
Yeah, and then he pulls out ideas or principles, very similar to the work that you and I do. He might have learned them on a very grueling 11-day hunt in Alaska, but they’re applicable whether you’re building a company, conquering a nation, or creating a sculpture.
Yeah.
These principles can adapt across different domains and professions. Is there anything you feel, since our work overlaps a lot, that you’ve discovered that I’m missing?
You really believe in the insights, and I really believe in the power of the story. I don’t think either of those approaches is wrong, so I don’t think there’s anything missing. I don’t think there’s anything I’ve found that you haven’t found, at least nothing that comes to mind. Honestly, a lot of the lessons are the lessons, and you learn them pretty quickly.
That’s why I like to focus on the stories. Sometimes, when a lesson is framed in a slightly different way, with a slightly different problem or in a slightly different setting, all of a sudden it clicks for you. I learn the same things from Brigham Young that I learn from Edwin Land or Joan of Arc, but that slightly different setting, personality, or framing of the challenge can make it click differently for you at a different time. That’s why I get very intrigued by the stories, and that’s why I think we have different approaches.
That’s a perfect time to transition into the second thing I want to talk to you about. I think I’ve said a few times in this episode that you’re one of my favorite podcasters. My life has greatly benefited from your work, and I think you’re world-class at what you do. I think I told you this even before you thought there was a business here. I remember these conversations we were having about, “Hey, ditch the agency. Stop producing,” and doing all this other stuff.
I remember that one night when we were in Austin. It was me, you, and Cliff Weitzman. Do you remember this conversation?
Yeah.
You, Cliff, and I talked about your business and your podcast for probably 90 minutes, because Cliff and I were both super fans of your work. We were like, “Man, if you just focus, you have the thing. You’ve already done the difficult thing.”
I was about to record with Mickey Melka. I was in the Bay Area, and I try to sell ads for you all the time. I don’t get any money from it. I just do it because I love you and want you to succeed. I remember saying, “Hey, Ben, I’ve only got 60 seconds. I’m about to record, but I think I have a good partner for you. Do you have any ad inventory?” And you said, “Something’s going on with the podcast that I need to tell you about.” I said, “All right, just tell me now.” And you said, “I don’t want to ruin your recording.” I said, “Ben, what the fuck is going on?” And you said, “I have cancer.”
I said, “Oh, shit. I’m going to call you back. I’ll call you back when I’m done.” Then we obviously talked about it, and you did one of the most profound episodes I’ve ever heard on the How to Take Over the World feed. It’s called “The Cancer Episode.” You lay out what you’re going through and your perspective on it. I don’t know what to say. It’s remarkable. Can you tell us what’s going on in your life right now, and what’s going on in your mind as you go through this experience?
Yeah. I was feeling terrible. I was feeling really bad, and I went in and saw a doctor. It was just this primary care doctor. I didn’t even have a doctor because I don’t like to go see the doctor, so I met this woman for the first time. I said, “You know, I’ve got all this stuff going on. I’m losing weight. I can’t really explain it.” She starts poking around in my body, and she pokes me and says, “What’s that?” I said, “I don’t know.”
Where did she poke you?
Right here, right in my liver. She said, “You need to go get scanned right away.” So I got scanned, and I had a lot of cancer—a lot of cancer. Some of these oncologists were like, “How did you just keep functioning normally? How did you not come see a doctor earlier?”
What was your answer to that question?
Everything in my life, you get aches and pains, and they all go away.
I had always gotten better. My back hurts; okay, rest a little bit, and it’ll get better. Stuff had started hurting, but I was getting older, and I thought it would get better. It was really only after months that I thought, “This is really not normal.” That’s why I hadn’t gone in earlier. I think that’s true of a lot of men, by the way. Go get checked out if something feels off.
Didn’t you say that you were initially reluctant to go to the doctor, and then you were putting your symptoms into Claude?
Yes. I still was putting it off, even as things were getting worse. I put my symptoms into Claude, and Claude said, “This isn’t the kind of thing where you go in next week when you have a chance. This is the kind of thing where you go in right now. If you can’t be seen right now, go to an emergency room.” Claude was right. If I’d been untreated, if I lived in a world where there were no cancer treatments, I probably would have been dead within a few months.
It was really bad. I lost 40 pounds, so things were very bad. The initial prognosis was one year. If you look up the survival statistics for the type of cancer I had and the amount of spread I had, the five-year survival rate is 0%. This is all stuff I’m reading, and it’s very sobering.
Having said that, the number of new treatments coming out for all sorts of different types of cancers is remarkable. We live in a really remarkable age, and I hope not to die in the next five years. I have to prepare my family for the possibility that I might not be here, but at the same time, I’ve also got to live like I’ve got my entire life in front of me, because that might also be the case.
That’s where I’ve been: trying to live two lives at once. One in which I die sometime in the next year, and one in which I’ve got 20 years.
What kind of cancer do you have?
It’s called primary neuroendocrine carcinoma, stage 4, metastatic. Neuroendocrine means the cells that form your endocrine system, so that’s your hormones, as well as your neurological system, like your nerves. It’s those types of cells. It’s related to small-cell lung cancer, like smokers’ cancer.
Mine started in the lungs as a very nonaggressive cancer, and then at some point it spread to my liver. At that point, it became metastatic. It transformed and mutated and became very aggressive.
Where has it spread to?
The liver is the main thing, and then the lungs, the spine, and my brain. The brain is maybe the biggest issue we’re trying to work with right now.
On the episode, you were talking about some kind of therapies and drugs that you’re trying. What have you done so far?
So far, I’ve just done chemo, and I finished chemotherapy for now. It’s excellent. It feels great to be done. Now I’m starting on a drug called tarlatamab, which we call our second line. The chemo did a good job of pushing back some of my cancer. I feel way better than I did at the beginning of this, and now we’re just going to see if we can keep that going.
If tarlatamab works for me, then I’ve got great prospects. If it doesn’t, we’ve got to try to figure out something else in a hurry.
I don’t want to poke and prod you and make you uncomfortable, but you have 4 small kids. If there’s anything that anybody in the audience can do to help you, I want to give them as much detail and surface area as possible to hopefully find some lucky thing for us—for you and your wife and your kids. Can you describe the drug that you’re on? We were on the phone 2 days ago about this. What are some of the prospects? What’s the good news? Essentially, we just need to buy you more time.
Yeah.
Because there’s just way more, whether it’s AI, immunotherapy, or new drugs. We just need to buy more years. Explain what’s going on with this new drug.
Tarlatamab is technically not an immunotherapy, but it’s very similar to an immunotherapy. The encouraging news is that tarlatamab was initially approved for people with small-cell lung cancer, and there it helped extend life expectancy by about 6 months to a year, which is still good time that you would take.
There’s a certain subset of people who have my type of cancer who’ve been on the drug for 2 years, and it’s working. It’s only been 2 years, so maybe it’s going to stop working any moment now, but maybe not. That’s the hope we have right now.
The assumption I’m trying to make is that this drug, tarlatamab, will last for a certain amount of time, and then we’ve got to find something else. Every cancer is unique. It’s its own special snowflake, and it’s got these different receptors, different markers. One that I have is called SMARCA or SMARCA4, and there aren’t a lot of great therapies for that yet, but there are a lot of clinical trials.
That’s maybe the next thing we’re looking at: if tarlatamab stops working for me, we can go into some of these trials. That’s the next thing we can attack with this cancer. I’m just about to start this new drug, and hopefully it can keep things at bay.
Is that covered under insurance? How does this work? Is it in short supply?
At first, it wasn’t covered under my insurance, but they just had a new study that they got a positive indication for this month. So now it’s going to be covered, which is great news. The next thing we’re looking at is whether we can enhance this with a custom mRNA vaccine to make it more effective. That’s sort of the cutting edge of cancer treatment, and that’s what we’re looking at spending money on right now.
6. Living With Two Futures
Do you want to talk about some of the same stuff you shared in terms of your outlook? You’re a man of faith.
Yeah.
I don’t have the same faith that you have. I have no idea what happens after somebody dies. But again, I think the episode you made is one of the most profound podcast episodes ever created. I can’t imagine what you’re going through, because your kids are all 5 and under, right?
You said in that episode—I think it was a quote, maybe by Nietzsche—“If I could live my life over again the same exact way, I would pick the same life.” You’re a good man. I’ve been telling everybody this: you’re a much better person than I am, for sure. You found something you love to do. You have this beautiful family, your faith, all these friends. You have everything you wanted in life, and that future might be deprived from you.
Yet the message you’re putting out there isn’t, “Oh, pity me,” or “Woe is me,” or that you’re sad. It’s almost unbelievably positive, for lack of a better description.
I really believe that, especially when you study history. I think about Napoleon fighting in France in the War of the Third or Fourth Coalition, or whatever. His men, his armies, keep getting wiped out, so by the end they’re just new conscripts. As soon as they can get them, they put them on a horse and send them out to the battlefield.
They’ve got what they call children running around on chickens, because they’re baby kids. They’re 16- and 15-year-olds riding around on these new horses that aren’t even trained for combat. You have all these 16- and 15-year-olds dying in war. You read about the amount of disease. If I go next year, you can’t study history for long without realizing I’ve had an amazing life.
I really have. I would choose this life again. It’s been great. I have a wife who I love and 4 kids who I really love. I found my vocation, my calling in life. I wake up every day excited about what I get to do. That wasn’t the beginning of my career. I’ve worked in consulting—it’s not exactly the coal mines, but I didn’t love it. I’ve got to spend years doing the thing that I love.
So life ends a little bit early, maybe. If it does, that doesn’t mean I’ve had a very unfortunate life. I still feel like I’ve had a very fortunate life. Context matters. When I’m going through pain, it’s not always easy, and I have bad moments. People can get the wrong impression from reading or watching that podcast. For other people going through cancer or disease, you have moments. But that’s okay. I just try to remember that, for the most part, I’ve had a very charmed life, and I really believe that to be the case.
Listen, man, I admire you. I’m glad we’re friends. I really love your work, and I’m really glad you chose to do this with me. I know we were thinking about timing, and I didn’t want you to be reluctant about it, because I do think there are a bunch of positive externalities and unpredictable externalities that are going to come out of this conversation.
I would just say, in closing, if anybody’s hearing this and could do anything—whether you have resources, drugs, anything that could help Ben and his family—please get in touch. We’ll leave contact information in the show notes. We’ll leave Ben’s email address in the show notes as well, if you’re cool with that. You’re a good dude. You got a bad hand, and I want to do anything I can to help you. Thanks for taking the time.
Thank you. If I can end with one more thing, I am alive, at least in some part, due to the influence of a man named Jon Huntsman, who was a billionaire from Utah and decided that the thing he wanted to do with his money was found a world-class cancer institute in Utah. I tried going through the medical system outside of that, and then I got put in this world-class cancer institute. I’ve had remarkable care since then.
People know me and feel like they know me because of the podcast, and people have been remarkably generous. But when you’re in this situation, you can’t help but think of all the people who are probably just as good of people as I am, who don’t have the type of resources, don’t have the type of audience that I have. I guess I would also like to put in a plug for everyone else. I do have a lot of resources, so if you know someone else in your life who could maybe use it more than me, also be thinking about them. Think about donating to Huntsman Cancer Institute or other cancer research and stuff like that, so other people can be helped out as well. I would really appreciate it.
This is not an act. This is how he’s been since I’ve known him. Thanks, Ben.
All right. Thanks, David.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review, and make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over four hundred biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders.