YouSaid · the spoken record

Eric Weiner

lines on the record: 111
first: 2016-02-01
most recent: 2016-02-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, creeping vanity, as one historian said of Athens, and I like that term, because it doesn't, you don't just wake up one day and say, oh my God, I'm arrogant. It sneaks up on you.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They came into being for different reasons, but they ended for the same reason. In a word, arrogance. I really do believe.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it shouldn't be a four letter word with another word. Yeah, we should, if not embrace it, at least acknowledge its role.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, right. So you need to have things shaken up from time to time. What did Thomas Jefferson said, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit of rebellion is necessary for a blood?”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anarchy is a complete lack of order. Chaos might be a hidden order, chaos might be a transitional state. To a new order. And, you know, not to pick on the Swiss, but Graham Green famously said of the Swiss, 500 years of peace and stability and what have they brought the world, the cuckoo clock. Is actually a German invention. But his point is”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thing to say is another thing to say disruption. But it disrupts the pattern, you know, it disrupts literally the EEG of our brain. And chaos is not the same as anarchy.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And for first time visitors, especially, you just see chaos everywhere. But an Indian would say, no, this isn't chaos. They're hidden orders here that Chiwala is selling the tea is always there doing that thing. And I think that having a lot of stimuli is important for creativity and disordered or apparently disordered stimuli. And there's just an awful lot of there in India.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And I lived there for several years. I have this India problem. I keep going back because I love and hate the place. I know.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, as long as the races bring with them different ideas in the world, you can have people from different races who see the world the same way. But in India, that was not the case. And I thought also that Calcutta was a great sort of stand-in to examine the notion of chaos. Have you been to India?”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is late 19th, early 20th century, and if you were to time travel there, you would find it to be remarkably creative. You would find a Renaissance man named Revenjranath Togor, who was a poet, essayist, activist, educator, the first non Westerner to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. You would find a scientist named Bose, not related to the headphones, but the same cultural background, who's doing amazing work and may have invented the radio before Marconi. What's interesting about Calcutta was the collision of British and Indian culture. And there's always that collision of cultures in these places of genius. And what emerges is your classic, the whole was greater than some of the parts. What emerged was a culture that was neither British nor Indian, Bengali.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think it informs a lot. I think you can think of Travis Kalanick of Uber. He had two very failed companies before Uber, and I think it fueled a lot of the aggression into Uber and having to succeed.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I can, there's this notion I stumbled across called failure indices. It's this idea that the genius, the creative genius, is very good at remembering how and where they failed. It's almost like they bookmark it in their brain. And then when they are confronted with a new problem, they will retrieve that place they failed and try it out again. They're willing to backtrack. So this idea that you should, if you fail, you should forget it and move on is wrong. If you fail, you should remember it and move on.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Around failing. But if Steve Jobs being fired, if he continued to fail, we wouldn't celebrate him. No, he would ultimately succeed.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is pretend celebrate, though. It's an theory is that especially in Silicon Valley Valley, failure is great as long as it's a backstory to your success. Exactly.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That you can be anything at any point, that you could be at a low. I mean, I'm thinking of a company like Stuart Butterfield Slack, you know, it failed. And then Slack happened out of it because it was a communication system they used within the failed company.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that would be a return to the way things used to be, right? And they take a very cyclical view of history and of time, and maybe we're getting metaphysical here. But if you have a cyclical view of time, you don't see these golden ages as a one-way street. You're up, then you're down, then you're up again.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's never true And I don't believe it's true for this place for Silicon Valley. And Chinese creativity is much less interested in novelty and much more interested in usefulness. If innovation isn't useful, they don't consider it creative. And there's a lot of handwriting there. I've met with Jack Ma.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And they invented the compass, and they invented toilet paper. Boy, how great is that? And sparks were flying in different directions as well. And it's interesting that there really is a Chinese approach to creativity because creativity is really based in our deep Creation myths, you know, and we all, whether you're religious or not, if you come from a Judeo Christian background and live in a Judeo-Christian society, you think of creativity as what's called ex nihilo from nothing, literally from nothing.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so in China was in the 13th century, and Marco Polo went there and sung the praises of China. I mean, it was a city. If a million people, Hangzhou, it was ruled by poet emperors. Couldn't we use a few more poet politicians? So it was kind of top down.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And the question is can they maintain that sweet spot? Absolutely. And I've thought about how long is this place going to last Silicon Valley? Because the truth is that these golden ages are fragile things. Yeah, they don't last that long. A few decades, a century maybe. And it's almost like they're these unstable elements in the periodic table. They can't hold themselves together.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're outsiders because if you're fully invested in the status quo, you're not going to rock that boat, right? But they're inside enough that their ideas do resonate and ultimately are recognized.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I call it Freud's Vienna, but it was Freud, it was Gustav Klimp the artist. And what's fascinating there is that you had sparks flying in lots of different directions. And what's interesting is that when you see a breakthrough in one field, say art, you often see breakthroughs in other completely unrelated fields. Because what happens is people see a break in the air in one field and on some unconscious level, as Freud would put it, they think, well, why not my field too? It's, again, it's the possibility of possibility. And Freud's a classic genius story in that he was an outsider, an immigrant and a Jew didn't really fit in, but didn't fully not fit in either. You know, he was accepted enough that he could push for his ideas that were dismissed as fairy tales at first, but he eventually won people over. And I'd say there's a sweet spot for all geniuses. They are what I call insider outside.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, or the genius creates from on high, like a god, like a Steve Jobs, and then we just lap it up and we have, you know, we're passive in the process. But I would argue that we, the appreciators of genius, the connoisseurs of it, are co-geniuses. Without us, the genius is nothing.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He had a great audience, and I would argue, Kara, that the audience actually was kind of a co-genius. You know, we think of genius as just, you know, the genius creates your...”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a letter to his father, I create my music. He didn't say Pixar, of course, but to operate on two levels so that the connoisseur will appreciate it and the everyman will appreciate it as well. So he was driven by the demands in a way that the audience made a great deal.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Double dip of genius, which has been in Jersey flavor. Yeah. Music, I would point out that you look at Mozart and people think, oh, clearly genius is genetic. He was born with that. Not so fast. He was born into a very musical family. His father was the premier violin instructor of the day. He was born in a musical time in a musical place and moved to Vienna, which was the place to be. And what's fascinating about Mozart is, I think, his relationship with his audience. You know, he had a demanding audience. I mean, everyone in Vienna played an instrument or knew music. And Mozart purposefully created his music like a Pixar movie. You go to a Pixar movie and it operates on two levels. They're the jokes for the kids and they get it, but there's a whole other level of humor for the adults. Right. Everyone's happy, right? You and your kid. Mozart actually said.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I'm talking about a kind of disorder, and there's some interesting research looking at the connection between chaos theory and creativity that chaos is sort of a necessary phase to go through on your way to a new order to creating something new. And our minds, our brains, when introduced to, say, a new smell or a new flavor, they'll enter what one neuroscientist calls an I don't know state.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm less interested in ethnic diversity. I'm interested in intellectual diversity. Discernment, which is separating good ideas from bad ideas. So all these golden ages I looked at were magnets for talent, but they were also colanders that sifted out the crappy idea. See, that's important. You can't just be open to everything. Las Vegas is a very tolerant place. It's not a place of genius and disorder. That's that upheaval I was talking about, that you need to shape things up.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They do. I hate to tie things up in a bow, but I'll give you a small bow, the three Ds diversity, discernment, and disorder. Diversity of ideas.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I hope it's available in audiobook, a televino's invisible cities. Because he imagines fifty six cities that are fantastical places. They're little one-page descriptions, and he imagines cities where instead of air, there's soil, cities where people live in nets upside down. It is so imaginative, and it was by my bedside when I was writing this book, Invisible Cities. Invisible cities by a telco cavino.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would be like a, to bring it back to Silicon Valley for a second, some startup firm allowing the intern to code the software or whatever. Yeah, and to give them that kind of responsibility”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And something else that was going on in Florence was a kind of internship program, if you will, called Botega or Workshops. And there was one run by a man named Verocchio. So-so artist, but a great businessman. And he had a great eye for talent. And one of his interns, apprentices really, was Leonardo da Vinci, who spent 10 years there, no much longer. It was like the never-ending internship. But he obviously was learning a lot. And what's amazing, Kara, is you look, there's one painting by Verocchio called Tobias and the Angel, and there's a fish in the painting that looks a lot better than the rest of the painting. And art historians now believe there's a reason for that. It wasn't painted by Da Vinci at 17 years old.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, culture was, it was like tea bills of the day, you know, the city had been decimated by the Black Death, the plague. And this is common for golden ages, they're often preceded by upheaval, catastrophe even. And that shook things up. And then all of a sudden, just investing in business seemed too risky, so they invested in culture. And they had some deep appreciation for it as well. They weren't, you know, you can have money and throw it around and not cultivate genius. You look at some of the Persian Gulf nations today, there's lots of money, but they're not producing lots of genius.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The time he was not an obvious choice. Right. You know, I mean, he mainly done sculpting and not painting. But Pope Julius II, who was a Medici himself, said, I'm going to bet on you. I want you to do this. So it's this boldness of choosing someone who looks like a bad fit. For a seemingly impossible task”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and I do make that connection. And it's an obvious one, but you can ignore it, that they were placing bets on people. But they placed bold bets. Know, and they had a keen eye for talent. Look at Michelangelo. Today we think, well, of course, he was the right person to paint for that Sistine Chapel job.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we don't often associate money in genius. We think that genius sort of doesn't dirty its hands with money, but that's not true. The Medicis, they were bankers. There was a cloth trade that they excelled in. And they were patrons of the art. But they got it. They knew art.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Is this too deep? No, it's perfect. I love it. No, it's just, I'm just thinking there's a lot of people in technology, which we'll get to in a little bit about that did that. And then Steve Jobs actually did exactly what other people are doing that made people see it.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I would add that once you hit that invisible target, other people have to see it. Otherwise, you're just crazy, right? You're just hitting invisible targets and people are like, what are you doing? I mean, hitting that target over there. I don't see anything. So they have to make people aware of that invisible target. Absolutely.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I mean, just a common theme throughout my book is it's specialization is bad and that geniuses don't know more than other people. They see more. Einstein wasn't a know-it-all. He wasn't a know-it-all. He was a see-it-all. And instead of ability to seek connections, let me give you one other quote that I think just sums up genius beautifully by the German philosopher Schopenhauer. He says, Talon hits the target no one else can hit. Genius hits the target. No one else can see. Which is good.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly a lot of a little bit of alcoholics is more creative studies show, and a lot of alcoholics fall down. And the Greeks sort of knew this intuitively. But it was that free-wheeling conversation and conversation among people from different disciplines. They didn't really have disciplines back then the way we do. But this is, I believe, just a common thread in all creative places, including this one, which is you don't have these silos. You don't have these fortresses of knowledge. Or if you do, people are willing to invade other people's fortresses.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, within all these places of genius, there are intimate spaces where people get together, right? And in Athens, it was two spaces. There was the agora, which was the marketplace, which was the original everything store way before Amazon. You could get everything there, including stolen goods and everything. And people came together and they talked. And it was chaotic. That sort of chaos is important. And the other place was the symposia, which means literally drinking together. Next time you go to a symposium, keep that in mind. Drinking together. And they drank a lot of wine, but they watered it down, five parts water.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That sense of wonder that really is the basis for all science and for this place. Silicon Valley would not exist without a curiosity and a deep, deep sense of wonder and awe. That's important and the Greeks were really, the Athenians in particular were the first ones to seriously ask that question. Why? What the fuck is going on here?”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They asked the question why You know, people before didn't really ask why, not the way the Greeks did. And Socrates in particular, he was an annoying person, right? Because he would, if he was sitting down here with you, he would say, well, why are you wearing that shirt? Well, I just chose it. Well, why did you choose it? What was your mindset? I mean, he would make you question your assumptions that we don't normally do. We normally go through life on autopilot because it's more efficient. But Socrates asked why they all asked why it was that...”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is They barred. They borrowed statue making from the Egyptians and mathematics from elsewhere, but they did perfect it. And they were sailors and they were open to ideas from the outside world. Now, why is that helpful? Why is immigration helpful? Well, it's helpful because A, immigrants bring fresh ideas in themselves which are helpful. But there's kind of another aspect here, because creativity, I believe, is contagious, right? Once it gets going. And so once you've always, you're the fish in the water and you've always been in the water and you don't think there's anything else but this water. And then along comes an entirely new kind of fish. And you're like, wow, it swims differently. There's a different way of swimming. And you might not swim that way. You might find some other way of propelling yourself. But the presence of outsiders opens your mind to the possibility of possibility. Right.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I once saw someone at Walmart. It might have been Sam Walton. He said that the planes are covered with the bodies of pioneers. And he meant that they're fast followers. They borrow all kinds of ideas, which is interesting. But get back to ancient Greece. Did they borrow?”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a verb it means to steal from others basically, and that's what they did. Plato said, what the Greeks borrow from foreigners they perfect. Maybe that sounds like this place.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it was if you went back in time and you were to say, well, which of these hundreds of Greek city-states is going to be the golden age, you would not have picked Athens? I mean, it was not the biggest, it was not the strongest militarily. It didn't have a lot of things going for it, but it did have an open mindset. It looked outward. It had an open immigration policy. Very interesting and a common thread for all these places. They welcomed foreigners in, even though Pericles, who was the leader at the time, said this may not be such a good idea from a national security point of view, but we do it anyway. And this may sound a bit heretical, but one thing that made Athens great is that they were moochers. They were tremendous moochers.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's cultural Probably ancient Athens Okay, Hangzhou China Late 19th. Let's talk about each of these genius places, and then I want to do bring it back to Silicon Valley technology because people here think of themselves as geniuses, and they call themselves geniuses. Oh, no, no.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It never works, it never works This place has very little to do with technology, actually. At least the process is cultural. I identified these seven genius clusters that you write grew organically. Some you're probably familiar with. Well, ancient Athens and Renaissance Florence, you're probably familiar with those, less familiar is Edinburgh, Scotland in the 18th century, which is an incredible genius cluster. Vienna had a rare double dip of genius, sort of musical Vienna of Mozart and Beethoven. the Vienna of Freud, among others. And I went to some really unusual genius clusters that you're probably not familiar with. Okay, Hangzhou, China, 13th century, the Song Dynasty, a city of a million people at the time, while Europeans were picking lice out of their hair and wondering when the Middle Ages were ever, ever going to end. China was doing amazing things. And Calcutta in the late 19th century, yeah, most people think of Mother Teresa in Misery. But it had its moment in the sun. You know, it produced the first.”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, people think that. There's always an argument can you create silicon, there's always silicon glen, silicon alley, and it never works. It never works. And to me, that's when I say analog. This is a place that works for a reason because it's a place. Right. I like Hollywood works as a place or Bollywood or the financing. And this place”
2016-02-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Eric Weiner, Author of "The Geography of Genius" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT