President of american for tax reform says americans are tired of the irs and our tax system. And on American History tv on cspan 3 on lectures and history university of texas has changed from the reconstruction error to present. And remembering the 150th anniversary of the con federate surrender and the end thof civil war. She and now viewers question are answered for three hours. He is a former chair of cnn and the editor of time and severs as ceo of the Aspen Institute and chair of the board of governors. Host what is the link between ben Franklin Steve jobs and others . Guest theyre all Creative Minds and that Creative Minds and that interested me throughout interested me a lot of people my career. A lot of people write write about sports heroes about sports heroes or or literary literary figures, but to me figures, but to me its people who its people who can can combine different discipline combine different discipline like the arts like the arts and sciences, and sciences, the way ben the way Ben Franklin Franklin did, did, the way ada lovelace the way ada lovelace did and albert did and Albert Einstein. We talk einstein. We talk about about innovations so often, innovations so often, its almost drained its almost drained of its of its meaning, and ive meaning, and ive always liked always liked to write about real people to write about real people who are in a who are in a situation, whether situation, whether it it be be averill hairman averill hairman after world war ii and you have after world war ii and you have a create a create a new world a new world ordinary like nato and the ordinary like nato and the world bank and world bank and the marshall the Marshall Plan 0, plan 0, steve jobs who says were now in steve jobs who says were now in a digital a digital revolution, we have to make revolution, we have to make it personal. It personal. These are people who these are people who to use to use steve jobs words, steve jobs words, were able were able to think different, to think different, think out of the box. Think out of the box. I want i want to try to explore to try to explore the creative mind the creative mind and how and how it it works. Host one of of them them themes themes themes in your book themes in your book seems seems to be to be a connect a connect to spirituality. To spirituality. Guest everybody believed they guest everybody believed they were part of something larger were part of something larger than themselves. I remember i remember sitting with steve jobs sitting with steve jobs and i asked him, and i asked him, why did you do why did you do what you do . What you do . And he said, life is and he said, life is like a like a river. You get river. You get to pick things to pick things out of the river, out of the river, really cool really cool things people things people have done, they have done, they put before you put before you in in the river, great the river, great devices or great ideas, devices or great ideas, but after a while but after a while you realize its not you realize its not how much you get to how much you get to take take out of the river, its out of the river, its what you what you put back into the river, what put back into the river, what you leave behind so that you leave behind so that your spirit is your spirit is still manifest after still manifest after you have been gone, you have been gone, and whether and whether its albert its Albert Einstein einstein or or Benjamin Franklin or Benjamin Franklin or anybody else, they did anybody else, they did have a have a connection to something connection to something super natural, super natural, something somewhat larger something somewhat larger than themselves. Host from 2011, host from 2011, your your book book on steve jobs, opening on steve jobs, opening sentence. In the sentence. In the early summer early summer of 204 i got a of 204 i got a phone call from steve phone call from steve jobs. Guest jobs. Guest i had guest i had written written a biography a biography of of Benjamin Franklin, and Benjamin Franklin, and he asked he asked unidentified speaker me to do him me to do him next. I thought, next. Franklin, albert franklin, Albert Einstein, then einstein, then you . Then i you . Then i realize he had been realize he had been sick and fighting sick and fighting cancer, and we dont always cancer, and we dont always look at look at Creative Minds in Creative Minds in business and business and entrepreneurship, and to entrepreneurship, and to me to be able to get me to be able to get very close to very close to and try to and try to peel back peel back the layers the layers from from the greatest the greatest business business and and Technology Innovator of our Technology Innovator of our day and generation, day and generation, was going to was going to be be something something truly special. Truly special. Id known him id known him since since around 1984 when around 1984 when he came to time he came to Time Magazine magazine toy toy to show toy toy to show off the off the original macintosh, original macintosh, and and we had remained moderately we had remained moderately good friends, good friends, especially when i especially when i was was editing time editing time and he used and he used me me to to market. I liked market. I liked stop jones and stop jones and his passion. His passion. When i got his call when i got his call i thought is i thought host i asked jobs why he wanted me to he wanted me to be the one be the one to write to write his biography. I think youre his biography. I think youre good at getting people to good at getting people to talk, talk, he he says. Learned from him a little bit, too. When i started working i would ask questions with premises and then finally i realized if i let them go and said ipod he would go on for an hour or two i could pick up to rictme rhythms of the way his mind work. I am not the best reporter or the best writer but i am getting good at people talking to you. I will try to do that i said i should go visit gordon and spend time with the people or larry page because i have been blessed to have that luckyness of having access to some of these people because i have been a journalist my whole life. That is what i try to bring to the party. There are people who take the steve jobs book and look at what it means, how it reads leadership lessons. I can call people up sit down listen try to get the quotes right and try to put it as a first draft for people to analyze. Host is this book an authorized biography . Guest guest he said he didnt want to read the book. He said i have been brutally honest and i want you to be so i will not ask to read the book before it comes out. We discussed when the book should come out and i said i think he should make the last seen when i step down as ceo of apple and the book went to the printer hoping he was going to be alive when the book came out. He told me and the last time we talked was when i turned the book in. And i thought he will beat the cancer one more time but we were not so lucky. Host he has no idea . Guest i did sit and read parts of the book to him especially the last chapter. I let him have the last word for four or five pages of the book and from different interviews i took his broad thoughts about why he did what he did, what made him creative, what was the meaning of life for him and so i put those together and really put them together from two or three separate formal interviews i had and wanted to read it outloud to him to make sure he was comfortable with it. There were things in the book where he is you know personal and tough on people and you know anidote i am not sure you and i would want in books. I made sure he knew about each one of them. Especially ones i thought where he doesnt give somebody Stock Options or he is mean to somebody. I wanted him to explain his side of it. Anything in the book i thought might be tough that he would not like i made sure he knew about it before hand because that is how steve jobs was. He didnt try to sugar coat things. He would Say Something out right. I am not as brave or curage as steve was. But i went over things in the book i thought he might not like. Host if you go to the index you will find mood swings of and offensive behaviors of and there is five lines of offensive behavior is in there. A couple other things as prankster and primal therapy. That was something as i said felt very fortunate he let me get up close to talk about primal screen therapy or examples where he was tough and encouraged me to be honest and we will talk about those things. In some ways i felt by the end of the process i knew more about him than i did myself because he was a very self reflective individual. He understood himself extraordinary well and once he started pealing away the layers he was willing to talk about it and luckily for me he encouraged me to put it all in. There were a few things i thought were painful to other and didnt give as much insight on steve. I would go over him and say that should be left out and it will hurt this person and wont help the reader. He said i told you put those things in. Was shehe smart . No not exceptionally you said he was a genius. I compare him to bill gates. Bill gates had more conventional mental processing power. I marvel and watch bill gates take large amounts olike two screens on his desk and he would be processing the information and be absolutely brilliant. Steve wasnt brilliant in that way. He didnt have that analytical processing power. He is an intuitive jen genius. We had a feel for beauty, what people liked, what would work and that is what i meant by genius. I saw it in Albert Einstein even. He was not the best doctor in europe in 1935. He was a third class patton examiner and couldnt get his ph. D or a job at the university. You would not say he is the greatest physciast but he was a genius. Steve job put the same quantum orbit as Albert Einstein but there was a similarity which is the genius of steve jobs came from making in intuitive leaves. And they questioned things that were obvious to us. Question the perceived wisdom of newton writing at the beginning of the period that time marches along respective of how we observe it. Albert einstein says how do we know that . How do we test that . Take clocks and try to sink roinize them. People didnt know he needed a thousand songs in our pocket but steve was able to have a feel for beauty and Customer Experience that made him the greatest intuitive genius of the middle age. That is what i meant by that sentence. Host there is one aspect steve jobs had a role in with the book and that is the cover. We had a couple different covers. We will show you the original and then the paperback cover as well. What was his concern about the cover . Gustgust steve got mad and and we landed at the San Francisco airport and the thing you least want to see is seven missed phone calls from steve jobs. I hit return phone call and answered instantly. He starts reaming me out saying you have no taste. I had no what he was talking about. I kept saying tell me what you are upset about. He said bad cover. They put it into online categories and he said i dont want to cooperate with you any more because of the ugly cover. And i said i have not thought about the cover yet. The book isnt finished. And he said unless you let me collaborate with the cover i will not cooperate. And that was the easiest decision. I said great. Suggest another. He said black and white and simple and we went through a lot of photos. I love the Albert Watson picture we went through. He works for Time Magazine and maybe fortune as well. There were four or five pictures he was considering including one that Time Magazine did later. I was hoping that he could agree on the albert watston picture and be did by the very end and he wanted that type that says you know steve jobs by me and he said i like that font. It is very simple. Steve loved fonts every since he was at college. That is why in the it is dozens of font. Theome thing i pushed back on is he wanted my name in dark type and his name in light gray thinking that it was my book and i said no no this has nothing to do with me. This book is all about you. Every word in there is something built on something you said. I want to steve jobs to be in the darker type and me to be more recessive. It turned out this way. There was maybe eight or nine conversations and with directors making sure that that cover that looks so so simple it is Pretty Simple looking cover took a lot of work. Sometimes simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and sometimes it is pretty difficult because steve jobs said, and there is johnny hive another great design director, said simplicity isnt about making it easy or taking things out, you have to under the depth of something. You have to dig deep and go hard. It is hard work to create simplicity and leave out something. And that is what steve jobs was able to do on the ipod the iphone, and the original mac. Host why the younger steve jobs on the paperback . Guest by the time the hardback was out for a year, the Albert Watson photograph was iconic. Apple computer used it on their posters, it was used in the Memorial Services it had just become the standard iconic photograph. I think there were people at apple and simon and shuster who said dont build on that. I saw the picture done for Rolling Stones in the early 1980s and steve is in the exact same pose. You have it there on the paperback. And i thought this will be something fresh and new. Steve always used the phrase think different and i think whether it was albert watston, apple, or simon and shuster it would not be doing different with that. And i think apple felt that icon iconic image was something they owned. And i wanted to make sure with the paperback because i think they asked, too, that we try to think different. Host what was the importance of Lorene Powell in steve jobs life . Guest she is an awesome person, a person of deep moral track and helps kids underserved get into college. I think that you know he would say to me that, you know his life wouldnt have been the same having not met her. And had she not helped make him who he was. So and by the way the whole family unlike a lot of powerful people, he wasnt out on the boat every day and having dinner every night with famous people. He was having dinner at the long table in the kitchen of his house with his three kids he had, wonderful kids and he would talk, deep serious conversations. No playing on the ipad during dinner. Steve was rough around the edges as a Family Member whether it was home work or office but the one thing you discover and and is even though he is rough around the edges, at work he developed a team that were loyal to him and more than loyal they loved him. Likewise it was his home. He has around him a family who deeply is not only loyal but deeply loves him. And so when people say steve jobs was a pretty rough character at times. He had an abrasive personality and could be mean to people i would say yes. I hope you look at what happened and that is he is able to have deep love and loyalty at home and at the office and therefore put it into a context. Some people are mean and nasty and hate him and steve had something else. It wasnt like he was hard to deal with. He connected with people and inspired them and made them love them. And that is the essence of steve jobs. Every now and then i will read articles about bosses who try to be like steve jobs and be tough oh people being brutally honest trying to be like steve jobs. I said dont try this because he could pull it off because deep inside he knew how to connect with people and make them feel inspired. He really cared deeply about other people. Otherwise we would not have known how to make products that connected emotionally to us. When you talk about his home and office life there were people around him; his wife and kids who truly felt deep love and passion for him. It was more complex than some people make it out. I wish i had conveyed that in the book. People read the book and say he was kind of mean. I say wait wait i tried over and over again in the book to say he was tough on people but whether it was the original team or his family people would say i would give up anything in the world to have the opportunity to work with him, be with him, and be around him. Host in the introduction to your book the innovators as an electronic geek you right who loved teeth kit and ham radio with your address. Guest i am old enough to have gotten my first geek experiences tottering circuits for a radio and getting to play with a ham radio. Host i can remember when vacuum tubes gave way to transitioners. You write historians are leery of causing great change as progress because they like to call them revolutions. Is this a revolution . Guest this is like the Industrial Revolution. You have have steam engine connecting with looms and things and suddenly we move into an age where machines and people are having to work together. I think with we have that here with the microchip, the computer and the internet all working together. Three inventions each important, but the combination of switch to Digital Networks with micro processors and chips and the computer revolution we have leads to a new way of doing information and conducting business and social life and it is definitely a revolution. And i remember i think there is a person who you know i quote somebody, steve chape a great historian of science at harvard who wrote a book about scientific revolution beginning with saying there is no such thing as a scientific revolution and this is a book about it. I introduce the book and as a kid you look at a vacuum tube and figure out how it works on a circuit and test