Dwarkesh Podcast
00:34:46 · Robert Caro, Dwarkesh Patel
[00:34:46] S1: Yes. [00:34:47] S0: That is my favorite book perhaps ever. And you paint such a compelling portrait of this person, Coke Stevenson, know, governor of Texas. They called him Mr. Texas. [00:35:00] S1: Yes. [00:35:01] S0: As you were writing his profile and writing this book, did part of you wish that he had won the Senate election? [00:35:09] S1: You couldn't help, I'm not, you couldn't help feel, well, I'll answer you directly. The answer is yes. I think Coke Stevenson, although he was an idealist, he knew how to get things done. When he was governor of Texas, he really accomplished things. Okay? I think if he went to the Senate, he would have been a great senator and accomplished things. So you wish that he had won. You feel the tragedy that he lost because of the way he lost, you know? The things about Coke Stevenson, he really didn't realize someone could do all the things to him. And in the election that Lyndon Johnson did, he didn't come to grips with that. [00:36:08] S0: Suppose that Kennedy wins in '60 but Johnson refuses the vice presidency so he's still a majority leader. How different do you think the bills that Kennedy would pass under Johnson as majority leader would be from the laws that Johnson as president was eventually able to pass? That is to say the things that happened in '64 and '63 and '65, would they have just happened earlier?
00:36:38 · Robert Caro
[00:36:38] S1: No, because Kennedy did not have the overriding desire to change America. We see no, John Kennedy was utterly charming. He was a good president. He was good in foreign policy where Johnson certainly was not. But what he did not have was this vision, this desire to change America that Lyndon Johnson had. Lyndon Johnson comes back from his year teaching the poor kids in Cotulla determined to change the education system to help poor people more, to do all these other things to help poor poor people. That determination is something that's really unique. It's what made him domestically such a great president that we have all these civil rights laws, these anti poverty laws that we wouldn't have had without Lyndon Johnson. His presidency ends in tragedy because of foreign policy, because of Vietnam. But he has this ideal, this desire to get things done to help people in America that's almost unique. You say, see, he's determined to do this, you know? He's gonna find a way to do it. You watch him doing it. Then you say, he was doing it. When he... His attention turns to Vietnam and everything falls apart. And he makes it, his presidency is ruined. The things he started out to do domestically don't get done in the way he would've done them. But he starts out in... After the election with the education laws, with the anti poverty bills to change the country, and he's on his way to doing it. That's the great tragedy of Johnson and Vietnam.
00:39:03 · Dwarkesh Patel, Robert Caro
[00:39:03] S0: If I can ask about that, and it's okay if you don't wanna talk about this because it's in the next book, but if you're willing to talk about it, fundamentally, why did Johnson keep escalating even when [00:39:20] S1: Oh, you know, in the answer to your question is, I'm still trying to figure that out right now. So I'm not gonna That's fine. Because that's quite a mystery, [00:39:31] S0: you Yeah. One of the things that's true of both Johnson and Moses is this inexhaustible energy, you know, working sixteen hours a day, sometimes even more than that. And I wonder how much you think that is the fact that they had a different constitution, that they were just had different reserves of energy, or do you think it was just their will was so strong? [00:39:58] S1: I think it's just their will. I mean, a lot of people have their energy. You know, when you see Robert Moses sleeping very little, showing that he'd do anything to get his way, to get things done, Being tired of something doesn't even seem to figure into the equation. Sometimes I'm looking at it, you know, I can't remember one off the top of my head, and you'll say, he's making this call and Johnson's making this call at two and 03:00 in the morning. He's up making these calls to get his way. I... In fact, there's a funny anecdote. One senator, Johnson calls him at 5AM to ask him for his vote on something. And the Senator says, Oh, Lyndon, I was just lying here waiting for your call. [00:40:57] S0: There will. I wanna ask you a little bit about writing biography now. [00:41:04] S1: Okay.
00:41:04 · Robert Caro, Dwarkesh Patel
[00:41:04] S1: Okay. [00:41:06] S0: One question I have is you spend five years, ten years writing a single book. And through that process maybe your editor and your wife are the only people who have seen the manuscript. So how do you make sure you're on the right track? Because you know, you had to wait so long from when you start to when you get public feedback. How do you make sure that everything's gonna hang together and you're pursuing the message the way you want to?
00:41:38 · Robert Caro
[00:41:38] S1: Part of your question is how do you be sure you're on the right track? The answer to that is you're not, okay? But how do you try to stay on the right track? I do have a device for that. Before I start a book, I learned this the hard way with The Power Broker, because I didn't do it with The Power Broker. Before I start a book, I think through what I want the book to be, the whole book. People say, you mean you think it through to the end? Well, the answer is yes. And then you say, well, what is this book about? And I said at that desk sometimes for a long time before I start right when I'm thinking about the book, just asking myself in one way or another, what is this book about? You gotta get it down to one sentence. You say, well, you can't get it down to one sentence. Then you say, yeah, but Bob, you learned you better get it down to one sentence. Or three years from now, you're gonna be writing and you're gonna be saying, what am I trying to do? So before I start a book, I try to get it down to, I send a sentence or at most a paragraph and say, really, what is this book about? And I try to make everything hang together around that point.
00:43:09 · Dwarkesh Patel, Anish
[00:43:09] S0: Back in August, my sponsor, Jane Street, released the design files for a mystery chip and challenged my audience to figure out its true purpose. The challenge is over, and Jane Street has released a blog post highlighting some of their favorite submissions. They also revealed the ASIC's purpose. I won't spoil it here, but if you're curious, I've linked to it in the show notes. Anish, who helped design the puzzle, walked me through some of the best write ups. [00:43:33] S2: I think my favorite submission was probably this insane visualization made by Chetan Vandriel and Lyndon Post who started by showing in three d how a chip is made from standard cells, how all of the metal layers fit together to actually comprise the logic of the chip, and then showed each component of our puzzle design, what it does, and how they reverse engineered it before then showing how it all fits back together into the puzzle. [00:43:58] S0: Don't worry if you missed this challenge. There's a new one live right now. [00:44:02] S2: So the goal with this new challenge is we want people to design a hardware protocol emulator chip that can be used to analyze and emulate different communication protocols. And as a bonus, we're going to pay to fabricate our favorite submissions and you'll actually get your chip back mounted on a board ready for you to test in real life.