121 Reality Distortion transcript (Steve Jobs)

Listen to the full episode and see show notes at this link.

Leslie: [00:00:00] This is famous and Gravy – biographies from a different point of view. To participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello@famousandgravy.com. Now here's the quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

Michael: This person died 2011, age 56. He dropped out of Reed College in 1972 and he once told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life.

Friend: That sounds like it could be one of my uncles, but, um, no clue. The only famous person I know that was really loved

Leslie: LSD was. Carrie Grant,

Michael: not Carrie Grant. Good guess, but not Carrie Grant. In the early years of his career, his meddling in tiny details, maddened colleagues and his criticism could be caustic and even humiliating, but he grew to elicit extraordinary loyalty.

Leslie: I don't know who that could be at all. Reed College and LD. It's hard to know what to bake.

Friend: It'll click into place. Okay. It'll click into

Michael: place.

Friend: Hmm.

Michael: Peter [00:01:00] Falk, not Peter Falk, who I do want to do at some point, not Peter Falk. Good guess. In the 1990s, he bought a tiny computer graphics spinoff from Director George Lucas and built a team of computer scientists, artists, and animators that became Pixar.

Friend: We still no? Mm-hmm. Oh, I wanna say John Landis, but that is not the guy that's part of, that's a whole, not John

Michael: Landis. I like that guest though. I think he's actually still around too. Not sure. All right. We'll look it up. All right. He once said quote. I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know.

Unfortunately, that day has come.

Friend: That guy who wore the turtleneck, Steve Jobs,

Michael: that's Mr. Jobs.

Friend: How can I remember his name? Steve Jobs. Today's dead celebrity is Steve Jobs.

Archival: We started with nothing. So whenever you start with nothing, you always can shoot for the moon. You have nothing to lose. And we got a collection of the, I think some of the finest computer scientists in the [00:02:00] world that just went and did it. And, and that's why I go to work in the morning, is to hang around these type of people.

They're fun. They play in punk rock bands on the weekends and all sorts of stuff. Computer people aren't. You read all this computer nerd stuff. It's not really true anymore. They're, they're really a lot closer to artists than they are to, to anything else.

Michael: Welcome to Famous Engr. I'm Michael Osborne,

Leslie: and my name is Leslie Chang.

Michael: And on this show, we choose a famous figure who died in the 21st century, and we take a totally different approach to their biography. What didn't we know? What could we not see clearly? And what does a celebrity's life story teach us about ourselves today?

Steve Jobs died 2011, age 56.

I am so unbelievably thrilled to have Leslie Chang on the show. Leslie, welcome back to Podcast Land.

Leslie: Thank you. I am

Michael: thrilled. Okay, so Leslie and I go way back. My [00:03:00] origins as a podcaster began about 15 years ago when I was at Stanford, and I taught a class where I had my students record podcasts. Leslie was one of my students.

After that class, the podcast took on, she stayed on to help with the show, and then after graduating you got trained up as like an audio producer? Yeah,

Leslie: yeah. I did the Salt Institute in Portland, Maine. Had an amazing time. Did a lot of documentary audio.

Michael: One of the things we did among the many projects we worked on was a 12 part history of Silicon Valley series.

I think that is one of the more relevant touchpoints for this episode. If there is one figure who completely embodies Silicon Valley lore and the sort of weird combination of idealism and rapacious capitalism, like Steve Jobs is the guy to study. If you were to pick one biography of a towering figure, he's the guy.

Leslie: A hundred percent. I mean, talk about origin story of Silicon Valley. He was pretty much there through the whole thing, and to your point, embodies the weird mix of [00:04:00] idealism, revolutionary hippie thinking, whole Earth catalog, and then of course rapacious capitalism.

Michael: Yeah, right. And hegemony and you know, world dominance, but also great products that we can't seem to put down.

It's all there in his story. All right, let's get to it. Category one, grading the first line of their obituary. Stephen P. Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple who helped usher in the era of personal computers and then led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies, and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age.

Died Wednesday he was 56. Why did they say Stephen P Jobs? Nobody does.

Leslie: I know.

Michael: I felt

Leslie: the same way. I was like, no one knows him as a, he's not a Stephen. Why? Why? That leapt out at me. What leapt out to you here? My initial reaction was that I feel like Steve Jobs would've hated this as the first line of his obituary.

What's missing? [00:05:00] It's factual. I think like visionary, co-founder of Apple maybe is the best phrase, but it just is missing some kind of spark or energy. Like he had so much personality. He was such a marketer. He had so much charisma, and I feel like none of this. Captures that. Why would you use the phrase mobile communication?

It's like such a, like businessy, MBA term, you know?

Michael: Totally. Nobody uses the phrase mobile communication, but he is responsible for making the smartphone ubiquitous. In the same way Edison made electricity ubiquitous, and Henry Ford made the automobile ubiquitous. Mobile communications is such a lame term to describe the impact he had.

Are you kidding me? I did have this thought. Okay. He dies 2011. Mm-hmm. Which when you and I were getting ready for this, I was like, oh, that's actually more recent. Than I thought. So maybe in 2011, the iPhone debuts 2007. Pretty soon after smartphones are everywhere. In 2011, maybe it wasn't yet [00:06:00] recognized that iPhones and Androids and smartphones were going to be the generational technology that completely defined our lives.

It is by far and away the most important invention in our lifetimes. Yeah, and so I was like trying to give them an out that way, but that kind of feels like bs. Of all the people we've ever done on Famous and Gravy, he is going to be more remembered by history than anybody else, than David Bowie, then the Queen, then, then Muhammad Ali, only because he's such a obvious American historical figure of our time and what are we gonna most remember?

It's not gonna be personal computers. It's probably gonna be the smartphone. Yes. It may be the company, it may be Apple, but it's one of those two things. And the way this obit reads, it kind of puts it all on the same playing field and help bring in personal computers, also music, movies and mobile communications like it.

You are right. This is so generic. It's not even generic. It looks like it was written by ai. It's, it's awful. [00:07:00] It doesn't get at his very complicated personality. It doesn't really do his legacy justice at all. The only thing you can really say positive about it is what you already pointed to. Visionary.

Mm-hmm. That's an important word and I think it's appropriate, whatever you think of him, I do think you have to include the word visionary in the first line of his oed. Cultural transformation is also pretty good, but it just doesn't feel. Impactful.

Leslie: It's a little like sociology, but I feel like he saw himself as a revolutionary and that would be the type of language that he would feel happy seeing here.

And I feel like that's a stronger word that would've been fun to see here.

Michael: It also doesn't introduce much in the way of complexity. It's way too neutral. Yeah. And I do think that people had, and have very polarizing reactions to his story. There's nothing in here that hints at that. There's a great New Yorker article I came across in the research.

About sort of competing biographies for Steve Jobs. They were talking about [00:08:00] the movie with Ashton Kutcher, which is basically a PR show. I mean, it's just totally deferential and flattering. And then there's the man in the ach, what is it, Jean Man in the

Leslie: Machine? Yeah. Documentary. Yeah, man In the Machine.

Michael: And then Steve Jobs, the movie, the Aaron Sorkin. Danny Boyle one. And so here's, here's the line they say that I think actually really captures the debate over Steve Jobs biography. In reference to those movies, they say in business books, jobs is presented as a visionary management guru in Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle's film.

He's cast in the stock role of a flawed genius seeking redemption. What was fascinating about jobs was that he didn't fit into either of those narratives. This is where it gets good jobs, was a stylishly, dorky Buddhist technophile, an egomaniacal hippie, minimalist, a ally mercurial, a steep hardass, a zen perfectionist, and adopted son who denied, but later accepted the paternity of his daughter.

No novelist could have invented Steve Jobs. He was a man who fit into no. Preexisting category and the fact that he was the boss and public face of the [00:09:00] world's most valuable company was to say the least unusual. Ultimately, jobs was captivating as a human being who embodied many common and contradictory attitudes, not just about technology, but about work, family, and spiritual life.

That is first line obit stuff, right? Yes. I mean, you'd have to rework that to get some of that in there, but like this is a complex, fascinating. Figure, his op opiate doesn't do anything to capture any of that story. Just it. It's almost like you already know who he is and it's almost lazy that way. I'm angry.

He's worked up or I got my score. Where? Where are you? Oh, I got a pretty brutal score. All right. What do you got? I'm giving this a two. I think that's the right number. I'll sign off on your two. They totally blew it, and I'd like to think that whoever was the author of this, this is arguably the most important line you'll ever write, like rest to the occasion.

New York Times. Not disappointing. Okay. I'm glad you and I are as worked up as we are. This is good. This is good energy to carry. Good start. Good start. Good stuff. Good stuff. All right, [00:10:00] let's carry it in. All right. Category two, five things I love about you here. Leslie and I will develop a list of five things that offer a different angle on who this person was and how they lived before we do the five things category.

You and I were talking before we recorded that. I hate it when people say it's complicated as a way of brushing stuff aside, as a way of dismissing. I'm like, eh, I'm not gonna say anything more. It's complicated. I wanna get into the complexity. And I approached five things in terms of introducing both, uh, incredible and problematic information.

And I kind of want to divide up the Steve Jobs story into business, personal and spiritual. So I'm gonna start with the business story. I wrote toy stories, Woody, and where, where I'm going with this is I had a friend who said. The Walter Isaacson biography is the big definitive work of Steve Life's story, and I asked him, what did they miss there?

He says, you need to read a book called [00:11:00] Becoming Steve Jobs, because for people who don't know the story, Steve Jobs was the founder of Apple in the seventies. The company, you know, goes public. He becomes very wealthy. They eventually hire John Scully. Steve Jobs and John Scully are good for a while. John Scully had been CEO of Pepsi, but then later in the mid eighties, Steve Jobs is ousted from Apple and goes into the wilderness.

He goes and starts a couple companies, most notably Pixar and next, and then he's rehired by Apple in 1997 and eventually becomes CEO again and leads it to glory. So that's like the business story. For anybody who doesn't know it, what the Isaacson biography really misses. In terms of Steve Jobs growth is what he learned during his time in the wilderness.

Isaacson almost talks about those companies next in Pixar, as if that's how he were keeping busy until Apple came knocking again, not in terms of how he became a better manager. And there [00:12:00] are, if you look at it, I think, very wonderful parallels with Woody from Toy Story, right? Which is the, which is the Pixar movie that leads Pixar to Glory of which Steve Jobs was leading.

So here are the, here are my Woody parallels. Okay. Toy Story, uh, established a likable character as the cause of his own downfall, as the result of hubris. Woody is constantly facing obsolescence, being replaced by buzz. He's a control freak. Mm-hmm. Woody polices Andy's room with zeal, enforcing order, insisting that he knows what's best.

This is Steve Jobs written by, he doesn't know he's a mercurial. He's a bully in a lot of ways.

Leslie: Yeah. Super forceful. Basically, he wanted things his way and he was a control freak. And he kind of imposed that on everyone around him. Monomaniacal? Yes.

Michael: Okay. Now, Woody's downfall involves exile. He is accidentally sent into Sid's backyard with Buzz, but he overcomes his weaknesses through learning to trust others.

Thereby he earns his way [00:13:00] to becoming an even better and more complete toy. Steve Jobs became a great manager when he was in the wilderness. I think he learned something important when he was ousted from Apple, and I think just the business story, we need to give him credit for growing. Mm-hmm. Whatever else you make of him that happened as the result of a deep break.

He even says in the Stanford commencement speech, at the time, I didn't realize this was the best thing for me. And it turns out it was. That's something I admire, Leslie. Yeah. I do think in our professional ambitions we can develop attachments that we have a hard time surrendering and saying, maybe the best thing for me here is to not be attached and to go and try and take the pain of a breakup and learn, well, maybe that's simple, but I feel like it's a important part of the Steve Jobs story.

So this was like my take home from this part of his life.

Leslie: I love that. And when you say. Wilderness. You don't mean like actual wilderness, you just mean [00:14:00] away from apple? You mean like trees and

Michael: stuff? No, I mean, no, I mean, I think Apple was his baby. The way he feels about his company is the way a parent feels about their child.

Yes, there is an attachment and an obsession and a love, and part of where his worst tendencies as a control freak come out is because he's so fixated on the story of this company. I

Archival: don't feel my job is to win a popularity contest right now. You know, I feel my job is to help the team at Apple do the right things to turn this company around so that it can really prosper again.

And, and I think that's gonna happen. And if, if some, you know, someone or some group of people that aren't gonna like just about anything we do. But my job's not to win a popularity contest.

Leslie: It's interesting to think like what the counterfactual would've been, right? Like if he had never been ousted and if he hadn't had time to grow, to your point as a manager, would he have burned himself out at Apple?

And [00:15:00] maybe it never would've gotten to where it eventually landed. We don't know. But it's like sometimes people who have personalities that are that forceful, like they need an act of God or like something external to force them away from that path for a little bit. Yeah. Before they can continue forward.

Michael: Alright, so what do you got for thing number two?

Leslie: Okay, so this, I'm gonna call from Nerd to Nemo. You already mentioned that. In his time in the wilderness away from Apple, he was involved in starting two companies next and Pixar. Yeah, and what I love about the Pixar story is that it actually started from such a nerdy place.

He was just so interested in the computer graphics and animation side of things. He was convinced it could really transform storytelling. So he bought the graphics group, which of course later became Pixar from George Lucas in 1986. Eventually was able to partner with Disney. They had this breakthrough movie Toy Story in 1995, which was the first fully computer animated feature film and got nominated for an Oscar, which was also brand new.

And I just love [00:16:00] that. You know, it started from such a nerdy technical place that he was interested in, and then it became. This company that's like really known for creating films that delight families. Toy story Finding Nemo Bugs, life Rati, like so many s Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and so I, that's one thing I love about it.

Michael: I, I mean this is the thing with Steve Jobs is there's so many opportunities to deep dive, different facets. The Pixar thing with something I locked in on early too. Yeah. I have such love for Pixar and they had that goal of like, one day I'd like to have a full length feature movie that's completely computer animated.

Yeah, which is such an unbelievably nerdy goal. To your point,

Leslie: you know what's cool about it is that jobs also let people have center stage with Pixar, right? Like he let Lasseter take the credit, and I just, I like that he stepped back a little bit, you know, he empowered this group of people to make art, make beautiful art for kids and families, and he didn't have to be a center [00:17:00] for that.

Michael: You know? Maybe that is a partial explanation for why there was such. Affinity for him, despite his temperament. He is such a champion of nerds. I think to the extent that the story of Silicon Valley over the last 50 years has been the rise of the nerds, it's one of the reasons he's the perfect figure to encapsulate that history.

Leslie: He wanted to elevate what they did, right? I think there was a quote, maybe it was in the Walter Isaacson biography, that he pushed his engineers, the original ones who were developing the Apple two to think of themselves as artists, and so that's why he had them sign the inside of the hardware case because he wanted them to.

Take as much pride as an artist would in signing off their work.

Michael: Yeah. And I, I think it is hard for people to today to appreciate just how bureaucratic, sterile, and corporate all aspects of computing were. Apple was the contrast to that. He had that famous quote about the computer should be the bicycle of the mind.

Yeah. And I do think you [00:18:00] see more of that creative and design aesthetic in Pixar, you know? Um, totally. Okay. I'll give you my number three. All right. This is a big one, and I'm stepping a little bit on a future category, but I want to talk about his family life. And the way I'm organizing this is I said stylish, torn jeans.

Okay. Bear with me. Go on. Go, go on. Because I was thinking he is actually got. Incredible genetics.

Friend: Mm.

Michael: This is another part of the story. This is like, you have to get this stuff in there, even if it takes a minute. So Steve Jobs was put up for adoption. Who

Friend: were his biological

Michael: parents?

Archival: A Syrian graduate student and teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin.

A guy named Abdullah John Dali. And ended up in a relationship with another graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Joanne Schiebel. And uh, she got pregnant. She's from a very tight knit Catholic community near Green Bay, Wisconsin. Her father is a strict Catholic and he's dying. So [00:19:00] she goes out then to San Francisco and finds a kindly doctor who's help arrange for private adoptions.

Michael: So right at the beginning, a little bit of fray genes, torn genes or something. Mm-hmm. But he's sort of taken from his genetic lineage. And then his bio parents did stay together for a period of time. They had another child, Mona Simpson, who went on to be a. Bestselling author independently without knowing that she had this famous brother.

They, yeah, put it together in the mid eighties. And Mona Simpson is like an incredible story in her own right part of the genetic lineage. That is amazing. There's also tons of coincidence in these stories. So another accidental fray, the way he finds out about his bio parents is he's able to track down a doctor.

This is after he leaves Apple, and he goes on a bit of a quest out of curiosity, not because he hates his adopted parents, but because he just wants to know, right? And he finds this doctor in San Francisco who has a connection. The doctor won't tell him who [00:20:00] it is, but if the doctor writes a letter that says.

Upon my death tell Steve Jobs, who his parents are. The doctor dies like four hours later, has a heart attack.

Friend: I read this too. You're like, what? That's wild.

Michael: Right? And so Steve Jobs finds out who his mother is, which is how he tracks down his sister. He also learns who his dad was, and Mona meets with his bio dad, and the dad says something.

Archival: Like Mona goes to the coffee shop, he says that they had had another child, but we'll never hear from him again. John Dolly says, I used to run a really great restaurant near Cupertino, and everybody used to come to that restaurant. Even Steve Jobs used to come to the restaurant. Mona, of course, looks shocked and doesn't say, well, Steve Jobs is your son.

And John Dali looks at her and says, oh yeah, Steve Jobs, he was a good tipper. They knew each other but did not know they were dad and son. It's

Michael: wild, right? Yeah, yeah. And Steve learns enough about him that he doesn't want to reconnect with him so that [00:21:00] he, he never. Like outs himself to his biological dad, but that he like randomly, accidentally met his father.

Like that's some cosmic shit, you know?

Leslie: Yeah. One thing that I wanna go back to is you said like, you know, he was curious about his bio parents, right? Like, and not out of any negative thing towards his adoptive parents. What I had read was went out of his way to make sure that his adoptive parents did not know that he was looking for his bio parents.

He didn't wanna hurt them, he didn't want to make them feel like any less than, or I

Michael: think he actually waited until his father passed away and then got his mother's blessing or something like that. Yeah. All right. So the doctor story, the dad story, the Mona Simpson story, the last thing I want to draw attention to, and we're gonna come back to the kids later.

Yeah. Of all of the characters in the Steve Jobs story, my favorite is absolutely. Lisa Brennan Jobs, his first daughter who was born out of wedlock, who wrote a memoir called Small Fry. I read three biographies and I read a ton of articles and watched a bunch of [00:22:00] interviews and documentaries and all that stuff.

In going through it all, she is, for me, the most compelling figure. Mm-hmm. In part because of her self-awareness. Again, we're gonna get into this more later, but in the case of both Mona, his sister, to some extent, his birth mom, Joan, and especially with Lisa, there is a strong case for a man who's trying to make amends.

He sees that there was a tearing and a fraying of his family of origin. I mean, the story with Lisa, I guess we should talk about this 'cause it's, it's like probably the greatest sin. In the Steve Jobs story?

Leslie: Yeah. I mean, basically the way I read it, Chrisanne, who was Lisa's mom, told Steve, you know, Hey, I'm pregnant.

They were kind of falling out of love at the time. Not really a thing anymore. And Steve Jobs, you know, he was on the precipice. He was about to make this meteor apple. Apple apples on a rocket ship. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And he. Angry. He is in denial. Basically like kind of contorts his mind in a way to try to make [00:23:00] it so, so that, you know, to create this reality that he's not the father, but of course he is the father.

There's a lawsuit that's involved. Yeah,

Michael: he denies paternity, but then the court orders a test. It confirms that he is the father. He signs an agreement four days before Apple goes public about what he's gonna pay for child support. Had that happened a week later, everybody would've looked at it and been like, you gotta pay a lot more than this.

Right? Yes. Right. Um, there's even like an 82 article profile, I think in Time Magazine where he all but says, ah, she was sleeping around. Hard to know. Yeah, I don't trust those tests. He eventually begins a process of cop intuit, but not until she's seven or eight years old and not until he's ousted from Apple.

And then the process of reconciliation is complicated and problematic when you listen to Lisa. She's clearly somebody who did a lot of work on herself. Yes, her memoir is really interesting 'cause she basically tries to make the point that, look [00:24:00] here are all his sins. I love him anyway, and this is my attempt to reclaim my own story.

I found her to be certainly not just the most sympathetic, but in a way the most interesting person for understanding who this guy really was. He, he's weird. He's, you know, as a dad it's really weird, super weird. Like there's awkward moments. He's mean to some of her friends in places. But for all his faults, he does try to repair the relationship.

He tries to make amends. So torn jeans. I do see a broken man attempting reconciliation imperfectly. I don't think he has the tools for it. Maybe he's not wired for it, but I wanna give him the benefit of the doubt on that front, especially by the end. Okay. What do you have for think number four?

Leslie: Okay. This is a little bit of different tone, but he was an incredible storyteller.

I work in marketing now, and when I look at Steve Jobs, I'm like, he is an incredible marketer. He has natural charisma, but by all accounts, he also like really tried to develop his stage presence [00:25:00] and that marketing intellect. I think. Yeah. You know, he really knew how to tell a story and get people bought in.

He's so good about like, here's the problem. This is our solution. This is the villain. We're the hero. It's just so simple and basic. Yeah. But it works. And he gets people like he just reels them in. That's

Michael: interesting. 'cause I think the same aesthetics that he brings to product marketing and developing an iPhone, an iPad, a computer, whatever, are the same principles he brings to marketing.

Strip it down, simplify it. Yes. Great craft. Hide the genius so that you just hold the thing and you can imagine what's built into it and the thought that goes into it. I think that that is absolutely true. In his marketing skills as well. Totally. You know?

Leslie: Yeah. And when I see him on stage, I watched a few of his keynotes and this is all posthumous.

Like I actually was not really into watching these when he was alive and when he launched the iPhone and things like that. But when he is up there, he's not actually saying that many [00:26:00] words. There's a lot of space. It's really simple visuals, but it works. You know? It's like you don't have to get up there and like densely just ricochet words off the audience to make it work.

And he's also kind of funny. Like he was funnier than I expected. Yeah.

Archival: I mean, he's very charismatic. I wanna show you something truly remarkable, which is Google Maps on iPhone. I hit our maps application here. I'm gonna search for Starbucks. There's all the Starbucks. I can get a list of Starbucks here, so I can pick that one if I want.

And let's give 'em a call. Tarbucks, can I help you? Yes, I'd like to order 4,000 lattes to go please. No, just kidding. Wrong number. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Michael: Okay, uh, I'll give you my thing number five. Um, okay. Bad Buddha, you. Yeah. I love this. I love

Leslie: the, this,

Michael: this is a place to talk about the reality distortion field.

Yes. People would [00:27:00] refer to this as the RDF. This is the phrase that members of the, it was the original MAC team who came up with this. They used it to describe his uncanny ability to convince himself and others to believe in almost anything, bending perception of what was possible.

Archival: When I started on the project, I was the second programmer working on the Mac team, and Bud was my manager.

And the first time I met with Bud, I said, well, what's the schedule? When are we supposed to get done by about 10 months away? And I knew it would take at least two years to do what we were doing. And he told me that Steve had a reality distortion field and Steve could convince anybody of anything. So Steve did not accept a reasonable schedule.

So the schedule had to be. In this distorted reality.

Michael: Do you remember Nick? Nick Weiler?

Leslie: Yes. Nick Weiler. How could I forget

Michael: him? Yeah, so Nick and I are working on a show together with Stanford Neuroscience from our neurons to yours. We just did an episode on psychosis. There was a person with lived experience around psychosis, and she kept using this [00:28:00] phrase.

Consensus based reality. Like this is a woman who, and when she was 17 years old, she's like, the first time I was having a psychotic episode, there was a grape flying and nobody else seemed to notice this grape. And I was like, shouldn't somebody point this out? She said to navigate, you know, hallucinations and voices and all kinds of things, and she was using this term consensus based reality, which I'm like, yeah, I loved that term because it's like, you know, reality's actually up for debate.

Right. You know? Yeah. Reality is actually up for debate and I think. Where this comes up in 12 steps and with addiction is that people often worship the experience of an altered state in order to convince themselves that they are being fulfilled, and this can lead to compulsive behavior around drugs and sex and money and other forms of power.

I would add the smartphone to the list. I think the smartphone has in some ways become our window in a, into a perceived reality. For some people in 12 Steps who struggle with the God idea, sometimes they'll say, you know what? [00:29:00] Just substitute the word love, or substitute the word reality as the higher power idea, and people will get comfortable with that.

I like those conversations about our, you know, God and reality being kind of the same thing. Reality is fluid. It is open to interpretation and the dance of being a visionary. Which is absolutely what Steve Jobs is, is to stay tethered to the ground just enough so that you can find the soft spots in the fabric of reality where you can say, but what if, you know, reality is what we can observe, but it's also what we can imagine.

He's a bad Buddha, no question about it. Like this is an egomaniac, right? He's self-obsessed and he's self-important and. I understand Buddhism to be about shedding the self becoming opposite, more selfless, opposite. Yeah. But I do think that there is just enough mindfulness and awareness in his spiritual practice that was the necessary fuel for his imagination and his ability to be a visionary.

And I was glad to be reminded that reality is up for debate.

Leslie: I did [00:30:00] find his spiritual practice to be so interesting to your point, so much of his personality and the way he behaved in the world was so opposite from what Zen Buddhism advocates for and like I think he meditated, you know, and he spoke to how hard it was for him.

And I can imagine, like, I've tried meditation, it's difficult, like even for someone like me, in my mind I'm sure is not like even half as active or whatever as intense and focused as Steve Jobs was. So I can't imagine how difficult it was for him. But even still, he didn't mind the friction of that experience.

That is kind of what you're speaking to also about like the friction of reality. He didn't mind. Pushing people's sense of what could be. He had to live in that tension space to make Apple a successful company at all, to make the co, to make the products happen. And I think like that's actually a very difficult place to live in.

Michael: I think it was exhausting. I think it, it imposes a set of expectations on the world that causes frustration and could be maddening to people. But I also think the flip side [00:31:00] of that is what's possible. Yes. And if there is anybody who, in our lifetime who said a different world is possible, it's Steve Jobs.

You know what I really took away from this when I'm reminded of how much of reality I'm not exposed to, and I don't know, I'm humbled. And I think that while I would never wanna be in the same room with Steve Jobs, I do want somebody to remind me You don't know everything. None of us know everything, but let's together.

Imagine what could be. I love that so bad, Buddha. Okay, let's recap. So, uh, thing number one, I said toy stories, Woody. Mm-hmm. His apple redemption thing. Number two, you said From nerd to Nemo. From

Friend: nerd to Nemo.

Michael: Thing number three, I said f afraid, stylish, torn jeans. Mm-hmm. Thing number four, storyteller and expert marketer.

Yep. And thing number five, bad Buddha and the reality machine. All right, great list. Okay, let's take a break.[00:32:00]

Hey, famous and gravy listeners, Michael Osborne here. This show is produced by 14th Street Studios, which is a production and consulting firm focused on creative development. We take ideas and shape them into podcasts that people want to hear. Famous and Gravy has been an incredible success story, and we believe it's built on a foundation of strong ideas, smart editing, and knowing your audience.

So if you've been carrying around a podcast idea or you want to make your existing show stronger, we would love to work with you. Send me an email atMichael@famousandgravy.com. Category three. One love. In this category, Leslie and I will each choose one word or phrase that characterizes Steve Jobs loving relationships.

First, we will review what we know about the marriages and kids. So already covered some of this. Chris Ann Brennan was his high school girlfriend. They were off and on during his early years before he dropped outta Reeb College. She was actually an early employee at Apple. Mm-hmm. She got pregnant there.

Lisa was born [00:33:00] when Steve was twenty three, nineteen seventy eight. So he denied paternity, sort of begrudgingly began to accept his role, and there was a long process of reconciliation. He only actually ever married once to Lorraine Powell Jobs in 1991. She was a Stanford MBA. When they first met Steve was 36.

They were married until his death in 2011, so about 20 years. They have three children. Steve was 36, 40 and 43 when each of the children was born. We already mentioned that he was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs in 1955. And we talked a little bit about his birth parents and his biological sister, Mona Simpson.

Leslie, this is maybe the hardest one love category we've ever done. Uh, you go first, you do this. Yeah.

Leslie: My one love word is garden. And I was really thinking about his children. And so, you know, we talked about how he has kind of this mixed family, a blended family, Lisa from Chrisanne, and then three children with Laureen.

And Lisa actually lived with [00:34:00] Laureen and the three kids for a period of time. Yeah. And so they were all under one roof. And so to me it's like the metaphors, like it's a garden. There's a mixture of plants. There was a bit of uneven care, right? Yeah. That he neglected certain parts. I think Lisa speaks to this really beautifully, the hot and cold.

He could be really wonderful and so sweet. She has this journal entry where she's like, I love my dad. I love, love, love him. He's just so wonderful and they have these beautiful experiences together, but. There's the flip side. There's a lot of neglect too. Cold shoulder. He does work a lot. And that's not just for Lisa, it's like across the other three children too.

Yeah. But like a garden with a gardener. He's capable of growth. He shows that he does have some regret towards later in his life. He expresses that he wishes he had spent more time and care with his children, and it wasn't perfect. Yeah. What garden ever is. Yeah. And I really like this as a metaphor for his family.

Michael: I think that's a beautiful metaphor. You're right. Not every plant flourishes in the garden. Some get neglected, some are ornamental, some are edible, you [00:35:00] know, and they have different needs. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And they have different needs. It's, it's a really spot on metaphor. I mean, it's, it's very hard to come up with something that jet at the fracturing, the complexity.

Steve Jobs, I feel like we need to say this at some point, was attracted to the counterculture in an important way. Like there is a little bit of hippie hippiness to, uh, Lisa's origins, right? She's born on a con in the seventies. I like garden in that it's evolving and organic, and there's some neglect in there, but there's also beauty and there's also growth.

What's your one love word? Okay. I, I'm not sure I can say it, but I'm gonna try Sato sto. It's a Italian word. Oh my God. Are we an Ikea?

Leslie: Oh, okay. S-F-M-A-T-O.

Michael: It's an Italian or it's Mato, and I'll tell you how I came upon it. It is a technique that Leonardo da Vinci apparently used that blends tone and color and that you see in the Mona Lisa's smile.

And I came to Mona [00:36:00] Lisa because he's got a sister named Mona. Oh my God. And a daughter named Lisa. And it's, uh, it's enigmatic and it's a confluence of elements that transcend a simple likeness, and they become a sort of universal depiction of humanity's in her life. This is the, the techniques though that, uh, that I, I, I, it's, I don't know if it's a nonsense word.

I guess it's just Italian. It feels like a nonsense word to me. What other words began? SF you know. Yeah. But when, when I started going down this like Mona Lisa rabbit hole, I went and looked at pictures of the Mona Lisa, which I haven't done in a long while, and that, you know what the smile really is enigmatic, you know?

Yeah. It's hard to know what to make of it. There is a sort of complexity to it. Yeah. You know, and again, I don't wanna hide behind. It's complicated. It's a complex story. But I do think that there is something really enigmatic and important about Steve Jobs home life. And upbringing and, and that it does relate to his legacy in a [00:37:00] way that I, I, I don't think that there is a conclusion to

Leslie: sdo.

Yeah, sma sdo. Yeah. There's something unknowable and like uncategorized about it. I think is maybe what you're getting at.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, I, I feel like what's interesting is his story is available to be interpreted any way you want. Yeah. I mean, I don't think you can brush aside the sins, but I do think that business leaders who want to understand his genius can compartmentalize his interpersonal life and can extract lessons from his story.

I think people who are very interested into did his flaws manage to find their way into his products. This is a long history in Silicon Valley that very antisocial people are creating social technologies and part of the reason we're so fractured as a culture is because we anoint. Antisocial people to, you know, yeah.

Be the conduits of culture. That interpretation is available for you too. Uh, shall we move on? Yes. Let's do it. Category four, net [00:38:00] worth. In this category, Leslie and I will each write down our numbers ahead of time and discuss our reasoning. We'll then look up the net worth number in real time to see who's closest.

And finally, we'll place this person on the famous eng gravy net worth leaderboard.

Leslie: Okay, so the way I tried to triangulate it was that Apple went public in 1980. Mm-hmm. He was reported to be worth. 200 million at that time. That number unavoidable

Friend: in the research. Right? It keeps coming up. Yeah. So that to

Leslie: me was like the baseline.

It was definitely a billionaire by the time he died. It as just a question of how many billions. So that's, as

Michael: soon as we're talking billions, it's like I can't, you know? Yeah. Like I can't wrap my head around that. I can't wrap my head around a billion, you know? So the

Leslie: way I did was like I looked at Apple's market cap in 2011, which was 350 billion.

So I have a guess,

Michael: but I don't feel good about it. So I think his position with Pixar and Disney Yeah, was also tremendous. I mean, he was on the board of Disney for a period of time and really the story with him and Pixar is not that he was involved in the creative, it was that he was involved in negotiations and [00:39:00] dealing with Michael Eisner and later Bob Iger and like he knew how to negotiate a deal that was part of his learning while in the wilderness.

I'm pretty sure he's gonna have, uh, a singular position on the famous engraving net worth leaderboard. So Leslie Chang wrote down 125 billion,

Leslie: but I love that you wrote yours in all caps. Yeah. And Michael Osborne wrote down at 20 billion,

Michael: the actual net worth number for Steve Jobs 10.2 billion. That's too much money.

That's too my 20. Nobody should have my head $2 million. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I I, did you look into, at all about LRE Powell jobs in philanthropy?

Leslie: Yeah. I found that so interesting because Steve Jobs was very not philanthropic during, during life or at least obscure about it. Like we don't, we know

Michael: very, very little.

He was either not philanthropic or super hidden about his philanthropy. She seems to be. [00:40:00] Very. That is what

Leslie: she's all about. That's what she's all

Michael: about, but it's also very opaque. She said, it's interesting, I wanted it to be more about the cause and less about the funder. That one of the things that happens with philanthropy is people want their name attached to things, which makes sense.

If you've got. That amount of money, but it is a sort of surprising quality of his legacy and how that money's being spent. Totally okay with $10.2 billion, I am happy to say that he has displaced h Ross Perot as the number one on the famous and gravy net worth leaderboard. We have a new all-time leader, Steve Jobs.

He is at a dinner table all by himself. That makes sense. He is a one of one Steve Jobs. Congratulations. You are our current leader on the famous eng gravy net worth leaderboard with $10.2 billion sense. Let's move on. Category five, little Lebowski Urban Achievers.

Archival: They're the little Lebowski, urban Achievers said Yeah, the achievers, yes, and proud.

We are of all of them

Michael: in this category, we each choose a trophy and award, a cameo and impersonation or [00:41:00] some other form of a hat tip that shows a different side of this person. What do you got?

Leslie: So I have a parody. The actor Noah Wiley portrayed Steve Jobs in the TV show. Pirates of Silicon Valley. Yes. It aired in the late nineties.

Yeah, I remembered when this came out. It was kind of a big deal. Anthony Michael Hall was

Michael: Bill Gates. Yes. Yeah.

Leslie: And so for the 1999 Mac World event, which is where their unveiling products and there's a keynote speech, et cetera, et cetera, jobs actually invited Wiley to basically parody him on stage. So at the beginning of the keynote, instead of Steve walking out, it's Noah Wiley.

And the audience just goes nuts like they are. So excited. It was a really short impersonation, but I thought it was pretty good. And then what I thought was really funny was that jobs comes out partway through and I'm sure they like prescripted it, et cetera, and he's just like, no, no, no, no, no. You're doing it wrong.

Some really totally wildly insanely

Archival: great new products. We have got products that are gonna make,[00:42:00]

Friend: that's not me at all.

Archival: That's not me at all. You're blowing it. Look, you're supposed to come over here, open the water,

Leslie: get the slide clicker, then you can put your hands together. Just like feels so accurate to his personality. Yeah. In terms of just like cutting people down to pieces with criticism. Yeah.

But I just like. I don't know. It spoke to a few things, like there's the ego aspect of it, right? It's like, dude, I'm on tv. But then it also showed like he had a little bit of a sense of humor about himself, right? It's, yeah. I have these weird little things that I do on stage, and it's kind of funny, but we're laughing together.

Michael: I, I actually do think he has a high eq. I just think he weaponizes it, you know? Yeah. I, I, I think that my point earlier about one of the narratives around Silicon Valley is that we empower antisocial people who then become the arbiters of our social technologies. I think that some of those figures are lacking social skills.

Steve Jobs is aware of social skills. I think he just deploys [00:43:00] them in a manipulative way, the whole reality distortion field. But I actually think he's empathic. He can read. People, I think he can read emotions and to some extent I think he can turn that gaze on himself at times and in places. And that's kind of what I hear in your leki there.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'll give you mine. There's, uh, Simpson. Yeah. Season 20, episode seven, my pods and boomsticks. This episode parodies Apple and Jobs as, uh, the company's map, and it's Steve Mobbs. There's this one and a half minute or so clip that has so much in it. There's a product announcement and Steve Mobbs appears on a big screen.

Bart hijacks the audio so that he's like, I've got a big announcement. You're a bunch of idiots, or whatever. And so

Archival: attention map universe, prepare for a live announcement from Apple founder and chief imaginative Officer Steve Mos.

Friend: You're all losers. You think you're cool because you buy a $500 phone with a picture of a fruit on it.

Well, guess [00:44:00] what? They cost eight bucks to make an IP on every one.

Archival: Tracy, your heart is blacker than your turtleneck.

Michael: And, and two things happen. One is the comic book guy comes in an imparity of the 1984 Super Bowl commercial, the famous one. Mm, yeah. Which is like one of the first big Super Bowl commercials, by the way.

Like that's a milestone. And he throws the ax. And then when, uh, all of the map store employees discover what Bart's done, they take their ear pods out and start ling it like a lasso. And they're like, how dare you criticize our fearless leader? They actually, in this short parody, really get at the cult-like following of Steve Jobs from the map store people.

So that was my leki. All right, let's take one more break.

Okay, [00:45:00] category six words to live by. In this category, Leslie and I will each choose a quote. These are either words that came out of this person's mouth or was said about them.

Leslie: I struggled with this one. I looked at so many Steve Jobs quotes, and I wanted to pick something that wasn't super widely known or really, you know, stereotypical or whatever, but

Michael: I kind of lost its punch because it was shared so much, or, yeah,

Leslie: exactly.

Yeah. But I just like, and I know this one is so common and popular, the one that I chose, but I just kept coming back to it as the thing that rang the most true to me. It's from his Stanford commencement speech, and he says,

Archival: you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards.

So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. In this question of

Leslie: what makes for a good life. There is, part of it is the story that you tell about it, not necessarily externally to other people, but the story that you tell [00:46:00] yourself, right?

Yeah. Like how do you do this sensemaking of this random left turn that I took, this random job that I did for him, this random calligraphy class that I was really interested in. And he's talking about it as like a

Michael: intuitive following kind of. Yeah, exactly.

Leslie: Yeah. And for him, it's kind of like, oh, you have to like listen to your heart or your intuition as you're taking actions moving forward.

Friend: Yeah.

Leslie: But I think in the famous and gravy context, what I really liked about it was that sort of sense making and like self-reflection. You actually do have the power to form that story in the way that is meaningful to you.

Michael: In a way, it's interesting how there's a part where he says like, follow your heart, your intuition.

Leslie: You have to trust in something. Your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Okay.

Michael: So that's the part where I'm like, well. Well, which one is it? Yes. You know, those are maybe very different things. Your gut, your heart, your intuition, your karma, destiny, whatever. I do know what he means. I think it [00:47:00] is a worldview of mine that inside all of us exists some voice or some representation of fate and destiny or karma where we feel in place where our soul and our mind are in sync.

I mean, this sort of gets to the bad Buddha idea that I do think that while I think he is an awful example of what a Buddhist, you know, can be because his ego is so extraordinary, he's also an example of the power of that idea that's really encapsulated in that quote, that what we go through in life. I think we have to convince ourselves that we were supposed to experience these things.

Right. And I think that that is really hard because we all inevitably encounter tragedies and things that we feel like should not have happened. The only way to move forward in life is to believe in, as Steve Jobs put it, whatever, you know? Yeah. Like, and it's to believe that somewhere in there is meaning and truth.

And trying to reconnect with that is the like [00:48:00] process of being a human. It really does get back to my point number five about being open-ended, about the higher power thing or the reality thing or the love thing. People talk about that Stanford commencement speech of his, if it's the greatest commencement speech of all time, I think it's very good.

There are things about it that are kind of weird in hindsight. Yeah. The way he talks about his cancer and then like, but now I'm okay. We haven't gotten into this part of the story. The story of his cancer is that he was diagnosed that he sought alternative treatments for nine months or so before finally getting surgery.

It was pancreatic cancer, but it was a rare form that potentially could have been treatable by surgery. And one of the things that comes up is that maybe he, by delaying and procrastinating getting more traditional forms of medical treatment, he allowed it to grow and it is eventually what killed him.

He does get the surgery. The cancer comes back and then he has a multi-year decline. One thing people miss about this, it was a very rare form of [00:49:00] pancreatic cancer and the protocol for how to treat it is not as simple as is sometimes portrayed. His interest in alternative medicine was maybe not as questionable as some people might want to say.

That's debatable. Like so many things with Steve Jobs

Leslie: talk about reality distortion field, you know?

Michael: Totally. And that, I mean, and that's, that's the narrative people map on is like, well, it looks like the reality distortion field failed. I do think that there are a lot of great moments in that commencement speech though, and the more I watched it, especially.

With the kind of famous and gravy lens, the more I found myself really appreciating it. It's also where I went with my words to live by. I went with the famous quote from the end, from the Whole Earth Catalog. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Leslie: Interesting. I was not expecting that from you.

Michael: It's a beautiful quote.

What does it mean? Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Stay hungry means stay on the quest.

Friend: Yeah. Be

Michael: searching for the things that you can bring inside that, that fill your [00:50:00] cup. Stay inspired is what I hear in that. And then stay foolish. There's an element of playfulness. Be goofy. Do dumb things, make mistakes. Uh, he talks about that in that commencement speech.

A lot about the mistakes he made and the things he learned. I think you only learn by being foolish and humbled by a certain playful attitude that may lead you astray. But if you have the right intentionality, like you can learn.

Leslie: It's interesting because I hadn't thought about the humbleness that goes into that second phrase, but it goes back to your earlier point about acknowledging that you don't know everything.

You don't know all of reality. Right. And so. You just have to be playful and move forward and try different things.

Michael: Foolishly experiment. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It, it, it landed for me this goro. Okay. Okay. Next category, man. In the mirror, this category asks a fairly simple question. Did this person like their reflection?

Yes or no? This is not a question about beauty, but rather a question of self-confidence versus self-judgment.

Leslie: Do you have a take? I thought the answer was pretty clear. Did you [00:51:00] feel it was ambiguous?

Michael: Oh yeah. Really? Okay. Is he convinced by his own reality distortion field? I think that there's evidence that he's not most evidenced by his deathbed regret to Lisa and saying, you know, I owe you one.

Which is a weird phrase to use. Yeah. And man, I'll let you down. There is a reconciliation, and I think he does right by people, but I think that there is a part of him that is plenty aware of how much anguish, frustration, pain. I think you can only deny the truth of that so much. And I, when I looked at how does Steve Jobs regard himself, I'm talking about the moments where all the filters and all of the tools you employ to manipulate the world are stripped away.

I'm putting the reality distortion field on the sleep right now to, mm-hmm. Certainly he can look at the external accomplishments, the way people regard him, the fact that there are fanatics, thousands, maybe millions of them. He did impact history in a way. Very few people have ever done that. [00:52:00] But legacy is not necessarily about internal validation.

I mean, I think one of the questions that hovers around Famous and Gravy is just how much to index Legacy as opposed to how you made people feel and he caused pain.

Friend: Yes. Right. I,

Michael: I think he did unlock creative potential for the masses, but I think he also hurt a lot of people along the way. I think he had real friendships.

Yeah. I, this is a complicated one for me. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not resolved. So I mean, were, were you a confident Yes. Just because you assumed the reality distortion field was active?

Leslie: Well, I was a confident, yes. Because I agree with you. I do think he did have regrets. You know, he expressed it on his deathbed, like you said.

But in my mind, based on everything that I learned about him, I felt like at the end of the day, he would've said it was still all worth it, all the hurt that he caused, all the regrets that he had about not spending time with his children or his family. All of it to me, I think he still would've said it was worth it.

And so that's why I felt like it was a confident [00:53:00] yes.

Michael: I I, you convinced me, Leslie. I think the answer is yes. He likes his reflection. I think it's still an open-ended question about whether or not we should Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. Yeah. But I, there's a case in both directions. Um, alright, well let's move on.

Category eight, cocktail coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most wanna do with our dead celebrity. Did you come up with something good here? I

Leslie: did, yeah. I like mine. Um, so I went cocktail. It felt okay, like it sounded like from all reports, like he wasn't much of a drinker. But what I did read was that he did enjoy a glass of wine here and there with dinners.

And I feel like wine makes so much sense for him because he saw himself in his team as artists and like. I work in the wine industry now, so I actually talk and work with wine makers and they see themselves as artists too, but there's a real scientific nerdery aspect to wine, so I just feel like it's like such a perfect fit for him.

There's some like transformation and magic and alchemy and turning grapes into wine, and I feel like he would've appreciated that. I also feel like when people have a glass of wine, [00:54:00] maybe it's just me, people like can get a little bit more sentimental and access this emotional space. Yeah, so the scene I would wanna kind of drop in on is December, 1980.

Apple just iPod. He's a millionaire and he pays off the mortgage on his parents' home in Mountain View. So this is his adoptive parents, Clara and Hall jobs. And so they have a little party and you know, invited some neighborhood friends. And I kind of ask him two things. One is what it meant to him to be able to pay off the mortgage on his parents' home.

I think there was a lot of true caring and emotion and affection that he had for his parents. It sounded like he was a tough kid. He really pushed their boundaries. But you know, they told him like, we chose you. And like, so they also instilled in him this sense of being special even though he was adopted.

And so I'd just be kind of curious, you know, now that you're entering adulthood on this rocket ship, looking back at your roots, how do you feel about all this? What does it mean to you to have been able to help your adoptive parents who helped you so much?

Michael: His dad is credited with being the [00:55:00] one who really installed this appreciation for great craftsmanship.

Leslie: Totally. And I think the second thing that I would ask him after we have that conversation is like, alright, show me around this Eichler house. You know, he grew up in this iconic California designed home, which, you know, you can still see around Palo Alto around the Bay Area. And there's a minimalism, a good design for the people type of aesthetic that he talks about having.

Yeah. Brightness, like indoor outdoor living that he really tried to embody and Apple products. And so just like walk me around the house, tell me what you see. Like, show me what inspires you here.

Michael: Oh, I love that Leslie. I thought about wine. I decided he's too temperamental to give any alcohol to, and I don't want the conversation to, you know, take a left turn and get toxic.

I want coffee and I think what I am wanting is to actually engage in a kind of semi caffeinated brainstorm about possibilities of the future. One thing that's interesting about Apple since he died is that they really haven't created [00:56:00] new products. They've created better products, right? But the smartphone, the MacBook, like each product line has gotten better in terms of quality, but they're not making up new stuff.

I would actually like to. Buy in to the reality distortion field, and I think I wanna do it at Apple headquarters. I think I want to do it somewhere where there's whiteboards and post-it notes and dry erase markers. I kind of wanna see him get excited about the possibility of something and I'd be very curious to see how he would do that today.

I feel like he left us with this device, this smartphone that has all but ruled our lives ever since. Yeah. And I don't think that that is the end destination for technological innovation, like the automobile before it, or the train before that. The story of industrialization over the last 300 years has generational technologies.

I don't think we're done just 'cause we have a smartphone now and everybody's got a computer in their [00:57:00] hand. So I'd like to see where this goes next. I imagine it would be infused with some kind of idealism, but one of his geniuses was obviously helping people appreciate. That he can meet a need that they haven't even yet recognized for themselves.

Leslie: So what is the need that we don't see right now? Exactly.

Michael: That's exactly the way to put it. What is the need that we don't see? Okay. We have arrived category nine, the Vander Beek named after James Vander Beek, who famously said, and varsity blues. I don't want your life in that varsity blues scene. James makes a judgment that he does not want a certain kind of life based on just a few characteristics.

So here Leslie and I will form a rebuttal to anyone skeptical of how Steve Jobs lived. Let's start with the counterargument. I think there's a loneliness that exists with $10.2 billion. I think he actually had some important relationships. The marriage, from what I can tell to marriage. Yeah. Lorraine looks like a good marriage.

There's a line where she and Steve and Lisa are in group [00:58:00] therapy when Lisa's a teenager and apparently Lorraine says, look, we're just cold people. Wow. I was like, well, that's, that's honest. You know? Um, I don't know how true that is. I bet Lorraine probably interesting. Didn't like reading that all that much, but I think he caused pain and I think he caused pain for people who loved him and needed him.

Most importantly, Lisa, I think there's Bridges burned in his work relationships. Yes. I, I think the relationship with w uh, for example, I think they're friends, but that story about jobs undercutting his cut of, uh, something they did at Atari, at, dude, what

Leslie: the hell, I know

Michael: one reason you might not want this life is that there was an effort to replace human connection with technological innovations, perhaps, or at least you could make that case.

Uh, I would not want that. Yeah. I, I, you know, I see in that loneliness of materialism missing out, uh, on, on some of the more important things that make life worthwhile.

Leslie: Yeah. I mean, like, I'm a young parent. You are too. And I [00:59:00] think. Again, the prioritization of a company over your own children is something that I have a really hard time personally understanding.

I get that that's where he was at, but that is not the type of regret that I wanna have on my deathbed. That's something I'm actively trying to not have. I

Michael: do think he's better at it the second time around. Yes. The kids with Lorraine, you know? Yeah.

Leslie: And I think, and I didn't come across this in my research, but like, I don't know if he felt any complication about the invention of the iPhone.

Like obviously I'm sure he loves seeing it in everybody's hands, but now there's this whole conversation culturally about it being the antisocial generation and like smartphone addiction. We're all in our isolating own filter

Michael: bubbles. Isolating, yeah. All of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Leslie: And like I, and I don't know how he would've felt about that either, right?

Michael: Yeah. How much he could have heard those criticisms Totally. We can't do with it and we can't do without it. It is changing our social nature in fundamental ways. Those [01:00:00] may be good or bad, right? It may just be that we learn to socialize differently and this is all just in the grand scheme of things, very new.

It has good things about it, but in some ways it may be for the worse. I don't mean to resolve that question, but I think that case can be made.

Leslie: I was gonna say this, this is a really, it's a hard one for this episode. Right? But like for me, and I was just in thinking about what might be the strongest case for Yeah.

Let's move to what is the number one reason for you? He had this other quote, which was like, my job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make people better. That's a complex quote. There's ways in which you could be like, oh, that's his way of justifying being an asshole to people. Right? But if you think about him as a leader and trying to get products out into the world, it does take people to get there.

And I think one of the big accomplishments of him as a leader is that he was able, whether you agree with his methods or not, to inspire and push people to actually get there and to have that level of influence and charisma and I [01:01:00] think would be kind of amazing to be able to see and to live through.

Michael: I do think Apple is an extraordinary.

Company in ways that we don't completely appreciate, and I'm not just talking about how much money it makes the people I know who have been there. While it all absolutely feels like they're drinking Kool-Aid and the Steve Jobs Kool-Aid in particular, there is enough of a value standard that everybody is aiming for in terms of bringing high quality things to everybody so that there is a almost democratization of access to art and design.

Mm-hmm. That is a, an incredible. Culture to create within an organization and then to spread around the world. So his legacy is desirable and is something that should go into the, I would want that life 'cause I would like to create things that on balance, help and improve people and give people power.

That is an extraordinary thing. I do see redemption of him [01:02:00] as a business leader, and I do think that his story of somebody who had to be humiliated by being kicked out of Apple and acquire some level of humility to grow into the leader he became. I think that's overall an upward staircase story. And I also do think he did it imperfectly and he did not get there fast enough.

But his attempts to make peace with his past and really make amends for his sins are genuine. There's even something enviable about his idealism. You and I. Did this Silicon Valley series once upon a time where we looked at the way that idealism can provide avenues for rationalization of really awful behavior and how that plays out in tech companies.

And I think you can rationalize being a jerk and treating people awfully if you think not only are you making products people wanna buy, but that you're making the world a better place. It is sort of dangerous to weave those things together, but I [01:03:00] don't doubt the virtues of that intentionality.

Friend: Mm-hmm.

Michael: Right. I, I do actually think that he was, on some level, genuinely interested in making the world a better place.

Leslie: I think the word that you said in there that stuck out the most to me was about intention for however complex a character, like whether you like him, whether you don't. I do think Steve Jobs lived with intention and at the end of his life, he can say everything I did, I pretty much did on purpose.

He wasn't someone who was just like, okay, here's the hand I've been dealt, or Here's the path that life seems to be taking me on, or that the universe is pushing me towards. He's like, I'm gonna create my own path and have that intention every single step of the way. That's pretty powerful. That is a desirable way to live, you know?

Michael: Part of the skepticism I've had throughout the conversation, and this is such a corny adage, but it just becomes more and more true the older I get. It's not about the outcomes, it's about the journey. It's not the destination, right? Mm-hmm. And I, I think that there is a kind of risk when there is a forcefulness and [01:04:00] a manipulation that taxes your soul on some level.

He acquires some. Measure of humility, but it's modest. It's not so great that it accounts for all of his weaknesses as he approaches death. But I do see an upward journey nonetheless, and I think like, look, his story is a great one for poking at that question of what is the point of it all? Is it to leave your mark on history for forever more, or is it to just go on an exciting ride and try and enjoy that for all its ups and downs?

I want to be reminded that I need to enjoy the ride ev, even if you're a bad Buddha, he's still a Buddha Buddhist, you know? Yeah. So with that, James Vander Bigg, I'm Steve Jobs and you want my life.

Before we close, if you enjoyed this episode of Famous and Gravy and you're enjoying our show and you've got your iPhone or whatever phone you have in your hand, please take a moment to [01:05:00] share this episode with a friend. We want to grow our podcast, one listener at a time, speed round plugs for past shows.

If people enjoyed the Steve Jobs episode or if they just should check out something from the back catalog, what would you have them listen to?

Leslie: Okay, so it's September, it's football season, so I recommend episode 42. John Naden. There's also a little nice tie in here because he was famous for the video game, and so like computer graphics, Steve Jobs, like, think about it.

It's perfect. It's right there. Yes.

Michael: Oh, I love that. All right. Up episode 42, game changer. John Madden. I'm gonna go with uh, episode 98. Pleasure activist Julia Child. Yes, that was on my list

Leslie: too.

Michael: It's just a fun episode, and I love these California figures. I think at some point I'm gonna try and create a little California playlist of famous Eng Gravy figures.

Okay, here is a little preview for the next episode of Famous and Gravy. Her father was a prominent lawyer with a lofty sense of civic duty. At one point, she herself transferred to the [01:06:00] University of Alabama to study law. And to go into the family business.

Friend: Oprah Winfrey

Michael: Dead, not Oprah. Win Dead. Oh, okay.

Not Oprah Winfrey, who as of this recording, I'm happy to say is still with us. All right. Famous Eng Gravy Listeners, we'd love hearing from you. If you wanna reach out with a comment question or to participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello@famousenggravy.com. In our show notes, we include all kinds of links, including to our website and our social channels.

Famous Eng Gravy is created by Amit Kapur and me, Michael Osborne. Thank you so much to my dear friend Leslie Chang for guest hosting. This episode was produced by Ali Ola, with assistance from Jacob Weiss, original music, Kevin Strain. Thanks. See you next day.