Marc Andreessen on Learning to Love the Humanities
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2022
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Like the frontier characters from Deadwood, his favorite TV show, Marc Andreessen has discovered that the real challenge to building in new territory is not in the practicalities of learning a trade, but in developing a savviness for what makes people tick. Without understanding the deep patterns of human behavior, how can you know what to build, or who should build it, or how? For Marc, that means reading deeply in the humanities: “I spent the first 25 years of my life trying to understand how machines work,” Marc says. “Then I spent the second 25 years, so far, trying to figure out how people work. It turns out people are a lot more complicated.”
Marc joined Tyler to discuss his ever-growing appreciation for the humanities and more, including why he didn’t go to a better school, his contrarian take on Robert Heinlein, how Tom Wolfe helped Marc understand his own archetype, who he’d choose to be in Renaissance Florence, which books he’s reread the most, Twitter as an X-ray machine on public figures, where in the past he’d most like to time-travel, his favorite tech product that no longer exists, whether Web will improve podcasting, the civilization-level changes made possible by remote work, Peter Thiel’s secret to attracting talent, which data he thinks would be most helpful for finding good founders, how he’d organize his own bookstore, the kinds of people he admires most, and why Deadwood is equal to Shakespeare.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded April 14th, 2022
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:09.2 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems. |
| 0:13.3 | Learn more at mercatis.org. |
| 0:16.0 | For full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit |
| 0:21.0 | ConversationsWithT Tyler.com. |
| 0:26.4 | Hello everyone and welcome back to ConversationsWithT Tyler. |
| 0:29.9 | Today I'm chatting with Mark Andreessen, known to many as P. Marka. |
| 0:33.6 | Mark, welcome. |
| 0:35.0 | Hey Tyler, great to be here. |
| 0:36.8 | Simple question. |
| 0:37.8 | Have you always been like this? |
| 0:39.8 | Yes, I believe that my friends would say that I have. |
| 0:44.0 | So let's go back to the junior high school, Mark Andreessen. |
| 0:47.4 | At that time, what was your favorite book and why? |
| 0:51.1 | That's a really good question. |
| 0:52.8 | I read a lot, you know, probably like a lot of people like me. |
| 0:55.7 | It was a lot of science fiction. |
| 0:57.3 | I'm one of the two people I know who thinks that Robert Heinlein was better than |
| 1:00.5 | early Robert Heinlein. |
| 1:01.5 | So that had a really big effect on me. |
| 1:03.8 | What else? |
| 1:04.8 | I'm never a sitting early age. |
... |
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