Full Transcript – Richard Saul Wurman – Wild Business Growth Podcast #254

This is the full transcript for Episode #254 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Richard Saul Wurman – Creator of TED. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Richard Saul Wurman 0:00
I don’t know what the crapshoot is to get to live longer. Maybe we are looking at the wrong thing.

Max Branstetter 0:21
Richard Saul Welcome. Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder & Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting, and you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is episode 254 and today’s guest is the legendary Richard Saul Wurman. Richard is the Creator of the TED conference, the TEDMED conference, the EG conference, WWW conference. The list goes on and on and on. He is also the author of 90 books in a wide, wide, wide range of categories. And he is a designer and an architect. And at the time of this recording, he is 88 years old, and is one of the most brilliant minds you’ll ever hear from. In this episode, we talk the most thrilling and thought-provoking insights and stories from Richard’s lifetime. How to get better at listening, how to get better at asking questions. And as you will hear very shortly, this interview is different than any other interview I’ve ever done before. So sit back, relax, and let Wurman take you to another place. Enjoooooooy the shooooooowwwww!

Aaaaaalrightyyyyyy we’re here with one of the brightest minds or brains or he would probably tell you the least interesting people on the planet. But endlessly fascinating Richard Saul Wurman, Richard, really excited to speak to you how you doing today?

Richard Saul Wurman 2:08
I have to start by commenting on that’s a stupid question. Because it can’t be answered. And it shows lack of respect. Because it’s not narrow enough question to answer. If I told you how I’m doing mentally, the parts of my body, my attitude, my energy, any different, it’s just doesn’t. It really doesn’t want to get information from the person. It makes the person give in back to you a vacuous sort of sloppy, gooey answer. I’m doing fine, or something like that. And so I don’t think that’s a good question. This, this little conversation we’re going to have IC will start off with trying to give you a lesson on how to ask questions, as opposed to me answering questions. Asking a question is so much more difficult than answering one. I’ve met somebody last night. I had never met before. And he kept on. Because he had found out the number of books and conferences and what I had done, it came out in this conversation. And he kept on being amazed as to how do you get it done? And where do you get the step? Of course, you had a lot of staff because I kept saying I don’t do much that I’m not busy. He said I don’t want to take too much of your time. I said too much of my time, I’ll be dead too much of my time at school because much of your time it’s dead? No, you’re not taking too much of my time. How did you do all these projects? You know, he must have a lot of steps they do all the research. The research is really, I said you have it so wrong. A project is about the questions you ask and the brilliance of the question or the simplicity or the clarity of the question. You can get it answered, you can get things answered when you can’t get it answered. The question becomes more more profound. In the here’s a question we couldn’t get answered. It becomes a more profound question when it doesn’t work. It’s the absolute opposite of of answering a question. We go through school, we’re putting up our hands, answering questions all the time. Taking a test answering questions all the time. It’s completely backwards. The test should be what would you say are 10 Good questions about the subject. Not the teacher giving them they got them in their education school, not even learning school. They didn’t go to a school that taught them how to help people learn. They got went to school to help them get their credentials for the following year as a teacher and then they got recruited as a teacher to make people memorize things, to preset questions that are in their teaching books. And the students never learn how to ask a question. classically, our life goes in the early years, is we’re pushed away from the sink by a parent who says, if you ask me one more question, I’m gonna send you upstairs. Questions or discourage? And Socrates, who didn’t write anything, so I’m not referring to anything you read, that he wrote, but was written about was known for. In my words, which are just paraphrase not clever words, that a good question is better than a brilliant answer. It’s the question stupid is not the answer. Because a really good question. It’s Einstein asking the question of realizing that something didn’t exist. And he asked the question, so he could try to solve it wasn’t his answer. It was the question. His curiosity is a question. It’s implicit. In a creative person, that all they are is a bunch of questions. I’m five foot seven questions. I’m quite foot seven. Of that. That’s all made up of I’m not made up of protoplasm and answers. Anyway, that’s my opening comment to your little question.

Max Branstetter 6:19
You’re the first guest that’s ever acknowledged that as a question, and it’s not even planned as a question. It’s a it’s a, you know,

Richard Saul Wurman 6:27
see, if it’s not a question, then you’re insulting me by doing throwing in a throwaway line.

Max Branstetter 6:33
So now that I’ve insulted you, I do have something burning in my brain. And this is a quote that your wife has said about you, which is Richard wishes he was a brain in a jar. Why does she say that?

Richard Saul Wurman 6:48
I guess I don’t go swimming with her every day that she does. She’s very disciplined. I’m undisciplined. You could if you wanted to stretch and say I’m very disciplined, because I’m thinking all the time, and that’s my discipline. And, um, but it’s not a discipline, it’s just, it’s a life. I have a life, not a discipline, and that I care more about questioning everything I see then making chatter being nice, abrasive, changing the subject to something that occurred to me, I guess, I’m more interested in exercising that part of my body. And therefore, yeah, I guess I’d rather be not really, but it’s a funny joke. I’d rather be a brain in a jar than he doesn’t care about his body as much, you know. I mean, we are just our brain. If our memory goes, I mean, that’s the tragedy of dementia and Alzheimer’s. Is your dimension go? Well, are you there then? Are you really a human being or whatever we want to call this temporary species we are in it’s a temporary species, we more and more. It seems like daily, but it’s probably weekly, somebody discovering or making some approximation or some discovery of another Humanoid Type race that existed someplace else in the earth 240 years ago, even after the last ice age, but that might that long ago, rather than 100,000. They say.

Max Branstetter 8:19
It’s a key point that you bring up. I alluded to before a conversation that you are, I’ll call it the opposite of the youngest guests we’ve, we’ve had on the wild Business Growth podcast, and I think

Richard Saul Wurman 8:30
I’m 88 years old, I’ll be 89 and March. Now when you’re 89, you’re actually in your 90th year. Because when you’re born, you’re in your first year. You’re not zero. You’re not near zero year, I just turned zero. I was born. No. You’re in your first year. When you’re one year old. You’re in your second year. We have a year off. Everything we do is slightly wrong. So when I’m next March, march 26, when I’m 89, I’m in my 90th year, and I’ll celebrate I’ll have my first celebration. Several times during my a bigger my during my 90th year of my 90th birthday.

Max Branstetter 9:16
What was your ideal 90th birthday party or 89th birthday party however you look at it look like

Richard Saul Wurman 9:23
my birthday party next next year. I’ve had different it’ll probably be, you know, some Kentucky Fried Chicken with my wife. I don’t think it’ll be anything. I did a big 75th birthday party I celebrated all year I was giving lots of speeches when I was 75. So I and I said instead of saying no to most people, I mean even then I said yes to everybody. But they had two things. They had to have a happy birthday cake and insanely happy birthday during the whole year. Then I got to All right everyone, I stopped doing it. I got to be annoying. But I made a thought of beta, you know, ego maniacal effort to try to have a my birthday celebrated. And then I saw it was foolish. So I learned a lot about being an asshole. Really. My 80th birthday, I had a really good birthday. My wife has tired of that birthday party from 75 or even celebrating birthdays because we have six grandchildren. And several children obviously to get sick. And it was too many birthdays and she celebrates she likes to send birthday presents birthday cards, I hate birthday cards. And all that. I just so she she went to New York and had dinner with two of our kids. From when I was at and I invited Yo-Yo Ma and Frank Gehry and Moshe Safdie and Jon Kamen in to Newport and I got a huge space, huge space. And a very good bit in there. A friend of mine sent me some fantastic wine. And I didn’t announce it but I chatted different times. About a month during the month before I said I was going to do this. So about a guess 3040 People walked in to this space. It was knocking on the door. And I said if you want to come by but if you don’t get there by six, the door is locked. I will not open. And the night before I thought of what the theme would be released. I didn’t tell them what they do. And I just said get there. So Moshe, left a day early from the Emirates and yo yo came up after a concert at Carnegie Hall and Frank charted an airplane and went came in from the west coast. I don’t know if you know who these people are. Do you know who? You know Frank arias.

Max Branstetter 11:49
I know who Yo-Yo Ma is the other ones I’m not as familiar with. So I’m reverse aging myself there.

Richard Saul Wurman 11:54
Frank Gehry did this the whole you know, Disney Hall the museum, the the symphony hall and Okay. He’s the most famous architect in the world. He did Bilbao. In business. There’s something called the Bilbao effect. We’re in a fantastic building changes the whole city’s culture, that building change Bilbao, and it’s called the Bilbao effect.

Max Branstetter 12:18
That’s like when you google Bilbao. That’s the building that comes up

Richard Saul Wurman 12:22
when people go to Bilbao and the businesses and open in Bilbao is because Bilbao now has a reputation of a cultural city because of a building. Okay, you can look up Bilbao effect you can check out me I’m not gonna lie anytime in this. I have no reason to. Moshe is off to you know, the building in Singapore with a swimming pool on the roof. Yeah, yeah. Well, Moshe did that building. Okay. And Jon Kamen, owns RadicalMedia. He did fog of war. He has lost a lot of, you know, he does some documentaries. He does some amazing graphic things and work with Esri and myself on the Urban Observatory project, and he’s a close friend. And he has a major major office media office. I’m close to them. So they got there. And the date night before I said to myself, I was walking in one of my gardens, I designed a lot of gardens. In my house, I had eight acres house around my house and I had many many elaborate gardens in Newport. I lived in one of them. They call them cottages but it was a mansion was the Firestone estate and swimming pools, three swimming pools and mat that I had built and and these gardens, so what was it, I think was in the it was a hydrangea garden and I made it into a rose garden, I think later anyways, walking in the garden. And I said, What are we going to talk about? How do I start it? I love beginnings. Beginnings are important. Your beginning was not very important. Thank you. You’re welcome. I thought of the word Eat eat a tea because the evening was going to end with a great dinner. A fish that was just bought from a market by the best fish house in Newport have a friend of mine, having it just all of it just out and like a cornucopia of stuff. Things you normally can’t get some some really rare, amazing fish and seafood. And a few of us the speakers and if people decided to come they weren’t invited, but somebody decided to walk from where we were talking the block and a half to the restaurant. They come in there was enough but I didn’t make it. There was not an invitation and I was not gracious. So I said, Well, we’re going to drink this amazing wine for about an hour. And then for 90 minutes, we’re going to get over the huge, huge space. It used to be the old place of where the generators were in. Newport got turned into a place that had six wooden boats being built a school of building wooden boats and learning how to build boats had three huge files. Not with columns, one big space, but three parts. And on either side, we’re probably about four or five, four boats being wooden boats. And it was a long in there year only did for that one year and going to this class was to build a boat the way it was built 150 years ago, out of woods. And in the middle was the steaming of wood and the taking of wood planks and steaming them into shape. So they could build holes. I said, you’ve already done that, get rid of that. So we had that whole big middle space of it. Build me a foot and a half pipe plinth about 12 feet high and we’ll climb up on there. Sit in these five chairs from my office I took in sitting in one that I won’t have a conversation for 90 minutes. And then we’ll go to this restaurant. So I thought the theme would be eat, but it stood for envy, admiration and terror. And my question was to these overachievers all of them overachievers, who I’ve known for a long time, who were friends of mine, not acquaintances. If you look up, Gary, you’ll see who he is. You’ll be shocked if you know you know who JoJo was. You look up Moshe. You look up, Jon, you’ll see they’re quite astonishing people each in their fields. I said, How do you now? Well, Frank is older than I am. I’m 88. He’s 94. Now. So this is number of years ago, seven, eight years ago, eight years ago. So he was a six. I said, How do you think about these words? admiration, but envy. What did you think of? Are you more envious now people? Because these are competitive guys to get anyplace. You admire people more or less now that you’re who you are. And you still terrify the simplest of questions, but very pointed questions. And we just chatted and joked with each other. I had filmed I’ve never released the films, but they’re terrific films. I def films from three cameras, nothing else was done. Then we walked over and well, at the end of it. Yo yo, that I specifically asked him not to do did. And he had brought his cello and because I didn’t wake up one and make a performance out of it. And he brought his cello and he played a piece then he he sang to me happy birthday. And he played another piece for people, which was quite astonishing. He’s done that for different times. He’s come to my meetings. And he’s an amazing, extraordinary human being. And that was it. So that was that was eight years ago. At this, I don’t think I did. I think after that I sort of said now I’ll wait. So I’m waiting. And then for nine years, I hope that obviously is based on life. And I’m planning it now. And it won’t be on my birthday. If my plan goes through, it won’t be on my birthday. And my wife doesn’t know about it. So she doesn’t watch this kind of thing. So don’t worry about it. And she might not ever know about it because it might not happen. I might not be able to pull it off. But right now I’m planning and planning to do it at another conference that somebody runs that I think has the potential potential to receive it and it’s in the right state. Because I want to connect it with a large project that I’m also don’t know what’s going to happen that I’m working on now. In the state of Massachusetts law. If it works, the entire Massachusetts educational system, I don’t celebrate my birthday, it has meaning. And the initiative that I’m trying to start is called Soul. I like acronyms. So it’s based on my middle name. You know, I have acronyms of how you organize information and acronyms of innovation. There’s only five ways of innovating. There’s only five ways of, of innovation, five ways of organizing information. And there’s Seoul is this four port port thing that I want to start as an initiative and celebrated at this event. I think unless I come up with a better idea.

Max Branstetter 19:37
There’s always opportunity for that. What does it mean to you what struck you about being 88 at the time of this recording and still being mentally sharp and in coming up with whatever your next ideas are?

Richard Saul Wurman 19:54
I don’t know what the crapshoot is to get a little longer. Maybe we are looking at the world One thing, I like opposites very much. I speak about it a lot I live it, I think you say something I think of the opposite is the opposite interesting. A considerable number of scientific breakthroughs and inventions come from doing the opposite of what’s going on not making a better version of something. The electric car has been done, it’s not the opposite of the cars driven by gasoline. It’s not really a great invention, the first car, the very first car was electric 20 years ago, people look at it as innovation is just no making a better version of something, I don’t give it much credit, they will come out with the opposite somehow an opposite where you somehow don’t burn things and either pollute the atmosphere or make certain some countries rich, that just as you get from one place to another, it might be hydrogen, H two O is a lot of hydrogen around you know, in our air in all the water all the waters hydrogen. And after you, you use its energy up, it turns into water. That’s the way it uses his energy up by we’ve already seen expel an experiment where they make water by putting some hydrogen and oxygen together, there’s a little explosion. There’s one in the Franklin Institute build it up. That’s the opposite, you know, it’s up explodes by being exposed to what’s here. There’s no refinery. There’s a lot of helium around the Germans stop making the air. Zeppelin’s the zeppelin company after the course the big explosion of the one in New Jersey. But they wanted to use helium and not hydrogen for it. They get blamed all the time. I don’t like the Germans at that time. This is not rah rah for the Nazi party. I have nothing against the Germans. Now I love traveling in Germany. I didn’t go to Germany for a long time. But then when I started going, I realized, amazing country. The people there are amazing. But they wanted to use helium and we wouldn’t sell it to him. Because the war was going on. I mean, the beginnings of the war. And by us not selling them our helium, they turned to something that is more efficient, but so much more dangerous. They knew the danger of the explosive nature of it. There seemed to be some ways of getting around that explosive danger. But whatever people use, by and large is not always but by and large is open, gasoline is open to explode and burn we see it enough cops and robbers movies and cars, car crashes. It’s a volatile thing. So it could be controlled better to. And then there’s their ideas of generation of electricity to have vehicles that hover above the ground. Certainly trains in a contained space, of course might be in a contained space slightly contained. So you get you experiment the cars, can people come more like sign of mathematics where you can never get the answer. You don’t quite get to the answer, which you get very close to where you want to go. But you’ve never touched anything, and there’s no possibility for accidents. And you go very fast. There’s things that I won’t see. But there’s certainly certainly they will not be iPhones will be something else besides iPhones in your life. And you when you hold your iPhone today or the equivalent, you say, Well, I’m addicted to it. I can’t get rid of it. Lot always. I’ll always have a horse. I’m always gonna have a horse. What’s gonna be you know, you say there’s got to be another way of transportation. No, I mean, there’s we got great horses. And I have a stable full of horses, and they get me here and there pretty fast. Everything you know goes away. Everything you think can’t go away. Well. Where’s your fax machine? I had a fax machine. I depended on my fax machine. I could only run my conferences in remote places because I had a fax machine. I ran conferences I ran a conference in in Japan from New York. I mean put it together I don’t speak Japanese. We was faxing. I fax things all day. They had good translators of it. They sent me back faxes in English all night. I wrote them back my answers. They work through them. And I got faxes. And we put together a complex conference, it was only the fourth conference I did. In the TED series was Ted Kobe, only the fourth. And it was only done. I took a few trips to Japan. But it was basically the daily nitty gritty of a complex conference for 700 people. 450 people from Japan, in a city I had never been to Kobe, with people I’d never met. For 1450 Japanese 250 Americans, we had to get over there. I was running and I, I didn’t, I noticed one person helping me I never had a big stand. I never had a stay at the current TED conference has about 250 work people working there. I had one person, maybe a one and a half helping me. Because I decided you can decide, let’s say, Well, we have to have food at the breaks, and we need lunches and dinners. Well, what are we going to serve at lunch? Or what are we going to have at the breaks. So like, somebody says, well, I’ll do that job. So they work hard seeing what they can get. And they work out five or six different things they can do. Because they know they’re gonna have to run them past me, and how much they cost. And so they do all that work. You know, they get prices, they bring them to me, I pick one of them, and I make few changes in it. Then they go back and they do that. And we work that out? Well, I could have just chosen the things I want and got it done period, one phone call, I would know the price, I could bargain them down. I could get it took less time, no money. And no more, no more of my time because I still have to review everything. There is so much of doing a project that you think is complex, it gives fear to people. I chose the music that was gonna come over, I chose the furniture, it’s just a choice. It doesn’t matter if it’s the absolute best choice, it’s my best choice in the conference was for me. I had to please me, I have standards, my standards, I’ll put up against anybody in the room. And I certainly will put up against anybody I hire. So ever, there’s 90% 95% of the things are just decisions that you make. 5% is some grunt work, which takes place mostly at the conference. And some keeping track at home of who’s coming the numbers of people and printing out badges. And I designed a complete opposite badge. I had a long badge. On a string around your neck Well, if everybody has that, but I had the last name large not their first name because I care about people’s last names. And I didn’t want anybody to call me Richard. So I had the last name or so you could pick up that oh, there’s somebody I want to meet. I don’t want to meet Richard was Richards is 1000 Richards, where there were whatever name you want to put max. And I had the schedule of the first two days on the front, then you just turned it over. And it was printed backwards upside down. And you could do this and see the schedule the next two days. So you had a schedule, and your name and a number so I could see you you were looking up if I needed to look up somebody. And it worked. And now they put the last name no schedule, a first name, no schedule, do the stupid dispatches. Why don’t know why people don’t steal ideas. You didn’t have to carry a program around. I didn’t enter I did to do a program. And I had enough so everybody had one but there was a stack of more of you last years. And that program had good bios in it with a picture of the people. So I didn’t give introductions. I said he can read your you know his neck. You can read about it. I want to read it but I don’t read about and the longer the introduction that I would have to give the less I thought of the person. Let me give you an example. One conference over the four days the other days. The first day. I said Our next speaker is is Bill Gates. Second day was quite crowded and the most famous businessman at that time in America sat next to the press and his wife at the State of the Union speech was John Sculley, who was head of Apple, he was very famous that we forget that because of Steve Jobs, but he was really well known. He couldn’t find a seat. I didn’t save seats for speakers. Or for anybody who paid for a meal, I didn’t take money from people for there was no sponsors that gave me money. They could give me services, they could set up a coffee shop, they could have a pay for a dinner. He was sitting on the island I just said John

went down. Next day, somebody was sitting in the front row. And I said, cue come up. And as a cue before you talk, let me give you a tell the story. And why your list because the more famous you are, the shorter the introduction. We had Bill Gates’s full name, John Sculley first name. And you, innit first initial of your last name. And that’s true.

Max Branstetter 31:08
There’s a thread that’s consistent across your life, and it involves Ted and even involves chemical compounds you alluded to, like h2o. And that’s acronyms. What’s this gravitational pull that acronyms have on you?

Richard Saul Wurman 31:24
Nobody’s ever asked me that question. It’s a good question. And it’s a very simple answer. Several stories I tell around it, I said it to you, I think on the phone the other day. If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. I’ve always tried to have people who are smarter than me that I was around. Because I’m so smart. I’m curious. I’m not smart. This answer several questions you might ask. Well, I went to the University of Pennsylvania. When I was 18, same age, you graduated high school. And for a number of reasons I chose to go into the School of Architecture. My family they’d not a miracle on the college, one side of this family, cigar makers and the other side of the band, not owners, cigar makers and the other side were kosher butchers. I went to school the first day to register from high school. And I got a catalog and I got a sheet of paper. Then there was no computers. Of course, this was 1953 1953 There was one of those things that had many sheets and some carbon paper before that you wrote on it hyped up and it was that’s the way things are done and how you got copies, right. And so I was given my name was on it and the courses I was going to take and there was a line to see a class Advisor Now I was really anticipating the magic of going to going to University is one of those moments in life. Well, for many people. It’s not just a trivial moment. It’s different than going to high school from junior high school and that’s a moment to lay going the the leap from high school to college when you’re not living at home. You’re not with people, you know, it’s a bigger leap. And I was asking a lot of it. Also at that time, and for a while and maybe even some ways now. I was odd. I wear white pants that were about six inches above my ankles, boots. I had a grubby beard well, but grubby beard. Nobody had any beards at that time. Three except hippies or there wasn’t even hippies. There wasn’t even beatniks This was before any of that. This is before beatniks right? This goes back before people dropped out a bit. I was fairly cocky and realistic. Anyway, I saw this thing that I had to stand like eight lines. And I went into the dean’s office. And I said I’d like to see the dean. And he was an untouchable. He immediately didn’t like me. I didn’t like him. When I met him I didn’t meet him for a long time. I sat there hour, hour and a half before his secretary would allow me in. And secretaries are usually like who they work for. So I went in to see him. He had a starched collar, and a suit very, very proper Boston Brahmin. This was in Philly. Gee Holmes Perkins was his name. And he managed to put together however the best school of architecture United States for about close to a decade. It was clearly the best one then it fell off but He put it together with him in a very orderly way. He got his ideas from Gropius, who was head of the Bauhaus and in Germany came over to Harvard and ran Harvard. He worked for Gropius and and got the dealership there. I guess these are all names you don’t know. But some of the people listening now, you could look them up. I said, I have this piece of paper, and I was absolutely crazed by it. I said, Why do I have to sign this piece of paper when you’ve already told me what I’m taking. You could just give me that and say show up. There’s no action that is taken with this piece of paper. And I hate to start my my learning experience. For the next five years, it was a five year undergraduate course then doing something that’s irrational. That’s how crazy I was. He looked at me like, you know, I was like, Whoa, Planet Nine or something. He said, Well, this is the way we do it. Mr. Wurman sign that and go to your class advisor said no, I want to make a deal with you, then. You thought I was just crazy. It was a school that was hard to get into. Everybody wanted to get into it was the best school. And here this kid is a pain in the ass. And cocky, I said I had a chance because I was waiting in line to go through this catalog. And I felt like a pig and shit. There was so many things that were interesting to me, I’d like to make a deal. I would like I will take every course I have to take for architecture, you have requirements all the way through different ones different years, less requirements in the upper layers. I’ll take every single thing I have to take. But I don’t want to see another advisor, I want to automatically whatever I have to take I’m taking but I want to take as many other courses that I want to take in any department of the university, which is a whole catalog of yours. As long as I keep it a B plus A minus average. He said fine. Because he knew I was gonna flunk out. The first year they fund 50% of my but it was it was very hard. wasn’t hard for me. So I took a triple load. I went to school every day, every night, through Saturday and not on Sunday. Here comes the answer to your question. I also realized that I was taking all these courses I was in class all the time. And nights I went to the night program. When you go to a class, you take notes, why? The object of taking notes is to study from them for the test, which I thought was absurd. Instead of the question. I talked about this earlier. So I took it upon myself to learn to listen and not take notes. I had no notes. I didn’t take notes. I learned to listen and make connections in my head for what I wanted to remember. Because all the stuff somebody says there’s nothing you want to remember, you don’t I don’t have a photographic memory. But I could see the words I told myself this is a thing that is cool that you can have where you can see things that people say. So I see things not like some of the great masters of doing that. But I can see I can see when you say something I and when I say things, I can see them as well as Elon. So I used to have my abilities instead of just hearing I can see and hear and put them together. And I make connections in my mind between words and other subjects so I can remember them. And I realized how important that memory was. So I learned to listen, which was my memory, didn’t take notes. And I gave myself over that just sucking it in of just learning. And I improved my memory. So I remember things. Not a photographic memory, I remember in a different way. I don’t remember because of photographic memory. I remember I have an attack, a attachment to thing. Everything attaches other subject funny, strange subjects in other fields to it. Of course, that’s what my TED conference was based on that moment. That is about everything.

Max Branstetter 39:34
How does that tie to? Whenever you’re deciding the next project that you’re going to, you know, focus 24/7 on

Richard Saul Wurman 39:47
that’s also not a bad question. I don’t know how I can improve.

Max Branstetter 39:50
I’m just shooting for not bad.

Richard Saul Wurman 39:51
Good question, but I don’t I have some load times when I’m not busy. I think Myself being slothful. I told you I work for two people. I got fired from several other jobs because I couldn’t work with people. They didn’t fire me. They were really inspirations in my life. loucon in particular, both loucon more so than, than Charlie because I was with him more. But we both became connected as more than just an acquaintance. This is a friendship. I did the first book ever on Louis Kahn, I was 26 years old. He’s the architects architect woke up, Louis LRU is gone, you’ll see what said about a agent, you’d be surprised. There’s certain things I was curious about. And then I looked for how to find out about for instance, this is not the beginning. So it’s the first one I can think of, it’s very clear, and then I’ll go backwards. When I was 45, my architectural practice went belly up. I decided to get out of Philadelphia for a little while and just clear my lungs because I didn’t know what I was gonna do next. I called him a couple of people that gave me a visiting professorship at USC and one at UCLA. So I was in LA. And I had this connection to the west coast for a semester. So as a visiting professor, so Charlie again, I went to work for Charlie, Charlie Eames for a while. And then came back to Philadelphia was very troubled time in my life, but I was doing different things. I was working for trilliums. I was working for two universities, teaching two different things. In each university. I came back to Philadelphia and I became Deputy Director of Housing and Community Development. I did a city job for a year. And then somebody asked me to come out and be dean of a school. I was dean of a school I was fired from that. That’s another whole interesting story, rehired at a higher salary, and they fired the person who fired me. But I moved into LA because that was out in Pomona. I lived in Claremont. When I came to LA, I was introduced to a vast city. We had a drive I hadn’t driven that much. Living in Philadelphia, I had a car but I just walked around the city I lived in downtown I lived in my car, I didn’t use it much. In La you don’t. If you need a piece of gum, you have to drive a mile. And I wanted to get a good guidebook and I couldn’t. I couldn’t get a guidebook so I could understand where I was. Understanding my context is important to me always has been I get anxious if I don’t I really want to know the place. I do the guidebook. And I started a guidebook company. Not as easy as those two sentences. I had to get somebody to give me $100,000 To do it, who I didn’t know, a company I didn’t know was Atlantic Richfield. arco became arco. And they became my patron in a while and they underwrote a Olympic guide. They saw how good the city God wasn’t. I started though this city guide, which eventually turned to the accesspress. And the former CEO of CBS became my partner and I did 22 guidebooks to cities around the world, London, Paris, Rome, all across the United States, and the Olympics and sports and medicine. I got the I saw there was so many things in medicine that I didn’t understand. So I did a medical access. And then I did a healthcare book. And then I had a relationship with Johnson and Johnson and UnitedHealthcare, and AARP because of older people. And that’s how it went. It was just things that took me to my interest. So the next thing is always the last two books. I did this three books I did, one just came out. I mean, one was somebody came to me and asked me, could they do a Kickstarter on the first book I did? For loucon? I said, the first book I did, I was 26. Well, it was a terrific book. And I say that not because it’s mine, I look at it, like somebody else did it. I can’t imagine doing it. So but I didn’t have to do it’s gonna be a facsimile. And it was loose favorite book. I said, I’ll do it if I can, instead of your like readers guide you do for it. And it was a you know, package of $100 book or $200 book because it was gonna it was a linen book with gold stamping and beautiful reproductions. I said I’d like to do an accompanying book called a profound scrapbook of all the detritus of whose life in a scrapbook of my design. So we did that. It turned out very well. That was the list last but before that I did a book because I got to thinking about being old 80s I got to thinking about this. And I realized I didn’t know about that. So I did a book called mortality. That was all about death deaths. This is where you live the longest. How long you lived, how you died at different places, how they got rid of bodies. Where do you Live to be 100 jokes about death that film, some thing from Monty Python about death, I got a chance to draw a skull, which I had been doing some watercolors of things at that time and had a big art exhibit their whole museum did art exhibit 47, white paintings and 25, my bronzes. So I do that, along with the other things was we didn’t think so I did a nice painting for the book. So what do I do next? It’s all about different things. And then the next the book before that was a kind of combination of my thoughts is that I saw that I was wrapping the ranting, not wrapping ranting about the word education and saying we learn. But before learning what gave becomes before learning, is understanding. And that all my friends, whether it’s yoga, whether it’s a cello player, or a graphic designer, or an architect, or a business person, or a techie, or a medical person, I knew them and I had a band of brothers from Ted. And they all had a different story of how they go about understanding. Somebody did visually, verbally, numerically a combination of both of those things. Some were storytellers. Some had images, the breakthrough of Francis Crick, Watson and Crick. Have you heard of Watson and Crick? Yeah, of course. Well, well, Crick was somebody I know I have a picture Crick right here. And I did, will let somebody else in Francis was a marvelous man. And one of his breakthroughs with Watson was seeing that photograph, brilliant professor at Cambridge, I taught at Cambridge, by the way, I taught a lot. So Cambridge was one of the highlights. And he saw a double helix. And so became visual, he built a model, the breakthrough of DNA was building a model, it was visual, he understood because of a visualization, not a formula, not C equals MC squared. It was a formula that he loved him bigger tinker toys, basically, he had tinker toys, and he could show how things connected and tinker toys. That was an amazing breakthrough. But that was a way of understanding through a model. People have a different journey. So I did a book called understanding, understanding. And it’s one of my best books. I have five books that are okay. I’m out of 100. I’m a Five Percenter. And then I learned after I did the book, there was a book I should have done before, understand, I learned for myself that before you understand, you have to learn how to explain that it’s really explaining then understanding, and then you can take action. So I’m working on some project called explaining explaining what is the science of explaining something. And there’s a methodology of explaining things, it’s not read more books. And that there is a relationship that at the higher level, the top person in a siloed medical school, because that’s what our universities are, they don’t talk to each other. It’s a group of siloed specialties. A university was put together with the idea initially, that everybody would talk to each other would be a better Center for Learning. Because we couldn’t fit them all in one building, we have different buildings, but they talk to each other and learn from each other. And eventually, like, one of my granddaughters did put two departments together, at the age of 15. She went graduated high school 15, when she she went to see the top guy at Carnegie Mellon, and said, I want to take two of your disciplines, put them together. And she created a department there at 15 and was the first graduate called Computational Biology. Now, it’s logical that the Biology Department and the computation department should be together because they, that’s all the way it’s done. And eventually, there’ll be other departments put together and it might become a university unit means one city, a city is great because it has all these disciplines together, and you get everything done. But that’s not what a university is. It’s a series of silos. They don’t talk to each other, that raise their own money, have their own buildings named all differently, have different number of years, different rules of how you get through different ways you get promoted all kinds of politics between things. So I’m interested in the base course of really the science of, of being able to

explain because explaining something is Where’d it begin? Well, I know if I figure out how to chip by working very hard a person, Chip a flint, whether it’s a piece of flint or a piece of obsidian, do you know what obsidian is?

Max Branstetter 50:15
I’m blanking Isn’t it like a dark rock?

Richard Saul Wurman 50:17
Well, it’s it’s volcanic glass. It is yeah,

Max Branstetter 50:20
I’m close.

Richard Saul Wurman 50:21
Well, it’s not a rock, you’re half wrong.

Max Branstetter 50:26
half empty, half full. Depends how you look at it.

Richard Saul Wurman 50:29
By the right size glass is the third alternative? Well, you have to explain how to do that it’s not easy to make a plant or the chip something truly isn’t. I lived in the jungle of Guatemala for six months. And I mapped in the jungle where there was no roads, no doctor, no communications, no phones, no electricity, no running water, terrible conditions. 12 of us. And I was part of a group of three of us that it plain table mapping of dhikala, Guatemala when I was 21, I know the things that the mines did might seem crude to us, it’s really hard to replicate, it’s very hard to do again. Very, very hard. And you have to learn how to do it. And that process of learning is interesting. Sometimes the process of learning something is so difficult that system of apprenticing somebody presents to the shoemaker, that all you do for your whole life is learning how to make shoes. And that wasn’t satisfactory to me. I don’t do anything well, because I didn’t want to spend my whole life doing one thing. You are and eventually are working on a pathway to become expert at something, do something really well be recognized that recognized for it and sell it. I mean, so your talents to do something, you’ll go in with a curriculum vitae. And you’ll say I’ve done these things. I want to be hard to be a rep and read in some channel, and then do my own my own program or whatever your I don’t, I’m not saying what you read, but you will sell your expertise. Right? I don’t have any clients, nobody asked me to do anything. But in order to get something done, I would I sell is my ignorance. I sell I don’t know anything about medicine. I don’t know anything about diagnostic tests. And I don’t think you do either. And I don’t think your top doctor can explain it to me, are you I’d like to do a book on diagnostic tests for men and one of the diagnostic tests for women. And then eventually an understanding healthcare book, but not use any doctors because they can’t tell me. And I want to take my ignorance to lead that if it becomes understandable to me, it’ll be understandable to others. So I’m gonna sell you my ignorance. That’s a hard sell. But I’ve done it.

Max Branstetter 53:12
What do you think makes the difference in your mind from stumbling on an idea and choosing to actually turn it into a book or a business or a project versus just oh, that’s an interesting thought.

Richard Saul Wurman 53:28
I’ve said names to you, places to you, that are to you. If you were sent them to me, and I did not understand the name or place or anything you said I would stop you. And also just a minute, I’ll look it up or tell me what that is. I wouldn’t have told me I’d be embarrassed. Obviously, just a minute, I would look it up, I wouldn’t I don’t let things go past that interest me enough to want to know about them, and just go on and on the world. So I don’t have anything. And then I see Well, that connects to that. And that connects to that. And then I have an epiphany. It doesn’t happen every minute of every day. But when the couple of epiphanies work together, I do. I have in my drawers. Not more than a half a dozen, but probably a half a dozen, only done books that I learned everything I could by doing the project I didn’t bother publishing, because I’m not doing them for you. And I’m certainly not doing I don’t have a publisher. I don’t have an agent. I don’t have a PR person. I don’t sell my books and bookstores. So I’m not doing for anybody but myself. I did the TED conference. The speakers were not suggested by the audience. And I didn’t get them there because I thought the audience would like them. I didn’t give a flying anything about the audience. I just wanted to do good work and I wanted to learn from it. I had people there that I wanted to hear from that I either knew or didn’t know or didn’t have enough time to make be in their presence. It was about me about connections, and of having a life dedicated to those connections and those epiphanies. And other people thought it was some things were interesting enough to come. Because I exposed them to a world they didn’t know. Well, they don’t know much of any world because everybody that my father did one thing he made cigars. He was interested, he knew about growing tobacco, hearing tobacco, making cigars, boxing them and selling.

And indulging me.

Max Branstetter 55:38
You always from an early age, even driven by that curiosity and fascination.

Richard Saul Wurman 55:46
Yep. And there have been any different, there’s some people now they’re dead. But there was some people 10 years ago, a couple of people in particular, who I was friends with, in junior high school, grammar school, junior high school, high school, we lived in a suburb just north of Philly. And so we had acquaintance ships and friendships for, you know, 10 years, while years going through school. And they didn’t weren’t friendly, particularly with each other. And I remember within a space of six months, I saw both of them and had similar conversations. And they both came up with words like, because we talked about old friends and who they knew who we knew. And you know, you always look in the rearview mirror when you meet old friends. They both said the same thing about me, they said, not the exact same words, but the same thing. That the difference between ourselves and the friends we know, I knew from when we first met in grammar school, first grade, second grade, whatever, was it, you haven’t changed at all? And we’ve changed. So that answers your question. I don’t remember changing, I don’t remember changing.

Max Branstetter 57:02
Do you think you’re more different now from how you were in your 40s? Or how you were in your 20s? No.

Richard Saul Wurman 57:10
sane person, look at the books I did then look at books now. They’re always just my interest. I’ve never had anybody asked me to do one of my 100 books. I’ve never had anybody asked me to do a conference. I have no clients. I have not gotten a paycheck. And I say for two years, I don’t know it could be 38 years or 45 years or six years. That’s not my life. And I don’t try to extend my certainly for the last. I can clearly say in the last 30 years. Nobody’s ever asked me to do anything. haven’t asked me to do a book on any subject. Obviously, I know how to do books, I’ve done books. I had some New York Times bestselling books, information, anxiety, and information anxiety too. And they’ve been translated into Japanese and all around the world. Certainly been visible because the TED conferences were visible. I did that for 18 years. I also did the TEDMED conference. And the first federal design assembly and the AIA national conference, American Institute of Architects conference by 1,000 people came. So I’ve been around but not with any PR and I’ve never done anything. To get a gig to talk. I don’t call somebody up and say please give me an honorary doctorate. Please give me a speech. I want to speak at your school. I want to do a speech for you. I did you called me I didn’t call you. I’ll have two other podcasts and then next week I do these because it helps me solve my puzzle. It’s doubtful whether our paths will cross again. So it’s not the extension of my pattern of life. I don’t go to dinner parties. I don’t go to openings. I don’t go to I don’t go to sporting events. I don’t go to theater. I don’t go to the movies. I travel with my wife and sometimes kids we get together. I have six grandchildren and we see them basically couple of them during the year and then we all 15 of us get together with some grandchildren and some significant others someplace for you know three days at Thanksgiving someplace this year. We’ll go to Charleston last year we went to Amelia Island sometimes we’ve gone to Mexico we’ve gone to a funny snowed in lizard snowed in ghost town once all this but I guess my life is fairly boring. Because I don’t have a plan day I just do what I want. I for a while very seriously painted here at home and then some museum, the Coral Gables Museum in Coral Gables, which is a town next to Miami. I gave me took the whole museum gave me the whole museum. And I had, as I said earlier, 47 of my paintings and 25 of my bronzes. And the only reason the bronze happened is that COVID made my bronze happening. Painting I could do but then I couldn’t get them framed because of COVID. I couldn’t, I didn’t leave the house. But I couldn’t get deliveries of plasticine. So I could get dressed the same. And then I could have delivered to a bronze caster to a place that could cast them in bronze. So I stopped doing painting and I started doing bronzes, then I just stopped doing my bronze is are very expensive to do and very expensive. The cast, I love doing them. And I did my first sculpture ever in my whole life. And then I cast it in bronze, the very first one. And I thought, wow, that’s really fun. And I learned something new. And the last six were pretty good. So I stopped doing them. Because I’m not gonna be a great sculptor. And I learned how to do it. And I pleased myself, I have every one I’ve done, I don’t give them away, I don’t sell them. I just have them and I closed down that got rid of all my tools or my clay. And I’ll do something else. And something else will be what I’m starting on that I can handle not happily, but I handle the dead period periods when I don’t have an intense desire to do a few projects at once. But I’m doing several books now. I work on things, several things. And I watch a lot of television, I watch lots of documentaries. I like my iPhone, and I look at Facebook a lot. Facebook is of course 95% Shit, but 5% I don’t know that I can see some little things and connections to things. So I follow up that trail. And then I make cold calls to people’s names who come up and comfort say somebody will mention somebody I just had a talk with this person. And they were interesting. Oh, what’s his name? I’ll give him a cold call. I’ll say my name is Richard Saul Wurman, you might or might not know about me, you can Google me. I would like to have an hour conversation with me if you like it, call me back. And so I have with perfect strangers I’ve never met yet over since COVID. I have a series of people I talked to small particle physics person in Austin, Texas, a head of Geriatric Psychiatry. It’s a big hospital. Just a publisher in New York, I’ve always wanted to meet but never met. So I’ve met just different people are trying to understand the science of zoom of remote conversation where you’re not in somebody’s presence, like a you are in a conference. And what can you do to make that conversation? Where there’s no agenda? And there’s no ask? I can’t ask. And they can’t ask me for anything. That’s my only rules. I can’t ask the geriatric psychiatrists for any help. You can ask me for help. But if you represent some field or something, it’s not about that setup. So it’s, that’s interesting. So that’s my life. It’s not a it’s not a planned life. It’s just, it’s just the life and I’ve been allowed to survive an interesting life. I have a very interesting life. I’m from for me, it’s very, really quite interesting.

Max Branstetter 1:03:23
What’s the most interesting documentary you’ve ever watched?

Richard Saul Wurman 1:03:29
Oh, Jesus, it’s hard to say what the most interesting one is.

I don’t know. There’s so many that are at one level because they’re all showing me something. I don’t know. I mean, there’s a whole flock of just eye candy videos, the Attenborough type of of animal life and Earth life and nature that are just all the same in a way they every one is the same. It’s just I can’t I can’t say that I like though the white Amaya Tiger. Better than I like a sea slug. That just you know, moves along. The robot is fascinating. So there’s, there’s that whole then there’s a group of science ones that try to explain certain science premises. Most of them are not good. But every once in a while there’s one that they say something or they produce an image of something that makes some clarifies relativity er, that clarifies something. I like watching the rare documentaries that are not several because there are real things when they could take photographs of the Hindenburg crashing and then the stories about why a crash and then I like watching each of the five different is probably five at least other Hindenburg firm films that don’t give a different reason for the crash. And the roll show themselves. I like the surety that People express the pseudo scientific surety they they express it, but why the Mayans? Their theory, which they don’t say is a theory, they say is the truth of why the Mayans disappeared or why the Aztecs disappeared, or why somebody won a war, or what the statistics of it and the roll roll. And then the new thing, because they can’t all be right, because they’re all radically different. And so you have to make a judgment about between whether you’re being swayed by how good of a Salesman the person is, or how good the facts are. And sometimes it seems like that more factual things aren’t presented as good. So you’re you buy into the, to the lie, because it’s more entertaining for a while. And I’m always looking at that, how presentation affects what you think is correct. So that’s how I look at things, I look at things always in the same way, I don’t look at him for entertainment. I look at him to see the threads of what they take through. And then there’s sometimes they don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, because I do about something just minor things. But the fact that minor things factually are wrong, and they were left to be made into a film to be edited, proof read study, paid for put online seen by people, and there’s a fact that just wrong, that they could have corrected easily Not, not one that’s obtuse, you know, not something that is esoteric, but just simple. It’s simply wrong as well, as we know today, right? That the sloppiness of our worlds surprises me. Oh, learning experience.

Max Branstetter 1:06:41
Richard, this has been a learning experience in itself. It’s been an absolute treat speaking with you and learning from you. And I should call you woman, not Richard. But you’ve alluded to that you’ve got 90 bucks in counting probably. And I think for anybody who’s interested in your work, it’s very exciting, but also almost daunting, because there’s so many different ones, you just want to know where to start. So I’m wondering, what’s your Where do you think is the best beginning place for somebody who’s never read one of your works before?

Richard Saul Wurman 1:07:13
Ah, there are three books. I would just say two books, information anxiety to these might be out of print, but you can get them all online used get used ones. And they’re not in bookstores? So information anxiety too, done a long time ago, probably 2030 years ago. It was prophetic. It was it was okay. A big fat book I did called Understanding understanding is my buds and how my buddies and how they go about understanding things. And it tells about some things about me, but lots about a lot of other people. It’s a big fat book. You don’t want to buy it new if you can’t, it’s expensive. It’s hard to find. But it just came out a little while ago, but I don’t try to sell them you can’t. It’s harder to get what’s called Understanding understanding. There’s a book I did a little while ago, which is sort of a funny, skinny and you still can get it because I saw you get it online. Use one’s called 33. The numbers, three 333 by Richard Saul Wurman mostly would be interesting. As an overview 33 is 33 stories with some illustrations that are grouped around another book I did in 1976. So I took a little book I did in 1976, and opened it every spread. And then I wrote things around that open page. And then 33 were 33 ideas that come to mind when I read my old this old book from 1976 that I did. So when you turn the page and 33 you turn the page and this do and it’s a clever little book. I just did. That’s an easy one. You see the squirrely way my head works. bestselling book was information anxiety that put me on the map because it was prophetic about what was happening in information in the early early 80s, I guess I think it was and then this last one, understanding understanding I just did a few years ago and that’s that’s a big heavy book, but that’s a it’s sort of a book about everything in a book about nothing. And if you had it in a bookstore, they wouldn’t know what shelf to put it on. But Amazon so there’s an easy way of doing if you go on or one of my websites. Look for the architect of ideas. You Architects of ideas is 11 minute film that was done by The Nantucket Project. Some very good conference. And I didn’t even know about it. They came into my house and shot this film in the summer. Then they asked me to speak. And as I got up on stage, they said, Oh, sit in your seat for a few minutes. We have something to show you. They showed me the film, I’d never seen it. So the first time I saw it, I saw it for 100 other people. I’ve never seen rushes of it. And it’s an interesting Wolfville the architect of ideas. And it was done by Tommy Scott, Tommy Scott. Have you ever heard the story of Tom and Tom who did Nantucket Nectars and sold for a lot of money when they were young. And it was the first young kids from Brown. We started something, servicing boats, and then tucket Harbor, then doing fruit juices and then doing it and then selling it to somebody like Snapple or something for like $75 million before people made money like that, who are kids. That was before, you know, today is a long time ago. They became famous as Tom and Tom. And he runs a conference Tom Scott, one of the Tom’s and then talk. I’m we’re friends, we talk to each other. Anyway, he asked me to speak and they came in did a film, a documentary film, it’s pretty good. It used to be shown on JetBlue. They used to show it on

Max Branstetter 1:11:28
the architect of ideas that you mentioned. I was after we had our intro call you recommended I watched it I watched and absolutely loved it. How you can find that at wurman.com/media Wu R ma n.com/media. So it’s absolute? Well, you did really well done. Yeah, absolutely well done. But for the listeners, that’s where you can find it. And there was

Richard Saul Wurman 1:11:50
no script for that he just came into my house came into my studio, which was the studio, which was the the little dog horse place that I pasted on a not the mansion that I lived in. But just out there, they came in with his cameras, it was all this. And he studies it just start talking. And then we walk around my property never went in, just walked around my property to the back. And around the listing is me like this in front of my huge swimming pool, 93 foot swimming pool I built and my three dogs. He just did it with no script. This was amazing. It was no second takes on anything.

Max Branstetter 1:12:29
I noticed there was a lot of external shots, but it was absolutely beautiful. And really well done. Richard, if you could leave our audience with one thing to ponder about could be anything in the world. What would it be?

Richard Saul Wurman 1:12:46
Go through three days and not lie. And ask no questions that are like. So how’s it going? How you doing? Don’t ask questions that can’t be answered. I got somebody last night I was was I went my wife and I went to someplace because they had done a whole series of stories on her. She’s a novelist. She was on the cover of their magazine in the area with their fifth anniversary. So I just got inside the front door of this place. And there was somebody standing there. So I started talking to him. And well, it’s just everything he was asking was were questions or things that I don’t think he really wanted to have answered. And then I have just a couple days before I mean, this is my week is taken up sometimes by things like this. I’m annoying, I got a letter, I have a more than $1.50 invested with a large wealth management company. And the senior vice president sent out a letter to all his customers I guess. And the first sentence is was a little one letter things like could be you know, help us the way airlines How did we do? How did we do in your flight or hotel? How are we as a resort you know, they get them and then they throw oil like that in the trash. And this was from so I as I said I had more than $1.50 was not trivial amount. And the letter was we just want to know how we’re doing how are we doing for you? Now you cannot answer that question. In a letter in a form letter. You cannot answer that question if I don’t know who he is really, what kind of person he is how old he is, but I can’t talk to him in a letter I can’t fill out a form he doesn’t know me. He knows me by the amount of money I haven’t is wealth management program. But he doesn’t know me. I’m sure he didn’t research me. And I just lashed into him with a how insane Applying the letter was. I said, you know, I suggested to get another job. So that’s what I would tell your listeners really, the thought, I’m not saying something complicated. I’m not saying something trivial. I’m asking the dumbest questions you can ask what dumber question? Could you what more you just asked for clarification? It makes it complex clear. Just, if somebody asks you a question, Is that a question you really can answer? Is it one that person should, really wants to know the answer to if you ask somebody a question, ask a question bounded enough? That gives you an answer that the answer then leads to another question or another subject. And don’t let somebody talk to you and say things you don’t understand and not stop them. Even if they are your superior. You’re not showing how stupid you are. You’re showing how interested you are the opposite. People don’t want to show their ignorance. By God, that’s the best thing we have going for us. If you don’t have ignorance, you have nothing to fill up. It’s like going into a candy store without a bag. But you know, that is not the way the world is. Nobody wants to fail in front of anybody else. This was brought up to me I didn’t think was anything odd. I was giving a speech at a conference with a very important friend of mine, who they had a hard time getting there he came because he was going to talk to me was an hour long conversation. It was just us conversing. We had no agenda. We didn’t talk about what we were going to talk about. Right. So the head of the conference, obviously was a little concerned because he had no input to what we were doing, right. We had no slides. We were just sitting there. St. Lucia. And talking we had it was going really well. And somebody when he was in the back, telling me the hour was up. I said, Well, I’ve been told the hour is up. And thank you because I really gotta pee. And I wear diapers so I could pee in them. But I’d rather not. So thanks to everybody, goodbye, and I walked out. Now that’s not what you’re supposed to do. In society, tell the truth. I was just telling the truth. There’s nothing. Everybody pees, what’s bad about telling the truth about that. And in fact, I was thanking him for it, I will just say, ping actually makes you feel good. When you pee, it feels good. It’s not a bad feeling. So I’m not going to hurt myself. I’m not going to be punished, or do self flagellation. But you can’t talk about certain things that are nothing. They’re controversial. But you see the point I’m making, I’m telling you an extreme case of it. But I’m not embarrassed by that at all. Because it’s the truth. I don’t get embarrassed by the truth. Let me give you another example of the truth being embarrassing. Let’s say you were sitting here now and you had a booger in your nose.

Max Branstetter 1:18:10
We don’t want to reveal too much here. Now let’s just say you had

Richard Saul Wurman 1:18:13
it. And we had a whole conversation. And I didn’t say up front. Hey, you got a booger in your nose? Get it out? Because that’s all I’m gonna look at. I’m doing you a favor. Because everybody else looking at you is looking at the burger and won’t say it. You see the difference? I am not embarrassing you. I’m helping you. And I’m telling you that because of that, it will interfere with the conversation.

Max Branstetter 1:18:40
This has been officially the best answer I’ve ever heard to “How’re you doing today?” So we’ve come full circle here. Really, really appreciate everything. And also, I have to say that Richard, I think I can now officially call you my favorite brain in a jar. So that just thanks. Thanks so much for all you do. And for spending the time this is really special.

Richard Saul Wurman 1:19:02
I have one question to ask you. Of course, your fantasy of what not your fantasy your preconception of what the conversation would be like. am I different than what you saw on a film? am I different than what you’ve read about? am I different than what anybody has told you about? Is it anything like or what how is it different than what your preconception was? Because we have preconceptions of things whether you think you do or not.

Max Branstetter 1:19:29
I think when I first came across your name online and learned, you know about Ted and your books and everything. I had a preconception before speaking with you of how this conversation might be more about Ted and your books and curiosity and projects and that sort of thing. But then once we spoke and once I prepared for this interview by listening to you on some other interviews you’ve done, I had a pretty good idea that I should just scrap however I would normally prepare for an interview and do To see where this conversation goes, and I think there’s no way to fully predict it. But this has been very unique compared to other interviews.

Richard Saul Wurman 1:20:10
I have to stop you. Yeah, there’s no such thing as very unique. Either something is unique or not, they can’t be more unique than unique. So it can’t be very unique. Let’s try another word with unique. That’s a lesson and listening to every word, but in your head thinking about every word you’re gonna say.

Max Branstetter 1:20:31
That’s very true. I’m just kidding. I couldn’t resist there. Anything else that you wish to share? Or are you Are you at peace with this?

Richard Saul Wurman 1:20:41
I don’t know. I have no idea who I’m talking to. And if anybody wants to get in touch with the give them my email address or so and they can send me an email if they like. It’s very easy. . I’m not saying I’m going to answer you. Or just get rid of it. But there might be something that’s interesting, or useful, and I’m not selling you anything. I have nothing I’m selling. I don’t have a podcast, you’re not to sign up for anything with me. Period. So it’s not that I’m not trying to get you to write. But if some one person writes me, and it’s interesting, it’s probably good for both of us.

Max Branstetter 1:21:24
Wow, Richard, thank you so much for coming on the podcast for sharing your brilliant brain in a jar with us. And thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the Wild Business Growth Podcast on your favorite app and tell a friend about the podcast and go check out one of Richard’s just a few books with them. You can also find us on Goodpods where there are good, good podcasts and podcast recommendations. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That’s at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!