Big Brain History
@BigBrainHistori • 12,121 subscribers
To not suck, you've gotta study history
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Robert Downey Jr. on the moment Jodie Foster called out his addiction: Oprah Winfrey asks how he managed to keep showing up to work on time despite his drug use. Robert pushes back on the premise: "Never missed a day. But that's not the point. You know that thing about how it goes and people say, 'Well, yeah, he's a fall down drunk, but he's always at work at 8 a.m.' It's like, that's kind of missing something here. You know, he's great with the kids. Don't let him drive." He admits the "reliable addict" narrative wasn't even fully accurate: "I could be found in the trailer like, 'What are you doing, Robert? We're 5 minutes away.' And I'd be like, 'I'm building a space shuttle out of toothpicks.' I mean, my behavior was a little aberrant." Then the interviewer brings up Jodie Foster, who directed him in a film and confronted him about his addiction. Robert Downey Jr recalls her words: "You're doing great on this film and I know that you're loaded, too. So, what's wrong with this picture? I'm worried about you. Not on this one because we're almost done and you're going to be okay and I know that you have a really strong work ethic and you're kind of like a lab rat. You're really resilient. That's not a good thing in this situation. I'm worried about you for the next movie." She was right. But Robert admits he couldn't fully absorb it in the moment: "I thought, maybe on the space shuttle I'll put my name on the side. When you're far out and when you're in denial, what do you do? That's your job. You deny and you stay far out."
Big Brain History922,850 次观看 • 1 个月前
Leonardo DiCaprio on what it took to play Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street: When asked about the real Jordan Belfort, Leo reveals he spoke to him "quite incessantly" during the making of the film. What struck Leo most wasn't the scale of Belfort's excess, it was his honesty about it: "To him the book was a cautionary tale of his time on Wall Street. And since that time, he is a much different person. And he is actually depicted, as we depict him at the end of this movie, as somebody that's going around talking about the dangers of greed and trying to get into the business sector with some sort of moral foundation." Leo explains that Belfort didn't hold back, even when it made him look worse: "A lot of times we would talk about sections in the book and he would say, 'Not only was it that bad, I was 10 times worse. And I'm going to tell you why'. And I really appreciated that honesty because I think, from Marty's perspective, he wanted to have a little bit of distance from that subject, but I needed to speak to him constantly just to get the nuances and the detail of what these scenes were like." But the hardest part of the role wasn't the debauchery, it was the speeches. Leo had been preparing for them for six years, mechanically breaking them down. Yet something only clicked when he finally stepped on stage: "I kind of felt closer to what Jordan must have felt during that time period where he almost created a cult for himself and was consumed by that adoration and the power of being able to provide great amounts of wealth to this mass of people that were worshiping him." He continues: "When I got on that stage, it took on this incredible life of its own. I kind of felt like I was Bono or some rockstar, even though I knew that these actors were paid to clap every single time I was shouting at them. You get this incessant need to push them forward. And it almost became like this Braveheart speech or cry for battle, except that was persuading them to go out there and essentially screw as many people over as possible."
Big Brain History236,615 次观看 • 1 个月前
Bill Gates in 1984 on why he dropped out of Harvard and what actually drove him: At the time of the interview, Microsoft was on track to do "just over 100 million" in annual revenue. Gates was 28. His first big contract had come nine years earlier, when he was 21. The interviewer pressed him on the money. Was he a millionaire? Gates deflected: "Microsoft's a company owned primarily by its employees, and it's not easy to put a value on it." Then came the more interesting question. Was he in it for the money? Gates's answer: "I don't think anyone at the company's in it for the money. It's a much more exciting field than trying to measure exactly how much we're selling or how much it's worth. The creation of these programs is something you can sit down and see people enjoying and solving real problems." On dropping out of Harvard, Gates was direct about why he couldn't stay: "Things move very quickly in the industry and it was really the urgency to get out there and be the first one to put a basic on the micro computer that caused me to drop out." The interviewer then pushed on the "genius" label, acknowledging Gates as both a technical wiz and someone with the business acumen to build a real company. Gates rejected the framing but described what he actually did: "I enjoy working with the people, talking about what we're going to get done, getting real excited, making sure that the structure is there, that the ideas get measured properly and really leading the company. That's exciting." Finally, the interviewer raised burnout, a real concern in an industry where it was already common. Would Gates burn out before 30? "No." How did he know? "The work we're doing is it's not like, you know, we're doing the same thing all day long. We go into our offices and think up new programs. We get together in meetings. We go out and see end users. We talk to customers. There's so much variety and there's always new things going on. And I don't think there'll ever come a time when that would be boring."
Big Brain History196,973 次观看 • 1 个月前
Dr. Oppenheimer reflects on the moral weight of creating the atomic bomb: When asked if he suffers from a "bad conscience" about the bomb, Oppenheimer responds: "I think when you play a meaningful part in bringing about the death of over a 100,000 people and the injury of a comparable number, you naturally don't think of that with ease." But then he makes a crucial distinction. "Long ago, I said once that in a crude sense which no vulgarity and no humor could quite erase, the physicists had known sin." This isn't about the deaths themselves: "I didn't mean by that the deaths that were caused as a result of our work. I meant that we had known the sin of pride. We had turned to effect in what proved to be a major way the course of man's history. We had the pride of thinking we knew what was good for man." For Oppenheimer, the deeper transgression was scientists stepping beyond their natural role to fundamentally "change the course of human history." "I do think it left a mark on many of those who were responsibly engaged. This is not the natural business of a scientist." The weight on the conscience comes not from what they built, but from who they became in the process.
Big Brain History311,724 次观看 • 5 个月前
Bestselling historian, Yuval Noah Harari, explains why we may be one of the last generations of homo sapiens. The prediction: "We are one of the last generations of homo sapiens. Within a century or two, Earth will be dominated by entities that are more different from us than we are different from chimpanzees." The technologies driving the shift: Harari explains that we as humans will soon have the power to re-engineer our bodies and brains through genetic engineering, direct brain-to-computer connections, and completely non-organic artificial intelligence. These technologies are developing at breakneck speed. The unprecedented danger: Harari warns, "One of the dangers is that we will see in the coming decades, a process of greater inequality than in any previous time in history because for the first time it will be real biological inequality." If enhancement technologies are available only to the rich or only to people from certain countries: "Homo sapiens will split into different biological castes because they really have different bodies and different abilities." Why this matters: Throughout history, inequality has been social and economic, but humans remained biologically equal. We're now approaching a threshold where the enhanced and unenhanced could be as different as humans and chimpanzees. The question is... who gets access, and what happens when biological inequality becomes real?
Big Brain History246,112 次观看 • 5 个月前
Taylor Swift, at 14, on staying grounded through early fame: In a Good Morning America interview, a young Taylor Swift is asked whether she thinks she's going to become a star, and whether she even cares if she does. Her response: "You know what? It would be really cool." The interviewer asks whether people underestimate her because of her age. Taylor explains that this happens constantly, especially in writers' meetings: "They're really nice and then I leave and they tell my publisher and my mom, you know, we thought she was going to come in here and be like, you know, we'd have to write a song for her. And I'm like, you thought that?" Her take on it: "There are a lot of stereotypes for young people. But I really think that if you prove yourself then people will see past your age." The interviewer then asks about the surreal moments. Seeing herself on walls, in stores, becoming recognisable. Taylor describes walking into Abercrombie and seeing her own picture hanging on the wall: "My friends would tell me like how they would go to the store and be like 'Oh hey Taylor' and the people in the store would be like 'You're talking to the wall.'" When pressed on whether every new experience feels overwhelming, meeting people, photo shoots, the whole machine of early fame, she gives an answer that feels remarkable for a 14-year-old: "Yeah, but it doesn't, I don't feel like it changes me as a person. I'm still the same person that I started out as being. You know, my picture's just on the wall. It's not that big of a deal for me. I don't think it makes me above anybody else. It really doesn't."
Big Brain History26,733 次观看 • 1 个月前
The motives (to name a few): • JFK had fired CIA director Allen Dulles • Planned to cut CIA budget by 20% • Threatened to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces" • JFK pressuring Ben Gurion to inspect Israel's Dimona • RFK pressuring AIPAC to register as a foreign agent
Big Brain History46,006 次观看 • 1 年前
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