Walter Isaacson on the sentence that built a country

Walter Isaacson has written the definitive lives of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, and Jennifer Doudna. In his new book, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, he turns from people to a single line — the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence — and argues it was never a description of America but a mission statement the country has spent 250 years trying to live up to. He joins David Deming to explain why Jobs and Musk were both “jerks,” whether empathy is a weakness, how Benjamin Franklin’s two-word edit changed the meaning of equality, what we are getting wrong today that our descendants may judge us for, why every one of his students must use AI, and what a 390-year-old university owes a country about to turn 250.For show notes and full episodes, subscribe to The Context Window with David Deming: https://thecontextwindowpodcast.substack.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thecontextwindowpodcast.substack.com