Podcasts Education Self-Improvement Conversations with Tyler Marc Andreessen on Learning to Love the Humanities

Marc Andreessen on Learning to Love the Humanities

Published: June 15, 2022, 1:33 p.m.

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: \u201cI spent the first 25 years of my life trying to understand how machines work,\u201d Marc says. \u201cThen I spent the second 25 years, so far, trying to figure out how people work. It turns out people are a lot more complicated.\u201d

Marc joined Tyler to discuss his ever-growing appreciation for the humanities and more, including why he didn\u2019t go to a better school, his contrarian take on Robert Heinlein, how Tom Wolfe helped Marc understand his own archetype, who he\u2019d choose to be in Renaissance Florence, which books he\u2019s reread the most, Twitter as an X-ray machine on public figures, where in the past he\u2019d 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\u2019s secret to attracting talent, which data he thinks would be most helpful for finding good founders, how he\u2019d 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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