Oscar Schwartz
A Bullshit Genius | On Walter Isaacson’s Biographical Project
Oscar Schwartz
On a friendly stroll somewhere in Colorado in the summer of 2004, Steve Jobs asked Walter Isaacson if he would consider writing his biography. Isaacson, a journalist, academic, and policymaker who was then CEO of the Aspen Institute, an influential think tank, had just published a six-hundred-odd-page study of Benjamin Franklin, and was at work on another about Albert Einstein. “My initial reaction was to wonder, half jokingly,” Isaacson later...
Scenes from a Crisis | Selfishness Switches Genders
Oscar Schwartz
Midway through Joachim Trier’s film The Worst Person in the World, Julie, the main character, finds herself lost and unsure how to move forward on life’s path. She recently turned 30, works in a bookshop, and lives with her boyfriend, Aksel, in a tastefully furnished apartment in downtown Oslo. He is in his 40s, a successful comic book illustrator whose gentle, nerdishly charming demeanor belies a moderately deviant imagination. Aksel...
What Was the TED Talk? | Some Thoughts on the "Inspiresting"
Oscar Schwartz
Bill Gates wheels a hefty metal barrel out onto a stage. He carefully places it down and then faces the audience, which sits silent in a darkened theater. “When I was a kid, the disaster we worried about most was a nuclear war,” he begins. Gates is speaking at TED’s flagship conference, held in Vancouver in 2015. He wears a salmon pink sweater, and his hair is combed down over...
