Micah Saul: This project is built on a hypoth­e­sis. There are moments in his­to­ry when the sta­tus quo fails. Political sys­tems prove insuf­fi­cient, reli­gious ideas unsat­is­fac­to­ry, social struc­tures intol­er­a­ble. These are moments of crisis. 

Aengus Anderson: During some of these moments, great minds have entered into con­ver­sa­tion and torn apart inher­it­ed ideas, dethron­ing truths, com­bin­ing old thoughts, and cre­at­ing new ideas. They’ve shaped the norms of future generations.

Saul: Every era has its issues, but do ours war­rant The Conversation? If they do, is it happening?

Anderson: We’ll be explor­ing these sorts of ques­tions through con­ver­sa­tions with a cross-section of American thinkers, peo­ple who are cri­tiquing some aspect of nor­mal­i­ty and offer­ing an alter­na­tive vision of the future. People who might be hav­ing The Conversation.

Saul: Like a real con­ver­sa­tion, this project is going to be sub­jec­tive. It will fre­quent­ly change direc­tions, con­nect unex­pect­ed ideas, and wan­der between the tan­gi­ble and the abstract. It will leave us with far more ques­tions than answers because after all, nobody has a monop­oly on dream­ing about the future.

Anderson: I’m Aengus Anderson.

Saul: And I’m Micah Saul. And you’re lis­ten­ing to The Conversation.

Aengus Anderson: Well, this con­ver­sa­tion will be like noth­ing you’ve heard before. 

Micah Saul: Yes, that is very true. I almost feel like we don’t need to say much here. 

Anderson: No. I think there are maybe a few words in order.

Saul: Yeah.

Anderson: The first being… Well, do you want to do his bio, and then I’ll tell peo­ple a lit­tle bit more about the episode and why we’re includ­ing it? 

Saul: Sure. So, today’s con­ver­sa­tion is with Richard Saul Wurman. He is the founder of TED. He is the founder of the e.g. Conference. Most recent­ly he’s the founder of the WWW con­fer­ence. He’s an incred­i­bly pro­lif­ic author, and there’s all sorts of inter­views and con­ver­sa­tions and bios and stuff about him online. He real­ly does­n’t need a whole lot of introduction.

Anderson: But, this con­ver­sa­tion is very dif­fer­ent, and it’s dif­fer­ent because it does­n’t con­nect to oth­er con­ver­sa­tions. I went into this con­ver­sa­tion want­i­ng to talk to Richard about the idea of con­ver­sa­tion itself, because as you can tell from the list of con­fer­ences that he’s orga­nized, he’s brought a lot of peo­ple togeth­er for con­ver­sa­tion. And so, you won’t hear the con­nec­tions to oth­er episodes; there will be implic­it ones. And towards the end as always, we move in to phi­los­o­phy a lot more. But this is real­ly a talk about con­ver­sa­tion. So let’s just begin there.

Richard Saul Wurman: I’ve writ­ten a lot of books. And they’ve been on a lot of dif­fer­ent sub­jects. From med­i­cine to sports to trav­el; a lot on car­tog­ra­phy. They’ve been dri­ven by my inabil­i­ty to under­stand things, by my igno­rance. So, in this book I wrote twen­ty years ago called Information Anxiety, one chap­ter in the book, I decid­ed to write the chap­ter on how infor­ma­tion is orga­nized. And I real­ized that the fun­da­men­tal way that I was taught to orga­nize things had to go…went back to the dit­ty we sang at school, a b c d e f g… We were dom­i­nat­ed, our soci­ety was dom­i­nat­ed, our dic­tio­nar­ies, our the­saurus­es, our ency­clo­pe­dias, our fil­ing cab­i­nets, our Rolodexes were all alpha­bet­i­cal. Everything we did was alphabetical.

And we did­n’t real­ize that there were oth­er ways we could orga­nize things, in a fun­da­men­tal sense. And I thought jeez, there must be thou­sands of ways of orga­niz­ing things. There must be just so many ways. And I sat down, and I could only think of five. And I could­n’t think of a sixth. And I gave speech­es say­ing that I was sur­prised. I mean, the book was out. I called it LATCH: Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy. And I said if there’s a sixth my next speech will say there’s six. 

After ten years, nobody came up with a sixth. I said okay, I think it’s safe to say there’s not more than ten. That there’s not that many ways, in a fun­da­men­tal sense, of orga­niz­ing things. Recently, there’s been a word that’s crept into our lan­guage called ​“inno­va­tion.” Outside of San Francisco—they called it the inno­va­tion city—there’s inno­va­tion cars that have a back-up cam­era (that’s called inno­va­tion) so you can see who you run over. There’s inno­va­tion every­where. So it’s lost its mean­ing. So, I want­ed to see, are there thou­sands of ways of inno­va­tion? And once again I could only come up with five. And one of those ways was sub­trac­tion. One of the five was sub­trac­tion. And I real­ized that the Bauhaus move­ment was an art move­ment based on subtraction. 

When I cre­at­ed the TED con­fer­ence, I sub­tract­ed out all the things that peo­ple were doing in con­fer­ences. White men in suits, pan­els, lecterns, long speech­es. I took all the pieces that were the alpha­bet of con­fer­ences, the pieces that made up the con­fer­ences, and I sub­tract­ed ​’em.

Well, I did TED in 1984. I did my last one in 2002. And at this moment in my life I was think­ing well, what are oth­er ways that peo­ple can gath­er? What else can I sub­tract? Maybe I did­n’t real­ly do a good enough job. And I real­ized there’s a cou­ple things I could sub­tract. And one of them was time. The eighteen-minute thing was not a big deal. I could sub­tract time com­plete­ly. And I could also sub­tract pre­sen­ta­tions. I could sub­tract some­thing that had been made—and that I was par­ty to—made more elab­o­rate. And they did all those things not as well as they do in ads on tele­vi­sion, or not as well as they did on tele­vi­sion pro­grams, or on films. And it was a con­fer­ence. So going back­wards, what real­ly is a con­fer­ence? What is the essen­tial thing of a gath­er­ing? What are the few things that make us human?

Ninety per­cent of our cells are not human cells. We’re made up of things that are list­ed sep­a­rate­ly in Larousse’s book of ani­mal life. So, what makes us human? What we do that’s that’s human? If you just reduce them down like a cook makes a reduc­tion, one of the residues that’s left is always con­ver­sa­tion. What do we do? How do ideas form? What is my fan­ta­sy of Watson and Crick? They had a con­ver­sa­tion and they came up with DNA. So many things in my life have come out of con­ver­sa­tion. Sometimes just hear­ing myself talk, but to some­body else. And sev­er­al of my books I’ve writ­ten by hav­ing a long con­ver­sa­tion with some­body, where they did­n’t real­ly answer back but it was the nod­ding of their head that allowed it to come out, much as we’re doing now. And I real­ized that many of my books, what I was design­ing was how to have a con­ver­sa­tion with the writ­ten page.

So, con­ver­sa­tion has been con­sis­tent­ly a mod­el in my head of being human. For quite a while I’ve spo­ken about how we’re not taught at any time in our life how to ask a ques­tion, and how to talk on the phone. And most peo­ple think they know how to ask a ques­tion, and they know how to talk on the phone. And yet I found that 98% of ques­tions are either bad ques­tions or speech­es. And most phone calls are ter­ri­ble. And yet we have the sense that we don’t have to learn that. And yet there is an art to that. There is a con­struc­tion to that. There is a struc­ture to it. And I am real­ly inter­est­ed in that part of the word ques­tion which is the word ​“quest.” And I’m inter­est­ed in that part of the word infor­ma­tion which is ​“inform.” And I’m real­ly inter­est­ed in the informed quest. And the informed quest is a conversation. 

There is a struc­ture to con­ver­sa­tion. The begin­ning of this last con­fer­ence I did, which was called ​“intel­lec­tu­al jazz,” was the sub­text of the title of it. 

Aengus Anderson: And the title was—

Wurman: WWW. And that was a sub­ject title, because it was all the ​“w” words in our life. The world, wind, water, war. The last one had about ten of them. The last one was called the Waking Dream. But the sub­text was intel­lec­tu­al jazz, because jazz is an impro­vised con­ver­sa­tion of two musi­cians or more. And the begin­ning of the con­fer­ence, the very begin­ning, I said, ​“Welcome to the great leap back­wards.” That what is going to take place in the next two and a half days could have tak­en place twenty-five hun­dred years ago in an amphithe­ater, in Greece. Without ampli­fi­ca­tion. We would­n’t need any A/V. And it has­n’t changed much since then. It just has­n’t changed. And things that don’t change are quite interesting.

I can say fair­ly calm­ly con­ver­sa­tion will be here in a hun­dred years. And two hun­dred years. If there’s life on earth, there’ll be peo­ple talk­ing to each oth­er. No mat­ter how we aug­ment those con­ver­sa­tions, as we have aug­ment­ed it with the tele­phone, we’re going to have con­ver­sa­tion. We’re going to talk to each oth­er. We’re going to express our­selves that way. And con­ver­sa­tion is about ques­tions. Often a con­ver­sa­tion is about ask­ing a ques­tion and get­ting a ques­tion back and ask­ing a ques­tion back and tak­ing things in this kind of braid of ques­tion and answer. Of gen­er­al to more spe­cif­ic to very detailed to some­thing gen­er­al again. And there is a physics to how we talk. And there’s a struc­ture to how we talk. And there’s impor­tance in the silences. [Wurman is qui­et for about five seconds.]

If you leave that silence in when you edit, you’ll see how impor­tant it is. And when I give speech­es, I am pur­pose­ly silent, and there’s an edgi­ness about that. People think­ing well, he’s seventy-seven. Maybe he just does­n’t know what to say next. Or he’s lost his way. Or what did he just say? And you engage in it in a dif­fer­ent way when the per­son comes back. So there’s a cer­tain part of con­ver­sa­tion that’s the­ater. That isn’t rehearsed and edit­ed and rehearsed and edit­ed and audi­tioned for and rehearsed and edit­ed as a TED talk. 

I don’t know why we should use those same modal­i­ties for build­ing a con­fer­ence, and not embrace in the con­fer­ence the live the­ater of a con­fer­ence, and the flow of non-rehearsed action. And so that’s what I was try­ing to do there, and try­ing to under­stand what that art was and what that struc­ture was. What was ter­ri­fy­ing and what was com­fort­able about it. And would it work? And would you nat­u­ral­ly turn to the audi­ence, even though it was two couch­es fac­ing each oth­er and the audi­ence here? Was the inter­est in the oth­er per­son and what they were going to say back to you more inter­est­ing than pleas­ing the audi­ence? And to a man, it was more inter­est­ing to talk to anoth­er per­son than turn to the audi­ence. And to a man, or a per­son, or a woman, to the con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist, it was more impor­tant to get back and forth in that tan­go than to say, ​“I just fin­ished a new book.” 

Anderson: It seems like there’s so much ener­gy that actu­al­ly goes into a good con­ver­sa­tion that if you are look­ing out there, you can’t be all here. Like, right now I have to be all here to fol­low what you’re say­ing, you know.

Wurman: Well, you’re lis­ten­ing. And you have to learn how to lis­ten. And I do lis­ten to what peo­ple say. And I lis­ten to them using words that are not real words any­more. No wor­ries, they say. Well, that’s not cor­rect. Many things like that have crept into our lan­guage, very quick­ly. Then they’ll stay. They’ll get intense. then they’ll die off and anoth­er one will come in. Each one is equal­ly annoying. 

And my gram­mar’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly good, and my vocab­u­lary is decent but not won­der­ful. And I’m not well-read. And I can’t read a hard book. So it’s not a snob­bish kind of intel­lect that’s say­ing this. It’s just, it’s just…not appro­pri­ate not to lis­ten or speak well. And that’s not taught any­more. Two ears, one mouth. You should lis­ten twice as well as you talk. And you should see in your mind what you’re hear­ing in your ears.

Anderson: We’re talk­ing about things that we don’t learn to do regard­ing conversation.

Wurman: Questioning.

Anderson: Questioning.

Wurman: Telephone calls. Silence. Pace. Time. Things that are fun­da­men­tal, the alpha­bet of our human inter­ac­tion, we are nev­er— There’s not even the briefest les­son in that by our par­ents or our so-called teachers.

Anderson: What do we lose by not hav­ing those lessons?

Wurman: Elegance. Ideas. The abil­i­ty to inno­vate. Creativity. All the stuff we like, we lose. Particularly when you see that the peo­ple who do all the things we admire, do ask good ques­tions, do lis­ten very well, do have good con­ver­sa­tions, do all those things. That they have self-learned those, or seen the impor­tance of them.

I extend words to encom­pass more things. And I don’t think of con­ver­sa­tion being you and I talk­ing. The same way I don’t think of a map being just car­to­graph­ic. There’s a mar­velous one in particular—a film of a Picasso paint­ing a paint­ing. It’s an amaz­ing doc­u­men­tary, it just shows him paint­ing a paint­ing. Stays with him. He paints and he rubs out, he paints over. And at least thir­ty or forty times, it’s a mas­ter­piece. And he just push­es and takes the stuff away and…changes it. And you say, ​“No no no no, don’t…no. It’s too beau­ti­ful.” And he’s hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with this— I mean, that’s a man hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with a paint­ing. He’s hav­ing con­ver­sa­tion with col­ors, with images, with form, with sto­ries, with emo­tions. With vio­lence. With calm­ness, with beau­ty, with sex. I mean, with all kinds of things. He’s hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with the flat sur­face of some­thing that isn’t talk­ing back, but it is talk­ing back to him. And chang­ing its mind. And telling him what to do next. And he’s see­ing his fail­ure and cor­rect­ing it. And his fail­ure in cor­rect­ing. He’s going in this dance.

I was asked on stage about two years ago (because I was par­tic­u­lar­ly out­ra­geous that day at giv­ing a speech) and some­body was sup­posed to inter­view me and I did­n’t want to be inter­viewed, and I was just going off. And he said you know, ​“Well, who do you think you are?” He was get­ting fed up with me. And I let the silence take over. And I said, ​“I’m a dance. [long pause] I’m the tan­go. [pause] A tan­go is vio­lent, and sex­u­al. It is filled with rules. And anti-rules. And it has two part­ners.” Well, it has part­ners. And the part­ners are love and hate. They’re ter­ror and con­fi­dence. They’re igno­rance and under­stand­ing. They’re com­plex­i­ty, and they’re clar­i­ty. And at every moment, I am both part­ners. And that is who I am. I am that dance. And my life is that dance. The bifur­ca­tion, the ying-yang, of par­al­lel, oppos­ing forces in bal­ance. And that’s what I aim for. I’m always ter­ri­fied, I’m always confident.

Conversation has that bifur­ca­tion. Because a ques­tion and an answer is a bifur­ca­tion. Part of con­ver­sa­tion is this nod­ding, is the engage­ment, is the mudra that we all accept as part of mak­ing con­tact with anoth­er human being. The human­ism of it.

Conversation also can be destruc­tive. In the ear­li­est stage of con­ver­sa­tion about an idea, about almost any­thing, it can be absolute­ly destroyed in the blink of an eye if it does­n’t breathe like a good red wine and have that time to sit and have no response. So con­ver­sa­tion isn’t always about response. It’s about respect. It’s a fine-tuned thing. It’s music.

Anderson: The oth­er type of con­ver­sa­tion that we haven’t talked about yet is the idea of the big society-wide con­ver­sa­tion. Historical moments where it seems like a whole pop­u­lace has been awake and talk­ing to each oth­er about new ideas. Is that some­thing dif­fer­ent, because it does­n’t have the imme­di­ate back and forth of a conversation?

Wurman: I can agree or dis­agree with you that it has hap­pened or will hap­pen or does hap­pen or can hap­pen and we should make it hap­pen. I’m not inter­est­ed in it. I am not inter­est­ed what­so­ev­er in my audi­ence. If I think about, ​“Well, here’s the peo­ple who have signed up for my con­fer­ence. Who do I think they would like to have me invite to speak?” then I change my speak­ing list. I’m not going to change my speak­ing list. I am just going to try to do good work of some­thing that inter­ests me, which is the only thing I under­stand, any­way. I real­ly don’t under­stand what inter­ests you. I can’t pos­si­bly know what’s going on in your head now. No way. And I cer­tain­ly don’t know what’s going on in the audi­ence’s head.

I am aware that what I’ve done in the past in var­i­ous books and in var­i­ous media and in con­fer­ences, I can see that it has an effect on events, and effect on peo­ple. But I haven’t tried to have that effect. I know it will have that effect if I do good work. I believe it’ll have that effect, but I don’t know what that effect will be. And I don’t have a mis­sion. I am not doing ideas that mat­ter. I can’t judge what mat­ters. I can only judge what’s interesting. 

My goal for my life is to have inter­est­ing days. It’s not any more that. I don’t have a great reli­gious pas­sion. Just to have inter­est­ing days. I have a def­i­n­i­tion of learn­ing, which sounds glib but it is rock sol­id. And that is learn­ing is remem­ber­ing what you’re inter­est­ed in. The word ​“inter­est” is in that def­i­n­i­tion. Interesting days is my goal for life. It’s all the same thing. I nev­er use the word edu­ca­tion, which is from the top down. Always use the word ​“inter­est.” Guides, con­nec­tions, con­ver­gence, and mem­o­ry. Without remem­ber­ing any­thing, with­out your mem­o­ry, you haven’t learned any­thing and you’re real­ly not human. You don’t exist. So, I know how un-PC that makes me, but I don’t believe in PC.

Anderson: Is the con­fer­ence, then, a way to cre­ate an inter­est­ing day for you?

Wurman: Yep. And to do good work.

Anderson: What’s the good work? I can under­stand the inter­est­ing day.

Wurman: I don’t mean good in a reli­gious sense. I mean I had a prob­lem to solve. There’s my belief in con­ver­sa­tion and peo­ple’s reac­tion to one anoth­er. Does the design of that, the stag­ing of it, the pair­ing of peo­ple, the premis­es. Was I up enough on the work of the small par­ti­cle physi­cist and the biol­o­gist and the poet? Was I up enough to think of a premise and keep them on point, and that I was a con­science enough for them to get their game up? That I knew enough about design that the stage would work? That I knew enough about music that the music would work? That I knew enough about food to design every piece of food they had at break­fast, break, lunch, break, and din­ner? Each thing is part of doing good work. It’s a design. 

Now, I don’t tell the audi­ence any of that, because I don’t care. I care.

Anderson: The good work, then, is solv­ing [crosstalk] a problem

Wurman: A prob­lem. That’s right.

Anderson: And the prob­lem is…

Wurman: The problem. 

Anderson: The prob­lem is the bor­ing day?

Wurman: No, the prob­lem is invent­ing a modal­i­ty of how peo­ple con­verse and learn, and how I learn from them, and sur­round­ing myself with peo­ple smarter than myself. And see­ing threads and pat­terns, expect­ed and unex­pect­ed, and hope­ful­ly some­times bet­ter than anticipated. 

Anderson: Is shar­ing that expe­ri­ence part of?

Wurman: I know that hap­pens. It’s not the dri­ving force.

Anderson: Why do a con­fer­ence and not a din­ner party?

Wurman: Well, for the eigh­teen years I ran TED, I start­ed by say­ing, ​“Welcome to my din­ner par­ty I always want­ed to have but could­n’t.” It is a din­ner party.

Anderson: So the con­fer­ence is then part of the problem-solving in that it’s almost like we can’t have that din­ner par­ty with­out the con­fer­ence as the justification?

Wurman: Well, because of just the numer­ics involved. The costs, the num­bers of peo­ple, all those things. But it is a din­ner par­ty, is the is the paradigm.

Anderson: This has been amaz­ing. And I… Your can­dor takes me off guard as an inter­vie­wee, which I real­ly am enjoying.

Wurman: I don’t under­stand what you’re saying.

Anderson: I’m think­ing… So, when I was rehears­ing our con­ver­sa­tion in advance, try­ing to think of things that I would want to ask and things that I would want to pur­sue, I was­n’t expect­ing that you would just say, ​“No, I’m real­ly just curi­ous basi­cal­ly in hear­ing these thoughts and hav­ing an inter­est­ing day,” and that the rest of it…who cares?

Wurman: You want­ed me to have a mission.

Anderson: Well, I think every­one does have some kind of a mission.

Wurman: Oh, you expect­ed me to have a mission.

Anderson: I did­n’t know what kind of mis­sion you would have. And of course, I mean I guess you do have a mis­sion, if an inter­est­ing day is a mis­sion, right? And that’s…

Wurman: Assuaging my curios­i­ty, see­ing connections. 

Anderson: Part of what I think I’m try­ing to do with this project is mov­ing towards an answer that I think does­n’t exist.

Wurman: Probably. Right, yeah.

Anderson: And I…can say that com­fort­ably. It does­n’t exist

Wurman: Yeah. Doesn’t exist.

Anderson: But the ques­tion is one of, what is a bet­ter future? And part of the assump­tion, of course, is that the present could be improved upon. 

Wurman: It also assumes that I care about a bet­ter future.

Anderson: Right. And that’s what’s so inter­est­ing. Because every­one— I think you’re the first per­son I’ve spo­ken to in this project who would be will­ing to say that.

Wurman: Yeah. That it would enter my mind.

Anderson: It makes me think— You know, we were talk­ing about the pre­cise def­i­n­i­tions of words. It makes me think ​“hedo­nism,” in like, the Greek definition.

Wurman: Oh, you can think of hedo­nism. You can think of indul­gence. Self-centered [crosstalk]

Anderson: Yeah, and I guess—

Wurman: You can think of all those words that are the ugly words of our society.

Anderson: Well, I don’t think of hedo­nism as an ugly word per se.

Wurman: But it is thought of as an ugly word, and I under­stand that. And indul­gences, and you know. All those things. I under­stand that. I under­stand the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of my position. 

Anderson: So, you’re fine with things as they are.

Wurman: No. I’m fine with think­ing up my next idea. 

Anderson: With that position—

Wurman: I’m absolute­ly not— I’m com­plete­ly dis­sat­is­fied with what is, because I’m always try­ing to think of what’s next as an idea for myself. But not in the glob­al sense of mak­ing a bet­ter world.

Anderson: Right. [crosstalk] So, how do you get from is to ought?

Wurman: There’s no such thing. There isn’t such thing as a bet­ter world, it’s just the world. 

Anderson: Because all of those are [crosstalk] ulti­mate­ly subjective

Wurman: It not… Well, there’s not going to be a bet­ter world. There’s just going to be a dif­fer­ent world. It’s always been it’s going to be a dif­fer­ent world. That’s what we have until per­haps some­day there won’t be a world. It’s just going to be a dif­fer­ent world, and some­times it’ll be Attila the Hun killing peo­ple. And some­times it’ll be some­thing else.

Anderson: Is that a great relief? [crosstalk] Was that a point that you sort of had to get to? 

Wurman: It just is.

Anderson: I mean, [crosstalk] it seems like to some extent, once you accept that, that’s got to be freeing.

Wurman: No, it just is. I’ve accept­ed it for an awful long time. I mean, I can’t remem­ber not accept­ing the fact of it, because it seems any­thing else is sil­ly. I mean, it’s absolute­ly silly.

Anderson: So, there’s no…good?

Wurman: Yeah. I think there’s some good and there’s evil. There’s ter­ri­bly evil things. I mean, you don’t think as a Jew I don’t under­stand evil and the life, my life­time that lived through a par­tic­u­lar­ly evil time that affect­ed my fam­i­lies. Of course I know there’s evil. And I know there’s some peo­ple that play the cel­lo well.

Anderson: Well said. You know, when we’re talk­ing about this, how do you— You know, you can say ​“this is evil,” and I’ll agree. But is that some­thing we don’t even need to wor­ry about get­ting to intel­lec­tu­al­ly? Is it just [crosstalk] you know it when you see it?

Wurman: No no no no no. I don’t care. You’re ask­ing me a ques­tion that would be some Talmudic posi­tion that I have about what peo­ple should do. And I don’t have that posi­tion. You’re try­ing to put it into a… ​“You should do this, or should­n’t do this, or this is a way of doing things, or shall we do this, or we ought to do this.” I don’t even think about that. Would, should, could, must does­n’t enter into my vocabulary.

Anderson: Is there any­thing you’d want to ask me before we wrap up?

Wurman: Why are you doing this?

Anderson: I think because I am wor­ried about the future. I am—

Wurman: And do you think this is going to have an effect on it?

Anderson: This ties into…

Wurman: I mean, just numer­i­cal­ly it can’t. It can’t [crosstalk] affect enough 

Anderson: Right. Totally. I agree with you—

Wurman: Statistically, it’s meaningless.

Anderson: —com­plete­ly.

Wurman: The num­ber num­ber of peo­ple you will reach is sta­tis­ti­cal­ly negligible.

Anderson: And, if I reached every­one it might be neg­li­gi­ble, anyway.

Wurman: So, I don’t think about that. I don’t think about… People, when I did TED… Ten thou­sand peo­ple next to, at that time, two hun­dred and fifty mil­lion peo­ple or two hun­dred and eighty mil­lion peo­ple, is a sta­tis­ti­cal error. I mean, it’s just…it’s a round­ing— It does­n’t mean any­thing. It just does­n’t mean any­thing. So, this is not a world move­ment. It’s is now, with TEDx’s and things. And the TED talks. But it was­n’t. I nev­er meant it to be.

Anderson: And I think even now, does it mean anything?

Wurman: Well, I think it has an effect on things. I don’t think it’s a good con­fer­ence. But I think the TED talks, even in their stilt­ed, rehearsed man­ner, have an effect because they bring cer­tain ideas to peo­ple who nev­er would be out of their lit­tle box. So, the net effect I think is quite positive.

But the eigh­teen years I was doing it, it was sta­tis­ti­cal­ly noth­ing. Yet, those thou­sand, ten thou­sand peo­ple, viral­ly, prob­a­bly, had an effect on a hun­dred mil­lion peo­ple. And I do believe it did, because there were things annou—Google was first announced, and the first Macs were shown there. And some­thing called Oak was announced there that changed to Java. And Photoshop and the Segway. And so forth and so on. It’s inter­est­ing to see the future first.

Anderson: And yet it’s about see­ing and not delib­er­ate­ly changing. 

Wurman: Well, not— But I know it will have a change.

Anderson: I think part of this project, it’s over­com­ing irony. Statistically, this project does not mat­ter. And I still intel­lec­tu­al­ly know that. And I think—

Wurman: But see, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly it does­n’t mat­ter. Unless you believe that the sta­tis­tic of one is more impor­tant than the sta­tis­tic of many. 

Anderson: And this may be the sta­tis­tic of two. Myself and my co-host, and maybe a cou­ple of peo­ple who are com­ing along for the right.

Wurman: And that’s good enough.

Anderson: And I think that’s part of it. But the oth­er part of it is just say­ing, ​“Maybe it does­n’t mat­ter. Let’s try.” and kind of embrace the naïvety of it.

Wurman: No, I think you’re doing it because you want to do it.

Aengus Anderson: Well, yes. We are doing it because we want to. In fact, we’re hav­ing a lot of fun doing this project.

Micah Saul: Yeah. We would­n’t be doing this if it was­n’t some­thing that we thought was going to be just…entertaining to us. Which is sort of what he’s say­ing through­out the whole piece. But there’s more to it than, isn’t there? I mean, really—

Anderson: Oh, there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that. And I think that’s real­ly the big ten­sion in his con­ver­sa­tion. It’s that on one hand you have to acknowl­edge that of course you’re moti­vat­ed by doing things that you like. Selfishness is always going to be part of what’s dri­ving us. But, is that a rea­son to dis­miss hope for mak­ing any­thing else bet­ter? Or to set aside the pos­si­bil­i­ty that that’s even out there? I mean, I think a big part of this project is deal­ing with the after­shocks of post­mod­ern phi­los­o­phy, in a way. And I know that sounds kind of absurd, but let’s see if we can actu­al­ly build a case for this. Because I see this project as a response to irony. Does that float with you?

Saul: Oh, absolute­ly. I mean, when we first were for­mu­lat­ing the ideas, before the project even launched, that was some­thing that we kind of strug­gled with for a while. That the seem­ing­ly naïve idea that this could actu­al­ly mat­ter. That’s a theme we’ve seen through­out the project as a whole. People try­ing to effect change and strug­gling with the seem­ing­ly naïve idea that what they do could actu­al­ly mat­ter in the scope of his­to­ry. Or even in the scope of soci­ety. In any of these mas­sive sys­tems. And the peo­ple that I find most com­pelling are the ones that say, ​“Yes. That is per­haps a lit­tle naïve. But we’re going to do it anyway.”

Anderson: And to jump back into the post­mod­ern phi­los­o­phy thing, for us… Well, in the English-speaking world like, in the 70s and 80s, we get this kind of explo­sion of post­mod­ern phi­los­o­phy, where we start decon­struct­ing things, right? And some­times that’s real­ly good, like when you’re talk­ing about race and you can say, ​“Wow, look at the way a soci­ety made up this fake con­cept.” Like, a total­ly fake con­cept, and it flies as real. That’s an amaz­ing use of that sort of philosophy. 

But when you take it further—and there’s a slip­pery slope with this, right? Once you start pulling every­thing apart, you get to this point where you’re like, ​“Well, basi­cal­ly every­thing that every­one is lob­by­ing for is sub­jec­tive. There is no good or bad.” And that’s kind of what Richard says at one point. But he also says, but clear­ly the Holocaust was evil. And I mean, the Holocaust is the exam­ple that any­one who’s been in an argu­ment about moral rel­a­tivism, that always comes up. Like, ​“Well, if you’re a moral rel­a­tivist, is the Holocaust okay?” And of course every­one says no. So how do you square those things?

This is the cri­sis that Torcello was talk­ing about ear­li­er, and Francis Whitehead is deal­ing with this. How do we acknowl­edge our own flaws and our own bias­es and our sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, and then still go for­ward? And like you, I have so much respect for the peo­ple in this project who’ve grap­pled with that prob­lem but have also said, ​“You know what? We’re not just gonna slip into solip­sism. We’re not just going to go oh well, I’m just going for my own plea­sure because every­thing else is rel­a­tive.” I like the peo­ple who say, ​“Okay. That’s nice. But there’s a lot of stuff that’s wrong in the world. Viscerally I feel it. Intellectually I know it. And I’m going to try to do some­thing, even though I may not be ful­ly right, and the odds are against me.”

Saul: Now might be a good point to bring up the idea again that we used a lot, and we were actu­al­ly using incor­rect­ly more often than not. If we were record­ing this episode a few months ago, one of us by now would have already said the word ​“Ragnarök.”

Anderson: [laughs] And what’s good is that you just did.

Saul: Well, okay. Fair enough. But just to clear things up, the rea­son we aren’t say­ing that this is yet anoth­er instance of that Ragnarök is because they’re slight­ly dif­fer­ent. Ragnarök is fac­ing cer­tain fail­ure, you fight on the side of good any­way. This is fac­ing the ease with which you could, as you say, descend into solip­sism, not doing that. You’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly fac­ing fail­ure, you’re facing…

Anderson: You’re fac­ing a world in which you just feel that every­one is self­ish, and all things are rel­a­tive. And there’s a cer­tain unknow­able, Hobbesian qual­i­ty that I think emerges from that. And if I was to take that one step fur­ther, I’d say you’re fac­ing a kind of despair that you for­ti­fy your­self against through com­plete hedonism. 

Saul: Or irony.

Anderson: Or irony. But either way, a type of detach­ment from any responsibility.

Saul: Right.

Anderson: For mak­ing… For try­ing to make the world bet­ter. I mean, you’ve writ­ten off the whole notion of better.

Saul: Which is some­thing that we very much did not want to do with this project. This project is in our own small way, our attempt at fight­ing back against that.

Anderson: And I think what’s inter­est­ing is you know, the bar to entry for inter­vie­wees in this project is we’ve been look­ing for peo­ple who are try­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly new ideas. And gen­er­al­ly, peo­ple who are doing that are doing that because they believe that the world can be made better.

Saul: Something that I think is sur­pris­ing to me (and this may just be my own naïvety about the way the world works) is the fact that there are peo­ple that act and do things and cre­ate in the world, that don’t look at it that way.

Anderson: And it’s inter­est­ing that the very struc­ture of our project has sort of fil­tered them out. But they’re a very impor­tant voice. And I think that’s the real val­ue of Richard’s con­ver­sa­tion here. It’s the reminder that here’s a thinker who’s done amaz­ing things. And his work, as we talked about briefly, it has had an influ­ence. And it’s one that he does­n’t care about. But it has. And yet he approach­es it so dif­fer­ent­ly than some­one like…I don’t know, Wes Jackson approach­es his work.

Saul: Right. We threw out an inter­view fair­ly ear­ly on in the project, with a very post­mod­ern artist. Because it didn’t…it did­n’t fit with the project. 

Anderson: In the exact same way that actu­al­ly this con­ver­sa­tion does­n’t real­ly fit with­in the project. Because it’s not a con­ver­sa­tion about the future.

Saul: And in addi­tion, one of the themes there is that it’s point­less to think about the future. And it’s point­less to try and change the future, because…

Anderson: One out­come isn’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter than the oth­er. I mean, maybe it’s bet­ter for you.

Saul: But what I think is inter­est­ing is that now we’ve cho­sen to bring this con­ver­sa­tion in, where pre­vi­ous­ly we didn’t.

Anderson: Yeah, and we talked about that at the time of record­ing that pre­vi­ous con­ver­sa­tion. Was it worth bring­ing a con­ver­sa­tion into the project basi­cal­ly to just demon­strate what The Conversation, with the cap­i­tals, that we talk about, what The Conversation isn’t, right? To define some­thing by its antithesis. 

Which is fas­ci­nat­ing, right? Because here’s a con­ver­sa­tion about the art of con­ver­sa­tion. Here’s a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one who’s arranged more con­ver­sa­tions than we’ll ever arrange in our life, and they’ve had more influ­ence than prob­a­bly any­thing we’ll ever do. And yet as being a par­tic­i­pant of a zeit­geist, or in terms of striv­ing for some­thing, not deliberately.

Saul: This actu­al­ly makes me want to go back and talk about our cen­tral the­sis again. If The Conversation (cap­i­tals) does exist and has exist­ed in the past, we’ve had dis­cus­sion about how that con­ver­sa­tion starts, and who it’s between. Wurman’s com­plete dis­missal of The Conversation sug­gests a real­ly inter­est­ing gen­e­sis of The Conversation, right?

Anderson: You mean that it’s more emergent.

Saul: Exactly. You know, here we are try­ing to maybe in some small way cre­ate The Conversation. And over on the oth­er side, you’ve got Richard Saul Wurman who is just…creating it…and not real­ly want­i­ng to.

Anderson: And prob­a­bly ulti­mate­ly hav­ing a mas­sive­ly greater effect than any­thing we could ever hope to do. So there is some­thing sort of delight­ful about that.

Saul: Yes. So, I’ve got a ques­tion for you.

Anderson: Alright. Throw it out.

Saul: Here we are. We are now…forty episodes in? Almost?

Anderson: Yeah.

Saul: Is the con­ver­sa­tion hap­pen­ing today?

Anderson: And you’re ask­ing me that, huh?

Saul: I’m ask­ing you that.

Anderson: After all that talk about sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. Well, giv­en that you actu­al­ly real­ly did just put me on the spot and there’s noth­ing rehearsed about this at all, I would say my gut says no. And I’ll tell you why. I don’t, I think I’ve recon­cep­tu­al­ized The Conversation a lit­tle bit since we start­ed. I think there is a lot of foundation-building that goes on that is actu­al­ly part of The Conversation. Maybe that’s hap­pen­ing today. I think the foundation-building is going on. But I am inter­est­ed in those moments where stuff speeds up a lot. When peo­ple open their minds enough to start using those ele­ments to actu­al­ly put some­thing down on the foun­da­tion. It’s when there is wide­spread change. And I feel like there’s none of that now. And I feel that we could wake up tomor­row and there could be a stock mar­ket crash, and peo­ple could be hav­ing The Conversation. Or it might not hap­pen for a long time. But I cer­tain­ly don’t think it’s hap­pen­ing now.

Saul: I think that’s why we’re doing this project. That’s my answer to Richard Saul Wurman. Because it’s not hap­pen­ing now. And if in some small way, if you can give some­body some new idea that maybe they need to talk to some­body over here, then this project has done its job. 

Anderson: But as he said, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly this project does­n’t matter.

Saul: Sure.

Anderson: And maybe it’s just ego on our part, but I think we’re bet­ting that he’s wrong.

Saul: And we hope you, our lis­ten­ers, also are bet­ting he’s wrong. Or at least are hav­ing as much fun going along for the ride as we are. And let us know what you think on the web site, because we actu­al­ly care what you have to say. And we want you involved in The Conversation as well.

Anderson: That was Richard Saul Wurman, record­ed in his home in Newport, Rhode Island on November 1^st, 2012.

Saul: This is The Conversation. You can find us on Twitter at @aengusanderson and on the web at find​the​con​ver​sa​tion​.com

Anderson: So thanks for lis­ten­ing. I’m Aengus Anderson.

Saul: And I’m Micah Saul.