#138 Alexander Graham Bell

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. I have my periods of restlessness when my brain is crowded with ideas tingling to my fingertips, when I am excited and cannot stop for anybody. Let me alone. Let me work as I like, even if I have to sit up all night or even for two nights.
When you see me flagging, getting tired, discouraged, put your hands over my eyes so that I go to sleep and let me sleep as long as I like until I wake.
Then I may hang around, read novels, and be stupid without an idea in my head until I get rested and ready for another period of work.
But oh, do not do as you often do. Stop me in the midst of my work, my excitement, with Alex. Alex, aren't you coming to bed? It's one o'clock. Do come. You come, then I have to come feeling cross and ugly. Then you put your hands on my eyes, and after a while, I go to sleep. But the ideas are gone.
The work is never done.
That is a letter that Alexander Graham Bell wrote to his wife, Mabel Bell, in March 1879, and it's in the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Reluctant Genius, The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell, and it was written by Charlotte Gray.
So you and I have talked about this idea many times, that books are the original links, that they lead us to one idea or one person to another, just like the internet does today, right? And a few weeks ago, when I was doing that multiple part series on Edwin Land, I realized I absolutely had to read a biography on Alexander Graham Bell, because so many times in Edwin Land's life, he referenced what he learned from studying the life story of Alexander Graham Bell, from being motivated as Bell persevered through struggles when you're creating something new, like Edwin Land did, to ideas on how to market a brand new product. There was ideas that Edwin Land learned from the marketing of the telephone that he applied to instant photography. So if you've already listened to those podcasts, you're gonna see a lot of similarities between Edwin Land and Alexander Graham Bell. And I just wanna speak, the reason I'm bringing this up right up front is because I do think the more biographies I read, the more this pattern becomes apparent. There is something instinctual in our nature. This idea that we all look to the past and try to learn from their accumulated knowledge and push that knowledge down the generations. Because not only if you wanna trace this tree of knowledge, real quick, Steve Jobs, a lot of the ideas that we credit to Steve Jobs really are ideas he learned from Edwin Land. A lot of the ideas that Edwin Land applied to work, he learned from Alexander Graham Bell. And we're gonna see Alexander Graham Bell did the exact same thing where he learned from other people like Samuel Morse and the life stories that he read that helped shape his work and helped push him through times where he wanted to give up and he drew inspiration on the fact, Samuel Morse didn't give up, so why am I gonna give up? And I just think that's something that is in all of us.
So I wanna start in the early life of Alexander Graham Bell. This may be the beginning of his lifelong passion of helping and teaching the deaf, and then he applies the lessons he learned from teaching the deaf into his development of the telephone. So it says, In the evenings, strange grunts and whistles often emanated from his father's study. Alex himself would communicate in an unconventional way with his mother, Eliza Bell, who was deaf.