The Forrest Gump of Silicon Valley - EP 27 Leslie Berlin

**Leslie Berlin** (0:00)
I think that was an important part of what drove him in that whole early era of Silicon Valley was, these were truly technologists who were in it because they wanted to make, they saw the possibility of making something incredible, and they couldn't do it inside any existing structures. And the money was just sort of a side effect of what they really saw as the essential work which was making this stuff and then finding a way to get it to market.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:48)
I'm so excited. We have Leslie Berlin with us. She's one of my favorite authors and a fellow Silicon Valley history geek, although you do it on a much higher level than I've done. But yeah, I'm so thrilled. We, over the years, we've gotten to know each other a little bit, and we talk off and on about things that have happened in Silicon Valley's past. We're definitely going to talk about The Man Behind the Microchip and your other books. The Man Behind the Microchip was one about Robert Noyce was just, I think it's as good as biographies get, and I'm not even being hyperbolic or saying this just because you're there. I mean, it's got this rare mix of such in-depth research, but then the writing that brings it to life. I just remember reading that book, I think in one sitting and just being like, I wish I could do that. So it's such a pleasure to have you.

**Leslie Berlin** (1:45)
Thank you. I've had the same thoughts about what you do. I mean, I think a lot about this, about the difference between what I do, which has interviews, of course, that is a lot of sitting quietly in an archive with documents that no one's ever looked at or thought about looking at, or when they wrote them, they had no idea anyone would be looking at them 50 years later. And the difference between that and what you do, which is being there in the room, hoping no one is paying too much attention, but your ears and eyes wide open, I don't think I could do that. It's a really different skill set. And so it's cool that we both admire each other's work so much.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:24)
It is. And I think we've talked about this a little before, but yeah, so I just have the 180
Before I did my last book on the Rockets, I was like, I'm going to go to the Silicon Valley Archives, which you were running at Stanford for quite a while. And I was like, I'm going to do, I'm going to dig in to these archives and I'm going to do this book on like the, it's kind of been dumb but never to my satisfaction, like the Cold War history of the valley, the military history. And I remember I was driving there and I'm like, I don't think I could do this for a couple of years. And I had just come from a rocket factory and I was like, nope, I got to kind of be in the spot. Although it's a horrible way to live because you never know when to, I guess authors always have trouble knowing when to put the pen down anyway. But when the stuff's happening in real time, you're like, what is the, when do I stop reporting? When is this in the story keeps evolving after you finish.

**Leslie Berlin** (3:22)
So yeah, we get that too. It's called research ecstasy. And you just never want to leave that sort of moment of continual discovery and connecting ideas and sort of figuring out how do I tell this to somebody? So I think it's very similar and typically, I mean, we just make up an arbitrary date and say that's where we're stopping. Yeah.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:43)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

**Leslie Berlin** (3:44)
All right.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:44)
Let me do a proper introduction. That was just me gushing for a second. You know, you're, as I mentioned, you're an author, a historian, or the project historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford. I don't think you're not double-duting. You're not still doing that.

**Leslie Berlin** (3:59)
No, I chair the advisory group for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford now. You'll never pry me fully out of Stanford.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:07)
And now you're the executive director of the Steve Jobs Archive. And that would be considered your day job?

**Leslie Berlin** (4:14)
Yeah, it's my day and night job. I co-founded the archive with Laurene Powell Jobs. And yeah, it's been a great thing.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:22)
And you wrote The Man Behind the Microchip. You wrote Troublemakers, which is this fascinating look at different figures throughout a defined part of Silicon Valley history. And then we have this book here as well, which is Making Something Wonderful, Steve Jobs, in his own words. But I don't think people can buy this. This is a treat.