A conversation with Ed Catmull, founder of Pixar. I've been making podcasts about Ed for over 8 years. He invited me to his home and told incredible stories from his 60 year career. Ed worked with Steve Jobs longer than anyone else — for more than a quarter century. We talked about what he learned from Steve, the founding of Pixar, building a company at the intersection of art and technology, why getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the idea right, and so much more.
Ed is full of hard-earned practical wisdom. Spending time with someone I’ve studied for almost a decade was awesome.
I hope you listen.
0:00 Most Companies Are Full Of Shit
4:28 The Brain Trust Mechanism
10:13 Why Steve Jobs Was Banned From The Braintrust
17:48 Your Job Is To Manage The Dynamics
23:27 Betting The Company On Toy Story
24:35 Engineering Eisner's Worst Nightmare
36:51 Bob Iger's Crappy Hand
38:44 Why Disney Never Asked What Pixar Was Doing
43:48 Take The Hard Problem
44:38 The Director Can't Lose The Team
48:48 Quality Is The Best Business Plan
52:32 What Walt Disney Taught Him
59:25 George Lucas And The Motion Blur Problem
1:08:48 Now What's The Point Of My Life
1:13:31 How Much Of This Was Me
1:16:10 George Lucas Wanted The Whole Industry Healthy
1:25:11 Refusing To Let Anyone Feel Second Class
1:32:38 The Truck In The Building
Includes paid partnerships.
The entire Book of Revelation is a giant chiasm. 🤯
A chiasm is a literary device where ideas unfold in order (A B C) and then repeat in reverse (C B A), forming an X shaped symmetry that aids memory and draws attention to the central point (C).
The Bible is amazing.
Steven Bartlett, host of the podcast, The Diary of a CEO, released an interview with Christian apologist, John Lennox, this week, and his closing comments to him were fascinating:
"One of the most compelling arguments for God that you've presented (and your way of seeing the world and being) is not actually necessarily anything you've written in your books or not not necessarily anything you've said. It is actually you.
You have a certain peace and contentment that I rarely see in people that I interview, but I often see, and I've almost always seen, in the Christians that I've interviewed, and this is a interesting phenomenon for me...it seems to be a trend that a lot of the Christian apologists that I've interviewed have that anchoring that so many of us are looking for."
What a great witness.
Link to interview below
The NFL quickly collected a fine for the dunk celebration, then used those same images for promotion.
The Offensive Player of the Year was turned into a comedy segment with Druski, minimizing an award earned through elite performance and hard work.
NFL Honors never acknowledged the poor representation of one of the league’s top individual awards.
The “prestigious” ceremony didn’t even air the pre-recorded acceptance speech.
After months to prepare and ship the award, the only offensive player selected received a Defensive Player of the Year trophy.
At some point, professionalism, respect, and attention to detail should matter.
This was cool. Here's Cooper Kupp on Mike Macdonald how the #Seahawks HC organically made this a tight-knit team.
“Mike did not make OTAs easy. Guys were talking about that actually earlier this week, about how OTAs is in two weeks and that thing kicked our rear-end last year. And so it’s like, ‘You're going to come here and you’re going to work.’ But the way it builds guys together and then you lift each other up — once that was happening — then I knew we had something special.”
“He wants that. I know he talked about that last year. The guys had talked about his whole like, ‘He did this a lot.’" (*moving hands together*) "He did this a lot. And he's like, ‘I want a team that's going to be together.’ And so for him, I think one of the coolest things we did this year was a walk.
"Every four weeks, we would take an hour of our meeting time. We'd meet in small groups — we’d break out — and we’d have these conversations with guys and just talk. Some of it was football. Some of it was life. It was getting to know each other and getting to see how people saw the game, how people saw life, how people reacted to adversity. Maybe adversity that they’ve been going through. And it was so cool to be able to learn your teammates and be able to go through those moments with them.
"And then just be able to speak into people’s lives that maybe you don’t get an opportunity to just have a platform to do that. Mike put a priority on that — on us being able to know our teammates — and not just know their names or where they played football at. But know their families, know what they've gone through and where they really come from.”