#004 Steven Levy, Journalist and Author - Creating Your Own Luck - a podcast by Ann Hiatt

Today’s podcast guest is Steven Levy, who the Washington post has referred to as “America’s premier technology journalist”. Levy has been covering the digital revolution for over 35 years.  He is currently Editor at Large at Wired magazine, where he was one of its founding writers.

During the height of the internet boom, he was the columnist and chief technology correspondent for Newsweek.  He also wrote columns for Rolling Stone and Macworld.  He’s pretty much lived the real life version of Almost Famous - have you seen that movie? It’s one of my favorites!

Steven Levy’s new book, Facebook: The Inside Story, is the definitive story—written with unprecedented access-- of the company that connected the world and reaped the consequences.

His seven previous books include the groundbreaking Hackers (1984); Insanely Great (1994), the history of Apple’s Macintosh computer; Crypto (2001) which won the Frankfurt Digital book prize; and In the Plex (2011), the definitive book on Google that was a New York Times bestseller and Amazon’s business book of the year. (And incidentally how we originally met!)

In this episode Steven and I discuss how he created his own luck and took proactive steps to create career opportunities for himself that wouldn't have materialized otherwise. We also discuss the keys to success and leadership he’s collected over his long career of investigating the most successful tech CEOs in the world. We also dive into his perspective on the role technology plays in the future of journalism and modern democracy.

All of this and a few tidbits about how he created a deep friendship with Steve Wozniack over their mutual love of music. Oh, and there’s a side note story about how he found Einstein’s brain too!

You’re not going to want to miss a minute of this! Trust me!

Minute-by-minute summary

05:00: What was your inspiration? How did you get into tech?

10:50: Steven talks about his origin story and his first jobs

12:30: How did you transition fro the local magazines to Newsweek and Wired?

17:35: We talk about the early years of his career, writing about tech and rock

20:30: Do you see a commonality between the formula for greatness?

27:45: what do you see are common strengths and weaknesses amongst these larger than life CEO’s?

31:20: When you were writing your books on Google and Facebook, were there any surprise similarities or differences?

34:50: What is your perspective as a journalist around the intersection between technology and modern democracy?

37:55: Steven talks about the relationship between Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg

43:00: Tech and future leaders

46:00: What was your thought process in connecting this next wave and providing a source of trustworthy information?

52:20: Steven talks to us about the highlights of his career (including finding Einsteins brain!)

57:20: What gives Steven hope for the future?

59:00: How can you connect with Steven?

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