Meet Walter Isaacson: New Orleans native and Elon Musk biographer
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Walter Isaacson receives the National Humanities Medal from President Joe Biden in March. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
For two years New Orleans native and historian Walter Isaacson shadowed Elon Musk to try to understand the world's richest — and most enigmatic — man.
- Isaacson's biography of Musk comes out in September.
Who dat: Isaacson's resume spans broadly. Now a history professor at Tulane, he is the past CEO of the Aspen Institute, a former vice-chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority after Katrina, former chairman of CNN and former journalist for the Times-Picayune.
- He has already written biographies of Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger.
- Isaacson, a man who's made a career of studying creative people, says it's his hometown's creativity that drew him back to live in New Orleans.
💰 What is New Orleans missing? "New Orleans is missing a good venture capital community. What New Orleans has is an enormous amount of creativity, passion and spunkiness."
- "I think the creativity coming out of New Orleans is greater than any other city I've been to in America."
- But many, he said, are trying to improve the venture capital scene. Including, he said, his wife Cathy who's worked in smart investment in low income communities.
🎶 Who are some of your favorite creative New Orleanians right now? "I think Jon Batiste is doing an amazing job of connecting a new form of jazz with social music, I'd call it. In other words, understanding how music connects us as a community and as a society."
⚠️ If you could wave a magic wand, what New Orleans infrastructure problem would you fix? "I want to start a group called 'Save Our Potholes.'"
- "I say this jokingly, but those of us who grew up in New Orleans have a weird sort of affection for streets that flood and the potholes that form."
- "People put lawn chairs into potholes. We turn them into creative things."
❤️ What's your favorite pothole? "There are a couple on Chestnut and Coliseum in the Lower Garden District that are pretty awesome."
🦪 What's your poboy order? "Domilise's fully dressed, roast beef poboy. And then the oyster loaf at Casamento’s."
🍽️ What restaurant do you go to for celebrating? "It's difficult because I know so many, and I love all the restauranteurs. ... Cathy and I make a habit of doing date night Sundays at Galatoire's at the same table, ordering the same thing."
- "But the amazing thing about New Orleans is every couple of months you can discover a totally awesome new restaurant where a chef is doing something you would never have thought of."
- "Whereas, when we're in New York I feel like I'm in a food desert. ... There's a lot of fancy restaurants, but nobody trying something new."