Reflecting on my Interviewees: Walter Isaacson

This week I wanted to highlight another one of my old interviews, this one with the great author Walter Isaacson

We did this interview around the time that his book, ‘The Code Breaker’ was published, so Isaacson had some amazing information about gene editing and CRISPR technology. One of the subjects that Isaacson and I talked about during our interview was the Harvard Grant Study that my father was a part of in 1942. For those of you who are not familiar, the Grant Study was part of Harvard’s Study of Adult Development program, and it followed 268 Harvard-educated men alongside a tandem study of 456 ‘disadvantaged’ men throughout their lifetimes to see how they differed. As George Vaillant (the principal investigator of the study) once put it, they were “trying to find Superman”. When I asked Isaacson about the study he said “one of the things that is interesting about that study and about CRISPR is, we have to sort out and try to balance the relationship between our genes and our environment. Much of what we are is because we are predisposed genetically to be it, and much of what we are is because of our environment or what we do, and in my opinion, it also involves free will and the ability of people to take on their environment and overcome their challenges.” Isaacson is very knowledgeable about many subjects, and I will always be honored that I got to pick his brain about such an amazing subject.