Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers.
Suppose every idea reached you anonymously, judged only on its merit. How many of the ones you'd actually accept come from the sources you'd never have expected?
In this episode
A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 13 of Eli's aphorisms, Dr. Jonas Salk, born 1914 in New York to European Jewish immigrant parents, gave the world the polio vaccine and wiped the disease off the face of the earth, Dr. Jonas Salk, Alan C. "Ace" Greenberg, and Fred Hassan, longtime chairman of Schering-Plough from great minds, a "What If?" to ponder.
Eli’s Aphorisms
“Turning education over to AI and robots will be about as effective as kissing through a glass window.”
“Doing well and doing good are not the same thing, but they go together very nicely.”
“Go ahead and make mistakes — just don't do anything stupid." (Fred Hassan, longtime chairman of Schering-Plough, built research teams unafraid of "grand mistakes," as long as nobody did anything stupid.)”
“When you think you're thinking out of the box, look around — you may just be in a bigger box.”
“This is not about throwing the old sources out. It's about letting the new ones in.”
“Go ahead and make mistakes. Just don't do anything stupid. Mistakes are good when they serve as learning events.”
“Because you never know where the next great idea is going to come from. And you don't want to miss it.”
“Cognitive biases lead to perceptual distortion, narrowed options, faulty judgment, and lost opportunities.”
“Leaders not only have to think out of the box — they have to make sure they're just not in a bigger box.”
“Truly original ideas come from more places, arise and develop much faster, and reach much farther than ever before.”
“Our biases aren't easy to shed, but shed them we must.”
“Greenberg wasn't arguing against education. He was arguing against credentialism.”
“Don't ask where this person went to school. Ask: is this person smart, hungry, resourceful, and determined to succeed?”
From Great Minds
“while his medical-school classmates went into private practice and made fortunes, he went into research instead. When Salk's own lawyers told him, on the eve of release, that he hadn't patented the vaccine and a patent would take another year, he shut the conversation down: a year of delay meant roughly 60,000 more cases of polio, many fatal, many in children. The vaccine shipped in 1954 with no patent. Eli was part of the final human trial as a first-grader — he got the real vaccine, not the placebo, and keeps his Polio Pioneer card on his desk. Salk's own words: "Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors." Eli names Kizzmekia Corbett, who led the final work on the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and was scooped up by Harvard within days of the announcement, as a Salk for our own time.” — Dr. Jonas Salk, born 1914 in New York to European Jewish immigrant parents, gave the world the polio vaccine and wiped the disease off the face of the earth“Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.” — Dr. Jonas Salk“The firm wanted people not with an MBA, but with PSD degrees — poor, smart, and a deep desire to become rich.” — Alan C. "Ace" Greenberg“When we built research teams, we built with people who were not afraid to make mistakes. We call them grand mistakes — just as long as we don't do anything stupid.” — Fred Hassan, longtime chairman of Schering-Plough
