Thomas Edison, every mention

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every year anyone David Senra 381

Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Thomas Edison comes up

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How Claude Shannon Invented The Future Aug 9, 2026 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 49:04 David Senra Without the intermediate efforts of engineers and inventors, people like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell.

The Practical Genius of Honda Jun 28, 2026 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 4:46 David Senra Another thing that Honda had in common with Dyson is that he believed in the Edisonian principle of design.

Phil Knight: Founder of Nike May 7, 2026 · 1 mention

Excellent Advice For Living: 79 Maxims from a Wise Old Man Jan 25, 2026 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 33:34 David Senra My favorite example from history of this is a young Henry Ford meeting his idol, an older Thomas Edison. 2 times in the scene

How Rick Rubin Works Jan 16, 2026 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 18:44 David Senra He calls it the Edisonian, from Thomas Edison, the Edisonian principle of designing a product.

The Creative Genius of Rick Rubin Jan 8, 2026 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 16:38 David Senra This is gonna sound really weird, but I think Rick Rubin would agree with Thomas Edison's famous quote, 2 times in the scene

How Bill Gates Works Sep 24, 2025 · 3 mentions

  • ▶ 1:02 David Senra Someone once said Bill wants people to think that he is Thomas Edison when he is really Rockefeller. 2 times in the scene
  • ▶ 9:11 David Senra Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Elon Musk, Edwin Land, Bill Gates, they devour entire shelves.

The Stubborn Genius of James Dyson Sep 12, 2025 · 4 mentions

  • ▶ 27:43 David Senra One of Dyson's heroes that he mentions a bunch is Thomas Edison. 2 times in the scene
  • ▶ 56:04 David Senra I believe in progress by stages in the iterative development that I have described as Edisonian. 2 times in the scene

How Elon Works Aug 27, 2025 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 11:09 David Senra Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Michael Dell, Edwin Land, they would read every single thing in a library on their subject of interest.

Michele Ferrero's $40 Billion Privately Owned Chocolate Empire Jun 24, 2025 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 41:32 David Senra Michael, like James Dyson, and I would say like Steve jobs, he believed in the Edisonian principle of design.

The Life Story of Michael Dell Apr 22, 2025 · 6 mentions

  • ▶ 58:27 David Senra And so a young Henry Ford idolized an older Thomas Edison before he knew Thomas Edison at the time. 6 times in the scene

Rare Jeff Bezos Interview Jan 6, 2025 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 29:38 David Senra If you go back and read, uh, Jeff's biographies, uh, it says this over and over again when he was a young kid, like his heroes were Thomas Edison and Walt Disney, but he thought of them as inventors.

Robert Kierlin: Founder of Fastenal Sep 3, 2024 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 48:59 David Senra Thomas Edison has a great quote about this, and he says, we don't know one 1000th percent of anything. 2 times in the scene

Rare Bernard Arnault Interview Jul 17, 2024 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 4:26 David Senra Thomas Edison, when he was a young boy working on the railroads, they would stop over. 2 times in the scene

J. Paul Getty: The Richest Private Citizen in America Jul 9, 2024 · 4 mentions

  • ▶ 12:15 David Senra I think of Henry Ford, who idolized Thomas Edison at the time they meet Henry Ford's unknown. 4 times in the scene

How Walt Disney Built His Greatest Creation: Disneyland May 14, 2024 · 1 mention

The Biography of Walt Disney May 3, 2024 · 1 mention

The Biography of George Lucas May 2, 2024 · 5 mentions

  • ▶ 5:55 David Senra George Lucas is the Thomas Edison of the modern film industry.
  • ▶ 14:28 David Senra Think about why Peter Jackson said, Hey, this guy's the Thomas Edison of our industry.
  • ▶ 1:54:22 David Senra Here's another idea from Thomas Edison that I think is fascinating. 3 times in the scene

How To Lose A Few Billion Dollars: The Life Story of Samuel Insull Apr 23, 2024 · 60 mentions

  • ▶ 0:20 David Senra But chances are you don't remember that Insull had been in the electric business as long as there had been an electric business that he had started as Thomas Edison's private secretary in. 2 times in the scene
  • ▶ 3:30 David Senra Sam was very smart, but he was pragmatic, very much like Thomas Edison. 4 times in the scene
  • ▶ 7:28 David Senra That reminds me of one of my favorite Thomas Edison quotes. 2 times in the scene
  • ▶ 13:21 David Senra Article that talks about a thirty-one-year-old American inventor named Thomas Edison. 15 times in the scene
  • ▶ 19:03 David Senra He wants to work for Thomas Edison. 15 times in the scene
  • ▶ 24:14 David Senra How would Thomas Edison and Johnson know that he should do that? 17 times in the scene
  • ▶ 35:31 David Senra And so this is a very important six years in Samuels' life because he is now essentially saying, hey, Thomas Edison's like, you, you have to run the company, and Edison is, he's not interested in, like, he's off on other things now, right? 4 times in the scene
  • ▶ 1:13:53 David Senra You know, Thomas Edison being the best example of that.

The Autobiography of Christian Dior Apr 18, 2024 · 3 mentions

Les Schwab (Charlie Munger recommended this book) Apr 17, 2024 · 3 mentions

Charlie Munger (the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack) Apr 16, 2024 · 3 mentions

  • ▶ 1:48:10 David Senra Here's another idea from Thomas Edison that I think is fascinating. 3 times in the scene

The Autobiography of Ted Turner Apr 14, 2024 · 3 mentions

Billionaire Art Dealer Larry Gagosian Apr 12, 2024 · 1 mention

John D Rockefeller: 38 Letters Rockefeller Wrote to His Son Apr 11, 2024 · 1 mention

The Making of Winston Churchill Part 2 Apr 7, 2024 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 17:07 David Senra This is just like an early, you go to Thomas Edison when he's like a twelve-year-old boy working on the, uh, the rail line.

Ed Catmull (Founder of Pixar) Apr 4, 2024 · 1 mention

The World's Great Family Dynasties: Rockefeller, Rothschild, Morgan, & Toyada Mar 25, 2024 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 34:38 David Senra Henry Villard, president of Edison Electric, had come to Morgan for help in taking over Edison's company.

James Dyson (Against the Odds) Mar 17, 2024 · 3 mentions

  • ▶ 10:26 David Senra Bilateral thinking, which he calls the Edisonian approach. 2 times in the scene
  • ▶ 1:07:52 David Senra And he says, Japanese believe in progress by stages in, in the iterative development that I have described as Edisonian, the persistent trial and error that allows them to wake up one morning after many, many mornings with a world beating…

The Biography of Napoleon Feb 28, 2024 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 3:35 David Senra Anywhere from Henry Clay Frick, to Edison, to Larry Ellison, to Julio Lobo, which is the last billionaire, uh, in Cuba before Castro took over, to Aristotle Onassis, to Bill Gates, to Andrew Carnegie.

The Biography of Brunello Cucinelli Feb 13, 2024 · 4 mentions

The Biography of The Founder of Rolls-Royce Feb 7, 2024 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 17:53 David Senra And so Thomas Edison actually makes a cameo in this book and says, like, Britain's essentially over-regulated, uh, their own industry and allowed the Americans to seize control over one of the most important industries the world has ever… 2 times in the scene

How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune Feb 1, 2024 · 21 mentions

  • ▶ 5:28 David Senra He lived a colorful life, trading jokes with Thomas Edison, figuring in Thomas Nast's best sketches, paying Boss Tweed's bail,
  • ▶ 9:00 David Senra Uh, later on, he meets, like, a young Thomas Edison, because he's gonna wind up buying Thomas Edison's, one of Thomas Edison's first inventions, which is a way to send multiple, uh, messages across telegraph lines, and Thomas Edison 5 times in the scene
  • ▶ 49:08 David Senra So a twenty-one-year-old Thomas Edison happened to be at the gold exchange the day that Jay Gold tried to corner the gold market. 15 times in the scene

Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick's Bitter Partnership Jan 29, 2024 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 1:02:59 David Senra Uh, I covered, I covered, uh, he, he's went to war with Edison in this fantastic book I covered back on episode 83. 2 times in the scene

Paul Graham's Essays Part II Dec 8, 2023 · 1 mention

Paul Graham's Essays Nov 30, 2023 · 1 mention

The Biography of Jim Clark (Founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape) Nov 17, 2023 · 1 mention

Kobe Bryant (Mamba Mentality) Nov 10, 2023 · 1 mention

The Biography of Kobe Bryant Nov 8, 2023 · 1 mention

The Biography of Vannevar Bush (Engineer of the American Century) Nov 2, 2023 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 4:44 David Senra It says, Bush came from an American line of can-do engineers and tinkerers, a line beginning with Franklin and including Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and the Wright brothers.

The Autobiography of Vannevar Bush Oct 26, 2023 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 47:46 David Senra He goes and talks about Thomas Edison, but he makes the point, like, you may have one individual that we know.

The Biography of John Malone (Cable Cowboy) Oct 17, 2023 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 26:19 David Senra This is important because we, we talked about this recently where I think it was last week in the Edison, uh, number two, 67 in the Edison biography and number two, 58, which was about Jay gold.

The Biography of Thomas Edison Oct 10, 2023 · 217 mentions

  • ▶ 0:00 David Senra There were other notable American inventors in his time, but they were more usually lonely, troubled souls, and his personality outshone theirs. 18 times in the scene
  • ▶ 5:04 David Senra This one trait is probably what I admire about Thomas Edison the most. 14 times in the scene
  • ▶ 10:13 David Senra He's not, people, like, he can't even last in school, so he gets in so much trouble that he has to be homeschooled, but his mom does something that's so smart and intelligent here, and 30 times in the scene
  • ▶ 13:28 David Senra Uh, he was like on a train track, and Edison winds up grabbing him before he could be hit by a train, and in return, I think it's the station master's son, if I'm remembering this correctly, the station master's like, how can I ever repay… 10 times in the scene
  • ▶ 18:30 David Senra Uh, Edison noticed that the three-year-old son of the station master was playing, uh, right on the main track in the path of the car. 22 times in the scene
  • ▶ 24:29 David Senra So this is technically the fourth book on Edison that I've read. 18 times in the scene
  • ▶ 29:47 David Senra So at this point, Edison's 22, no money, but the, all these telegraph people, like, is very common, and all the engineers and everything, they kind of know each other, and so he goes and seeks out this other guy named Pope, and Pope is… 18 times in the scene
  • ▶ 36:14 David Senra So now we fast forward a few years of the story, he's 26 years old, and he makes the mistake, and he corrects it later on when he opens up Menlo Park, but he's just like, he's like trying to invent, he's trying to be an inventor and a… 22 times in the scene
  • ▶ 45:03 David Senra And Edison arrived at that just by following his natural bend. 18 times in the scene
  • ▶ 51:08 David Senra So Edison's gonna need a ton of money to build out the entire electrical system, right? 12 times in the scene
  • ▶ 57:27 David Senra And so there's a small analogy between the conversation I'm having with my ten-year-old daughter that Edison is describing the book about, holy 17 times in the scene
  • ▶ 1:06:35 David Senra I mentioned earlier, he's like, 18 times in the scene

Henry Ford's Autobiography Oct 6, 2023 · 7 mentions

  • ▶ 2:08 David Senra And it's, like, people like Michael Faraday, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford is, is, uh, one of the people, which is, uh,
  • ▶ 7:06 David Senra And so Henry Ford idolizes Thomas Edison. 6 times in the scene
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