How a 19th-Century Bombing Shaped Modern Surveillance (with Steven Johnson)

About this episode

Kim interviews Steven Johnson about his book and the historical context of self-organization and anarchism in the watch industry.

While the podcast team is taking a Radical Sabbatical, Kim is interviewing authors of the books that have had a big impact on her in the past two years.  In this episode, Kim speaks with Steven Johnson, co-founder of Notebook LM, not about AI but about his book, The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective.  They start with the story of how the Swiss dominated the watch industry for over a century, thanks to a highly decentralized network of cottage laborers in the Jura mountains. The culture of autonomy in the industry was so strong that it turned Swiss watchmakers into some of history's first anarchists, which in the 19th century simply meant self-organization. The movement became associated with disorder and violence after many anarchists adopted Nobel’s invention of dynamite as their weapon. The public outcry against their violent attacks on heads of state and industry led to many modern surveillance techniques, including wiretapping and fingerprinting..  Steven and Kim speculate that some approaches to company-building in Silicon Valley have embraced bottom-up self-organization principles of the Jura mountains…

People in this episode

Host: Kim Scott

Guest: Steven Johnson

Topics covered

• anarchism
• self-organization
• capitalism
• Silicon Valley
• history of watchmaking
• dynamite
• surveillance techniques

Keywords

• anarchism
• self-organization
• Silicon Valley
• dynamite
• surveillance
• watch industry
• capitalism
• history

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Notebook LM

Books & works: The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective

Places: Switzerland, Jura mountains

More episodes of Radical Candor: Communication at Work

• Ways to Manage - Back by Brain Science (with Caroline Webb) · September 9, 2026 · 53 min
• Get Situated for Success (with Angela Duckworth) · September 1, 2026 · 52 min
• Revolutionizing Meetings: From Sabotage to Strategy (with Rebecca Hinds) · August 18, 2026 · 49 min
• Why some leaders are incorruptible, many get corrupted by power/money (with Rob Lalka) · August 4, 2026 · 45 min
• How Great Leaders Make Everyone Better (with Liz Wiseman) · July 15, 2026 · 1h 5m
• How to Raise Emotionally Resilient Kids — and Lead the Same Way (with Dr. Becky Kennedy) · July 7, 2026 · 56 min