♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: we begin this evening with a press conference today with president trump and mitch mcconnell, soon after their meeting at the white house. we start with the cbs evening news report, and here it is. reporter: now to the other end of pennsylvania avenue, the president told reporters into the rose garden to watch him mende fence. -- mend a fence. donald trump: we are closer than ever before. reporter: after a white house lunch, donald trump and mitch

mcconnell strolled to the rose garden to mend a fence. it was a change in tone from 90 minutes earlier when mr. trump told his cabinet, do nothing, blaming them for the stalled election agenda. >> i will not -- they are not getting the job done. reporter: he was echoing his former chief strategist steve bannon who this weekend declared mcconnell an enemy of grassroots conservatives. >> right now it is a season of war against a gop establishment. reporter: and challenging the gop incumbents. >> the day of taking a few nice conservative votes and hiding is over. reporter: today the president sent mixed messages. donald trump: i can understand how steve bannon feels. we will talk about that, and they are great people. reporter: president looked ahead to his 2020 reelection campaign

and said he was hoping for a sequel. donald trump: i hope hillary runs. hillary, please run again. yetrter: he has not commented on the four u.s. soldiers killed in niger. he said he had written to the families and will call them soon. donald trump: if you look at president obama and other presidents, most of them did not make calls. a lot of them did not make calls. reporter: officials with president clinton, george w. bush, and obama said they all called families of the fallen. the chief of staff said this was a expletive lie, and that the current commander in chief is a deranged animal. >> thank you, major. charlie: we continue with excerpts from the press conference. donald trump: as far as tom marino, he was a very early supporter, the great state of

pennsylvania. i saw the report. we are going to take it very seriously. because we are going to have a major announcement probably next week on the drug crisis and with the opioid master problem. and i want to get that absolutely right. this country and the world has a drug problem. the world has a drug problem, i will makeit, and an announcement next week. we will be looking into that. for the puerto rico situation is so, as you know, oh, i think -- it has according -- fema been outstanding. puerto rico is very tough because it is an island, and is also tough because it was in poor shape for the hurricanes ever hit. their electrical grid was destroyed before the hurricanes got there. it was in bad shape, it was working, in bankruptcy, owed $9 billion. and then on top of that the

hurricane came. you have got to build a who -- whole new electrical plant system. we are not talking about generators. puerto rico has more generators than any place in the world. there are generators all over the place. the fact is their electrical system was in horrible shape before and even worse shape after, so we are working right now as you know -- relief funds were just approved, approved by congress. that includes texas by the way, that includes florida. it also includes puerto rico, the u.s. virgin islands, etc. it was a really bad shape before. we have done, we have -- we have delivered tremendous amounts of water. what you have to do is have distribution of the water but by the people on the island. we have massive amounts of water. we have massive amounts of food, but they have to distribute the food, and they have to do this, they have to distribute the food. ♪

isaacson ister here. he is the author of a biography on several towering figures. he now 10 -- turns his attention to leonardo da vinci. isaacson called his newest subject the person with the greatest amount of curiosity of any human who has ever existed. we will talk about that. i'm pleased to have walter isaacson back at this table. walter isaacson: you are the only person who gives him a run for his money. hech mcconnell: charlie: he was so much wiser and talented. i don't paint. this come about? how does someone that wrote it biography of jobs, einstein franklin, come to leonardo? walter isaacson: i sort of noticed a pattern, especially after benjamin franklin, which

is people are curious about everything who love the sciences. ben franklin finds whirlwinds when he is doing the postal service and riding up and down the coast, and need love that pattern -- he loves that pattern. or steve jobs who had with ace slot -- who ended every project with a slide of technology. people like that tend to be very creative. they love every pattern of nature whatever it is. and the total ultimate is leonardo. so the culmination, if you look at the back of the book, there is vitruvian man. that is almost a symbol of an astonishingly good piece of science. there were portions of a human perfectly done, but also unnecessary duties the way he does is shading. it is art and science, and that is leonardo. it is a self-portrait, and is him standing in the earth, the cosmos, and how do i fit in? charlie: how do you research

him? walter isaacson: i discovered that at his 7000 pages of notebooks that we can still find , as you know, bill gates boat -- bought the codec last year, one of the science notebooks lead in. and you can still see where he is doing sketches from the last summer -- supper. thought, people have written about leonardo. they usually approach him as just an artist. they start with the great paintings. i wanted to start with the notebooks and show the science as well as the engineering in the list -- he had to do lists every day, things he wanted to figure out like, why is the sky blue or what makes people on -- yawn? that is why i call him create curious.

so i went day by day for his notebooks. charlie: you had access to material noel had? -- no one else had? walter isaacson: bill gates is doing a new translation. several are involved in it, and they were kind to let me see the research they have done on that. and then in windsor castle, that is where this unbelievable anatomy drawings are and my wife actually met somebody who was a curator there and so we got to spend some time at windsor. so it was fun going around in search of leonardo. charlie: he would go to the cadavers and take the skin off. walter isaacson: he loved anatomy. but he did a lot of dissections. he would take the skin off of a face because he wanted to know every muscle. touch the lips, which ones come from the brain, the nerves from the brain, which was come from the spinal cord?

and like the 10th or 12th page on the dissections of the human face, very like drawing up top of aght drawing up top smile. you see the mona lisa smile as he processes all of the art with the anatomy. charlie: is he one of those things that it is good to do a few things well that a few -- a lot of things only good? walter isaacson: you have pictures you wish he would have finished like adoration of the magi, but when he could not let the perfect, he put it aside. so we really only have 12 fully finished, totally leonardo paintings. charlie: he lived in the 1600s. -- he limped into his 60's. walter isaacson: he is great the display of information. so his anatomy drawings have layer by layer of the human

body. so like ben franklin, he loved how things flowed. he loved looking at water into a pond and making its world. why does it swirl? its world because something goes from a bigger cavity to a smaller one, and discovers how the heart valve works. people thought it worked because of pressure. he said he is because of the swirl. anyone who can see patterns of nature like that and combine it with curiosity and observation, i loved it. charlie: you begin to look at him -- let's talk about his early childhood and go forward. what we know about his parents? walter isaacson: he was very fortunate. his father was a notary. had he not been born illegitimate, he would have been [indiscernible] we know he would have been a very bad notary. like let perfect be the enemy of the good most of the time.

it meant he could not have gone to the university to get a formal education, so he became a disciple of experience. somebody would tell him something like why the sky is blue, and he would do a water vapor thing to test it out. we see the beginnings of the scientific method because in this little town da vinci, he was born out of wedlock and gets into college. charlie: did you think of himself as artist first? walter isaacson: in my first chapter, it is, i can also paint . at age 30 when he reached that type that's horrible milestone of turning 30 years old, he gave up on adoration of the magi and other paintings, but he decided to leave florence and go to milan. he invents a musical instrument like a violin. it is in the shape of a lion's head. it was a cold -- it was for the new duke of milan.

, 11rites a job application paragraphs. the first 10 are things like i can do engineering, i can divert rivers, i can do buildings, i can design weapons of war. only the 11th paragraph also says i can paint. so he tried to think of himself as an engineer. he was then corrected, even though he was a very dedicated engineer. he was at heart a painter. charlie: florence was a part of the renaissance. walter isaacson: not only was it the heart of the renaissance, but there are reasons of that. and unlettered guy like leonardo who wanted to learn to get books. and he was very tolerant. leonardo was gay, left-handed, radical, legitimate -- illegitimate. and yet he fit perfectly into florence. florence had become wealthy.

there was a double entry in bookkeeping. they had chemists living next-door to artists and cloth weavers, and they were inventing new things, new fabrics, the science of perspective. all of these especially -- they needed to show they needed good taste and money. it was a good time to be an aspiring painter and fit into that tolerance. even people from the fall of the ottoman -- the fall of constantinople from the east bringing algebra, it was one of those things like the bay area of california 500 years later where a lot came together. charlie: what about [indiscernible] walter isaacson: his teacher. when leonardo is young, 12 years old, he gets apprenticed. was one of four or five studios in florence that were becoming very successful because everybody needed new palaces with madonnas and show they had good taste.

--veracio was a part of that crowd that would turn it down. but leonardo changes the way they do things. he becomes a beautiful painter and poses for veracio. so we know what he looked like as a kid. charlie: can you say he was a late bloomer? walter isaacson: he stays as a timentice to veracio for a after his apartment -- apprenticeship should have ended. he is turning out some madonnas. would it we are not sure what -- we are not sure which ones are his. and if you want the baptism of great, one of veracio's paintings, and he does some of the main characters, but leonardo does the river flowing in and the water, and then the water of the river jordan rippling at the ankles of christ

. and you see his love of that spiral pattern in nature. charlie: what was his relationship with michelangelo? walter isaacson: not good. you may have known younger rivals. michelangelo was about 20 years younger. as michelangelo was antisocial as leonardo was social. leonardo had an enormous number of friends. he was always out and about. charlie: his posse. walter isaacson: yeah, he definitely had a posse of both charlie: students, friends. they traveled together. walter isaacson: musicians. much angelo is very loner. we have a few scenes where michelangelo -- i don't think leonardo, he was fine, but michelangelo dissed leonardo in public. charlie: what happened? walter isaacson: they were in a discussion in the square and leonardo asked a question. michelangelo said, you answer,

you fool, or something. it was not a pretty sight. people recorded it. michelangelo does david, which is a huge statue. leonardo is on the committee to figure out where to put it. leonardo does not want to put it right in the plants a -- the main plaza of florence. ornament overent it, meaning a fig leaf over the genitals area they both get commissioned to do paintings in the council hall in florence because people were smart. he said this is good for us. both of them start battle scenes, and both quit in the middle because they are so unnerved by the competition. ♪

♪ wrote thatthink you leonardo was very attracted sexually and romantically in every way to men, and unlike michelangelo, was very fine with it. [speaking simultaneously] walter isaacson: so the agony and the ecstasy has written about him. he was very, very religious and felt uncomfortable with his sexuality. leonardo when he first goes to the lawn, he goes with another

young man who seems to be his companion. later his companion is a guy something that means a little devil. they were together for 30 years. leonardo was quite open about having male companions. he took melissa around with him -- mona lisa around with him. he would take it when he was traveling and work on it. walter isaacson: the thing about him is, he would just keep paintings until he had it perfect. the mona lisa was a culmination. it started around 1503, but in 1519 when he dies, it is by his bedside because he is still layers ofe tiniest glaze. he used the science of objects to figure out the lips and the size of anatomy -- science of anatomy. even the light coming into your , but in thee detail

corner of the retina sees the shadow. details, solittle they go straight, but the shadows turn up. as your eyes move across your face, the sour -- the smile flickers. but this took layer after layer and year after year and the lightest touches. charlie: was he the dominant presence culturally of his time? walter isaacson: yes, by the end of his life he is indeed leonardo da vinci. he is known as an engineer, although with all of his inventions they never flew very well. part of it was because he was a theater producer. one of the things i have learned, which is underplayed. were impresarios, and they would do big public

pageants. so that helicopter device, done first for the state. science and perspective, he wants to make the stage look deeper, so he knows how to do the angles sharper and the table tilted a bit, and everybody doing very dramatic gestures. you see that in the last supper. so what he does as a theater producer ties into his art and engineering. charlie: did he know how great walter isaacson: he was? he is pretty famous by the end. he is fighting off the richest isabellan italy like who wants her portrait painted and keeps sending emissaries and saying i will send you anything. instead of doing her portrait, he does the cloth merchant wife who he feels is mysterious, a woman named lisa. he never gives it to the cloth merchant but wants to paint the mona lisa not for the patrons that want to pay him charlie:.

charlie:you say here the notebooks are the greatest record of curiosity anywhere. walter isaacson: absolutely. with all due respect to this table. every week or so, he would make a list of the things he wanted to know. it is a to do list. likef them has something -- why is the sky blue, why do fish go faster in water when birds are heavier? and the locks and dams, asked him how he closed. how do they walk on heights in flanders, what muscles touch the lives from the brain? and one of them, describe the time of the woodpecker. that is when i caused. i said, wait a minute, who wakes says, i want to know what the tongue over a woodpecker looks like. how would you even know? some made front of him like

other people have. but they kept coming back to it and finally discovered the tongue of a woodpecker is pretty interesting. it questions the brain when a woodpecker hits, and it sort of it into his engineering and everything else. the reason he wanted to know was not because of his engineering. it was because he was leonardo. he was so curious, so curious about everything that sometimes he just went off on tangents because he wanted to know, which is a great lesson. we sometimes forget that in life, which is, why do i need to know that, or this would be useful for me to know. you, it be no use to will not help you in your job, but like leonardo, you do it out of pure curiosity. why is that? walter isaacson: gravity, tailfins, when he does the

tobias and the angel painting, ,e is holding a dangling fish and all of these things show his fascination with anatomy which across for a second, i have become impressed, there you were to know that out of curiosity. leonardo does, he discovers when he does it that the movement of air on the top of a wing is what keeps birds and airplanes aloft. that sort of, so he discovers that from comparing the flow of water to the flow of air. even though it helped him with his flying machine, he wanted to know out of pure curiosity. charlie: had he figured out from physics that it should be possible? he things it is

possible, he does it first in the theater and then makes all kinds of human devices. you lose -- use everything to move. it cannot be done, and he can't do it. >> you can never use your own muscles. now, something to flap like a bird. their muscles compared to their body mass are much different. but here is the interesting thing about that. why central pouch -- motion cannot be done. puzzle,ful mathematical called squaring the circle, which simply is, can you make a circle the same size as a square using only a protractor and a ruler, it cannot be done because of high being an original number -- a rational number. -- your rational number.

leonardo tries to do things that are impossible and discovers why they are impossible, pushes his arises. -- horizons. charlie: it would be good today. walter isaacson: first of all he would love artificial intelligence. he cared about how do we think what conscience is. he loved engineering, and i think he would have liked to the notion of the self driving car and love is blind. because he was born the same year gutenberg first started commercially selling books from a print shop, it allowed leonardo to drill down on any topic that caught his eye. he would have loved the internet. someone like franklin or steve jobs, who wanted to do everything and had a very practical sense to him. but steve jobs also had a

certain system about it. he was in search of the meaning of life. walter isaacson: steve jobs had a spirituality, and he like leonardo da vinci. he would talk about it a bit. i think that the true be in man is a spiritual drawing. the drawing on the back of the book, it was done because he and three friends were trying to figure out how do you design a church that had the same proportions as a human. that shows how we fit in the cosmos and creation. they went to the ancient architect the true bs, did designs up -- vitruvius. charlie: was he a believer? walter isaacson: not really. they were just he was called a heretic, but in the second addition, he is a little bit afraid. leonardo believed in science. he was a skeptic, but he looked at fossils and rights, that kind of disproves biblical account of

the flood because of different layers at different times. he looked at the fetus in the womb and would take the opening of this, a gorgeous drawing of a fetus in the womb and the church features that it has a soul. he tries to experiment -- it does not breathe. he is willing to scientifically question the teachings of the church. believed ine was the beauty of creation and how we fit in and was a follower of the church at the time. he was just kind of willing to question some of the church teachings which made others think he was heretical. ♪

♪ anybody can you imagine today -- not who he would have been in the interest he would have, certainly the computer age and the possibilities of that, but anybody that reminds you of him, either by their flamboyance or multi-talent? walter isaacson: there is no leonardo amongst us. charlie: you can hardly think of somebody who has painted to the degree he has painted. walter isaacson: and design flying machines and stuff. i like people who have been at this table whose interests are

very diverse. steve jobs obviously in that category. i think jeff bezos is in that category. he loves storytelling to artificial intelligence to space travel. the more your mind wanders infinitee different wonders of creation, the more you can be like leonardo. probably in our work and our teaching of our kids, we tend to specialize. we put things in silos. we say you got to do science and engineering and math, and you say yes, but creativity comes from someone who loves the beauty of a mathematical equation but also the beauty of a brush stroke because both of , sort of convey a glory of nature. charlie: he had no interest in children? walter isaacson: he never had a

relationship with a woman. he has a lot of nephews, and they got some of his property. but he was not a family man. charlie: what have we found out about the paintings? trying to understand a painting in terms of its composition, age , and nature of the oil? walter isaacson: one of the interesting things that is happening this week is the sale of this last painting in private hands. it is christ holding the crystal , the world. one of the things we are not sure about it was leonardo, because it was in bad shape, but with the multispectral technology like ultraviolet light, you can see the under drawing. you can see each coat, each brush stroke, whether it was left-handed. you can see palm prints, which is something he did.

helps us understand. we can learn more about the paintings in the past 10, 20 years with the new technologies. charlie: where do you put mona lisa? walter isaacson: it is a total ultimate. sometimes we see them on lisa when we are young, there is a huge crowd, everybody is taking selfies, you don't get it. i had the good fortune to talk to somebody at the louvre on tuesday. charlie: i have seen in the room by myself. walter isaacson: there were two or three others. we got to spend time, and suddenly you see that this is a in alltion of a life aspects of nature. one of the themes of his work is how the curving waters of ,ature, like bill gates' codecs or like the veins of the earth and the connect to our veins. you see that with the river

coming into the mona lisa. if you look at the one in the national gallery done when he riverung, it also has a and a merchant and his wife. when you get to the mona lisa, you see what a lifetime of studying anatomy, it all comes together. there are biographies of leonardo who are great. like kenneth clark in the 30's and 40's. they will say, he really exults at the mental lisa -- mona lisa, but they say it is a shame he wasted so much time doing math and geology and these that did not work. i think the model is that answers that criticism with her smile because she realizes that is only after a lifetime of just loving every pattern in nature that you and i can do, which is be more observant and love the patterns of nature, be curious about -- he would walk around with his notebooks in florence

and see a smile form on somebody's face. in his notebook he would say, let's try to imagine all of the emotions. he does that with the last supper, all 12 apostles. in this mona lisa, even though it seems like a pretty still almost athere is dramatic narrative as you can watch the smile flicker and the emotions come to the surface as the earth and creation for next with her. -- for next with her -- connects with her. if you are in the room, you see a window. and you see it is a fake -- not a fake perspective, but accelerated perspective like someone who designed a theater set would have done. , but lines go back to fast that makes it look deeper. it is a narrative because jesus

has said one of you shall betray me. as your eye moves, you see almost a sound wave hitting each of the groups of three and the apostles saying, is it me, or is it, you know, looking in shock. so instead of being a still moment, what you have in that picture like every picture of leonardo is a narrative drama that connects them motions to the emotions. charlie: look at the next one. this is perspective lines. walter isaacson: you can see how he understands the science of perspective but is going to worry people coming in from the right, he can think of perspective when he needs to. but it is important because one of the great things that happens in florence at that time when he is growing up is architects, mathematicians and artists are all working together.

they kind of figure out and codify the science of perspective which means brunelleschi and albert t can do the dome and the doors. it is all in perspective. charlie: while we are here, let's do this. next one.onday is the walter isaacson: that is the one going on sale on november 15. it is being showed this week in san francisco. it is one that was discovered. it has been a long -- around for a long time, but only in the past 10 years has it been authenticated as the original. we have many copies as the one leonardo drew. of --e: is it in hands private hands? walter isaacson: it is in the hands of a russian oligarchs, but it is going up now for sale. $125,000, will go for

$150,000. charlie: what is the name of the oligarch? walter isaacson: i don't know. we will find out. there is a lot of lines. he blurs the lines because in reality we do not need sharp lines. the face of jesus is kind of blurred. the curls, that is the pattern leonardo loves most, have the luster on them. you look at the right hand giving a blessing. it is much more focused. the lines are delineated. why? leonardo new how the science of perspective made the lines look sharper. it looks like that hand is coming out at you. then the weird thing, which i am not sure why it is, he is holding a crystal or with in inclusions because he knows all about crystal. he gets the science exactly right. but there is something wrong

about this. jesus' robes should be inverted and distorted. it seemsok at this, distorted. why does leonardo make it perfect as opposed to the distortion that would come from a globe? it could be he did not know. i have read the notebooks, but he knew exactly what the distortion would be. maybe it is because he thought that will be too distracting. that might be the reason, but i like to think the reason is in a subtle way for those who notice it and get it, he is showing us the miracle that christ holding up our world, the salvador mundi, is a miraculous thing, so there is no distortion. charlie: this is the turin portrait. some people think -- walter isaacson: it is older than leonardo was at the time, so we know he drew it, but --

charlie: did he have a beard like that? walter isaacson: he did, a beautiful and unshaven face when he does the vitruvian man. by his late 30's he has the beard. we have seen a lot of portraits with the beard. that is the iconic portrait. i think he is doing it not just of himself but as a more universal picture. charlie: the next slide is mona lisa. walter isaacson: look at very carefully. you see the shadows turn up, but the detail of the lips turned down. it is because he has dissected the human eye enough to know how andretina processes details how there are shadows. that is oversimplification, but it means as your eye wanders across her face, the smile flickers off and on. she is reacting to us. it is the first example of

virtual reality where it is interactive. you see the wonderful rivers finally eons of time flowing into the human veins. you see the lustrous curls and the eyes are so intense and emotional, and is the mona lisa affect. the eyes follow you around the room. charlie: did he like portraiture? alsor isaacson: yes but dramatic painting. some of the greatest are the ones he would have liked the most. the last supper and the mona lisa. charlie: where was he ranked as a painter in the end of walter isaacson: to me he is the most creative because he connects emotionally and is doing new things. science perspectives, blurred lines which capture reality, understanding how the eye works, understanding the science perspective. also he was so observant that

when he would say somebody, you would sketch in his notebook. he would sketch faces and always notice not only emotions and jesters but how they can -- gestures but how they connected to emotions. it is hard to compare like the also-- picasso who is amazing, but leonardo does more to connect all of art to the creativity and understanding nature of anybody in history. charlie: did he and michelangelo ever -- 20 years? walter isaacson: when they are painting the paintings at the council hall, one on each wall, both total paintings, they were also in studios but bringing it to murals on the wall. they were figuratively and literally looking over their shoulder at each other. and michelangelo -- michelangelo is more of a sculptor. and all of his paintings like

the chapel, the sistine chapel. likeare very sharp lines the way a sculptor would do. leonardo looked down upon that because as i am looking at you and i hope people become more observant by studying leonardo, when you look at a person's face, you realize there are not some sharp lines. we have two eyes and shapes are curved, so we see the shadows caressing. this is what leonardo does in his notebook page after page. he really dislikes michelangelo's sharply delineated design drawing and instead believes in this notion of where you see the curves and the shadows caressing objects and are not sharply delineated. charlie: how tall was he? walter isaacson: he was known to be tall, not six-foot, but he

was taller than average. he walked well. people noticed him when he rode horses because he was dnd. he exercised a lot. you look at the man in the vitruvian man, you see the muscles in the chest. he was known with the curling, beautiful locks. he was called well proportioned and strong. so he was strikingly and notably good-looking because -- most contemporary writers, that is what they mention. did he write other than in terms of scientific corp. -- curiosity? walter isaacson: he wrote fantasies, he wrote about storms. some of them -- maybe i am over doing this, but so much of it starts off as a theatrical producer that a lot of these things about storms hitting

people come from him performing something at court. he wrote about 12 treatises, one on the science of art, one on shadows, one on the flight of birds, one on mechanics and engineering, but he never published them, which is a shame because the printing press had , but likeinto being with his pain during -- paintings, you say why did he them -- het let treatisesy got his polished enough that he would send them off to the printer. which was good for me, because i get to go around to different places. charlie: it is interesting here. you talked to a lot of people. you almost -- this is a book written with your own curiosity. that is theson: interesting thing. you get to meet one of the

people that authenticated salvador mundi, or others who get to discover things about leonardo's mother. we never knew who the weather -- the mother was. now this year we know. and i was at the metropolitan museum, and you have people who love leonardo that are really people you want to meet. -- spendt to stand time with them. charlie: you also got to ask mym questions if in fact, understanding, whether you were on the right track or not. in other words you are testing your own curiosity, or your own assessment. walter isaacson: i would read things in the notebook. this helicopter, he was doing a play where the angels have got to come down. in the navy that is what that was for. -- maybe that is what that was for. you want to question people, but also i do learning from leonardo, which -- charlie: what was that about?

walter isaacson: as i was going through it, i was figuring out lessons i wanted to learn. one of them was, he made this list as i say every week, but he would say, ask so and so to give me the measurements of the sun. ask so-and-so how they fixed dams -- in the lawn. ask so-and-so how they want on ice in flanders. he was always asking people, the kind of people you would have at this table and say, here are the questions. he put them in his notebook what he wanted to ask. i will try to be more observant object.light hitting a i will be more curious about everybody i will ask more questions because there must be 200 lines in his notebook that begin with ask

so-and-so about this. less he what may we do wrote, leonardo drew four right triangles with basis. he would put a triangle been shaded the remaining -- remaining areas. the robots is labeled with the letter of each. ,e was trying to accomplish using the visualization of geometry to help him understand the transformation of shapes. walter isaacson: it is like the square and circle. do you want to transform one ? to another size he does it as a young kid and under the very last notebook page we have. to me that, you see the vitruvian man, the circle and square and the mona lisa, everything comes from caring about how shapes transform. hislie: eight days after had his last, he

will and testament drawn up by a notary, witnessed and signed. he had been ill and realize his final days were approaching. be it known to all persons present and to come that the court of our lord the king, beset -- before ourselves and person that leonardo da vinci painter to the king at present staying at the place known as -- due to the certainty of death and uncertainty of the time, in his will he commended his soul to our lord the mighty god and the glorious virgin mary. his science had led him to adopt many heretical beliefs including the fetus in the womb like you mentioned. walter isaacson: he is on the end of his life and trying to find out the meaning of it all. that last page talked about the two thirds- it ends of the way down with a phrase, but the soup is getting cold. you can imagine him in the

bedroom as his office is upstairs, the chateau in france, all of the students waiting with his cook, and he is still trying to do this impossible problem, but the soup is getting cold. he knows his days are numbered. it reminded me of einstein. if i can go off on a little tangent, his last day at the hospital, there is einstein. he pulled out his notebook and rights line after line of equations, still trying to get unified theories that would time together gravity and electromagnetism and other forces. charlie: still waiting for that. walter isaacson: still waiting for people to square the circle. the fact on the deathbed, you are still trying to do these problems that fascinated them, that was inspiring to me even though the soup was getting cold. charlie: an open to mischief. that is a little bit like steve jobs. walter isaacson: one of the

things about -- in each of those things, i don't list but give the examples under each lesson of things he did to explain how that is done and how he did that in his life. when i was growing up in our great novelist there was -- he said there were people from louisiana are preachers and storytellers. the world has too many preachers. as a biographer, you are trying to tell a story. but whether it is any story that has ever been told, there are certain lessons that come out of it. you try not to start with a lesson. you say where is this going to lead, but with leonardo's life, it was so filled with lessons, .t reminded me of steve jobs it reminded me of ben franklin. so i thought, here are the

patterns. what leonardo did so well is by being so curious, he saw patterns like how swirls form in care and water, whatever. he loved the beauty of patterns across disciplines. do, becauseied to in some ways this is a culminating book. i will write other things, but there is no mountain higher than leonardo da vinci. what i have tried to do is say, .ere is some of the patterns steve jobs is really different from albert einstein and ben franklin and leonardo. there are certain patterns that emerge that lead you not just to be smart but to be imaginative and creative and curious. charlie: have you ever thought about writing a geography -- a biography of christ? a fleeting moment? walter isaacson: i think people who would be better at both the

historical -- the historical jesus as well as christ the savior. a fascinating topic, and there are so many good books written on it. charlie: so you have not. walter isaacson: it is not on my bucket list. in fact, i think leonardo, da vinci to me was the culmination of this series of things. i would like to write some more. i will not try to do another grand, historic figure because leonardo is everything that connects the art, the science, the spirit of everybody i have written about so far. charlie: the book is called leonardo da vinci. walter isaacson, as i understand it from reading the press, it had been sold to the movies, and there is some idea of the own art of dicaprio -- leonardo dicaprio's name had been attached. walter isaacson: i am not a big

understand her of how hollywood works. i was happy leonardo dicaprio -- his production company and studio, i am glad they acquired the rights because i think leonardo dicaprio, if he chooses to do this, is someone who loves the environment, has a field for nature, is a performance artist but loves painting. so you want somebody who have a passion for the subject, but i have no idea how it will end up being made or if it will be. charlie: thank you. walter isaacson: thank you, charlie. charlie: thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

♪ yvonne: 7:00 a.m. in hong kong, live from bloomberg's asian headquarters. i am yvonne man come about them to "daybreak asia." a day of major speeches, president xi gave the keynote address at china's crucial congress. he gives his vision at home and abroad. the economy grew doing that president's first five years. they are betting on more of the same. kathleen: i am kathleen hays in new york where it is just past 7:00 p.m. this tuesday. president trump will beginning his latest views on tax reform and what is said to be a major policy speech. t