# What Makes Great Investors | David Rubenstein | Podcast | In Good Company

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FPr2fkWsH4

[00:01] Hi everybody and welcome to In Good Company.
[00:03] and today I'm here with David Rubenstein.
[00:06] David is the founder and chairman of the Caral Group, one of the biggest private equity firms and he also hosts the David Rubenstein show where he interviews prominent leaders in business and so on.
[00:17] And earlier this year I had the pleasure of being on your show.
[00:19] So this is like revenge time actually.
[00:20] David,
[00:20] well thank you for inviting me and you were great on my show and anytime you want to come back please let me know.
[00:25] I will.
[00:27] Um, you sometimes talk about people being like like brands.
[00:30] So, what's the David Rubenstein brand like?
[00:32] I'm not quite sure what it is.
[00:34] Um, maybe it's as too busy to do anything very well because I'm doing so many different things that I don't really have as good a brand as I maybe would like to have, but the truth is um I spent 30 years I'm now still in private equity.
[00:45] I spent 30 years building a firm.
[00:46] It became one of the larger private equity firms.
[00:50] But I find that I'm better known now for the TV shows I do or the interviewing I do or for my philanthropy.
[00:56] I have a lot of uh philanthropic things I've done and people talk to me more about that than
[01:02] anything I've done in the investment world.
[01:05] So I guess my brand is that somebody that can't do anything well and I do many different things but none of them that well as I would like to be.
[01:09] Well, we're going to go through it and you for sure do a lot of things well.
[01:11] But you were you were an adviser in the White House at age 27 and now you are here.
[01:16] Just what are the what are the highlights in your life since then?
[01:19] I mean, briefly.
[01:21] Well, briefly, I came from very uh modest uh stock.
[01:26] My parents were not graduates of of college or high school.
[01:29] They both dropped out of high school.
[01:30] They were married young.
[01:32] I was their only child.
[01:34] Um so, I grew up in a bluecollar setting.
[01:37] And um you know, so you grow up in that setting, you have to make it on your own.
[01:40] So, there's a plus about that.
[01:42] My own children have had some advantages that I didn't have.
[01:45] Uh but I uh was only interested in politics and government at the time when I was young.
[01:48] I had no interest in making money in the days of of in the 1960s or so.
[01:53] There were no hedge funds, private equity funds, tech startups.
[01:57] There was no there were no billionaires and you didn't aspire to be a billionaire and my family was Jewish.
[02:01] If you were Jewish
[02:03] and you wanted to go into business, you went into your family's business.
[02:05] The family might have a business.
[02:06] If you didn't have a family business, you became a lawyer or a doctor or dentist.
[02:09] And that's what your mother, my mother aspired me to be was the doctor.
[02:13] I became a lawyer because I wasn't that good in sciences and I thought I was interested in politics and and being a lawyer you could go into politics and my role model was John Kennedy's advisor.
[02:23] John Kennedy was a charismatic person became president of United States at 43 but uh his role model his role advis his his adviser and my role model was a guy named Ted Sorenson who had been his speech writer and great intellectual blood bank at the 31.
[02:35] So at 31, Ted Sorenson was writing the inaugural address and every other great speech that Kenny gave and I thought I'm I'm not a charismatic figure.
[02:42] I don't be money, but I could be like like Ted Sorenson.
[02:46] So I attached myself.
[02:47] You became a Ted Son at 27.
[02:49] Well, I I did.
[02:51] In fact, I wasn't as prominent as he had become because he was more senior.
[02:53] But I at 27, I did become a deputy domestic policy adviser to president of the United States.
[02:58] I wasn't qualified for the job, but you know, White House staffs are often filled where people aren't qualified.
[03:01] So I did got the job but unfortunately I
[03:04] got inflation to 18 or 19%.
[03:07] So uh you know I didn't last Carlo didn't get reelected.
[03:10] You um you started Carlile in uh in Washington.
[03:13] Everybody else were in New York and uh uh you know that wasn't so fashionable for a time but now everybody's going to Washington to do business, right?
[03:21] I mean all the big business leaders.
[03:22] So you were like nearly 40 years ahead of time.
[03:24] Well what happened was um I was in Washington.
[03:27] I had worked in the White House.
[03:28] Um, I I didn't have the credibility to go to New York and start a private equity firm.
[03:32] I didn't have an investment banking background.
[03:33] All private equity firms were really started by former investment bankers at that time with all with very few exceptions.
[03:40] And I lived here.
[03:42] And there's a famous senator in the United States who once said, "If you're getting kicked out of town, get out in front and pretend you're leading a parade."
[03:48] What does that mean?
[03:50] Take advantage of the situation you find yourself in.
[03:51] I'm in Washington, so what do I do?
[03:54] I say, I understand companies heavily affected by the federal government better than the guys in New York.
[03:59] So what was heavily affected by the federal government?
[04:00] Aerospace defense.
[04:02] So we did a lot of aerospace defense deals early on.
[04:04] And people in New York said, "Well, these
[04:05] guys in Washington, they know it better.
[04:06] So it helped us a bit.
[04:07] And you know, in hindsight, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change it.
[04:10] Because when Washington, there was nobody there then doing this.
[04:11] Now everybody wants to have an office in Washington.
[04:13] Everybody wants to know what the president thinking or so forth.
[04:15] And when I go around the world now, people don't say, "Tell me about your deals.
[04:19] Tell me about the deals you've done."
[04:21] They say, "What's going on in Washington?
[04:23] What's Trump doing?
[04:25] What's Congress doing?"
[04:26] people are really fascinated by what what's happening in Washington.
[04:27] So, but I do keep up with government.
[04:29] I spend a lot of time uh on keeping up with government officials.
[04:33] So, I do have a some sense of what's going on in government, but I'm I can't tell you that I'm the the leading expert on what's going on in the government, but I know enough so that when I go to Abu Dhabi or Dubai or or Korea, I know a lot more than they do about what's going on in Washington.
[04:45] How many days a year do you travel seeing these investors?
[04:47] In my peak when I was running the firm, I was the principal fundraiser and um I was probably flying about 800 hours a year, which is a lot.
[04:55] I'm probably now down to about 400 hours a year.
[05:00] But when my peak I was going to the Middle East five times a year, uh Europe about six times a year, Asia about four
[05:05] times a year, um and then Africa one or two times a year, and South South America maybe twice a year.
[05:11] There was a lot of travel.
[05:12] Got a lot of frequent flyer miles.
[05:14] Uh well eventually I got out of the frequent flyer world but got uh but in the end um I uh I learned to fly and you know I I mean I fly on on my plane and uh and I I mean I'm not the pilot but I I eventually when I first started I said wow I'm great I'm going to be in a flight business class then I said I can fly first class and then I said hey I'm going to come back from Europe on the on the uh Concord.
[05:37] And then I started chartering planes for a little bit.
[05:39] And then I started chartering planes for a little bit longer.
[05:40] And then eventually I bought a small plane, then a bigger plane, a bigger one, a bigger one, and I got used to it.
[05:45] So I I do fly on a private plane.
[05:47] And it's my most favorite possession.
[05:49] I own the Magna Carta, but that's nothing compared to my plane.
[05:53] I tell my family, bury me in my plane.
[05:54] I'm never so happy as when I'm in my plane.
[05:56] Well, we're going to come back to happiness.
[05:57] Now, you have um interviewed many of the best investors in the world.
[06:02] And just coming back to that, what you say here is that many of them come from middle- class background just like you
[06:07] did.
[06:07] Why?
[06:07] Why is that?
[06:09] Well, I think people that um grow up in very wealthy families may not have quite the hunger and the drive to put yourself through the torture you have to do to learn how to be a really great investor and investing is a very torturous business because you're going to be wrong a lot of times.
[06:22] And so I think a lot of people who are really great investors came from middle class backgrounds.
[06:27] They tend to have these things in common.
[06:29] They're pretty good in math generally, not maybe a math superstar, but pretty good in math and arithmetic.
[06:33] They have a certain degree of humility because when you're trading or you're investing, you're going to lose money a fair bit.
[06:38] You have to get used to that.
[06:40] They also have the ability to uh make a decision to get out of something relatively shortly after they find out it's not going right.
[06:46] Other words, some people have egos that are so big, they say, "This position is right, the market's wrong."
[06:51] If you have that position all the time, you're probably going to be uh wrong a lot because the market's going to go against you.
[06:55] So, really good investors say, "Look, I made a mistake.
[06:59] I'm getting out of this position.
[07:00] Also, you have to know how to get along with people.
[07:01] And I think a lot of investors who are really good get along with other people.
[07:05] You have to motivate people to want to work for you.
[07:07] You have to motivate people to want to tell you information.
[07:10] And so, I think getting along with people is is a pretty good.
[07:12] You think rich people Do you think rich people are less good at getting along with people?
[07:15] Well, the richer you get, I think the bigger your ego usually gets obviously not always the case or some humble people.
[07:20] Warren Buffett is pretty humble but also very wealthy.
[07:23] But it's a general rule of thumb.
[07:25] If you want to have find people that are low ego, don't look for the richest people in the United States or the richest people in the world.
[07:32] Because when you get a lot of money, and I mean money, but being worth a hundred billion dollars or more, you're generally you can say, "Look, I'm pretty smart and I'm smarter than the average person, and your ego tends to get bigger."
[07:41] So, how do you cope with that?
[07:43] Because you got kids who are investors and they are not from the middle class anymore.
[07:47] Well, I have three children, all of whom are in private equity.
[07:48] They all have their own funds and um they're all you know they've seen what I've done and you know it's going to be difficult for somebody to do replicate exactly what I did but they will maybe do something better or do something different.
[08:00] There's no doubt that the children of very wealthy people have a disadvantage in a sense that if they accomplish something great people say it's because
[08:08] you're a father or your mother and if you fail people will say well what do you expect because in the end they're probably not going to be as highly motivated as somebody who grew up in a poor family.
[08:15] uh the wealthiest people in the United States don't usually build great businesses.
[08:21] They tend to come from middle class backgrounds or maybe lowerass backgrounds.
[08:23] So you you can't say this publicly, but if you grow up in a wealthy setting, it's a big disadvantage to try to really accomplish something on your own because even if you do something on your own that's impressive, people won't give you credit for it.
[08:34] Which is we come back to that which is probably why you decided to give away a lot of your money.
[08:38] I decided to give away essentially all my money.
[08:39] Bill Gates called me when he was studying up the giving pledge and you're a signer as well.
[08:45] Um, and there were 41 of us in the beginning.
[08:47] And I said, 'Look, I started with nothing and I'm going to end with nothing.
[08:51] But I wanted my children to read all my speeches about giving away all my money so they wouldn't think they that they that when I die, I'm they're going to get a lot of money.
[08:57] I wanted them all have their own careers and get their business off the ground and then um not feel that if they got a lot of money from me that that was going to be uh something that people would say to them,
[09:08] you don't really earn the money.
[09:09] You didn't really earn it yourself.
[09:11] So, I'm trying to get my children to be on their own and I am giving away basically the bulk of my money.
[09:14] I've given away a large part of it already.
[09:16] Continuing on on what makes a good investor, um, how important are good academic results?
[09:22] A good academic results can indicate you're pretty smart.
[09:25] And being smart is probably better than not being smart.
[09:29] But the best investors are not the superstar inves uh uh students of all time.
[09:33] Uh, Warren Buffett got rejected at Harvard Business School.
[09:35] He tried to get in Harvard Business School.
[09:36] He got rejected.
[09:37] So he must have been an okay student but not be not a superstar.
[09:39] Um a lot of people have dropped out of college.
[09:41] They were smart but they didn't have great academic records.
[09:43] Bill Gates was smart but he dropped out of Harvard.
[09:45] Mark Zuckerberg smart.
[09:48] Um a lot of people are very smart but sometimes they either too smart to want to go through the college uh rigomearroll and get all the grades and all that.
[09:58] There's no doubt that being smart is better than not being smart but being lucky is better than not being lucky.
[10:02] And a lot of people have luck for sure.
[10:03] What is a yenta?
[10:06] Ayenta is a Yiddish word that means want to
[10:08] know everything, a busy body.
[10:10] And so that's what your mother called you when
[10:12] My mother called me a yente because when
[10:13] people would come over for for dinner, I would always ask them lots of questions
[10:16] and I always say, "Tell me this. I'm asking questions all the time. I want to know everything."
[10:20] My mother said, "Don't be such a yenta."
[10:22] Which means you don't you should know everybody's business.
[10:23] But you now as an interviewer, I am always asking questions.
[10:27] And maybe I got it from when I was a little boy.
[10:28] I was always asking people questions.
[10:30] I wanted to learn learn stuff.
[10:32] Are you still a
[10:33] I'm always interested in interviewing people and learning more and I I try to read as many books as I can and try to interview as many people as I can and so I guess so.
[10:39] Why does a good investor have to go through have to go against conventional wisdom?
[10:43] Well, conventional wisdom would would if you did what conventional wisdom would be you're doing what everybody else is doing.
[10:48] So you do everything everybody else is doing.
[10:49] How are you going to be ahead of the pack?
[10:50] So you have to do something that conventional wisdom says is not the right thing to do.
[10:53] And so the best investments generally are are are against conventional wisdom.
[10:57] And of course the conventional wisdom is when the markets go goes up, what do people do?
[11:01] They jump in.
[11:03] When the market's going down, what do they do?
[11:05] They jump out.
[11:05] Why is it so difficult?
[11:06] Why is it so difficult to go against conventional wisdom?
[11:07] Because generally
[11:09] people want to be liked by other people, respected by other people.
[11:13] And if you tell people you're doing something nobody else thinks is a good idea, they're going to tell you you're stupid.
[11:17] And you nobody likes to be told you're stupid.
[11:19] So when you look at yourself, what are your strengths as an investor?
[11:22] Well, I wasn't the investor qua investor that other people in our firm were.
[11:26] I sat on all the investment committees, but but I wasn't driving the investment process.
[11:30] So, I wouldn't say I'm a great investor.
[11:32] I was probably better at building a business than being an investor.
[11:35] But I would say my strengths were that getting along with people um and probably picking talent was probably a reasonably good thing and and and figuring out how to uh persuade people to do what I wanted to do.
[11:47] Now, all of life is about persuasion.
[11:49] you know, persuading your your parents to do what you want them to do, your children what you want to do, your business partners, everybody has to learn how to persuade other people.
[11:55] And you persuade people by talking well, by writing well, or by leading by example.
[11:59] And so I tried to lead by example by working hard and therefore other people would follow me.
[12:05] And I learned how to try to talk reasonably well so that people would want to follow what I said.
[12:08] If I talked
[12:10] in a very poor way or I couldn't really articulate myself, people probably wouldn't listen and they might tune out.
[12:15] So let's continue on that.
[12:16] Let's let's talk about Rubenstein, the the leader, right?
[12:18] So, you on your show talk to leaders across the world, but um mainly in the US.
[12:22] Why don't you like leaders in other countries?
[12:27] Um I love leaders in other countries, but here is the challenge.
[12:29] I have a day job and I'm still co-chairman of Carlile and I have I chair a lot of nonprofit organization like Universe Chicago, the Council for Foreign Relations.
[12:38] So, I don't have the luxury of traveling around the world to do as many international interviews as I would like.
[12:44] And I found that it's tough to get people overseas to want to do as many interviews as I might want to do.
[12:49] So I'm always happy to do interviews for people overseas, but I haven't really had the time to really focus on doing it.
[12:55] So if I had no other job, I would say I'm going to take my shows.
[12:59] I'm going to go to Europe for a week, go to Asia for a week, Africa a week, but I don't have the time right now to do that.
[13:05] Now you you you categorize leaders into various uh you know or categories and you have
[13:11] one with which you call visionaries, right?
[13:13] So what have you learned from the vision the visionaries?
[13:16] Well, visionary leaders are people that have an idea of something that nobody else has really thought of.
[13:21] And like take Bill Gates.
[13:23] When Bill Gates was thinking of the computer revolution occurring, um, you know, that was pretty visionary.
[13:27] Many people didn't think there would be personal computers everywhere or there'd be software need for software.
[13:30] And so many people or take Elon Musk.
[13:33] Elon Musk, you know, thought about the importance of space travel before many other people did.
[13:40] built this incredible space company Spa uh SpaceX and then he also thought about how you could actually make electric cars actually viable and so he was pretty much of a visionary I would say.
[13:49] Talking of two visionaries because I think you did one interview together with well both Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos at the in the same interview.
[13:56] Yes.
[13:56] Um, one time at uh, it was the Bill Gates had his annual Microsoft conference and right before the conference actually started, um, Bill Gates uh, and Jeff Bezos allowed me to interview both of them, but they wouldn't let me keep a transcript of it, so there's no transcript of it.
[14:11] had never been on an interview jointly together at the time.
[14:14] It's quite it's quite a lineup.
[14:15] It was pretty impressive, I would say.
[14:17] And look, think about it.
[14:17] Uh, Jeff Bezos drove out to Seattle because he admired Bill Gates and what he'd done out there.
[14:23] He drove out there in his car with us, his then wife and they started his company from scratch.
[14:26] From scratch and uh we were involved in the beginning in helping him a little bit at Carlile and then we didn't really take the stock that we could have had.
[14:34] Uh we would have owned a lot of stock at the time but we didn't.
[14:39] No, I mean you win some, you lose some, right?
[14:41] Yes.
[14:41] But I always think about like for example when Mark Zuckerberg was at Harvard, my now son-in-law was his uh classmate and he told me about this company and he said, "Look, Mark is looking for $30,000 to get this thing off the ground and so forth."
[14:54] And I said, "Look, it's a dating company.
[14:55] It's not going to go anywhere."
[14:55] I'd seen dating companies before.
[14:57] Well, the guy that actually put in the 30,000 was one of his college classmates who's now has that stock and never sold it.
[15:01] It's worth $50 billion.
[15:05] 50 billion.
[15:05] Eduardo Savverin.
[15:05] Um $50 billion.
[15:05] So, I wish I had made that
[15:12] investment.
[15:14] I wish uh I had we had stock in Amazon at the beginning pretty much and we sold it right away.
[15:17] We didn't think it was going to get anywhere.
[15:19] So, I've made a lot of mistakes.
[15:21] I I wish I wish I had held on to some of these things.
[15:22] Well, you also made a lot of uh you also backed a lot of winners.
[15:26] Now, another category you talk about builders, Ken Griffy and Jamie Diamond and so on.
[15:30] Just what are they?
[15:32] What are these people?
[15:34] Well, builders are people that take an organization that might already be there.
[15:36] Let's say um JP Morgan.
[15:40] Uh JP Morgan has been around for a long time.
[15:41] It's a very famous bank.
[15:43] But when Jaime Diamond went there after his bank that he was then running, Bank One, was bought by JP Morgan, he built it into the most powerful bank in the world.
[15:51] Now, therefore, he didn't start JP Morgan and he didn't start Bank One, but he built an organization that was quite impressive.
[15:57] Transformers, what are they?
[15:59] Transformers are people that take an organization and change it dramatically from the organization that they they might have found.
[16:04] Um a a good person in that category might be uh Steve Jobs.
[16:09] Steve Jobs was uh started Apple but he
[16:12] was thrown out of Apple.
[16:14] He was out of Apple for 12 years running Next and then Next was sold to Apple.
[16:19] He went back to Apple and he transformed it from a company that was almost going bankrupt into a company that became, you know, worth about $4 trillion.
[16:23] commanders.
[16:26] Well, commanders are people who are, you know, uh take great leadership uh skills and and really learn how to uh get people to follow follow them in some ways.
[16:36] And I'll give you an example.
[16:39] Um a military leader can be a great commander.
[16:40] Norman Schwarzoff or Coen Pow as an example.
[16:43] Colon Pal was see the chairman of Joint Chiefs and he really was a great leader, a commander of of people and knew how to get the most out of people in a military context.
[16:52] And then uh we got two more categories there.
[16:54] decision makers,
[16:55] people who have to make really tough decisions all the time and then they do reasonably well.
[17:00] Very often you got a CEO who's making tough decisions about how to build or grow a company or uh a president of the United States or other leaders of a of a country who have to make decisions all the time.
[17:10] When you're let's say the CEO of a company, you get
[17:13] decisions coming to you all the time.
[17:14] A president of United States going to make decisions.
[17:15] Really good ones are making good decisions.
[17:18] And then the last one is masters.
[17:21] Well, masters are people who, you know, people you greatly respect.
[17:26] They have a command of the subject matter that is so significant that people really want to listen to them and really want to follow them in many ways.
[17:33] Um, you could say what what uh take the founders of Google for example, the two founders of Google, they had a concept and they grew the company in a way that was quite quite impressive.
[17:46] Helped by Eric Schmidt as well who was the CEO for a long time.
[17:48] Um so masters are people that master a subject very well.
[17:50] They know it inside out.
[17:52] In the case of Google, it was the the system of uh for re for for search engines.
[17:57] But you know there are many people who master a subject and know it inside out upside down but don't actually build great companies.
[18:02] Some do.
[18:04] Which category would you put yourself in?
[18:06] Well, I wouldn't say I'm all that skilled in any one thing.
[18:07] I probably maybe more of a builder because I well I started Carl I I really built it in many
[18:14] ways because it was my vision.
[18:17] My vision was to have two things that had never been done before in private equity.
[18:20] Private equity was always a mom and pop business.
[18:21] They're very small firms.
[18:23] When KKR did the RJR deal 1989, they had about seven or eight, nine people.
[18:26] That's very small.
[18:26] Um, that's because they had one fund, a private equity funded buyouts.
[18:30] I decided I would have a business that did buyouts, but then I have a growth capital business, a real estate business, and a debt business so forth.
[18:37] So, I have multiple uh products and then I would globalize it.
[18:41] So at that time when I was starting Carlile, nobody had a buyout business in Europe that was an American company or nobody in America had a business that was an Asian buyout business.
[18:51] But I decided I would have different funds all over the world.
[18:55] So I would both um have many different disciplines and then globalize it and that was the vision I had and I did it but I could have done it better than others.
[19:03] I could have done it better than I did.
[19:05] Some have done it better than I did.
[19:06] M in your book you talk about you know why why why do anybody want to be a leader and it's very common it's very common driver you think
[19:15] yeah most people in the world are leaders in one way you're a leader of a family let's say you're your parent you're you're a leader of the family but
[19:22] most people don't say I want to be a leader of a country I want to be a leader of a large company so forth so
[19:27] some people have a drive to do that
[19:29] maybe to prove that they're they're they're worth something that they've really achieved something in their life
[19:34] so uh everybody doesn't say they want to do that.
[19:36] Many people are very content to be h just going along not being a leader.
[19:40] In fact, the happiest people in the world are not leaders.
[19:41] Now, happiness is the most elusive thing in life.
[19:45] Probably very few people are truly truly happy.
[19:46] But very often the happiest people are people who have don't have a lot of money and aren't leaders.
[19:50] They're just people that living their life.
[19:52] They might have a nice f they might have a nice family, but they're not trying to change the world.
[19:56] People that try to change the world have such u drive sometimes and they're never going to get to where they really want to be that they're going to feel that they're inadequate in some ways.
[20:06] and therefore not as happy as they might want to be.
[20:08] Have you never met a happy leader?
[20:10] Um when they retire sometimes they get to be happy but happiness is very elusive.
[20:13] Thomas Jefferson talked about it in the Declaration of Independence.
[20:17] He wrote the sentence that became the
[20:18] most famous sense in the history of the
[20:20] English language. We hold these truths
[20:21] to be self-evident that all men are
[20:22] created equal that they're endowed by
[20:24] their creator with certain unalienable
[20:25] rights and among these are life,
[20:26] liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
[20:28] But he never actually defined happiness
[20:30] and nobody really knows exactly what
[20:32] creates happiness. But clearly some
[20:34] people have a happiness and when you
[20:36] talk to them you can see they're happy
[20:37] with their life and some people are just
[20:39] bitter and they're not happy with their
[20:41] life and maybe for personal reasons or
[20:42] professional reasons. Very few people
[20:44] actually achieve their goals in life and
[20:46] if you're very ambitious it's very
[20:48] difficult to get to your goals.
[20:49] >> Is it a goal to be happy?
[20:51] >> I think what is life all about? I think
[20:53] life is probably about creating
[20:56] happiness. Um probably more so than
[20:59] anything else you can say what do people
[21:00] really want? What they want is generally
[21:03] to have um a family, not always family,
[21:06] have a good relationship with a partner
[21:08] and have children that are grow up happy
[21:10] and healthy and that leave you leave a
[21:12] legacy behind for your children um to
[21:14] kind of follow and but happiness is a
[21:16] very elusive and you know psychiatrists
[21:19] make a fortune because there not that
[21:20] many people who are happy and and and
[21:22] pharmaceutical companies make a fortune
[21:24] because so many people are on all kinds
[21:25] of medications. So happiness is elusive
[21:28] but I think it is probably the ultimate
[21:30] goal. Are you happy?
[21:31] >> I'm always trying to do more and I
[21:34] always say I wish I could have done
[21:35] this. I wish I was a better athlete. I
[21:36] was a better uh business builder. I was
[21:39] a better writer, a better interviewer. I
[21:41] always um I'm pretty critical of myself.
[21:43] So I I wouldn't say I'm happy, but I'm
[21:45] happier than I thought I would be 30 or
[21:47] 40 years ago when I didn't think my
[21:49] career would really go where it went.
[21:51] >> Why are Jewish people outperforming in
[21:53] nearly everything?
[21:54] >> That's a more complicated subject. Um,
[21:56] when you think about it, they're roughly
[21:57] 8 billion people on the face of the
[21:59] earth and they're roughly 13 14 billion
[22:01] Jews. Relatively small population and
[22:04] they've survived for 2,000 years more or
[22:07] less because of a lot of different
[22:09] factors, but Jews seem to be with some
[22:12] exceptions and you can't always say that
[22:14] that what I'm about to say is always
[22:15] true, but they tend to focus on um
[22:18] education. They tend to focus on u uh
[22:21] philanthropy. they tend to focus on
[22:24] strong family units and those things
[22:26] over thousands of years when you have
[22:28] the DNA all staying within a certain
[22:30] gene pool it tends to produce those kind
[22:32] of results. Now obviously when you say
[22:34] that Jews are happy and they make a fair
[22:37] amount of money and they're in in
[22:38] philanthropy you do produce some
[22:39] anti-semitism too and today
[22:41] anti-semitism is clearly on the rise.
[22:43] >> One of the things you need to do as a co
[22:46] is to convince people. What is the what
[22:48] are the important things when it comes
[22:49] to the art of convincing people? There
[22:51] are three ways you can convince people
[22:53] to do something in my judgment. One is
[22:55] you learn how to talk. You say to
[22:56] people, I'm I want you to do this and
[22:58] here are the reasons. And if you can
[23:00] talk persuasively, that can be helpful.
[23:01] Now, you don't have to be Martin Luther
[23:03] King at the get at the Lincoln Memorial
[23:05] giving a great speech, but you can be
[23:06] persuasive without giving that kind of
[23:08] speech. Another thing is to write well.
[23:10] You don't have to be uh Abraham Lincoln
[23:11] writing the Gettysburg address, but you
[23:13] can write well. So people in in the
[23:15] today we people are getting memos or
[23:17] emails all the time. If somebody writes
[23:18] something that's persuasive, that can be
[23:20] helpful. Um, if you talk well, that can
[23:22] be helpful. But the most effective way
[23:24] to persuade people to do something is to
[23:26] do it yourself and be a role model. If
[23:28] you say to people, I want you to work
[23:30] hard, but you're working three hours a
[23:31] day, that's not probably going to be the
[23:33] right way to do it. If you work 10 hours
[23:34] a day, 12 hours a day, people are going
[23:36] to see you who work for you, and they'll
[23:38] say, well, that's the way to get ahead.
[23:39] He's the role model. I'm going to follow
[23:41] him or her.
[23:42] >> You kept in touch with um all the
[23:44] American presidents since you were 27
[23:46] years old. So for 50 years, what's the
[23:48] key to keeping in touch with the
[23:50] presidents?
[23:51] >> Well, probably giving to their libraries
[23:53] probably helps. But uh um for all
[23:55] presidents in our country these days,
[23:57] they they have libraries and they all
[23:59] build libraries and they're always
[24:00] looking for money for it. But to be very
[24:02] serious, I I have um kept in touch with
[24:04] them because I've interviewed them at
[24:06] events and so forth and I try to be
[24:08] supportive of some of their causes and
[24:11] generally a lot of them have admired my
[24:12] philanthropy. A lot of it my
[24:14] philanthropy is preserving American
[24:15] history and a lot of them help to make
[24:17] American history. So it's a number of
[24:19] different ways but um I I know some
[24:21] presidents better than others and you
[24:23] know I you know I I enjoy it I guess
[24:24] because I I always you know admired the
[24:27] presidency and and wanted to be around
[24:28] it. That's why I worked in the White
[24:29] House. So I've had a special interest in
[24:31] knowing presidents and maybe hanging
[24:33] around the White House or doing things
[24:34] that preserve American history and
[24:35] particularly White House history.
[24:37] >> What do presidents have in common?
[24:39] >> Presidents have in common ambition. Um,
[24:42] there are some presidents who became
[24:43] president without ambition to be so.
[24:45] Calvin Kulage a long time ago really
[24:46] didn't really want to be president. But
[24:48] generally, remember to be president of
[24:50] the United States, you have to put
[24:52] yourself through a hellacious process
[24:54] for roughly two years or so to kind of
[24:56] go from a primary, work your way up, win
[24:58] the primaries in the general election.
[24:59] It's a very complicated process and you
[25:02] have to say, why do they want to do
[25:03] that? Because they want to they're
[25:04] ambitious. This is their profession
[25:06] politics. The top of the profession is
[25:07] is the presidency. But think about it.
[25:09] Um, John Kenny was assassinated. Uh,
[25:12] Linda Johnson driven out of office.
[25:14] Richard Nixon driven out of office.
[25:16] Gerald Ford couldn't get re-elected.
[25:17] Jeremy Carter couldn't get reelected.
[25:19] Ronald Reagan almost was assassinated.
[25:21] Um, George Herbert Walker Bush couldn't
[25:23] get reelected. And so you say to
[25:24] yourself, why do these people want this
[25:26] thing? You might be getting assassinated
[25:28] or maybe assassinated or you have a
[25:30] scandal um or you almost you're
[25:32] impeached. I mean, Donald Trump was
[25:33] impeached twice. Bill Clinton was
[25:34] impeached once. So why do people want
[25:36] this job where it's so difficult? That's
[25:38] because at the top of the uh of the
[25:40] totem pole in the politics world is
[25:41] being present and so people want to be
[25:43] at the top.
[25:44] >> Now um you at the top of um of a popular
[25:48] TV show. So how did you decide to do
[25:50] that?
[25:52] >> Well, what happened is like most things
[25:53] in life by it's by serendipity. If I
[25:56] said I want to hire McKenzie and how can
[25:57] I get better known? They wouldn't have
[25:59] said well you're you have a you're a shy
[26:01] person and why don't you take
[26:02] interviewing up? They wouldn't have said
[26:04] that. So um I uh what happened was at
[26:07] Carlo I'm trying to get a lot of people
[26:08] to come to the events because we're
[26:10] trying to market funds and to get people
[26:11] there I would get former presidents of
[26:13] the United States or secretaries of
[26:14] state and I'd pay him a fee as part of
[26:16] the legitimate fee business and then
[26:18] they would be speaking but they were
[26:19] boring very often. So I I went to the
[26:21] speaking agent said look I think I have
[26:22] a good sense of humor maybe I could make
[26:24] them a little more human if I inter
[26:26] interview interview them. They said if
[26:27] the fees the same we don't care as long
[26:28] as the fees the same we don't care. So I
[26:30] started interviewing them. I made some,
[26:31] let's say, dry personalities funnier and
[26:34] more human. So then I became the head of
[26:35] the economic club in Washington and all
[26:37] I had to do was get business people to
[26:38] come in and speak and I found that they
[26:40] were terrible. Their CEOs were terrible.
[26:42] And then the questions from the members
[26:44] uh were terrible, too. So I said, I'll
[26:46] tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going
[26:46] to junk this format and I'm going to
[26:48] just do interviews and I could use my
[26:50] sense of humor. And that all of a sudden
[26:52] Bloomberg after a couple years saw it
[26:53] and said, let's put on TV. And then they
[26:55] said, okay, that's a good show and
[26:56] that's how it went on business. And then
[26:58] it led to other things. So, I I've
[27:00] learned how to do interviewing because I
[27:02] now do a lot of it. And I reason I enjoy
[27:04] it is one, you can get to see almost
[27:06] anybody in the world. If you say you've
[27:07] got a TV show or or or some kind of
[27:10] broadcast, people might be willing to go
[27:11] on it.
[27:12] >> Secondly, it it gives me a chance to
[27:14] read a lot because I want to read and to
[27:16] prepare for the interview. So, I do a
[27:17] lot of the reading and that helps my
[27:19] brain, I think. And also, it's a way to
[27:21] connect with people because, you know,
[27:23] you're going to get to meet people that
[27:24] I might otherwise get to meet. So, let's
[27:25] suppose I had no interviews. I probably
[27:27] wouldn't spend that much time with
[27:28] former presidents of the United States.
[27:29] They probably say, "Why do I need to
[27:30] talk to you?"
[27:31] >> Uh, how does it help your business?
[27:32] >> It helps in ways I did not anticipate.
[27:35] It's hard to believe. I built Carlile
[27:37] with the help of others and, you know,
[27:39] been went almost 40 years. When I go
[27:41] around the world, people don't come up
[27:43] to me and say, "David, you have a really
[27:45] good rate of return on that deal." Or,
[27:46] "David, that was a really clever deal
[27:48] you did." They say, "I saw you on TV. I
[27:50] love your interview. Uh, when can I go
[27:52] on one of your shows?" And so it's
[27:54] amazing how many people um watch these
[27:56] shows. Now Bloomberg is seen all over
[27:58] the world because Bloomberg is all over
[27:59] the world. And so it helps me gives my
[28:02] my visibility I guess in my age. I'm now
[28:04] um an age where many people my age are
[28:07] retired but I I enjoy what I'm doing and
[28:09] I keeps me young to kind of be able to
[28:11] keep doing this. But also you know when
[28:14] people come up to you young people all
[28:15] the time and say I watch your interview
[28:17] shows and I like it. It you know it's a
[28:19] good feeling.
[28:19] >> Tell me about this thing. How do you
[28:20] prepare for these interviews? Because I
[28:22] I totally agree with you. It's amazing
[28:23] to have to you you meet somebody and you
[28:26] don't want to look like a fool. You have
[28:27] to read up on what they do. You see what
[28:29] they've done before. You read the books
[28:30] and so on. Like I read all your books,
[28:32] [laughter] you know.
[28:32] >> Well, I apologize for for you to do
[28:34] that, but
[28:35] >> it was great. So, I learned a lot about
[28:36] it.
[28:37] >> What I do is I if somebody has a book, I
[28:40] always read the book. Um and rarely do I
[28:43] I I read a summary of the book and
[28:45] because I I sometimes might not have the
[28:47] time, but I always want to prepare. And
[28:48] then what I do is I prepare questions in
[28:50] advance and that helps me think it
[28:52] through. And then I kind of uh memorize
[28:54] the questions a bit because I they're my
[28:56] own words. If somebody prepared the
[28:58] questions for me, I probably couldn't
[28:59] remember them. And then I I often I do
[29:02] another technique I've been using lately
[29:04] is I will read the book, but sometimes
[29:06] the books are not as good as I want them
[29:08] to be. And sometimes the person is not
[29:10] somebody I didn't know or they might not
[29:11] have had a book. So I watch interviews
[29:13] that they've given on YouTube. And so I
[29:15] very often can now spend time watching
[29:17] some of the YouTube interviews that
[29:18] other people have given that I'm about
[29:19] to interview and it gives me a sense of
[29:21] their personality, the kind of things I
[29:22] like to talk about and not. So that's
[29:24] how I prepare. And I always, you know,
[29:25] think that I remember what Jim Baker
[29:28] told me. Jim Baker, a former secretary
[29:29] of state, uh, was in our firm for 15
[29:32] years, one of the most successful
[29:33] secretary of state, White House chiefs
[29:35] of staff, secretary of treasury, very
[29:36] impressive guy. He told me as a as a
[29:38] young man, his father said to him,
[29:40] "Prior preparation prevents poor
[29:43] performance." the five Ps. Prior
[29:45] preparation prevents poor performance.
[29:47] And I always realize if you're prepared,
[29:49] you're probably going to do reasonably
[29:50] well. If you're not prepared and just
[29:52] wing it, you probably won't do as well.
[29:54] >> But you don't you don't use notes, so
[29:55] I'm really impressed because I have
[29:56] notes.
[29:57] >> Well, I'm but I don't have your memory
[29:59] anyway.
[29:59] >> You have a great memory. But let me put
[30:01] it this way. If I took those notes away
[30:03] from you today right now, you would do
[30:05] the same interview. You do as well. It's
[30:06] it's a little bit of a crutch. And the
[30:08] reason I don't use it is for this
[30:10] reason. Um I do have a good memory.
[30:12] There's no doubt I can probably memorize
[30:14] with some of the stuff, but if I prepare
[30:17] 30 questions and I only get 27 of them,
[30:20] nobody's going to know except me. So,
[30:21] nobody will really know I missed
[30:22] something. It's not like you're reading
[30:24] a Shakespeare and you forgot a couple
[30:25] lines and people know you forgot the
[30:27] lines. Secondly, um I feel that in the
[30:30] eye contact is very important. So, when
[30:33] you have the papers in front of you,
[30:34] very often you look down. As soon as you
[30:36] look down, you lose the eye contact and
[30:38] it makes it look less more of an
[30:40] interview than than a conversation. And
[30:42] that's why I do it this way. I do it.
[30:44] But I'm not perfect. And sometimes, you
[30:46] know, I'm always, you know, thinking,
[30:48] did I have the right question? Did I
[30:49] forget something? But every time I'm
[30:51] listening to a person, I'm always
[30:52] thinking of the next question as well.
[30:54] But it's important to listen. And when I
[30:56] interviewed Oprah Winfrey once, she
[30:57] said, I said, Oprah, you're a really
[30:58] good interviewer. She said, "No, no, I'm
[30:59] a good listener. I listen." And that's
[31:01] the key to interviewing. Listen to what
[31:03] the person says. Um, you know, for
[31:05] example, when the FBI agents come by to
[31:07] interview me on a background check for
[31:08] somebody, they have a checklist of 10
[31:10] things. and I can say, "Well, actually,
[31:12] this person is an axe murderer. He's
[31:13] killed a couple people." They won't
[31:14] actually stop and they just go to the
[31:16] next question because they just want to
[31:17] get their things done. And uh I won't
[31:19] mention his name, but there's a very
[31:21] famous person in the United States who
[31:22] is considered a brilliant person, one of
[31:24] the most famous intellects and uh
[31:27] professional people and very famous guy.
[31:29] >> If you had if you had to say his name,
[31:31] >> I'm not going to tell you his name
[31:32] because I don't want to embarrass him.
[31:34] um he was a college champion debater and
[31:37] uh he but every time he got to the
[31:39] finals he lost to this one other person
[31:42] who was also champion debater and not
[31:45] not a f as famous a school. So finally
[31:47] after losing four or five times he went
[31:49] to this person and said tell me what am
[31:50] I doing wrong? How come I'm losing to
[31:52] all you all to you all the time? And he
[31:53] said you know what it's debate. You're
[31:55] supposed to listen to what the other
[31:56] person says and then respond but you're
[31:58] never listening. You're just making up
[32:00] statements that you already had cooked
[32:01] up in advance. Listen to what the other
[32:03] person says. you'll do better. And I
[32:04] think it's very important as an
[32:05] interviewer to to pivot. You listen to
[32:07] what the person says or they say
[32:08] something you didn't expect, then pivot
[32:10] and and and and follow up.
[32:12] >> What's the key to good listening?
[32:13] >> Well, the good key to good listening is
[32:16] uh you know actually not focusing so
[32:18] much on the next question, but listen to
[32:21] what the person is saying in that
[32:22] question. And then try to um you know uh
[32:26] get people to talk about uh their
[32:28] favorite subject, which is themselves.
[32:30] Everybody's favorite subject is
[32:31] themselves. And if you let people talk
[32:33] more about themselves, they generally
[32:35] respond positively. And what I have
[32:36] found over the years is that what people
[32:38] like to talk about is their upbringing.
[32:42] If they was a harsh upbringing or a good
[32:43] upbringing, they like to talk about it.
[32:45] Their their relationships with with
[32:47] their parents very often they like to
[32:48] talk about it. Sometimes they not. And
[32:49] then generally the mistakes they made.
[32:51] People like to talk about the mistakes
[32:53] they made and the difficulties they had
[32:54] in overcoming those mistakes. And that's
[32:56] what I I I find people most like to talk
[32:59] about. And a lot of good people have
[33:01] self-deprecating humor. Um, some don't.
[33:04] Um, you know, um, some
[33:05] >> your humor is more English than
[33:07] American, right?
[33:08] >> I have what people call a dry sense of
[33:10] humor.
[33:10] >> Yeah. And and also it strikes me because
[33:11] you're a pinstripe, so it's a bit
[33:13] English the whole thing, [laughter]
[33:13] right?
[33:14] >> Um, my I have a dry sense of humor and
[33:17] some it goes
[33:18] >> Where does that come from?
[33:19] >> You know, it may be I I it may be a
[33:21] self-deprecating style. I'm not quite
[33:23] sure, but I'll give you an example. I
[33:25] interviewed Bill Gates one time and I
[33:27] I've known Bill for a while, but I
[33:28] wouldn't say I'm not close to him. I
[33:30] interviewed one time for my Bloomberg
[33:32] show. I think it was maybe the one of
[33:34] the first ones I was doing. And I went
[33:35] to his personal office and I said to
[33:38] Bill, tell me this, if you had um um you
[33:42] know had a college degree, you think you
[33:44] could have been more successful in life?
[33:46] Well, it went right over his head. He
[33:48] didn't he gave a serious answer. uh when
[33:50] I gave that question to him another time
[33:52] I interviewed him in front of a audience
[33:54] the audience laughed and then he got the
[33:56] picture that it was a humor humorous
[33:58] thing. So sometimes people don't have
[34:00] senses of humor and if you ask him a dry
[34:02] sense of humor kind of question they
[34:03] won't get it. Um but you know Jeff Bezos
[34:06] I interviewed him in front of a large
[34:08] audience and I ask him sort of humorous
[34:10] questions he got the point. But um I
[34:12] like interviewing people in front of a
[34:14] audience and the reason I like to do it
[34:15] is because the audience reaction is
[34:17] something I can play off of. If people
[34:19] laugh, that's good. And it also loosens
[34:22] up the person you're interviewing,
[34:24] >> I found. So I I I and also I like to
[34:27] make people happy. And when I'm
[34:28] interviewing people, I can make people
[34:31] uh enjoy it because I tend to use a fair
[34:33] amount of humor. And by the humor,
[34:35] people kind of they might not remember
[34:36] the uh the uh the substance of things,
[34:39] but they always come up to me and say,
[34:40] "That was a funny thing," or "That was a
[34:41] funny line." And I I you know, I just
[34:43] have a good sense of of how to do that,
[34:45] I guess.
[34:45] >> Yeah. No, I listen to a lot of your
[34:47] interviews. um you know at the
[34:48] Washington economic club or economic
[34:50] level Washington you do really well
[34:52] there. I hate to um bore you for that. I
[34:54] tone down the humor a little bit there.
[34:55] >> Do Americans have a sense of humor you
[34:57] think?
[34:57] >> Uh we need American we need a sense of
[34:59] humor given where we're some of the
[35:00] things going on but yes um you know I'd
[35:02] say I would say I don't know Norway as
[35:04] well obviously as you do but I I don't
[35:05] know whether there's a sense of humor in
[35:07] Norway that's more typical than than it
[35:09] might be in the United States. United
[35:10] States you know sense of humor is not
[35:13] atypical probably.
[35:14] >> Yeah. Well, I I guess England is the
[35:16] best place, right?
[35:17] >> Probably probably so. Um, yeah, maybe
[35:20] so. But Norway has a lot of pluses. I've
[35:22] spent a lot of time there, I should say,
[35:23] over the years with talking to various
[35:25] pension funds and so forth, and I've
[35:27] enjoyed it. It's a country, you know,
[35:29] small country. And when the Nobel Prize
[35:31] was set up, I was doing some research on
[35:33] it recently and it turned out that uh
[35:35] that u Alfred Nobel u I didn't for
[35:38] reasons he didn't describe um he gave
[35:40] the peace prize to a committee of five
[35:42] people of the Norwegian port parliament
[35:44] and it said that he thought that Norway
[35:46] was more peaceful than Sweden.
[35:48] >> Talking talking of which why do you want
[35:49] to interview the pope? the Pope um well
[35:51] the the Pope doesn't do a lot of
[35:53] interviews maybe virtually none and to
[35:55] somebody whose last name is Rubenstein
[35:57] probably not going to give an interview
[35:58] but uh the current pope is an American
[36:01] um he actually I'm the chair of the
[36:02] board of universe Chicago and apparently
[36:04] he took a a summer extension course or
[36:06] something or another one time at Chicago
[36:08] but I don't know if that's going to uh
[36:09] enable me to get in do an interview of
[36:11] him
[36:11] >> have you tried
[36:12] >> not yet um but I'll tell you the first
[36:14] time I met a pope I was at the White
[36:16] House in 1978
[36:18] Pope John Paul II back and came and he
[36:21] was a revolutionary figure. Remember he
[36:23] came from Poland, first non-atholic, a
[36:24] first non-Italian pope in a long time.
[36:26] And I remember when I went to go in the
[36:28] receiving line, he shake his hand or
[36:31] something like that. I saw his hand. He
[36:32] put it out and he had a Casio watch on
[36:35] like every second. He didn't know what's
[36:37] going on. I say, "Hey, I assume you'd
[36:38] have a Roman numeral uh kind of watch
[36:40] and you don't really care what the time
[36:41] is because you're not in a big hurry,
[36:43] but he had a thing telling him where
[36:44] thing it was every tenth of a second." I
[36:46] was thinking I should have asked him,
[36:47] but I didn't want to, you know,
[36:48] embarrass him. [laughter]
[36:50] Um let's talk [clears throat] a bit
[36:52] about values. Why is humility an
[36:54] important virtue?
[36:55] >> Well, I value humility because I think
[36:58] that arrogance, the opposite of
[36:59] humility, is something that uh is not a
[37:02] endearing trait. And um to me, the
[37:05] leaders that I most admire are people
[37:06] that are humble. Um Abraham Lincoln won
[37:09] the Civil War. Can you imagine Abraham
[37:11] Lincoln walking around the White House
[37:13] say, "Hey, I just won the Civil War."
[37:14] "Yeah, I'm pretty impressive, aren't I?"
[37:16] Or can you see him signing the executive
[37:18] to the executive order that outlawed uh
[37:20] slavery, the emancipation proclamation,
[37:22] and holding it up and going like this so
[37:24] everybody could see Abraham Lincoln. You
[37:26] can't picture that. He was a humble man.
[37:28] And I think humility is is a real
[37:31] virtue. Now, there is false humility. Of
[37:33] course, people pretend they're humble,
[37:35] but then they tell you how great they
[37:36] are. But I think humility is something
[37:37] that is is a good virtue to have. And
[37:40] you know, I try to be as humble as I
[37:42] can. I'm not trying to brag about myself
[37:43] unduly, but obviously I'm not perfect in
[37:45] this regard. I I put my name on
[37:47] buildings. If I if I put up money for a
[37:49] university building, I put my name on
[37:50] it. And the reason I do that is I try to
[37:52] show people and particularly in
[37:54] Washington DC where my name's on
[37:55] something that somebody can come from a
[37:57] poor background can rise up and they can
[37:59] do something useful for the country or
[38:01] or university by giving money that helps
[38:04] other people presumably. And so that's
[38:06] why I I often put my name on buildings
[38:08] if I give them money to help a building
[38:09] get off the ground. You talk a lot about
[38:11] history and you have a lot of historical
[38:12] references. Why are you so interested in
[38:14] history?
[38:14] >> I guess as a student I wasn't as great
[38:16] in the sciences as I was in history. So
[38:18] I did well in history in in high school
[38:20] and college and it's something I can
[38:22] understand. History is um you know it's
[38:24] about reading and writing and I'm those
[38:25] are skills I have. I'm not probably as
[38:27] good in the math as as I am in in
[38:28] history reading and writing. But also um
[38:31] my view is that that history is
[38:34] something that teaches you about the
[38:35] mistakes of the past. And the theory
[38:37] behind studying history is that if you
[38:39] learn about the past, you learn about
[38:41] the good things that you should do in
[38:42] the future and the bad things you should
[38:44] avoid. And um so I I think it's very
[38:46] important for people to have a sense of
[38:48] history. And I think presidents of the
[38:49] United States particularly should have a
[38:50] sense of history too or leaders of
[38:52] organizations because you you know
[38:53] people have made a mistakes over the
[38:55] years and if you're going to make the
[38:56] same mistakes you can avoid them if you
[38:58] learn about history a bit more.
[38:59] >> When you look at the world today, do you
[39:01] feel that we are learning from history?
[39:03] >> No. Um I think that today we have a lot
[39:07] of wars going on and people haven't
[39:10] learned from the history that wars
[39:12] usually result in a lot of people dying
[39:14] not necessarily making humans better
[39:16] off. Um I think people tend to ignore
[39:19] history or they rewrite history. Um some
[39:22] people are like President Putin
[39:26] likes to talk about the history of
[39:27] Ukraine and Russia. It's a history that
[39:29] many people or scholars think is not
[39:31] quite accurate. But he and I hope this
[39:33] doesn't result in my anybody coming
[39:35] after me from from Russia. But but I
[39:37] don't know that his history of Russia
[39:39] and Ukraine is quite as accurate as many
[39:42] other scholars would think it is. But
[39:43] that's his view of history. And he cites
[39:45] history as the reason for to doing what
[39:47] he's now doing in Ukraine or trying to
[39:48] do in Ukraine.
[39:49] >> You spend a lot of money uh preserving
[39:52] US history, right? You bought Magna
[39:54] Carta.
[39:54] >> Yes.
[39:55] >> Um restored Lincoln Memorial and so on.
[39:58] Why? What kind of ideals are you trying
[40:00] to
[40:00] >> let me try to All right, let me try to
[40:02] describe. Yeah, I didn't I didn't hire
[40:03] McKenzie or BCG as I said earlier about
[40:05] something else to give me an idea of how
[40:08] people can remember me. I I stumbled
[40:10] into it. What happened was I went to an
[40:12] auction one time in New York. It wasn't
[40:14] an auction. I thought it was a viewing
[40:15] and it turned out it was going to be an
[40:16] auction the next day of the Magna Carta.
[40:18] And they told me, very clever curator
[40:20] said, "The Magna Carta is likely to be
[40:21] sold tomorrow. It's owned. It's the only
[40:23] copy in private hands. There are 17 of
[40:24] them. This is the only one in private
[40:25] hands owned by Ross Barau and it'll
[40:27] probably be sold tomorrow and as
[40:28] somebody the likely buyers are from
[40:30] Russia and a couple other countries
[40:32] didn't seem like very favorable to the
[40:33] United States and I said okay I know it
[40:34] was the inspiration for Declaration
[40:35] Independence we should keep the one copy
[40:37] that's in private hands in the United
[40:38] States. So I went back and bought it the
[40:39] next day and and gave it a permanent
[40:41] loan to the National Archives.
[40:43] >> $20 million.
[40:44] >> I paid $21 million for it. But you know
[40:47] at the time I just thought it was a good
[40:49] thing to do as a gift to the country. Um
[40:51] later when the Washington Monument had
[40:52] its earthquake damage, um I called the
[40:54] head of the park service and I said,
[40:55] "How long is it going to take to fix
[40:56] it?" He said, "It's going to take a
[40:57] couple years. Congress is going to have
[40:59] hearings and all this. I I don't have
[41:00] the money from that right now to do it.
[41:02] It'll take me a while to get it." I
[41:02] said, "Forget that. I'll put up the
[41:04] money." And I didn't think it was that
[41:05] big a deal. It wasn't that much money.
[41:07] But uh it got a lot of attention because
[41:08] people can't imagine or couldn't imagine
[41:10] a private citizen putting up the money
[41:12] for the Washington Monument. So the
[41:13] reason I like to do this is this. Let me
[41:15] let me try to explain. um in um
[41:20] the human brain is an incredible device.
[41:22] You know, when when humans showed up on
[41:23] the face of the earth, let's say as as
[41:25] homo sapiens 400,000 years ago, uh it
[41:28] wasn't evident to the gorillas or the
[41:30] tigers or the lions or elephants that we
[41:32] were going to dominate the world because
[41:34] we weren't as fast, we weren't as big,
[41:35] we weren't as hairy, we weren't as
[41:37] strong. But we dominated the world and
[41:38] why we now can kill any animal and we
[41:40] dominate the world. Why? Because we have
[41:42] this human brain. And the human brain is
[41:44] an incredible device. you know, it can
[41:46] create a Picasso painting, uh, an
[41:48] Einstein theory of relativity, uh, all
[41:50] kinds of things that are incredible that
[41:52] the brain can do that no other animal on
[41:54] space on face earth can do. But it has a
[41:56] couple disadvantages. And one of the
[41:58] disadvantages is it because in the early
[42:00] days of of human history, um, people
[42:03] weren't sure that somebody coming along
[42:05] might be interested in killing them. And
[42:07] so you had to recognize friends and foe
[42:10] relatively quickly to see whether
[42:11] somebody's a friend or foe. And so you
[42:14] have facial recognition and you could
[42:15] recognize somebody's face and that's why
[42:17] uh and and that was for for hundreds of
[42:19] thousand years. Names are a couple
[42:20] thousand years old. So that sometimes as
[42:22] you get older, you're not old enough yet
[42:24] to know this problem. You might forget
[42:25] people's names, but you'll recognize
[42:26] their face. So the human brain um in
[42:29] that way is not perfect because uh when
[42:32] we we've kind of got the history of
[42:34] people look different than us, we get
[42:35] mad at them or potentially that's why
[42:37] there's a lot of racism and other
[42:38] things. If people worship differently or
[42:41] look differently, we have a natural
[42:43] ingrained instinct to be against them
[42:45] for whatever reason. Obviously, not
[42:46] perfect situation. Another thing that
[42:48] the human brain doesn't do as well yet,
[42:50] and maybe it will later, is if I show
[42:52] you a computer slide of the Magna Carta,
[42:54] you push a button, you'll go to the next
[42:55] thing. If I say you're going to come see
[42:57] the Magna Carta, well, you might get
[42:59] excited about it. You're going to see
[43:00] the original. So, you might read about
[43:01] it before you go there. When you get
[43:02] there, a curator is going to explain it
[43:03] to you. And when you go home, you're
[43:05] more likely to take some literature. And
[43:06] so more likely you're going to have a
[43:07] more of an experience of seeing the
[43:09] original Magna Carter or seeing the
[43:10] original of George Washington's home,
[43:11] Mount Vernon. And so by preserving them,
[43:14] we we have as long as human brain is
[43:16] still better uh developed uh in in and
[43:18] seeing things in person than is seeing
[43:20] on a computer slide, it's more likely to
[43:22] educate people. So in other words, maybe
[43:24] in a thousand years from today, seeing a
[43:25] computer slide of the Magna Carta will
[43:27] have the same impact exactly the same as
[43:29] seeing the original. But today it
[43:30] doesn't. And so since it doesn't, I want
[43:32] to get more people to go to see these
[43:33] historic things so they can learn about
[43:35] it. and therefore hopefully learn more
[43:36] about history. That's why I try to
[43:38] preserve things
[43:39] >> partly because of this but also because
[43:40] of a lot of other things. You recently
[43:42] got the Presidential Medal of Freedom
[43:44] which is which is the highest
[43:45] distinction of this country, right?
[43:47] >> Highest civilian.
[43:48] >> What what did it mean to you personally?
[43:50] >> Well, I regret that my parents weren't
[43:52] allowed to see it because my mother
[43:53] would have said he deserved it. But um I
[43:55] would say um you know look uh everybody
[43:59] likes to be honored by the president of
[44:00] the United States I suppose. And so the
[44:03] highest civilian honor you can get.
[44:05] There's a military honor uh
[44:06] congressional medal of uh of honor. It's
[44:08] a different thing for people in combat.
[44:10] Um you know, I'm sure it's a highlight
[44:12] uh of my life to get it and be
[44:14] recognized, but you know, in the end um
[44:17] you know, I I my children came to the
[44:19] event and I I wasn't sure why they all
[44:21] flew in from the country around the
[44:23] country to be there, but I think it was
[44:24] because Magic Johnson was also getting
[44:26] one and I think they wanted to meet
[44:27] Magic Johnson or some of the other
[44:28] people getting the events getting the
[44:29] awards. So I'm not sure they came to see
[44:31] me. I think they did. Why are there more
[44:34] old tycoons now than in the past? Just
[44:37] old business people who are doing really
[44:38] well. I mean, they're just hanging in
[44:40] there for a long time, right? I mean,
[44:41] it's Murdoch. It's I mean, you name
[44:43] them, they are they're going strong. I
[44:45] mean,
[44:45] >> okay. There's a couple reason.
[44:46] >> I mean, you are 78.
[44:48] >> I'm 76.
[44:49] >> 76.
[44:49] >> I look like I'm 78, but I'm 76.
[44:51] [laughter] Um Warren Buffett's 95. Yeah.
[44:53] Um Um
[44:55] >> Why Why do Why do people keep going for
[44:58] >> um a couple reasons, I think. one, it
[45:00] used to be that humans didn't live as
[45:02] long. Um, in 1900, the average American
[45:06] lifespan was 49. 49. In 400,000 years
[45:10] ago, the average lifespan was 20.
[45:11] 400,000 years ago. Now, in 1900 in the
[45:14] United States, 49. Today, uh, when when
[45:16] the social security system was set up in
[45:18] 1934, the average lifespan was 65. So,
[45:20] you could retire at 65, but you're
[45:22] probably dead by 65, so you'd have to
[45:23] pay out a lot of benefits. Um now, uh
[45:26] for white people born in the United
[45:29] States 70 years ago, they might have a
[45:32] pretty good chance of living to mid70s,
[45:35] maybe early 80s. People born today in
[45:37] the United States from a good zip code,
[45:39] good ethnicity and so forth, probably
[45:41] going to make it to their late 80s,
[45:42] early 90s. So people are living longer.
[45:45] Now, another So one thing is, so people
[45:47] are living longer. So So it used to be
[45:49] you retired and you kind of died a few
[45:50] years later. Now people are going to
[45:51] live longer. Secondly, the baby boomers
[45:53] have been the center of attention ever
[45:55] since they were born. Um, you're you're
[45:57] young. You're not quite a baby boomer.
[45:58] You're younger. But baby boomers who
[46:00] were born in, let's say, in the late
[46:02] 1940s and the early mid-50s, they've
[46:05] been the center of attention their
[46:06] entire life. And they don't want to get
[46:08] off the center of the stage. They like
[46:09] being the center of attention because
[46:11] our entire lives we've been the center
[46:13] of attention because we were the biggest
[46:14] generation. Now all of a sudden people
[46:16] are saying get off the stage and now we
[46:18] don't want to get off the stage.
[46:19] >> Do you really do you really think that's
[46:20] the case? Well, I love what I'm doing
[46:23] and if I stop doing what I'm doing now,
[46:25] I worry that um a phenomenon might
[46:28] happen that is medical professional
[46:31] sales can sometimes happen. If you're
[46:33] going sty and you're working hard, you
[46:35] know, your body is, you know, is
[46:37] probably used to it. Sometimes you'll
[46:39] see that somebody retires and as soon as
[46:42] they retire, they go out and play golf,
[46:43] they dropped out of a heart attack. So,
[46:44] I'm afraid that all of a sudden it's
[46:46] like the body is in here in inside my
[46:48] body. People are saying, "I got to keep
[46:49] working, keep working, keep going." And
[46:51] then if I say, "Okay, guys, turn off.
[46:52] I'm just going to go chill out for
[46:54] another 5 years." I think they're going
[46:55] to say, "I'm going to go to sleep and
[46:56] maybe something bad will happen."
[46:58] >> I think you have heard you say that you
[46:59] are spurting towards the finish line.
[47:01] >> Yes, I am sprinting to the finish line
[47:03] because I don't want to just slow down
[47:06] and go to Florida and just play
[47:08] shuffleboard every day. I want to keep
[47:09] doing things. I enjoy what I'm doing.
[47:11] When you do when you enjoy what you're
[47:12] doing, it's not work. So,
[47:14] >> do you think the world is more
[47:15] interesting now than it was in the past?
[47:17] >> Oh, sure.
[47:18] >> In what ways?
[47:19] >> More interesting. Yeah. Oh, sure.
[47:20] Because now you can connect with
[47:22] anything in the world anytime because of
[47:24] smartphones and computers and and the
[47:26] internet. You can get so much
[47:28] information. You can know so much and
[47:29] you can do so many different things that
[47:30] you couldn't do before. So, sure, the
[47:32] world is is much more interesting than
[47:33] it used to be. And I don't want to and I
[47:35] love what I'm doing. I just wanted to I
[47:37] could, you know, I I was younger and I I
[47:39] wish I, you know, had the health that
[47:41] would get me to an older age.
[47:43] >> Why did you buy a baseball team
[47:45] recently? I was not a great baseball uh
[47:49] afficionado. I played baseball when I
[47:51] was a little boy, but then I realized I
[47:53] wasn't a great athlete at the age of
[47:54] eight or nine or 10. I realized I wasn't
[47:56] going to be that good at it. And then I
[47:58] started doing other things. I came from
[48:00] Baltimore. Baltimore is um a blue collar
[48:03] town in the United States. When I was
[48:04] growing up, it was the eighth or ninth
[48:06] biggest city in United States. Now it's
[48:07] not even the top 20. It's lost a lot of
[48:09] population, had a lot of crime, a lot of
[48:12] u uh a lot of uh problems in the city.
[48:15] And I thought by buying the m most
[48:17] important baseball team in the city and
[48:20] buying, you know, one of the most
[48:21] important sports teams in that whole
[48:23] region, I could help revitalize my
[48:25] hometown. I felt that I hadn't done
[48:27] enough for Baltimore. I basically left
[48:29] Baltimore when I graduated from high
[48:31] school. And so for more than 60 years,
[48:33] I've been giving away a lot of money in
[48:35] other parts of the country and doing
[48:36] things in other parts of the country.
[48:37] But I I just kind of ignored Baltimore.
[48:39] And I just felt Baltimore gave my
[48:41] parents a place to to to grow up and and
[48:44] they they that's where I was born. My
[48:46] parents are were married there. My
[48:48] parents are buried there. I'll probably
[48:49] be buried in Baltimore. And I suspect
[48:51] that that I should have done more for
[48:53] Baltimore. So I thought by buying the B
[48:54] baseball team and hopefully improving it
[48:56] that I could contribute to my hometown
[48:58] that it gave me a good public school
[49:00] education. That was the reason.
[49:01] >> Sports is one of the few places where
[49:03] people actually agree. These days
[49:05] >> sports is something that is universal
[49:07] all over the world. People love to see
[49:09] sports teams compete and they obviously
[49:10] want to vote for their own team that to
[49:12] win. I'm not quite sure why. I'm writing
[49:13] a book now about why people want to be
[49:15] sports owners and why sports is so
[49:17] important to people, but I guess it's a
[49:18] kind of a reflection of their um their
[49:22] their self-worth. For example, why
[49:23] should people live in Baltimore uh care
[49:26] whether I buy the team and the team does
[49:28] well? If I if the team does well, how is
[49:30] the life going to be better of somebody
[49:31] in Baltimore? It's not necessarily going
[49:32] to put more food on their on their
[49:33] table, but it's just they they have a
[49:35] sense that they're part of something
[49:37] bigger than themselves. And if something
[49:38] bigger than themselves does well, it
[49:40] makes them feel better about themselves.
[49:42] >> What do you read?
[49:43] >> I read um a lot of books. I try to read
[49:45] over 100 books a year. And the reason is
[49:47] I have a lot of TV shows uh where I'm
[49:49] interviewing authors and I feel it's a
[49:50] courtesy, as I mentioned earlier, to
[49:52] read the book. Um sometimes I can't get
[49:53] to it because of too many other things,
[49:55] but I I tend to read non-fiction. I'm
[49:58] not very good at fiction. Uh my theory
[50:01] is if I'm reading a fiction book, some
[50:02] of that's not going to be true. So I
[50:04] want to get as many facts into my head
[50:06] of of things that are true as possible.
[50:08] So I read a lot of non-fiction, a lot of
[50:09] biographies and so forth. I love
[50:11] biographies, uh politics books, business
[50:13] books, and u you know, and history.
[50:16] Those are the kind of things I like the
[50:17] most.
[50:17] >> Last question. What is your advice to
[50:19] young people?
[50:20] >> Well, the most important thing is to
[50:21] figure out how you're going to enjoy
[50:22] your life. So you're on this earth for a
[50:25] relatively short period of time. 60
[50:27] years, 70 years, 80 years, 90 years,
[50:29] maybe it'll be in the future 90 years.
[50:30] Um, you have to figure out how to enjoy
[50:32] your life or what's the point of having
[50:33] a life. So, and figure out what you're
[50:36] you enjoy and try to pursue that. And I
[50:38] tell people experiment. You know, people
[50:40] graduating from college aren't going to
[50:42] necessarily know what they're going to
[50:43] really like. I I I've had many jobs
[50:45] before I got to doing what I'm doing
[50:46] now. And some things I didn't like. I
[50:48] didn't like practicing law. I wasn't
[50:49] that good at it. Um, and so in the end,
[50:51] experiment, try different things, and
[50:52] then ultimately develop the skill set in
[50:55] areas that you think you're going to
[50:56] enjoy the rest of your life. And then
[50:58] try to do something useful with your
[50:59] life. You're only on the earth for a
[51:01] short period of time, and you're going
[51:02] to feel much better about yourself if
[51:04] you feel you've done something to
[51:05] contribute to humanity, to make your
[51:06] parents proud. And if you have children,
[51:08] make your children proud. Now, it's
[51:09] easier to make your parents proud than
[51:10] your children proud. Your children are
[51:12] never going to be proud of you probably,
[51:13] but your parents might be proud of you.
[51:14] And if you're lucky enough to have your
[51:15] parents still alive when you achieve
[51:17] something, that's a great great feeling.
[51:19] Well, um, David, it's rare to see
[51:21] somebody enjoying life as much as you
[51:23] do.
[51:24] >> Well, I enjoy it, but talking with you
[51:25] is pleasure because, uh, I admire
[51:27] everything you've done. And, you know,
[51:28] look, you could be running your hedge
[51:30] fund in Europe and not have to do this.
[51:33] So, congratulations for what you're
[51:34] doing to help your country.
[51:35] >> Well, no, I'm having a great time. Big
[51:37] thank you.
[51:37] >> Thanks a lot.