David Rubenstein, HOW TO LEAD
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[3:25]about self care and balance edited by Amy Newmark. This is a fantastic collection of essays
[3:32]and everyone will find something relatable and that they can use to make their lives better
[3:36]within these essays. David Rubenstein is the CEO of the Carlisle Group and the author of the
[3:41]New York Times bestseller and number one Wall Street Journal bestseller How to Lead with them from
[3:46]the world's greatest CEOs, founders and game changers. He is the chairman of the Port of Trustees
[3:51]of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Council on Foreign Relations.
[3:55]He is an original signer of the Giving Pledge and a recipient of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.
[4:00]And the MoMA's David Rockefeller Award among other philanthropic awards. The host of the David
[4:05]Rubenstein show on Bloomberg TV and PBS. He lives in the Washington DC area. Welcome David. Thank you
[4:11]so much for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books. Thank you very much for inviting me.
[4:16]I feel a little intimidated because you are like a masterful interviewer yourself. Forget about
[4:21]all your professional accomplishments. But just how you do it on your TV show and in your
[4:27]book you are such a great interviewer. So I just wanted to start by asking when did you know you
[4:33]loved interviewing people and where did you get that interest and what makes people a leader?
[4:39]Well when I was little my mother called me a yenta. A yenta is a yiddish word for
[4:44]wants to know everything and wants to know everybody else's business. So when people would come
[4:48]to our house I would ask them lots of questions and my mother would say David let them talk
[4:53]about what they want to talk about. And so I did have an inquisitive mind. But I didn't really
[4:58]associate it with interviewing. What actually happened was this your father has a private equity firm
[5:04]and I have a private equity firm and to attract investors to our annual meetings we would often
[5:09]invite prominent people. Will you pay a big fee to former secretary of state former president?
[5:15]And so I was paying $200,000 for former president to make a speech center or secretary of state and
[5:20]they would show up and they were giving boring speeches for that amount of money. People were
[5:23]falling asleep. So I said maybe I could interview them and make it a little bit more interesting
[5:28]ask them my yenta type questions and people laughed and people I'd made Ben Bernanke look funny.
[5:33]It was it was good people think thought it was good. So I just put that in the back of my mind.
[5:37]Then Vernon Jordan asked me to become the president of the economic club of Washington.
[5:41]I said okay and the same thing people were supposed to come give speeches business people.
[5:46]They were boring. I said I'll stop that I'll interview them and it took off and then
[5:50]Bloomberg saw it and they said why don't you do this on television. So I basically
[5:54]been doing it for a number of years but it's like anything that you think you know how to do
[5:57]reasonably well. It's not something I studied. It's just something that kind of came naturally to
[6:02]me and I enjoy it. Just as you enjoy this I enjoy it and so when you enjoy something I think it
[6:07]comes through to the audience a bit. It totally agree. And then it was so neat in your book
[6:12]for you who loves interviewing to then interview Oprah who's like the most masterful interview.
[6:18]It's like interviewing squared or something in this in this part of your book and how she
[6:24]developed her love of doing it and how she became who she was. Tell me a little about even just
[6:29]that interview. Well somebody I met before I succeeded your father because of your father's
[6:36]help as the chairman of the Kennedy Center. I'm sure you've been to some of the Kennedy Center
[6:39]honors events. So the first year that I was a chair, Oprah was an honoree and so I got the meter
[6:46]for the first time then. And then later I saw our couple times at the White House when President
[6:51]Obama was a president and I got to know her a little bit. I always told her that my mother had
[6:56]told me how wonderful she was because my mother was in Baltimore when Oprah was in Baltimore
[7:01]and I said to my mother, look Oprah's never going to be a national figure. Nobody from Baltimore
[7:04]comes a national broadcaster but Oprah turned out to be great. And so I got to know her well
[7:09]enough to ask her to do this interview for me and she said yes. She showed up in studio in Bloomberg
[7:14]and we had a little audience and she was great gave a masterclass on how to interview. The only
[7:19]challenge when it was that halfway through the producer ran in and said wait a second Miss Winfrey
[7:24]you had kale salad for lunch and there's a little kale on your front tooth and it's showing up.
[7:29]So we'll have to reshoot everything and we said no no we're not going to reshoot a get a digital
[7:33]person to take it out. So they did. But it worked out pretty well and she said the key to interviewing
[7:39]is listening and that's what makes her good and then the key to listening well is doing it with
[7:43]empathy and she does that extremely well. So it was very enjoyable. And I did not even know till I
[7:49]read your book that Oprah is not even her real name. It's actually or but yeah they misspelled it
[7:55]on her on her birth certificate and you know that's that sometimes that happens and you you know you
[8:00]have to live with it. So for example in my case my last name is Rubenstein. All of my father's
[8:06]brothers name was R U B I N S T I N. But his was R U B E N S T I N. The reason is when he went
[8:14]into the military in World War II they looked at his birth certificate and found that it had been
[8:18]spelled R U B E N incorrectly and he said no that's not how we spell it and they said this is the
[8:23]military you're in the Marines now this is what we're doing. So they changed my father's spelling.
[8:28]Whatever is on your birth certificate is what you're stuck with. Maybe I'll have to pull mine out
[8:32]just make sure everything's as it should be. Well what I'm trying to do is go back and get my
[8:36]birth certificate and see if I get on the change the year. You know say it was really a couple years
[8:40]later so I can look a little bit younger or feel a little bit younger. If only we could do that
[8:45]and get ourselves a few extra years. One of the things that I really liked about this book is that
[8:51]in your introduction you've picked out all the things that you found from yourself your own
[8:57]experience and from many people that you've interviewed that are the characteristics of becoming
[9:01]great leaders. Luck I'm just going to quickly read them because they're the keys to your whole
[9:05]book. Luck desired a succeed pursuit of something new and unique hard work slash long hours focus
[9:13]failure persistence persuasiveness humbled demeanor credit sharing the ability to keep learning
[9:20]integrity and responding to crises. Right. So which of these and by the way the part about
[9:26]humbleness what did you call it? Humble demeanor. In your book you are and even now you're
[9:31]you're like always disparaging yourself. You're like well I told Oprah she was going to be nothing
[9:37]and I you know I didn't invest in Amazon I told Jeff Bezos it would at most be $300 million
[9:42]business and like all these things and you passed on Facebook. I feel like you wanted you're always
[9:48]highlighting the things you didn't do whereas of course you could be highlighting all the
[9:52]amazing things you have done. Well I think that humility works and it's a good trade. I also think
[9:59]that if you're just
[10:00]to issue, always look at the mistakes you made.
[10:02]So I'm always thinking I could have done this better.
[10:04]I'm only way I could have done this better.
[10:05]I did this terrible.
[10:07]So that's my personality.
[10:08]Some people have different personalities.
[10:10]But you know, and I tell people, look,
[10:12]if you can't be humble, fake it for fake humility.
[10:15]But I actually feel, I got very lucky in life.
[10:18]I'm not that talented, relatively speaking.
[10:20]And I'll think about this,
[10:21]when you were in high school or in college,
[10:25]there were many people who were first in the class,
[10:27]President of student government,
[10:29]all American athlete, whatever that might be.
[10:31]What happened to them?
[10:32]You don't know.
[10:32]And so I had the same kind of experience.
[10:34]And the people that were so much better than me,
[10:36]they kind of faded.
[10:37]And I got luckier than they did.
[10:39]And so I feel that humility is deserved.
[10:43]Yes, there's this whole peach too soon thing.
[10:46]Peekton 7th grade.
[10:47]Ha ha ha ha.
[10:49]Well, I peaked as an athlete when I was seven or eight.
[10:51]I thought I was really good.
[10:52]I was going to be a major league baseball player
[10:53]when I was seven or eight.
[10:54]Then I realized later that Jews did not become
[10:56]major league baseball players.
[10:57]They might be major league owners,
[10:58]and not baseball players.
[11:00]I had to go to something else.
[11:02]Yeah, you're so funny.
[11:02]You're like, I thought I was good until everybody grew way
[11:05]taller than me and got way better than me.
[11:08]It's true.
[11:09]I didn't, you know, when you're seven or eight,
[11:10]you think you think you might be a big,
[11:13]Mickey Manner or something.
[11:14]But then you later realized that's not going to happen.
[11:16]Paul Simon had the same thing.
[11:17]I interviewed him recently.
[11:18]And Paul Simon thought he was going to be major league
[11:21]baseball player too.
[11:22]Then he realized kind of when he was 12 or 13,
[11:24]he wasn't going to be tall enough.
[11:27]He did realize it comes to the people at certain age.
[11:30]You realize you have to do something different.
[11:31]So nobody really knows what they're going to do.
[11:34]I think within reason when they're 10, 12, 13, 14, 15,
[11:38]you just evolve and many things turn out differently
[11:40]than you expected.
[11:41]So when you went to college, what did you think you were
[11:43]going to do?
[11:43]I really wanted to be a writer.
[11:45]Then I wanted to be a psychologist.
[11:47]OK.
[11:48]And when did you decide you wanted to do what you're doing now?
[11:50]I mean, this wasn't even invented.
[11:53]Like when I was sitting around thinking,
[11:54]what's the perfect thing for me?
[11:56]How would I know that in 2018 or whatever
[12:00]I would want to start a podcast?
[12:01]But I knew I loved talking to people and listening
[12:04]and interviewing.
[12:05]And I've always been really interested
[12:08]in analyzing what people are thinking,
[12:11]either consumer behavior or person-to-person,
[12:15]something like that.
[12:16]And getting it, I've always been able to kind of relate
[12:18]to what people aren't even saying,
[12:20]but maybe thinking.
[12:21]I know that sounds ridiculous, but.
[12:23]And I was like, how can I turn that into something?
[12:24]I don't know.
[12:25]That's just like who I am.
[12:27]Well, it's worked out for you, right?
[12:29]So far.
[12:30]But the most important thing in life
[12:32]is to have personal happiness.
[12:34]It's the most elusive thing in life as well.
[12:37]So if you're happy with what you're doing,
[12:39]what else in life really matters?
[12:41]Jackie Kennedy famously said, if you mess up raising your children,
[12:45]nothing else in life really matters.
[12:46]So if you're a parent and you have four children,
[12:48]I think.
[12:48]Yes, I am.
[12:49]Yes.
[12:50]So you realize when you become a parent,
[12:52]that is the most important responsibility you have.
[12:54]And the greatest happiness you will have
[12:56]will be the success of your children at any age.
[12:59]But if you leave your children aside,
[13:01]what it is that makes you personally happy
[13:03]what you're doing?
[13:04]If you can find something in life that makes you happy,
[13:07]what more do you want out of life?
[13:09]And so in my case, I got lucky.
[13:11]I found something I'm really happy doing now and you are too.
[13:14]That's true.
[13:15]So which piece of the puzzle of the many things
[13:17]that you do makes you the happiest?
[13:19]I would say, actually, one of the things
[13:21]that made me the happiest was being reasonably successful
[13:24]by conventional standards when my parents were alive.
[13:26]I'm an only child.
[13:27]And when you're an only child,
[13:29]you have a certain responsibility,
[13:31]probably to reasonably good things
[13:33]because your parents have everything invested in you.
[13:35]And so my parents did live to see what I had done.
[13:38]And so that was probably the greatest pleasure of anything.
[13:41]And then secondly, feeling that when people come up to me
[13:44]and say, you're doing a good job helping the country
[13:46]in this area or you've done this for the country,
[13:48]that's good because everybody wants to help their country.
[13:51]And so those are the things that I enjoy the most.
[13:53]When you get to be wealthy,
[13:54]it's not as much of a pleasure as you might think
[13:57]because wealth doesn't buy happiness as we all know.
[14:00]And some of the most tortured souls I know
[14:01]are people are very wealthy.
[14:03]So I think it's not to having money.
[14:05]It's basically people feeling that,
[14:07]I'm doing something to help the country in some modest way.
[14:09]And that's what I probably get the greatest pleasure out of.
[14:12]And addition to my own children.
[14:13]And what are your children up to these days?
[14:15]What are you proud about with them?
[14:18]Well, you can say that I failed or I succeeded.
[14:20]All of my children have MBAs and they're all in private equity.
[14:23]So there are no struggling artists or no poets.
[14:27]There's no filmmakers.
[14:28]There's nobody, nothing creative maybe in that way.
[14:31]I, you know, one of my daughters
[14:32]met the Harvard Business School,
[14:33]my son described it with Stanford Business School
[14:35]in law school.
[14:36]My other daughter has an MBA
[14:37]and they're all doing private equity related things.
[14:39]So I think they're happy.
[14:40]But again, happiness is elusive.
[14:42]And when you're in your let's say 20s or 30s,
[14:45]you're not yet sure what it is that's gonna make you
[14:47]completely happy.
[14:48]So you're still struggling a bit.
[14:49]I didn't start Carlisle till I was 37.
[14:52]I think your father started Blackstone when he was in his 30s,
[14:55]I guess, right?
[14:56]Yeah, so 1989.
[14:57]So if I could do the math quickly enough,
[15:00]maybe I would be in private equity, but I'm not.
[15:02]So I would say, you know, I got lucky in life.
[15:06]And I know the trick is this,
[15:08]your father and I are roughly the same age.
[15:10]You may be one year older or something like that.
[15:13]But when you reach a certain age,
[15:15]you realize that life is not forever.
[15:18]So you're trying to cram as many things into the remaining years.
[15:21]And you don't know when you look at your body,
[15:24]you've had this but your body your whole life,
[15:26]which part is gonna fall apart first?
[15:28]Is it the brain or the other parts of the body?
[15:30]Which ones are gonna check out and say,
[15:32]I've had enough, I'm going.
[15:34]And you don't know when that's gonna happen
[15:36]or what part of your body's gonna fall apart.
[15:37]So what I'm doing is racing to the finish line.
[15:40]It's what I call it.
[15:41]I'm trying to get as many things done before,
[15:44]my brain collapses or my body doesn't work anymore.
[15:47]And when you're in your early 70s,
[15:49]you just don't know how long you're gonna be able to do this
[15:51]at what pace.
[15:52]So I'm rushing to get things done now.
[15:54]For example, my entire life, I never wrote a book.
[15:57]My first book comes out when I'm 70.
[15:59]Now what was I doing in my 60s, 50s, 40s, and 30s?
[16:02]Where was I when I write these books?
[16:04]I have this book is my second one that you're talking about
[16:07]and I have another one coming out next year,
[16:09]or this year, later this year.
[16:10]And I'm trying to get them out before too long.
[16:13]And your father wrote a book as well.
[16:14]I don't know, he told me he didn't like the experience
[16:16]so he might not do another one.
[16:17]I don't know.
[16:18]I don't think he'll ever do another one.
[16:19]He complained about it the whole time
[16:21]and I think he's just delighted to be done with it.
[16:23]Yeah, so I enjoy it.
[16:25]So I'm trying to get as many things done as I can now.
[16:29]And I just don't know why.
[16:31]I wish I was as happy when I was in my 20s or 30s
[16:33]as I am now.
[16:34]I'm very happy.
[16:35]I just wish, like all parents,
[16:37]you want one thing that never happens.
[16:39]You want your children to call more frequently.
[16:40]But other than that, I'm pretty happy.
[16:43]I know you're in this race to the finish line.
[16:45]are you afraid of dying?
[16:47]I don't know that, I don't know what age it is
[16:50]that people begin to think about death.
[16:53]I don't know.
[16:54]Maybe you start preparing your wills
[16:56]and think about that when you're in your 50s or 60s
[16:58]or something like that.
[16:59]I wouldn't say I'm afraid of it
[17:00]because I know it's inevitable.
[17:02]There's nothing you can do about it.
[17:03]I just, I'm afraid of not getting stuff done
[17:05]that I want to get done before the time comes.
[17:08]But in the end, I wouldn't say I'm afraid of it.
[17:11]I just wouldn't like most people my age
[17:14]to have a peaceful death.
[17:15]Not a terrible death.
[17:17]Nobody wants to linger and be a burden
[17:19]going people for a long time
[17:21]or have people pity you or something like that.
[17:24]So you want to find a good way to die.
[17:26]And I don't know what that way will be.
[17:28]But hopefully it's not something that's drawn out too much.
[17:30]And so what is number one aside from perhaps writing
[17:34]another book on your bucket list
[17:36]of what you are struggling to get done as fast as you can?
[17:39]I signed the Giving Pledge,
[17:40]one of the first 40 people to do it.
[17:42]And I think your father signed it recently.
[17:45]Yes, right.
[17:46]And so there we're committed to giving away half
[17:48]of our money so forth.
[17:49]But I would say I'm going to give away the bulk of it.
[17:53]At least I'm making a lot of speeches,
[17:54]saying I'm giving it all away.
[17:55]So my children will read these speeches.
[17:58]And they will say we've got to work hard
[18:00]because he's not giving us any money.
[18:02]So there might be a surprise for them in the will.
[18:04]But I want them to realize that they
[18:06]got to make it on their own to some extent.
[18:08]Obviously, as you know, if your father is a prominent person,
[18:11]it has pluses and minuses.
[18:13]If you achieve something, people say,
[18:15]well, of course, your father or your mother
[18:16]made it possible.
[18:17]But if you fail, people will say,
[18:19]well, how could this person have failed
[18:21]that she had the advantage or he had the advantage
[18:22]of a prominent father or mother?
[18:24]But for example, it's complicated.
[18:26]If you have a prominent father,
[18:27]you don't want to be in that shadow,
[18:29]particularly for a man.
[18:30]Being in the shadow of a prominent father
[18:32]is complicated for boys and young men.
[18:34]So your brother, I think, is in the West Coast
[18:37]and he's in the movie world,
[18:38]different than your father, completely.
[18:40]My son didn't want to come back from Stanford,
[18:42]law school or business school.
[18:43]He's staying in the West Coast.
[18:44]And I think he wants to stay out of my shadow.
[18:46]So maybe prominent people in the East Coast,
[18:48]their sons go to the West Coast
[18:50]and get out of their father's shadow.
[18:51]I don't know.
[18:52]Maybe they just want to get out of all the darkness
[18:54]on the East Coast and go to the sunshine.
[18:58]Maybe that's one way to get out of the shadows.
[19:00]Although the advantage and there are many is the example
[19:04]set by parents who exhibit all these characteristics.
[19:09]Like I was thinking about my own dad
[19:10]as you were, as I read through your list.
[19:12]I mean, they're relentless working
[19:15]and not because not like, oh, I have to work,
[19:18]but the joy you take in creating and working
[19:20]and doing it all the time.
[19:22]I mean, I talked to my dad at some point about retiring
[19:25]and he's like, how could retiring?
[19:27]What would life be if I did nothing?
[19:29]What would I even do with myself?
[19:31]So I think it's this constant learning
[19:33]and working and producing and changing
[19:36]that keeps people vibrant at any age.
[19:39]Yes, retirement is a relatively new concept in human kind.
[19:44]For most of human kind, people didn't live that long.
[19:47]So they didn't have a chance to think about retiring.
[19:49]Probably in the 20th century in the United States
[19:51]when we came up with so security
[19:52]and we said you can retire or get so security at 65,
[19:55]people more and more began to think, okay, at 65,
[19:58]I'm done, I can retire.
[19:59]As you now know.
[20:00]Oh, as we all know, if you do retire very often bad things can happen.
[20:04]I observe not always, but some of my friends who retired, they dropped dead on the golf course
[20:08]about a week later.
[20:09]I'm not exaggerating.
[20:10]All of a sudden it's like if the body says, all right, we got to keep going, we're
[20:13]keep going.
[20:14]And then all of a sudden you can relax when you relax and bad things can happen.
[20:18]So I don't want to relax because I think germs will come in and all of a sudden something
[20:21]bad can happen.
[20:22]So as long as you feel you're doing something that's relevant and you are contributing
[20:27]in some way to society and some part of it.
[20:28]I think people should continue to work with, you know, obviously people have different
[20:32]interests in life.
[20:33]I can't imagine retiring.
[20:35]I, you know, running a company day to day when you're in your 80s is challenging.
[20:39]Some people do it, but there are many things you can do without retiring that are useful
[20:43]for society.
[20:44]So I can't imagine just going to Florida and playing shuffle board.
[20:48]Do people still play shuffle board?
[20:50]I don't, I always talk about it.
[20:51]I don't know.
[20:52]I think some people do play shuffle board, but I have never played it.
[20:54]Maybe we need to come up with a modern day version of shuffle board, some sort of app
[20:59]or something.
[21:00]So, you know, nobody has to get in.
[21:01]I think now, what's now called pickle ball?
[21:03]Okay.
[21:04]So further to your giving pledge and all of your philanthropic causes and endeavors, creations.
[21:10]How have you decided where to give?
[21:12]I know this is a big question and I know you've given a lot to the Kennedy Center and
[21:17]Duke and and and you're somewhere you gave something to an auto learn that anyway, tell
[21:22]me how you decide.
[21:24]Your father has gone through the same thing and made some mega gifts that are quite staggering
[21:29]and impressive.
[21:30]In my case, I can't say there's any one or two things I've given money to there.
[21:34]You can say, look, I'm going to just do climate change.
[21:37]I'm just going to do health care, but I didn't do that.
[21:40]I don't have that much of a tunnel vision.
[21:42]So I try to do many different things, but like most people, you want to give to your
[21:45]schools.
[21:46]You want to give your kids schools, hospitals that have been helped, but whatever it
[21:49]might be.
[21:50]But once you've done that, you could, you look around for other things.
[21:53]In my case, I stumbled on to this thing that I've called patriotic philanthropy, which
[21:57]is to say giving back to the country by reminding the country the history of like preserving
[22:02]documents and giving them to the country or fixing the Washington Monument or Mount
[22:07]Blowning or things like that.
[22:08]So it's only 10% or so of my philanthropic gifts, but it's 95% of the attention I get
[22:14]for it.
[22:15]But that's okay.
[22:16]Most of my money goes into education and medical research, but but if I give 50 million
[22:20]dollars for pancreatic cancer at Sloan Kettering, nobody will pay attention because somebody
[22:24]might give a billion dollars at the Sloan Kettering.
[22:27]And if I give 10 million dollars to fix the Washington Monument, it gets 99% of the attention
[22:31]of the things I do.
[22:32]And just because people don't tend to do that as much.
[22:34]So I do a lot of what I call patriotic philanthropy.
[22:37]And I'm most focused on probably is things that I think will help the country in some way.
[22:42]Because I came from very modest circumstances, got lucky, long Jewish name, and who would
[22:47]have thought in some other country I could do what I did.
[22:49]So I got lucky and now I want to give back to the country in some ways.
[22:52]And that's what my main focus is now and recently thinking of things that can give back
[22:56]to the country.
[22:57]But there are areas that I do care about that aren't just related to patriotic philanthropy.
[23:01]One of them is something that you probably share an interest in as well, which is reading.
[23:06]As I mentioned earlier, before we went on the air, I've been for the last 10 years,
[23:10]the co-chair and the principal underwriter of the National Book Festival.
[23:13]And I created the Literacy Awards to Library Congress to focus people on literacy reading.
[23:19]It's sad, but it's true, 13 to 14% of Americans cannot read, and adults cannot read.
[23:25]And I don't mean they're from a Spanish-speaking country and they can't read English.
[23:30]I mean, they can't read in their native language either.
[23:32]And as you also know, probably there's a thing called a literacy, which means that you don't
[23:36]read even though you can read.
[23:38]So 30% of the people who graduate from college each year, 30% of the people who are college
[23:43]graduates, I should say, never read another book in their life, 50% of the Americans have
[23:47]not bought a book in the last five years or been to a bookstore or shopped on one online.
[23:52]So it's sad.
[23:53]We have to get more people to read, because reading produces pleasure, but also improves
[23:57]the brain and does many other things.
[23:59]And reading books is more important than reading newspapers or magazines or tweets, because
[24:05]the book will focus the brain in a way that a tweet doesn't.
[24:08]You've got to be focused, as you know, to read a book.
[24:10]It takes hours and hours and hours to get through it, and that focuses the brain.
[24:13]I think it's much better for you.
[24:15]It takes hours, but I feel like I lose all sense of time.
[24:18]Right.
[24:19]Like when you're reading, I don't pay attention to time.
[24:21]Like time disappears.
[24:22]So how does the Library of Congress, what do they do to get people to read more?
[24:29]How do you solve this crisis?
[24:30]Well, there are many things you can do.
[24:32]There are a lot of literacy organizations that exist in the United States to help people read
[24:38]more.
[24:39]And my awards that we give out money to the United States groups, there's an infinite amount
[24:43]of good groups out there.
[24:44]So it's not, it's a drop in the bucket, but we're trying to say to people, look, focus
[24:48]on literacy and help people learn more and give money to literacy groups.
[24:52]And we try to highlight that by giving grants every year to literacy groups and also try
[24:57]to get younger children to focus on reading.
[25:00]We're now redoing the parts of the Library of Congress building so that more children
[25:04]will come there and be able to be mentored in how to read and realize the pleasure of reading.
[25:09]When I was young, I got my library card when I was six years old.
[25:13]You were allowed to take 12 books out in the library.
[25:15]I would take them out one Saturday and I'd read them all day and that one day and I had
[25:19]to wait another week before I could take books out and go back to the library.
[25:21]I just love reading and it's, you know, it got me out of the world that I was in
[25:25]and to a different world.
[25:26]So you can't read too much in my view.
[25:28]It's just a wonderful thing.
[25:30]I wish I had a chance to read even more.
[25:33]I try to read at least one book, maybe two a week, but it's the trick to it as you probably
[25:39]know is this.
[25:40]If you're interviewing an author, it forces you to kind of read the book a bit because
[25:44]you want to be well informed.
[25:45]So I do a lot of book interviews and therefore I read a lot of books, but I have a weakness
[25:50]which is that I don't read novels and I don't read things that I don't know much about.
[25:55]So I tend to read biographies, business books, philanthropy, politics, government things
[25:59]like that, which I know reasonably well and I can get through those books reasonably quickly.
[26:04]If I had to read a chemistry textbook, it would take me a light year to get through it.
[26:07]I would never be able to get through that.
[26:09]So I am reading things that are easy for me to get through generally.
[26:12]Yeah, I'm keeping the chemistry textbooks on the shelf as well.
[26:16]I think we can, if you got through college, it's enough.
[26:20]So I would, you know, I like to learn more about other things and I am trying to do some
[26:24]more book interviews shows and interviews things.
[26:26]So I do interviews of people about their books for the New York Historical Society and
[26:32]now that's on PBS and I'm working on another show that will be with the Library of Congress
[26:37]to kind of focus people on reading and interviewing authors.
[26:41]I watched your interview with Melinda Gates about the moment of lift and that was great.
[26:45]I couldn't believe that she met Bill Gates dancing.
[26:48]I mean, all these things you get out of people.
[26:50]It's like, what?
[26:51]I can't believe it.
[26:52]Well, most of the people that I interview, I do know somewhat and therefore they tend
[26:57]to have their guard down a little bit more because they're not thinking I'm going to ever
[27:01]embarrass them or something like that.
[27:03]And then in the case of Melinda, I've been, you know, involved with a giving pledge
[27:06]for a while.
[27:07]So I've gotten to know her over the years.
[27:08]She's also a Duke graduate and I gotten to know her in many ways.
[27:12]So I think she was, you know, fairly relaxed and one of the tricks that I use is I do
[27:16]send people the questions in advance.
[27:19]Now if you're a journalist, that is considered a sin because journalists are not supposed
[27:24]to do that.
[27:25]But I say that people, I'm not a journalist, that's not what I am.
[27:28]I'm just somebody trying to get some information for other people.
[27:31]I send people the questions.
[27:32]They see that it relaxes them because they see there's nothing that's going to embarrass
[27:36]them.
[27:37]Now, my brain is reasonably good but not perfect.
[27:40]So if I prepare 35 questions, I don't like to have the notes in front of me and just
[27:44]read them up and down like, you know, I'm reading off a script.
[27:47]So I try to memorize them and I probably get 30 of the 35, I will remember them.
[27:51]And so I do also listen to the person.
[27:53]So if they divert from something I thought they were going to say, I will go down that rabbit
[27:57]hole with them to kind of follow through, not just going through the questions.
[28:01]I had prepared in advance.
[28:03]In Melinda's case, and in the case of most people, what they really want to talk about
[28:07]is their book or their, whatever they're doing.
[28:10]But getting them to talk about their youth or how they did something like meeting Bill Gates,
[28:15]their husband.
[28:16]And what is it like to raise three kids when you're worth, I don't know, $100 billion.
[28:19]Those are the kind of things people are often asked.
[28:22]And sometimes people are afraid to ask these people that, but I'm generally not afraid
[28:25]because I generally know these people reason well and you know, you never embarrassed anybody
[28:29]that I'm aware of.
[28:30]I used to send everybody the questions too.
[28:32]And I used to prepare everything and have quotes and I did that for like two years until
[28:37]finally one author was like, why did you send me the questions?
[28:40]Like, now I don't have as much like look forward to like I wanted to see what you were
[28:44]going to ask or something.
[28:45]And then I thought, well, I'm hardly ever getting to these questions.
[28:48]I'm just because once they start talking, I find something I'm interested in and they
[28:52]want to talk about.
[28:53]So then I stopped with the questions, but now I'm second guessing that now that you still
[28:56]do that.
[28:58]But I do it for this reason, it helps me focus my interview.
[29:01]So in other words, if I just read somebody's book, what am I, you know, what am I going
[29:06]to do?
[29:07]I just kind of prepare the questions.
[29:09]In some cases, people say, I don't want the questions, say, okay, but I still have memorized
[29:14]kind of what the questions are.
[29:15]So it's really from my preparation as much, but I some people just say a lot of authors,
[29:20]I don't want to see questions in advance because it takes away the spontaneity.
[29:23]Right.
[29:25]But nobody's ever said to me, they would you send me questions, but you didn't ask
[29:28]all these questions.
[29:29]I actually, I just send the questions to comfort people, but I don't ask all those questions
[29:34]either because I just try to find out what they're doing.
[29:36]And I often now apologize to this.
[29:38]If the FBI comes to you and says, I'm going to do a background check on somebody and
[29:44]they have typically they'll have 10 or 15 questions.
[29:46]They just go through them as you're talking.
[29:49]If you say, actually, this person is an axe murderer and you should be careful.
[29:52]They won't respond by saying, tell me more about the axe murder.
[29:55]They just go to the next question because they don't pay attention to what you're saying.
[29:58]At least that's obviously an exaggeration.
[30:00]But I think I try to listen to what they say and then go down, follow what they're saying and try to get them to open up about themselves, because when people open up about themselves, you can get a more interesting conversation.
[30:11]I totally agree. It's so nice to talk to somebody who does the exact same thing that I do like every day. It's really inspiring and awesome.
[30:20]And the quality of people that you get is really amazing. If you ever need help with all of your shows.
[30:27]I'm sure you're going to be competing with me soon. You'll have your own show on TV soon and so forth. But and you're younger. You're going to be you're going to be doing it for a while.
[30:34]One of the things that I think is interesting and you know, you're as person who does interviewing you would appreciate this.
[30:39]The interview format is relatively new and I try to as entertainment and education. I try to I think it went back to there was a show before you were born called the tonight show, which was hosted by Jack Parr and before that Steve Allen.
[30:53]And they brought people in late at night and interviewed them entertainment figures and so forth.
[30:57]And this was kind of novelty. You hadn't really seen that before on television. And it really there wasn't a similar thing on radio.
[31:04]And so if you go back and think about it, there are no interviews of Cleopatra. There are no interviews in Abraham Lincoln. There's no interviews at George Washington.
[31:12]So I wish we'd had that format before. So we would know so much more about these people. But the format didn't exist.
[31:18]So now what we're doing is we were kind of reinventing a way to convey information.
[31:22]And I think, you know, maybe 200 years from now or a thousand years from now, there won't be an interview format.
[31:27]Maybe just put something in somebody's brain and all the information comes out who knows.
[31:30]But I do think it's it's a relatively new phenomenon. I wish I had a chance to interview, you know, Abraham Lincoln or, or, you know, people that are not around anymore.
[31:40]But we just that doesn't exist and nobody's been able to figure out a way to make that work.
[31:44]That's true. Well, that's why it's interesting in your book how you have it.
[31:48]I feel like in the olden days, maybe you would take the interviews and then take the answers and make that into the essay.
[31:54]But this is tr, it's almost like a transcript of many of your interviews, but that's just I find that just as interesting to read as if you had done a reported piece based on the information.
[32:05]I've been surprised, I won't say I invented the technique. Obviously I didn't, but kind of taking edited transcripts and putting him into a book form.
[32:13]People like reading it, you know, it's sometimes easier to read that than to read the pros summary of what the person said.
[32:20]So I guess people seem to seem to like it and therefore when I, the interviews in that book are basically edited somewhat.
[32:26]So I will have, you know, done an hour interview and then we edited it down to maybe 30 minutes for a TV or something.
[32:32]And we've edited even further for the book. So it's obviously designed to be a little bit more interesting and concise than the real interview was.
[32:40]But people seem to like reading it and the net particular book you're referring to what people say is I like it because I can read chapter one and then go to chapter eight and then go back to chapter three.
[32:51]You don't have to read them in a certain sequence.
[32:53]Yes.
[32:54]People don't even like being told how what ordered to read their books in. They just let it choose everything.
[33:01]So like I sometimes when I'm reading a book and the first couple chapters are kind of weak.
[33:05]I say let me get to the last couple chapters because I'm not sure I'm going to read the middle chapters unless the latter chapters are really good.
[33:11]So I skip around a bit and you know, sometimes people do that with these books as well.
[33:15]So the first book I did was a book called the American story and what it was was I started an interview process at the Library of Congress.
[33:23]My theory was that members of Congress should know more about American history.
[33:27]So once a month I would host a dinner at the Library of Congress for members of Congress only.
[33:32]And to my amazement we would get 300 members of Congress showing up.
[33:35]There's a free dinner free cocktail party and I would ask them to sit with people from the opposite party and the opposite house and they kind of like their
[33:42]patternization which they can't do in public. There was no press there.
[33:45]And then I would interview Doris Kearns Goodwin or David McCullough or something like that.
[33:49]And they were like school kids learning just like anybody else would.
[33:52]So the first book was the summary of that.
[33:54]This book you've seen I have a book coming out in the next September.
[33:57]It's called the American Experience about all the genes that have come together to make America so unique and so different.
[34:04]And what it is that we did that made our country different in better many ways in other countries.
[34:09]You know as I'm trying to work on the next book after that and I'd like the discipline of trying to do one a year until again the brain falls apart.
[34:17]Well I don't want to take up much more of your time but I was wondering as a last question what advice you might have to aspiring authors.
[34:24]Well, I remember that it takes a while to get near rhythm.
[34:29]And write about something you know and something you enjoy.
[34:33]If it's not something you enjoy or know something about it's going to be more challenging.
[34:37]And it doesn't happen overnight it takes like a year or two or longer to write a book.
[34:41]Nobody wrote a great book in three weeks.
[34:43]It takes a long time and it can be frustrating.
[34:46]And at many times maybe your father had this experience you say you know I'm not going to do this.
[34:50]I'm just going to quit.
[34:51]I'm not going to write this book anymore.
[34:53]And sometimes I've been frustrated when I've been working this thing.
[34:55]I don't really need to do this and I don't want to do this anymore.
[34:57]But you just got to persist persist persist.
[35:00]So now are you writing a book now about your are you taking your podcast and putting them in the book?
[35:05]I have an anthology coming out next month called momstone have time to it's a collection of essays written by people who have been on my podcast.
[35:12]Another one coming out in November of two children's books coming out.
[35:16]And I have perhaps another memoir that I'm working on about how books have changed my life in different in different parts of my life.
[35:23]Right.
[35:24]So how did you get your first name?
[35:26]It's short for Elizabeth.
[35:27]People pronounce Elizabeth or they just a girl and play group can pronounce Elizabeth.
[35:31]So when you go to college or business school people ask you where's this name come from or they didn't know.
[35:37]Everybody knew that it was shortened for Elizabeth.
[35:39]No I get that question like a zillion times which is why when I named my four kids I was like you're getting names that are not.
[35:45]There are no nicknames associated with your names.
[35:49]All right.
[35:50]Okay well look you're doing good things promoting books and I appreciate you're giving me the time to talk about my book.
[35:57]And you know I admire your father a great deal.
[35:59]He's done a great job in the business world in the philanthropic world and I enjoyed his book and I interviewed about his book too.
[36:04]Oh good.
[36:05]So did I.
[36:07]Well we probably was more open with you than me but that was good and I put it on my TV show and you know it was good.
[36:13]And so.
[36:14]I have to go back and watch it.
[36:15]All right.
[36:16]All right thank you so much.
[36:17]This is a pleasure.
[36:18]All right.
[36:19]Take care.
[36:20]Bye bye.
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[36:50]Thanks so much.
[36:51]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[36:54]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at ziby Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[37:06]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
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