Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: When I went to Berkeley in sixty four, it was
Speaker 2: rated at one time the number one undergrad and grad
Speaker 2: school in the world. And it costs two hundred and
Speaker 2: six dollars a year today for an out of states student,
Speaker 2: that's thirty or forty thousand. If it moved with inflation,
Speaker 2: it would be less than eight hundred dollars today.
Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, and welcome to this episode of
Speaker 3: Math and Magic. Today we have a guest who has
Speaker 3: fundamentally changed American business. An unlocked capital for entrepreneurs who
Speaker 3: could not access the financing they needed to bring their
Speaker 3: dreams to life, and he ushered in an explosive era
Speaker 3: of innovation starting in the nineteen seventies that changed the
Speaker 3: world of business and even the world itself. He's Mike Milkin.
Speaker 3: Originally you probably thought of him as a financier, but
Speaker 3: over time he has shown that he has other important
Speaker 3: dimensions which are even more important to the world, and
Speaker 3: has made contributions as a philanthropist, public health advocate, and
Speaker 3: medical research innovator. He's also the chairman and founder of
Speaker 3: the Milkan Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan economic think tank that
Speaker 3: seeks to create a more informed public, more thoughtful policymaking,
Speaker 3: and improved economic conditions. And he just opened the Milkan
Speaker 3: Center for Advancing the American Dream in Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: This is a man who not only believes in the
Speaker 3: American Dream, but is helping get the message of that
Speaker 3: opportunity to everyone in America. Michael grew up in southern California,
Speaker 3: and as a kid, as true nature began to shine through,
Speaker 3: he was a block captain for the United Way, riding
Speaker 3: his bike from house to house collecting dimes and quarters
Speaker 3: to help fund local charities. He was voted friendliest and
Speaker 3: most spirited in his high school class, and even received
Speaker 3: the Outstanding young Man Award from the Law Local Junior
Speaker 3: Chamber of Commerce for the greatest service to the community.
Speaker 3: He married his high school sweetheart, who he began dating
Speaker 3: in the ninth grade. Wow, lots of good stories here, Mike.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Thank you, Bob, and great to hear that voice.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: Well, listen before we get into the real meat of
Speaker 3: everything I want to do. You in sixty seconds? You
Speaker 3: ready to go?
Speaker 2: I am ready?
Speaker 3: Cats are dogs dogs Early Riser or night out early
Speaker 3: riser city or country city, East coast or West coast,
Speaker 3: West coast, TikTok, Instagram or x none of the three. Okay,
Speaker 3: introvert or extrovert. Extrovert, beach or mountains, beach, rock and
Speaker 3: roll or country rock and roll, TV or YouTube YouTube,
Speaker 3: books or movies, books, cook or eat out, Cook, vegetarian
Speaker 3: or carnivore, vegetarian, call or text call It's about to
Speaker 3: get a little harder. All time favorite musical artist Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 3: Favorite book to read to the grandkids, The Giving Tree,
Speaker 3: favorite sports team Lakers, first job working for my father,
Speaker 3: Favorite place to visit home. And here's the last one.
Speaker 3: Secret to over fifty five years of marriage.
Speaker 2: Seeing the world through someone else's eyes.
Speaker 3: That's very nice. Let's jump in. Fifty percent of Americans
Speaker 3: now say they don't believe in capitalism, and I don't
Speaker 3: care what your political persuasion is. That's probably not healthy
Speaker 3: for the country. You spent your life helping people understand
Speaker 3: capitalism and help them have an opportunity to participate in
Speaker 3: the rewards of capitalism, regardless of the circumstances of their birth.
Speaker 3: So how do we get here and what do we
Speaker 3: do to turn that around.
Speaker 2: I think those percentages you talk about, Bob are age
Speaker 2: related heavily, and so the financial crisis of eight to
Speaker 2: twenty ten eleven really changed perspective for younger people. And
Speaker 2: what occurred was people lost their home or had trouble
Speaker 2: keeping their home. The student loans that have compended over
Speaker 2: this time, they're now one point seven trillion. After the
Speaker 2: financial crisis, we have not fully recovered and the result
Speaker 2: was that most young people didn't feel the financial system
Speaker 2: was working for them. And today they're in their twenties, thirties,
Speaker 2: could even be in their forties. There is no better
Speaker 2: system than the free enterprise system, and so our goals
Speaker 2: here and something called the EMA Economic Mobility Alliance, are
Speaker 2: to change those views in a short period of time.
Speaker 2: On July fourth, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
Speaker 2: the United States, every child born in America is going
Speaker 2: to get one thousand dollars in their investment account, no fees,
Speaker 2: no management fees, and will be compounding away. There's a
Speaker 2: group of individuals that have been in the Giving Pledge,
Speaker 2: myself and many others, led by one individual who's talking
Speaker 2: about giving six billion dollars to all children in America
Speaker 2: ten and under. Collectively, these invest America accounts would make
Speaker 2: everyone feel that they had part of America. They own
Speaker 2: a piece of Microsoft for Apple, et cetera. And so
Speaker 2: when we look at what country in the world today
Speaker 2: has the highest median net worth that has twenty million people,
Speaker 2: it is Australia, which has a super annuation funds and
Speaker 2: so they they have set aside money. Today it's around
Speaker 2: three trillion US for twenty six million people. It would
Speaker 2: be like if we had forty five or fifty trillions
Speaker 2: sitting around for all the citizens of our country. And
Speaker 2: so the initiation of programs like this is in the forefront,
Speaker 2: and so you want people to feel they're part of
Speaker 2: the system. But if you ask me what changed, two
Speaker 2: major things changed the financial crisis and the increase in
Speaker 2: the cost of going to college. When I went to
Speaker 2: Berkeley in sixty four, it was rated at one time
Speaker 2: the number one undergrad and grad school in the world,
Speaker 2: and it costs two hundred and six dollars a year.
Speaker 2: Today for an in state student, it's more than sixteen
Speaker 2: thousand and four. An out of state student like others,
Speaker 2: it's thirty or forty thousand. If it moved with inflation
Speaker 2: be less than eight hundred dollars today. So we have
Speaker 2: driven up the cost of education dramatically, and that's why
Speaker 2: we not only have one point seven trillion in student
Speaker 2: debt that students feel they can never get rid of,
Speaker 2: but we still generate more new student debt every year.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things we've been working on
Speaker 2: for a number of years is how do we eliminate
Speaker 2: this loans to go to college? And there's numerous programs
Speaker 2: today that are being considered that will eliminate the need
Speaker 2: to generate loans to go to school. That was the seed,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, and that is the reason why in
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven eight we began the effort to
Speaker 2: build the Center for Advancing the American Train because we
Speaker 2: felt not only the people of America, but the people
Speaker 2: of world needed some place that they could look to
Speaker 2: that exists where you can rise up based on your ability.
Speaker 3: By the way invest America it correct me on these stats,
Speaker 3: but I think if nobody adds anything more than that
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, that that grows to sort of fourteen fifteen
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in thirteen years, and if they never touch it,
Speaker 3: I think they have a million dollars by the time
Speaker 3: they're fifty.
Speaker 4: Those stats right.
Speaker 2: They are, and I think people are going to add
Speaker 2: to it. Those numbers are going to grow. And we
Speaker 2: have spoken to companies that employ almost thirty million people
Speaker 2: who say they're going to give money to the accounts
Speaker 2: of all their employees choled. One of the things if
Speaker 2: you're a mathematician, you know is the sooner you start
Speaker 2: saving money, the more it's going to countpound during your lifetime.
Speaker 2: So let's get started at one, not at forty.
Speaker 3: In the nineteen seventies and eighties, you opened access to capital,
Speaker 3: enabling a whole new breed of entrepreneurs, and you touched
Speaker 3: almost every great entrepreneur of that era. I just want
Speaker 3: to sort of put on the record here you change
Speaker 3: my life because you were able to take MTV Networks
Speaker 3: public in nineteen eighty four. Sover that, thank you. So
Speaker 3: many business people of that era were touched by you.
Speaker 3: One question, how did you decide who you should back?
Speaker 2: It was the view that the real asset of a
Speaker 2: company was its people. People like you Bow and so
Speaker 2: where you're right, you're right on the talent and the people.
Speaker 2: So when you look at a company, you look at
Speaker 2: the major asset of that organization, if it's a company,
Speaker 2: if it's a philanthropic organization, whatever it might be, is
Speaker 2: the talents of the people working for it, and for
Speaker 2: a country, the social capital, rule of law, creditor rights,
Speaker 2: universal education, healthcare, etc. So the question is I might
Speaker 2: have my view of the future, but you need someone
Speaker 2: that can execute that view. And so whether it was
Speaker 2: John Malone or Steve Ross or yourself, Bob, you know
Speaker 2: you're too honest, but my view, if you had not
Speaker 2: joined AOL, AOL would have failed. It's that individual. And
Speaker 2: so the decision to back Craig McCall or Bill McGowan
Speaker 2: was heavily based on their talent. And Bill McGowan, most
Speaker 2: people would think it's crazy today that you were paying
Speaker 2: twelve dollars a minute to make a long distance phone
Speaker 2: call in the nineteen sixties and seventies. Twelve dollars a
Speaker 2: minute today, that's free. And he took on AT and
Speaker 2: T at the time the largest company that had ninety
Speaker 2: nine percent market share because he believed in fiber optics
Speaker 2: and changing how we communicate, and he drove the cost
Speaker 2: down eighty or ninety percent but someone had to give
Speaker 2: him money, and the decision to give him money it
Speaker 2: took three years for me to convince my own firm
Speaker 2: to do it. You were about to get black balled
Speaker 2: at and t pay the most fees to financial firms.
Speaker 2: If you financed them, you would be blackballed. And what
Speaker 2: most people didn't realize is that everything people said about
Speaker 2: credit was wrong. Companies were the best credit, countries were
Speaker 2: the worst credit, and individuals were in the middle. And
Speaker 2: ninety nine point nine percent of every single company in
Speaker 2: America was not investment great. So you had a situation
Speaker 2: where the existing companies maybe five hundred, were allowed to
Speaker 2: borrow or finance their business and everyone else else did
Speaker 2: not have access to capital.
Speaker 3: We, by the way, could dig in on this. You
Speaker 3: could give us the masterclass on this inside and out.
Speaker 3: But I want to switch focus a little bit. The
Speaker 3: Milkin Institute, along with the Milken Institute's Global Conference, which
Speaker 3: is the who's who of everyone in business and finance,
Speaker 3: can you talk about the origin story of this and
Speaker 3: its mission and where it is today on delivering that mission.
Speaker 2: That conference brings the leaders in philanthropy and medical and
Speaker 2: education and entrepreneurs and finance together, and so the idea was,
Speaker 2: let's bring people that might never meet each other in
Speaker 2: their lifetime together. Let's bring those special talented individuals in
Speaker 2: education or healthcare or even government leaders, and let them
Speaker 2: spend four or five days together. To give you one story, Bob,
Speaker 2: that kind of depicts that. Peter Chernan, who at the
Speaker 2: time was the president of what was news Court Fox
Speaker 2: when they were combined, he was on a panel with
Speaker 2: the leaders in the media entertainment industry. But he came
Speaker 2: there that day and went to two sessions, one doctors
Speaker 2: in Uganda where there's one hundred and twenty five thousand
Speaker 2: people for every doctor. In malaria no more, the fact
Speaker 2: that one of the largest causes of death on the
Speaker 2: planet was malaria, particularly for children. And he walked into
Speaker 2: those two sessions, something he might never have done in
Speaker 2: his lifetime, nor was prepared to walk in, and it
Speaker 2: changed his life forever. I think less than a year
Speaker 2: later he told Rupert he wanted to retire, and he
Speaker 2: became an active participant with malaria no more when and
Speaker 2: visited East Africa. Would he have ever done that if
Speaker 2: he had not walked in the room. The goal is
Speaker 2: to get people, get entrepreneurs, get those change makers, bring
Speaker 2: that human and social capital together at one place from
Speaker 2: every walk of life. If you said when it had started,
Speaker 2: it started in the early seventies when I used to
Speaker 2: put on these research conference and I wanted to see
Speaker 2: how a CEO or a leader at an organization answered
Speaker 2: the fifth question or the tenth question. Not the first.
Speaker 2: Everybody can get prepared for the first, but what about
Speaker 2: the tenth question. And much of the decision on financing
Speaker 2: a Bill mcgallan or Steve Ross, or yourself, or a
Speaker 2: Craig McCall or a Steve Win or a John Malone
Speaker 2: and you name it came from watching their interaction, what
Speaker 2: their vision was, the twinkle in their eye. Of the
Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of companies I've had a chance to
Speaker 2: finance and be involved with. Bob, you mentioned MTV. I
Speaker 2: can't tell you how many times I had someone call
Speaker 2: me up complaining in the mid eighties of how bad
Speaker 2: MTV was on their kids. How could I do this?
Speaker 2: Why did I do this? They're listening in all these songs.
Speaker 2: And you might remember, Bob, prior to MTV going public,
Speaker 2: in order to protect MTV, it was bundled with HBO,
Speaker 2: and it was bundled with ESPN. So if the dad
Speaker 2: didn't want to cancel ESPN and the mom didn't want
Speaker 2: to cancel HBO, well then they couldn't cancel MTV. And
Speaker 2: it took over a whole generation. And it's always the people.
Speaker 2: It is estimated that the social and human camp of
Speaker 2: the United States is worth fifteen hundred to two thousand trillion.
Speaker 2: Fifteen hundred to two thousand trillion. The financial assets are
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty trillion. So whether it's a nonprofit,
Speaker 2: whether it's a for profit, whether it's a government, whether
Speaker 2: it's an agency, they're only as good as the people
Speaker 2: that work for them and the vision of them.
Speaker 4: Let me ask you about you as it relates to this.
Speaker 3: I mean most people would say, Mike Milkin math genius,
Speaker 3: knows numbers inside and out. Oh my god, knows everything
Speaker 3: about finance. How did you develop and where did this
Speaker 3: extraordinary skill for actually evaluating people come from? Because usually
Speaker 3: you don't see those two skills going together.
Speaker 2: My father, when I was eight years old, told me
Speaker 2: my children, his grandchildren would not have a good life
Speaker 2: unless every single person had a chance. Not that they
Speaker 2: would succeed, but they felt that they had a chance
Speaker 2: at this American dream, this dream that was defined in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty one of upward mobility, a chance to succeed
Speaker 2: and grow, not based on your religion, where you were born,
Speaker 2: what school you went to, your parents, whether you're a
Speaker 2: man or a woman, but your ability and your persistence.
Speaker 2: So that was drummed into my head as a young kid.
Speaker 2: My father's mother died and childbirth, and his father was
Speaker 2: killed in an automobile accident when he was eleven. So
Speaker 2: his view of community and that's why I started raising
Speaker 2: money for local charities on my bike as a young boy.
Speaker 2: And as I grew up, I discovered that most people
Speaker 2: don't see the world through other people size. They see
Speaker 2: the world only through their own eyes. And as a
Speaker 2: parent and a grandparent, you see so much if you
Speaker 2: travel or with your grandchildren or children by seeing the
Speaker 2: world through their eyes. And so to me, the idea
Speaker 2: that people with the best ideas would be denied access
Speaker 2: to capital. When I financed the first woman to buy
Speaker 2: a company, she didn't inherit that was in the largest
Speaker 2: in America, I got hate mail in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: In America, today, women have led the largest automobile companies,
Speaker 2: IBM the largest defense contractor. But the emancipation of women
Speaker 2: didn't begin to the seventies, and the emancipation of women
Speaker 2: financially didn't begin until the mid eighties when I financed
Speaker 2: reg Lewis an African American man. My view the Jackie
Speaker 2: Rock and cent of business. I got death threats in
Speaker 2: America in nineteen eighty six, and so things have changed
Speaker 2: tremendously in America, But it wasn't that long ago. And
Speaker 2: today young people or financial markets are totally open. And
Speaker 2: in the last thirty years of the twentieth century, small
Speaker 2: and medium companies created more than sixty million jobs. And
Speaker 2: so today that young person has one thousand or ten
Speaker 2: thousand people that might give them financial capital to grow.
Speaker 2: When I entered Wall Straight in nineteen sixty eight, maybe
Speaker 2: there was ten people that decided whether you could get
Speaker 2: capital to grow your business. And so the world is
Speaker 2: much different today. But the challenge is the same. We
Speaker 2: need to make people feel they're part of that effort.
Speaker 2: And so starting with a private equity firm of KKOI
Speaker 2: and Leonard Grain and Apollo, they form something called ownership works,
Speaker 2: and when they buy a company today they give equity
Speaker 2: to every single employee, whether they're the truck driver or
Speaker 2: the night watchmen. And more than ten billion dollars has
Speaker 2: now been distributed to the lowest wage workers of these
Speaker 2: companies to make them feel they're part of it. But
Speaker 2: this is just the beginning, in my opinion, and the
Speaker 2: enormous differences in net worth that exist in this country.
Speaker 2: America has the highest average net worth of any country
Speaker 2: in the world with more than twenty million people. But
Speaker 2: you're averaging in the Gates and the Bezos and the
Speaker 2: musk into those equations, et cetera. But we have a
Speaker 2: relatively low median net worth, substantially lower than many developed countries.
Speaker 2: Now we have a large percentage of our population that
Speaker 2: has a net worth less than ten thousand. It's our
Speaker 2: dream here that we will dramatically change that in the
Speaker 2: next ten years through participation in not just four oh
Speaker 2: one ks, but ownership, and that every child in America
Speaker 2: will have an investment account, so that will create opportunities.
Speaker 3: More of mathem Magic right after this quick break, Welcome
Speaker 3: back to Mathem Magic.
Speaker 4: Let's hear more from my conversation with Mike Milkin.
Speaker 3: You know any man who's ever had an inkling of
Speaker 3: any issue at the prostate knows of what you've done
Speaker 3: with prostate cancer research. You brought your saying entrepreneurial skills
Speaker 3: to the issue of prostate cancer with the founding of
Speaker 3: the Prostate Cancer Foundation in nineteen ninety three. You've set
Speaker 3: up other health organizations which have also had a big impact.
Speaker 3: You looked at this situation the way you.
Speaker 4: Looked at business.
Speaker 3: What was the problem with medical research and how did
Speaker 3: you attack it?
Speaker 2: I lost ten relatives to cancer, and so i'd say
Speaker 2: between seventy two and ninety three, I was a donor
Speaker 2: to medical research. But in ninety three I watched my
Speaker 2: father die and I concluded that science could not move
Speaker 2: fast enough to save his life. You know, I moved
Speaker 2: back to California from the East Coast because I wanted
Speaker 2: his two grand children, our two sons who were born
Speaker 2: at the time, to know my father before he died. Well,
Speaker 2: fast forward eighteen years later, I'm diagnosed with advanced cancer
Speaker 2: that spread through my body, and there is no solution
Speaker 2: at the moment that would save my life. And so
Speaker 2: I had to accelerate, not just for me, but for
Speaker 2: millions of others. How research was going on. I saw
Speaker 2: a submission to the National Cancer Institute that was nine
Speaker 2: feet of paper. It took eighteen months to prepare. They're
Speaker 2: going to spend eighteen months analyzing it. If they give
Speaker 2: it a go, it'll be three years later and what
Speaker 2: they said they're going to do will no longer be
Speaker 2: even relevant three years later. So we had to accelerate research.
Speaker 2: So we decided we'd go to a five page piece
Speaker 2: of paper. You could submit anything you want. We only
Speaker 2: promised to read five pages. We'd let you know whether
Speaker 2: you won and fund you within sixty to ninety days.
Speaker 2: And a requirement was you had to share. I had
Speaker 2: people telling me now they can't share their research until
Speaker 2: it's published in Nature or sell in a year, and
Speaker 2: we told them that's okay, your work is so important
Speaker 2: you don't need our money. We will just give our
Speaker 2: money to those willing to share. And so those three
Speaker 2: things changed the face of research. One sharing your data
Speaker 2: with everyone so everyone knew your idea. Number two quick response,
Speaker 2: and number three you don't have to work for a
Speaker 2: year if you had a good idea. And the most
Speaker 2: important idea maybe of all, was less fun young people.
Speaker 2: So we concluded when you looked at people that won
Speaker 2: Nobel Prizes, most of those people want a Nobel Prize
Speaker 2: for their ideas. When they were in school or their
Speaker 2: twenties or early thirties. They might not have won they
Speaker 2: were sixty, but the idea Einstein Newton, Madame Curry had
Speaker 2: won two Nobel Prizes by the time she was forty,
Speaker 2: James Watson, you name it. And so the decision to
Speaker 2: fun young scientists in their generally thirty one thirty two.
Speaker 2: They've now spent half their life out of high school,
Speaker 2: going to medical school, getting a PhD in biology or
Speaker 2: computer science or something, and now they're ready for their
Speaker 2: own laboratory, but they weren't getting money. So that decision
Speaker 2: and the sharing Bob. We had one hundred and ninety
Speaker 2: four different disease groups who would share best practices, and
Speaker 2: whether it was the Michael J. Fox Parkinson's or the
Speaker 2: Multiple Mile Long or the lust Garden Pacriantic Foundation, we
Speaker 2: would talk about what does work, what doesn't work, and
Speaker 2: we created something, you know, Partners for cures Today. It's
Speaker 2: called the Future of Health where you can study deploying
Speaker 2: technology today like non evasive surgery, focused ultrasound or what
Speaker 2: we've learned about immuneology and your immune system. We worked
Speaker 2: in prosty cancer for ten years, but then shifted it
Speaker 2: over to a sister organization or Multima Meloma Alliance MRI,
Speaker 2: and the death rate from melanoma dropped fifty percent immediately.
Speaker 2: I'll never forget in nineteen ninety seven listening to Jim
Speaker 2: Allison tell our medical research group that your immune system
Speaker 2: is smarter than all of the world's greatest scientists, and
Speaker 2: the reason you got cancer was one of three. Your
Speaker 2: immune system has been turned off, your immune system has
Speaker 2: been compromised, or your cancer is disguised like a klingon
Speaker 2: worship and it doesn't recognize the disease. Well. Twenty years later,
Speaker 2: Jim won a Nobel Prize. I met three young men
Speaker 2: one night who had melanoma in their brain, in their lungs,
Speaker 2: and in their liver. Normal life expectancy less than one month.
Speaker 2: All three are live today decade later, all in total
Speaker 2: remission because of these checkpoint inhibitors. And what Jim's breakthrough
Speaker 2: was he turned off the switch in the cancer that
Speaker 2: turned off your immune system, so your immune system was
Speaker 2: turned back on. And that was also the technique of
Speaker 2: energizing your immune system that we found during cod of
Speaker 2: it in the RNA vaccines.
Speaker 3: I'd like to get some of your views on AI.
Speaker 3: Seventy percent of Americans use AI, two thirds fear it
Speaker 3: might cost them their jobs. Can you give us some
Speaker 3: of your perspective on AI. What's good about it?
Speaker 4: What's the risk?
Speaker 2: What's changed today is the data. I was one of
Speaker 2: the few people that was ever a math major in
Speaker 2: the finance world in the nineteen sixties. Today, math majors
Speaker 2: are some of the most highly paid and lead many
Speaker 2: of our financial institutions, healthcare institutions, you name it. Because
Speaker 2: data is available. In nineteen sixty five, when I did
Speaker 2: my credit research, I could get data, but I could
Speaker 2: not get any medical data. Today there are files, and
Speaker 2: the largest files will be your biological and clinical data. Today.
Speaker 2: The amount of information that's available in data to everyone.
Speaker 2: So it isn't the data that's the shortage today, it's
Speaker 2: the analysis of that data. Who's going to analyze that data,
Speaker 2: who's going to figure out and so. Earlier this year,
Speaker 2: there was a study of a doctor, a doctor in
Speaker 2: AI an AI alone diagnosing diseases. The one that did
Speaker 2: the best was AI alone. The one that did the
Speaker 2: medal was doctor and Ai and the one that didn't
Speaker 2: do as well was a doctor. In nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: when we set up the Prostate Cancer Foundation, they came
Speaker 2: up with something called minimally evasive surgery. And so when
Speaker 2: you ask me and tell me a large number of
Speaker 2: people are concerned. What about if you were a surgeon
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety three, you went to medical school, you
Speaker 2: learned a special skill, you were among the best surgeons
Speaker 2: in the world. And now they've come up with this
Speaker 2: new technology, a technology of minimally evasive surgery. If you
Speaker 2: get your appendance taken out, you won't be able even
Speaker 2: to find the scar. You're in the hospital, maybe overnight,
Speaker 2: less blood less, trauma, less everything. But what happened these
Speaker 2: organizations led by surgeons said, how do we know? How
Speaker 2: do we know if the outcome is going to be
Speaker 2: the same ten years yet, or let's wait ten years.
Speaker 2: So for a ten year period of time, millions of
Speaker 2: people underwent surgeries traditionally that they didn't have to go
Speaker 2: under as it was delayed by these surgeons who were
Speaker 2: about to be disintermediated. And so you could have bought
Speaker 2: intuitive surgical which I think is worth one hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty ballion or more at pretty much the same level
Speaker 2: ten years later because it was delayed. What about AI.
Speaker 2: There is this dramatic change that's changing every single parts
Speaker 2: of our life. The greatest benefit that's simple to see
Speaker 2: might be in healthcare. The second is going to be
Speaker 2: an education. Might be your education tutor. But what is
Speaker 2: the future promise? The future promises for every person. If
Speaker 2: we can find eight and a half to nine billion
Speaker 2: mobile phones on the planet wherever you are, I assure
Speaker 2: you we can find every person who can be your tutor, etc.
Speaker 2: Explain things to you. And so someday everyone is going
Speaker 2: to have an education that's going to be available to everyone.
Speaker 2: I was interviewing John Chambers in March of two thousand
Speaker 2: when Cisco was the most valuable company in the world,
Speaker 2: and he stated that education is going to make everything
Speaker 2: else look like a rounding air on the internet in
Speaker 2: the web. Well, it hastened to date, but it might
Speaker 2: in the long term. Are there negatives? Yes? Can we
Speaker 2: take misinformation and spread it throughout the entire world? Yes?
Speaker 2: Can a handful of individuals create fake pictures and rile
Speaker 2: people up? Yes, So there are plenty of potential problems,
Speaker 2: and some of which we've seen in the last few
Speaker 2: years as these false images or things have occurred. But
Speaker 2: when it comes to education and healthcare and other things,
Speaker 2: it holds enormous promise. And so there's pluses and minuses,
Speaker 2: and hopefully we'll find a way to control the minuses.
Speaker 3: Mike, we usually end each episode with shoutouts to some
Speaker 3: business great to math and magic. But your background is
Speaker 3: so unique, I want to add change it a little
Speaker 3: bit for you, add a few more things. Who was
Speaker 3: the best mentor you ever had?
Speaker 2: I'd say two, Gary Becker, who I read his work
Speaker 2: in the mid sixties on human and social capital, and
Speaker 2: probably my dad.
Speaker 4: It's great.
Speaker 3: Who besides you was the best executive to see the
Speaker 3: world and the businesses through numbers. You've seen them all.
Speaker 2: I think you worked. And one of my best friends,
Speaker 2: Steve Ross, was one. He saw the world through numbers.
Speaker 2: Every time we sat down, he'd take out that little
Speaker 2: yellow pad you remember, and write everything down.
Speaker 3: I've got a few of those yellow pads. As a
Speaker 3: matter of fact, I've promised one of them to his daughter.
Speaker 2: He understand not only the numbers, but he understand the
Speaker 2: most important human nature and what motivated people, their fears
Speaker 2: and their aspirations. So it isn't just the numbers today,
Speaker 2: it's understanding what those numbers are telling.
Speaker 3: Who was if you think about it, and again, you
Speaker 3: saw a lot of them. You know CEOs ran these companies.
Speaker 3: You bet on them. Who is the most reliable CEO
Speaker 3: to always deliver the numbers?
Speaker 2: I'd say it's not the numbers, Bob, It's more the vision.
Speaker 2: Bill McGowan had a vision. Who in his right mind
Speaker 2: would take on someone that's a triple A that has
Speaker 2: ninety nine percent market share, has the most number of employees,
Speaker 2: has political operatives in every state. Who would take them
Speaker 2: on with a new idea? And who made the tough decisions.
Speaker 2: I remember in the mid eighties MCI cut fifteen thousand employees.
Speaker 2: He was there when there were thirty and twenty, but
Speaker 2: he gave this talk in order to survive and grow,
Speaker 2: they needed to prone to grow. Again, what a tough
Speaker 2: decision that is when you're really the founder with all
Speaker 2: of these people, but had to change the cost parameters
Speaker 2: of your business. But to me, it's delivering a vision
Speaker 2: not everyone necessarily believes. John Malone gave a talk at
Speaker 2: one of our conferences. It could have been as far
Speaker 2: back as nineteen seventy nine. I don't remember that if
Speaker 2: he ever reported a profit, he should be fired. He said,
Speaker 2: you need to look at this company based on the
Speaker 2: number of subscribers and customers we have. You can't judge
Speaker 2: this company because we're building on subscribers. And he changed
Speaker 2: the way people viewed it. Bob. I'm sure with your modesty,
Speaker 2: you've never told your own viewers, but when you joined AOL,
Speaker 2: AOL was paying people to put content on AOL. In
Speaker 2: a short period of time, you let people know they're
Speaker 2: going to have to pay you to put content on AOL,
Speaker 2: and that really changed the entire paradigm and much of
Speaker 2: the way even today, you know YouTube, Instagram is not
Speaker 2: paying people to put content. They're sharing future revenue as
Speaker 2: they've grown. But it was that vision that you had
Speaker 2: that changed substantially and allowed the company to survive and
Speaker 2: eventually merge into Time Warner.
Speaker 3: Mike, it's really hard to believe one person has done
Speaker 3: all you've been able to do in just one lifetime.
Speaker 3: Thanks for sharing your stories and insights with us today.
Speaker 3: Here are a few things I picked up from my
Speaker 3: conversation with Mike one. The American dream is some thing
Speaker 3: we all make possible together. Mike believes firmly in the
Speaker 3: free market, but also recognizes that the current system isn't
Speaker 3: working for many Americans. His decades of economic experience have
Speaker 3: led him become a proud member of programs like Invest America.
Speaker 3: His vision is one where all children are given the
Speaker 3: concrete opportunities to be a part of the market and
Speaker 3: reap its rewards. And this vision won't just happen, it
Speaker 3: has to be built. Two Faster really can be better.
Speaker 3: While some say slow and steady progress is the way
Speaker 3: to go when it comes to medical research, Mike has
Speaker 3: shown that efficiency saves lives. When he started the Prostate
Speaker 3: Cancer Foundation, he did away with thick stacks of research
Speaker 3: and long review times. When it's people's health on the line,
Speaker 3: Mike favors bold, business like investments.
Speaker 4: Three.
Speaker 3: Sharing is a superpower. This has always been a tenet
Speaker 3: of Mike's approach to medical research. Finding cures requires open communication.
Speaker 3: It's also something I see baked into the premise of
Speaker 3: the Milken Institute's Global Conference. Putting leaders in the same
Speaker 3: room can unlock empowering.
Speaker 4: Connections and new solutions.
Speaker 3: Whether sharing space, ideas, or even money, it can be
Speaker 3: revolutionary to break out of our silos. I'm Bob Pittman.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
Speaker 1: to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts. The
Speaker 1: show is created and hosted by Bob Pittman. The Math
Speaker 1: and Magic team is Ali Perry, Jessica Crincicch, and Dylan Hoyer.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Sidney Rosenbloom for booking and wrangling our
Speaker 1: wonderful talent, which is no small feat. Until next time,