Speaker 1: Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcasts featuring conversations with
Speaker 1: industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Speaker 1: Cynthia Littleton, co editor in chief of Variety Today. My
Speaker 1: guest is David Rubinstein, co founder and co chairman of
Speaker 1: Carlisle Group. Carlyle is one of the world's largest investment firms,
Speaker 1: with more than three hundred and seventy billion in assets
Speaker 1: under management across five continents. The company's reach is vast.
Speaker 1: Rubinstein helped launch the firm in nineteen eighty seven after
Speaker 1: working as a lawyer in Washington, d c. And for
Speaker 1: the Carter Administration as a domestic policy advisor. He's made
Speaker 1: piles of money over the years, and Rubinstein was one
Speaker 1: of the first signers of Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge, in
Speaker 1: which the one percent agreed to give away at least
Speaker 1: half of their wealth to charity. Rubinstein's curiosity is as
Speaker 1: big as his fortune, and he indulges it in non
Speaker 1: fiction series that he hosts for PBS and Bloomberg News.
Speaker 1: His latest PBS offering Iconic America, Our Symbols and Stories,
Speaker 1: is an example of Rubinstein's passion for history. He's very
Speaker 1: concerned that not enough of us know enough about our
Speaker 1: history to avoid repeating it. With his latest show, Rubinstein
Speaker 1: visits marquee locations across the country for episodes that delve
Speaker 1: into what makes a place tick and what makes it
Speaker 1: uniquely American. His stops include Fenway Park, the Golden gate Bridge,
Speaker 1: and the Hollywood Sign, but these are not breezy travelogs.
Speaker 1: The Hollywood episode does a good job of capturing a
Speaker 1: region that is synonymous with an industry that is very
Speaker 1: much in the throes of transition. Our conversation takes several turns,
Speaker 1: including his thoughts on why people generally hate the rich,
Speaker 1: why his mother deemed him a yenta at a very
Speaker 1: young age, and he dishes on a bipartisan monthly dinner
Speaker 1: series that he hosts in Washington, d C. That's all
Speaker 1: coming up after the break, and we're back with David Rubinstein,
Speaker 1: host of PBS's Iconic America, Our Symbols and Stories. David Rubinstein,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me at your beautiful Madison Avenue offices.
Speaker 2: My pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much
Speaker 2: for having me.
Speaker 1: I David, you accomplished in many areas, obviously as an
Speaker 1: investor at the highest heights of investment in private equity.
Speaker 1: You're an author, you host, by my account, at least
Speaker 1: three shows, three ongoing TV shows, and have numerous specials
Speaker 1: and things in the works. How does all of this
Speaker 1: activity in disparate areas come together in your life? Why
Speaker 1: do you stay so busy?
Speaker 2: I'm trying to stay active mentally and physically. I'm now
Speaker 2: seventy three years old, and we all know that when
Speaker 2: you turn certain ages, your brain slows down a bit,
Speaker 2: your body atrophies a bit. But if you exercise, or
Speaker 2: you exercise your brain as well as your body, you
Speaker 2: can postpone to some extent the normal aging process. I
Speaker 2: also have a lot of curiosity about things, and when
Speaker 2: I was growing up, my mother would call me a yenta.
Speaker 2: Yenta is a Yiddish word for onet to know everything.
Speaker 2: So when people come to our house, I would always
Speaker 2: ask a lot of questions. And now I find myself
Speaker 2: as an interviewer on television or other kind of media,
Speaker 2: asking a lot of questions. And maybe it came from
Speaker 2: my intellectual curiosity or what my mother would call being
Speaker 2: a yenta. So I'm trying to keep my brain active.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to stay interested in what's going on in
Speaker 2: the world and maybe stay relevant. Because as you get
Speaker 2: to be a certain age, and you're obviously much younger
Speaker 2: than me, you get to be a certain age, people
Speaker 2: look at you differently. So when I turn seventy, people
Speaker 2: said to me at the Kenney Center, where I've been
Speaker 2: the chair for a number of years, mister Rubinstein, do
Speaker 2: you want to take the elevator up? Or can you
Speaker 2: walk these three steps? And so, you know, people look
Speaker 2: at you differently when you hit a certain ages. And so,
Speaker 2: as you know from covering Hollywood, people don't like to
Speaker 2: announce their age particularly, and they like to mask it
Speaker 2: a bit with either plastic surgery or some other kind
Speaker 2: of cosmetics things. And so I don't have any plastic
Speaker 2: surgery and I don't use any cosmetics. But you know,
Speaker 2: obviously I'm trying to do as many things like can.
Speaker 2: And I also think to be very serious, every human
Speaker 2: wants to give back to society before their time on
Speaker 2: their face of the earth is over. And how do
Speaker 2: you give back to society. Well, one way you can
Speaker 2: do is help your country. And so I do a
Speaker 2: lot of things that I call patriotic philanthropy. But I
Speaker 2: think by doing interview shows, I'm trying to educate people
Speaker 2: and educate myself as well. So I do a lot
Speaker 2: of different things to keep busy. Maybe that's because I'm
Speaker 2: afraid if I don't, they busy something with atrophy or
Speaker 2: I won't be as relevant as I would like to be.
Speaker 1: A rolling stone gathers no moss.
Speaker 2: I've never heard that phrase before. That's a you should
Speaker 2: coin that.
Speaker 1: I think somebody might have beat me to it, but
Speaker 1: you have. And a new entry coming to PBS soon
Speaker 1: that is called Iconic America, where you go to different
Speaker 1: cities and do a really interesting job of looking at
Speaker 1: how monuments or iconic landmarks in those cities, what they
Speaker 1: say about those cities, and the economic and cultural and
Speaker 1: social aspects around those cities tell me. What was the
Speaker 1: spark of inspiration for doing this type of sort of
Speaker 1: travelog and history.
Speaker 2: For the last ten fifteen years or so, I've spent
Speaker 2: a fair amount of my time trying to educate people
Speaker 2: met American history on the theory that we should have
Speaker 2: an informed citizen ry. That was the premise of our
Speaker 2: representative democracy when it was created. Sadly, Americans don't know
Speaker 2: much about our country's history. We don't require people to
Speaker 2: take American history courses in college or high school. We
Speaker 2: don't even teach civics very much anymore in junior high
Speaker 2: school or high school. So as part of an effort
Speaker 2: to do that, I have started some programs, various interview
Speaker 2: programs and so forth. This particular one was something that
Speaker 2: I developed with PBS helping where we would go and
Speaker 2: take iconic symbols of this country and do an hour
Speaker 2: show on each, hopefully telling people about the history and
Speaker 2: the interesting parts about it. So the eighth that we've
Speaker 2: chosen for this part of the series and that we'll
Speaker 2: be broadcast on PBS beginning of eight point twenty six,
Speaker 2: the first one is Fenway Park. So after the Fenway
Speaker 2: Park one, we were going to do the Hollywood Sign,
Speaker 2: which I believe you've already seen that show.
Speaker 3: That one caught my attention, right.
Speaker 2: That one is the famous Hollywood sign that, as you
Speaker 2: may know, maybe our listeners don't, it was originally intended
Speaker 2: to be Hollywood Land. That was the sign. It was
Speaker 2: designed to sell houses in the Hollywood Hills, and it
Speaker 2: was the Hollywood Land Company that was selling them competing
Speaker 2: with other home builders. Ultimately that land taken down when
Speaker 2: the homes homes are all sold and now it just
Speaker 2: says Hollywood. So that's another one. Then we have one
Speaker 2: of the Golden gate Bridge, one of the American Bald Eagle,
Speaker 2: one of the Gadsden Flag, which says don't treadle me,
Speaker 2: which has had a long history in our country. Another
Speaker 2: is Stone Mountain, which is a mountain in Georgia where
Speaker 2: Confederate symbols are now carved into it. Another one is
Speaker 2: a Statue of Liberty. Another one is the American Cowboy.
Speaker 2: And what we try to do is to go through
Speaker 2: the history of these things, what people might know or
Speaker 2: might not know. Try to do it an interesting, entertaining
Speaker 2: format because you want people to watch it. So in
Speaker 2: many of these I interview people. Many of them other
Speaker 2: people do interviews, and we have some really interesting people.
Speaker 2: In the Hollywood one, for example, we gathered a number
Speaker 2: of Hollywood well known people for a dinner and we
Speaker 2: had talked about Hollywood, and then I went to visit
Speaker 2: the homes of some famous Hollywood stars and so forth.
Speaker 2: And I think it's pretty educational and taught me a
Speaker 2: lot about Hollywood that I didn't know.
Speaker 3: You do a good job in. These aren't just breezies.
Speaker 1: These aren't excuse me, these aren't just breezy celebratory travelogue episodes.
Speaker 1: These are you do a good job in the Hollywood
Speaker 1: episode of putting. You know, it's a it's a warts
Speaker 1: and all look at the town. You know, it's pros
Speaker 1: and its cons and Hollywood just by its you know,
Speaker 1: just by that what that word conjures up has has
Speaker 1: definitely there's a lot of dark side to a lot
Speaker 1: of the up and the opportunity. I thought you did
Speaker 1: a good job of capturing what can go wrong, but
Speaker 1: also the incredible opportunity. You come to town with a
Speaker 1: great idea that you can package into a form of
Speaker 1: pop culture that can be marketed to the masses, and
Speaker 1: you can be you know, there are any number of examples,
Speaker 1: you can be living out of your car and within
Speaker 1: a short amount of time caching big royalty checks by,
Speaker 1: but just by dint of a good idea and that
Speaker 1: and that's an intoxicating place, and you captured that very well.
Speaker 2: Our country has been premised, to some extent on something
Speaker 2: that was a phrase that was invented in nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: six called the American Dream. Now, the American dream is
Speaker 2: kind of a ratio alger concept where you start with nothing,
Speaker 2: typically an immigrant many ways, and you rise up the
Speaker 2: success in our country, and the American dream is something
Speaker 2: that people generally believe in this country. But a subset
Speaker 2: of that is the Hollywood dream, which is you might
Speaker 2: not be well educated, you might not be extremely talented
Speaker 2: in the view of some of your peers, you go
Speaker 2: to Hollywood and you're discovered as an actor, actress and
Speaker 2: something all of a sudden, you're Marilyn Monroe or something
Speaker 2: like that. And so that dream still lives on and
Speaker 2: many many people go to Hollywood. It turns out that
Speaker 2: what Hollywood actually is is not what people think. There
Speaker 2: is no Hollywood in the traditional sense, where if you
Speaker 2: go to Hollywood that part of la that's not where
Speaker 2: the studios are. We try to point out the studios
Speaker 2: are in Burbank or other parts of the Los Angeles area.
Speaker 2: But the word Hollywood got to be synonymous with this
Speaker 2: is where the movies are made. And of course if
Speaker 2: you go to the actual Hollywood, you don't see any studios.
Speaker 2: You do see Graeman's Chinese theater and you see people's
Speaker 2: uh cement fingerprints.
Speaker 3: The Walk of Fame and yeah, but that's.
Speaker 2: About all that's actually related to the movie industry in Hollywood. Uh.
Speaker 2: You also see a lot of you know, kind of
Speaker 2: T shirt shops and things like that.
Speaker 3: In Hollywood times squarish type.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you go to the real Hollywood, which is
Speaker 2: in the studios in the valley or so forth, that's
Speaker 2: where the movies are made, TV shows are made. But
Speaker 2: the whole culture of Hollywood is one that is i
Speaker 2: would say, uniquely American. And what we try to do
Speaker 2: in these so called symbols of our country is to
Speaker 2: talk about things that are really uniquely American. So there
Speaker 2: there obviously there's Bollywood in in uh in India, but generally,
Speaker 2: if you think about making movies, you think about Hollywood
Speaker 2: and a uniquely American kind of enterprise.
Speaker 3: And that meritocracy of sorts.
Speaker 1: Like you can come you can be Greta Garbo from Sweden,
Speaker 1: or you can be Doris Day from a tiny town
Speaker 1: and I'm probably gonna get this wrong, but hi, you know,
Speaker 1: so you can be somewhere from the Midwest and come
Speaker 1: out here, and you know, again, if you get that
Speaker 1: right mix of luck and idea, you can find your
Speaker 1: fame and fortune.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: I mean think of the famous movie stars and the
Speaker 2: diverse backgrounds they had. So Carrie Grant was really Archibal
Speaker 2: at Leech was his real name, and he's from England.
Speaker 2: Bob Hope, that was not his real name, and.
Speaker 3: He came to really yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think his first name was really Leslie.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, Leslie. I can't Leslie, not Leslie Howard, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know people who rose up from very modest
Speaker 2: circumstances and became famous Hollywood icons.
Speaker 1: One thing I wanted to add to your discussion of
Speaker 1: Hollywood is one of Hollywood as the geographical neighborhood of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, is it. One big exception these days is Netflix.
Speaker 1: Netflix planted, It's staked, it has actually has offices in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: And that was a pre pandemic decision that I think
Speaker 1: anybody there would say has been very challenging because that
Speaker 1: neighborhood of Los Angeles has really got a big problem
Speaker 1: with unhoused and it's really created a very difficult environment
Speaker 1: just in and around in and around Netflix. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of the kind of wither
Speaker 1: Los Angeles seems to be in that neighborhood. Can they
Speaker 1: make this work? With this they have this incredible sort
Speaker 1: of anchor tenant that for years they've been saying, We're
Speaker 1: going to revive Hollywood the neighborhood, and.
Speaker 3: It's a struggle.
Speaker 2: Streaming has changed the entertainment world for sure, and what
Speaker 2: Netflix has achieved has really been a major factor in
Speaker 2: changing the way movies are financed, actors are compensated. So
Speaker 2: if I ask people who's the most prominent person in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: as I've done from time to time when working on this,
Speaker 2: that people would often say, person like the head of Netflix,
Speaker 2: Ted Sarandos, who is the co c O. Now he's
Speaker 2: deciding the green light the script or that script. He
Speaker 2: had a fair amount of money to do it still does.
Speaker 2: And all I'm recently at a Kenny Center event and
Speaker 2: you know, a very nice person came there for an
Speaker 2: event honoring Adam Sandler, who made some movies I think
Speaker 2: with Netflix. That's why he was there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's made a bunch of movies for Netflix.
Speaker 2: Right, So, you know, you never know who is going
Speaker 2: to be the most powerful person in Hollywood. I would
Speaker 2: say today, you know, He's probably one of them. Who
Speaker 2: are the most powerful people today in Hollywood. I guess
Speaker 2: they're typically the studio heads or people like the head
Speaker 2: of Netflix, or there are a couple directors that can
Speaker 2: make a movie. Steven Spielberg can probably get anything finance
Speaker 2: he wants to get financed, and I assume James Cameron
Speaker 2: Ken as well.
Speaker 1: I've never seen such a time in Hollywood where all
Speaker 1: most of the major platforms are in the throes of
Speaker 1: this massive transition, and frankly in you know, various forms
Speaker 1: of disarray, restructuring, you know, pretty massive layoffs. It is
Speaker 1: just a part of this, you know, certainly difficult, but
Speaker 1: it's clearly necessary transition of just as of reallocation of resources.
Speaker 1: Can you think, as a student of history and certainly
Speaker 1: a student of business, can you think of analogous times
Speaker 1: in American history where we've seen sectors just going through
Speaker 1: such wholesale transformations in the way they make money. The
Speaker 1: way Hollywood makes money on content has changed radically in
Speaker 1: ten the last ten to fifteen years. Can you think
Speaker 1: of analogous industries in time The.
Speaker 2: Industry that I've been in, the financial service industry used
Speaker 2: to be you had investment bankers, and they would service
Speaker 2: big corporate clients and big corporations. Over the last forty
Speaker 2: years or so, the big clients for many investment banking
Speaker 2: firms have become private equity firms which didn't exist thirty
Speaker 2: forty years ago, or hedge funds, which didn't really exist
Speaker 2: in any large scale thirty or forty years ago. So
Speaker 2: the people that are often moving Wall Street today are
Speaker 2: hedge funds, particularly those that are involved in rapid trading
Speaker 2: kinds of things, or private equity firms of various types,
Speaker 2: venture funds, growth capital funds, buyout funds. It's really changed
Speaker 2: Wall Street, and dramatically, just as as.
Speaker 3: You would you say for the better, for the worse.
Speaker 2: Or historians a figure that I'd say, it's you know,
Speaker 2: as a general rule of thumb, I think when you
Speaker 2: have changes, it probably historically better than not. But there
Speaker 2: are always some abuses, some problems and changes. But you
Speaker 2: think about it. One hundred years ago, there were a
Speaker 2: limited number of big Wall Street firms, and over the
Speaker 2: years we still have a limited number of Wall Street firms.
Speaker 2: The names have changed a bit, same as true in
Speaker 2: Hollywood you had a limited number of studios, a few
Speaker 2: years ago, and you still have a limited number of
Speaker 2: major studios.
Speaker 1: So it's amazing those original brand names still really carry
Speaker 1: a lot of weights.
Speaker 2: Yes, if you think about it, the big brand names
Speaker 2: fifty years ago, where MGM still exists, Paramount still exists,
Speaker 2: Universe still exists, Disney still exists, Warner Brothers. So those
Speaker 2: big names have stayed around, even though the studios are
Speaker 2: completely different in the way they are owned and operated
Speaker 2: than they were years ago. But Hollywood has changed dramatically.
Speaker 2: The way you get movies finances changed, the way you
Speaker 2: become a star has changed. But interestingly, it's still the
Speaker 2: center of entertainment creation. In other words, if you want
Speaker 2: to make a movie and you want to get a
Speaker 2: movie financed, you don't typically go to Des Moines, Iowa.
Speaker 2: You probably go to Hollywood or Los Angeles, somewhere in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles. Of course, there's a lot of activity in
Speaker 2: New York as well, but New York Los Angeles is
Speaker 2: still the epicenter, I would say of the entertainment that
Speaker 2: hasn't changed in the last fifty years or so, and
Speaker 2: probably he's not going to change anytime soon. I think,
Speaker 2: even with the Internet and with all kinds of things
Speaker 2: that you can do. Virtually, you're not likely to see
Speaker 2: entertainment creation activity being done out of you know, the
Speaker 2: mid Midwest. Let's say it just doesn't happen. It's not
Speaker 2: likely to happen in my view.
Speaker 1: The locus of you definitely there there. Certainly there's more
Speaker 1: import export happening. South Korea is a really big exporter
Speaker 1: of content. Israel is exporting more both shows and formats
Speaker 1: for shows that are remade for different audiences.
Speaker 3: But there, But.
Speaker 1: You can't and I've seen many times people you know, companies,
Speaker 1: even Netflix at the beginning, really you know, it took
Speaker 1: them a lot to kind of get there, find their
Speaker 1: sea legs. But the idea that well we can hire
Speaker 1: people to produce shows, we can pay people to produce shows,
Speaker 1: there is something. There's something you having that in house expertise,
Speaker 1: having that department, that physical production department that knows how
Speaker 1: to get people before cameras, knows how to get ten
Speaker 1: big trailers out to the out to the field in
Speaker 1: the Midwest where you're going to shoot that pivotal you know,
Speaker 1: the pivotal closing scene in the corn Fiel field or
Speaker 1: whatever it might be like that that level of expertise
Speaker 1: knowing how to deal with tax incentives and all the
Speaker 1: different pay literally literally the payroll in production is a
Speaker 1: very specialized job because there's so many different unions and
Speaker 1: so many different rules that you have in contracts. It's
Speaker 1: a really it's a very.
Speaker 3: Very expertise hard business to break into.
Speaker 2: That expertise still resides principally in the New York area
Speaker 2: and the Los Angeles area. The only non US I
Speaker 2: would say factor that's changed a bit about how people
Speaker 2: are entertained in recent years is TikTok TikTok, which is
Speaker 2: Chinese based.
Speaker 3: Of course, much in the news these days.
Speaker 2: It has lots of controversy associated with it, but it's
Speaker 2: very rare for an American audience to use a technology
Speaker 2: to be entertained or to be informed that is not
Speaker 2: based in the United States. So, for example, I doubt
Speaker 2: if you or I could get through the day without
Speaker 2: using either a product or a service created by Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon,
Speaker 2: or Netflix, all American technologies. Now. Think about how you
Speaker 2: use one or more of those every day, and they
Speaker 2: didn't exist fifty years ago or so. But how many
Speaker 2: Americans are used to getting their entertainment, their information from
Speaker 2: a let's say, a China based entertainment form very few,
Speaker 2: and I think that's produced a fair amount of dislocation
Speaker 2: and concern in Washington, d C. For the reasons that
Speaker 2: have been articulated by government officials. But I think part
Speaker 2: of it is we're not used to having technology or
Speaker 2: entertainment or information given to us through a Chinese source.
Speaker 2: I often wonder why it is that no European technology
Speaker 2: has taken hold, so that Europe, which is a bigger
Speaker 2: population in the United States, has not created any technology
Speaker 2: that we are currently using to get through our daily
Speaker 2: life lives. Think about it. I mis mentioned the companies
Speaker 2: that you're using probably or their services, but none of
Speaker 2: those companies are really European based. China has come up
Speaker 2: with one so far. TikTok, what happened to Europe? I
Speaker 2: can explain why probably there's nothing from Europe in this
Speaker 2: array of companies. But as a general rule of thumb,
Speaker 2: back to the entertainment area, entertainment more or less for
Speaker 2: the United States is created in the United States essentially,
Speaker 2: and created more or less in the New York area
Speaker 2: or the Los Angeles area, with few exceptions. With artificial intelligence,
Speaker 2: you're now going to have the challenge of figuring out
Speaker 2: whether you should write your own tests essay or have
Speaker 2: an artificial intelligence service do it for you, which apparently
Speaker 2: are people are doing. And now there's a big push
Speaker 2: to figure out whether graters or teachers can have a
Speaker 2: mechanism to figure out whether something's been written by artificial
Speaker 2: intelligence or not when they're greating exams, and that's going
Speaker 2: to be a big industry.
Speaker 1: Does that all of that level of misinformation Does it
Speaker 1: affect markets?
Speaker 3: Does it? Because does it mess with people's market heads
Speaker 3: when they're trying to figure things out?
Speaker 2: Well, markets move on impulse, they move quickly. There's a
Speaker 2: general view get there first with the information and act
Speaker 2: on it. When the information is wrong and you act
Speaker 2: on it, that's going to be a problem. So, yes,
Speaker 2: people are moving quickly, and sometimes the information is not acurate.
Speaker 1: Don't go chasing after any national landmarks. We'll be right
Speaker 1: back after this short break, and we're back with more
Speaker 1: from David Rubinstein, host of PBS's Iconic America.
Speaker 3: Our symbols and stories.
Speaker 1: In Hollywood and in other aspects of pop culture, certainly
Speaker 1: Wall Street high finance.
Speaker 3: You know, private equity.
Speaker 1: Head fund leaders are very are very often cast as
Speaker 1: the villain.
Speaker 3: That is it? Is it?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like a punching bag sometimes? Is it
Speaker 1: hard to be? Is it hard to square that with
Speaker 1: the reality that you know well.
Speaker 2: Throughout history people who have made money, even legally, have
Speaker 2: not been put on pedestals because generally people think, as
Speaker 2: Balzac once said, behind every great fortune there's a crime,
Speaker 2: and there's a general view by the population as a
Speaker 2: whole that if you've made somebody made a lot of money,
Speaker 2: they must have done something wrong. And private equity firms
Speaker 2: didn't do themselves any great favors early on, when they
Speaker 2: didn't pay attention to environmental concerns or diversity concerns or
Speaker 2: other things. That has changed a bit, but there's no
Speaker 2: doubt that there's always going to be animosity towards people
Speaker 2: that make a fair amount of money. People are jealous
Speaker 2: to some extent, or people think that these people didn't
Speaker 2: deserve it. So I don't if I spend too much
Speaker 2: time worrying about people not liking what I'm doing, I
Speaker 2: will never get anything done. And I think it's true
Speaker 2: of most people. You have to get used to criticism
Speaker 2: because no matter what area you're in, if you rise up,
Speaker 2: you'll get critics. People like to take other people down
Speaker 2: as a general rule of thumb, and so I get
Speaker 2: used to this after a while, and I basically think
Speaker 2: I can only do so much. I do what I
Speaker 2: think is right. People don't like it, then nothing much
Speaker 2: I can do about it.
Speaker 1: You've certainly made a lot, you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: very specific choices with some pretty incredible philanthropy over the years.
Speaker 2: Yes, but I get criticized for that too. Let me explain.
Speaker 3: Undoubtedly, there are people.
Speaker 2: I was an original signer of the Giving Pledge, and
Speaker 2: there were forty of us. And you know, I'm committed
Speaker 2: to giving away not.
Speaker 3: Half of my by Warren Buffett and Buffet, Bill.
Speaker 2: Gates and Will Indegates, and you're supposed to give away
Speaker 2: half your net worth and on your death or during
Speaker 2: your lifetime, and I have committed to giving away all
Speaker 2: of my money, and I'm working to do that. But
Speaker 2: I'll give you an example. I went to visit Monticello,
Speaker 2: and I many years ago, I thought it was run
Speaker 2: down from what I had thought it would be. And
Speaker 2: so I said to Monticello, which is Thomas Shejefferson's home.
Speaker 2: He designed it and lived in it. Can you fix
Speaker 2: this up? How much would it take? I'll put up
Speaker 2: the money, and they did. But I said, as part
Speaker 2: of this, I think you should tell the good in
Speaker 2: the band of Thomas Jefferson. He wrote the Declaration of Independence,
Speaker 2: but he's also a slave owner who during his lifetime
Speaker 2: owned more than seven hundred slaves, and he obviously had
Speaker 2: a long time relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings.
Speaker 2: So build out the slave quarter so people can come
Speaker 2: here they know the good in the band, And I
Speaker 2: think that's important in our history to do that. I've
Speaker 2: been criticized by some people on the right side of
Speaker 2: the spectrum saying, well, Rubinstein is so woke. He insisted
Speaker 2: that Thomas Jefferson's slave background be described. Why should we
Speaker 2: hear about that when we go tour Monticello. We should
Speaker 2: just know about the Declaration of Independence. What are you
Speaker 2: supposed to say to that?
Speaker 3: So selectively edit your history.
Speaker 2: So I think you'll always be criticized for anything you
Speaker 2: do in life, if it's of any importance. But if
Speaker 2: you spend your life worrying about people criticizing you, you
Speaker 2: will never get anything done. So in the end, I
Speaker 2: kind of shut out the fact that some people are
Speaker 2: going to criticize whatever I do, and I just go forward.
Speaker 1: And you've obviously met you know, you are very much
Speaker 1: public figure. With you with your media and television work.
Speaker 1: Does the work being does the work of interviewing and
Speaker 1: talking to people? Let me ask this a different way.
Speaker 1: Does your media work help you in your business and
Speaker 1: investing life?
Speaker 2: It wasn't intended to that. It's like, I don't play golf.
Speaker 2: That takes a lot of time. I don't drink alcohol
Speaker 2: that takes a lot of time. So I'm not going
Speaker 2: to bars or anything like that. So the time I
Speaker 2: would be going to bars or drinking alcohol or you know,
Speaker 2: going to wine tastings or playing golf, I have that
Speaker 2: time available to do other things I'm interested in. And
Speaker 2: I've taken up interviewing as a as a bit of
Speaker 2: a hobby a bit, and I enjoy it and I
Speaker 2: like the intellectual challenge of it, the preparation, learning things
Speaker 2: and so forth. So has it helped me in the
Speaker 2: business world. I wouldn't say it's hurt. I would say
Speaker 2: maybe it's helped in this sense. When I go around
Speaker 2: the world to raise money for Carlis or other kinds
Speaker 2: of business ventures I'm involved with. More and more people
Speaker 2: now identify me as this is the guy on television.
Speaker 2: So I notice that when I walk into a room,
Speaker 2: I hear the younger people saying, well, that's the guy
Speaker 2: from those interview shows. There are surprisingly many younger people
Speaker 2: who watch my interview shows, and I guess they're rebroadcast
Speaker 2: on YouTube or other kind of things. They think I'm
Speaker 2: a full time interviewer. They don't know that I have
Speaker 2: a business career and a whole life outside of just
Speaker 2: doing these interviews. But people come up to me in
Speaker 2: ways they didn't before and say, can I have a
Speaker 2: picture with you? And can I talk to you about
Speaker 2: how to get in the interview business? And I try
Speaker 2: to say, this is a very tiny part of my life,
Speaker 2: but people now think it's My entire life is being
Speaker 2: an interviewer. And it shows you the power of television
Speaker 2: power broadcast because the interview shows that I do for
Speaker 2: Bloomberger PBS tend to go all over the world, and
Speaker 2: so it has probably not hurt me. People know me
Speaker 2: better than they did before. Can I cite a specific
Speaker 2: investor that came in because they liked my interviews? I
Speaker 2: can't say that, but I can't say it's hurt me
Speaker 2: in any way that I know yet.
Speaker 1: Certainly, though, as you say, the intellectual challenge keeps things,
Speaker 1: keeps things firing. David, let me ask you. You are
Speaker 1: a native of Baltimore. How did you how did you
Speaker 1: go on the path to becoming a lawyer, to working
Speaker 1: in the Carter Administration and going into big business.
Speaker 2: My parents were both from Baltimore. They married when my
Speaker 2: father was twenty came back from World War Two. My
Speaker 2: mother was seventeen, an ungodly young age to get married.
Speaker 3: I was born more than totally unusual for those times.
Speaker 2: Not unusual. My mother dropped out of high school to
Speaker 2: get married, not unusual in those days. My father never
Speaker 2: came back to finish high school when he came back
Speaker 2: from the Marines in World War Two. They married more
Speaker 2: than nine months later I was born. I'm the only child.
Speaker 2: My father worked in the post office. He didn't have
Speaker 2: an education, so he worked on a blue collar job.
Speaker 2: I didn't have any money growing up, But in the end,
Speaker 2: it's a big advantage. Because you know you're going to
Speaker 2: get somewhere in life, you have to do it on
Speaker 2: your own. I got scholarships to go to Duke University
Speaker 2: and University of Chicago Law School, and then I practiced
Speaker 2: law in New York and then I wanted to go
Speaker 2: in the politics. That was my ambition, not to make money.
Speaker 2: I didn't care about money, and I went to work
Speaker 2: in the White House for President Carter. I'd worked in
Speaker 2: this campaign in nineteen seventy six. We won, and so
Speaker 2: you get to work in the White House you were
Speaker 2: in a winning campaign. I did that for four years.
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan defeated US. I had to go back and
Speaker 2: practice law. I wasn't very good at it, and then
Speaker 2: I started in nineteen eighty seven a private equity firm
Speaker 2: in Washington became one of the largest in the world.
Speaker 2: So it's an unusual story because I didn't have a
Speaker 2: finance background. I would say that my government career wasn't
Speaker 2: so successful. I managed to get inflation to fifteen percent,
Speaker 2: which is higher than what we have now. So nobody's
Speaker 2: invited me back into government since those days. So that
Speaker 2: was my basic story.
Speaker 3: Got lucky.
Speaker 2: I got lucky, and my business career took off, and
Speaker 2: that enabled me to get involved in the land be
Speaker 2: and now the kind of kind of public broadcasting things
Speaker 2: I now do, and in this particular case, the interview
Speaker 2: where the interview the show we're talking about, is part
Speaker 2: of my effort to educate Americans about our history. The
Speaker 2: theory about history is that you don't learn the past,
Speaker 2: you're condemned to relive it. And the theory of our
Speaker 2: country is that it's a representative democracy, but it requires
Speaker 2: an informed citizenry, and we don't have an informed citizenry
Speaker 2: so much anymore. So as part of what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to do in philanthropy is to kind of educate Americans
Speaker 2: more about our history. I have many different programs that
Speaker 2: do this, and this is one of those programs.
Speaker 1: Well, and again, I think a lot of some really
Speaker 1: good conversations that enlighten complex subjects that can be covered
Speaker 1: in a thousand page book in a in a more
Speaker 1: conversational way. I think those are really helpful. I can
Speaker 1: imagine that those those kind of things that would be
Speaker 1: helpful to classrooms, to high school students and things like that.
Speaker 2: I do have some programs designed just for students, and
Speaker 2: I do them typically through the New York Historical Society.
Speaker 2: And let me mention one program that I've started that
Speaker 2: most people probably don't know about. I thought it'd be
Speaker 2: a good idea if the people that make our laws
Speaker 2: knew more about American history, so couldn't hurt. So once
Speaker 2: a month for the last seven years, I host an
Speaker 2: interview of a great American historian in front of only
Speaker 2: members of Congress, and I asked the members of Congress
Speaker 2: Democrats are Republicans, House and Senate members to sit with
Speaker 2: people from the opposite party in the opposite house so
Speaker 2: they can get to know them better. And maybe because
Speaker 2: there's no press there, nobody is preening for the press.
Speaker 2: Nobody is afraid to see be seen sitting next to
Speaker 2: somebody from the opposite party. It's members of Congress tell
Speaker 2: me after seven years, this is one of the most
Speaker 2: interesting things they're doing in Congress, coming to these dinners,
Speaker 2: because I just had one a few days ago with
Speaker 2: John Meachim. I interviewed him about his new Lincoln book,
Speaker 2: and members of Congress are obviously interested in Lincoln. There
Speaker 2: are no press there, so nobody feels they have to
Speaker 2: avoid somebody from the opposite party, and.
Speaker 3: So it's a preting I'm sorry, no preing.
Speaker 2: No preenings. So it's an interesting thing we do once
Speaker 2: a month, and I think it's a modest contribution to
Speaker 2: kind of bringing Washington together, though obviously a lot more
Speaker 2: worker than he needed to be done.
Speaker 3: Do you get a good turnout?
Speaker 2: We typically get two hundred and three hundred people, which
Speaker 2: is a lot.
Speaker 3: It's impressive, and.
Speaker 2: Just that particular one we had Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker,
Speaker 2: was there, Chuck Schumer, the current leader in the Democratic
Speaker 2: side of the House of the Senate, was there. And
Speaker 2: we have the Senate and House leaders come typically from
Speaker 2: time to time, plus committee chairs, and they all like it.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you.
Speaker 1: Let me close by asking you something you've probably been
Speaker 1: asked before. If is it, given your interest in history
Speaker 1: and you're interviewing your interviewing skills, who what figure from.
Speaker 3: History would you if you could summon someone back.
Speaker 1: From the past, who would you most like to interview
Speaker 1: or who would be in your top three of people
Speaker 1: to interview.
Speaker 2: Well, it's an interesting question because the interview format that
Speaker 2: we're now engaged in I kind of think as a
Speaker 2: form of education, entertainment and entertainment started probably in the
Speaker 2: Tonight Show in the nineteen fifties when Steve Allen before
Speaker 2: Jack Parr was the host, and then it evolved into
Speaker 2: daytime interview shows and the whole plethora of interview kind
Speaker 2: of formats we now have. But we don't have interviews
Speaker 2: of George Washington, we don't have interviews of Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 2: because the interview format didn't really exist in that way.
Speaker 2: So to answer your question, of course, I thought about this.
Speaker 2: I would love to have interviewed William Shakespeare and say,
Speaker 2: you know who really wrote those plays? No one person
Speaker 2: could have done that. Or King Henry the ads, why
Speaker 2: didn't you just get some prenups with your wives and
Speaker 2: rather than chop off their heads? It wouldn't have been easier.
Speaker 2: Or Cleopatra asked her who was a better lover? Mark
Speaker 2: Antney or Julius Caesar. But if there was one person
Speaker 2: I would like to interview, it's to me the greatest
Speaker 2: American of them all, and that's Abraham Lincoln. He held
Speaker 2: the country together, wasn't really educated, but he was a
Speaker 2: brilliant writer, incredible modesty, humility, and I just wanted to
Speaker 2: ask him. I'd love to ask him, you know why
Speaker 2: he felt it was so important to hold the union together?
Speaker 2: Why not just let the South go their way, and
Speaker 2: he wouldn't have all the pressures he had, but he
Speaker 2: would be the one I would want to interview for sure.
Speaker 2: Probably second would be George Washington for all the obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: If the people alive today that if I could interview
Speaker 2: any of them, probably the Pope if he doesn't tend
Speaker 2: to do a lot of interviews with people named David Rubinstein,
Speaker 2: so I suspect I probably won't get that interview.
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