2021-06-15 Past, Present, and Future: A Conversation with David Rubenstein and Janet Hill about Politics, Education, and Leadership
12:12AM Jun 16, 2021
Speakers:
Alison Sander
Esther Dyson
Max Holm
John Werner
Chris Ullman
Caroline Goulding
Emily Manoogian
Sydney Weiner
Janet Hill
David Rubenstein
Bennett Funk
Valerie Mosley
Unknown
Keywords:
david
janet
great
government
question
people
duke
cryptocurrency
country
sports
interviews
years
part
world
talked
view
athlete
young
grew
job
This is Imagination in Action. It's a night of creative, connective, compelling conversation with a dynamic mix of imaginators. We have Janet Hill and David Rubenstein. And these two are driving the action that will power our futures. We strive to be one of the most original, engaging salons on Clubhouse and in the world, and Imagination in Action is the catalyst sparking thinking and insight never captured before. So we're really excited about this. Next week, we're going to do a show on comedy. We have comedy writers for [The] Ellen [Degeneres Show], [Everybody Loves] Raymond, and [The Late Late Show with James] Corden talking about the comedy process. We have Peter Diamandis the week after that, we have Tal Zaks, the Chief Medical Officer of Moderna, with Juan Enriquez, a futurist, and Jane Metcalfe, the founder of Wired. We're going to do a hospitality and education show with the former head strategist of Airbnb, Chip Conley, and Barbara Waxman, we're setting up a show with Mark Bittman on food. We're gonna have some finance show-- we have Randall Lane from Forbes, the [former] president of Mastercard, Ajay [Banga], and the president of Fidelity, Kathleen Murphy. We have a bunch of great shows coming down the pike. But tonight [I'm] excited for this conversation. So, Caroline, can you play something to kind of kick us off? It's officially that time.
Sure! I'm going to play a little thing from Yankee Doodle Dandy by Henry Tom.
Thank you, Caroline. We dedicate that to our speakers. That's a live performance. Also later in the show, we're going to have Max perform. He's a jazz pianist, and he's in Spain right now. [He's] got a full scholarship, Berklee College of Music, and he's going to celebrate some New Orleans music and Janet and I know that's where you're from.
Thank you.
And then let me introduce our two speakers and then Allison and I will start interviewing and then we'll get to the audience. So Janet Hill grew up an only child in New Orleans, when segregation was the law and "white only" signs were around. She was inspired by civil rights leader, Andrew Young, who went on to be the mayor of Atlanta. Andy and she called themselves the "country cousins". She went on to Wellesley. Her mom, who was a business leader for 64 years at least, had encouraged her to do that. She was one of five African Americans in a class of over 400 at Wellesley and Hillary Rodham Clinton was in that class. She went on and got a master's [degree] from [the] U[niversity of] Chicago, same school that David got a master's from, and she used her master's in math to take a job spying on Soviet sub[marine]s. I don't know if we'll get into that, but I thought that would be interesting to share. She joined the Pentagon and a senior role was Secretary of the Army, Clifford Alexander. And after being in the Pentagon, she and Clifford formed a firm and spent 30 years helping major corporations, especially around women and minorities in senior ranks, and she supported First Lady Michelle Obama as she transitioned to the White House. Her husband says she has more energy than a Dallas Cowboy player. He should know-- he ran for 9000 yards with the Cowboys and for 25 years helped coach them and so he knows what a Dallas Cowboy looks like. She is NFL royalty-- when Janet and her husband Calvin couldn't decide on the name for their newborn, Roger Staubach suggested "Grant" and there you go. Grant is one of the most amazing and beloved NFL.
What happened? John, you're on mute.
Oh, I'm sorry. In terms of service, Janet's on 12 corporate boards, 15 nonprofit boards, and three University boards-- and three mutually with David. In terms of sports, she attends every Cowboys game she can and she's a big fan of the French national soccer team and she has plans to go to Qatar in 2022 to see the World Cup. I think she wants to ask David about about traveling there. She follows the US Soccer Team and she took her 13 year old granddaughter and Grant to see the women on the world stage. Her husband's a Hall of Famer, her son's a Hall of Famer, and she's a Hall of Famer. [We're] so proud to have Janet.
And then David, I want to introduce him. [An] only child growing up in Baltimore, [his family had an] 800 square foot apartment. My grandfather grew up near where he grew up, actually, in the Hebrew orphans asylum, so I feel a connection there. David's dad was a marine in the Pacific during World War Two. He didn't finish high school [and] neither did his mom. His dad was a mailman. And I heard David say his top salary his dad [was paid] was $7000 a year-- kind of tells you about the times. When David was in sixth grade, he heard an inaugural address that really shaped him and moved him-- we'll come back to that. [It was] the John F. Kennedy inaugural [address]. He went off to college at 16. He applied to Duke writing a handwritten application, he was part of Duke University. He was one of the 5% Jewish quota then, which has long since been abandoned, but it also says something about the times, and he only had 12 African Americans in his class. In terms of work, he went to law school and after law school worked at Paul Weiss, where he met, 15 years after he heard the [inagural address], Ted Sorensen. Ted Sorensen helped connect him with a presidential campaign and one thing led to another he ended up meeting Jimmy Carter and ended up serving four years in the Carter administration. At the age of 37, he had anxiety that if he didn't do a startup, he might be too late. [So,] he started a little operation that became a juggernaut (the Carlyle Group) which is wildly successful. They [Rubenstein and Hill] are both on the board there together. He gives back in creative ways. If you like the pandas at the National Zoo, he helped with that. He's purchased, I think, multiple [copies of the] Declarations of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation and the Magna Carta and distribute[d] them throughout the land so people can appreciate it. After an earthquake, [the August 2011 earthquake that left] the 555 foot Washington Monument damaged, he jumped in to help restore it. He climbed on the outside scaffolding to the top and a world renowned whistler [Christopher Ullman] played some music up there. I think he even wrote his initials on top, I wonder if that's graffiti in a federal monument. But we're going to try to reenact that moment with the whistler later tonight.
And I have three really quick stories. I once heard a speech at the Aspen Institute and I was late to see who was giving it. I was just in the back and I was just mesmerized [by] how thoroughly knowledgeable this person was and it was David giving a talk on Lincoln. I also went to a Harvard event at the World Economic Forum and I was expecting the Harvard president and David got up at the podium. I was wondering if maybe David was the chair of the board of Duke-- I didn't know he had a Harvard connection-- and I wondered to Duke and Harvard merged and David got the top spot. My last story is I went to the NCAA lacrosse championships and I was on the sideline taking photographs as I think all the Yale alumni were cheering for Yale over Duke. And there David was on the sideline cheering for Duke. He's interviewed so many people: [George H.W. Bush, [Bill] Clinton, [Bill] Gates, and [Jeff] Bezos. He interviewed them in pairs. I think it says something about the demand that people have to be in his presence. I know if the Pope and Bruce Springsteen are listening to tonight's show, he hasn't interviewed you. And I think that would be a great interview. And in closing, Alex Baldwin passed the Tom Clancy character to Harrison Ford [and] I think Nicolas Cage would do well in passing the National Treasure character to David. I also think David is a modern day Clark Kent and you guys are going to get to know him tonight. So that's who our guests are. I'm going to do the first question. Alison, I will alternate until we get to the audience. And my first question is, David, you grew up an only child in the Jewish section of Baltimore, your father worked for the US Postal Service, [and] your mom was a homemaker. Janet, you grew up an only child in segregated New Orleans and your father and mother ran a dental lab business. What do each of you remember from your childhood? And what values did you did your upbringing helped to cement in you? And I know, Janet, you had a nickname, "The General." David, did you have a nickname growing up? So that's that's my first question. A little bit about your childhood and early family values.
Let Janet go first.
Yeah. Thank you, David. Thank you very much, John. Yes, I grew up in New Orleans, an only child, I think I learned generosity of spirit. It was a segregated environment but my parents did everything they could for me. They also tried to emphasize striving for excellence. It wasn't even whether you were excellent, but whether you were trying to be excellent. A very hard concept to pass on to the next generation, but I've tried to do that, and [then pass it on to] the next generation after that. So I was very lucky to have them. My mother, who outlived my father, worked in that dental laboratory for 64 years. So while I know very, very successful business people such as David and a lot of others, I don't know anybody as successful as she is, or was.
I didn't have a nickname as impressive as "The General." I think, I think that nickname was given to Janet by her son, Grant.
Well, actually, David, it was given by Grant's friends, who, whenever they were at my house, I was bossing them around. And so, because I worked at the Pentagon, they first called me a "sergeant," but I demanded that they call me "general."
I would say, one of the hardest things to do in life is raising children. If you grow up in a modest family, you can have all the benefits and so forth and so on that people in wealthier families have, but we all know that people who grew up in wealthy families don't often turn out as well as you might want because they have too much privilege, or they're sometimes maybe pampered or spoiled a bit. I would say that of all the parents I have met in recent years, Calvin and Janet have probably done the best job I've ever seen. They have one child, he turned out to be an all American athlete, an all pro athlete, a graduate (how many NBA players have actually graduated from college?). He's now picking our U.S. Olympic team, in basketball, and he's part owner of the Atlanta Hawks, he's a broadcaster. He's now succeeded Janet on the Duke University Board of Trustees, among other things, so very impressive job of raising a child. And Janet, I hope you will write a book about how to raise an only child sometime because I think it would be a bestseller.
Okay, oh, I'll write that maybe you can help me.
So in my own case, I grew up with, as you heard, modest means. But when you grow up in modest economic means you don't sit around and go "woe is me." You accept the situation you find yourself in and try to make the best of it. And so I didn't mope around and say, "Wow, my friends have more money than I do" or "my friends have more things than I do." You just do what you can with what you have. And I got lucky in many different ways. And, you know, it turned out reasonably well for me. But I think in the end, my parents deserve a lot of the credit because they put all their energies into me. I was their only child. While they weren't well educated by today's standards, where everybody has college degrees and graduate degrees, they did have a lot of street smarts and they tried to get me to do something more than they had done with their lives and so I give a lot of credit to them for you know, whatever I turned out to be.
That's super. David and Janet, you both have had very, very rich lives with so many twists and turns, many of which John outlined and you're obviously Renaissance, multi-career individuals. I'm curious about the arc that your lives took as you look back and whether you ever made any wrong turns and needed to course correct or whether part of your brilliance today comes from how many different types of jobs you have each had.
Well, I can say that after graduate school, I did go into teaching and I found that I knew the subject matter, which was mathematics, but I had some trouble conveying it at both the college level and the high school level. [There were] lots of students who took an automatic dislike to any type of mathematics. So, I abandoned teaching and went into mathematical research for the Navy. I think it's okay for people to decide that they want to switch careers and I did that when I was very young.
I would say that it's a very rare experience in life where you turn out to know exactly what you want to do, you love what you think you're going to do, and you do it your whole life. So the experience of Mark Zuckerberg dropping out of Harvard and creating a company, Facebook, or Bill Gates dropping out and creating Microsoft, that's a rare experience. The more common experience is that people have multiple jobs throughout their life. I tell people all the time that, in my case, I've had multiple jobs and I was always looking for something that I felt I would really love. Because I observed [that] the people that are the most successful are the people that do what they love doing. You don't win a Nobel Prize hating what you're doing. You win Nobel prizes if you love what you're doing and you can't do almost anything else because you're so committed to it. I didn't really love a lot of the things I was doing and the one thing I really did love was working at the White House for President Carter, but the voters obviously didn't like my doing that and so they put us out of office. I think there was a rumor that I was going to be promoted in the second term and maybe that's why Carter lost. So I had to go back and keep finding other things. I tell my children the same thing. Find something you love [and] experiment. I tell students all the time when I speak to them, experiment, try many different things. Don't always listen to your parents about what they want you to do. My mother wanted me to be a dentist and I had to spend a lot of time persuading her that I wasn't going to be good at that. And I think I was right.
I know you're a man of many talents [but] I have to admit, David, going to you as a dentist wouldn't be top of my list.
My mother thought it was a great profession, because you got to be called doctor, you didn't have weekend hours, and she had a lot of dental problems. She was always going to the dentist and I guess she liked her dentist a lot. I tried to convince her that I might have arthritis in my fingers, and therefore I wouldn't be able to be a dentist for very long. So I convinced her that I should try something else. And it generally worked.
Oh my gosh, that's so funny. That should be another fascinating book, which is careers we've talked our parents out of having us do. I want to follow up on education because obviously both of you not only have attended top schools, but also have helped shaped them, serving on so many different boards of universities as trustees. So I'd love to understand a bit more because obviously, education is a bit embattled at the moment. What did each of you get from your education? And what do you think universities today need to deliver to their students? Specifically, if you could create the new "Rubenstein-Hill" university? What would be the required curriculum?
Well, first of all, everybody has to take mathematics, so let's just start there. I know that David is a scholar in history, a subject that I don't know a great deal about. If he had not written one, but now two books, which cause[d] me to know a little bit more more, then I would be I would be in a bad state. I will say my husband and son both majored in history, and so I do get a little bit from them. But I think both history, the humanities, and the hard sciences are very important at the university level. And some kind of study and analytical studies.
In my view, Janet and I have both served on Duke board together for many years and the appeal of serving on a University Board is that you get to see a microcosm of society. You're seeing the young people who are going to graduate and eventually become leaders in society, you're seeing professors who are doing great work teaching but also doing great research. It's a great way, I think, to give back to the country, even if you did not go to that university, Janet, while her son, Janet did not attend Duke University, she went to Wellesley. But she, I think, served on the board for 15 years or 16 years.
Yes, I served an extra long term. I like to say that the alum[ni] serve 12 years, but the parents serve 15.
She did a terrific job. And why did she want to do that? Well, of course, her son had gone there, but I think it was a way of giving back to a very good university. And in my own case, I've been on four University boards: Hopkins, Harvard, Chicago, and Duke. And to me, it's a way of giving back to society, because I think one of the greatest treasures that we have in this country is our higher education system. For all of its flaws, it's the envy of the world. And one of the ways I think we can make our country better and stronger, and again the envy of the world, is to have the best university system in the world. So that's one of the reasons why I do it. As to what students should do, I think what students should do in college and universities is major in something that they're interested in, not what they think is going to get them the best job. That's because if you major in something or study something you're interested in, you're more likely to do better. Don't worry about your job. As somebody that's hired a lot of people out of college, I'm looking for people that know how to think, that know how to reason, that know how to get along with other people, [and] that know how to do things more than just a particular job. So I don't really view college or universities as training grounds for jobs, [but] really training grounds for life where you hopefully will emerge with a love of reading [and] a love of exercising your brain all the time, learning more and more. The specific things you need for your job, you can learn that on the job. I don't think you need to go to college to learn something specifically to help you get a job. I recognize that it's a minority view, probably to some extent these days.
Well, I think you just came up David with the tagline for the Rubenstein-Hill University: a training ground for life. I think you might get some Clubhouse attendees. I want to just ask one follow up given that you both think so much about education, and, as you say, U.S. education is the envy of the world. What do you make out of the political correctness debate that's happening at universities today? So as Princeton renames the Woodrow Wilson School and Harvard Law School changes their logo? How do you guys make sense of that? And do you think that is universities on the cutting edge? Do you think any of that is misplaced?
There are individuals who are younger than David and myself (and I'm older than David) who are offended by Wilson's name at Princeton and I'm talking about Princetonians, not people outside of that University's purview. And so I think, the view of the world, but the view also of history, is different for individuals who were born in the '60s or the '50s than individuals who were born in, I'm going to say, 1995. I'm surrounded by lots of people who were born in the '90s. And, and their view of the world is their view of the world. I respect that. While it might not be something I would move for if I were a Princetonian, I think others have a right to ask that there be more clarity about who they're honoring.
I would say that when our country was set up, it was in set up with a wonderful rhetoric. Everybody is supposed to be equal-- "We hold these truths to be self evident." But obviously, the rhetoric was rhetoric in many ways, because it really meant all white Christian men are to be treated equals, not African Americans, not people who are Jewish, and not women, really, because they had no rights either legally. So we have basically spent 230 years trying to live up to the rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence and we have done a reasonable job in some areas, but it's a long way to go. And so sometimes when trends start, like the era of political correctness, it can go a little further than maybe it should go. But I think that there's some corrections that have to be made in our history. People should understand that you can't honor appropriately certain people who have done some things that are not only antithetical to the times they lived in, but certainly antithetical now. I would just say that I can't support everything that goes on in the era of political correctness, but I do think people should be much more sensitive to the fact that we haven't quite lived up to the goals of the Declaration of Independence or the goals of the Constitution.
Great. I'm just looking at the room. I see Emily is here, who works at the Salk Institute is one of the world's experts on the circadian rhythm. I know later today, she wants to ask you guys as two high achievers, how do you pace yourself? I see Elena is here from Brazil. I think you have 40,000 followers and a really thoughtful person, [I'd] love to see if you have a question. I see William Hoffman, the number two at the World Economic Forum. I see Esther Dyson, I see Orkas who was a topper. For those of you who don't know what a topper is, he was the number one student at IIT Delhi [and now] he's a leading expert on AI. I see Jim and Carolyn, two 80 year olds who have seen it all and I'm excited to have them ask a question. I see Bennett and Sydney, two Gen Z [teenagers]. I'm excited to have a young generation ask a question. I see Jeff Webber, who is very active in philanthropy, the chair of the New Profit board. So when we open this up, we're going to get some great questions from some really thoughtful people. So my next question to both of you is you both served at high levels in the federal government. Do you think government service offers an important rite of passage? What did this time teach each of you? What most surprised you about your time in government? Do you think we do enough today to make government service attractive in the 21st century? I get the feeling a generation or two ago, it was a real point of pride to go into government and I worry that [it] isn't these days. What are your thoughts on this topic?
I didn't have as high level a position as David did in the White House, but we both worked for President Carter. I can say that it was a distinct privilege for me to work in the Pentagon for him [Carter] and for his Secretary of the Army, I learned a lot, but I contributed a lot also over four years. I think we should encourage young people, especially smart young people, to spend some time in government service either selected, as I was and David was, or elected. If we don't do that, then we are stuck with what we have. I don't mean what we have at this moment, but certainly what we have had. We have been through periods where we have not had the best people in positions of authority and this has hurt all Americans. I'm all about encouraging smart young people to consider government service.
I think that when government service is talked about, it should be talked about a little differently than it used to be. It used to be that if you wanted to serve your country, you could do so in a military way where you potentially could give up your life and pay what Lincoln called "the last full measure of devotion," or you c[ould] work in the civilian way, and make, obviously, different kinds of sacrifices. Both are very noble undertakings. But you don't have to work in the government, military and/or civilian side, in order to give back to your country. We have now developed, in the last 50 years or so, an enormous amount of non-government organizations that are doing wonderful things where you can do public service while not technically being in government. So my answer is try to do something in public service. If it can be in the government, fine. Military or civilian, fine. Both is fine. But also, if you for whatever reason, you don't have the opportunity, or you want to not work in the government, you can do so in a non-government agency or organization that does a lot of good things. And I think there's a reason to do this. One, I think it's a way to give back to your country. Two, I think you learn a lot from it, it'll make you a better person later on. And three, I think that it's a way to have a sense of fulfillment, that you will look back on the rest of your life and say, "Yes, I did give something to my country and now I feel that I am more of a complete person because I did something for the country that made it possible for me to have a reasonably good life."
I love that answer because my brother worked at the Kennedy School on the topic of social capital with Bob Putnam for many years and we all feel like we should actually measure the social capital of a country because whether it's a nonprofit or public service, it really makes a difference to how pleasant a country is to live in and how united it is. I wanted to switch for a second-- there are so many topics we could raise with both of you and I'm sure the other parts of the audience will have many more questions-- but I wanted to turn for a moment to the essential qualities of leadership. You've each met many of the top leaders in the world, not just in business, but governments, sports, religion, media, etc., and Janet, you ran a business around helping define leaders. What historical leaders or living leaders have most impressed both of you and why? What has studying leaders taught you about leadership that most people don't understand?
I study leaders almost as a hobby, and leadership. And I would say there are a few people that I can certainly point to myself, that I've had personal relationships with one was already mentioned Andy Young. I look back at somebody like Andy, who in the '60s was marching around the South with Martin Luther King and myself and the other members of his extended family were supporting him and his family. I can say that he made an ultimate sacrifice, much in the same way that David just talked about military service, that I have not made. I have never made that type of sacrifice. And he is a man of very, very high principles. [Young is] somebody who's still alive, fortunately, at the age of 86, lives in Atlanta, and I think still is mentoring a lot of people who are certainly in Atlanta, so I turned to him. I had a good relationship with someone like Dave Thomas-- I actually served on the board of Wendy's. They founded that company in 1969 with one store. When he got to two stores, he could not handle it. Dave did not have the privilege of a college education but he was smart enough to know that he could get smart people in there to run the business. Today, the business has 8,000 stores, and that's his legacy. We probably didn't have a whole lot in common but I would call ourselves good friends. I'm a good friend of of David Rubenstein. We don't agree on everything, but, I look up to him. I think he's accomplished a great deal, I think he's done a lot for society, for individuals, certainly for those of us who live in the Greater Washington, D.C. area. His patriotic philanthropy has benefited us all. I'll mention three other people. David knows them, I'm sure. Ajay Banga, who is the [former] CEO at MasterCard, Satya Nadella, who is the CEO at Microsoft, and Shantanu Narayen, who's the CEO at Adobe. Not only are these three young men doing such a terrific job where they have changed the culture at their companies and increased the market share of the companies, but interestingly enough, they all went to the same high school in Hyderabad in India. So now I'm sort of obsessed with going to see this high school.
I've been to Hyderabad 12 times in three years, every quarter.
Oh, wow. Then the next time I['ll] go with you.
Yeah, amazing city. Next question to both of you has to do with the state of capitalism. What are your insights on some of the events that seem to be taking place in today's capital markets? Do you view these as fads or signs of potential flaws? Do you get concerned about the growing economic divides? Where U.S. billionaires added more than $1 trillion in wealth during the pandemic, some young people, some in this room, are questioning whether capitalism is still about producing fundamental goods and services or whether money making today is more about market speculation and manipulation. I'm a venture capitalist, I love backing founders. But I do wonder about this. And what, if any, shifts do you think institutions need to make to govern the volatility in today's markets? What do you see in today's capital markets that concerns both of you?
Well, I'm going to let David take this.
Winston Churchill famously said [that] democracy is the worst form of government except [for] every other one. He might well have said, capitalism is the worst economic construct except every other one. Capitalism has its flaws, for sure. One of the great flaws it has is that it does produce a fair amount of economic inequality and we're seeing that now in the United States, among other places. But I do think it has created more wealth, and therefore more good, than any other economic system that I'm aware of. Clearly, what's happened in our country is as wealthier people are becoming more and more common, those left behind are falling further and further behind. And COVID drove that even more so to be the case. You had what I called a "COVID Crater" where people that didn't have access to broadband, that couldn't keep their jobs because their jobs were not in great demand during COVID, fell further and further behind and it's going to take a lot more time than we ever dreamed to get them back to just where they were before, let alone back to a reasonable position. So, capitalism has its challenges.
There's no doubt that an enormous amount of money is being created today in the venture capital world, the technology world, and I hope that a lot of those people that are making that money will give it back relatively soon to society. The tradition of philanthropy is one that our country has been a leader in throughout much of our country's history. But, very often, philanthropy began when people were in their 60s or 70s, or retired, and then they were starting to think about giving back. Fortunately, a lot of younger people are making a fair amount of money and they are giving back at a relatively early age. In my own case, the greatest pleasures of my life are taking the money that I've made and giving it back to other causes. It's created far greater happiness for me than anything else that I've done professionally. And so, I encourage others to do that as well. Philanthropy is derived from an ancient Greek word that means "loving humanity," it doesn't mean just writing checks. You can love humanity and be a philanthropist in my view, by giving your most valuable thing: your time. That is very, very valuable as well, [and] so if you don't have money, give your time, your energy, your ideas, and give back to society. Don't wait until you're 60 or 70, or 80 to do it. Do it now, make it a regular part of your life.
Great. I know Allison's going to ask the next question. Just want to remind people this is Imagination in Action. We're recording this tonight [and] there'll be a transcript. And then Sydney Weiner and Bennett Funk are going to help create audiograms of some of the profound, provocative, fun things that our speakers say. I'm looking at the audience [and] I see Val Mosley just joined. I think she was student body president when she was at Duke-- that was a real point of pride for her [because] we have two proud Duke speakers. I see we have a bunch of interesting people. We look forward to getting your your questions. Allison, to you.
David, I just wanted to go back to one part of John's question, because you went on record earlier this year, and may have gotten more publicity than you expected, saying that cryptocurrency is here to stay. It's a very hot topic on Clubhouse, I can assure you, but I'm curious. Is there any part of that speculation that concerns you if evaluations go over a trillion or Bitcoin is used in ransomware requests? The part of John's question where I would really love your great reasoning is, obviously capitalism may be the best [economic] form, but how do you, as somebody who's watched [the economy] very carefully, figure out where it needs more restraining and where that speculation is on course?
Well, the word speculation is not a positive word. There's speculation in all kinds of areas of economic activity. Right now, there's a lot of speculation in cryptocurrency because, by almost definition, it's all speculation because there's nothing underlying it, more or less. My point on that show was not to say that I am out there speculating on cryptocurrency. It was to say that I think it's too late for the government of the United States or other governments to say, "You know, now that we've seen cryptocurrency for the last 10 years or so, we don't like it, and we're going to abolish it." I think that's unrealistic. That would be like trying to go back to prohibition. People want certain things, in that case, alcohol, and you couldn't really control it through prohibition. In the case of cryptocurrency, people want something either that they think is an alternative to government currency, which they think may be inflated or maybe doesn't have the value that they really want, or [it's gained popularity because] it's equivalent to gold in some ways. Gold has been for 1000s of years in effect a cryptocurrency [because] you can argue it has some value--you can use it for jewelry or other kinds of things-- crypto[currency] is not quite the [same] case. I think people want something that is called cryptocurrency. Some of them will eventually turn out to have some more useful social purposes other than just speculation, I suspect. But I do think that it's a mistake to think it's going away. I do also think that if people want to invest in it. I'm not recommending it, but you know, people go to the horse races all the time and they bet on horses. I don't bet ever-- I've lost the bet when I was in high school and I said I would never bet again. So I don't bet, I don't go to any betting things, I don't go to horse races, but you could argue that betting on sporting events or other things, is like doing [the] cryptocurrency kind of thing-- it's speculation. So if indulging a small part of their capital that way it makes them feel better and if we can deal with the ransomware issues and have government regulation that makes it work better than it does today, [then] I don't think it's harmful, I don't. I do think government is probably a little bit behind getting its regulatory act together in dealing with cryptocurrencies.
Super. And Janet, I don't know if you have any views on cryptocurrency. If not, I wanted to just go back to one question, where I don't think we got your answer, David. Janet, did you want to weigh in on cryptocurrency?
No. Only to say on the part about gambling, first of all, I'm not a gambler, either. I'm a total fish out of water when I'm in Las Vegas, as if I don't know what to do while I'm there. But now I see that the NBA and the NFL ha[ve] sort of embraced gambling. And up until the moment that the game starts you can gamble and guess on who is going to win the game. I never thought I'd see that day. But it seems to be working without problem and it certainly satisfies the interests of a good number of the fans.
Great. I wanted to come back to one question, David, I think we missed your answer on given that you've both written a book on how to lead with wisdom from world's greatest CEOs, founders and game changers and through your great episodes on Bloomberg have had a chance to interview, as John said, everybody other than Springsteen and the Pope, I'd love to know is Lincoln, the leader who most impresses you? What would be your list of [top] living and historical leaders? And whym after all those interviews, are they the ones that stick out in your mind?
And if we could get you a DeLorean so you could go and meet some of them, [I'm] curious to know who.
Well, it is an interesting phenomenon that the interview that you're doing with me now and then I've done with many other people, is a relatively new phenomenon. We didn't have interviews of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Napoleon, Charlemagne, Cleopatra, why not? Why are there no interviews? It wasn't a format that was really in existence. There was the Socratic dialogue from 1000s of years ago, but we don't have any real interviews from 1000s of years ago of how they actually went. So I think that the interview format is a very good one that brings people out more and I've used it. I wish I had a chance to interview Abraham Lincoln. In my view, he was the greatest American in part because he kept the country together. And in the end, while he was hardly an abolitionist, and he didn't get to the Emancipation Proclamation as quickly as some people would have preferred, in the end, he did come to the conclusion that slavery could not exist and he ended it as much as anybody could end. It didn't solve operational problems, for sure, but I think he was our most significant American and therefore, probably I most admire him of any Americans [who] ever lived.
In terms of living Americans, I'll stay out of the political world for a moment and just talk about health. I realized it's controversial now, and it shouldn't be, [but] I greatly admire [Dr.] Tony Fauci. He told the truth to power, he stood up for what he thought was right, and I think had we listened to him, we [would have] had a much better situation in terms of mortalities and other kinds of health concerns relating to the most recent pandemic [because] he's had a 60 year career in dealing with these kind of issues. I also greatly admire his superior, Francis Collins, who under three presidents has served as the head of the NIH [National Institute of Health]. He also lead the Human Genome Project which discovered the human genome and one other health person who was mentioned earlier in the call [who] I've always admired because he helped me, and that's Dr. Jonas Salk. Dr. Jonas Salk spent seven years [and] came up with a polio vaccine. Albert Sabin came up with one as well. But you'd think back on [it and] people in my childhood were getting polio. I don't know why I didn't get it. I'm very fortunate, but had Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, not come along, many of us my age would probably have had polio, which is a scourge and I'm glad I didn't have [it]. So those are three people in the health area I really admire.
You know, actually, Emily, a world renowned researcher at the Salk Institute on circadian rhythm, do you want to just jump in and ask a question, given that David mentioned your fine institution?
Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure to talk to you. It's a great opportunity. As soon as you said "Salk," I was like, "Yeah!" It's really an honor to get to work at the institute that he built. I actually study chronobiology and circadian rhythm, the timing of biology. And so my question for you, for both of you, is what is a day in the life look like for you? When do you guys wake up? Do you even have a typical day? When do you eat? What does your schedule look like with the amazing careers that you have? I'm wondering what a day looks like for you.
Right this minute, I'm up late every night watching NBA basketball, so I've given myself one more hour of sleep in the morning. I'm retired. I'm in the middle of the basketball season, [and] I guess I'm supposed to watch these games since my son's one of the owners of one of the teams that's still in it. So that's part of my rhythm, as it were, I'm still serving on two [boards], the Carlyle and Esquire bank boards. I have a lot of materials to read for those. I am only on one nonprofit [board] now-- it's the Wolf Trap Performing Arts Center here in Northern Virginia, where I live. I have things to do for them. I still have volunteer things that I'm doing for Duke, but I am pretty much finished with my board service as a trustee at the end of June. So, I'm plotting what I'm going to do with my grandchildren for the rest of the summer.
Emily, just before we hear from David, any assessment as a chronobiologist on that?
No, I think the hour shift is very reasonable. I'm trying to get in all the NBA [games]-- I'm a Clippers fan. So I--
Okay, good.
--Am trying to get in on that. But we have it a little easier here because the games start at seven. So--
that's right.
I've lived on east coast for a while. And I remember that was rough, but one hour shifts that's not bad.
Physical jetlag, because of games.
By the way, before David speaks, I do recommend to any of the young folks on the call that you consider another half hour of sleep, if not an hour of sleep. Honestly, I'd be I think it's good for everyone.
Can't agree with you more.
I interviewed Jeff Bezos about two years ago--it's in my book, "Leadership"-- and the most surprising thing he said to me was that he needs eight hours of sleep a night. I figured "how can anybody build that great company and do all the things he's doing and actually get eight hours of sleep a night?" and I realized that I've been getting six hours of sleep a night and I could have done so much more with my life if I was getting two more hours of sleep. So I realize that I made a mistake, I should have been sleeping more.
I'm doing now what I call a sprinting to the finish line. I'm very nervous that I'm not going to get all my bucket list done. And so I'm racing to get things done, that I won't get when my brain eventually deteriorates, or my body deteriorates. Of course, all of us at my age (I'm 71), you don't know what is going to deteriorate first. So, when I was growing up, my parents used to read the obituaries and I went, "Why are they doing that?" I asked them and they said, "Why, we want to see who died." Now I read the obituaries to see why people younger than me died and how lucky I am that I'm still alive. So I'm trying to get things done. And my day is one that I wouldn't recommend to people because I'm not sure it's that healthy, but I probably only get five and a half or six hours of sleep a night. Then I'm on 20 some nonprofit boards and I chair eight of them, so that takes time, and I've [also] got Carlyle responsibilities, I have a family office responsibility, I [have] three children, and I make a lot of speeches. I'm [also] writing some books and doing some interview shows and so forth on TV, so I'm doing a lot of things. Maybe it's because I don't know what I would do with my time if I wasn't. Maybe I'm too insecure to just sit back for a weekend and do nothing and afraid that nobody will call me or nobody will ask me to do anything. So I'm visually engaged and I hope this doesn't lead to my dying prematurely. But as some people have said, I get my exercise being a pallbearer at friends of mines' funerals who exercise a lot. So I don't exercise enough, I don't sleep enough, but I'm just going reasonably strong and I wouldn't recommend it to everybody.
And David, I know you don't drink alcohol, so you'd be a good designated driver at a party. Emily, as a chronobiologist, anything you want to say on what you just heard from David?
Yeah, I think you're aware, the sleeping more is probably something that can help you stay healthy and mentally fit a bit longer and trying to keep that kind of consistent schedule as much as you can. But you know, I won't preach time restricted eating here, you can listen to our session that we had last week. But it might be something you can integrate in, that doesn't take away from your schedule.
I also would say, I'm not a designated driver, because people have seen me drive. And when you're driving [and] people are honking at you all the time, you realize you're probably not that great a driver. And so nobody's ever asked me to be a designated driver, maybe for that reason.
And you have a great sense of humor. Allison, let's continue with the State of the Nation. I know we have some questions.
Definitely. Well, we're pretty impressive with what both of you achieve with six and five hours of sleep each. We've come through a super intense time as a nation and it seems as if we've never been more divided. Henry Brady, who's the Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, says that not only is he worried, but he thinks the Republic is as frayed as it's ever been in any period since just before, during and after the Civil War. I don't know if you agree with that, but I would really appreciate hearing from two people as thoughtful as the two of you. What do you think are some of the key factors that brought us to this level of partisanship and division? And most importantly, what are some of the interventions that you think are most important if we are to build back our ability to come together as one nation?
If I knew the answer that I would have been at the Iowa caucuses in New Hampshire and South Carolina. I don't know the answer to that. There's no doubt that throughout most of history, people will always say this is the worst of times, things are falling apart and it's worse than it ever was and generally [that is] not the case. There's always bad times before. But I would have to admit it's not very pleasant right now in Washington, D.C. because the Congress is dysfunctional. It can't pass anything, it can't get anything done, it's too political. When I worked in the Capitol on Capitol Hill briefly, you used to have bipartisanship efforts and Republicans and Democrats walking together to work together. Why is that not the case now? Well, I think the three reasons [are]: one, campaign financing laws don't really exist, so there's no limit to how much money members can raise. Therefore they spend enormous amounts of time raising money and therefore, they're very beholden to the people that give them money. That's a big factor. They don't need the money so much because most incumbents get reelected but they use it to get leadership positions because you can give to other members and also you can retire with the money and you can use it for other political purposes, either [way] you have leftover money. So there's a big incentive to raise a lot of money. And that's the sad thing. Social media, for all of its wonderful features, has made everything in Washington open to everybody's scrutiny. Therefore, members are afraid of doing anything that will be on social media and criticizing them. So social media has made it much more difficult than before to have the government come together. And also I think that the country is divided, so Washington's divided. In other words, Washington reflects the country and the country is pretty divided right now. It's not just members of Congress raising too much money, or they're too afraid of social media-- people in the country have very, very different views on things. We really have become a tale of two cities or a country of two natures. You're either red or you're blue and there's not a lot in between. It's a sad situation. I wish it would get better. But I think you're going to need a national tragic event of some type to force people to come together for a brief period of time. I don't want such an event to happen, but right now short up some shocking event, I think we're drifting towards more of what we already see.
I agree with that, but may I just say that, David, of course, left out any mention of the last administration. They gave a valuable assist to the divisions. President 45 [Donald Trump] was divisive. I can't put it any other way. And his rhetoric was angry and loud and dramatic at all times. One thing I'll say about the current president, and there may be things that he's done and some things I think, that I don't particularly care for, but there is absolutely no drama with the man. [We no longer] have all of that drama every single day, which I think wore out both his followers and people who did not follow him. And in the end, of course, he was removed.
So we're going to get to sports and race relations in history, but we have two more questions under state of the nation. So as you both know, our national ability to hold fair elections is under attack. Although Biden won the 2020 election by 7 million votes, a majority of Republicans, according to polls, continue to believe the election was stolen. What do you think the steps are needed to have elections that are trusted? What do you see as the biggest threats to democracy given misinformation, social media, and disenfranchisement? And my last question on this is, which individuals and institutions do you think are doing the best work to help rebuild trust in government?
I think the White House, and I don't know anybody in the White House, but I think the White House is trying to do that. And maybe that's part of the calm that sort of envelops everything that they're doing. Again, everyone's not pleased with that, but I think they're trying to do that. That doesn't speak directly to elections. But it gives the electorate confidence, if you will, in what is coming out of the White House. Now, in terms of all of these efforts by several different states, and let me just say there is a division, but there are more people in this country who were pleased with this election than displeased. Admittedly, it was a few million, but still, it was more. So the disenfranchised ones who were not happy with the outcome, this continual talk about "we are going to reestablish the former president by by August," that was moved from February to May, now August, is pie in the sky. This is residual rhetoric coming from him, from Florida. So I don't know what the answer is to that but but it continues to be divisive. As a Democrat, and I am a Democrat, I can tell you that in states like Georgia, they are taking what has been passed as law, and they're working with it. And they'll have everybody out to vote in November.
I may make a couple comments on that. First, I think the people that deserve the most credit for getting us to where we are today are the judges. The judges in the federal judiciary, and the state judiciary unanimously, in 65 cases throughout all of these fraud claims, many of them say that the only fraudulent thing was the claim that something was fraudulent because there wasn't any fraud anybody can really come up with. I would also like to remind people of what the "big lie theory" is. The "big lie theory" basically, is this: if you say something so outrageous for such a long time, eventually people will say, "Why would somebody say something so outrageous? It must be true because why would somebody say something so outrageous if it's not true because it's so outrageous?" Well, if you repeat it over and over again, eventually people begin, under the "big lie theory," to believe it. And I think we have a lot of that going on now, sadly.
I do give President Biden a lot of credit for not jumping in and taking the bait. If I were in his position, I probably would respond more and more to all the ridiculous claims that are being made about his getting elected inappropriately and so forth, but he hasn't taken the bait-- he's focused on the people's business and I think that's good and I give him credit for that. And his administration for not taking the bait. It is a sad situation but I think we all know where the root of it is coming from. I'm most disappointed that some people in the political system who should know better, are basically unwilling to admit the obvious. They're just continuing to play along with this system, which is somewhat debilitating to our government.
So everyone you're listening to Imagination in Action. This is where we have extraordinary people share how they've used their imagination to make action happen. Whether it's in the past or currently, these are interesting times, lots of opportunities, lots of challenges, and we have two extraordinary people who are modeling for us. And in future shows, I mentioned the next few, we're also building a show with Naomi [McDougall Jones] and Sarah [Springer], two directors from Hollywood, one an African American. We're building a show with Usman [Riaz] from Pakistan. He's like the Walt Disney of animation in Pakistan. We're building a show around David Sengeh, who's in the cabinet of Sierra Leone. We're building a show around Peter Girgius, who's a biology professor at Harvard studying the ocean animals and John Linehan, the head of the Franklin Park Zoo. And finally, we're building a show now around robots with Daniella Rus, who is the Deputy Director of Research at the Schwartzman College of Computing at MIT, and runs the csail [computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory], which has 1,300 students studying AI and computer science and robotics. So excited that you all are here. We're gonna open up to questions shortly. But back to you, Allison.
Great. Well, David, you have a book coming out in September on the American experiment, which includes interviews exploring the diverse makeup of our country's DNA that includes interviews with Pulitzer Prize winning historians, diplomats, music, legends, sports giants, and many more. I'd love to hear what you learned in pulling this book together on what people think does make this country special. What do each of you feel are the qualities and beliefs that make America special, and hopefully will get us through this divisive time?
Well, the American experience and experiment was basically this: people came together and, as Benjamin Franklin said when he was asked what he's given the American people [and] what the founding fathers gave, he said, "A republic, if you can keep it." The truth is, it was an experiment and nothing like that had ever happened before-- a government created out of a whole cloth to replace the failed Articles of Confederation government, which replaced the colonies that didn't really work so well either. We had wonderful rhetoric, as I mentioned earlier, in our founding documents, but we didn't really live up to it. Our country has been trying to live up to this rhetoric for all these hundreds of years, and, with some great successes and some failures, that still exists.
What I tried to say in the book is that I'd like people to think about the fact that there is life on Earth is an incredible, serendipitous kind of event. If the earth was formed, you know, 5 billion years ago, and it was, you know, 100 million miles closer to that, let's say, or let's say 50 million miles, or 30 million miles closer to the Sun, or 30 or 40 million miles further from the Sun, we probably wouldn't have life. So it happened in a very unusual way. Everything came together. It was the right location from the Sun and other things happen. The same thing is true of our body politic-- had we not had certain things happen, the American experiment wouldn't have come together. And in my view, the things that made our body politic work are a number of genes, as I call them. And the genes would be the belief in the rule of law, the belief in equality, the belief in the importance of voting, and so forth. So things that I think are essential to our democracy and our ability to move forward-- another one would be the American dream, people believe in the American dream, you can rise up from modest circumstances, and so forth-- these genes have come together and created an incredible country, I think, the envy of the world. But we have our flaws, as we all know, and I do think that it's important that we recognize we need to keep working on our flaws. But I do think the country has become the envy of the world and still remains the envy of the world. More people want to immigrate to this country and do immigrate to this country than any other country in the world. Very few people emigrate from this country. And I think that that tells you everything. How many people are immigrating into Russia, for example, or how many people are immigrating into any other country? Very few, relatively speaking. People really want to come here because we have built an incredible country, even with its flaws and its inequalities. It's still a place that I think people envy.
Thank you, Janet, and thank you, David. We've reached the first hour. This is going to continue. This is Imagination in Action. Our next question is on sports. And I know, Duke is like the Stanford of the East or Stanford is the Duke of the West and you guys both know a lot about sports from being connected there. Janet, of course, you know about sports from your perspective of being married to an NFL legend and being a mom of a NBA legend. [I'm] curious from both of you-- what roles do sports play in each of your lives? What do you know about collegiate sports and professional sports that maybe others don't know that you'd like to share exclusively on the show, or just, you know, riff on this. But before we do, I'd like to introduce Chris Ullman. Chris was on a show a few weeks ago on empathy and we had Crystal Emery, a world class filmmaker who is a quadriplegic and hooked up to a ventilator-- the ventilator, if it's not set up, you know, she could pass away-- and she spoke very powerfully. And then Chris spoke as a world class whistler-- he's won championships. He and David have done a number of things where they celebrate history and moments where Chris gets to play some whistling. So, before we take the sports question, and go then to race relations in history, Chris, would you do a musical interlude for this nice moment?
Yes, thank you, John. And thanks to David in China for a really interesting conversation. So this is a wonderful jazz tune called "Take the 'A' Train" by Billy Strayhorn and the great Duke Ellington. [Whistles]
Wow, thank you, Chris.
Hey, thanks, Alison.
Thank you. And did you really play at the top of the Washington Monument on the outside of the scaffolding, as David was being, you know, appreciated for his quick-response leadership to saving a national treasure?
It is true, David and I stood at the base of the Washington Monument. We looked up and David said, "You should whistle when you're up there, I bet no one's ever done that before." And I whistled Yankee Doodle Dandy, which is what I was going to perform, but the wonderful violinist performed it so I didn't want to do it again. That's what I picked the different tunes, but it was a great honor. And, David's initials are not at the top of the Washington Monument. It's great folklore.
Great. All right, great. So David and Janet, sports. [They're] a big part of our society. And I think during the pandemic, [they] played an important role to help people get through it, whether they bought running sneakers and ran on their own, or followed some of their teams in the bubble or etc.
Yes. Well, I was only gonna say yes, that is all true, [they] really did become, in a sense, more important during the pandemic. I want to say about Chris-- first of all, Chris is an athlete in his own way, because to be able to professionally whistle takes the same type of dedication, stamina, and extension of yourself that athletes have to do if they are going to be any good at their craft. So congratulations, Chris. I've heard you whistle many, many times. This is so, so great to have you do that.
I am a well known non athlete, and I don't dribble and chew gum at the same time. And I also do not know how to whistle. So I too am in somewhat of awe. Not just Chris, but of certain professional athletes [and] athletes at the college level who are very good at what they do. I think at the college level, athletics is important. I think it's a way to bring a community together. I think that's worked at Duke, where Duke basketball and to some extent Duke football, which is now competitive, bring people together. That happened back in the day at the Ivy League and then I believe that the Ivy League let their athletic programs slide somewhat. And when they did that, I think they did lose some sense of community. David can correct me. My husband went Yale. So I certainly know that happened at Yale.
I am never going to correct Janet on anything, so--
That's not true. [Laugh]
I would say that if you go back and look at all societies throughout history, they've always been interested in some type of sporting activity. What is it that makes societies interested in sporting activities? I guess it's the marvel of what the human body can achieve, with practice and so forth. And then secondly, people love to win and people hate to lose. And so, in sporting events, you typically have a winner and a loser and cheering for a winner is [an] enjoyable part of life and then marveling at what athletes can do is another important part of life. But also, I think people visualize themselves as being potentially these athletes when they're younger-- they might aspire to be like an athlete. And when they're older, they might think about what they could have done, if only their parents had not called them in to eat dinner and they could have practiced more, something like that. In my own case, I've never been a great athlete. I peaked at seven or eight. I was pretty good until about seven or eight and then people got bigger than me. So I enjoy watching athletics. I tried to play some things where, I'm modestly competitive for my age, but I don't think anybody would associate me with a great athletic capability in any area.
And then just a follow up. Anything you you to know about sports that people may not know? I know Calvin, I think, was involved in helping to think about the NCAA athletes getting paid or [being able to receive a] sponsorship. And I know Grant Hill, you know, I think Michael Jordan said he was heir apparent and had six great years, but then had a hard time. You know, after those six years with injuries, David, as someone who thinks about history, you know, I think sports is, you know, there's a lot of lore in sports history. Just double clicking on this history topic or on this sport topic.
Look, you know, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, a part of life is about the pursuit of happiness. And there very few things that give people as much happiness as watching sporting events or participating in sporting events. So I think it's a wonderful thing to do, to watch, and to participate in. I think what we don't probably know, as much as we should know is, you know, what are the limits of what humans can really accomplish. Certain sports are getting better and better in performance and one of the things that makes sports so interesting is the statistical parts of it. We love to measure the statistical performance of athletes compared to their predecessors and so forth, or their peers. I think today, the world is watching the sporting world come back. And, as we're already seeing in the NBA basketball finals, more and more fans can't wait to show up at these events. I think you're going to see sporting events filled with more and more people that want to once again participate as a viewer.
The only comment I would like to make though is, I am worried about the lack of civility. We're increasingly seeing sporting fans who feel they have some ability to throw something at athlete or yell something at an athlete that's inappropriate. And I hope we can find some way to eliminate this lack of civility and get back to some more normal kind of behavior by people that go to sporting events.
I agree with that. But I think that's being taken care of by the leagues. The NBA is led by Adam Silver, who is also a Duke trustee and a Dukie. And, you know, every single person who's thrown something or even shouted something at a player at an NBA game has been banned for life. Now, maybe they were so irate that what they threw was more important than being banned for life. But these are fans. And that is a huge mitigating factor against somebody else doing it. So he took a very tough line. He tends to be compassionate but tough and is thought to be the best commissioner of any of the major leagues. I'm sure David would say that's because he went to Duke and maybe he's right.
Well, that's obviously the case. He also went to the University of Chicago Law School.
Right. He followed David all the way along.
So I wanted to move us from sports to a little bit about race relations because both of you were born at times where segregation was the law. We've come through an incredibly tumultuous year where many Americans woke up to racial divides in policing, in COVID exposure, in employment, among many other areas. I would love to hear from both of you whether you think the current racial reckoning is real, how much progress you think we've made in each of your lifetimes on racial inequity, what are the areas where you think we have the most work to do, and what do you think Americans do and don't get about racial relations?
One thing, I think, that some people don't get, and this includes many Black people that-- listen: in 1965, when I was a senior in high school and I left from New Orleans and went 2000 miles away to Boston to college, I had never met anybody white. And one of the first people I met was Hillary Rodham. She was very nice to me. And I tried to bail out of Wellesley after three days but my mother back in New Orleans put her foot down and basically said, "No, you are not coming home. No, you are not running away from school." And I was not resourceful enough to figure out how to live on my own, I guess, in Boston, at 18. So I toughed it out. None of the wonderful things that have happened to me would have happened if I had left. So that's my, that was the seminal moment for me, if you will. But the other important moment was also in 1965, when the civil rights bill [the Voting Rights Act of 1965] was passed. And segregation, which was the law in certain places, such as New Orleans, ended [after the Civil Rights Act of 1964]. And there was affirmative action and open accommodations. So, if I were to walk into, I don't know, Starbucks, and buy coffee, that is not a place I could have walked into and bought coffee in 1964. So I see the last 60 years or 70 years as-- that was probably the most important thing that happened. A lot of young people, who, as I said, I'm surrounded by people who who were born in the '90s, they don't even know that unless they read their history books. And they don't realize that there are many of us walking around who lived through that. Now, that doesn't mean we've reached Nirvana, because we have not. And I think the situation with the police, which gives a bad name to police-- most police are good. There are good police, men and women, and there are some rogue police [exemplified by] the shooting of black men, and not just shoot[ing] them once, but [those who say,] "Let me go ahead and put 12 bullets in them." And the stop was-- the reason they stopped him is because they had a taillight out. Something is not defensible here.
The most amazing thing that has ever been created by God or evolution, in my view, is the human brain-- an incredible muscle and organ-- but it has had its defects. And one of its defects is this: although the human brain can create Mozart sonatas or Beethoven symphonies or Picasso works of art, or whatever you might want to see that the human brain has done, it's incredible. Shakespeare plays-- it has a defect. And the defect is it says, "If you are different than me, I don't like you." And therefore, racism arises not just in the United States, but all over the world.
Race-- there are very few countries where two different races get along swimmingly, as if there is no racial distinction. The United States is worse than many other countries because we still have the residue of the sin of slavery. We had slavery in this country for several hundred years and we have the residue of it now, which is that many people that are descendants of slaves still have not achieved equality compared to whites who may have lived in this country a relatively short period of time. Since the civil rights laws of the 1960s-- the '64 Civil Rights Act, the '65 Voting Rights Act and the '68 Housing Act-- since those acts, for people who are African American, Black-- they are not discriminated against legally in quite the way they were before, but there's still a divide. If you are well educated, you are talented in certain ways, you can, in our current society, do reasonably well even though there is still some residual, I would say, discrimination. But if you were at the bottom half of the of the African American totem pole in the sense that you don't have a high school education, you don't have a college education, you've been involved with the criminal justice system in ways have made you incarcerated at a very high percentage compared to whites, you are not going to be benefiting from all the laws that we changed in the 1960s and all the affirmative action things we've had recently. And that's come home to people and recognized by everybody.
When you see something like George Floyd, I'm very upset that George Floyd had to be murdered to make people see that we have so much progress that has to be made. But it is interesting to me that that one murder, because it was so seen, so visible, has had an impact on corporate America, [and,] certainly, in some other parts of America, more than I would have thought, because Black men were being lynched by the thousands in the in the 20th century, certainly the early part of the 20th century, and they didn't seem to have the impact that one murder had in this century. I hope that the impact of what George Floyd suffered will be residual in the sense that we will actually have real progress made, but it's going to be a while and I do think the human brain is not going to all of a sudden eliminate the fact that certain people who look different are treated differently.
Janet and David, thank you so much. Now I want to open it up to some questions. I'm just looking in the room. I see Sydney and Bennett, two Gen Zers, are going to jointly ask a question. I see Esther-- I'm going to call on you next. Esther Dyson, who's come to all our shows. I'm going to call on you immediately. Emily, thank you so much for asking that Salk Question. I see Valerie. Like I said, Valerie was president of Duke and that's a real point of pride and you guys could bond on on that. I'm gonna call on you. And I'm really proud of our 250 speakers, I think I counted 35 of them were in this room today from the number two at the World Economic Forum, to the top student from IIT Delhi. We have just had a great group. So Esther Dyson, everyone's favorite really, really, really, really, really clever person.
Well, I don't know how to follow up that. So first, thanks to David, who is a trustee also at the Institute for Advanced Study, which is where I grew up. And--
Yeah, and you were at the feet of Einstein, right, as a toddler.
[He] didn't sit still long enough to help people at his feet. But what I would like to do is ask both of you about-- there's going to be lots of great questions about politics and money and so forth-- is about science and math. Janet, in particular, you mentioned mathematics and I love telling people who were arguing about COVID-19 that, actually, everybody who gets a vaccination dies afterwards. It just takes many years. And a scientific education enables you to pick that up quickly. But there's so much more to math and to science than either being a quant[um physicist]-- or a baseball analyst or being a coder. There's understanding how the world works, there's having common sense, there's understanding why people change their minds when they get new evidence. I just love to hear both of you talk about that.
Well, everything you said is correct. I mean, what can I say [is that] mathematics is part of everything in life. And if I did a book on raising Grant and also on sports, I would talk about the mathematics of sports because, you know, one can look at the arc of the football or the arc of the basketball and there's so many other things-- the shape of the court, the shape of the field-- things of that sort. So it comes into play all across the board. I think that we have not done a good job in this country of encouraging women and minorities to study mathematics, or for that fact, other STEM courses. And sometimes I hear STEM mentioned and mathematics is not mentioned. It's sort of left out so I guess it's just "STE" without a "M" on the end.
So I see Kelly Stoetzel is here. Kelly's an amazing leader and she just joined the leadership of Clubhouse. It's so great to see you. I'm excited to see her leadership just thrive. I also see her parents are here, Jim and Carol Young, both octogenarians. I also see my dad is here and I see a few people are following him and I think they think that it's me because we share a name-- John Werner, John Werner. I'd like to ask Sydney and Bennett, two Gen Z[er]'s, to kind of share perspectives to the these great leaders, share questions. So Sydney, do you have a question?
Yeah. So hi, I'm Sydney Weiner. I'm a rising senior in high school-- I just finished my junior year. My dad actually went to Duke at the same time as Grant, so, you know, I've been rooting for Duke since forever and I begged to stay up in 2015. I completely freaked out when, you know, they won the national championship-- started bawling and my dad, embarrasingly for me, he put it on his Facebook page. I have two questions. So the first is for both of you. You know, as John mentioned earlier, a lot of people my age are really disillusioned by the government and the state of our country and that's really drew me to want to get into government and policymaking and wanting to work on the [Capitol] Hill. So I know that going into the field, democracy is supposed to be slow and that I'll face a lot of pushback and many people lose steam along the way. And so I was kind of just wondering about how you both have dealt with that pushback and how you stop yourself from burning out and just remind yourselves, you know, what it is that you want to do when there's constant pushback by people that really don't want the state of affairs to change.
And my second question is for Janet. I run a few clubs at my school, a few which are male dominated, like Model Congress and I'm also senior editor of my school's classics and political magazines. And I also play a lot of sports. And even though I'm young already at times, I've felt disrespected by some boys in my school and sort of discounted, which I know is common for women in general and especially when women are in positions of power. And so I was listening to a lecture by classicist Mary Beard, who, you know, says that women put on man's voice and use typically male mannerisms to be taken seriously and that we need to reform what's considered the voice of authority. So, as someone who is in a ton of positions of power and so highly respected, I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit about how women can command respect and be confident without compromising their femininity or themselves in the process?
Well, on your latter question, I don't think you [should] take verbal abuse from anybody. At your age, at my age, or in between. So if there are students, who are-- you said, disrespecting you in your leadership role? I don't know what, the student newspaper or something of that sort-- call them out on it. You know, I'd ask them. In other words, if they have said something that suggests some diminishing of your capability, ask them, "Are you diminishing my capability to put this newspaper out?" Honestly, they're going to shrink from you if you say that. Again, it says so much about them. And it says nothing to me about you and your capabilities. When other people have to diminish a person in order to feel good about themselves, they are terribly flawed.
Yeah, they're not going to be ready for me next year.
Well, I mean, honestly, listen. You're entitled to show the expertise that you have. And I'd like to think that that doesn't happen to individuals at your age, and that the next generation of young men are more enlightened than previous generations. But perhaps they're not.
Well, first, let me say some who are listening may not realize that Esther Dyson's father, Freeman Dyson, was one of the leading mathematicians and physicists of the 20th century and part of the 21st century. He passed away not too long ago at the age of 96 and was a scholar for an enormous number of years, I mean, about a half a century, at the Institute for Advanced Study and was a towering intellectual [that] I got to meet a number of occasions and marvel at his mind. And I'm sure, growing up as his child probably couldn't be that easy, because he was so brilliant, and I assumed, you know, one of his children would be brilliant and Esther, I think, lived up to that expectation.
In terms of the question of what you can really realistically do, there are people who will change the world, who are going to who are going to knock down walls. There's an Elon Musk or a Bill Gates or a Mark Zuckerberg or a Steve Jobs. They have such a drive to change the world a certain way that, you know, I wouldn't be the one to tell him, "Hey, that's not unrealistic to have a electric car," the kind of way that Elon Musk has done, or Steve Jobs, "We're not gonna have personal computers for everybody." But unless you have that drive, that vision, to basically knock down walls and do whatever it takes and maybe at the sacrifice of your personal life or your health, I would say for most people going into government, I would try to look for a realistic goal that you can accomplish while you're there. So most people are going to go into government and work on Capitol Hill, young people typically do it for two to five years. And during that period of time, I would say I would try to have one or two realistic goals that you can accomplish and look back and say you got something done. You're probably not going to change the Federal Government all that much in the couple years you're there, even if you're there for a lifetime, because it's too complicated to change dramatically. But I would say-- I recommend that people do try to do some public service as I mentioned earlier, and Capitol Hill is a good place to do it. You see the good and the bad of human life up on Capitol Hill.
Valerie Mosley, why don't you ask your question? Then Bennett, I'll come to you. And we're really lucky Max is staying up in Spain. He's going to play some improv jazz before the end of the night. You know what Bennett? Why don't you go as Valerie's trying to figure that out?
Yeah, so I had a question that kind of goes back to what was being talked about earlier about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. My question was basically, do you believe that the government is going to try to throttle or dismantle cryptocurrencies in order to have their currencies, you know, like the United States dollar, be the prominent currency?
Well, I don't believe that. I think, as I tried to say, it's too late for that. I think throttle is a pejorative word and maybe you didn't intend it that way. I would say the government of the United States moves slowly as a general rule of thumb and it moves slowly to regulate and understand what crypto is about. But I do think that the government probably is smart enough to realize you're not going to be to put that genie back in the bottle so there will be some regulations, probably dealing with the trading of cryptocurrencies as opposed to their existence and probably more disclosures about what lies behind some of them, how they're created, and so forth. More regulation about how they're to be transferred, and so forth. That may happen.
I think, in the lifetime of the young people watching or listening now, we will probably not have any paper currency anymore from the government. We'll probably have only digital currencies and the digital currency will be backed by the United States government. But remember, what backs the United States government currency now is really the full faith and credit of the United States. But, I think a lot of people are saying, "What? You have $28 trillion of debt, U.S. government, and you're printing this and you know, you're borrowing an extra three and a half trillion dollars a year and it's not like the old days when you had gold backing the U.S. dollar, which we used to have before President Nixon." So I would say, I think increasingly, people are nervous about paper currency, increasingly they're nervous about the government's ability to really honor some of the obligations it has without inflating the currency so much. That's why I think cryptocurrency has some appeals. I realize it has other appeals as well, and there's some nefarious things you can do with cryptocurrencies, but remember, we're in the first inning of the cryptocurrencies. 25 years from now, people will say, "What was paper money?" And I suspect cryptocurrencies will play a role alongside government backed digital currencies, as these things evolve. Remember, the internet, we came the know the internet maybe less than 25 years ago, and look how it's dramatically changed our life. So digital currencies, in 25 years from now, will be completely different than they are today and I don't think it'll be possible for the U.S. government to sweep it away.
Great. Thank you, David. And, you know, the political allegory of The Wizard of Oz was the yellow brick road was the gold standard and the ruby slippers were ruby so they could look good in Technicolor, but they are the silver to represent the farmers' interest in silver. So I see Valerie, you figured out the mute. That's great.
Yeah.
I do want to ask a quick history question, and then we'll go to Valerie and then Allison. You know, you're the chief futurist at BCG [Boston Consulting Group]. [I'd] love for you to use your futurist hat to kind of sum up what we've achieved so far. But this is, David, for you. You know, you love history, you've done so much for history. I feel like your example is so powerful. So much of history is reading letters. In the future people have these digital footprints, digital tattoos, digital exhaust, emails, tweets, social media. How do you think that's going to change how we document history. Wou were talking about how interviews weren't done with Lincoln and Socrates, but I feel like there's going to be a new amount of information and probably some new things. And then 100 years from now, what monuments do you think D.C. will have? What do you think they may take down?
Well, first, people historically, not saying for a couple 100 years, you wrote letters and letters were the very good evidence of what people thought. But people were pretty careful about what they wrote. They were always worried that letters would be intercepted and be seen by the wrong people, particularly in times of war. And so people were very careful about what they wrote-- very, very careful. As we all know, there's a tendency to kind of be cute with emails, or in other kinds of digital forms of communication on social media, and you say things that maybe a minute later you wish you hadn't said. All of these things are captured in some electronic device, typically. And therefore at some point, when people go back and look at emails, you're going to find that people have said things that maybe embarrass them later. The new presidential libraries will not have any paper. The first presidential library that's completely digital is the Obama library, and all future libraries will-- presidential libraries-- will only be digital. And the government of the United States keeps, as a matter of law, every digital communication made by a government employee. And so it's theoretically retrievable. So I think we're gonna learn a lot more about what people think because digital communications are just ones where people are franker than they probably were in letters and more voluminous than they were in letters. So we're going to have more material and it's going to be probably franker than it than it was before.
And, in terms of monuments, it is amazing to me in a city like Washington, D.C., where I more or less live, that there are essentially no major monuments to half the species: women. We have the Washington Monument, we have the Jefferson Memorial, we have the Lincoln Memorial, and that's, of course, because they were presidents and so forth. But we still haven't done a very good job of memorializing what women have done for the country and I suspect in the next 10, 15, 20 years, we'll see a lot more monuments to people who are women, and a lot more monuments to people who are minorities, and a lot more monuments to people that have done things other than political kinds of things. But people have done things in other parts of life that are not just the kind of political monuments that we now have.
I'd like to pop in here and say about the monuments that I point everyone to the Mellon Foundation, which has committed $250 million to something they call "The Monuments Project." And what they intend to do over the next five years is to support efforts to recalibrate the assumed center of our national narratives to include those who have often been denied historical recognition. I don't exactly know how they're going to do that in Washington and in other cities, too, but it's quite an undertaking from a fairly distinguished foundation.
Janet in researching for this show, I realized that you worked with the first African American to be Secretary of the Army in the Carter administration, and Secretary Alexander, you and he worked for 30 years on your business and it's his daughter, who is now the head of that foundation that you just referenced.
That's exactly right.
[You must be] very proud.
I am. I've known her since she was in elementary school.
Yes, yeah. So let me now turn to Valerie. And then after Valerie, I'd love for Alison to kind of share some thoughts, and then we'll get Max. He's in Spain. And for those who don't know, David was one of the first 40 to sign the Giving Pledge. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett asked him if he'd give his money away. And where a lot of, you know, post-economic types say, "Yeah, I'll give half my money away before I die," David is committed to giving it all away. But he also wants people to realize that there are a lot of different ways to contribute to society and I think he's been a great leader. So for those of you who don't have a lot of disposable income, he's challenging you to think about how to give back. He's building on what Ted Sorensen helped Kennedy, right, in that inaugural, by his action, by his leadership, and by his creativity. And David, thank you for all that. So, Val Mosley, one of my favorite people in the world. People should write down that they heard Val ask a question tonight.
John, you're so wonderful. It's such a pleasure to be here. Both of you are just all three of you are pretty amazing. I have the Duke connection, as you mentioned. I was a history major. I left to go on to Wharton and manage money and be a partner at Wellington. But I just love-- and I was on the board for a while much like both of you are.
My question has to do with something that both of you have talked about and has to do with this inequality that exists in this wonderful place of America and the increasing gap that exists. And I'm wondering, one question is for David to think about. Have you given any thought to how we can use the capital markets to help address some of the issues? I have done some research, I left Wellington several years ago, and I'm now working on a project to help democratize wealth building and reinforce wellbeing around worth knowing. And when you see a graph of what is happening with the interest rates on credit cards, or student loans, and then you see that rate and the graph of the price for high yield bonds, they're very divergent. So there's something about the power of capital markets, when you think about the extent to which you have-- you and others have-- decided to give money away, have you given any thought, to the, well you're both leaders, so just want to tap into your leadership, of using some philanthropic dollars to be able to be first losses against the structures that would attract capital, to then be able to refinance the burden of debt that so many people have and disproportionately people of color suffer? That's one. And I would ask both of you, because you're awesome, to give the advice that you would give to your younger self. You've learned so much over time. What are some key things you wish you had known, and you want to make sure that your audience knows that we should do or we should avoid? Like the wisdom widgets. Janet, if you want to go first?
Well, I'm going to let David answer the first half of your question. But I think that this income inequality as well as those of us who live a life where there is debt, and angst, if you will, associated with that. And certainly I've seen it from the point of view of trying to start and mine was successful, though, a small business. So many of them are not. And that is the backbone of America. Unfortunately, the backbone is not large businesses, like Wellington, or Carlyle, or anything else. So I think we need something to help individuals who are middle class and individuals who are not middle class and striving to become middle class. I'm sorry, your second question?
Advice to your younger self.
Advice to my younger self: stop and smell the pizza. And eat it.
Great, David, how about you on that?
First, it's very difficult to deal with the debt issue, because as you suggest, the debt loads on minorities are much greater proportionately they are on whites. I don't have an easy answer for that. Clearly, members of Congress have suggested, and I suspect at some point in our lifetime you'll see something where there's some type of debt forgiveness for student loans. That's very expensive to do, probably will take some time, but I suspect you'll see a gradual easing of the burden through eliminating some, if not all, of that debt for some, some individuals, not all, but I think that's possible. But the debt burden you're talking about, credit card burden, is a complicated subject, and I don't have a great answer for it. I do think that in the capital markets, as you know, more and more managers are being selected who are minority managers or diverse managers and I think that's a good thing. It's not going to solve the problem overnight. But for a long time, those who gave money out to money managers didn't really care whether they money managers had diversity in their, in their ranks, or whether they were minority owned or not, that's changing. It'll take some time to have a big impact, but it is changing. And I think that's for the good. I think almost everybody now who in money management world has kind of mined more diverse managers and more managers that have, I'd say, minority ownership and minority senior professionals.
In terms of your second question. To my younger self, I would just say, you know, read as much as you can, make as many contacts as you can, look for mentors as much as you can, experiment with as many different career possibilities as you can if you find something you really passionate about. And then also, as Janet says, smell the roses. Life can't be only working because it's not a balanced life. And so find things that you enjoy that are sports, you can keep with you the rest of your life, cultural things you can keep with you the rest of your life, and find some philanthropic thing that you can keep with you the rest of your life. That's probably what I would advise my younger self to do.
So, I now like to introduce this segment, Allison. Some people find this one of the highlights where you kind of synthesize what's been talked about in our Imagination in Action show so far. You're so insightful. Bring it on.
Well, this is quite a show to try to summarize. Caroline started us off with a patriotic rendition of Yankee Doodle Dandy that was pretty extraordinary on the violin, we were lucky enough to have two extraordinary individuals, David and Janet, share not only thoughtful perspectives, but I think our whole audience really appreciated first of all, your candor and then just the breadth of topics that you were willing to take on. I don't think we've had other speakers who are quite this unsiloed. So John, first of all, gave a great introduction to Janet who grew up in New Orleans when segregation was the law. And Janet talked about learning from her parents about generosity of spirit and striving for excellence, with emphasis on the word striving, which I love. David grew up as an only child in Baltimore and successfully fought off his mother's desire to make him a dentist. I am forever grateful for that. I have a dental phobia, so I can't think how the world would be different. David and Janet recommended that students view college as training for life and not just as training for a career. They talked about the distinct privilege of government service and David reminded us that there are ways to do public service and many different forms, including nonprofits, with an importance of finding a way to give back to your country which he described as really "the greatest source of happiness in his life."
We talked about leadership and Janet told us she studies leaders as a hobby (I love that) including Andy Young, Dave Thomas, Satya Nardelli, among many others. David, I think, has also made a business, plus a passion, plus a hobby of studying leaders, and cited several health leaders who told truth to power through the COVID nightmare: Tony Fauci, Francis Collins, Dr. Jonas Salk, and who have really saved lives in the process. David reminded us that interviews themselves are a very new phenomena and that we don't really have interviews of many great leaders in history, including Cleopatra and others, that would be fascinating to hear from. We talked about the state of the nation, where we now have an incredibly divided country which David called A Tale of Two Cities, red and blue, very much in need of purple bridges. Janet reminded us that the last president, number 45, added a match to these divisions. David reminded us of the "big lie theory"-- that if you say something so outrageous for long enough and repeat it often enough, people start to believe it.
Luckily, just about then, Chris whistled, "Take the 'A' Train" from Duke Ellington and I love the fact that Janet classified that as an athletic performance, I think we all have to agree. David reminded us that the American Republic was an experiment [and that] our country is trying to live up to the very strong rhetoric of being equal, with some successes and quite a few failures. And David reminded us that life on Earth itself is a serendipitous gift. And that's probably true, he said, also for our body politic. He talked about the genes that make up our American DNA: belief in the rule of law, belief in equality, belief in the importance of voting, belief in the American dream, among many others. And he reminded us, which I love, that very few people emigrate from this country, which is probably one of the better tests. Janet took us back to 196[5] and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, David talked about how divides and the sin of slavery has still put limits on what some in our society can achieve, including what David referred to as the COVID Crater, which set major parts of our society even further back.
John asked a great question on how social media will change the nature of history and David talked about how future presidential libraries will be digital only, which may have the benefit of being franker, as well as more voluminous, than careful letters. And finally, David and Janet talked about a future DC when monuments are also created to women and minorities. For advice to our younger selves, it included, read as much as you can, experiment with as many ideas as you can, smell the roses, find things you enjoy, and find a way to give back. Thank you for an incredible evening, where you both found quite a way to really fill our spirits. Thank you.
Max, can you play something for like 90 seconds? And then we'll see if there are other questions.
Sure, John, and thank you, Janet and David. I would like to play a tune written by the great American Ragtime composer from New Orleans, Scott Joplin. This is one of his lesser known pieces, but nonetheless, I think it's one that is very celebratory, and will help us all march on out of here after a wonderful, insightful conversation. This is called "The Sycamore." [Plays].
Great, so any questions, Janet, you think we should have asked you? David, I want to be respectful of your time, you're more than welcome to stay all night, but if you have to go, we understand. Usually our shows are two and a half hours, but I think we agreed that if you could just stay for an hour and a half, that would be more than enough and thank you for staying longer.
Well, my pleasure. Whoever did this summary should get the Nobel Prize for summarizing what people said.
She does it every show.
Nobel should have given a Nobel Prize for summary of what people said. I wanted to say, I'm honored to be with Janet. Janet is an extraordinary individual that I've come to work with on a number of boards. And as I said, not only a great parent, but a great role model for people and somebody who's broken a lot of barriers herself. And I would say that it was my privilege to be here with her and I appreciate everybody's asking me questions. I tried the best I could to answer them and I'm sure I made some mistakes and probably said some things I'll get in trouble for later, but in any event, I enjoyed it very much and thank you for inviting me.
You've been such a leader on so many forms of media and I'm glad this was your first example of social audio. We're proud to have you and you're welcome back anytime it fits in your schedule. And thank you. And also thank you for your humor. I feel like a lot of serious people who accomplish a lot take themselves way too seriously and I feel like you also have a nice balance of humor in all that you do. So I want to just appreciate you in addition to all that you do for history and philanthropy and trying to make the world work.
Thanks very much. I appreciate it. Okay.
Thank you very much. Also, it was a pleasure to be here.
Janet, do mind staying another eight minutes because I wanted to ask you another question. Before I ask Janet a question, does anyone have a question for Janet?
Actually, my question was for David, but it would work for her as well. Lots of conversation here about innovation, especially earlier around digital currency. What about China? They seem to have such tight controls on a variety of issues, behaviors, and especially what's happening to things that are important to their priorities. Do you anticipate an overall approach to taking over the world, their approach to taking over the world essentially, by gobbling up debt and surrounding individual countries with what I would call "limited goodwill", you know, of course, attached to an unknown set of future demands for them? And shouldn't we counter this by cleaning up our debt and refocusing where we spend government money?
Well, yes, we definitely should do the latter. In terms of the future with respect to China, I don't know if I'm the best person to answer that question.
It is complicated, right?
It is. And, you know, we have a complicated relationship with them.
No question about it. I read Henry Kissinger's "on China" and it changed everything I felt about them. I mean, of course he would do that kind of thing.
Yes, he would. Yes, he would.
His incredible insight. And he's kind of misdirectional like they are.
I have been to China myself several times, about eight times, all of it in the last 15 years. I even went to a wedding where I was in the wedding of a Duke graduate who had been a young trustee. And I took a friend with me and just loved every moment that I was there. But, again, our situation with them is quite complicated at this moment.
So you guys, let me just wrap up and then I have a last closing comment that I want to ask Janet, but welcome, everyone to Imagination in Action. This is where we have people role model how they use their imagination and put it into action and help, you know, think about what are the opportunities and challenges in our times. Next week show we're having the comedy writers, the head comedy writers for Ellen, Everybody loves Ramond, and Corden. The week after that we have Peter Diamandis. The week after that we have Tal Zaks, the Chief Medical Officer for Moderna and Juan Enriquez and Jane Metcalfe, the founder of Wired Magazine. We then are going to have Chip Conley who was a strategic advisor for 12 years for Airbnb, and Barbara Waxman, and they're going to talk about middle age and how it's expanding, and hospitality. We also have Mark Bittman, the food writer for The New York Times. He just came out with a book, "Animal, Vegetable, Junk". We're also going to have Randall Lane from Forbes who created the 30 under 30 and is the Chief Content Officer. And we're gonna have the president of MasterCard and the president of Fidelity. We're also going to have a show with Naomi and Sarah, two female directors in Hollywood, one African American, talking about the challenges and the "Me Too" movement. And we're also going to have David Sengeh, who is in the minister's cabinet in Sierra Leone, coming in from Africa. And we're gonna have the head of a zoo, we have a lot of great shows. Daniela Rus, that has 1300 grad[uate] students at MIT running the csail, computer science, artificial intelligence, and robot lab. So every Tuesday 6 to 8pm, tune in and have your imagination stretched and hear about action. So my last question, Janet, is how-- you have two granddaughters you absolutely adore. I know you and David were both single children. Maybe talk a little bit about your hope for that generation. We had two questions by by Gen Zer's-- what are your wishes and hopes for the generations to come? You know, so much is talking about those that are leading today, but what are your dreams and wishes for the next generation, and, you know, use your imagination, and maybe share some things that you'd like to see put in action.
Well, thank you for asking that. One granddaughter is 14 and a soccer star, continuing the athletic genes that run through her, and the older one is 20 and now a freshman in college [who] just made the Dean's list at the end of her freshman year. Just to show you, my older granddaughter never looked at her grades all year because she was convinced that they were poor, then she made the dean's list. So I hope for her that she continues her college education, that she continues to prosper as she already has, and that she has a higher expectation of herself. For the younger one who aspires to go to Duke, I hope short term that is something that she's able to do and that Duke wants her and that the Duke soccer coach wants her. And I think it's great that she looks up to the women's national soccer team-- she knows everything about every member of the team. And, as you mentioned, I took her to the World Cup when they won it in Leon, France, and took Grant too. We all had a great time. I didn't know as much about women's soccer and now I know about that team, which is a tremendous team. I think they're expected to win again this year.
For, especially my younger granddaughter, she was born with the digital gene. So [she has the] capacity to understand the digital world and exploit it for her own benefit. I hope she's able to do that as she gets older because she's well positioned to do so. She can get out of the business of programming my iPhones and my husband's-- that she can do also. So I mean, I don't know if I have any big expectations beyond those. They're kind of short term expectations in the near term future.
Yeah, so where I was going was just intergenerational, I think we need to think across generations and having a grandmother think about her granddaughters. I know in the coming weeks, we're going to have Pattie Ballinger, who's the chief of staff to President [Lawrence] Bacow at Harvard, the Duke of the North, and her son, who works at Hulu. And we're going to just have a show about a conversation between a mother and a son. And maybe it would be good to have you back, Janet, your granddaughter to do a show, because at Imagination in Action, we want to show that we're getting people to think about how to collaborate, how to be imaginative, how to do action. I think-- yeah, looking across generations. And you know, you grew up in the South, where there were signs around [reading] "whites only," and you didn't know a white person well until you went to Wellesley. We need to appreciate where we've come from, but we also need to appreciate where we want to go and I think you've modeled that in your professional career and your personal career. And thank you for being a speaker here. And in a few minutes, this whole talk is going to be transcribed and you can read what you said, Janet, and this whole talk will be audio, if you want to listen to it backwards or upside down. And then we're going to pull out some of the most profound and provocative statements and create a new unit of media that we want people to share to try to help create [an] impact in the world so there's more imagination in action. But thank you so the power vested in me I close this room and Kelly, as the leader of leaders at Clubhouse, I'm so glad you got to experience some of this and we're really proud of this platform and how it lowers the barrier for people to collaborate. We had people from Vancouver, from India tonight. From Spain, from Detroit, Texas, from all over the world and this allowed for David Rubenstein, David and Janet, to be spotlighted in a really special way and they didn't [even] have to be in the same studio, they didn't have to have fancy equipment. So maybe the force with you and live long and prosper.
