Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20150411

Connected and that opportunity would occur. Rose phil mudd and brian grazer when we continue. ni rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose phil mudd is here. He has served as Deputy Director of the c. I. A. Counterterrorist center. He was also the first Deputy Director of the f. B. I. S National Security branch. Left Government Service in 2010 after more than two decades. His new book is a guide for approaching tough decisions in the digital age of data overload, it is called the head game high efficiency analytic decisionmaking and the art of solving complex problems. I cant imagine who gave it that title. laughter i am pleased to have philip muddjdd how could you ever think this is oh, the head game is fine its the subtitlenico that nrninrnrni ÷c the author writes the book. The first title was the big think and the folks at the Publishing Company said this is not going to work. So back and forth six months. We said we need something thats going to catch the idea of how to think intellectually about complex problems. I was sitting in a bar one night not uncommon for me laughter and i swear, in minneapolis sitting in a bar having a glassnr of wine. I look over and i see some guyni working some girl at the bar, andninrxd i looked at him and said shes playing head gamesni with c instantly, i took out a card and said, the book will be called the head game. Everybody understands that. How do we figure out how to make that an acronym, but it was at a bar watching a guy work a girl. Rose your life is about analysis. Thats right. When i walked in the doors in the c. I. A. In 1985, i was so desperate for a job i said youre going to be an analyst and i remember going into the desk to get the badge to get in the front gate and they said your job is analyst. Going into the c. I. A. They dont give you much information up front. I said, i dont know really know what that is and it turned out to be 25 year career. Rose do the guys in operations respect analysts and do the anists want to be in operation . I have more operation friends, guys working in the field collecting intelligence than i do analyst friends. Its a friendly rivalry especially in the ranks, theres a lot of respect across the board. Both services have been around for a while. The analysts are regarded as pointedheads who have graduate degrees and the operators are knuckle draggers out in the field. The extrovert analyst is a guy that looks at the other guys shoes in the elevator. laughter rose john brennan wants to bring them together more, operations and thats right. Rose and is that a good idea . The idea is, in the history of the agents is typically you have people collecting information and the people analyzyn separate places. If im analyzes the Iranian Nuclear program, the peoplexd actually collecting it, sometimes in another building. Theres a simple thought, if you have knowledge on a problem, why dont you all sit together. How does it take 60 years to get there. Theres a problem called Matrix Management. If you have somebody managing all of this stuff on iran and that person is managing the analysts studying the Iranian Nuclear program and theni the people collecting the have somebody trying to manage that analyst career. Parachuting in, telling that iran manager, you know, that guy youre having work on that project, he needs different experiences to grow as an officer over 20 years. And the line manager is going to say, excuse me i have a real world problem ive got to solve here, leave me alone. That Matrix Management is tough. In theory it works. Experience on a problem sittinbinci 9q in oneco place more brains is better brains. The management part will be tough, i think. Rose so much information is known today. Theres such a data overwhelming amount of information. Yeah. Rose our power to collect information has never been greater. Thats right. Reach out and give us more information. Whats the value added of the c. I. A. . This is an advantage not being there because i think the c. I. A. Is strugglingxd to revolve around a fundamental question. When i joined the service, i intelligence was secrets, interpreting communication. If you want to look at the north Korean Nuclear facility, get on google earth. Human sources inside an organization. The iranian revolution in 1979, if youre fast forwarding to watch unrest in iran today, you will get people on twitter vine people with smartphone photos. Im not sure you have people clandestinely collecting because youco have 1,000 uh protesters collecting for you. The transformation is to understand intelligence is notnr secrets its knowledge. Its information that helps you solve a problem. So the c. I. A. In essence is losing traction i think in the knowledge world because a lot of them still believe that knowledge is secrets. Its byxd definition, if youre at the c. I. A. You acquire clandestinely. As i watch the world change, you take the evolution in iran or unrest you saw a few years agonr in iran,nr the sliver of information thats secret, if youre assessing unrest in a foreign country compared to when i started in 1985 is going like this. So theyve got to realize that intelligence isconi knowledge and a lesser and lesser part of the intelligence world is secrets. Unless you get out there and get into the big world im in now i think theyll slip further behind. Rose give me a sense of what knowledge tells us about iran. Thats a good example of a situation where i think intelligence can bring real value added. When youre dealing with a classic intelligence problem youre looking at two categories of stuff, capability and intent. What can a country do. What kind of material do they have. How are the facilities protected so if theyco have bombs we can go after them. Those are all questions the Service World cant answer well. In 1985, you couldnt take google earth and watch iran build a facility. On the intense side do they want to build a facility, do they want to delay building . Do they want to build a facility to only acquire Nuclear Material for Nuclear Power is this thats Technical Information that gets inside a Senior Leaders office to say you have the capability to do this, do you have the intent to do that. In my view rose thats an intelligence question. Thats an intelligence question. As the world of knowledge explodes, the number of the classic intelligence questions is going to get fewer and fewer. Rose an intelligence question will tell you do they want it, how fast do they want it and whats their game plan. To get to the book, i dont think thats the right question i would ask if i were an analyst. Rose what would you ask . The first information, the officer, the Intelligence Officer has to acquire has to do with the capability of iran and the intent of the leadership to use that capability. When youre talking to a Decision Maker the real transition of being an expert to analyst is not to start with the data to start with the Decision Makers question the question of how can we affect this problem. If you dump a bunch of information on my desk about irans Nuclear Program im going to say thats interesting what do i do about it . Rose how about doing nothing. Largely true. Rose i would ask the most important question is whats the problem. How do we define the problem before we ask the question how can we affect the problem . I think the problem is do we have a sense that iran might use this capability . This is the intent part of the equation for nefarious purposes. The first is building a capability they could eventually deploy. The second is deployment the third is use of the capability. As a practitioner if a Decision Maker wants to know how do i affect this, to my mind, my responsibility, whether im in business or whether im in the c. I. A. To determine what does my boss want to do and so once i determine what he wants to do, i want to affect this president obama, president bush so i can slow this program down. This vision is narrow and you will youre doing is asking the questions about your boss question. If all youre doing for him is helping him with the question hes formed, maybe you could serve a better purpose by broadening his question. You just graduated to sort of ph. D. Level analysis. I always told analysts you have about four or five stages to go from mediocre to good to great but first is being expert you know your turf. The second is being able to talk about it in a formal way. The third is being able to have a conversation about it in an informal way so i can talk to you without a bunch of notes in front of me. The final stage is being able to watch where youre going and anticipate but also supplement where youre going as youre suggesting so if i think youre going in a direction and not asking the right questions how do i insert the questions without you saying im not an idiot. So this defining how an analyst goes up the ladder from immediate yoke tore good and almost great. Almost nobody got there 5 or less. Rose why . The characteristics of an analyst, expertise ability to work with other people ability to present orally, ability to write clearly and to havexd a passion about the business so you can beat your competition, to my mind the number of people who combine those interpersonal skills, the interest and expertise in ani particular area and the ability to writeni idni present orally well everybodys going to raise their hand in a room and say they can do it. I have a bunch of harvards ph. D. S and masters degrees folks people cant write. Rose i agree. Then you have people saying theres no value in liberal education. There is value in liberal education because it can teach you how tonini express yourself and give you context and referencenr and vocabulary. With two exceptions that i should have figured out long ago. The first is people think that speaking is nice to have, especiallynr the introverted anist i dealt with. I camenico to realize as you moved up the ranks, i spent half years with director, saw him as often as four times a day. Probably did a thousand threat briefings. The number of emails i wrote him i could count on two hands. I bet fewer than ten. I told analysts, you dont have to like speaking, most peoplei3 dont, but if you want to win, you better learn how to do it. Get in front of a camera and learn how the second thing i thought was a problem. We go to college and assume that people are going to come out with Critical Thinking skills. About three years agoni on aao have the reasons i wrote this book is i realized why dont colleges have an initial requirement first two to four semesters of Critical Thinking dhowrks break down a problem look at scenarios red team or attack the problem. We assume people study english and history is to become not to become Critical Thinking. Rose the person who could communicate well might have more to contribute but because he or she would be overshadowed by the big talker they would not be the right scale. If youre a manager, there are ways to figure out how to deal with that. For example, i went through training as a manage. I still remember this one day when i was a firstline manager. We didnt have very good training for managers but one experience defined the next few years for me one aspect in terms of managing people. Were going through a practical exercise eight people around the room. I dont remember the analytical issue. I asked the groupxd as someone in training, what do you think of this problem . Afterwards, during the afteraction when i was being instructed about what i did there, there are people around the table who said he didnt ask me, he asked the group. A very simple method and this again appears in the group. I realize that the people you describe have a psychology that says im only asked what im looked at and someone says charlie what do you think. Every meeting thereafter and it seemed appropriate is say, larry, mary nancy, what do you think about the problem, and if somebody started to stutter but had app good thought, i would pull him aside and say, lets talk about that. Rose bill gates does that, to pull out the person in the back of the room, not just the guy who happened to be cabinet rank sitting in front of me. George tenet did that to me. I was a back againch gs14 which is a middle ranking officer. Bangback benching at a c. I. A. Meeting he looked at me on the back wall and said who are you . I said, my name is philip mudd im a church chump change midlevel officer. He said, what do younio[ think about this. Even at tha i level, do you,;2ju what that meant for a c. I. A. Officer . co i said, heres my perspective. I dont know what he thought, but it was a changing moment for me. Rose gave you confidence that he wanted to know your opinion. That he cared. C rose that my opinion matters and i want to make sure my opinion is as informed as it possibly can be. Exactly. I do not want to stumble so i better bring my game and plus there are a bunch of people around the table saying why is the director asking that idiot . Rose bottom line, the head game is you want people to look at the end game and say what is the question we wantco here. Thats right. People look at the data every morning and say especially in this data world for example, why dont you, ifnr youre moving to a city get 1,000 real estatenico ads and sort through them and say, let me get a sense of the city. Dont do that. Thats infusht. The first conversation is how do i have a quality of Life Experience in this city that brings me joy . Spend time on that. That way you can weed out about 90 . Same thing with al quaida. People came in with stacks of stuff and say heres what this stack of stuff says, and i would say, okay make a better decision thats simply a good expert, concise analysis of all the junk on your desk. I dont care. But it did take me 15 years to get there. Rose update in terms of what you think is going on in yemen and the whats happening in yemen. You cant look at yemen without looking at the broader middle east side, iraq and syria, as an example. Two things going on are of concern to me. In each of these cases youre looking at sunni groups, i. S. I. S. , al quaida. In all these areas, there are i. S. I. S. In iraq, el nusra, i. S. I. S. And al quaida inconr the arabian peninsula, comingni up against ajc group. This is a religious divide that goes back 14 centuries. What im concerned about is not whether we have isolated civil wars irans been on a roll, they have been on a roll in syria and lebanon going back to the 80s, been on a roll in iraq after Saddam Hussein goes, they have a sunni leader. And in yemen. In every one of thefa cases, it looks like thegn titanic players coming face to face with the shia. There is evidence of that in yemen as well. Thats the first thing i worry about whether this is more a Seismic Shift in the middle east as opposed to rose a Seismic Shift . Conflict between sunni and shia . A ideological conflict. A cold war becomes a hot war in every one of these places because sunni are fighting shia. Rose and the test is not pro anything, it is within their own definition. Yeah, and whos at play in these circumstances. Its the heavy hitters. Thats the saudis. Youre talking about theyre getting into yemen. Theyre into syria and ironies. Its notx ra players on the margin. Rose between the sunni and shia, youre seeing it there, the other competition is the question for arrearagele supremacy between saudi arabia. Which is a sunnishia divide. When we sat at the table we metco with george tenetnyon . N at 5 00, the small group. Every night we talk aboutco wmd threats, the fight we talk about whether we would be able to pick up somebody tomorrow, talk about what tenet was going to tellnr president bush in the morning, we talk about what threats we got that night and say is this important or not, a pretty intense time. But we were talking about fight ago group that did not control geographic space. The taliban controlled space in afghanistan. Al quaida didnt control space. They simply were focused on attacksnico ahead, the americans washington and new york. Then the circumstances i mentioned before, syria, iraq, yemen, were starting to see groups that had an al quaidaest idea of life. The enemy isnt just in syria and iraq, its in france charlie n, hebdo, new york. Theyre starting to control other places. Im worrying in the future they get areas that not only host groups that attack america or want to attack america but that whos a geographic space and start to evolve toward governance. That to me is a big change. Rose governance meaning government over space . Yes. Rose wanted to do what i. S. I. S. Said i wanted to do, create a caliphate but this time taking over real nation states. Thats correct. I would not have thought of that 14 years ago. Rose back to yemen, there you have the iranians and iranian supported rebels are overtaking theni government through the houthis. People that we thought were on our side. Whatever our side is. Rose people we thought were our friends. Yes. Rose on the other hand, you have iran which is the mortal enemy of i. S. I. S. Theyve sent theirxdnr own top general into iran andda damascus and have hezbollah blah and syria trying to fight i. S. I. S. Yes. Rose and i. S. I. S. Is our enemy. Yeah, but you would say the enemy of our enemy is our friend. In other words, we shouldxd be inxd with the iranians because we have a common enemy. I would say holdni on a second here. I think iran is a democratic society, a great culture im not here to vilify iran. They have a different world view than we do. But part of that world view would be to say once a shia government takes control in a place like iraq, it is not one man one vote, not the american idea of a democracy. Rose and not sharia law necessarily. Not necessarily sharia law. I would expect it would be. What im saying is theyre not making a commitment saying if the sunnis win an election well let them win. Well say the shia are on a roll in iran and iraq and its a shia world. Rose the saudis have a real interest in yemen because its right there. Yeah. Rose they always said weve had an interest there. Yeah. Rose the sunni countries are coming together and creating joint Strike Forces and realize they cant sit on the side lines they cant wait for america the to do it, they have to do it themselves. Do you see that as real and positive . I see that as real and sort of positive as long as you know what your end game is. Theres a difference between democracy and unstable states. Democracy in these3len states with ethic and religious divides whether you like it or not. Im an american, i believe in democracy. When you put democracy in a state where people define themselves not by the state but by their religion. Their tribe democracy is unstable. Their nationality is not the first definition. The religion is the first definition. When they lose the election theyre not going to buy into the state and say let me wait for the next round theyre going to say wheres my gun. My point is, if you want democracy, these arab states coming together and imposing security is not going to give you democracy, its not going to be the hope of the arab spring. If you want security with autocrats, i think were okay. Rose this has been the american dilemma all along, a decision having to do with mubarak and others. I tell folks to bring it home. You know, democracy is nice, but if you live in washington or new york or memphis orni where i grew up in corral gables, florida, and there are killings in your neighborhood every night, youre eventually going to say to the police force rose stop the killings. Figure itxdni out. I look out and say people are going tonmo saynrok the arab spring and all that, thats a nice theory. Stop the killing. Rose is this a winnable battle against terrorism or simply a detaining thing in the same way that after world war ii it became a policy of containment. Finally somebody asks the right question. Its interesting i watch the president , for example and others say our mission is to defeat i. S. I. S. In this al quaidaest movement and i look at this and say, no, its not. First of all, pakistan afghanistan, indonesia, yemen,xd somalia, nigeria, we have never defeated thisco ideology. Weve defeated people who are a threat to the united states. The sliver of shabab group in somalia who was coming after us, for example. But not only can we not defeat the ideology, were not the we have no credibility in this fight. So i think we can contain it while others fight the ide lonchicle battle. We have to keep others off american shores drone attacks for example, helping insurgent friendly groups. But to give the people a myth that we can destroy ideology is a myth. Xd rose philip mudd, former Deputy Director of both the cia Counterterrorist Center and the fbiS National Security branch. A lot ofco experience at the topnrnini levelsnini of national security. Thank you. Thank you. Rose back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose brian grazer is here, one of hollywoods most successful and prolific producers and ask anybody, one of the most interesting people there. His movies and Television Shows have been nominated for 43 cad any awards and 149 emmys. Most of his work is inspired by what we calls curiosity conversations with some of the worlds most interesting and accomplished people. His new book xplorers theni ideas of curiosity and creativity. It is called a curious mind the secret to a bigger life. Im pleased to have brian grazer back at this table. Welcome. Thank you, charlie. Thanks for having me. Rose how did this come act, a curious mind, the secret to a bigger life . Ill revisit it, of course. First, what ive done is, for 30 years, every two weeks i go to meet somebody that is expert or renowned in anything other than show business. So every two weeks its science, medicine, politics, religion all art forms, the full from architecture to fine art to toni coture to fashion. Rose why do you do this . To enlargen my world, to expand my universe. I grew up in a tiny world, the radius of three miles maximum. I lived in a culdesac of three blocks, didnt leave till i was 18 went to college 22 miles away. I didnt see much. Rose so there is insecurityco ab a little bit of i havent seen as much, i havent done as much. I want to play in the big leagues and i want to expose myself to as much as possible. Yes. I never thought of it like that but there is thats part of its drive. I knew that i grew up in such a provincial little world and i wanted to make it bigger and i wanted to create larger opportunities for myself, and i thought by learning about other subjects my world would expand and you just never know when these dots or how these dots ever got created and connected and that opportunity would occur. Rose when did this start . Well, originally it started right out of college in that i graduated college and within two weeks i thought what do i do . Did i learn anything . I wasnt sure i learned anything. What i did is i reached out to the most wellknown professor at u. S. C. That i was one of the students one of 300 kids and i requested to meet him and he denied the request and i then showed up at u. S. C. As he left his class and said id like to just spend 20 minutes with you. Rose ill just walk with you and talk. Well just walk and talk. He eventually said yes and hung out with me for an hour and a half and in that hour and a half i learned more than i did in a year. I thought, im going to apply that methodology to other subjects. Rose right there the idea was born. Exactly. Rose what you do is exactly what we do at this table every day. We invite interesting people here like you to talk about the who, what when, why of your life and how you see the world. I mean, thats exactly what you have been doing on your own for your own self education. I do it for a whole audience here. But the same idea curiosity, creativity and asking questions. I just felt we all have curiosity, but if you really focus, you can use it as superpower, as a tool to get inside the psyche of another individual that is expert at something that youre not and you can get in a pretty quick learning curve as to their vocabulary whether architecture fashion whatever that thing, is and it would be a value to me that i would then have information or knowledge that other people wouldnt have and it would be of use. Rose youre famous now but when you began youre not as famous as you are now. Right. Rose would anybody turn you down . Everybody turned me down. I was turned down so many times. Rose what would you say when they turned you down. I mean, i was sort of known for if you throw me at the door you come at the window. If out the window, through the chimney. If that doesnt work, im in the plumbing. I would just try different techniques to get to that person. Usually it was me working with assistance or two assistance and if that didnt work in the case of lou wasser man i really wanted to meet lou wasserman, about a year and a half i wanted to meet people in our business. Took a year and a half. I met his assistant melody at the time getting into her car in the parking lot. I said im the guy who has been calling and writing letters and i raheel mahrus ubaydahly want to talk with mr. Wasserman and eventually i got that. Rose what did he say. Usually i could turn five minutes into an hour. He looked at me like, hold on, kid you dont have much to add. He wouldnt let me in his office snoof whats in it for me. He could see there was nothing in it for him. He went back to his office and came back with a legal tab and a pencil. He said hold these put the pencil to the paper and they have greater value together than apart, now get out of here, put me in the elevator and said goodbye. At first, it was humiliating. But then i realized what he was saying. Rose you had to bring value to the conversation and yeah, and to bring value, it was the creation of i. P. , intellectual property. So it meant, like, start writing ideas. You know, mine ideas, write them down and they will be your currency. Rose he told you to take a pencil didnt he tell you to write a movie . He didnt tell me to write a movie. I had to figure that out. Rose ahhh and i wrote splash. Rose right. So i wrote a couple of movies for television that got made. I saw i was getting kicked out of Television Even though i was just getting in. I wrote splash, which was successful, and after splash i never revisited the idea of a new movie person or television person. Thats when it came i met a person who was outside of hollywood or entertainment. Rose tell me who you think the top five are youve met like this. Michael jackson for sure. Rose he taught you about music. He did. I asked him if he would take his gloves off. I was terrified to ask him that but i just didnt think he could be serious with the gloves on. When he took the gloves off he became mozart. He became a different person. Rose became an artist. nr yeah. So i loved meeting barack obama as a senator when he was in the senate in Office Number 99, which was probably one of the worst offices. But that was really interesting to me. It was like going to the departmentni of Motor Vehicles butnr instead it was a senator that becaoe the president of the united states. So i thought that was interesting. Princess di was very interesting. Rose how did you get to her . That took a lot of effort. It took a lot of effort andni eventually it was a year laterxd and it was fortuitous that we got to premier have a royalnitok chose to be the person not with charles but alone and she askedq c c sit directly across from her. Rose that was axd long conversation. Several hours. Rose so talk to me about because i believe, as youxd know,ni very much, that questions have power. Yes. Rose and if i write, its about that idea that questions have power. They have power in themselves. Often theyre more important than the answers becauseni they will put forward an idea and how the person reacts or not reacts to the idea says something aboutco thatxd person. Yes. Roseroni youve thought about this a lot. Ive thought about this a lot. Ive thought the same thing that youve thought and literally your reference in this book, youre an idol of mine and you actually interviewed me on your show about eight years ago that i want to interview you on one of your tv shows not 24 but just you in this process. That was an ignition point for me to realize maybe i should write a book to encapsulate some of these stories. Rose the power beyond my work. Its me, the life ive lived. Yes. Rose this is what makes me uj yes. And in analyzing what the dialogues are about, ive come to the conclusion that its the grey area between the question and the answer. Its that grey area where im reading the nuance of you, the subject. When im reading your body language, when your question my question to your answer builds, it becomes, i feel, kind of biochemical. It changes your molecular structure. Things are happening in that grey area of the two hours between the question and the answer. Thats when things really have breakthroughs. Thats when creative breakthroughs i believe, happen. And youre looking for that . Im looking for that. And it happens, when youre really engaged like that, it becomes so elevating, its emotionally and intellectually eclipses just anything youve ever experienced. I mean, i thought to myself, because im trying to explain this to others, think about your very first and best date with a girl. That best date with a girl, you were in the moment. Its real time, youre asking questions and its building and evolving and it becomes a thing called chemistry. Youre hoping to have that happen every two weeks. Rose you find out who she is and tell her who you are. And something magical happens, exactly. And im hoping to doni that every two weeks. Rose youre looking for magic. It createsnrco inspiration. Whether its inspiration about that subject or its just inspiration itself, it feels different. Your mind and body feel different and it creates confidence, it creates value. You can carry that inspiration into a subject that matters to you and you can build off of it. Its kindni of beyond words. Rose youre very much in the moment. I try to be very much in the moment. I really want to live the highs and lows of life . Rose and you also take particular notice of the physical attributes of pe the hair the way they dress the beard. Yes, definitely is that because rose because thats a common point. Yes. Rose they are the way they are or they have an insecurity or pride about what they are. Yes, and it gets revealed about how they dress, are they on time, not on time do they want to make you feel uncomfortable, do they want to intimidate you . How is that intimidation and what are the sociodynamics. Rose all the Television Shows youve made, youre the producer of one of the most talked about Television Shows on the air right now. Yes. Rose youve had a long history of producing things. You call yourself a storyteller. This side of the scale is all you have encapsulated in this book, this life you have lived. Yes. Rose tell me about those. Two oh my gosh, a great question. Okay. I somehow put higher value onco whats in that book than all the movies and Television Shows. Rose becauseth you. Yeah, its me. It defines my life and its a power that i believe in that other people can have because i just know that i was just so close to being nobody, youc qg angr we all are so close tonr being nobody in so many different ways. Rose is thereni a common6enominator you have discovered about people . For example, if you take all the people that iveni evernr interviewed, i dont think qwpcdys ever sat down at the table andnr said inrco am where i am because i was thenico smartest person in the room. I am where i am because i was the most creative. What theyre saying almost all the time is that i worked harder, i was more accessible, i13 i cared more, i had moreco passion, it meant more to me therefore i poured more into it. That isni theninixdco common refrain. Never i was the best at whatever. So therefore it wasxd automatic for me that somehowco the music spoke to me and i just wrote it down or i just put it on a page. Thats not the wayn its not. It really isnt. I mean we selfcreate, really and we do it through drive and internal competition, you know, the selfworth. I think a lot of it is if you have drive and purpose, and theres an emotional injury that youre trying toni overcome, thatnr concoction becomes something pu . aty powerful. Whats interesting about this is its the experience itself that makes a difference to you. Yes. Rose in other words, youre not trying to make a book. No. Rose youre not trying to createco something. Youre not looking for something that isni usable. niniri c c experience. You want to be there and just be open and accessible. 100 percent. Exactly. Because there were no metrics for judging it. Rose yeah. So im in the moment. Its a real ride that i get to create. Its demock democratickized. It costs no money. Its not judged in general metrics. Its just this experience were having. For 20 years, i never told anybody. I did one on one things. You surprised me when you said i want to do this thing and id never told people. Rose heres the other interesting thing, Marlon Brando used to call me all the time, he was a big fan of the show. He wouldni callni me up and say his question forever until the day he died for me was what are you going to do with all this . I would say to him, im going to enjoy it and im going to share it thats what im going to do with it. Im not going to take it and make it into something. He wanted me to take it nrco somehow he couldnt get his arms around the ideani of absorbing all of it. You haveni to be taking it and doing somethingok with it, changing the world, writingco a great book or doing something rather than] moment and sharing the experiencexd of it because there 5] people dont quite understand it. Rose it has to have purpose. It has to have rose rather than experience. Yes exactly. nijf i loved that ive done itni for 30 years, i still do it. By the way, it still takes sometimes a year for someone to agree to meet with me. It was much harder 30 years ago or 25 yearsni ago. Rose you have the new yorkni profile. ninr yeah, so thoseni thingsniniconico help but i just met withco Floyd Mayweather. That took a year. T q there was no i guaacj didnt see any alignmentni of, you know coni rose henr didnt seenrnini what there was inni it for him. I guess. I didnt fault it because there might not be anything in it for him. 1 rose do you think they submit because you simply are persistent orx about you and thinkco whym a . I think its 50 50. Rose yeah. I think sometimes they just submit because im perco pernx . Ou persistent. I think in n caseni of Floyd Mayweather somebody probably just said, oh, you should doco that, because afterni a yeir silence, all of a was an incomingnrnininixd call like, i wantxd to fly in tonini meetco withnixdp, you. Rose its a whim. You catch him atxd the right do it. Exactly. Rose what did you ask him . Im enormously curious about him and manny. I love the fight game. nrni i met withni many. ni he said yes almostni immediately. Rose hes corporate. He has acswnr lot going on. co Floyd Mayweather, his lifestyle is so big and its the money team and he has so much bravado. Ive known other fighters but not anyone as showy as he. Sugar ray leonard, hes a neighbor, i knowni him. But this guy is so showy and its such he should be on empire. Theres a very pimpy quality. Rose yeah. He sat down. He had six iphones, and each iphone he was doing something on all six iphones but he was at the same time polite, but he was you know, he was facetimeing some n. B. A. Athlete and there were all these other things going on on the iphone, andn a connecting . Are we connecting . He would put his arm around menini4 ih like howard stern a lot, hes very good at what he does. Ixdnixdnrco was oncooyk the radio and entranced with a conversation he was having with floyd but mostly about sex. Mostly about that butxd not all. And it was interesting but thats not where i was going. And you were interested in all these other big athletes. If i talk to him and i hope i have the opportunity im sure you will. Rose i just want to know what it is that makes him who he is. What it is about him thats put him in this place thats hes in and what shaped him and inspired him and what makes him go, what makes a champion how fast are his hands, does he know fear does he not know fear, does he create fear. I think he feels he creates fear. Im sure if you choose to interview him, it will work out. Rose i hope so. Me and many other people will be watching you with him. Rose do you find whats the difference here between men and women . More women than men . More men than women . No, i meet with many more men than women. In fact, in writing the book, i had to focus on which women did i interview. But more often not men. A lot of them were no bell nobel laureates. I had probably met 50 women to 500 men, some version of that. But i met very interesting women. Condi rice, hillary clinton, of course. Klia kaugh who was a forensic anthropologist. Rose co holmes. Xd no. Cheryl thanburg. Rose thats obvious. What would you not want us to know about you . What is it that makes you a little bit crazy if we get close to . Very neurotic. Rose we know that. And thats way too general. Rose yes. Is it women . I cant figure out women. But most men cant figure out women. Who does. What man really has figured out a woman . Rose tell me what it is that makes you sort of i cant go there . I mean, i dont know. I mean rose you think your life is an open book . I think my life is a pretty open book. I didnt write the book for a while because i felt like, you know, by writing a book it looks like youve solved everything about life, you know, you have all the answers. And i definitely dont have all the answers. Friends of mine know that about me. Rose what foibles do youco have . Technology is driving the world soninr just sayxd inni three years what wil want to do. I mean, right now like storytelling has existed form c c rose thats what you are. Thats what i am. Im a story teller. The stories that i do whether movies or television or empire or digital they find different platplatforms in. Three years things will change a lot. Cars that require drivers and all those kinds of things. So i really enjoy, i get a lot of pleasure out of life and i want toni continue to get a lot of pleasure out of life and i do think the world will change a lot in three years. Rose bill murray said to me the most important thing he said you have to be alert and accessible all the time. Right. I think thats so true. You have to ask yourself constantly whats the moment. Make sure you are in the moment and you know whats going on here so that its not just obvious. Its beyond the obvious to all thats going on. Thats partly why ive done this sort of curiosity is for that reason. I want to curate my life in realtime asco its happening. Xd like theni truman show. Rose you want to curate. I want to, i dont want somebody else to. Rose you want to aggressively decide yes, because i know the things that make me happy. Makes me happy to learn something. Makes me happy to be in a moment with somebody and it becomes a cloud of inspiration. I love going places i havent been, i love demystifying cultures i havent seen. I love going to burma. Rose im going to go to bhutan. Yes. Rose this is dedicated to my grandmother schwartz as a boy, she treated every question i asked as valuable, she taught me to be curious, a gift thats served every day of my life. Sonia made all the difference in my life. When she said i value you and i value the questions you ask and its going to mean something to you in your life, she was looking at report cards with straight fs on them. So she, all empirical evidence would not suggest that i was going to be an acclaimed movie producer or any of the things that you mentioned, but it was1 usenrjf of curiosity in a disciplined way that has brought all these things tonr me or me to them. I mean, Fidel Castro Rose what was thatni like . nr what year was that . Fantastic. It was about eight years ago i wentnii]ni withni lesxd mundezc we had to change our flights and planes and that was probably part of the adjustment. Rose was he late or on time . He was on time. It was a sort of godfather two things where we were supposed to go to a specific destination and then the cars as they were going to the destination become derailed and we go across a divide and go in the other direction and end up at the military palace. Rose who was in the groupninr]pa c c brad grey, graden carter, which was fan fastic. He organized it. But i think les was the real rose he wantsco his own show on cbs . I think he felt that cbsni news was of use to him. Rose he probably had known of cbs news,ni too, youni know, because when he took over it was the jewel ofco so i think that fidel felt like if hes going to try to reach the American Public or hes going to use his influence thats a good place to begin. He spent six hours breaking down the molecular structure of this little island, what a kilowatt would produce. It was very convincing. After about three and a half or four hours, i felt like this is a great place, why dont i live here. Rose what do you think will happen to cubanr now . Oh, its going to completely change. You would know better than i because youre a news man. But youre going to have people who shouldnt be in the country and people who shouldnt leave that country being in our country, building it, creating laws and ordinances, it will be commercial enterprise. Rose heres the other thing didnt somebody asking about hair, your hair . A lot of people asked about it. Rose but fidel is not a lot of people. No. Basically he spoke three and a half hours felt like he didnt take a breath, straight on with a full force then he looked up looked at the room, and said, how do you do your hair . Thats the one question. Rose thats the interesting thing. Great profile writers can always capture some moment like that that makes the whole room human. Its what they do. Its the telling detail of observation. Thats true. Its interesting. Rose so where are you in your life . You have this book which i take a small amount of credit for. You should take credit for it. Rose this is such a wonderful thing youre doing and it ought to be a good book. I think it is a good book. Rose its about an essential truth. Yeah. Rose the essential truth is curiosity will just serve your so well. I mean the idea of looking around at what you see and capturing the moment the awe, the sense of the miracle of life and all of its manifestations is an extraordinary journey. Definitely. Rose so how are you in the movie business now . You have empire and thats doing quite well. Right. Rose what makes that so good . Its about family. Rose yeah. Itsconi gluum9n its juicy. Its a juicyxdco nighttime soapnonini opera. Rose family, juicy and glamorousxdu sexy. Its based on a dynasty led by a music dynasty that the patriarchni xk is lucius lionq king lear in the world ofnini hiphop. So we make sure that every week there are three at least three moments or sequences that people gasp upatco because you just cannot believe that one person is doing that to another person, whether someon d is killi person you would nevorn expect them to have sex with or in bed with its a constant series. Rose gaining momentum, too. It really is. Rose listen to this, boys and girls, produced by brian grazer, a film, a beautiful mind, frost, nixon, da vinci code, rush, american gangster inside man, friday night lights, dr. Seuss how the grinch stole Christmas Apollo 13, blue crush, liar liar, the nutty professor parenthood and splash. Television. The 84th Academy Award friday night lights sports night, arrested development, 24 and parenthood. Thank you. Thank you, charlie it was awesome being on your show. Thank you. Rose brian grazer, the book is called a curious mind the secret to a bigger life. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. For more about this program and earlier episodes visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the Coca Cola Company supporting this Program Since 2002. Rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. This is nightly business re sue herera. General electric plans to sell off most of its ge capital unit. What does it mean for the new ge and investors in one of the most widely held stocks anywhere . No stone unturned. How black stone, the private equity giant is becoming a real estate behemoth as well and a little la. Our market monitor has some of the best names to own, the ones investors love to hate sometimes and shes got names for you. All that and more for friday, april 10th. Good evening, everyone and welcome. Sue herera has the evening off. Well talk about ending the weeknd with a bang. General electric is continuing its makeover and in this case its an