Latest Interviews
Showing 226–240 of 275 interview transcripts.
Clear all filters- Milken Institute46 min
Engaging a Curious Mind: Brian Grazer Talks With Bob Iger About Life, Listening
Brian Grazer, Bob Iger, Robert Iger
Producer Brian Grazer attributes his success in film and television to a disciplined practice of seeking diverse conversations, ranging from political leaders like Vladimir Putin to scientists like Jonas Salk, which consistently reshape his creative perspectives. This approach, which he details in *A Curious Mind*, treats curiosity as a strategic superpower that has directly influenced major projects such as *Apollo 13* and *Empire* by connecting disparate experiences into coherent narratives. Executives like Bob Iger have adopted similar metrics for leadership, prioritizing authentic curiosity in hiring and strategic decision-making to navigate complex market dynamics.
- Milken Institute1h 6m
Dealing With China: A Conversation With Henry Paulson
Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson details his tenure managing the 2008 financial crisis, highlighting real-time policy pivots involving Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers that prevented total economic collapse. He further outlines his strategic engagement with China, noting the establishment of the Strategic Economic Dialogue which secured long-term climate cooperation while navigating tensions over human rights and intellectual property theft. Looking forward, Paulson advises prioritizing pragmatic economic linkages and institutional influence, such as joining the AIIB, to manage the complex spectrum of U.S.-China relations amid rising geopolitical and structural challenges.
- Milken Institute57 min
A Conversation With Ken Griffin and Mohamed El-Erian
Ken Griffin, Mohamed El-Erian, Gerry Baker
Panelists Mohamed El-Erian and Ken Griffin analyze a global economy defined by divergent monetary policies and structural stagnation, where the Federal Reserve normalizes rates while other major central banks maintain liquidity. Despite suppressed inflation and robust asset prices driven by state-level reforms, experts warn that prolonged artificial pricing and geopolitical instability in regions like the Middle East and Eurozone threaten long-term financial stability. Both speakers remain optimistic that technological advancements and the democratization of capital will eventually overcome political gridlock to reignite productivity and entrepreneurship.
- Milken Institute1h 13m
MI Forum: Hall of Mirrors
Barry Eichengreen, Michael Hiltzik, Skip Reimer
Economist Barry Eichengreen joined Michael Hiltzik at the Milken Institute's January 2015 forum to analyze historical parallels between the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis in a discussion of his book *Hall of Mirrors*. Eichengreen argued that the Euro's structural flaws and the Federal Reserve's past policy errors, including the Lehman Brothers failure, created systemic vulnerabilities that Keynesian fiscal intervention successfully averted during previous depressions. The session concluded with warnings that prioritizing short-term stability over long-term structural reform risks precipitating a future financial collapse within the next eighty years.
- Milken Institute55 min
Asia Summit 2014 - A Conversation with Robert Zoellick: U.S. Rebalancing Toward Asia
Robert Zoellick, Chan Heng-Chi, Manraj Sekh, Jared Carney Lightdale, Kevin Chen, Yanqing
Former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zellick addressed the strategic challenges of the current global order, analyzing the implications of Scottish independence on UK-US relations while advocating for a federalism model to counter insular fragmentation. He outlined a complex counter-ISIS strategy requiring local ground forces and regional partnerships to navigate the collapse of the Sykes-Picot system without overextending US domestic will. Furthermore, Zellick emphasized the necessity of advancing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to secure US leadership, urging the integration of rising powers like China into reformed multilateral institutions rather than isolating them.
- Milken Institute1h 6m
A Thousand Hills to Heaven: Love, Hope, and a Restaurant in Rwanda
Josh Ruxin, Kathy Eldon, Alissa, Skip Reimer
At a Milken Institute summer forum, Healthbuilders director Josh Ruxin and Creative Visions Foundation founder Kathy Eldon discussed Rwanda's decade-long economic transformation from post-genocide devastation to a stable, high-growth hub driven by public-private partnerships. Ruxin detailed how his organization's model of transferring fully funded, government-operated health centers to local communities, alongside social enterprises like the "Heaven" restaurant, has spurred private investment and reduced poverty without traditional aid dependency. The speakers concluded that Rwanda's strict anti-corruption governance and focus on sustainable infrastructure offer a replicable blueprint for development, urging international observers to shift their perspective from humanitarian aid to direct economic engagement.
- Milken Institute1h 19m
The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State
John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge, Skip Reimer
John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge argue that the West faces a critical Fourth Revolution in governance driven by fiscal unsustainability, technological stagnation, and intense competition from an increasingly efficient Chinese state. They propose replacing the bloated "nanny state" with technocratic safeguards, consumer choice mechanisms, and private sector management techniques to restore democratic legitimacy and economic vitality. Without adopting these reforms to shrink and modernize government, the authors warn that Western nations risk losing the ideological contest for freedom and liberty to rival authoritarian models.
- Milken Institute1h 3m
The Data Science Revolution
Tim O'Reilly, Frank Adante, Tim Donke, Keith Collins, Michael Woods
At the 2014 O'Reilly Strata conference, industry leaders from Rubicon Project, eBay, SAS, and IASDI discussed how big data is shifting from simple volume analysis to complex, real-time applications across sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and advertising. The panel highlighted a technical pivot toward in-memory computing and algorithmic cross-pollination to operationalize insights while addressing critical challenges in data privacy, security, and the distinction between correlation and causality. Ultimately, the event concluded that the future of data science relies on enterprises owning their processing while trusting "black box" algorithms to drive predictive maintenance, precision medicine, and automated decision-making.
- Milken Institute1h 0m
Secrets to a Healthy Life: Freda Lewis-Hall and Pattie Sellers
Freda Lewis-Hall, Pattie Sellers, Seth Ginsburg
During discussions regarding a potential $100 billion Pfizer-AstraZeneca merger, Chief Medical Officer Frida Lewis-Hall outlined her role in overseeing global patient safety and clinical data integrity while addressing the healthcare system's critical fragmentation. She advocates for a shift toward individualized health management where patients act as "CEOs" of their own medical records to bridge gaps in continuity, emphasizing specific metrics like waist circumference and the need for comprehensive family history. Looking ahead, Lewis-Hall calls for intensified collaboration across the public and private sectors to combat the looming economic crisis of Alzheimer's disease and to integrate AI-driven diagnostics into preventative care strategies.
- Milken Institute1h 1m
A Conversation with Cherie Blair: Empowering Women, Driving Growth
Cherie Blair, the first woman from her family to attend university and a former Queen's Counsel, leads the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women to empower female entrepreneurs in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East through business training and mentoring. By addressing the critical "mid-range capital gap" that hinders women's access to $10,000–$100,000 in funding, the Foundation has already supported over 100,000 women across 50 countries, with partnerships including Google and Bank of America enhancing professional growth and job creation. Blair advocates for structural political and cultural shifts to overcome systemic barriers, citing Rwanda's high female parliamentary representation as a model for improving global economic inclusion.
- Milken Institute1h 23m
The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters
Gregory Zuckerman, Joel Kurtzman, Conrad Kieschel, Greg Zuckerman, David J., Eric Schmidt, John McCutchan, David Freeman, David Sanger
At a Milken Institute forum, author Greg Zuckerman and moderator Joel Kurtzman analyzed how unconventional entrepreneurs like George Mitchell and Harold Hamm drove a U.S. energy revolution, slashing import dependence from 40% to 14.5% through hydraulic fracturing innovations. This technological surge, powered by horizontal drilling and "slick water" fracking, transformed the nation into the world's top energy producer while generating millions of jobs and reshaping global geopolitical dynamics. Despite ongoing debates regarding environmental safety and seismic activity, the discussion emphasizes that these breakthroughs have provided a critical economic bridge toward future renewable energy adoption.
- Milken Institute1h 16m
Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture
Erez Aiden, Jean-Baptiste Michel, Skip Reimer
This analysis of a 5-million-book corpus derived from Google Books reveals how irregular verbs have regularized, collective memory decays faster than ever, and the time for technological adoption has plummeted from 65 to 26 years. Researchers also quantified the suppressive power of regimes like Nazi Germany and modern China through automated detection of n-gram frequency drops while demonstrating that cultural inertia allows for predictable long-term language trends. Ultimately, the study advocates for democratized big data access to objectively track public sentiment, career fame trajectories, and potential algorithmic biases across diverse fields.
- Milken Institute1h 17m
Son of a Gambling Man: My Journey from a Casino Family to the Governor's Mansion
Bob Miller, Joel Kurtzman, Mike Milken
On January 21, 2014, Harvard researchers Aris Aydin and Jean-Baptiste Michel will discuss *Uncharted Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture* alongside former Nevada Governor Bob Miller, who remains at the venue to sign copies of his autobiography. The event contextualizes Miller's career within the broader evolution of Las Vegas, tracing its transformation from a mob-influenced gambling hub into a globally recognized economic leader through the strategic visions of figures like Bugsy Siegel, Howard Hughes, and Steve Wynn. By detailing shifts in financing, regulatory oversight, and infrastructure, the session highlights how legal enforcement and corporate innovation drove Nevada's diversification beyond gaming into fields such as biotechnology, mining, and tech.
- Milken Institute56 min
A Conversation with Edmund Phelps, Moderated by Peter Passell
Edmund Phelps, Peter Passell, Krishna Kumar
Co-hosted by RAND and the Milken Institute, this event featured Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps arguing that a shift from individualism to corporatism since the 1930s has stifled indigenous innovation and halved US productivity growth rates. Phelps highlighted that while established corporations currently leverage regulatory protections to block startups, China is matching historical US innovation rates through technological diffusion and grassroots experimentation. He concluded that reversing the stagnation requires a fundamental cultural shift that prioritizes individual creativity and risk-taking over traditional conformism, as standard economic policies alone cannot restore economic dynamism.
- Milken Institute1h 9m
MI Breakfast With Bill Richardson, Moderated by Ambassador Charles Ries
Bill Richardson, Charles Ries, Mike Clowden, Kevin Blyer
Governor Bill Richardson and Ambassador Charles Reese joined Milken Institute and RAND for a joint breakfast in Santa Monica to launch Richardson's book, *How to Sweet Talk a Shark*, and outline future innovation summits. The discussion featured Richardson's firsthand accounts of negotiating hostage releases with dictators in North Korea, Sudan, and Cuba, while also detailing strategic lessons on ethics, translator reliability, and the necessity of personal rapport. The event further highlighted three upcoming initiatives: a Nobel Laureate conversation with Edmund Phelps, a biotech investor conference in New York, and a private California Summit for state-level policy reform.