David Rubenstein: belief

Transcript context

…Living or dead, whom would you most like to interview? It’s an interesting question. The phenomenon that we’re engaged in now, which is an interview, is a phenomenon that didn’t really exist throughout most of organized history. So we don’t have any interviews of Cleopatra, Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, William Shakespeare, or George Washington, or even Abraham Lincoln. If I could interview anybody that’s ever lived, it would be Abraham Lincoln. I think he was the greatest American, and I think he was the kind of person that would be an interesting interviewee. He had a good sense of humor. He had a pretty good perspective on himself, and he did some things that, I think, were pretty impressive. If I look at your books of interviews, all the different people you’ve interviewed and online, it’s striking to me, there are relatively few what you might call weirdos in the group. In your new book, there’s Ken Burns, there’s Madeleine Albright, there’s Wynton Marsalis. But someone just out there who’s radical or different or not well-known — why not interview more weirdos?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.