>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: phil knight is here. he was the first ever deputy director of the [indiscernible] his new book is a guide for approaching tough decisions in the digital age of data overload. it is called "the head game." i cannot imagine who gave it that title. i am pleased to have philip mudd

back on this program. how could you ever think this is a great -- "the head game" is fine. it is the subtitle. philip: the author writes the book. the marketers do the cover. i did the title. we went back and forth. it was difficult to come up with the first title, the big thing. folks at the publishing company said, this is not going to work. back and forth six months. we need something that is going to catch the idea of how to think intellectually about complex problems. i was sitting at a bar one night, not uncommon for me, and i swear this is in minneapolis sitting at a bar, having a glass of wine. i look over and i see some guy working some girl at the bar. i looked and said, she is playing head games with him. i took out a card. the book is going to be called head games. everybody is going to understand what a head game is. had we figure out how to make a dent -- how do we figure out how

to make that an acronym? charlie: your life has been about analysis. it really has. philip: i started as an analyst. when i walked through the doors of the cia in 1980, i was so desperate for a job. they said, you are going to be an analyst. they said, your job description is analyst. i did not have the heart to say i do not really -- in the cia, they do not give you much information up front. charlie: do the guys in operations respect the guys and analysis, and do the guys in analysis want to be in operations? philip: i had operational friends more than analyst friends. it is a rivalry in the agency, but a friendly rivalry. there is a lot of respect across the board. both services have been around a while. the analysts are regarded as pointy-headed people who have

graduate degrees. the operators are knuckle draggers in the field connecting. as george tenet once told me the definition of an extra analyst is somebody who looks at the other guy's susan the elevator. charlie: -- guy's shoes in the elevator. charlie: brennan wants to bring them together more. is that a good idea? philip: in the history of the agency, typically you had people collecting information and people analyzing information in separate faces. the iranian nuclear program, the people who are collecting are sometimes in another building. there is a simple thought. if you have knowledge of a problem, why don't you all sit together? there is a problem with that managerially. this is incredibly boring. it is called matrix management. if you have somebody managing all the stuff in iran and the people connecting information --

on the side, you have somebody trying to manage that analyst, parachuting in, telling that manager, that guy working on the project needs different experiences to grow as an officer over 20 years. the line manager is going to say, i have a real world problem i am going to solve. matrix management is tough. you want everybody with experience sitting in one place. more brains is better brains. a management part will be tough. charlie: so much information is known today. there is so much data, overwhelming information. our power to collect information has never been greater. devices that can reach inside and give us more information. what is the value added of the cia? philip: this is an advantage, not being there. i think the cia is struggling to evolve around a fundamental question. when i joined the service, i

thought the definition of intelligence was secrets, intercepting somebody's communications, satellite photographs, which in our google earth. if you want to look at the north korean nuclear program, get on google earth. human sources inside an organization. the iranian revolution in 1979 if you fast-forward to watch unrest today, you are going to get people on twitter, people on fine, people with smart sound -- smartphone photos. i am not sure you need someone clandestine collecting, because you have a thousand protesters collecting for you. charlie: taking pictures. philip: the transformation is the struggle to understand that intelligence is not secrets. it is knowledge. it is information that helps you solve a problem. the cia is losing some traction in the knowledge world because a lot of them still believe that knowledge is secrets. by definition, if you are at the cia, stuff you acquire

clandestinely. if you take that issue of revolution in iran as an example, or unrest a few years ago -- the sliver of information that is secret, if you are assessing unrest in a foreign country, compared to when i started in 1985, is going like this. so they have to realize that intelligence is knowledge. a lesser and lesser part of the intelligence world's secret. -- world is secret. i think they are going to slip further behind. charlie: give me a sense of what knowledge tells us about iran philip:. philip:-- about iran. philip: that is a good example where intelligence can bring real value-added. when you are dealing with a classic intelligence problem you are looking at capability and intent. what can a country do? what kind of fissile material do they have? comedy centrifuges? how are their dispersed facilities buried and protected? if you want bunker buster bombs,

do you go after them? the open source world cannot answer that well. you can take google earth and watch iran build a facility. you could not do that 30 years ago. on the intent side, what do they want to do? do they want to build a facility? do they want a facility that can only acquire nuclear material for nuclear power? that is a huge technical information that gets inside a senior leaders office. you have the capability to do this. d you have the intent to do that? that is an intelligence question. as the world of knowledge explodes the number of classic intelligence questions is going to get fewer and fewer. charlie: intelligence tells you, do they want it, how fast you want it, and what is their game plan. philip: i do not think that is the right question to ask is an analyst. charlie: what would you ask? philip: the first information and intelligence officer has to

acquire has to do with the capability and intent to use that capability. talking to a decision-maker the transition from being an expert to an analyst is to not start with that data, to start with a question. how can we affect this problem? if you don't a bunch of information on my desk about iran's nuclear program, i am going to say, that is pretty interesting. how can i change this? charlie: what if i know nothing? the most important question is, what is the problem? how do we define the problem? philip: the problem is, do we have a sense that iran might use this capability for nefarious purposes? the second is deployment of that capability. the third is use of that capability. as a practitioner, if a

decision-maker wants to know how do i affect this, my responsibility in business or in the cia is to determine, what does my boss want to do? once i have determined what he wants to do, i want to affect this -- president obama president bush -- so i can slow this decision down. charlie: all you are doing is asking questions about your boss's questions. you are helping him with the question he formed. maybe you could survey better purpose by broadening his question. philip: you just graduated to phd level analysis. i always told analysts, you have four or five stages to go from mediocre to good to great. the first is be an 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 you are going and anticipate it, that also

supplement where you are going, as you are suggesting. if i think you are not asking the right questions, how can i insert some of those questions without having you say, excuse me, i am not an idiot. those are the stages to me that came to define how an analyst goes up the ladder from being mediocre to good and sometimes great. almost nobody got there. almost nobody. 5% or less. the characteristics of an analyst -- expertise, ability to work with other people ability to present and write clearly, and to have 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 a particular area and the ability to write and present well -- everybody is going to raise their hand and say they can do it. i have a bunch of harvard phd and masters degree folks who could not write. people cannot write. charlie: and you have people saying there is no value in a

liberal education. there is value in a liberal education because it can teach you to express yourself, and give you context and reference and vocabulary. philip: with two exceptions. the first is, people think speaking especially the introverted analysts -- i spent 4.5 years with the former fbi director. i saw him as often as four times a day. probably did a thousand direct briefings. the number of e-mails i wrote him, i could count on two hands. i bet fewer than 10. it was all verbal. what do we do? as i told analysts, you do not have to like speaking. most people don't. but if you want to win, learn how to do it. get in front of a camera. the second thing i thought was a problem -- we go to college and assume that people are going to with critical thinking skills. about three years ago, one of the reasons i wrote this book is i realized, why don't colleges have an initial requirement the

first four semesters of critical thinking? how do you break down a problem? how do you attack the problem? how do you look for gaps? we assume people study english literature and history and critical thinking. why not train them in critical thinking? charlie: i would worry about not necessarily the person who could communicate well -- someone might have more to contribute, but be overshadowed by the big talker. they would not be the right scale to measure the difference. philip: if you are a manager there are ways to figure out how to deal with that. we went to training. i still armor this. one date, when i was first a line manager we did not have good training. one experience to find the next few years for me in terms of managing people. we were going through a practical exercise, eight people around the room. i do not remember what it was. i asked someone in training what do you think of this

problem? afterwards during the after action, when i was being instructed about what i did there were people around the table who said, he did not ask me. he asked the group. very simple method. this appears in the book. i realized that the people you describe have a psychology that says, i am only asked when i am looked at and someone says, charlie, what do you think? every meeting thereafter, it seemed appropriate when i would say larry, mary, nancy, what do you think about this problem? is somebody started to sputter but had a good thought, that is going to be a pull aside later to say, that was interesting. charlie: president obama, gates said he has the ability to do that. that is one thing, to pull out the person in the back of the room, not just cabinet right. philip: george tenet did that to me. i was backbench, middle rank officer at cia, back benching.

i never forget back benching a cia meeting, and he would forget this. i still see him every three months. he looked at me on the back wall and said, who are you? i said, my name is philip mudd. imho change mid-level officer. he said, what do you think about this? i had probably 12 years of service. even at that level, do you know what that meant for a cia officer? i said here is my perspective. i do not know if he cared. changing moment for me. charlie: he gave you confidence that emboldened you because he wanted to know your opinion. philip: he cared! charlie: i want to make sure my opinion is as informed as it can be. philip: i do not want to stumble, so i better bring my game. there were a bunch of people around the table saying, why is the director asking that idiot? charlie: you want people to look at the end game and say, what is the question here?

philip: people look at data every morning especially in this data world. for example, if you are moving to a city why don't you get a thousand real estate ads and start sorting through and saying, let's get a sense of the city. please don't do that. that is really inefficient. what kind of life experience to i want? how can i have a quality of life experience in the city that brings me joy? you can weed out about 90%. al qaeda, i had people come in with stacks of stuff. they would say, here is what this stack of stuff says. i would say, that does not help me make a better decision. that is simply a concise analysis of all the junk on your desk. i do not care. it did take me 15 years to get there. charlie: update me in terms of what you think is going on in yemen? and the applications of what is happening in yemen. philip: you cannot look at yemen without looking at iraq and syria.

there are two things going on that are of concern to me. in each of these cases, you are looking at sunni groups, isis al qaeda, in all these areas -- the all-new storefront in syria isis and al qaeda -- the al nusra front in syria. this is a religious divide that goes back 14 centuries. i am not concerned whether we have isolated civil wars. iran has been on a roll in syria and lebanon going back to the 1980's. they have been on a role in iraq after saddam hussein goes. they are on a roll in yemen. we have a sunni leader gone, and the houthis back. it looks like these titanic players, egypt and saudi arabia on one side, coming face-to-face with the shia. there is evidence of that in yemen as well. that is the first thing i worry about. whether this is more of a seismic shift in the middle east.

charlie: the conflict between sunni and shia's? philip: the cold war ideologically, becomes a hot war in every one of these places, because sunnis are fighting shia. charlie: the test is not whether they are pro-u.s. or anything. philip: and who is at play in the circumstances? it is the heavy hitters. they are in yemen, in syria. it charlie: sunni charlie: -- charlie: the sunni and shia, and the question of regional supremacy with saudi arabia. philip: when we sat at the table, we met nightly with george tenet at 5:00, the so-called small group. every night, we would talk about wmd threats, whether we would be able to pick up somebody

tomorrow, what tenet was going to tell president bush in the morning, what threats we got that night. a pretty tense time. we were talking about fighting a group that did not control geographic space. the taliban controlled space in afghanistan. al qaeda were simply focused on attacks against the americans. in all the circumstances i mentioned before -- syria, iraq, yemen -- we are starting to see groups that have an al qaeda-ish idea of life. the enemy is not just here. it is in france, london, new york. they are starting to control geographic space. northern nigeria, another example. i am starting to worry that in the future we may get areas that not only host groups that attack america or want to attack america, but they host a geographic space and start to evolve toward governments.

that, to me, is a big change. charlie: government over a space? isis wants to create a caliphate , taking over real nationstates. philip: i would not have thought of that 14 years ago at the threat table. charlie: go back to yemen. you have the iranians rebels overtaking the government through the houthis, people we thought were on our side correct? philip: whatever our site is. charlie: we thought they were friends. on the other hand, you have iran, which is the mortal enemy of crisis. they sent their own top general into iran and damascus using hezbollah in syria to fight isis. philip: i look at this and say one of the problems with isis -- you would say the enemy of our enemy is our friend.

we should be in with the iranians because we have a common enemy. i would say, hold on a second. i think iran is a democratic society, a great culture. they have a different worldview than we do. but part of that worldview would be to say once a shia government takes control in a place like iraq, it is not one man, one vote. it is not the american idea of how you run a democracy. it is not necessarily sharia law, although i would expect it would be. what i am saying is, they are not going to make a commitment that if the sunnis win an election, we are going to let them win. they are going to say it is a shia world. charlie: is there something happening over there that will upset things? the saudis have an interest in yemen, because it is there. the sunni countries are coming together and creating joint strike forces. they realize they cannot sit on the sidelines and wait for

america to do it. they have to do it themselves. do you see that as real and positive? philip: i see that as real and sort of positive, as long as you know what your endgame is. there is a difference between democracy and unstable states. the marker states with ethnic and religious divides -- i am 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 inherently unstable. charlie: their nationality is not their first definition. their religion is the first definition. philip: when they lose an election, they are not going to wait for the next round. they are going to say, where is my gun. if you want democracy arab states coming together in posing security is not going to give you democracy. it is not going to be the hope of the arab spring. if you want security with autocrats, i think we are ok. charlie: this has been the american problem the decision

with mubarak and others. philip: i tell folks to bring it home, democracy is nice, but if you live in washington, new york memphis, or florida, and there are killings in your neighborhood every night, you are eventually going to say to the police force, stop this. figure it out. i think people are going to say the arab spring and all those folks -- that is a nice theory but stop the killings. charlie: philip mudd, former deputy director of the cia counterterrorist center and the national security branch. a lot of experience at the top levels of national security. thank you. back in a moment. stay with us.

charlie: brian grazer is here. he is one of hollywood's most successful and prolific producers. his movies and television shows have been nominated for 43 academy awards and 140 nine and is. much of his work has been inspired by what he calls curiosity conversations with interesting and accomplished people. his new book explores the ideas of curiosity and creativity called "a curious mind: the secret to a bigger life." i am pleased to have brian grazer back at this table. brian: thank you for having me. charlie: how did this come

about? brian: i will revisit it, of course. first, what i have done is, for 30 years, every two weeks, i go to meet somebody that is expert or renowned in anything other than show business. it is science, medicine, politics, religion, all art forms from architecture to fine art to fashion. charlie: from castro to norman mailer. brian: exactly. charlie: why do you do this? brian: to enlarge my world. just to expand my universe. i am from a tiny, tiny little neighborhood really the radius of three miles maximum. i lived in a cul-de-sac of two blocks and did not leave it until i was 18. went to college only 22 miles away. i did not see much. charlie: so there is insecurity about this. a little bit of, i have not seen as much.

i have not done as much. i want to play in the big leagues and expose myself to as much as possible. brian: yes. i never thought of it like that, but there is a -- that is part of its drive. i knew that i grew up in such a provincial little world, and i -- i wanted to make it bigger and i wanted to create larger opportunities for myself. and i thought my learning about other subjects, my world would expand. and you just never know when these dots or how these dots, ever get created and connected. and that opportunity would occur. charlie: when did this start? brian: it originally started right out of college, in that i had graduated college and within two weeks i thought, what do i do? did i learn anything? i was not sure i learned anything. so what i did is, i reached out to the most well-known professor at usc that i was one of the students, one of 300 kids. and i requested to meet him.

he denied the request. and i then showed up at usc as he left his class and said, i would like to just spend 20 minutes with you. charlie: just walk with you and we will talk. brian: he eventually said yes and hung out with me for an hour and a half. i learned more than i did in a year. i thought, i am going to apply that methodology to other subjects. charlie: right there, the idea was born. brian: exactly. charlie: what you do, we do at this table every day. we invite interesting people like you to talk about their life. and how do you see the world? that is exactly what you have been doing on your own, for your own self education. i do it for a wide audience. but it is the same idea. curiosity and creativity. brian: i felt the curiosity -- we all have curiosity, but if you really focus, you can use it as a superpower, as a cool to get inside the psyche of another

individual that is expert at something that you are not. and you can get on a pretty quick learning curve as to their vocabulary, whether it is architecture or fashion, whatever that thing is. i would then have information or knowledge that other people did not have. it would be of use. charlie: you are famous now, but when you began you were not as famous. would anybody turn you down? brian: everybody turned me down. i was turned down more times -- so many times. charlie: what did you say? brian: i was known for if you throw me out the door, you come in the window. jonah the window, through the chimney. if that does not work, i am in the plumbing. i would try different techniques to get to that person. usually, it was working with assistants. in the case of lou wasserman i really wanted to meet lou wasserman.

i met his assistant, melody. when she was getting in her in car the parking lot and i said i am the guy who has been calling and writing letters and i need five minutes with mr. wasserman. eventually i got my five minutes. charlie: what did he say? brian: usually i could turn the five minutes into an hour. he stopped me and looked at me as though, hold up, kid, you do not have much to add. he would not let me in his office. you -- you can see there was nothing in it for him. he stopped me and said i'm going to my office. he came back with a legal tab and a number two pencil. he said hold these. he said put the pencil to the paper and they have greater value than they did as separate parts. now get out of there. he put me into the elevator and said goodbye. at first, it was sort of humiliating. then i realized what he was

saying, i have to own -- charlie: bring value. you have to bring value to the conversation. brian: to bring value as the creation of ip, intellectual property. start writing ideas for you write them down. and they will be your currency. charlie: he told you to take a pencil, did he tell you to write a movie? brian: he did not, i found out. i wrote "splash." i wrote a couple of movies for tv. i saw i was getting kicked out of tv even though i was getting in. i wrote "splash" which was successful. after "splash," i never revisited the idea of a new movie or tv person and it came to me. i met a person that was outside of hollywood or entertainment. charlie: tell me who you think

the top five are that you met. brian: michael jackson. he taught me about music. i asked if he would take his gloves off. i was terrified to ask him. i do not think he could be serious with those gloves on. he was a pop icon. when he took them off, he became mozart. he became a different person. charlie: he became an artist. brian: and so i loved meeting barack obama as a senator when he was in office number 99. one of the worst offices. that was really interesting to me. it was like going to the department of motor vehicles. instead, a senator who became the president. i thought that was interesting. princess di was interesting. charlie: how did you get to her? brian: it took a lot of effort. eventually, it was a year later and it was fortuitous. we got to premiere, a royal

premiere of "apollo 13" and she chose to be the person not with charles but alone. she asked if i would sit -- i was requested to sit across from her. charlie: it was a long conversation. brian: several hours. it was amazing. charlie: talk to me about, i believe questions have power and if i write, it is about that idea that questions have powers. they have power in themselves and often more important than the answers. they will bring forward an idea and how the person reacts or not react says something about to -- about that person. you have thought about it a lot? brian: yes. i have thought about that a lot and what you thought. you are referenced in this book you are an idol of mine a you interviewed me about eight years ago and said i want to interview

you. not about any of these movies just about you and this process. , that was an initial point that maybe i should write a book that would encapsulate some of these stories in the power -- charlie: it is me. it is the life i have lived. it is what makes me up. brian: yes. in analyzing what those dialogs -- dialogs are about, i have come to the conclusion it is the gray area between the question and the answer. that gray area when i am reading the new wants -- nuance of you and reading your body language. it becomes biochemical. it changes your molecular structure. things are happening in that gray area between the question and the answer. that is when things really have breakthroughs. that is when creative breakthroughs happen. charlie: and you're looking at that in those conversations? brian: i am looking at that.

it happens when you are really engaged. it become so elevated and emotionally and eclipses anything you have experienced. i thought to myself, i'll try to explain this to others. think about your very first and best date with a girl. that best date, you are in the moment. it is real-time. you are asking questions and it is building and evolving. it is becoming chemistry. you are hoping to have that happen. happening something magical happens. exactly. i'm hoping to do that every two weeks. and you're hoping to do that every day. charlie: that is true. you are looking for magic. brian: it creates inspiration. whether about the subject or inspiration itself, it feels

differently. your mind and body feel differently. it creates confidence, increase in value. you can carry the inspiration into a subject that matters and build off of it. it is kind of beyond words. charlie: you're very much in the moment? brian: i try to be. i want to live the highs and lows of life. charlie: and you take particular notice of the physical attributes of people. the hair, the way they dress the beard. that is a common point. they are the way they are for some reason. brian: exactly. charlie: or insecurity or pride. brian: exactly. it gets revealed in how they dress. are they on time? do they want to make you feel comfortable? are they trying to intimidate you? how subtle is the intimidation? what are the socio-dynamics. ♪

charlie: on this hand all of the movies you have made and television shows until right there, one of the most talked about shows on the air right now. you have had this long history of producing things.

you call yourself a storyteller. on this hand, all that you have encapsulated in this book. this life you have lived. tell me about those two. brian: a great question. ok. i somehow put higher value on what is in that book than all of the movies and television shows because -- yeah, it is me. it defines my life. it defines and it is a power i believe in that other people can have. i just know that i was so close to being a nobody. and we all are so close to being nobody. in so many different ways. charlie: is there a common denominator that you discovered about people? for example, if you take all of the people i've interviewed i do not think anybody has ever said and sat down and said, i am where i am because i was the smartest person in the world or i was the most creative.

they are saying almost all the time is that i worked harder and was more accessible and i wanted it more. i was hungrier. i cared more. i had more passion. it's a meant more to me. therefore, i poured more into it. never said i was the best at whatever. therefore, it was automatic. and somehow the muses spoke to me and i wrote it down or i put it on a page. that is not the way life works. brian: it is not. it's really isn't. we self create really. and we do it through drive and internal competition, you know the self-worth, i think a lot of it is if you have drive and a noble purpose and there is an emotional injury you are trying to overcome, that concoction becomes something pretty

powerful. charlie: what is interesting is the experience itself that makes a difference to you. you are not trying to make a book. you are not trying to create something. you are not looking for something that is usable. you're looking for an experience. you want to be there and be open and accessible. brian: 100%. exactly. there were no metrics for judging it. it is just i am in the moment. it's like a real ride i get to create. it is democratized. it costs no money. it does not get judge in conventional metrics. it is just this experience we are having. and for probably 20 years, i never told anybody i would do these one on one things. when you surprised me and i never really told many people. charlie: you called me up. i was one of the people you called up. here's the other interesting thing about this.

marlon brando used to call me all the time. he was a big fan of the show. he would call me up and say, his question forever until the day he died for me was, what are you going to do with all of this? it was never that. i would say to him, i going to am enjoy it and share it. that's what i'm going to do. i am not going to take it and make it into something. somehow he couldn't get his arms around. absorbing all of this and you have to take it in and do something with it. changing the world, writing a great book or doing something rather than just being in the moment and sharing the experience of it. there were television cameras there. brian: people do not quite understand it. charlie: it has to have purpose rather than experience. brian: exactly. i love that i have done it for 30 years and i still do it.

by the way, it still takes a year sometimes for people to agree to meet with me. it was much harder 30 years ago. charlie: you have the books and the profiles. brian: those things help. it will still take -- i just met with floyd mayweather. but that took a year. i started sending him messages a year ago. and there was no -- i guess he did not see any alignment with -- for us. charlie: what was in it for him? brian: i do not fault him. i think it is fine because there may not be anything in it for him. charlie: you think they submit because you are persistent or they learn more about you and they think why not? brian: i think it is 50/50. i think sometimes they submit because i am persistent. i think in the case of floyd mayweather, if felt like somebody may have said, you

probably should do that. after a year of kind of silence, all of a sudden, an incoming call i want to fly in to meet with you. whatever time or day. charlie: sometimes you catch them at the right moments. brian: yes, exactly. charlie: what did you ask him? what were you curious about. i am curious about him and manny. i love the fight again. brian: i met with manny and he said yes almost immediately. charlie: he is politician. brian: with floyd mayweather, i was curious, his lifestyle is so big and the money team and so much bravado and i have known other fighters but not anyone as showy. sugar ray leonard, i sure you know him. this guy is so showy and such -- i'm so hesitant -- he should be

on "empire." there is a pimpy quality. he sat down and had six cell phones. six iphones. each iphone he was doing something. at the same time, he was polite. but he was face timing some nba athlete and other things going on the iphones then i would say, are you connecting, are we connecting? he would put his arm around me and smile. charlie: i like howard stern a lot. he had a conversation with floyd. it was mostly about sex. it was mostly about that. not the whole thing. it was interesting. you were interested in sort of all of this. when i was talked to him if i have the opportunity and i hope i will, just want to know what

it is that makes him who he is. what it is about him that system -- that put him in this place that he is in? and what shaped him and what 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? brian: i think he believes he creates fear. if you want an interview, i am sure it will work out. i will watch you. me and many other people will be watching. charlie: to you find -- what is the difference between men and women? more men than women? brian: i meet with more men than women. in writing the book, i really had to focus on which women did i interview.

more often than not, men, a lot of noble laureates or -- very few women. i probably met 50 women to the 500 men or an inversion of that. i've met very interesting women. condi rice. hillary clinton. a girl named cleo, an anthropologist. charlie: you met elizabeth holmes? brian: i don't know her. charlie: she is a young entrepreneur. she is doing remarkable work. brian: sheryl sandberg. charlie: that is obvious. what is it about that you wouldn't want us to know about you, brian grazer? brian: oh, god, charlie. charlie: what is it that makes you a little bit crazy to get close to? brian: very neurotic. charlie: we know that. brian: geez. that's too general. way too general. charlie: is it women, is it --

brian: i can't figure out women but most men cannot figure out women. [laughter] charlie: tell me what it is that makes you, i cannot go there? brian: i do not know. charlie: do you think your life is an open book? brian: it is pretty open. i did not write the book for a while, by writing a book it looks like you have soft -- solved everything about life and you have all of the answers and i definitely do not have all of the answers. friends of my know that. i have so many foilbles. the world is going so technology is driving the world so badly -- rapidly that i would just say in three years what will i want to do? right now, storytelling has existed for thousands of years and that is what i am. i am a storyteller.

it takes and my stories, the stories i do whether movies or television or "empire," they define different platforms. things will change a lot. with cars that do not require drivers and those sorts of things. i really enjoy -- i get a lot of pleasure out of life and i want to continue to get a lot of pleasure out of life but i do think the world will change a lot in three years. charlie: bill murray said to me one of the most important things he said to me is you have to be alert and accessible. all of the time. i think that is so true. you have to ask yourself constantly, what is the moment? make sure you are in the moment you know what is happening so it's not just obvious but beyond the obvious to all that is going on. brian: that's why i have done this curiosity.

i want to curate my life in real-time as it is happening. like "the truman show." i want to curate and not someone else. i know the things that make me happy. it makes me happy to learn something and be in a moment like this with somebody in the -- and becomes a cloud on inspiration. i love to jump on a plane and go to a place i've never been. i love to go to myanmar. i still call in burma. charlie: this is dedicated -- you love sonia. brian: sonia was pretty powerful. she made all the difference in

my life. when she say i value you and the questions you ask and it is going to mean something in your life, she was look at report cards with straight f's. so she -- all empirical evidence would not suggest i was going to be a movie producer, acclaimed movie producer or any of the things you mentioned. it was the power of curiosity and the use of curiosity in a disciplined way that has brought all these things to me or me to them. i mean fidel castro, had lunch. charlie: what was that like? brian: it was fantastic. about eight years ago, i went with a les moonves and a bunch of guys. we all sort of secretly wanted to get together with fidel castro. we're all writing letters and doing little things without telling the other guys. and then eventually, he might have wanted to do it because because he is a calculating guy

and he agreed. we had to change. charlie: was he late or on time? brian: he was on time. it was like "godfather 2," was supposed to go to specific location and the cars become derailed and we go across the divider and go at the other direction and end up at the military palace. charlie: who was in the group? brian: les moonves and gary. charlie: who -- brian: i think he felt that cbs news was of use to him. charlie: he probably knew of cbs news. brian: of course. so i think fidel felt like if he

is going to reach the american public or use his influence, that's a good place to begin. he spent six hours breaking down the molecular structure of this island. what a kilowatts would produce. it was very convincing. after 3.5 or 4 hours i thought it was a great place. why not live here? it is going to completely change. you would know better than i. you are a news man. you will have people who should not be in the country who are in the country and people who should not leave hours are there building it. creating laws and ordinances. charlie: here's the other thing -- didn't somebody ask about hair? brian: fidel asked about my hair. a lot of people asked. he spoke 3.5 hours for the it

seems that he did not take bradford he looked up and looked at the room as said how do you do your hair? that was his one question. charlie: great profile writers can only capture some moment like that that makes the whole room human. that is what they do. telling details of observation. charlie: -- brian: it is true. charlie: what are you in your life? i take a small amount of credit for the book. brian: you should. i think it is a good book. i'm glad you look at it. charlie: is about existential truth. curiosity will just serve you so well. the idea of looking around at what you see and capturing the moment, the awe teh sense, the

miracle of life is extraordinary journey. definitely. how are you in the movie business? you have "empire" is doing well. what makes it so good? brian: it is about family. it is glamorous. it is juicy. is a juicy nighttime soap opera. >> charlie: juicy. the book is called "a curious mind: the secret to a bigger life." thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

>> marco antonio rubio. will he make his marco or end up like starko? has he jumped at the sharko? get ready, goal. -- get ready go.