my goal is not to prove to anybody that I'm the smartest person the most able person in the world because I'm not I'm just me and and that's it I can't give you more but I commit myself to give you the best of what I can do I'm fully committed I'm 100% committed to you to anybody that I'm talking to I try to be
all of myself no one could ever doubt yoyo Ma's commitment to music over countless beautiful Timeless recordings to all of these amazing performances that don't just speak to fans but often speak to the moment to what's going on in culture and Society there are times that yooa has shown up performed and healed
Nations and here we are in a cafe in New York City one of my favorite spots in the world to talk to someone whose music heals me all the time put a pot of coffee on cuz we did and enjoy this conversation with the remarkable yoyo Ma we're going to have some coffee we're going to have some coffee thank God
we're going to have some coffee yeah right so I can't wait to have some coffee what's your intake a day I take like three espressos in the morning line them up one two three it's funny because uh I don't want too much milk and so this way it's it's like you know it's fast and and uh I love how you want drink a long black though you just have
three right well it's it's kind of yeah I don't know I don't know why it's just kind of feels good that way if I'm really drowsy I'll put in a little sugar yeah you know yeah and and sometimes if I feel frisky I'll put a little cinnamon and you it's like just like I've never done that really little cinnamon ininn
yeah that's a Vibe yeah really good try that out or just you know if you like a little excitement I'm trying to think like when it comes to actually being inspired to to play your instrument or to to be drawn into something that's creative ni it it never really works in a schedule it's not a scheduled thing are there are there
moments when you just can't go to sleep or you can't move because the the drawer is too strong you must no never I just I just when I open the cello case uh I've gotten to the point where it's always my friend and that's what you I think when I was younger sometimes you have to fight your way in you know because I got
to do this I got to do this and this just doesn't work just kind of kind of fit it's way you interview you get people into that little nice subconscious mode thanks man it's true I think so what let's see what's in your subconscious nothing no I just read I just read like yesterday that something like 5% of our
brain is in the conscious mind and you do the math well that explains me a lot better yeah I mean I sometimes I I realize what I'm thinking in the moment and I'm like wow I had no idea that was going on in my head and I had to split second where I'm like very consciously aware of what's going on I think that's I think when people say
stay in the moment that's what people are talking about they're trying to get you to not control your thoughts but be be be conscious of them and try to focus on things that are fulfilling well since we started talking about coffee in the morning do you ever wake up having a great idea about something
you're kind of not quite awake and you think I better write this down because if I don't I'm not going to remember once I wake up I have done that and and lately I've started to write little lists and things that I love or that I'm excited about first thing in the morning and I notice
also that I'm if I'm going to have a conversation with somebody that day that I really love to listen to their music first thing in the morning cuz I'm very open I may have heard the music I'm prepared I love the album or I love the song but I feel very differently about it f sing in the morning than I did any other
time my son tells me Daddy it's really good if you wake up in the morning you don't get to do things you just stay quiet for like half an hour yeah and this is do that but then you have three espressos and you're like that doesn't work for me oh well I during that half hour I can have three Espress and that's
totally fine you you know you wrote something and said something really beautiful about Apple music classical and I want to start you know this portion of our conversation there um you talked about it um having a place where we can we can hear what music was thinking what the artists who played it and wrote it were
thinking during times in history and and what was going on outside time travel that's what music is absolutely I mean think about it if you if like we're talking right now but imagine that you could transport yourself to another time in place and and you could be hearing that same conversation or getting into someone's
insides which is what music is and I mean think of people talk about access think of the amount that kind of access you have into the feelings the the words the the the sounds the you know the context of what a piece of music can get you um you know from tell you you you name the period I think so much of classical music is what
was written down in the last couple hundred years and the fact that you can get through the code of notation um into someone's thoughts is kind of miraculous what we say is classical music was all of music because it wasn't before it was labeled it was just music it was church music it was folk music it was dance
music it was you know secular music it was religious music it was Court music it was so the fact that a lot of it is being labeled as sort of like oh it's sort of like Elite music that kind of is it's like saying democracy is elitist there's a hierarchy to it yeah yeah yeah it's like saying our founding
fathers were elitists I'm glad you're going there because I wonder what the term meant to you and I thought I said too bold a question you know to ask early on is what does the term classical music mean because I I don't disagree with you I I find genres can be efficient but sometimes misleading
genres are always efficient any kind of stereotype has a little bit of truth to it but as you know from anything that we do it doesn't relate to feeling the deeper you go you realize you know actually that's for the birds yeah right and I I'll give you an example I um I played a piece of Bach for winon marceles and prel of the
third Suite he listens to it says man this is a kickass Jazz this is jazz yeah this is because because B actually was one of the greatest improvisors of his time Mozart was one of the greatest improvisors and we don't think of it that way no and in fact most classical musicians improvised composed and doing
things but with the industrial society we became more and more specialized these days people will do everything and that's what I'm hoping for is that people who go into music are not going to be labeled as oh you're this kind of oh you do this WR which implies that that's all a human being is capable of
doing is that you can only do this and if you go out of your lane you're doing something not right I feel like you've been dedicated to to creating recording and releasing your music in service I feel like it's more than just a personal desire to be heard or for your talent or your work to be heard that if you can't feel like you're
helping there's almost it doesn't have the same the same reason the same impact for you well I think we do things for different reasons and Al often we do uh something for many reasons and one of them absolutely a service I think we do this I think everything that culture is that which is what we've invented to
examine what's around is and the reason we do that obviously some of it is to satisfy our own curiosity but when you're really excited about something you want to share it with somebody this my job right this is my job that's what you do and you are led by your curiosity and when you find something do you keep it a
secret do you lock it up in the box and you say I know something I'm not going to tell you no you want people to know and and so if that's service fine you know I think in your interview with Barbara strand which is amazing because she said essentially I'm looking to tell the truth and she wants the truth in this in
a very particular way and and you got Insider to not focus on the thing that we all think she is she's a perfectionist she's difficult to work with no you you realize that she there's something else driving her and you got to that which is actually much of the motivation behind the strive for what we see on the
outside as a uh tendency to want things just the way she wants it but that's her dedication to her truth you know if we think about braa strien for decades now she's been referred to as the voice she's the voice it's the voice it's the voice right she was so quick to say look I was gifted The Voice I'd be foolish
not to use the voice can you relate to that can you relate to what she was saying from a personal level Beyond getting to know her better and understanding the true Barbara strien which was amazing that you took that from the conversation and thank you but do you relate to what she was saying as someone I think I have the greatest
voice in the world and nobody recognizes you want to be the voice I don't know why but you know I've tried all my life you're watching her to the concept of being the voice of one single tears rolling down your face if only someone could truly understand these damn hands nobody knows me why hands why my
beautiful hands but you know what I mean I think that I think that you know for a long time from a very very young age Talent is and the journey it takes you on the life's journey is the greatest is a great gift but it is a box it can be a box people recognize some value in what you do and they want more of it and they want you
to be that for us right yeah it's it's what's what's interesting well you may be surprised uh and I may be surprised by what I'm saying too because uh because yes at at a certain point you start from someplace but like Robert strand I think the similarity there is that I just did it it was part of my
family's background in music and um and in a way I never made a decision about being a musician I just liked it and so I spent most of my life I'm 68 and it was I was you know almost 50 years old before I realized this is yes I I do this I love music I love playing music but what I really really have always
been uh passionate about is understanding things around me understanding people understanding nature understanding why people do what they did and actually a a a real reason I was born in Paris 10 years after World War II now World War II is far away for most people and but in Europe 10 years after you felt the effect of the war you
really I mean people were still going through a lot of PTSD before before the word was invented the term was invented and I think I feel that I am a child of World War II because I've spent my life trying to understand what happened why did it happen why did it have to happen and uh I mean Slaughter on a
scale and then when we came to the the United States so I I was 7 years old 1962 so this was before the assassination before the Civil Rights Movement and so I'm an immigrant as are you I suppose right and and I don't know how you feel about this but once I became an immigrant and a citizen I had to ask myself as I was thinking
what is American Music what is the soul of American music the way that in different countries you know Russian music oh this is right this is French music this is British it's American music and and in in looking I was I was thinking you know just because I came here in 1962 does that mean my ownership of the citizenry that I'm
thinking of what it means to be a citizen does it by knowledge of the history of the United States starts from 62 and I'm not responsible for anything before or do I actually have to take on you know everything that went on so I can appropriately contribute right yeah because otherwise how can I participate
in in in issues that that we are all dealing with ch history yeah right and even pre the forming of the nation right so what are we responsible now legally I know what I'm entitled to be and to think but not everything is under the egis of the legal system you know we are also how are we responsible for one
another yeah and what is our what is our role to thoughtfully contribute to the future of a country that we were not born into exactly what what has been one of the most emotional experiences you've had performing not so much from an insula point of view what your feeling in the moment yourself but what you're sensing
others are experiencing at that time well I think you know the moments we all remember forever where we were when we heard a piece of news right 911 I was in Colorado Springs I was in Denver and and I was supposed to play that evening in Colorado Springs Denver the next night and in Phoenix Arizona the third night
and uh I called my wife in the morning she says turn on the television and you know we saw what happened and so the first reaction is well well maybe everything's cancelled and they thought you know President Bush was going to go to uh you know a safe place in the mountains every Orchestra decided they wanted to hold
the concert and I can tell you that those communal moments when people are together right I think to this day I can go back to Colorado Springs or Denver or for Phoenix and everybody who's at that concert remembers it to a te you know it's like this was the moment where we were all holding hands and you know crying
together and being together and standing strong together uh I think there are moments like that the night before the first Iraq War I was in Washington DC you know it's it it can go on and on and on those are kind of big moments but little moments you go to in Chicago where I was working
for 10 years and went into a lot of public schools and you know in the 10 years that I was there every weekend uh on the South Side about 40 people get shot and we decided to go to the parents of the kids to say what would you have wanted what song would you have chosen or would your child have
chosen and I was working with a you know young musicians in their 20s and they chose a song found the singer we recorded it they recorded it with the parents there and we put on the website you know notes for peace and we're not solving anything but we are co-witnesses and there's a public website you know it's like the Vietnam
memorial you know you can go touch right the names of every person that died here we have it online and the resolve is they're going to do this until every single person has been acknowledged because yes it shouldn't go on we don't have the means to solve that no one person or agency has it mean but eventually it's going to be the public
will that says enough so it's just seeding something for a future that we may not see but you know it's going to but there's enough DNA there and if people take that on it's it's going to continue if they don't then it's a failed experiment but for those that were there it's not a failed experiment I just
don't think we'll be around long enough to know whether we succeeded or failed and so we must just continue right right it's that's that's the the fact of human nature right we're capable of the greatest inventions the greatest you know moments of of everything as well as the greatest cruelty and it never ends
you know your life has been so fascinating for so many reasons but one I keep coming back to is that you are an outlier you are you're someone who searches around convention looking for new ways to do things looking for new ways to reach people looking for new ways to share the message about something you care about um and I and I'm really
inspired by that and I know others are drawn to that there are lots of many amazing artists and creative people who have stayed true to their craft who have done wonderful things in life but I feel part of the attractive energy toward you across the board from the most influential leaders in the world right
through to the people who pay hard money for hard tickets to come see you perform is that your curiosity seems to overshadow Convention I think a simpler way of putting it is I don't know what I'm doing you know I mean it it it's like I don't have Ready Answers for things right I I don't say this is the right way I'm
trying to think if there was a simple way to ask that question I wonder whe how you would have thought if I said yo y m do you know what you're doing yeah I'd say nope and that's the end no I mean I I didn't mean to no no it's toally to imp you were asking a a simple question in a complicated way in
this day where everybody has opinions about everything I'm not sure I have opinions about everything you know I have a brother-in-law who says yoyo feels strongly both [Music] ways he doesn't disagree yeah exactly no because it's like and and and I think if you're looking for okay so let's say we're talking about Barbara St and she
knows her truth right let's talk about truth I think if everybody in this room saw an accident happened across the street and we would each have a slightly different angle visual angle of see and and then you interview every single person and say okay what exactly happened you know it's it's a different version of like
playing telephone we would have many different truths and I think sometimes there's a term that I'm sort of saying it's a term but maybe it isn't I think if you have 360 degree truth Prismatic truth you know family truth you know oh what's that exactly what is it from your point of view three
siblings very different points of view on what the family was like right so it doesn't have to be an accident everybody has a family and already you have different viewpoints or something very potent happens when everyone feels comfortable telling their truth which really happens more often than not in families and that's where it becomes
very interesting yeah and so you take from family you know to organization to community boy suddenly yeah we've scaled the truth right right and so so how do you how does all of that combine into something that we can actually all Aspire toward together in a way that is not necessarily uh Authority driven you
know how can we how can we go for um maybe goals that are uh unattainable you know in the 1100s people built Cathedrals that took over 100 years to build you know so not during my lifetime but maybe your great grandkids do you ever get a chance to sort of Express this kind of balance in that environment because it's it's very
interesting well I'm I can express this to you you because uh because I think you're kind of interested in well we're kind of interested in the same types of things right I mean you also gauge whether someone's going to go yeah yeah yeah this my people have you thought about equilibrium in your life
Mr President says I mean that's a good question though yeah you have to know your audience right I mean I can talk to my children and my daughter will look at me and say what are you talking about says uhoh I hear a lecture coming and then I shut up because you know it's like she's not you know it's like yeah and so I I think
this is it's nice to talk with you because you're listening to me I'm paid to okay okay you have to listen to me so I'll just drone on and on another thing let New York be T's outside let's just keep going this Cafe is a safe space I'm three coffees in let's keep going what flight um this idea of of Leaning into
Beethoven's work of reducing the amount of support the music required originally and bethoven for three you know it's it's like you know Table for Three yeah um exactly it's it's beautiful someone described it as like a it reminded them of tiny disc which I love this idea of a of of a of reduced parameters in order to try to
capture the emotion what inspired that well you know what Manny says my good friend Emanuel ax The Pianist who's playing in who one of the three people along with lunus kavakos the great Greek violinist I think Manny says if you were interested in Beethoven symphonies in the 1800s up until you know the recording
industry started happening and you might hear it twice in your life the only other way you could hear it is if you plated yourself in a short in a version for two pianos or for three people for a bunch of people that's it it's your garage band that's the only way you know if you want Beethoven C cover you're not going to hear it any
other place you got to do it yourself that's before you know Edison came along so um I love that image too by the way the three of you just stuck in a laundry room out the back of someone's house just knocking this knocking Boven out yeah that's right and but that's the way uh people uh you know before the
printing press that's how you got the Bible someone who was could read would read from them but you didn't have your own copy that's kind of interesting is that what motivated in the first place or is that just a happy accident printing press yeah did no no well obviously that was a happy accident look what happened
I don't know there there we go uh no but you know the idea as as Emanuel was saying as Manny was saying you know this idea of what it is putting that in context did you have that context when you came together or did you go oh yeah that is what we're doing well it was during the pandemic right orchestras
weren't playing Ain got 100 people together in that time yeah and so we thought you know here's a pandemic proof way to actually say the next time it comes and it's not us doing it but you know Manny has a wonderful uh friend who was a former student who actually made a lot of the arrangements and uh we
thought great if you want to have music you know and everything's falling apart you can have it you can have it in smaller form and it's it's good it may not be you know the best hamburger but maybe it's a mini burger but do you feel do you feel kind of punk rock doing it you talk about being like a garage band
does it feel kind of punk rock abely absolutely absolutely it's I think uh it's it's that same configuration over and over again friends coming together over coffee three espressos or whatever or lots of ketchup but you know you you you kind of you just smoo and and and you say what are we going to do Hey Joe let's try this yeah ah come
on no it's not going to work of course it's going to work come on try it come tomorrow you know let's let's try this and and I think we need a lot more of that uh in order to have participatory responsibility in things you know someone else when they were talking about it said oh it's it's a great step
into into contemporary classical when I thought oh I got to ask your your M what he thinks about that term if we're not really into genres but we get with the we love the idea of contemporary contemporized of updating things of doing things differently yeah well listen what's great about uh anything contemporary is that it's now now is
scary to people though sometimes but did you face any kind of push back in any capacity even someone like yourself who's achieved and given so much always you know lanes are very important in in order in society and anytime you kind of swi all over them you fly all over the place but if you don't want to get
criticized don't do anything I tell you I've been criticized so often by so many people what's the most common criticism can you remember when I first came out and started playing concerts the the most often asked interview was like how can an oriental like you play music wow like us you know so that was like almost every
single interview maybe 40 years ago but you know it is also sometimes asked very innocently because we make judgments there were people used to say women soloist they can't play like a man you know and the compliment would be oh she plays like a man you know just like that's that's gone but there are lots of
you know people make sometimes innocent judgments and sometimes they're tainted with a little more kind of uh I don't know uh less innocent let's say you're very kind and you see you see good and I know you you said it beautifully you know you want to be with people you want to learn from people and
see the good and people but there must have been times when that triggered something in you and you know to do with it well I think you know the one thing that I grew up in three cultures so in France uh when we moved to the states the French would say why would anybody want to do that it's the greatest culture in the
world and you know and when we came to the states it was like well you know this is the greatest country and my parents would say well Chinese culture is really great and and as a seven-year-old I would say you know then why aren't we living in China or why did we leave Paris exactly you know so so I had a lot of contradictory
messes um uh sort of pumped into my brain and um it's sort of like figuring out code switching without and and actually allowing sort of dropping the barriers so that you're you're comfortable in wherever in all the codes right and I think part of being an immigrant I I think my thought is what do I need to be
in order to feel that you could like Waldo drop me any place in the world and and make do as a musician as a human being say what do you need to do what values do I need to know that a society has for what is desirable undesirable because every society has something slightly different but then
also what are the commonalities that are there in every society yeah and you brought that into your music otherwise I I don't see how you would have been able to shine up so authentically and creatively and into so many different environments as well well listen why are you talking to me because you do exactly the same
thing those are the values you practice and I think what I observe in you is as something that I know you practice I know that I try to practice is that is one of hospitality you know the whole world has rules for Hospitality you have a guest you show your guest around the guest shows respect appreciates the gift you're giving them
and by accepting the gift that you've given them offered them they become part of you beautifully put I mean it's it's sometimes people will say to me you know why aren't you more critical why don't you tell us what you don't like I've been so fortunate to be able to pick and choose what I play and who I
speak to the concept of choosing something or someone because I don't like it is just not in me it seems alien to me the idea of wasting time like that like I I I just believe the artistic spirit is made of magic I I I I don't think you know y Yad do you know what you're doing nope it's magic I I I I
don't know what I'm doing and I think that's part of what makes me both secure and insecure I'm secure in knowing that I don't the know what I'm doing so in other words don't tell me that I don't know what I'm doing because I'll agree with you so where's the insecurity I'm insecure because you know I'm coming into an interview I'm doing a
performance and before that I actually think I have no idea what I'm doing and then but then you have to kind of say all right hold on for a second you may not know much but you know just some things and let's take what you know and and make an arc out of it and and share that what you don't know and share
that experience you know you talk about process it's like share the process of not knowing and discovering something and be excited by that when you're on stage on stages that many would consider to be some of the most in a conventional sense high pressure environments a lot of cameras lot of people important
people an important anniversary something that's very emotive and requires music in order to create a healing experience the stakes are high and there's many of them on paper and you put yourself in that situation because you're drawn to the idea of sharing your gift and being a part of that experience you do so safe in the
knowledge that you don't know what you're doing yeah and and that you can actually look at someone in the eye and and be comfortable enough to okay I I I don't succeed in doing that uh a lot of the time that doesn't mean that that's not my goal you know my goal is not to prove to anybody that I'm the smartest person the
most able person world because I'm not you know I'm just me and and you know and that's it that's I can't give you more but I commit myself to give you the best of what I can do I'm fully committed I'm 100% committed to you to anybody that I'm talking to I try to be all of myself I'm not going to look over your shoulder and
say you know there's a more interesting person uh on your left and and what's going on over there no undoubtedly by the way but well there's a bottle of catchup there very longing they do the same job exactly but you know but that's but that's all we can hope for yeah if a child comes and talks to you you pay
full attention to the child people get really obs obsessed I think in this particular space of of um discipline and music with the idea of Mastery you know like the more you play it the better you get the closer you get to Perfection and I I think on your birthday when you played all all six weets in a in a row
and and put yourself through that exercise um I wonder how that change how that night I I wonder whether that kind of made things more simple after that whether it simplif fight things for you a little bit because you know you exercised everything you'd learned and everything you were passionate about
with regards to bark in that one sitting was like okay I'm going to put myself through this I'm going to see if I can do this it it's it's about process but it's about not about my process but I think I have a theory that Bak had an idea and and it's I'll try and put it simply is that he only worked
two years in his life outside of the church where his employer was not the church so um and his employer loved music had a lot of musicians around sort of like you know it's like being an an ideal environment for musicians to just experiment so he was a great experimentor I think of him as a as a scientist composer who was just trying
everything needed to figure out what the essence of something was human nature nature and it's like he's on a great sabatical what can I do and he's then located the cello so what what what is that instrument what can it do well I'm going to figure out how exactly what the cello can do and I'm going to write six
pieces of music he likes six he does a lot of things in sixes Brandenburg conos you know violin partitas and son do and whatever so I'm going to do six uh sweets and and so he writes the first three and afterward he says yep I I figured out what the CH can do but now I'm do three more there okay I now am
going to try and get the cello to figure out what I wanted to do not what the cello can do but I am a composer I'm an organist I can play you know six different lines at once with my feet with my both hands and I can do all that stuff cello has four strings how can I make the cello do something that I can do on the organ
just on four strings and so he then writes it gets you know he he does this thing where Tunes down and string he writes for adds a string on on the CH and I think he succeeds and I think it's the Journey of hearing somebody going through that process of thinking that makes it you know reach for the sky and he actually
does the impossible and which is sort of our human nature is that we always are trying to reach The Impossible and when you can feel that achievement you then are part owner of that yeah incredible you carry it yeah becomes part of your DNA right when it becomes a part of your chemical makeup when I get the same feeling when
I hear a song Crescendo each time or a tear comes to my eye each time no matter where I am that's part of my makeup yeah that's you just pinpointed something that I believe in deeply which is that the magical thing that culture can do it can actually turn the other into us right it's like
saying the moment and you can do that in music you can do that in literature you can read you know A Book Like beloved and you're not living in that era you're not of that ethnic group you're not part of this but you are brought fully into it and that experience then becomes part of our life if we've digested it yeah then we share it right
and yeah and that's for me the thing that we have not used enough in in society to actually break the the categorical fractures that have sort of to kept us apart to promote participatory responsibility yeah gosh what an incredible mouthful that you have this that's cic starting to roll off the tongue quite
nicely I suspect not but go right ahead um our common nature I want to take some time to talk to you about your relationship with nature you voice been drawn into nature um and your music does reflect the outside world inside whatever environment you're playing in I it's I feel it others feel it do you hear music
in nature even when it's not playing you know what I mean do you feel the beat and the Rhythm and the melody and the Soul absolutely there's first of all I think and many people think we are nature that's so this the separation is that's the problem right yeah we separate ourselves yeah when we separate
ourselves from nature then you know you can extract nature without consequence right but if you are nature then whatever you do to Nature we're actually doing to ourselves well we wouldn't commodify well not all of us but hopefully majority of us wouldn't commodify out Offspring or our family in the same way we do nature because we
don't see a separation between right that's right so if so that's that's number one and I think if there's I think scientists and Poets or scientists and artists agree that that's actually basically it so our common nature is really that's nature right you know that's that's that's our commonality and if you start from that
I'll give an example it's it's actually kind of interesting because it has refers specifically to cello practice the beginning of the first chello Suite by B you know the first thing you ever learned yeah thank you did your research and uh so if I play it as a piece of cello music you know I go start you know
vibrant that sounds nice it's never worked for me it I don't feel right playing it I feel like it's you know it's the wrong energy and whatever so the way I get around it is I actually think that the one the piece of music Started long before I start secondly I visualize the idea of something like a brook
flowing and you know how if a leaf falls you know it just it just gets caught in that you just join it you're not going like this and that's one example of how we are part of nature another thing is Music US human beings we're 60% Water right and take music music is just three things it's energy because it's
sound moves air molecules and the air molecules hit your eardrum and then your brain interprets what it is right so it's sound is energy and it's time and music toys with time through that are regular and irregular when you get irregular patterns P patterns you're toying with someone's sense of time right and space it takes you to a
different uh Consciousness level state of mind so when you're on stage what is your relationship with conventional time whilst you're playing well I think it's in a way when you're on stage you're a bubble because the bubble is the ecosystem of whatever is the space you're in if it's a hall it's a it's a contained bubble
everybody in that contained space is subject to the energy of the air molecules that's floating around being refracted reflected and and it hits them the attitude I have in playing is as much as possible never trying to prove something uh and always trying to show well I I pretend or I really think
that I am the host of a giant party because if I'm in a city I'm a guest in the city you know I arrive I don't live there I try and figure out who's living in that City who's in that Community but when I'm on stage I'm the host you know because if you're on the stage you have heightened position if you ever have somebody on stage staring
at you and you're in the audience you feel how powerful that eye contact is oh yeah you feel so special right and so so you have to respect that and I'm the host and nobody's there trying to say show me how good the party is going to be they're there to enjoy the party and I'm there to share what I think is
pretty neat about what might be happening that's it so things can go wrong that's fine MH and if things go right we're all in it together so what does legacy mean to you now if if you seem so capable of finding a moment and respecting it trying not to spend too much time what came before and predict what is going to happen
which is the ideal State CU left and right at that moment it's kind of anxiety on a stick right so this feels like a life in in in practicing of that that exercise and your ability allows you to find a moment St what does it all mean do you think at the end what what what does it all mean because I've traveled so much because
I've was privileged to have people guide me into a lot of different uh ways of thinking uh disciplines um continents and and I realize you know what I knows is that much right so I you know I've got CU can't yeah exactly but I realize that you know and I'm one of 8 billion people on Earth the good thing
and bad thing about being 68 years old is that uh I've seen Generations go by I'm aware that there are at least four generations that are younger than I am and I'm aware that 50% of the world's population is on the 27 of that 50% about of the males about 40% are unemployed so that's a statistic that is a little less than
abstract and it feels you know I I I want to feel that this is palpable not tangible yeah it's not just something something that is is is yeah it's not a number and I'm thinking well what can I do I can't do much but the only thing that I can do is to think well as I get older you know the proportional population uh of the world is going to
be younger and younger than I than I am and so what do they need you you know so if I'm in the company of older people I like to say how much do you know what a younger person is thinking about and and there's some older people that say ah Jen's you know they're lazy they don't care you know they don't come
on time they don't feel like doing something whatever sure they may be that but I also know a lot of people people who care deeply and are actually concerned about I think the right things that we should all be concerned about same yeah and and and what I would like to do is to encourage you know my peers
to say if you have you know access to things share it as quickly as possible and give them the chance rather than say you know kid you wait until you're you know go through all the what I had to go through so earn it because it'll be too late there is zero value in that to me exact exactly zero so just you know
really tell them what you know yeah and tell them give them the access to say look these are the keys this is the door and let's share this so that you know if I have something to say that's valuable to you but you take on the responsibility because we want to Succeed In Our Lifetime we want to own our story succeed and then you can learn
about it after I'm gone you're right we don't do a good enough job of sharing yeah and so it's not you know again it's a lot of things you know Barbara stron said the same things you know I don't need to perform more I don't need to do this I don't need to do that but what you what she does need to do is
something else and and I'm thinking you know let's figure out what younger people really feel they need and what is it that we can do to actually help them you know to maybe nothing you know maybe they're already set or if there's anything that you can do do it do it now that's our best investment do you know what you're doing
no not at all I forget what I'm doing that's the other thing I not only don't know what I'm doing and I can't hear that well what did you say we're recording anyway this whole thing's just to get to surprise this wasn't being filmed we'll start in five minutes right recording bring the coffee