An American Story
Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger
Audacy
4.6 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2023
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Since it's the 4th of July, we're re-airing an interview we did with Ken Langone, the legendary financier, who helped take a bunch of companies public before co-founding Home Depot. He joined us a few years back to talk about his book, I Love Capitalism!: An American Story, but really it was just a fascinating conversation with a guy who grew up in a working-class family, put himself through school, and after some hard work and smart decisions and a few guardian angels, became one of the most successful businessmen in the country.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Jill on Money Show. It is Tuesday, the 4th of July. Happy Independence Day. |
| 0:10.6 | In honor of Independence Day, we are going to re-air a portion of an interview that we |
| 0:16.9 | did with Ken Lan-Gone. Now, Ken Lan-Gone has had quite a history, by the way. If you live |
| 0:25.3 | in New York, you probably know him, then know the name because you go by NYU and there's |
| 0:29.9 | like the Lan-Gone Hospital. But for those of us who are old enough to remember, Ken Lan-Gone |
| 0:36.4 | was one of the folks involved with starting Home Depot. And this goes back because he had |
| 0:41.3 | an investment banking background and he did some business with Ross Perot and then came |
| 0:45.6 | Home Depot. Well, he came on our podcast, joined us in the studio after he had written |
| 0:52.4 | and released a book called I Love Capitalism and the Subtitles and American Story. So what |
| 0:59.8 | we thought would be fun for you is if you didn't hear that interview, it is kind of an interesting |
| 1:05.2 | way to think about Independence Day through a financial angle. And so if you dig this, |
| 1:12.0 | go buy Ken's book. I think 2018 was when we had him in the studio. So he's a great storyteller |
| 1:19.5 | and a lot of fun. So the kid from Long Island makes good. Here is our interview with Ken Lan-Gone. |
| 1:27.6 | You are born to Italian American parents in the North Shore of Long Island. Who's first |
| 1:35.6 | generation? Your grandparents are your parents. My parents are first generation. Working class. |
| 1:41.4 | Dad was a plumber. My father was a plumber. He went to the eighth grade. My mother worked |
| 1:45.8 | in a school cafeteria. She went to the seventh grade. And you lived on what you sort of describe |
| 1:50.8 | as like the bad side of the tracks in a nice family. It was where the poor people lived. I think |
| 1:56.8 | my parents paid $4,000 for the house they bought, which they couldn't buy. They were running |
| 2:02.2 | the house for a few years. It was right by the public school. How is it that your parents |
| 2:08.1 | who were not educated were so encouraging that you become educated? Because a lot of people |
| 2:13.8 | grew up as tradespeople, children of tradespeople go into the trade. My father made me learn to be a plumber. |
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