Short questions with Dana Perino for Jared Cohen

For a number of months now, I’ve enjoyed checking in with some of your favorite Fox personalities to learn more about who they are behind the scenes.

But as you may recall, I did promise to throw in some surprise appearances here and there!

This week I wanted to share my conversation with Jared Cohen, a New York City-based bestselling author. His newest book, "Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House," has just been published.

He's also president of global affairs and co-head of the office of applied innovation at Goldman Sachs, which he joined in Aug. 2022 as a partner and member of the firm's management committee.

Prior to that, he was CEO of Jigsaw, which he founded at Alphabet Inc. in 2016. Earlier, he was Google’s first director of ideas and chief adviser to Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt. From 2006 to 2010, he served as a member of the Secretary of State’s policy planning staff and as a close adviser to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.

P.S. We have so much more in store for you. Stay tuned each week for new editions of "Short Questions with Dana Perino" — and if there’s a question you want answers to or a suggestion for the person I should interview next, leave a note in the comments section below.

This week, bestselling author Jared Cohen tells Fox News' Dana Perino the question all managers should ask in a job interview; which three presidents, dead or alive, he'd invite to a dinner party; and the advice he shares with others (and where he got it). (Fox News/Courtesy Jared Cohen)

Q: What is one thing you wish you knew when you were younger?

JC: Who shot JFK?

Q: Why do you think it is important to study history?

JC: If you look at tech and entrepreneurship, everything has gotten so focused on the forward and the future.

Everything problematic that happens in the future has roots in something that happened in the past — and we need to understand where we came from in order to understand where we are today and where we're going.

Q: Your career is pretty incredible. You went from government to tech to finance or probably something else along the way. You've written books through all those different sectors of your career. What is the best advice to someone who is transitioning careers or industries?

JC: For me, it's been, "Choose your next job, based on who you want to work with and for — and have them create a job for you that doesn't exist."

Q: What question should every manager ask in a job interview?

JC: How can I have more of a growth mindset and how can I manage myself? In addition to my management responsibilities.

Q: You're the father of three beautiful young girls. What is your favorite thing about being a girl dad?

JC: There are all these parts of their socialization process that just — as a male growing up — were never part of my life. For example, I never played with dolls. I never did ballet. And so I'm experiencing things for the first time with them.

And I have to participate because, like, I'm their dad. Yes!

Q: Are you pessimistic or optimistic about artificial intelligence?

JC: I try not to take a binary view of AI because it's the most significant technology created since the invention of the internet, and it's going to create a layer on top of our world — and we're going to inherit all the good and the bad.

"We need to approach problems the way that we've always approached them. But artificial intelligence needs to be part of that."

So I think that we need to approach problems the way that we've always approached them. But artificial intelligence needs to be part of that.

Q: What is your favorite or most used app on your phone?

JC: These days it's my stopwatch because I've been doing a lot of planks.

Q: If you could invite any three presidents, living or deceased, to a dinner party, who would they be?

JC: Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and James Garfield.

Q: What piece of advice that you've been given do you find yourself passing along to others more and more?

JC: I'll actually give you one from the book. It comes from Bush 43, because I thought I was writing a book about retirement — and I ended up writing a book about how to be introspective about life.

What's interesting is George W. Bush is the least introspective person I know. But this is very introspective advice, which is: We're obsessed with this idea of legacy, whether we say so explicitly or not.

"I want to wake up and do it all over again."

And he views it as a dirty word. He views it as a selfish word. This idea that we basically avoid the present for the future.

If you can just remind yourself how illogical that is over and over and over again, you'll end up enjoying your family, friends and work so much more now.

Honestly, ever since writing this book, I go to work and people ask me what I want to do next. And it's like, I work with really smart people, I work on interesting things. And I'm going to go to sleep tonight.

So what's next? I want to wake up and do it all over again.

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To read all of Dana Perino's earlier "Short Questions" interviews for Fox News Digital, check out this (long) list!

For her interview with William La Jeunesse, click here.

For her interview with Matt Finn, click here.

For her interview with Rich Edson, click here.

For her interview with Gov. Chris Sununu, click here.

For her interview with Ross Rayburn, click here.

For her interview with Mark Meredith, click here.

For her interview with Emily Compagno, click here.

For her interview with Chad Pergram, click here.

For her interview with Mike Emanuel, click here.