"Bill Gates"

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Don't miss your stop.

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just a regular walk.

Everybody who's at work.

Come on, Janet.

And for everyone else,

welcome to Smartless.

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Lattice. Smart.

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Oh, wait, I got a quick one.

I got a quick dad joke.

Here we go.

What kind of bees make milk?

Hmm.

Will? I don't know. Boobies.
Boo? Boobies. Boobies.
Yeah, I guess. Okay.
I'll go with it. Sure.
I think it's funny. Fuck, you wanted to say no so bad.
You wanted to say no. I wanted to say, no, that's not funny.
You have violated the pun law. All right.
Another dad joke, please. Sure.
Go ahead, Sean. My friend keeps saying, cheer up, man.
It could be worse. You could be stuck underground in a hole full of water.
I know he means well. Oh, I know he means well, right? Yeah.
I didn't hit it. No, no no no i know but you might need to for some of our listeners what about this one what about what about this uh did that did that italics the well in your book no no okay uh you know a good elevator joke works on so many levels sure ah he got me he got me nice reading come me.
Nice reading. Come on, that's good.
Okay. It's pretty good.
Guys, I've said it before and I'll say it again. We three fools are incredibly lucky at times on this show to be able to ask some questions and hear some answers from folks who wouldn't otherwise spend even a second with us.
Today is one of those days. Oh, I like that.
Our next guest is one of the most important people to have been born in our generation. He is responsible for some of the most transformative ideas, technologies, and events the world has ever known and probably ever will.
These discoveries, advancements, and innovations have made parts of our lives and the world around us far different than anyone could have even ever imagined just 40 years ago. His work has brought him enormous wealth, which is enabling him to once again change and help our planet and our lives in ways that are exciting, confusing, and in some ways, life-saving.
Please welcome Mr. Bill Gates.
Oh my gosh. Wow.
Okay. Yeah.
Hello, Mr. Gates.
Hey guys. Wow.
How lucky are we that we've got you now? This is so cool. We've got questions.
Yeah, we've got questions. First of all, it looks like you're sitting in a high chair.
I am. Oh.
Well, this is a guy who probably does. Well, I was going to say, the guy does a lot of podcasts.
I was thinking, why are you? I know you've got a very, thank God you've got a book coming out. I cannot wait to read it.
But is that the only reason you're talking to us dummies? I mean, you've got so much important stuff to do. It's true.
Sparing an hour for us is generous, but maybe foolish. It's relaxing.
So far. So we're not making you nervous at all.
That's good. So far.
Good. Jason, I also can't wait for you to not read his book.
But Bill Gates, welcome to the podcast. And I say that not because he won't be interested, just he barely knows how to read.
And I will say, it is so exciting having you here as somebody who has been responsible for not just innovations, but just the impact that what you have done over the years has been incredible. And not just in technology, et cetera, and really being on the cutting edge of that for years, but all the philanthropic work you've done.
I want to, I didn't know you were going to be here today, but I've been a big fan of your work in the philanthropic area. You've been a leader in that.
You've really set a tone. So I applaud you and I thank you.
And I wish more people would take your cue. Yeah.
Well, he's setting a great example. I think they will.
I hope they will. Yeah, we really do.
Are they? I mean, I know you did something. What is it called? The Giving Pledge.
Yeah. The Giving Pledge.
Yeah. I was just going to ask about that.
Exactly. Are men and women following along with that? Yeah, we have about 250 people who've made the commitment to give away the majority of their wealth.
And we get together and learn from each other because philanthropy is actually a little confusing. You don't have like a rating system or profit.
And it brings you into a new area.

And so we can inspire each other

and hopefully anybody who's got lots of money

feels like pitching in.

Yeah.

Yeah, and because wasn't it,

I think Warren Buffett said,

because if you can't figure out

how to live off of $500 million,

there's a problem.

Isn't that part of that pact?

That's right.

I think I read that somewhere.

I know, which is funny because I was thinking about writing him a letter and asking him if he'd give me 500 million to see if I could do that. Yeah, just a little experiment.
Do you know what I mean? As an experiment. So, Mr.
Gates, I'd like to ask you if it's possible, Jason. Sorry, I don't mean to hijack this, but- Be my guest.
I've got some questions here if you run out. I'm sure at risk of you having said this a million times before,

would you talk a little bit about the genesis of Microsoft?

Because I don't know if I've ever really heard a clear story of how it came to be,

how you had the idea for it, and how it came into fruition.

Yeah, I was super lucky.

My parents found me a little confusing.

Thank you. and how it came into fruition.
Yeah, I was super lucky. You know, my parents found me a little confusing

in terms of I was very good at some things

and not good at other things.

So they sent me to a private school,

and that school got a computer.

So when I was 13, I had my first exposure,

and I got kind of obsessed with figuring it out,

what it could do.

And so, even during high school, together with a friend, Paul Allen, I got thousands of hours of time learning how to write software. So, forgive me for interrupting, what year was that that you got first exposed to the computer? And where? That's 1968.
I'm up in Seattle, Washington at an excellent private school. And then Paul's reading, and he sees that a computer is going to be done on a chip, the microprocessor made by people like Intel, and that those chips are going to get twice as good every year or two.
And so I say to Paul that that's exponential improvement, that then computers will be almost free and they'll need a lot of software. We should do that software.
And he follows, when I go back to Harvard, because my parents wanted me to go to college, he follows me there to kind of bug me and say, well, this revolution is going to happen. Let's get going.
And finally, when the first personal computer comes out in late 1974, I drop out and Paul and I found the company. And you told Steve Ballmer to stay behind, finish his education because you're going to need him later.
Yeah, in fact, he shows up about four years into the company, and he's the other person who plays an unbelievable role. I did manage to catch him in the middle of business school, so I got him to drop out of business school.
There you go. So you see these computers in sort of the late 60s that you're first exposed to are, by comparison, of, to today, but maybe even to the computers in the mid-70s, rudimentary at best probably? Yeah, also very expensive.
And so, you know, we only big companies and the government have them. And so we would have to sneak in at night to get access.
And, you know, we kept saying to people, these things are going to be cheap, but they didn't, you know, they didn't agree. And so we got to be the very first people.
And then you have people like Steve Jobs at Apple, where they're doing the hardware, the Apple II, and we're doing the software. So the Apple computer came with our software.
Oh, it did. Yeah, and was it, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I, for some reason, always thought that one of the major things for small brains like me that really was like, oh, because I remember computers, there was the coding thing, and then all of a sudden one day there was, I think it was Windows, which was just point and click stuff.
And it was like, oh, this is a whole different thing. Was that not you, Mr.
Gates? Yes, absolutely. So the idea of the graphics interface where you use images, not just characters, that's pioneered at Xerox, which made a lot of money on copying machines.
And they didn't manage to make a good product. So it's actually Apple with the Macintosh and Microsoft with Windows that takes this idea of graphics interface and takes it to the masses.
And, you know, now everybody knows that's, you know, the way you use computers. You just point and click.
But what we don't know is that what you're pointing on underneath that is a bunch of code that you're activating when you hit a click. Yeah, it's actually pretty complicated underneath, which is why we had to hire lots of smart engineers and write a lot of code.
But I will say, I kind of have two questions, which is, A, so you learn on these rudimentary huge computers that are only the government and, you know, educational institutions have, et cetera. So then, so you and Paul Allen realized that, okay, this is the future.
Are there people who can teach you how to do the stuff you did, or did you have to figure a lot of that stuff out yourselves as you were going? We pretty much had to figure it out. I mean, we did hire a few adults, you know, who knew things like finance and accounting.
But because we were at the forefront of a revolution, you know, this idea of, okay, how do you manage these people? How do you price this stuff? You know, we, and we decided we'd sell all over the world. So I have to build a team in Japan and Europe and deal with all the languages.
I have to say it was super fun. And because we were right, these computers got so popular, you know, we made enough money.
We just kept hiring more and more people and eventually built Windows and Office, you know, which had Excel spreadsheet and Microsoft Word and those became... I remember all that, yeah, yeah.
So by the late 90s, we are doing well and it's kind of a standard way that people use personal computers. Yeah, I was...
on that last little bit of the code stuff, and you touched on that, so that Apple products came with your software built in, and then you guys split, and it became kind of like the, and forgive me for the comparison, it became like the VHS Betamax. It was either or.
It was like you either did this or you did that. Was there ever a discussion between you and Steve Jobs about, hey, let's continue in this partnership using your, et cetera, et cetera? Did you guys, or was there a moment that you split? Because we're always pure software, the only competition is that they, Apple does its own operating system, which competes with Windows.
But we write software on the Macintosh. In fact, we had as many people as Steve Jobs did when he's doing the Macintosh, because we do our word processor, we do our spreadsheet.
And it was amazing because, you know, Steve did the Mac. That was wonderful.
Then he leaves Apple. Apple's being very mismanaged.
When he comes back, I reach a deal with him where we actually invest in Apple and commit to do our software. And then he runs that company so well that going from the verge of failure,

it actually becomes the most valuable company in the world, even slightly more valuable than Microsoft. That's amazing.
So, we ended up working together. And then in the last few years when he

was sick, we got to reflect on our lives and talk to each other quite a bit. We were kind of

competitors. I mean, he would criticize Windows pretty brutally, but that's okay.
But his skill set, which was kind of design and user interface, he was not an engineer. And so my skill is very much as an engineer.
So we appreciated each other. Was there a lot of competition though? There had to be, when you're sitting in your garage or wherever you were with Paul, designing this and coming up with this and all that stuff, back then you didn't have the, people didn't know what you were doing, right? Everybody knows what everybody's doing now.
And so you had this kind of secrecy so you could protect yourself. But as it grew and became the thing that it became, how do you protect yourself and how did you protect yourself from competitors? And was Apple the only competitor? Because Microsoft wasn't about any one piece of software, not just Windows, not just Office, we were doing Xbox, which had games.
We thought of ourselves as a software factory, and we wanted to be faster than anyone else and have lower-priced software than anyone else. And so the other people doing software found it pretty intimidating that we moved at that speed.
and that's why when Steve does the Macintosh, he comes to us and say, hey, are you willing to bet on this? Can we work on this together? It got quite competitive. Eventually, other great companies like Google come along, and they're also very good at hiring smart people.
And there's been room. If you think of what are the most valuable companies in the world today, it's all these companies that ushered in this digital revolution.
Right. Yeah, I was going to say, because now you have, instead of Google, Microsoft, and Apple, you have 200 AI companies now because people see the future much more quickly now than they did then.
Sean, tell Mr. Gates, you're an Ask Jeeves guy, right? Like that's been your whole...
Yeah, an Ask Jeeves. Mr.
Gates, do you remember having conversations with Paul or Steve or any of your contemporaries at the time? Do you remember sitting there having conversations with them and allow yourself the imagination for what the future could bring? And were there any things that were worrisome or exciting like you hear about the conversations that are happening now regarding AI, where we're kind of on the doorstep of another big move. Do you remember having those concerns back then? Were there any? Yeah, so the digital revolution with PCs and internet, we thought of as very empowering.
And so you could say we were kind of naive in thinking this was all good. In fact, when we worried, we were worried about what we call the digital divide, that having access was so valuable that we should make sure that schools in the inner city and poor countries had the internet and the PC.
It's only when social networking comes along that this kind of, oh, isn't it always for the good to give people new capabilities, we realized, wow, you know, the social criticism, the waste of time that in some ways we were playing to human weaknesses that you seek out outrage and that kind of can drive people apart. Yeah.
And now, you know, that we've seen that those advances aren't always good. Now with AI, which is far more powerful than social network, we're going, wow, how do we shape this thing to get the good, which is definitely there, but avoid the bad stuff? And it's a little bit scary right now.
Well, a little bit of trying to put the genie back in the bottle, A, unfortunately, with the social networks and also just with phones in general and their impacts. You know, as a father of three boys under the age of 16 and younger, I would ask you, and I know your kids are a little bit older, and look, I don't like answering hypothetical questions myself, but I'm going to ask you a hypothetical, which is, and feel free to not answer it, if your kids were teenagers, again, if they were adolescents, if they were 11, 12, 13, 14, would you let them have access to social media? Yeah, my youngest, I stopped her from having a cell phone until she was 14.
And she was quite upset because the other kids had access. It works a lot better if groups of parents or even the school come in and saying, hey, during the school day, this is pretty distracting.
And Australia is now trying to pass a set of rules. You know, there's a book by Jonathan Haidt called The Anxious Generation.
Yeah, we've read it. I've read it.
Okay, good, good. You know, and his point that we're kind of overprotecting kids in the real world and underprotecting them in the digital world, I think he's got a's got a super good point there and we, we've got to step up on that.
I took his advice and I said to my boys, to my teenage boys, I said, I will, I will give you a lot of freedoms in the real world that are commensurate with your reduction in, in your time in the digital world. And I will give you much more leeway to do stuff and spend time in real time and give you a later curfew on the weekend, you know, sort of 1130, if you will, or whatever that is, if you guys, if I see a market reduction in your time online.
But what I dream about, this is what I'm getting to, what I dream of is six months of no social media on this planet. And what would that do in a sort of a social, in a reset?

Imagine a world where we didn't have that.

I personally think that we would be in a much better place.

Yeah, it's, when you see how polarized we are and that, you know, even I, if there's

some article criticizing somebody I don't like, I'm like, oh, yeah, I want to be outraged

Thank you. But, you know, even I, if there's some article criticizing somebody I don't like, I'm like, oh, yeah, I want to be outraged against the people I think have shortcomings.
And so, you know, you want an algorithm that brings us together. And, you know, maybe a moratorium would help us get there.
Yeah. And we will be right back.
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So one of my things that I'm trying this year, really trying hard, is to wake up earlier.

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My, you know, as a kid who grew up in the 70s, as a Gen Xer, you know, your rise and your significance in the world coincided with sort of my teenage years and understanding that kind of thing. And it felt like the first time that we had things like the, you know,

the fortune list or the Forbes or the richest people in the world.

And your name was in and out of the top of that for many, many years.

And I can't imagine just how absurd that must be on a certain level.

Did you have those moments of like, not even pinch me, but of like, is this me?

It feels almost abstract. How bizarre.
Did you have that at all? Or just leave me alone. Well, it's definitely wild.
You know, at a young age, you know, I was in my 30s when I become the richest person. And my parents, fortunately, you know, their values helped anchor me and they were always saying, okay, you know, to whom much is given, much is expected.
You know, so I did start in my 40s to really study philanthropy, you know, Rockefeller, Carnegie,

what had they done,

and try and figure out, you know,

could I be as careful about giving it back?

And then in my 50s, I retired from Microsoft

and moved over to do foundation work full-time.

But yes, it's bizarre.

Having close friends who really know you,

who can laugh about your success, I think, you know, does help keep you grounded. That transition to philanthropy, I'm sure there are many parts of it that are even more complicated than your life beforehand.
Many, many challenges. Can you speak about those? I'm sure there's a lot of it that is much more enjoyable too, probably most of it.
How is that feeling, that transition? Well, I loved being an individual contributor in my 20s and then managing Microsoft in my 30s, where you're just very hands-on and you can say, my product is selling well, or this one is not. How do we fix that? And so it's a real switch, you know, where you're not having that immediate market feedback to go and say, hey, why do children die? How many children die? Can we reduce that? And then I had to learn about poor countries and vaccines.
But I have to say it's been as fulfilling.

In the turn of the century, we have 10 million children dying every year. And because we got out new vaccines and worked with partners, that's now down below 5 million a year.
Wow. And if we keep doing our work well, including governments caring about poor countries, we can cut that in half again to two and a half million.
Sorry, have you found a way to make it an attractive idea for countries to come on and partner with you that goes beyond just the obvious ethical and moral pull of it? Is there a GDP component that you can dangle in front of some of these more capitalistic-minded countries that get them to the table a little bit better? Yeah, that's a super good point. Of you know, we, of course, the moral argument of the

golden rule, you know, helping people everywhere is our strongest argument, but that alone isn't going to get us there. You know, we had some of the generals in the U.S.
Army saying, hey, if you don't help these countries out, then we'll have to go to war and, you know, you'll have to increase our budget.

So that the foreign aid budget, by creating stability, it avoids the awful war.

And also, you know, if you lift people up economically, like Asia today, you know, buys

a lot of American stuff, movies, drugs, jets, software, you know, you name it.

So our mutual success, you mutual success has been amazing. The two countries we defeat in World War II were generous enough to them that they become the second and third biggest economy.
And we engage in mutually beneficial trade. Japan shows us how to make quality products.
And now we want to extend that, you know, and get, you know, Asia's doing well. India's getting rich and eventually they don't need aid if you help them out.
And so you only have mostly countries in Africa that still really deserve this kind of support. Are you finding that you're having the same kind of messaging, language success as you try to encourage them to come along with environmental adjustments as well, that it's mutually beneficial from a business standpoint, et cetera? Yeah, so environmentally, a lot of these port countries are very beautiful and we all have to deal with climate with climate change.
Sadly, it's these African countries that didn't contribute to that problem at all because they're outdoor farmers near the equator. They're the ones that are suffering the most.
The countries we need to really change their emissions are these middle-income countries, So China, Brazil, now India. And they expect us to help them by inventing really inexpensive ways to go green.
And so the biggest hope for the environmental stuff is innovation. If the green stuff is really expensive, even the rich countries are kind of saying, hey, don't make me buy an electric car if it costs more.
Don't make me buy an electric heat pump. And so, you know, it's going to have to be all of us saying we're in this together, it's one planet, but also a lot of innovation because nobody can agree if it's expensive, who should pay for it.
Right. A friend of mine who's sort of a friend of ours, a friend of the show, Willie, our buddy, he mentioned that with this big round of deregulation that supposedly is on its way, that there may be a good spin to it in that the amount of innovation that is needed to really make a big move in an environment, a part of that, it's necessary for private to be spending money there as well as just federal money.
And so by deregulating, you give those companies more money to spend in R&D for these environmental things. Is that just spin for the business sector? And I'll let you guess what business he's in.
He's a great guy. What do we think about that? Is that spin or is there some validity to that? No, there's definitely some validity.
For example, if you want to build an electricity transmission line, you often have to go through almost a decade of approvals. And of course, that line, if anybody blocks it, then it doesn't work at all.
And so, we need to have more collective action as we try and change, you know, move away from coal, electricity to other things, which is sun and wind and nuclear and a variety of things. We don't want to get rid of all the regulations because part of the reason the U.S.
is so beautiful, we've preserved lands, we've cleaned up our waters better than any other country. But it is absolutely fair to say that many of these environmental reviews are delaying projects that we need in order to solve climate change.
Gotcha. So government could get out of the way a little bit because we've got to work fast, right? But not completely? Yes.
So we're going to have to strike that balance. Well, it's so hard not to be cynical when you have things like, and you were just touching on the idea, Jason, it was partly baked in your question, which is this, that, yeah, of course, there is what you called the ethical or moral pull, but it always comes down to economics, right? Sadly, it's the driver of everything.
It's like when the government went to war on the cigarette companies. It wasn't because they wanted us to stop smoking.
It's because they didn't want to pay for people who were sick, unfortunately. It's got to be a win-win.
Ultimately, otherwise, they couldn't care less. And I think that there is a societal issue in America.
Mr. Gates, I haven't revealed this to you yet.
I'm Canadian by birth. Oh.
So, and I'm sorry to drop it on you like that. We had a reveal party earlier.
But, you know, I think that there is a societal, there are some societal issues. And I am American as well.
And I've lived here for a number of years. And I love this country.
I truly, truly do. And my children are all American.
It's an incredible experience. But I do think that there are some issues societally in this country that come up that have to do with that.
Unfortunately, and I know that, look, I'm not naive, but unfortunately a lot of things in this country are driven by people wanting to, what's theirs? And there isn't this idea that we're only as strong as our weakest link. It just, and if anything, it keeps getting reinforced in different ways in elections, et cetera, in the way that you look at, California should have buried power lines.
There's no question about it, but nobody wants to pay for that kind of thing. And so there are all sorts of things like that, and people just won't do it.
And I don't know how we can change minds in this country, but it is strange. And people will vote against their self-interest in this country in ways that are staggering.
And I'm giving you all these big picture things because I imagine, Mr. Gates, these are the kinds of things that you think about because you're dealing in macro.
Am I right with that? No, absolutely. When I think about the health system or climate, we've got to solve these problems.
we saw that when we weren't ready for the pandemic, millions of people died who shouldn't have died. Yeah.
Go ahead, Sean. I was just saying, I love all the, talking about medicine, I love all the medical things you're doing.
Do I call you Bill? Do I call you Mr. Gates? Sure, Bill's fantastic.
Okay, William. It's a great name, Bill.
I do think you should keep it. It is a been thinking about it is a great day trey we can call you trey trey that was my nickname yeah my family still calls me that because my dad was built right why where'd you get trey the third because this is the third trey is the third oh hey so hey trey i love all the medical things you're involved with.
So, what's your favorite one you're working on? And how has being around all the innovation of this medical world that you're involved with changed the way you live your life, whether that's food, diet, or whatever it is that we don't know about? We're learning a lot. We've learned that sleep is that sleep is very important.
On nutrition, you know, we're still kind of confused about other than eating too many calories, what counts? You know, the work of our foundation is very focused on the diseases that are still huge in poor countries. So HIV, malaria, you know, we literally still have polio out there, even though we got rid of it in the US and kids aren't dying and being paralyzed.
But we're down to just a few countries. And so the only disease we've ever gotten rid of is smallpox.
And now polio is very close to being the second on that list. So I put a lot of effort into that.
With HIV, you've got a million Americans living with it, 40 million worldwide. We'd like to make it so we can actually cure it rather than you having to take medicine the rest of your life.
Yeah. And so we're making good progress on that.
Is there any truth to the fact, because I hear like they actually, you know, you hear these conspiracies that there actually is a cure for HIV or there is a cure for all these things, but they suppress it because there's too much money in pharmaceuticals. No, I wish that was true because then I would take the cure and, you know.
Give it to everybody. Right, exactly.
Do you know about this? Gosh, now it just occurred to me now that you're're here, I'm going to call you Bill as well, if that's okay. Good.
Bill, I know, because I've been reading online and a lot of people from their basement say that you're putting chips in our brain, which is amazing. I love when people, when I hear that, and my answer to that is always, to what end? Yeah, I know.
Like, why do you want to sign my head? Yeah, exactly. Anytime I hear somebody say the government, I'm like, all right, we're done.
Right? But do you hear any of that? Does it make its way to you? Do you laugh about it sometimes? Does it alarm you when you hear these people saying, Bill Gates is trying to put a chip into everybody's brain? Yeah, well, I've had people come up to me on the street and yell at me that, you know, why am I tracking them? And I look at them like, but why are you? What am I going to do with that information? You know, so you do have to laugh about it, but it's also at the same time tragic that millions who would have been saved by the COVID vaccine stayed away from it because of all the online misinformation that they were faced with. And, you know, whenever you get a pandemic saying, oh, there must be some evil genius behind this, that's not very adaptive.
Right. And we're not really ready for the next pandemic, which will come.
Hard to say when it's going to come. But I thought that would make vaccines more popular.
Yeah. Unbelievable.
And so there's some work to be done here. So, Bill, with all the AI stuff that's being talked about, and I'm sure if you're like me, you get to kind of tune out a bit because there's so much of it.
Is there, well, I'm sure there's many parts. What's the most promising use of AI that you can see coming soon? I'm sure it's going to fix a lot of things, but is there something that might be on the doorstep that you can talk about? Well, I'd say the most promising work is health and education.
Even today, if you get like a set of blood tests back or an MRI test back, you know, or you get a confusing medical bill, you really should stick it in the AI and say, explain this to me like a sixth grader, because it is so good at doing that. Okay.
And so— God, I'd use it all the time. Helping people with medical things.
And then in education, having a personal tutor that gets what you're confused about the level that you're at and knows how to encourage you, you know, whether it's in math or writing papers. And, you know, it's early days and it's being rolled out.
And this will not only be profound for the United States, but in Africa, you know, we have fewer teachers and doctors than anywhere in the world. And so a chance for us to give them access to the kind of health that we take for granted.
AI, in those two domains, we should push forward, get the accuracy up, and really surprise people by improving the health system a lot. And this question is coming from a person who has no idea how research and development happens in medical science.
But I think that you get an idea, then you got to run it through a modeling thing and you got to test it all out. But am I right in assuming that AI can make this much, much faster such that we can track down maybe what the right equation is to fix cancer or any other of these incredibly damaging things that maybe that the process of elimination can happen much faster where we can reasonably expect to have some cures for some of these uncurable things perhaps in our lifetime? Absolutely.
And, you know, medicine has made

a lot of progress. I mean, heart disease is way down, you know, cancer, we have a lot of things

in the pipeline, but AI is going to accelerate all of that. Great.
You know, I work in Alzheimer's

and there's some great tools coming along because nobody should want to have that. And even with HIV, this idea of the cure, the fact we can get it out maybe in four years instead of eight, we'll use AI to help accelerate that.
That's amazing. We'll be right back.
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Our show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey guys, everybody should have a support system, right? Who's your support system? My support system, as you well know, talk about all the time, is Scotty.
And of course, my two besties, Will and Jason. Whenever I have a problem, an issue, I talk to them about it.
And if they're not available, I will talk to a therapist. And I've been going to therapy for a long time and it's always great.
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And back to the show. Your mom was really influential with you for sort of planting this early seed of philanthropy and giving back and using what you're given in the right way.
Is that correct? Do you want to speak about that at all? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you see your parents behave, that's more influential than what your parents say.
Right. And so they, you know, volunteered in the community.
They gave what they could. And then as my mom saw— She was big in the United Way, yes? Exactly.
She put a lot of her time into that, both in our city but also at the federal level. Wow.
So she was always telling me, okay, you've got to run a United Way campaign and get back. Sadly, she died pretty young, about 30 years ago.
And it was my dad who actually, when I was still full-time at Microsoft, ran the foundation and got it going for the first 10 years and kind of set the culture in a very positive way. So he did get to see and participate in all you know, all those dictates that go back to my childhood.
Are your kids being as observational as you were and benefiting from it like you did? Yeah, no, well, my kids, you know, are both lucky, although being a child of somebody well-known, you know, I'm sure your kids experienced some of it. It's got a lot of pluses, but some minuses as well.
But are they following your great example, I guess is my question. Well, I'm giving them as a percentage of the wealth, a pretty small percentage.
I mean, in absolute, it's a lot. And I do believe that they'll have their own careers and they'll be very generous with what they're doing.
But I didn't decide that we would take, you know, that wealth and pass it down. You know, 95% goes out through the foundation.
And yet, you know, I'm super happy with how hard they work and their values. You know, my wife, Melinda, did a great job raising the kids, and it's worked out well.
Yeah, amazing. What about, I want to know, like, about that gut probe in a pill.
Like, you just eat a pill. Like, describe that to me, because I just read headlines about it.
I didn't really know anything about it. What is that technology, and what is it used for? Probe in.
Yeah, like you eat a pill and it probes your guts. Oh boy.
Yeah, so digestion is super complicated and that's why these nutritional fads come along and the New Yorker cartoon said, you better adopt this new nutritional fad quickly before they prove it doesn't work. And what happens is that in your gut, there's a lot of bacteria they call the microbiome.
And we're just now, as you swallow this capsule and it absorbs all of those bacteria, we see what's going on. We finally understand what's going on.
And so our foundation works on malnutrition. These big pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly work on overnutrition.
And it turns out that we work together on the research because the same complex circuitry that allows poor kids to be malnourished. In the U.S., we have, you know, horrible levels of childhood obesity.
And so as we're learning that, new drugs like these GLP-1 obesity drugs that as they get cheaper are going to have a profound effect, that's the type of innovation coming out. And yet, we didn't understand that until very recently.
But we but we had, and Sean's still mourning the, you know, the new ban on red dye number three, because it's such a staple in his diet, as you can probably tell. He can't identify the cherry and the strawberry flavor stuff.
His brain is basically liquefied. But I will say, you know, you talk about that in this, about obesity, childhood obesity.
What is it? What is the difference in this country? Again, it sounds like I've been attacking this country. I'm really not.
I just, I'm curious about things like, about childhood obesity compared to other countries and the nutrition and things that are allowed. Like, you know, you've seen those things where they compare a product that is the same, but that's sold here and then sold in the UK.
And the list of ingredients is like double in this country with additives and preservers, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, is that a massive problem or no? Almost certainly not.
Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, our kids sit in front of the TV more than any other kids.
So lack of activity alone explains most of this. Wow.
And, you know, sadly, when your parents are obese, the likelihood that you'll be obese goes up pretty dramatically. And so the U.S., in many respects, drug addiction, obesity, we're, you could say, as the world's richest country, all the problems of being rich are worse in the U.S.
than they are anywhere else. Yeah, for sure.
We're also the most innovative, though, and that's why I'm not a pessimist at all. I do think...
Wait, so it's just apathy? Is that what it is? No, your TV shows are too entertaining. Oh, okay.
Exactly. It's all your fault.
Not mine. Not mine.
What are you excited for? What are you excited for the next five years? Sorry, Sean. No, that's good.
I just had one question about another issue. But yeah, sorry.

Well, right before that,

but I do want to get to that.

I'm really passionate about this

because of the fires that just happened,

because of the constant droughts in California.

And we talked to Kamala Harris about this

like three, four years ago

when she was the senator in California.

It's like most of the earth is water.

And so when there's a shortage of water,

I'm like, how can we not figure out

how to desalinate water? And people say it's too expensive. Well, it's more expensive to not figure it out.
And so what are your thoughts about that? And do you have any kind of desire to be in that world? Yeah, so I'm very involved in that because, you know, we have to both do climate mitigation and climate adaptation. And adaptation, a part of that's dealing with water shortages and more difficult weather.
It takes a certain amount of energy to desalinate water. And so only by bringing the cost of energy down with things like solar or perhaps nuclear fission or fusion, then you get more water availability.
80% of water is used for agriculture. So you can afford to desalinate water for human consumption.
You can't really afford to do it for agriculture, so you have to end up moving your farms to the places where there's enough water. You don't want to pay to desalinate just to grow.
Unless you do, unless we figure out a way to do it. Unless you do.
And people like, sadly, Jason Maiman, who obviously with his almond consumption has been destroying the planet. It's unbelievable the amount of water that goes to every one of your precious objects that you just carelessly stuff in your mouth.
But, Bill, what is that? I was going to ask you about what you're excited about the next five years. What are we going to do about energy sources going forward? What can we do? Have we reached peak oil? What are we going to do with fossil fuels? Can we keep it going in this direction? What do you think about that? Well, I'm very hopeful that between expanding wind and solar and getting both types of nuclear, nuclear fission and fusion, to get safer and cheaper, that even with all this demand for energy, like electric cars or electric heat pumps, AI data centers, that we'll be able to get ahead of that and still have cheap electricity, even though we'll get rid of all of the terrible CO2 emissions.
So we are going to have to transition away from coal and natural gas in the decades ahead. And that's going to be a painful transition, I imagine.
Not if we innovate the cost of these other things down. You know, electric cars are getting cheaper.
Eventually, you do get to the point where the substitute is as cheap as the dirty thing was. And in the long run, that's what we need to do so that we get global adoption of green approaches.
Well, but educate me if you would to the extent that you know. You know, if you get an electric car and you get all these people who get them and they're great.
And then some people like to virtue signal with them and shame other people. But the components, so many of the components that go into the car are, you know, petroleum-based, whether it's the actual components themselves or traveling those cars to their destinations or across oceans and stuff, right? You know about all this.
Is there any way that we can mitigate all of those other things as well so that we're not relying on petroleum for everything? You know, absolutely. And we measure that.
You know, anybody who buys an electric car, as you say, it's not zero emissions, but it is dramatically less than a gasoline car. And we're learning to make the batteries using less energy and less environmental things, like new ways of finding lithium.
And so the accounting on, okay, you know, how do we have the most environmentally clean car? We're doing a very good job tracking that. And consumers who help create demand for electric vehicles, they deserve a little bit a sense of virtue because the more we buy, the down and the more we- I agree.
I was playing, obviously, but I do agree. I do agree.
Bill, what's the rest of your day look like? What are your, is your average day- I'm firing the person who told him to do this. Is your average day split 50-50 between sort of personal pleasure, silly stuff, and also saving the world with the other half? Or I'll bet the ratio is not 50-50.
But do you get a little time to be stupid doing something? And if so, what is it? I do. In my 20s, I was monomaniacal in my work.
But now, although I work 50 hours of work a week and travel a lot, I play a fair bit of tennis. I play a lot of pickleball.
I love reading. I love, you know, TV shows that you guys have made.
That's super fun. A little bit of golf? No, I'm not doing much golf.
I like tennis and pickleball because slightly better exercise. Yeah, sure, sure.
Gotcha. What is the one thing that you know how to do that everyone would be kind of surprised about? Do you have like a little hobby? Like, are you a great, like, drawer? Do you cook? Yeah.
Like, are you a knitter? Is there anything that's sort of a sneaky little talent that people might be surprised about? Like, are you a great whistler, you know? Yeah, nice. That's pretty good.
That qualifies. On cue, on cue, not bad.
I'm good at sleeping on planes. Oh, that's a great talent.
That is a great talent. Now, are you a savory or a sweet person? Do you have a sweet tooth? Yeah.
No, I try and not have too much peanut brittle around because I would eat anything that's around. Wow.
Sugar is a bad deal for me. Very dangerous.
Well, it's good that you're not too distracted with silly things because we need you there on the stick doing whatever you are doing and what you will continue to do, we hope. So thank you so much for what you've done, what you're going to do, and thank you for spending an hour with us.
Yeah. That was fun.
Thanks, you guys. Honored to meet you.
What an absolute thrill. Thank you so much for your time.
So cool. Thanks, Bill.
Thank you, Bill. Thank you.
Enjoy the rest of your day. All right.
Thank you, sir. See you, buddy.
Bye-bye. Bye, pal.

I felt like I was a real blowhard today.

I'm sorry.

You have a lot of opinions,

and they're good opinions. This is a talk show.

I felt very blowhardy.

I'm so sorry.

Well, you know what?

You get somebody like that on the show,

and you want to talk about all the stuff

that is complicated.

Big stuff.

I want them to answer big questions.

I know, I get that.

Big macro questions.

I get that. How can we save it? Is there any way that we can change opinion in the world? Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.
It's almost like everybody's looking, to your point, Will, it's like everybody's looking for that guy who has all the answers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I mean, I wanted to ask him, like people like that, do you have perspective about being one of the people that changed the fucking world? No, I know. Like there's like 10 or 20 people like Einstein and him and like Steve Jobs.
He and I are like on a short list of people. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Back up, back up, back up. I agree.
No, I'm saying what you're saying, dude. Well, the number of smiles that Will has created as opposed to computers.
He and I, yeah, dude, I'm making your point for you that Will and I have changed. He's got to like, talk about like, you know, when you get to the end of your life, and like we've talked about it before, you know, did I use my years right? Like this guy, I mean, I'm sure some people have issues with him, like with everybody, but my goodness, the amount of effect he has set over this world.
And he's still doing it. I know, I know he.
The other thing that I'm excited about, you know, his book, he's got this new book coming out that's, you know, about like how this all started for him, how his brain started going and how he got excited. Was it a biography? Yes, I believe so.
Yeah, it's called Source Code. It comes out February.
But yeah, hopefully there's an audio portion of it that I can listen to over and over again. Oh no, JB, no.
Yeah, I still don't get it. I'm going to come read it to you.
It's left to right, top to bottom, right? You don't know what you're missing. I just had such a good read.
Oh God, you don't know what you guys. It would give you so many more references.
You'd be so much more interesting. No wonder you're so bland.
You have nothing in there. Wait, did recording or are we still rolling? No, this is part of the show.
Source Code is the book. Go out and read it.
Because all the profits are going to go to not his pocket, something really good. I should know this, but it's all for charity.
That's great. As most everything he does.
Exactly. That's so cool.
Source code. I also love the work that I want to get more into the...
Oh, here we go. Jesus Christ.
You couldn't even fucking get... I want to get into the biotechnology.
The biotechnology. Why? Why, Sean? Into the biotechnology.
It is exciting. Bio.

Bio.

Smart.

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Smart.

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