Why Women Still Struggle for Real Power — with Melinda French Gates

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Speaker 12 Episode 345. 345 is the area code belonging to the Cayman Islands.
In 1945, the first microwave oven was invented. I like my girlfriends like my microwaves.

Speaker 12 Cool on the outside, hot on the inside, and kills every baby I put in them.

Speaker 12 Oh, that was wrong.

Speaker 12 That was so wrong.

Speaker 12 Go, go, go!

Speaker 12 Welcome to the 345th episode of the PropjuPod. Everyone is freaking out at that joke.
Is this the end? If we're going to go down, let's go down with all guns blazing. All right, what's happening?

Speaker 12 I am back in London, and it feels alien because the sun is out. It hit 62 degrees today.

Speaker 12 We have a fantastic episode today. We speak with Melinda French Gates, a philanthropist, businesswoman, and global advocate for women and girls.
Probably the wrong joke for that.

Speaker 12 Anyways, we discuss with Melinda her new book, The Next Day, Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward, we also get into her philanthropic efforts, what she learned from raising a son, and why women still face barriers to claiming real power today.

Speaker 12 So, with that, here's our conversation with Melinda French Getz.

Speaker 12 Melinda, where does this podcast find you?

Speaker 13 In Seattle.

Speaker 12 Seattle, that would make sense.

Speaker 13 Yeah, home for me.

Speaker 12 Home for you? What percentage of your time do you spend there? And what's your second favorite place?

Speaker 13 I'm probably half the time in Seattle. And my second favorite place is being with my granddaughter somewhere on the East Coast, New York or Florida.

Speaker 12 Oh, that's nice. Where in Florida?

Speaker 13 They're down in the sort of Palm Beach area, but inland from that.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I have a home in Delray Beach. I really enjoy it down there, and I miss it.

Speaker 12 So let's bust right into it. In the opening of your new book, The Next Day, you write that you've organized a book around transitions that were formative in your life.

Speaker 12 You mentioned leaving home, becoming a parent, losing a friend, ending your marriage, and leaving the Gates Foundation.

Speaker 12 Walk us through, if you can, each of these pivotal moments and highlight some of the key insights.

Speaker 13 Well, I wrote this book because I think, you know, we all go through transitions in life. And I'm very honest in the book that I've turned 60.
And so by now, I've gone through lots of transitions.

Speaker 13 As you said, leaving home for me, that one was really exciting to go to college. But then I got there.
And as I describe in the book, I felt like a fish out of water as a woman in computer science.

Speaker 13 And I had to adjust to that. I talk about joining Microsoft.
That was, again, a very exciting time in the computer industry. I loved it.
But again, I was, there weren't very many technical women.

Speaker 13 I leave my career to start raising my children, knowing I would go back, but that was an enormous transition for me to leave the workforce and raise children.

Speaker 13 And then, you know, we started the Gates Foundation and I chose to leave that last year and strike out on my own in philanthropy.

Speaker 13 So big, big transitions, some exhilarating, some scary, but I think they're things we learn and we gain resilience by going through lots of transitions.

Speaker 12 So obviously you're playing at an entirely different altitude, but my family is blessed with a certain level of economic security and I constantly get questions around how do you maintain your children's grit?

Speaker 12 And the answer is, I'm not sure we have.

Speaker 12 You obviously, your kids, I would imagine this is an issue that

Speaker 12 you face. How do you try and instill a certain level of values and grit and an appreciation for work in your kids, given obviously the extraordinary opportunities and privilege they have?

Speaker 13 Sure. And my three children are all now adults, ages 22, 25, and 28.
But what I would say is I was incredibly purposeful about it from the day day they were born.

Speaker 13 And I knew they were being born into a life of incredible privilege. But I grew up in a middle-class family.

Speaker 13 And I knew that if I could instill those values and make our life as normal as I could for them and constantly live out my values in the home and through the work we were doing in the world and bring the work home and talk about it around the dinner table as well as I took them out on age-appropriate field trips.

Speaker 13 Even when they were very young, we went and visited places around Seattle that they could give their time.

Speaker 13 And eventually when they were old enough, I took them to pretty rough places in Africa because so they could see that Seattle was one pinprick on the globe.

Speaker 13 And that if you have some level of wealth and privilege, there is something you can do with your life to give back.

Speaker 13 And I believe that's true for everybody who's born in the United States, no matter what their wealth income, you have time and energy and talents and sometimes even money to give back.

Speaker 12 So in addition to taking them and exposing them to people who aren't less fortunate, did you have any more pedestrian tactics like chores or athletics, anything like that?

Speaker 13 Absolutely. First of all, I felt like my kids should not be homeschooled.

Speaker 13 They should be in a school environment so that we were working through all the issues that kids work through with their peers and that I needed to work through with other parents.

Speaker 13 We absolutely had had chores. They had an allowance, and we had an agreement about their allowance.
They got it weekly. It wasn't for specific chores.

Speaker 13 It was for it was an allowance, but they were expected to do their chores. And the agreement I had with them is that became their budget for buying clothing, for buying things they wanted.

Speaker 13 Anything else went on their Christmas wish list or their birthday wish list from our extended family.

Speaker 13 And the other agreement I had with them is because of who we

Speaker 13 neither they nor I were ever allowed to tell how much it was per week because everybody would have an opinion. Oh, that's all the gates kids gets or, oh my gosh, that's so much money that they get.

Speaker 13 But it turned,

Speaker 13 I think it taught them to budget early and learn the value of money.

Speaker 12 One of the things or I think one of the reasons or common themes through the accolades or the positive reception of your book is that you are pretty strikingly vulnerable and raw and out there with pretty sensitive topics.

Speaker 12 When you read memoirs, quite frankly, you're usually reading kind of the starched version of their life written by someone else, that they're the hero in everything and everything's for the better and ends well, and there's some life lesson in it.

Speaker 12 And you seem pretty vulnerable in it. You talk a lot about dealing with panic attacks and anxiety.

Speaker 12 We are raising a generation of people who are suffering more from anxiety or greater levels of anxiety than any previous generation.

Speaker 12 You have kids, you've struggled or been open about your struggles with anxiety. What advice can you give to young people who might be struggling with anxiety?

Speaker 13 Pretty much every human being has anxiety at some level.

Speaker 13 And I know many business leaders that I have been around, I'll say many of them male or even prime ministers.

Speaker 13 I was practicing backstage for something and I saw this prime minister going into a Q ⁇ A session and he was practicing with his team because he knew there were going to be anxiety-provoking questions.

Speaker 13 And the only reason I even say that is

Speaker 13 because I think we have to realize all of us deal with it at some level.

Speaker 13 And the more we can be honest about it and bring it forward and name it and then reach for support and other people and resources, the more we can overcome it.

Speaker 13 And partly you do have to lean forward into it.

Speaker 13 I often say to to myself in the back of my mind, and I've said this to my three children, both when they were in middle school, high school, and now adults, just when anxiety makes you feel like you want to fall backwards, as soon as you start to feel that falling backwards, you have to push yourself to lean forward and say, what can I do in this moment?

Speaker 13 Who can I reach out to on text? How do I reach? you know, a trusted friend, a parent, a therapist, a counselor.

Speaker 13 And that the more you practice going through those anxious times, the more you're going to get better at it and push through even some of the bigger ones.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I love the statement of Dan Harris that action absorbs anxiety. And something that gives me anxiety, I don't know if you've ever felt this way as a parent.

Speaker 12 I have huge fears that I have sons 14 and 17, that they're going through something

Speaker 12 and don't tell me or anybody. That's my fear, that they're in the room.
And I felt the same way. When I had problems at school, I wasn't going to talk to my mom about it.

Speaker 12 I was raised by a single mother. I just wasn't going to come to her.
And that's always been my biggest fear is that,

Speaker 12 well, anybody doesn't reach out, but especially with my kids, like, how do I create some level of comfort or fluidity around communication? Because

Speaker 12 I do worry that, you know, I would bet the majority of the stuff they've dealt with, I never knew about. And anyway, any.

Speaker 12 more of a statement than a question, but any thoughts on trying to make sure that people close in in your life reach out when they're struggling?

Speaker 13 Well, I would say, you know, Scott, you and I grew up in a different generation, right? And luckily, this generation is talking much more about anxiety, depression, mental health disorders.

Speaker 13 So that's fantastic. And all I can say is what I tried to do as a parent, I definitely had times when I worried substantially about two of my three children.

Speaker 13 The third one, not so much because she was so verbal. I kind of always knew what was on her mind.

Speaker 13 But the older two, and what I learned over that time was the more I could be venerable and name what I was afraid of or what I dealt with at their age, I think the more it caused an opening for a conversation.

Speaker 13 I will say I hear from more parents of boys, or I did when my girls and my son were in middle school, high school, that boys tend to not be in general

Speaker 13 as verbal about naming their emotions, especially because they're maturing a bit later than girls. And so I think in those cases, you have to create more openings and opportunities.

Speaker 13 So, I learned with two of my three that they would talk over a dinner alone with me, and we just made a regular routine of dinners alone. Another one talked to me more when we would go out walking.

Speaker 13 So, we made a regular routine of going out walking. And guess what? I still employ those tactics now that they're adults.

Speaker 12 We'll be right back after a quick break.

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Speaker 12 You're raising a son. I'm writing a book.
on masculinity and

Speaker 12 I have two sons so I can't compare and contrast what it's like to raise girls versus boys.

Speaker 12 But what have you been your observations and how or if and how you've changed your approach to parenting between your son and your daughters?

Speaker 13 Well, first of all, for me, at least, it was more about personality. I mean, kids come into the world with a good chunk of their personality, I think, developed.

Speaker 13 And we can only, I think, affect what my mom used to say were the two ends of the spectrum. Help them, you know, raise up their good sides and try and keep the low sides down.

Speaker 13 So, my kids, all three, were quite different personalities. But I will say, you know, I.

Speaker 13 that my son, and he and I were just recently talking about this, he matured a bit later than the girls did, you know, at those ages.

Speaker 13 And so, I did have to talk with him more about his friends, even later than I talked to my girls. Like, you want to make sure your kids are surrounded by a good community and good friends.

Speaker 13 And if you see a bad one, you, you know, in middle school, you get to help them more on that. In high school, you know, it gets trickier, right? And so

Speaker 13 I did have to have more conversations with my son about, you know, what are you noticing about this friend? What do you like about this friend or what don't you like about that friend?

Speaker 13 So he could compare and contrast good friendships to be able to really see who was true in his life.

Speaker 12 So you also talk a lot about how difficult it is still for women to get real power.

Speaker 12 What do you mean by real power and what still

Speaker 12 gets in the way? I mean, there's a lot of data showing that women are doing, quite frankly, just really well, right?

Speaker 12 Women under the more college attendance from women, women under the age of 30 in urban centers are making more money, more single women own

Speaker 12 homes. The graduate schools are chock full of women now, more women seeking tertiary education than men.
But you say that or that women still have a difficult time seizing real power.

Speaker 12 Define real power and what you think are still some of the obstacles facing women. Sure.

Speaker 13 I think we all have power inside of us. Boys and men, women and girls.
You're absolutely right at the statistics you've talked about where women are starting to thrive at those levels.

Speaker 13 But when we send them out into society, into their careers, there's a noticeable shift. And you are not seeing women at the very top of professions.
They're starting to make it in middle management.

Speaker 13 You're seeing more female CFOs and chief legal officers or head of HR. But you know, how many CEOs in the Fortune 500 are women? How many entrepreneurs are women?

Speaker 13 How many at the top of the medical profession? How many of those are women? And so what I'm seeing is that women are stalling at certain levels for all kinds of reasons.

Speaker 13 And partly, though, there are barriers in society that are holding women back. And we need to break down those barriers.

Speaker 13 Because to me, real power is when a woman can use her voice and advocate exactly the way she wants. She has full decision-making authority, authority over her resources, and she's setting direction.

Speaker 13 So when I look at who creates our public policy, I still don't see enough women at the head of the Senate or the U.S. House of Representatives.
I don't see enough women in state legislatures.

Speaker 13 That's where we're making policy. When I look at who are the heads of studios and what movies are being made, those tell our stories.
How many female directors do you see?

Speaker 13 So we're still stalling out in society.

Speaker 13 And that's why I feel, at least for me, my work is how do we make sure we continue to break down the barriers and lift women up all the way as we also bring along boys because you have great statistics which I've read and I see and I see it anecdotally of boys now struggling more at the sort of middle and high school level and college level, right?

Speaker 13 So we actually need to do both.

Speaker 12 So there's just no getting around it.

Speaker 12 You know, the data I've seen is that while young women are thriving, where women really take a hit professionally, quite frankly, is when they have kids.

Speaker 12 And that is the corporate world still hasn't figured out a way to maintain a woman's trajectory. And the corporate world is very unforgiving of people who leave for even a year.

Speaker 12 So I guess moving to, and also, I think it's like 80 or 85 of the Fortune 500. At one point, I think there were more CEOs named John than women, like not that long ago, three or four years ago.

Speaker 12 So there's clearly, I mean, there's clearly some nuance here. Clearly, there's still really big obstacles for women around, as you put it, seizing real power.

Speaker 12 I believe that equality of opportunity doesn't always mean equality of outcome. I'm not sure there will ever be 250 women.

Speaker 12 Fortune 500 CEOs, and that's a longer conversation as to why. But there should definitely be more than 80.
But what can we do? Because is it laws? Is it a different approach?

Speaker 12 It doesn't appear. I mean,

Speaker 12 is it going to be a naturally occurring phenomenon? Because there's more women in college and college is a strong predictor of senior leadership.

Speaker 12 Is it that young women aren't as risk aggressive for whatever reason and they need different upbringing about risk and entrepreneurship?

Speaker 12 Like, if you had a magic wand, you have a lot of resources, you have a big voice, you've identified the problem.

Speaker 12 What do you think are the two or three things we can do as a society to try and help women at those senior levels get over the hump?

Speaker 13 Okay, so one of the biggest barriers for women in the workplace is caregiving. Even in the private sector, less than 27%

Speaker 13 of women have access to paid family medical leave. We are the only, the only high-income country in the world.
that doesn't have a federal paid family medical leave policy.

Speaker 13 And I don't believe it should be maternity leave. I believe it should be paid family medical leave.

Speaker 13 Because if you look at societies, take the Nordic countries, where they've had paid family medical leave for a long time, say 30 years, what happens? Both the women and the men take it.

Speaker 13 And what it does is the man participates longer in the rearing of the children. He appreciates his wife's role more.

Speaker 13 And you break down the norm in society that, oh, the woman should go take care of the kid. And then there's not also a career penalty for her taking that time off because the man's doing it as well.

Speaker 13 When we get to that point of really waking up to having a paid family medical leave. policy at the federal level, we will change society.

Speaker 13 And so one of the things I am doing with many, many partners is pushing on this. We got very close in the last administration.
We missed it at the federal level by one vote.

Speaker 13 It was a senator, a male senator. But we have it in 13 states and the District of Columbia now.
And so we've got to keep, that's one barrier we have to break down and keep pushing forward.

Speaker 13 Again, I believe if you have more women in state houses and you have more women on the hill in the in DC, we'll get that policy passed, but we'll get it passed even before that.

Speaker 13 Because we do have to have like-minded men and boys who believe in these things. In terms of women, just take, I'll take one example, risk, which you brought up.

Speaker 13 I don't believe women are less risk-averse. I really just don't.
We talk about that a lot, but when you look at the statistics, if you want to start a new business as a female entrepreneur, 4%,

Speaker 13 4%

Speaker 13 of venture capital funding goes to women.

Speaker 13 And so when you talk about, when you actually do the surveys of the women who've run the gauntlet, take it on Sandhill Road in Silicon Valley, they hear they're too risk, they won't take enough risk.

Speaker 13 They're They're not taking enough risk. They're taking too much risk.
They haven't thought of their business plan. When you put a male next to them, they run the gauntlet and they do much better.

Speaker 13 So to me, it's a bias we have in society that men and women have. So what do we need to do?

Speaker 13 We need to make sure more limited partners are looking at women-led businesses and quite frankly, people of color businesses, because I believe women have a different lens on society than men.

Speaker 13 It's not good or better. It just is different.
And I believe they have good business ideas. And we shouldn't, as an investor, and I am moving money in this direction.

Speaker 13 I don't believe we should leave money on the table.

Speaker 13 I think those are good businesses that will help us get through some of these caregiving struggles that we are facing now as a nation, especially with an aging population.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I would say the greatest exposure to inequality I registered or witnessed was in the 90s. I came of age, the dawn of the internet.

Speaker 12 I graduated graduated from business school in 92, and I raised a bunch of money. I lived in San Francisco starting internet companies.

Speaker 12 And I'm embarrassed to admit this.

Speaker 12 It never dawned on me that every one of us that was raising tens of millions of dollars in venture capital,

Speaker 12 we were all white dudes.

Speaker 12 You weren't even allowed to be gay. I mean, you couldn't be or outwardly gay.
You couldn't,

Speaker 12 it was all the same

Speaker 12 person.

Speaker 12 It was all

Speaker 12 white men, typically in their 30s, who had great credentials, Stanford or Berkeley. I went to Berkeley.
And all of that risk capital was crowded into, what is that?

Speaker 12 You know, 11% of the population, you know, that it's a fragment. And it just never dawned on me that why aren't you know, non-whites getting funded? Why aren't women getting funded?

Speaker 12 And things have gotten better. I remember Catherine Dillon.

Speaker 12 I mean, granted, it started from a terrible place, but Catherine Dillon, who's my business partner here, I remember we raised money from General Catalyst, a kind of arguably one of the better venture capitalists east of the Mississippi.

Speaker 12 And we went in there for the last round, and it was part of the last round of funding. We raised, I think, 17 million bucks or something in an A round for one of my companies.

Speaker 12 And we had to meet with all the partners. And all 27 of the partners, granted, this was 15, 13 years ago, all 27 of the partners were men.

Speaker 12 And it didn't even dawn on me. And Catherine and Maureen, basically, they said to me, what the fuck? And I'm like, what's wrong? And they're like, they couldn't find one woman.

Speaker 12 But I do think it's gotten a lot better. But where do you see the friction? We know the problems.
Where do you see the friction and how do we address it?

Speaker 13 Yeah. So in addition to my philanthropic dollars, I also have a large investment fund because I believe it's so important to put my money where my mouth is and to role model what's right.

Speaker 13 Do I expect to, and so it is, it's going, that funding is going to limited partners who are over-indexing on women and people of color businesses, because I believe if I can prove that I can get a good return from that, then people won't leave, you won't, you'll have men saying, oh, wait a minute, I want to crowd in on that business.

Speaker 13 I don't want to leave funding on the table, right? There's a great opportunity now with. female sports.
You're seeing those sports teams finally coming up and doing better.

Speaker 13 Billie Jean King has been on this, you know, forever, but now you're seeing people like Serena Williams has a great investment fund. There's Monarch Collective.

Speaker 13 So you're seeing the rise of women's NBA. And I believe you're going to start to see the rise in more other sports for women.
That is a fantastic place to put money down.

Speaker 13 Just as one example, there are many more types of businesses. So I'm funding limited partners who are funding many others.

Speaker 13 Again, with this thesis that I have, and we'll see if it proves out to be right.

Speaker 12 So you've,

Speaker 12 speaking of philanthropy, you've committed a billion dollars towards women's health.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 so just first off, I just want to say thank you. And

Speaker 12 that is

Speaker 12 I talk a lot about, and I'm very passionate about the struggles that young men face in our society. And the inspiration for me focusing on this area was data I started getting from this

Speaker 12 Brookings scholar named Richard Reeves. He's literally my, he's literally my Yoda on the topic.
And he called me and he said, I'm going to start my my own institute.

Speaker 12 And despite the fact that your billion dollars is geared towards women's health, the American Institute for Boys and Men, headed by

Speaker 12 this person that's literally changed my life, Richard Reeves, you gave him or pledged $20 million.

Speaker 12 And so first, thank you.

Speaker 12 And the second is, why did you decide, given that the billion dollars is focused on women's health, to give $20 million to the American Institute for Boys and Men?

Speaker 13 Okay, so yeah, just to clarify a little bit, I put down a billion dollars on behalf of lifting up women and others in society. 250 million of that is going to women's health.

Speaker 13 We have something called the Action for Women's Health. So 250 million, a quarter of the billion.
Then I took 12 global leaders and gave each of them 20 million.

Speaker 13 They can spend a small portion of it on their own organization, but the goal is really for them to find other organizations doing like-minded work.

Speaker 13 So Richard Reeves was one of those 12 global leaders because I absolutely believe that boys need to be doing better and men in society. We have to have good role models for them.

Speaker 13 As he talks about teachers, coaches.

Speaker 13 Men need good places to say, hey, I can fit in society even though society is changing. And so to me, he's on the forefront of that with his Men and Boys Institute.

Speaker 13 And I wanted to fund that and see also who else does he choose to fund.

Speaker 12 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 12 We're back with more from Melinda French Gates.

Speaker 12 So this is a loaded question, but I'll ask it anyways. I believe that the biggest problems in our society can be somewhat reverse engineered to income inequality.

Speaker 12 You're one of the wealthiest, I would imagine one of the wealthiest women in America. What are your thoughts on income inequality and how we address it?

Speaker 13 I absolutely see the income income inequality in the United States, and I do not think it's good for us as a nation.

Speaker 13 And I think you have too many people, low-income people, who are really struggling and struggling in their communities.

Speaker 13 You know, my dad grew up at a time that his dad ran a small machine shop in New Orleans, got turned over to the war effort. After that, it got turned back into a machine shop.

Speaker 13 But my dad grew up in a family where there were not a lot of resources. And yet, because of Georgia Tech, he was able to do a work study program and still become an engineer.

Speaker 13 And then he got a scholarship to Stanford, right?

Speaker 13 But you've pointed out, which I think is true, it is far harder to get into university these days than when I grew up or you grew up or my dad grew up.

Speaker 13 And it's far harder to find a good living wage to be able to purchase your first house. So I don't have all the policy solutions for that, but I do think there are some policy solutions for that.

Speaker 13 And I particularly, my heart goes out to black people. The redlining that we did in our country made homes unaffordable to them, and they couldn't even live in certain neighbors, neighborhoods.

Speaker 13 That absolutely, those disparities need to be reversed.

Speaker 12 When I look at you and your ex-husband's approach,

Speaker 12 extraordinarily successful, extraordinary beneficiaries of a capitalist economy, you know, unprecedented wealth.

Speaker 12 But my sense is, like, and like a lot of your colleagues of your generation, or I'll say our generation, you do take civic responsibility seriously.

Speaker 12 You know, trying to advance women's health, trying to cure malaria. I mean, these are, you know, for lack of a better term, these are good things.

Speaker 12 And I worry, or what I witness is this new generation of tech leaders who are even aggregating arguably more wealth and, in my view,

Speaker 12 have a bigger debt to America and the world. I don't see that same level of like a comity of man.

Speaker 12 It seems as if what they want is to get tax credits or subsidies from the government or reduce regulation once they're kind of over the hump.

Speaker 12 They want to be protected by the law, but not bound by it. And I get the sense they just don't have the same,

Speaker 12 even in the Gilded Age, the, you know, the Carnegies of the Rockefellers,

Speaker 12 you know, full-body contact violence to get to that point of wealth. But once they got to that point of wealth, really took,

Speaker 12 you know, wanted to build big, beautiful works and give back and kind of cement their legacy as people who were seen as patriots. And I don't get that sense from this next level of tech leadership.

Speaker 12 One, do you agree with that? And two, why do you think that is?

Speaker 13 I don't think

Speaker 13 tech leadership is a monolith. I think you're seeing certain ones being held up in society right now.

Speaker 13 All I can say is that I believe if you are wealthy, you know, this extreme level of wealth, anybody who has, you know, $500 million, my gosh, you have more than enough wealth.

Speaker 13 You have a moral obligation to give it back. And you have benefited.
If you started a business in this country, you have absolutely benefited from this country.

Speaker 13 I've traveled the world where people say, my gosh, you know, I couldn't begin to start a business like that in my country. So you have something to give back.

Speaker 13 And all I can say is that, you know, Warren and my ex-husband Bill and I set out with this giving pledge to really try and role model for society that if you have gotten great wealth, you should be giving it back.

Speaker 13 Has everybody started to give back? Absolutely not. But do we have a group of them who are? Yes, for sure.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 what I can say is that the community that of that that are giving back, they're talking to one another. They're learning.
They're trying to figure out how to do it well.

Speaker 13 They're trying to figure out how, even with their kids, we now have a whole next generation of the giving pledge of their adult children and adult grandchildren who are giving back.

Speaker 13 So I think we have to role model that this is what's right for society. And that hopefully over time will put pressure on those who are not.

Speaker 12 It even goes beyond that, though. I've just been so disappointed.

Speaker 12 I see these, some of these tech bros or some of those i don't call right wing i don't even know how to but they attack someone like mackenzie bezos i've seen them attack you i've seen them as if your your philanthropy and your efforts are somewhat

Speaker 12 you know

Speaker 12 that there's something mendacious or malicious there

Speaker 12 And it's sort of like,

Speaker 12 you might be wrong, but your heart's in the right place. I think that's the worst thing you could say.

Speaker 12 And yet they take it to this, and some of these people have really big platforms and they want to create this sort of conspiracy that you're up to harm. And I don't know.
It's interesting.

Speaker 12 They seem to have really centered in on McKenzie for some reason, which it just makes no sense to me at all.

Speaker 12 Isn't that incredibly upsetting for you? I don't get it.

Speaker 13 I ignore it. So I.

Speaker 13 Can you really?

Speaker 12 Can you really ignore it? Yes.

Speaker 13 Yes. I know who I am and I know what I'm doing and I know what my values are and why I'm giving back.
I mean, sure, I'm not sitting on the sidelines.

Speaker 13 I mean, to me, it's like, it's so easy to sit on the sidelines and as Roosevelt used to say, you know, criticize from the sidelines. I'm in the arena doing the work.

Speaker 13 I've had visited, my gosh, probably more low-income countries, certainly than I ever thought I would in my lifetime. I see the difference that.

Speaker 13 you know, these health tools make in low-income countries. I see the difference when a woman has access to a good paid family medical leave policy.
It changes society.

Speaker 13 So, you know, I think when you're not doing the work and you're not in the arena, it's easier to criticize others and to project onto others or make them look bad because you don't want to go do that work.

Speaker 13 That's, you know, that's up to them. If that's how they want to act, fine, but it doesn't bother me.
My work goes ahead.

Speaker 12 So we're pretty much exactly the same age. And turning 60 was sort of, maybe it's because I'm a man, I'm going through a midlife crisis, but

Speaker 12 I have

Speaker 12 the last few years, especially my 60th, was like

Speaker 12 pretty seminal for me. And it's changed a lot of my perspective and the way I think I approach life.

Speaker 12 You know, we're sort of on the back nine. And I don't, I don't know if you're religious.
I'm not.

Speaker 12 I think at some point I'm going to look into my kid's eyes and know our relationship is coming to an end. And I'm and that end is barreling faster than I'd like.
It's weird that time is just,

Speaker 12 I mean, decades are becoming years, years are becoming months, you know?

Speaker 12 And I'm curious if you've registered any difference in your approach to life or your perspective as, you know, now that you have a six handle on your birthday cake.

Speaker 13 Absolutely. And I actually think I crossed this when I turned 50.
I said to myself outright, I'm on the back half of life now at 50. And I knew it.
Hopefully. And I, yeah.

Speaker 13 And I, so I said to myself at 60, if I'm not living my life the way I want to live it now, something is wrong. Like I am fortunate enough that I don't have to work, right?

Speaker 13 That's an enormous privilege. And that, look, I get to organize my time.
And somebody once said to me, you have to paint on the canvas of your own life. And I thought, isn't that true?

Speaker 13 No one else can paint on my canvas.

Speaker 13 So if I'm not organizing my life in the way I want to see my parents or to see my children or my two now granddaughters and do the work that I believe in in the world, That's on me.

Speaker 13 And I, you know, you enter a point where I think you, I hope, I hope I'm in this generative stage of life, right? And really thinking about my adult children, what have I passed on to them?

Speaker 13 What would I like to continue to pass on?

Speaker 13 Are there words I haven't sent to them or things, regrets I have that I'd like to go back and tell them I'm sorry that on that particular day I wasn't my best self with you?

Speaker 13 But look, if we don't do it now, we could be gone easily tomorrow. So easily.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 you've checked a lot of boxes, right? You're professionally hugely successful. You've aggregated huge wealth.
It sounds as if you have nice kids and a good relationship with them.

Speaker 12 It sounds as if you have good friends.

Speaker 12 Go five years out. What does success look like for you in five years? And what boxes that aren't checked are you looking to check?

Speaker 13 Well, I really set my horizons on a 10-year horizon because look, we are taking, I'm trying to take big swings at what Warren Buffett would say are the hard problems society has left behind, for better or for worse.

Speaker 13 And so, those will take 10 years to play out. But I certainly, in a five-year horizon, hope to see far more states with a paid family medical leave policy.

Speaker 13 We are beginning to turn the crank on that and change the momentum on that.

Speaker 13 I hope we are doing far more basic science on women's health so that we can come out with more drugs that help women over time, both in the U.S. and globally.

Speaker 13 And I do hope that we can see more women in state legislatures in five years because that will signal that we're on our way to getting more women up on Capitol Hill.

Speaker 13 If I could accomplish those three big things and see progress on those, I will feel like, wow, we're on the right track.

Speaker 12 And a superficial question, but I'm curious. So I assume some of my listeners might be curious.

Speaker 12 When you have the type of wealth, you've always said that there's people that spending, you can be good at money or you can be bad at spending money.

Speaker 12 And then I know a lot of people who don't have a ton of money but are better at spending it.

Speaker 12 And I know a lot of people that have a crazy amount of money and I just don't think they're very good at spending it.

Speaker 12 What do you spend a lot of money on? What do you spend less money on than people would expect?

Speaker 13 That's a funny question. Let me think.
I probably spend more money on travel. I learned through travel.

Speaker 13 I was just in Southeast Asia. Gosh, I learned so much in a place I'd never been.
And then I would say I also travel to see my loved ones because my loved ones are across the country, right?

Speaker 13 And so it's the experience of being there and the joy of those moments. So I'd say that's something I spend more money on.
What do I spend less money on?

Speaker 13 I don't know, probably groceries because I'm a terrible, terrible cook. I just got an air fryer and my brothers were like, why? You eat out so much? So I probably spend less money on groceries.

Speaker 12 All right, just as we wrap up here, I want to do just a quick kind of rapid fire. So last piece of media you consumed that sort of moved you?

Speaker 13 A book by Tim Snyder called On Tierney.

Speaker 12 That's too deep. Last piece of streaming media you really enjoyed.

Speaker 13 Oh, streaming media.

Speaker 13 I went back, well, I'm watching, you might think this is too deep too. I'm watching Pachinko.

Speaker 13 I love cultural fiction and it's about the Korean and Japanese and the cultural tension there after World War II. I love it.

Speaker 12 Biggest fear or phobia.

Speaker 13 Biggest phobia is claustrophobia.

Speaker 13 Biggest fear, and it plays out when I'm scuba diving, put it that way. So that's where it still comes up, but I'm working on it.

Speaker 12 One place you could vacation the rest of your life. What would it be?

Speaker 13 Australia.

Speaker 12 Oh, no kidding.

Speaker 13 Best piece of advice you've received: set your own agenda or someone else will. That's from my mom.

Speaker 12 Biggest influence on your life up until, say, the age of 25?

Speaker 13 My father, he really believed in me. I write about this in the book.
And he saw me that I could be good in math and science. And he made sure at every step of the way I knew that.

Speaker 12 Three words on your tombstone. What would you want them to be?

Speaker 13 Loved by family and friends.

Speaker 13 Made a difference in the world. Had a big heart.

Speaker 12 I like that. Melinda French Gates is a philanthropist, businesswoman, and global advocate for women and girls.

Speaker 12 She's the founder of Pivotal, an organization committed to accelerating women's power and influence worldwide, and previously co-chaired the Gates Foundation.

Speaker 12 Melinda is also a best-selling author whose latest book, The Next Day, is out now. She joins us from her home in Seattle.

Speaker 12 Melinda, thanks so much for your good work, especially your support of the American Institute and Boys and Men. It makes a huge difference.
And I really enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker 13 Thank you, Scott. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 12 Houser of happiness, what will mark my trip to London? What will be the thing I want to remember?

Speaker 12 When I'm at the end and I say, all right, let's dial up the heroin and I play Apple Memories on large screen TVs.

Speaker 12 One of the things I want to remember, I want to come through my head is what will be the iconic moment for me

Speaker 12 that happened on, when was it? I think it was Sunday night. And that was at the Royal Albert Hall, which is arguably one of the most beautiful venues in the world.

Speaker 12 And one of the things I love about it is that you can only play there once.

Speaker 12 So instead of just rolling through a city and then the lead guitarist has to have a cheat note saying, where the fuck are we now?

Speaker 12 Oh, it's great to be here at, you know, the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles, by the way. That was from the 70s.
It's been rebranded several times. They say, this is it.

Speaker 12 I'm playing one of the most beautiful venues in the world. And this is the first and last time I'm ever going to play this venue.
So they show up and they practice and they're given.

Speaker 12 access to the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra, which is incredible, unbelievable venue, stage hands. And the last thing I saw there was Cirque de Soleil, and they just did an amazing job with it.

Speaker 12 Anyways, I went and saw one of my favorite artists in an album that sort of changed my life. I just thought it was so beautiful and gives me so much peace when I listen to it.

Speaker 12 I went and saw Beck, and the album is Morning Face.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 when I first moved to Florida, I moved there because I was escaping New York in the sense that it was 2008. I had lost everything.

Speaker 12 I was at that point from all exterior metrics, had had a quote-unquote successful career.

Speaker 12 And yet I woke up because I was so concentrated in tech, specifically in a company called Red Envelope, which went chapter 11 in the great financial recession.

Speaker 12 I kind of woke up and had very little money and kind of negative net worth.

Speaker 12 And it was really humiliating to have taken all this risk and had all this curb success and end up in a financially strained environment.

Speaker 12 And of course, about that moment, my oldest son decided to come marching out of my partner at exactly the wrong moment.

Speaker 12 And then fast forward three years, we're applying to get him into preschool in Manhattan. We applied to seven schools and we got into zero because it was speech delayed.

Speaker 12 And I thought, fuck it, I'm out of here. I've been an entrepreneur and single

Speaker 12 most of my life. I'm used to rejection, but I'm not used to it for my three-year-old.
And so we decided to move to Florida. And when we were in Florida, I thought, okay, it's time to buy a house.

Speaker 12 We got a second kid, just had our second son.

Speaker 12 And I thought, I need a home, need to stop renting.

Speaker 12 and found a great home that we could fix up exactly what we wanted in this lovely little hamlet called Gulfstream and bought a home on the water, just perfect, brought in a general contractor that we knew, and we were going to make it into our dream home.

Speaker 12 And Goldman Sachs had this group that would manage the money of small business people, hoping that someday our company will get bought for a lot of money and that we'd someday be rich, such that they would have a built-in network of wealthy, high-net worth people.

Speaker 12 Even though I didn't have a lot of money, I was working with Goldman. And I said, okay, I have this home.
I think it was $2.5 million.

Speaker 12 And I said, I have the down, which is about half a million, and I need a mortgage for $2 million. And I said, no problem.

Speaker 12 And then we're getting towards closing where I'm supposed to show up with the $2 million, the $2.5 million.

Speaker 12 And Goldman calls me and says, we can't give you a mortgage. And I said, well, why is that? And they said, well, you own 40% of your company, L2, and L2 last year lost $3 million.

Speaker 12 So we have to take $1.2 million away from your annual income. And you have negative income and we can't get you a mortgage.

Speaker 12 I'm like, well, it's great to work with Goldman, who allocates the losses of my company, which you're supposed to do on a venture-backed company to grow.

Speaker 12 And by the way, we ended up selling the company, I don't know, six years later for $160 million.

Speaker 12 But I couldn't get a fucking mortgage. And I couldn't buy this home that my family had, my partner had just fallen in love with.

Speaker 12 And that made for a really uncomfortable, ugly conversation going home and saying, I'm not only not a provider, but I can't get a fucking mortgage for our dream home.

Speaker 12 And then called the real estate agent and the sellers and say, we lost our financing. I can't afford this home.

Speaker 12 And then finally, we got another home about a year or two years later, built a beautiful home in Del Ray, what was beautiful for us on a quarter acre small piece of land.

Speaker 12 But we said, we have boys, we have to have a pool. And we used to get up in the morning and we would turn on my favorite album, Morning Face.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 we had a dog, most beautiful dog in the world, sweetest dog in the world, a Vishla named Zoe.

Speaker 12 And she would, we would try and throw the tennis ball into the pool to try to get her to go in the pool because our youngest would only go in the pool if the dog was in the pool.

Speaker 12 And we kept throwing balls in there and she wouldn't go in. And our youngest, Nolan, would see that.
And then finally, he would just jump in the pool to get Zoe to jump in.

Speaker 12 Anyways, it became this Pavlovian reaction where on weekends, when we turn on Morning Phase, our youngest would come bounding down the stairs and jump in the pool.

Speaker 12 And then the dog would jump in after him. And it was just such a nice moment of joy.

Speaker 12 Anyways, the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra opens, and then Beck comes out, and he's playing the kind of the opening song from Morning Phase. And my partner just starts weeping.

Speaker 12 And I know why she's weeping. We go back, and music can do this like nothing else.
We go back to this moment

Speaker 12 when our little boy who could barely walk would jump in the pool when hearing that song on weekend mornings and get the dog to jump in behind him.

Speaker 12 And I believe like what Gloria Vanderbilt said, that the happiest moments in your life or the happiest period in your life will be when you look back on when you had little kids.

Speaker 12 And that's definitely true for me. Those are the moments I really miss.

Speaker 12 And a lot of it is not just because they were wonderful moments, but because they're gone forever, because that little boy is no longer around.

Speaker 12 He's now on, you know, on TikTok all day and, you know, talking about girls and starting to smell funny. And it's got under our motor.
Jesus Christ, that's a thrill.

Speaker 12 Anyways, this was such a wonderful moment for us

Speaker 12 to be at such a beautiful venue and to be thinking about

Speaker 12 that wonderful time with our boys. Also, or not okay, but wonderful to lean in to when things move you.
What is it about something that inspires you or makes you emotional?

Speaker 12 Because you need to register these things to inform your life. What's important to you?

Speaker 12 What has registered? What have you noticed in your life? What are you going to miss? What are the things you're going to think about at the end? And to not really lean into these things

Speaker 12 is a tragedy. And it's also not a given.
You need to learn how to lean into these things. You need to practice.
You need to laugh out loud. You need to register sadness.

Speaker 12 When something moves you, stop and let it move you. Feel it.
Lean into those emotions.

Speaker 17 Woke up this morning,

Speaker 17 fall on the

Speaker 17 storm.

Speaker 17 Looked up this morning,

Speaker 12 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our intern is Dan Shalon.
Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Profit Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Speaker 12 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Mouse, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Profit Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.

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Speaker 24 I'm Neli Patel, editor in chief of the Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems.

Speaker 24 We've talked a lot about generative AI on the show lately, which is a very big idea that is causing quite a few problems.

Speaker 24 And one thing we keep hearing about over and over again is that generative AI is causing a lot of problems in schools.

Speaker 24 There are a lot of people out there, including many of the listeners of the show who email us, who are worried about the obvious problem, students using ChatGPT to cheat on assignments.

Speaker 24 But when our team went and poked at the story, they found that the issues in education with AI go a lot deeper, to the very philosophy of education itself.

Speaker 27 If this technology becomes more ubiquitous, we'll have courses created by AI, graded by AI, with submissions from students absolutely generated by AI.

Speaker 27 So it begs the question: what are we even doing here in higher ed?

Speaker 7 This episode is presented by Salesforce.