Bonus: Ruth Porat - “If We Can, We Must.”

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Game night rush or any night of the week, really. Genius keeps every order moving. From online ordering to your kitchen to the front counter. Big league reliability for any business. That's genius. Ruthie's Table 4 brought to you by Sky and Montclair. I think it's so important to start with what's the state of the world today and can we fix it? and make sure we're focusing on what's the upside because it's so easy to be to be scared about change. I think that it's exciting to see the art of the possible.

0:44Ruth Porat and I shared some fantastic times together over the years. In December when I told Ruth I was coming to San Francisco, she said, Ruthie I'm gonna give you the ride of your life. It turned out to be in the back of a Waymo, the revolutionary driverless car, a project she's been deeply involved with as president and chief investment officer of Google and Alphabet. Life and her extraordinary schedule has often kept us thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of miles apart, as she moves across continents, connecting people, connecting ideas, and connecting communities. Being here today with Ruth is really special to me.

1:28A Ruth and a Ruthie, back together at last. What could be better? Thank you so much. That was so beautiful. We have not done a podcast on a Sunday morning at 8.30 in six years. I will, thank you, thank you. It was the way to finally get our planes to land. By this morning as I was getting dressed, feeling quite hungover from Saturday Night Live, I thought maybe this is not a good thing to do. This is a good idea. Having done it, I think it's a great idea. You're now team, team, team four. We are doing. Sorry, team four. Yeah, we have discovered the Sunday morning podcast. I think it's really nice because the recipe is really nice.

2:06I was so interested that you chose the recipe that I love most, well, particularly in the summer. Do you love this recipe? I do love this recipe. Papa Pomodoro. Yeah. Do you want to read it? Absolutely. Why? Papa el Pomodoro. Four kilograms of ripe, sweet plum tomatoes peeled and chopped. Four garlic cloves chopped. 175 milliliters of olive oil. I did have to Google all of this to get that converted for Americans, but that's okay. Oh, okay. We took it from the... But that's good. I like it. I like... No, Google works. It converts. One stale sourdough loaf, crust cut into large chunks, two bunches basil leaves torn into pieces.

2:48Fry the garlic in olive oil and cook gently until soft. Just before the garlic turns brown, then add the tomatoes tomatoes. Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season. Add 600 milliliters water, bring it to the boil, put the bread into the tomato mixture, and stir until the bread absorbs the liquid, adding more boiling water if the soup is too thick. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Stir the basil into the soup with 120 to 175 milliliters of extra virgin olive oil. Then let sit to allow the bread to absorb the flavor of the basil and oil. Drizzle with olive oil and serve and enjoy.

3:28Of all the River Cafe recipes you could have chosen, what made you choose this recipe? Well, it's just, it's lovely. It's one of, I think, a soup, a beautiful, simple soup is just soothing. And I was so intrigued picking it, learning that it's what actually convinced you to cook only Italian. Like the beauty and simplicity of it, to me, is just wonderful. And as somebody who doesn't really know how to cook, I can actually do this. It can. It's very simple. I think it has four ingredients. As you were reading it, I remembered that I was staying in Italy with Richard and his cousins. And it was my first trip to Italy, and I didn't understand Italian very well.

4:09I didn't know the family and I woke up and I heard this argument going on in the kitchen downstairs these two sisters were fighting there was quite a heated argument I thought are they discussing feminism Mussolini you know where they were going to go the next day and the argument when I came in the kitchen one of them was almost in tears where they're making Papa Pomodoro and one having added the bread and the tomato together one wanted to pour in water and the other one didn't want to add any water. And this was a family crisis. Sounds like a crisis. And I thought that told you a lot about family, food, and maybe sisters.

4:48With Google, it's not just something we feed the people who work here. It's a very definite policy. It's a very definite value that you have. And I think that if we're talking about, and want to talk more about the values of the work that you're doing, there is also a value in the way we approach food so I think Google really pioneered a lot of the notion of food within the office the way we do it and for Google it's a really important part of the culture our view is that bringing people together is built community and it's also for an innovation company serendipity is really valuable and so So having people come for meals is one way you get people from all around the company working on different things, all of a sudden comparing ideas.

5:42We then created something that we call MKs, or micro kitchens. So our view at Google is you shouldn't have to walk very far before you can have a place to come together where there will be snacks and drinks and other things. And there was a term for a long time people would talk about, casual collisions. so at an MK at the micro kitchen what you would want is somebody working on search and somebody working on Chrome just happened to be coming to get a snack at one time and then strike up a conversation and it sparks ideas so it's a notion of community but also serendipity and innovation and so it's very very core to who we are.

6:21Just in the last night where you were here with your son I was here last night which I saw some people who had seen the television show about the River Cafe sitting, you know, all the way down there. And so I just moved their table so that they could sit closer to the kitchen because they were so interested. And they were sitting beside, behind somebody they'd seen on an airplane, you know, and they were here. And the interaction, and as you say, the collisions, you know, sometimes it's a bit hard for a waiter to get through or to bring food to a table. But I think that does happen in a restaurant.

6:54I think that more than anything, what we're seeing is people want human connection. They want to be around the energy of people. It's humanity. It's the liveliness of it. What is your food day? When we get to the food at Google, so you wake up in the morning. What do you have for breakfast? I'm a pretty regimented person. I'll have coffee when I get up in the morning, but when I get to Google, I'll have plain yogurt and berries. And will be in your office or will you collide into somebody else having yogurt in Paris? Well, usually we'll collide into somebody when I'm picking something up. And then we all have these wonderful baristas, which is lovely because then you're waiting for the cappuccino or whatever to be made.

7:35And then there are more casual collisions. So it's fun running into the bowl. That's a really interesting point that you actually, I like that idea that next time we keep somebody waiting for their coffee, we can say we did it on purpose so you could have a collision. Exactly. It's okay. You didn't wait for your coffee. You created an opportunity to have a coffee. And innovation. Do you realize what kind of thing you're going to create? You think this is just a slow coffee maker. No, it's very deliberate. We like to pretend it's deliberate. And then at lunch, it's the same thing. I'll go back and to the same micro kitchen or do you walk further?

8:10The micro kitchens are for snacks. We want to make sure that we're being as smart as possible. And it sounds like you have a very similar system here, actually, where every day after lunch, they'll see what was left over in particular vegetables and greens and then they'll create a bit of a friendly competition amongst the chefs in the various restaurants yes to come up with some way to reuse that but it has to be a completely new dish so it doesn't it's not a reheating yeah it's how can you do something super creative yeah and we've meaningfully reduced food waste as a result i think the best ideas come when you have people around the table and so we very much to this day.

8:51It's about let's get people around a table and then you kind of build on one another. And it's different when you're together. We were talking to the chefs here about how Google and the work you're doing in AI is going to make more communication. I think that people fear with technology as it will take us away. And I think that what you were talking about was how it can bring us together. And I'd like to know, because I know that food and AI and restaurants, we're all going to be working together and without the fear and without you know with the idea of how we can do it so i i think that technology has to be a tool that benefits us like it for me the way i use it in my daily life is i have this i use ai to help ingest content and respond to things i need to send out that's not the magic of it the magic of it is that it then gives me time to spend where I want to spend time.

9:49Yeah. So what I think, exactly. Let me hear. Exactly. And so, you know, when I think about it, about half of small businesses use, are using AI now. And the ones that are using it are seeing an uplift in revenues and profitability because it's letting them do things that they need to have done, like reaching customers or planning what's in their inventory in ways that help the business. So to me, the most interesting part about technology is to try and understand what are pain points that I have in my life or in my business or in anything, and using it to be an assist partner to getting it done faster.

10:36It's sort of like, this is a simplistic way of stating it, but my dad actually used a slide rule, and then we used a calculator. Like just the ease of it still requires me to do the thinking that I need to do, but it's an assist to what I'm doing. So small businesses are seeing a lot of different ways of using it, whether it's creating the marketing materials or reaching customers or, as I said, some of the operational elements of it so that you can then spend time where you want to spend time. the most relevant fact about what we're all doing in food is how to feed people how to feed people through food banks how to feed people through technology what do you feel about the responsibility of you know corporations or people who have the knowledge and the technical ability to feed people who have no food you know i think you're the you're making a really important point it's so often and i'm thinking of it in the context of what's the role of technology and i think there is a role of technology.

11:37And I think too often when people are assessing technology, in particular today, they're focusing on what are some of the downside risks. They're not starting with the realization that things aren't as good as they should be in society. And I'm going to answer your question on food, but you're hitting something that's really important to me and broadening it out. You know, today, the disparities, depending on what your postal code are, I think are unconscionable when we can address it. And you're getting at that with food. But an area that I focus on quite a bit is how can technology help address health issues?

12:25and what I find to be really distressing is there are treatable cancers and the survival rate depending on your postal code can be 50 percent lower than what you or I would be would have in America more than half of the adults don't read at the sixth grade level your point about how did you say half? More than half? 50 % of adults. 54 % of adults in America read at 6th grade level or below. When you talk about food, when you talk about there are floods and fires and why aren't we getting people out of harm's way faster? Why don't we give them days notice, not minutes notice? These are all problems that exist.

13:12And these are problems that can be addressed with technology and are being addressed with technology. And I think it's so important to start with what's the state of the world today and can we fix it and make sure we're focusing on what's the upside because it's so easy to be scared about change. And that's what I get excited about. So you and I have talked about this. I was in Asia and a prime minister said to me, how can technology help with the lowest economic strata in my country with farmers? Can it? Farmers, yeah. And the answer is yes. And in fact, it was a joy. Last year, I was with Ajay Banga, the head of the World Bank, during World Bank Week, and we announced a platform that farmers can use that enables them on their Android phone, which is more ubiquitous in developing markets, to get pre-crop information.

14:08So how can you see when you have an infestation risk? You can use your phone and you can get information. Like AI can help you see when there's a problem to intervene. And all the way through to the back end, how can you understand post-crop issues? What about markets? Where should you send it so that you don't see actually this diminution of the ability to sell it all profitably? We can help farmers. And we've done a pilot with thousands of farmers in India. And you see an uplift in their earnings. because they're having access to information that can make a difference in their life. So I get excited when you say, in health, we've got to close that gap.

14:52In early detection of disease is what's going to make a difference. In food, food scarcity, food security, we've got to do better. And if you can use information to actually increase crop yield and increase the ability to get to market, we should be doing it. Those are areas where I think it's exciting to see the art of the possible.

15:16What did you have growing up? Tell me about the family. So I was born in England. I was born in the north of England, right outside of Manchester in Sale. And the way we arrived to England is my father had grown up in Vienna. and his father was taken on Kristallnacht and that's when he realized he needed to get out of Austria. How old was he, Matt? He was 15 and so he was able to escape on a youth boat. The rest of his family could not get out. They all perished in the camps. And as soon as he was of age, he enlisted in the British Army. He ended up fighting in the two battles of El Aleman. His high school had been closed down in Vienna So he never completed high school.

16:02And as he was fighting in the British Army, he concluded that if he were to survive, education would be his passport to freedom. That was the phrase I heard over and over again as a child. And so he actually started to teach himself engineering while fighting in the north of Africa. And he used to tell us that his fellow soldiers would tease him that he would die before he could ever use this education. And his answer was, I would rather die an educated man. and he survived and then went to what was then Palestine fought more of independence and eventually was invited to Manchester to the University of Manchester to get a master's in physics so then I was born there and he eventually was invited to first Harvard and then Stanford where he designed the atom smasher but he always taught us education is a passport to freedom do you have memories of the houses and what they looked like where your kitchen was so i've gone back to my home in sale and my best memory from sale is whenever it was a rainy misty day my father would say let's go run in the rugby field we lived in a tiny little apartment building and we'd run in the um rugby field.

17:24I went back there recently and saw that rugby field. It was beautiful. And then I lived in a little home in Palo Alto. What about your mother? My mother was a psychologist, an extraordinary psychologist and entrepreneur. She ended up creating something called the Center for Creativity and Growth in Palo Alto when I was a kid. She was a complete free spirit. She was an artist and a dancer and just as as sort of regimented as my father was as an engineer and physicist creative in his own way my mother was an artist and painter and psychologist she was amazing you have a sister I have a younger sister and an older brother he was really active in the Vietnam War movement moved out when I was five and my little sister and I she was a year and a half younger called ourselves co-conspirators my best yeah so you would have your meals but how did your parents both working how would they have organized that my parents both works my mother was actually a truly horrendous cook and would just whip something together for dinner so we would always come to dinner that was a lovely part yeah her food was not like you would want to eat my father used to always joke that the food was better in the British Army than it was pretty bad yeah I actually I was reminiscing about that as I was coming over here and I realized that not until my 20s did I realize that a beautiful piece of salmon shouldn't taste like a hockey puck because she just put everything in the oven and cooked it and cooked it.

18:58She was a wonderful mom but not a... Yeah, it was quite an academic world. It was very much. What was your father's theory about the quark? You and I have talked about the quark test. So my father was at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a physicist. And when I was a pretty young, he said to me, you know, if someone in my lab can't define a quark in less than 30 seconds, they don't know what they're talking about. And later in life, I remembered that story because when I would be at work and I would ask somebody a question and they would give me some long rambling answer, I realized they would fail my dad's quark test.

19:37So I've been using the quark test for a long time, which is if you can't tell me something in less than 30 seconds that's supposed to be in your technical domain yeah then you probably don't you probably haven't really scrubbed what you're doing and then what do you do i make them go back to the drawing back to the drawing board like either you understand it you understand why it's important and you can therefore explain it or you have failed the quark test somebody said that the other day scott galloway said that if you ask somebody what they're doing in life and they can't describe it quite quickly it's they don't really know maybe a problem i saw that in my prior life at Morgan Stanley when somebody would come in with the trade that they said was a great trade and you'd ask them to explain why was it a great trade and the answer would fail my dad's quark test and I'm like okay yeah I may not quite understand what you're doing but if you can't explain it to me you don't either did you feel when you fat when you tasted that first piece of salmon that was something amazing because you are a good eater I've eaten with you in many places and I know how I do know how important food is to you so was there a kind of oh food could taste Was it like this moment, or do you think it was just...

20:40Well, the salmon is a funny one, because my mother cooked salmon all the time, but it really was a hockey puck. So I thought I didn't like it, and then when I finally had something that was properly cooked, you're right, it was like, oh, we can start expanding our horizon. That's what Paul McCartney said about wine, because when he and John Lennon, it's a story I love, it says a lot, I think, that when he and John Lennon went to Paris for the first time, John Lennon's aunt gave them 10 pounds. for a week and so which was okay those days but they never could have anything but the cheapest wine so they thought that mine was just a horrible drink right why would anybody like this until brian epstein took them out to a fancy restaurant then they had a good glass of wine and then you know because yeah well i found that over the years now my favorite way to go out to a restaurant maybe to make up for all the last years is i don't actually just like to have my dish to myself i I would rather everybody orders, and then you get to taste everything.

21:40Share, yeah. Sharing is a big thing. You know, sharing, we do it here. I mean, obviously, people order three or four pastas or three or four of that. And then there are the people, again, someone I talked to who said that they grew up with poverty, and, you know, your plate was your plate. The idea of actually taking anything off your plate as a child to give to somebody else when you knew you weren't going to get any more. Well, the joke in the family is my husband is that's gold. I'm not going to share. And then the kids and I are all ordering and sharing. It's just fun. It makes it fun. It's an adventure.

22:14Your time in Palo Alto was growing up. Tell me about Palo Alto. I only know one other person who lives there. So it was a wonderful, innovative, creative, academic environment. So my father designed the atom smasher. people around the table where physicists went on to win Nobel Prizes my mother psychologist created this Center for creativity and growth and would bring in psychologists from around the country around the world who would then speak at her center so it was always stimulus like we would have our dinner around the dinner table and then we were expected to go into the living room together and we'd sit and we'd each read our books and I remember like lying on the floor reading the book and that's what you would do.

23:03It was a sweet, it was a really sweet home. I do remember in high school, years later, one of my friends said, you know, we always thought you were sort of weird, but we thought you would make it in life, which to me is an important message for kids in high school. It's like, well, if you know, in high school, if maybe I was a bit odd and academic that's fine and just be who you are and um you got to follow that path yeah and your parents encouraged it so that also they weren't trying to make you into something else yeah and did you travel did they did you go to europe did you go back to vienna we we didn't go to vienna until about 2000 was that hard for your father to go back yeah so when we moved back to england in the 60s, it was the first time my father went back to Austria to try and find the records of his family.

23:55He didn't bring us as kids. And then in 2000, I was living in London. We came and worked here at the family. I was working at Morgan Stanley. And my husband actually said, you know, it's time to take the children on an oral history tour. And so we brought my father over and said, don't sugarcoat it, take us through what it was like. And he planned a bit of a trip. But as we went through Vienna, the doors just kept opening to more and more of that memory. And sort of on the last day, my middle son said, I want to stay with grandpa in his room. And my father woke up in the middle of the night trembling.

24:36Everything came pouring back. But then he looked at his grandson and he said, we survived. And for him, it was realizing he had survived. He lost all of his family, but now had this new family, the grandchildren, the children, the grandchildren. And he said it's stabilized. Yeah, he got a sense of calm. And for us, that image of being in Austria and reliving it with him, but then him celebrating that, as he often said to us, you can take away my family, you can take away my state, you can't take away my mind, and we can recreate it. And so his joy, his joy from the family. I wish I had met him.

25:23He was amazing. He was absolutely amazing. Did you go to Israel? Yes. My mother's family was in Israel. So you had an Israeli grandmother who cooked, yes? So my mother's parents escaped from Russia in the early 20s, and then ended up spending their life there. My grandmother always thought she would end up back in Russia, but stayed there. And how was that? How was that experience for you? So she never came to the States? No, my grandfather ended up, he built the roads in what was then Palestine, and my grandmother was just this incredible, loving grandmother who did know how to cook. I don't know why my mother didn't inherit any of the skills, but my grandmother was amazing.

26:14Do you remember what she cooked? She cooked a lot of very traditional Russian dishes. And the main thing about my grandmother was that for her, cooking was love. and she spoke Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. I don't speak any of them. But the one word that was the word we shared that I did understand, there were a couple of them, was essen, it was eat. Eat, eat. And she would always cook, cook, cook for us and then say essen, essen. And the only way, the way to express love to her was to eat. And I remember as a young kid, you get to the point where you were trying to, I was trying to express my love to her so much that it actually hurt that we ate so much.

27:02She was incredible. I mean, the most amazing story about her was actually her final day. What was that? So she went to the green grocer, paid off her debts, and then she went home and spent the entire day cooking. and filled the freezer with food, filled the fridge with food. She was cooking for my grandpa. And then she went to her bedroom and lay down, and that was it. Had she been ill before? Did she have a sense of her? She must have because she knew. She didn't do that on every Tuesday. No, she went and paid her debts, so she must have known, and she prepared my grandpa to be there without her.

27:52Wow. Yeah, so food was love. I want to go back to your Waymo ride. Oh, yeah. Well, it's relevant here. You love the Waymo ride. You were amazing. When I said, do you want to go in a Waymo, you're immediately like, seriously, absolutely, yes, seriously, of course, we must go in a Waymo. Yeah. And I've said, I'll go with you, and trust me, after a minute, it's going to seem totally normal. And after probably three minutes, you might be a bit bored and you're going to start doing something else. But it's that first jump that you're like, bring it on. Which is what you're saying with technology more broadly.

28:30But that first jump for people, it is really helpful to go through a training program or have somebody by your side. And I would say even when I did it and I brought in some engineers and said, okay, take me through everything. All the magic's been done by the engineers. Then the question is, how do I want to use it for me? like you you're in the driver's seat how do i want how can it give me time back yes but it's that first jump and in fact there's some research recently that i find very distressing that women are 20 less likely than men to engage and and yet it's really easy to address when you do a kind of just start a training program then you see this three three x increase in utilization so it's just that first step and I think then you play around with it and figure out what does it mean for you a conversation about women your life the way you've worked your father and encouraging you I would have liked to have done a podcast with him but there was something I read that he would take you into the garage after you did your homework to solder, make radios and work with tools and so what was that like what did that teach you when i was quite young i must have been 10 11 he first taught me how to solder um you know this super hot iron melting metal so that we could actually build build things and built built a radio we built a binary adding machine he would take me to the stanford linear accelerator center to do my homework and so at the youngest age he made it pretty clear education is your passport to freedom for everyone and there's no limit to what you can do.

30:20My very last question to you is if food is sharing as you do you know food is collision as you say it is and work the food is your mother who didn't cook and your father who remembered the food your grandmother that was part of her identity uh if eating here the other night with your son was food um all that is food that we share that we express love with we work with we connect with but it also is comfort there's sometimes and i think about maybe those people who had an argument in their office and then reach for those m &ms you know lots of m &ms well look for the m &ms that you know that we do very often i certainly do um we'll reach for a piece of music to listen to if i need comfort or a type of bed linen i want but it also could be it could also be food and i was wondering ruth part is our last question of a very beautiful morning is to ask you if you need food for comfort what would that be so my mother i said was a awful cook except in one area she made a wonderful baba ganoush wonderful hummus and wonderful falafel so I find whenever I'm traveling and I can order a mezzo plate I didn't know that word when I was growing up I just yeah baba ganoush and hummus and falafel I will order it because that's mom that's mom and that is it's the quintessential sharing plate yeah it's got everything on it and it's the best one shared with people it was the only thing that she could actually cook well and um yeah so mom mom has met the plate i can see that for you it also says more but you know that you are the person who shares yeah i think that's your pleasure that's the fun that's that's the fun thank you thank you Ruthie's Table 4 was produced by Alex Bell, Robbie Hamilton and Zad Rogers with Andrew Sang and Bella Salini This has been an Atomize production for iHeart Media

32:36So as a pizza genius, I know pizza shop orders come from, well, everywhere With Genius by Global Payments, online orders actually sink straight into your kitchen It's as simple as pie And with digital menu boards, your specials, your prices, your brand, always front and center. It's one system, ready for game night crowds. Any night of the week, really. Big league reliability for any business. That's genius. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.