BIG INTV: Melinda French Gates on Secrets: ‘Live a Truthful Life, Then You Don’t Have Any’ (Re-Run)

18:32Melinda French Gates:You can go big. You can go bold. So we are working on it. I wish we had been even more successful with the pledge than we have been to date, but it's a problem to continue working. But I think the expectation in our country that wealth should not be amassed in great amounts in individuals' hands, I think that idea is still out there. And I think that's why you're seeing such pushback on some of these people who are amassing enormous amounts of wealth, right? They benefited from living in this country, being educated here, if they were educated here, having our regulatory environment, having our venture capital system.

19:16Melinda French Gates:If you live in this country and started a business, you benefited from this country. And I believe to whom much is given, much is expected, and they should be giving back more, far more than they are.

19:27Katie:I want to ask you about those individuals a little bit in a minute. I'm curious, though, when you think about, say, the billionaires in this cohort who are reluctant to go big, right, to give away vast sums of money. What's that about? You know what I mean? Like, what holds people back who are worth billions and billions of dollars from starting to hand out hundreds of millions, if not billions of those dollars? What is it? Because it's not as if they won't have the money to sustain their lifestyle, right? It can't possibly be that.

20:02Melinda French Gates:Well, think about it this way. First of all, a lot of people say, look, I already created something or I'm still raising my kids. Completely fair arguments, right? I don't want to create another organization, right? So there's that, which I get. So there are different ways of doing philanthropy, and that's what we're trying to demonstrate. There are different ways. You don't have to have a big organization if you don't want, or you could have an organization if you want. There's also the concern about, gosh, if I'm going to create even a big or small organization, who do I hire that I can trust so that it stays with my values, my mission?

20:39Melinda French Gates:Because right, when you start in this space, then somebody can make it more about them. We've seen that. So there's some fear there. And then there's also nobody wants to look dumb and nobody wants to spend their money poorly, right? And so it takes time. You are learning a different sector. You are learning what is possible. And then again, you need to kind of start doing to get used to it and start learning where you can be effective. So it does take time, right? And then, of course, no one wants to give away their money and it be wasted. I don't even want to do that with$100. You probably don't either.

21:18Melinda French Gates:No, I do not. No. So you want to know. And it takes a while to know that you can trust which organizations you can trust to be effective with your money and how you want to do it.

21:28Katie:That makes sense. And that brings me to sort of this cohort of people you were referring to earlier, right, who aren't even really trying to go down that road. They're not even exploring, as far as we know, what that might look like for them. I'm talking about the Peter Thiel's, the Elon Musk's of the world. Let's call them billionaire activists, right? So people who use their power and wealth to shape politics, to shape opinion. You have Elon Musk who spent, you know, something like$300 million to help Donald Trump get elected to a second term. You've directly said that some of these people are not philanthropists.

22:04Katie:They've criticized you. You've gone back and forth about it. But how do you think about that cohort, sort of, given your life's work and the giving pledge and everything that you do, you look at someone spending$300 million to elect a president and amassing unbelievable sums of money, right? How do you respond to that? How do you think about that?

22:29Melinda French Gates:Well, I'm not going to name particular names here. But I'll say this. I have the value in me that to whom much is given, much is expected. But I can't speak for their values. They clearly have a different set of values or different system. And maybe some of those people, look, let's give a little grace to the situation. They're still building, building, building in their careers. So maybe they will get to it in five years, in 10 years. What I do know, though, is there are a lot of people who say, I will get to it. And then unfortunately, what happens is they get so elderly that, oops, then it's kind of almost too late.

23:09Melinda French Gates:So my hope for them is that they would get started sooner. Just like they've picked a good leader in business, they would pick a good leader in their philanthropy and get going with that person.

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25:00Melinda French Gates:I'm Craig Melvin. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.

25:02Katie:I've always been a glass half full kind of guy.

25:05Melinda French Gates:And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges. Their stories are funny and quite candid. So I hope you'll join me each week. And who knows, you might just come away with your own glass half full. Search Glass Half Full with Craig Nolten from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

25:36Katie:We are arguably in a very different universe today around money in politics. And a lot of that money, especially in the Trump administration, is tech money. Does that concern you? I mean, having spent time with a lot of leaders in the tech industry and now sort of seeing where they're tilting, where that money is going?

25:55Melinda French Gates:Well, again, I think we have to look back and say, how did we get in this situation? Which is the Supreme Court made a decision about money in politics, right? And that has led, I didn't agree with that opinion at the time, but that was the law of our land. We follow the law of the land. So it has allowed even more vast sums of wealth to go into politics. And as it so happens, when you say, where's wealth being created today? It's not the railroads. I mean, you still make money off railroads, but it's not the banks that you're creating a new JP Morgan. It's in tech, right? And so in some ways, it's not surprising that they're trying to use those positions that they have to influence society or influence what they want for their business.

26:43Melinda French Gates:So in some ways, it's not surprising. Honestly, after the Supreme Court ruling, start there and look at where we are now. One follows the other.

26:52Katie:Yeah. And I have to ask and then I'll move on. I want to spend time on some other issues. But, you know, you have these executives sitting with the president at these lavish dinners. You have their companies pulling back on DEI initiatives, which I know is something you care about and invest in to a great extent. Is this about business to you? Is it about shareholder returns? Or was there this undercurrent sort of all along? Um, I don't know.

27:21Melinda French Gates:I don't think anybody knows the full answer to that. I think this undercurrent was there. I think some things went too far in the public's mind in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And so where the line gets drawn, I think some people in society felt like it had gone too far, and that's probably a fair criticism, right? So I think the undercurrent might have been there, but I think a lot of these people that you're sitting, as you said, sitting at that table have different things that they want, and mostly what they want, it's for their business. And so they either join in the popularity party or they say, God, I never wanted to do that stuff in my company to begin with.

28:05Melinda French Gates:It's nice. I don't have to anymore. So I think there are different motivations around that large table that we saw. But I think a lot of them are business driven.

28:15Katie:Yeah, of course. And I mean, what does this country look like in 10 years as those commitments to diversity and equity and inclusion fall by the wayside? What worries you about that?

28:28Melinda French Gates:Well, first of all, I hope that this too shall pass. Right. So do I. You know, and sometimes when you get these big whiplash changes, you know, things do change over time. But what I do know to be true is they are affecting families. They are affecting people's opportunity to get the education they want. They are affecting people's ability to get the job that they want to get. So, you know, where we were making progress, even in the tech sector, where there was transparency at job level about how many men versus how many women at job level, right? Right. Not having that transparency, the transparency, when you bring light of today of issue and you can measure it and managers say, OK, I'm going to sign up to have more females on my team or more people of color.

29:28Melinda French Gates:It changes things. And what I know to be true from my father, but seeing it even in my own job at Microsoft, the more diversity we had at the table when we were discussing product features and what to put in and what to leave out. The conversations were better and what we put into the products was better or worse depending on different points of view. And so to have a society where, you know, when you walk the streets of Seattle or D.C. or pick your favorite place, Dallas, Texas, I see a lot of different diversity, right? And yet that diversity isn't fully reflected in our institutions. If it starts to not be as reflective, we were making strides, but not as reflected in our education system or not reflected on the Hill.

30:19Melinda French Gates:We're seeing the policies that are coming out of Congress, right? It's why I believe we need far more women in our state houses, far more Hispanic people in our state houses, so that our state houses then grow to Congress. Congress looks like our populace. That's where we need to get. And we just aren't there yet. And I think some of the initiatives were starting to help us get there. Not all of them. Some of them weren't good, you know. But it'll be interesting to see what happens.

30:49Katie:Well, as you said, let's hope that this too shall pass. I want to ask you, of course, about Pivotal Ventures. So in 2024, you announced you would step away from the Gates Foundation and fully focus on Pivotal. Last fall, you issued a$250 million global open call to support organizations focused on women's mental health, women's physical health. Now, this call, I think it's notable to say, was put out before, you know, USAID, for example, was essentially completely dissolved. And over 4 ,000 organizations applied, even then, which is incredible. Now, earlier this year, you announced the winners.

31:27Katie:You have 80-plus organizations in 22 countries. Incredible. I'm curious, though, can you give us a lay of the land in terms of what these organizations are facing? What are they staring down politically, financially in this moment as they try to do this obviously very vital work that they're doing?

31:47Melinda French Gates:Well, let me just first say why I made that call, and then maybe another thing we'll talk about in women's health, which is if you step way back and you say of all the global funding, the research and development funding that goes into women's health, put cancer aside for a second, 1%. 1 % of all R &D spending goes to women's health. Okay, so right there you're like, hmm, 50 % of the population, 1 % of global funding. So, and as I had done the work that we were doing at the foundation, one of the things I had stood up there was a whole division focused on some of these gender issues, but in particular, the vast bulk of the money was around women's health.

32:34Melinda French Gates:because I could see when I was out in the communities, there were a vast number of things we weren't addressing. And one of the saddest things to me, even in the global health work, is the statistics we collect about women are so sparse. We basically collect if they are alive or dead at the time of childbirth, like how they have done. Like those were our basic statistics. We've been changing that over time. So I knew there were massive problems in women's health. And so one of the reasons I made this particular call, this$250 million call, is I wanted to see what was out there. I wanted to see on different continents, six different continents where we're funding this work, what are people doing to address the inequities they see in society?

33:20Melinda French Gates:So it turns out, you know, they're doing the full spectrum. They're doing mental health, they're doing nutritional health, they're doing reproductive health, and they're doing women's body health writ large, right? And what my belief is that we can't begin to see sitting back, I don't care where you are, Seattle, New York, you know, Austin, you can't begin to see all the problems of the world, nor the solutions. And so what I wanted to do were find the solutions that were out there and figure out with the right amount of funding and support, could we create these force multipliers out in the community.

33:59Melinda French Gates:So we will be collecting data from them. We will be sharing what works. But it's also a signal to the world that women's health is important. Some of them are doing policy work in their countries. Women's health is important, and we need to be changing the narrative about women's health, and we need to be funding it more. So those are the goals of that particular action for women's health. Incredible. I just met. I was on a call just this morning with 80 of the 80 leaders, and they're doing amazing work, and I can't wait to see what comes from it. Will everything work? No. Will a lot of it work?

34:40Katie:I sure hope so. I hope so, too. I mean, what of the challenges? There's just the sort of stark reality of this almost sort of like cultural disinterest in women's issues, right, in women's health that shows up in the sort of 1 % of R &D spending. That's a challenge. But when you talk to these organizations and you get to know them, what are they up against? Like, what are they dealing with? I mean, even in the United States, I'm obviously curious about how that really important work of advancing women's well-being has been challenged in the last few years, quite candidly. And I'm curious about what you're learning, about what it means to be an organization trying to make progress in this space, given sort of where we are.

35:27Melinda French Gates:It is hard. Yeah. Like, just take the United States for a minute. I've been out visiting places like in Louisiana. And even what the doctors say they are up against, you know, they're saying, okay, this change in the law from the Supreme Court, the Dobbs decision. But now we're hearing that we may not be able to get access to certain contraceptives, or are we even allowed to use these various tools, or we're not even allowed to train people now on how to use misoprostol. And misoprostol is used, that's only one of the drugs in a medication abortion. Misoprostol is used to stop postpartum hemorrhaging, which is one of the number one things women die of after childbirth.

36:14Melinda French Gates:And so when a doctor says, I don't know if I'm going to have access to these tools in the future, so what should I do? Should I be stocking up on them? Two, I'm not sure what I can teach. And three, I'm not sure if I'll lose my medical license. You are creating fear in a system that is already trying, teetering, and trying to help women, right? And then you get things where patients don't know what they can get through the Affordable Care Act anymore, right? You are sowing fear in the system and unnecessary health problems for women that were already there when the world already wasn't sort of addressing some of the many of the problems in the right way.

36:57Melinda French Gates:And so these 80 organizations that I've chosen, I'll give you an example of one. One is here in my backyard in Seattle, which is they walk the birth experience with the mother from the day she is pregnant all the way until the baby is two years old. Wow. And why is that important? Because often women fall into a depression in those first few days, two weeks, six weeks a baby's born. And when a woman is depressed, she can't work, she can't breastfeed properly, she can't take care of the baby properly. and yet the medical system doesn't see her until the child's next appointment. So they are literally walking the system to help make sure that that woman and that baby are supported.

37:43Melinda French Gates:And there are great services that are doing this around the United States. This one happens to be doing it a slightly different way. Again, there are ways we can support that kind of work. But people are up against a lot. You know, women in Africa, a lot of the organizations in Africa are saying, I can't get contraceptives. Are you kidding me? I've been doing this work for 20 years. How do I get, I can't literally get access to contraceptives now because of the pull back from USAID. What am I supposed to counsel a woman to use? A condom? Right. I mean, a condom, she's threatening her own life because her husband will say, well, either you've been unfaithful or I've been unfaithful, and he'll often beat her.

38:28Melinda French Gates:So, you know, that's the situation we are in today.

38:32Katie:I'm listening to you talk, and it's incredibly compelling, and it's so frustrating. I have an eight-year-old daughter. It is so infuriating, so much of what you're describing. It makes me furious, And I channel some of that at least through, I mean, obviously time with my child. I channel it through journalism. We try to do reporting and shed light on some of what's going on with USAID, for example. How do you channel the frustration that must come with just being so face-to-face with this all the time, right? I mean, you have not exactly picked an easy lane. for your efforts. And there is sometimes, I think, maybe just for me, I think for a lot of us right now, though, a lot of women, a sense of futility that you hear about, right, doctors who aren't sure whether they will lose their medical license if they offer a woman counsel about her options.

39:36Katie:That's infuriating. How do you channel that?

39:41Melinda French Gates:Yeah, so I definitely get frustrated. I definitely have been angry at times in the last many months. But what I do is, one is I take time in quiet and I process my own emotions, which is really important, or I process them with a therapist or with a friend. And then I figure out how to channel that into productive work. So you are, besides your daughter, which I also have three adult children and two granddaughters, I love to be with them. That just takes me away. We need that at times for sure. That joy, how do you find play? But then in my work, I take those emotions once processed and try to funnel them directly into my work and say, I find where are the points of light?

40:32Melinda French Gates:Where are the fires that we can keep burning and we can keep alive during these times? And how do you take those things and demonstrate to the world what should get done, what can get done? And guess what? I'm lucky enough that I can connect some of those projects if they prove out to other philanthropists. And I find hope because I actually have other philanthropists coming to me and saying, I'm ready. I'm 60 years old. I've raised my kids. I'm ready. What should I be working on? How can I learn? Where should I go? And so I find these points of light and hope in the community, whether it's in my backyard, whether it's somewhere else in the U.S., whether it's around the world.

41:14Melinda French Gates:and I funnel my emotions and my resources into their work because they are on the front lines doing the hard, hard work. And they give me hope when they come back and say, okay, these are the obstacles I'm up against, but here's the change I was able to create. Here's the woman whose life I did save. Here's the woman I kept out of depression. Here's the kid I counseled who was having suicidal thoughts, right? When you hear those stories, that humanity in that connection, I think that's where we find hope. And that's at least where I find hope in my friends that I'm talking with about this too quite a bit.

41:51Katie:And when you are looking at organizations to support, what are the most important things that you look for? You know, when you are sort of assessing an organization, obviously the merits of the idea, but also, you know, the ability to navigate and survive the ups and downs of running a nonprofit, right? The ups and downs of such a volatile societal environment, political environment, all of those things. What are you looking for? What do you want to see?

42:21Melinda French Gates:I look for leaders who are resilient, leaders who can be flexible of thought, leaders who are courageous, and leaders who have done the work, like know what the specific work is and have built a team or an organization, even if it's tiny, around them to keep doing that work. Because I know they will need those other leaders on the hard days and those leaders are going to need them. But when you see those kinds of leaders, those are the ones you lift up. And so part of, you know, when I came out of the foundation, I made a billion dollar commitment, a new billion dollar commitment on behalf of women.

42:59Melinda French Gates:We didn't even talk about, but one of the things I did is I use part of that to pick leaders that I saw that, again, we went out and scoured, but that I saw who were working hard to create change in the world. Some of them are women. Some of them are men. But they are really working deeply in their society. And those are the ones that I have a lot of hope for. And I'm seeing some of them take the gift I've given them and not only obviously use it, that's what they're supposed to do in their work, but I challenge them. They can use a certain amount of their own work, but they have to find other leaders and fund them.

43:37Melinda French Gates:But I'm also seeing them be able to use that to raise money from other people, right? And that gives me hope. So, yeah, we have to look for it. We have to look for the helpers, some people would say.

43:54Katie:Yeah, yeah. And the people who will pay it forward. Yes, definitely. I wanted to ask you a little bit about work, workplace culture, the future of work, because you have criticized sort of this productivity culture that glorifies overwork, right? You've talked about sleep. You've said sacrificing it for productivity is, in your words, quote, so dumb. I have to agree with you. I mean, I get eight or nine hours of sleep every night, and if I don't, I'm really in trouble. You know, do you feel out of step saying things like that, or do you think that we need to sort of counter this drive-to-survive mentality?

44:30Katie:I mean, do you want to see sort of systemic change, or are you happy to just be someone who disagrees with the status quo on this?

44:39Melinda French Gates:Well, I haven't disagreed with the status quo on this since I've been in high school, actually. So my parents were countercultural. Like, they actually taught us that you needed breaks. You know, maybe because we were Catholic, we certainly took Sunday as a family. And, you know, my dad has this huge career. My mom's running the household, and they have a small business, a real estate business, that my mom and dad are running in their spare time, which they didn't have to put us four kids through college. But, you know, we took Sundays off as a family. And guess what else? My parents actually taught me the importance of rest.

45:14Melinda French Gates:of taking a short nap every day. And they did, and I did quite often through high school, definitely in college, and even to this day. It's not every day, but just recharging your batteries. So I came from a family that was countercultural on this issue. I don't feel like it's mine to sort of change people's opinions. But even schools are figuring out the difference between my oldest daughter and my youngest went through the same high school here in Seattle, but they were six years apart in school, six years apart in age, actually seven in terms of classes, which class they graduated in. Do you know freshman year when my youngest daughter came into that school, they were teaching much more.

45:56Melinda French Gates:They didn't teach it at all when my oldest daughter was in that school about meditation, taking a nap, doing some yoga, doing some mindfulness, Right. It is it is becoming, I think, more part of the culture. And those who believe it will take it on. And those who don't, fine, they'll do what they do. And maybe maybe it won't affect them now. But look at who they are when they get to be 70, maybe. Yes, yes.

46:21Katie:Those years of exhaustion will catch up with them. I'm so curious. You had remarkable parents. I mean, you've brought them up several times. Clearly, they left you with a lot. And when you think about your kids, what do you hope you are imbuing them with? What do you hope they, in an interview in 50 years, are talking about when it comes to their mom? Thank you for that question.

46:53Melinda French Gates:I hope they say that they have thought a lot about their values and they know who they are because they learned that from their mom. How important it is to know who you are as a person and to live in that direction and in that own lane. Even when the world calls you to move in different ways or buffers you to do the headwinds to do different things. They figured out over time who they were. and then they worked deeply in that lane. And I hope they will also say that they knew the importance of being loved by family and friends because at the end, it's not really about the work you do. Hopefully you got to do meaningful work and you leave something behind there, but it's really about were you loved by your family and friends?

47:40Katie:We covered a lot of stuff there, a lot of it very heavy, so I hope you don't mind if I pivot you to a little game to wrap up. Probably great to end on a light note. So we have a game we created, we're very proud of it, called Control-Alt-Delete.

47:59Katie:So I want to know what piece of tech would you love to control? What would you alt, so alter or change? And what would you delete? What would you vanquish from the earth?

48:08Melinda French Gates:Oh, gosh. Okay, what would I control in terms of tech if I could control it? Where AI is headed? Oh, tell me about that. I want your take. Well, I think there are so many amazing possibilities with tech, like just amazing and what it will bring forward in terms of our health and what we learn. And so I think there's so many upsides, but we also know there are downsides. So if I could control the upside and, you know, keep the downside as low as possible, boy, would I love to be in control of that.

48:43Katie:I think putting Melinda French Gates in charge of AI actually sounds like a really good idea to me. I think we should do that. No, no, no.

48:51Melinda French Gates:I got another day job.

48:53Katie:What about alter or delete?

48:57Melinda French Gates:I would alter when kids had the ability to have a phone in their hand. I really think that it should be honestly. Yeah, what's your age? Not age, ninth grade. Ninth grade. Entering ninth grader. Entering ninth grader. So high school. It's just, yeah, it's just having profound effects on the mental health of young people. Profound. And I just think any time before that is just too young. Yeah. And delete? I'd delete social media. Just wipe it all. Gone. Yeah, I just don't think we get that much from it. We get some upside from it. You hear the one one thing we do get is we get some pushback on certain voices or pushback on certain narratives in the news.

49:49Melinda French Gates:And that that comes to light. But I just think it's honestly it's done more harm than it's done good in the world. So and some people are choosing to just delete it. Right. You know.

49:59Katie:And a lot of young people, interestingly, are are choosing not to participate, which I think is a a hopeful sign.

50:06Melinda French Gates:Yeah, me too. They're seeing that being out in the physical world and experiencing things with their friends, that that's more meaningful than following this stuff on your phone or wherever you're following it, and that it grabs you so easily, right? Like, I loved when my youngest daughter and her friends got to, I don't remember what year of high school, I think it was sophomore year, and they're like, you know, when we go out for a meal together, we're going to do a phone stack. And they would just stack them all up at the end of the table. And that way, nobody was tempted to, like, go to it and they actually had a meal and had real conversation about things.

50:40Melinda French Gates:And I was like, good on you all. Yeah, that's amazing. Sometimes we can learn from our kids.

50:44Katie:I was going to say these next generations really need to save us because as you and I just discussed, we have some problems that need to be addressed. Well, thank you so much again. This was fantastic. I really, really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks for doing this.

51:07Katie:This show is produced by Jessica Alpert with help from Adriana Tapia and Sam Egan. Sound design, mix, and original music by Pran Bandy. Kate Osborne is our executive producer. And I am, of course, your host, Katie Drummond, Wired's Global Editorial Director.

51:38Katie:This week on the political scene from The New Yorker, Trump's rupture in the world order.

51:45Melinda French Gates:Europe caught between two adversarial great powers. That's basically dialing back the clock to not only pre-World War II, but really it's a pre-20th century view of the world. And I would say it's a world of permanent insecurity that we're looking at.

52:03Katie:Join me, Evan Osnos, and my colleagues Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser every Friday on The Political Scene, available wherever you get your podcasts.

52:15Katie:This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at O-D-O-O dot com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

52:46Melinda French Gates:From PRX.