AI transcript
0:00:06 if you’re feeling bummed about the future of climate change under our new administration
0:00:12 we’ve got a podcast for you the headlines can sound really bad but putting those in context
0:00:17 often like they don’t play out the way that they’re first portrayed listen to explain it to
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0:00:40 episode 345 345 is the area code belonging to the cayman islands in 1945 the first microwave oven
0:00:46 was invented i like my girlfriends like my microwaves cool on the outside hot on the inside
0:00:57 and kills every baby i put in them oh that was wrong that was so wrong go go go
0:01:10 welcome to the 345th episode of the prop juke pod everyone is freaking out at that joke is this
0:01:16 the end if we’re gonna go down let’s go down with all guns blazing all right what’s happening i am
0:01:24 back in london and it feels alien because the sun is out it hits 62 degrees today um we’ve have a
0:01:29 fantastic episode today we speak with melinda french gates a philanthropist businesswoman and global
0:01:35 advocate for women and girls probably the wrong joke for that anyway as we discuss with melinda her new
0:01:41 book the next day transitions change and moving forward we also get into her philanthropic efforts
0:01:46 what she learned from raising a son and why women still face barriers to claiming real power today
0:01:49 so with that here’s our conversation with melinda french gates
0:02:12 melinda where does this podcast find you in seattle seattle that would make sense yeah home for me
0:02:17 home for you what percentage of your time do you spend there and where what’s your second favorite
0:02:22 place i’m probably half the time in seattle and my second favorite place is being with my
0:02:27 granddaughters somewhere on the east coast new york or florida that’s nice where in florida
0:02:33 uh they’re down in this sort of palm beach area but inland from that yeah i have a home in uh delray
0:02:39 beach i really enjoy it down there and i miss it uh so let’s bust right into it in the opening of your
0:02:45 new book the next day you write that you’ve organized a book around transitions that were formative in your
0:02:51 life you mentioned leaving home becoming a parent losing a friend ending your marriage and leaving the
0:02:57 gates foundation walk us through if you can each of these pivotal moments and highlight some of the key
0:03:03 insights well i wrote this book because i think you know we all go through transitions in life and i’m
0:03:08 very honest in the book that i’ve turned 60 and so by now i’ve gone through lots of transitions as you
0:03:15 said leaving home for me that one was really exciting to go to college but then i got there and as i
0:03:20 described in the book i felt like a fish out of water as a woman in computer science and i had to
0:03:26 adjust to that i talk about joining microsoft that was again a very exciting time in the computer
0:03:32 industry i loved it but again i was there weren’t very many technical women i leave my career to start
0:03:38 raising my children uh knowing i would go back but that was an enormous transition for me to leave the
0:03:44 workforce and raise children and then you know we started the gates foundation and i chose to leave
0:03:50 that last year and strike out on my own in philanthropy so big big transitions some exhilarating
0:03:56 some scary but i think they’re things we learn and we gain resilience by going through lots of
0:04:02 transitions so obviously you’re playing at an entirely different altitude but my family is
0:04:05 blessed with a certain level of economic security and i constantly get questions around how do you
0:04:13 maintain your children’s grit and the answer is i’m not sure we have um you obviously your kids i would
0:04:19 imagine this is an issue that that you face how do you try and instill a certain level of values
0:04:25 and grit and an appreciation for work in in your kids given obviously the extraordinary opportunities
0:04:34 and privilege they have sure and my three children are all now adults ages 22 25 and 28 but what i would
0:04:43 say is i was incredibly purposeful about it from the day they were born and i knew they were being born into
0:04:50 a life of incredible privilege but i grew up in a middle-class family and i knew that if i could instill
0:04:59 those values and make our life as normal as i could for them and constantly live out my values in the home and through
0:05:04 the work we were doing in the world and bring the work home and talk about it around the dinner table
0:05:09 as well as i took them out on age-appropriate field trips even when they were very young
0:05:15 we went and visited places around seattle that they could give their time and eventually when they were
0:05:21 old enough i took them to pretty rough places in africa because so they could see that seattle was one
0:05:28 pinprick on the globe and that if you have some level of wealth and privilege there is something
0:05:34 you can do with your life to give back and i believe that’s true for everybody who’s born in the united
0:05:41 states no matter what their wealth income you have time and energy and talents and sometimes even money
0:05:47 to give back so in addition to taking them and exposing them to people aren’t less fortunate did you have
0:05:57 any more pedestrian tactics like chores or athletics anything like that absolutely first of all i felt
0:06:02 like my kids should not be homeschooled they should be in a school environment so that we were working
0:06:06 through all the issues the kids work through with their peers and that i needed to work through with
0:06:14 other parents we absolutely had chores they had an allowance and we had an agreement about their
0:06:20 allowance they got it weekly it wasn’t for specific chores it was for it was an allowance but they were
0:06:26 expected to do their chores and the agreement i had with them is that became their budget for buying
0:06:32 clothing uh for buying things they wanted anything else went on their christmas wish list or their
0:06:38 birthday wish list from our extended family um and the other agreement i had with them is because of who
0:06:45 we were neither they nor i were ever allowed to tell how much it was per week because everybody would
0:06:51 have an opinion oh that’s all the gates kids gets or oh my gosh that’s so much money that they get
0:06:59 but it turned that it i think it taught them to budget early and learn the value of money one of the
0:07:04 things or i think one of the reasons are common themes through the accolades or the positive reception
0:07:10 your book is that you are pretty strikingly vulnerable and raw and out there with pretty sensitive topics i
0:07:16 you know when you read memoirs quite frankly you’re usually reading kind of the starched version of their
0:07:21 life written by someone else that they’re the hero in everything and everything’s for the better and ends
0:07:27 well and there’s some life lesson in it and you seem pretty vulnerable in it you talk a lot about
0:07:34 dealing with panic attacks and anxiety and we are raising a generation of people who are
0:07:40 suffering more from anxiety or greater levels of anxiety than any previous generation you have kids
0:07:46 you struggled or been open about your struggles with anxiety what advice can you give to young people
0:07:53 who might be struggling with anxiety pretty much every human being has anxiety at some level
0:08:01 and i know many business leaders that i have been around i’ll say many of them male or even prime
0:08:07 ministers i was i was uh practicing backstage for something and i saw this prime minister going into
0:08:13 q a session and he was practicing with his team because he knew there were going to be anxiety provoking
0:08:21 questions and the only reason i even say that is because i think we have to realize all of us deal with it
0:08:29 and the more we can be honest about it and bring it forward and name it and then reach for support
0:08:37 and other people and resources the more we can overcome it and partly you do have to lean forward
0:08:43 into it i often say to myself in the back of my mind and i’ve said this to my three children both when
0:08:48 they were in middle school high school and now adults just when anxiety makes you feel like you want to
0:08:55 fall backwards as soon as you start to feel that falling backwards you have to push yourself to lean
0:09:01 forward and say what can i do in this moment who can i reach out to on text how do i reach you know a
0:09:09 trusted friend a parent a therapist a counselor and that the more you practice going through those anxious
0:09:14 times the more you’re going to get better at it and push through even some of the bigger ones
0:09:21 yeah i love the statement of dan harris that action absorbs anxiety and something that gives me
0:09:27 anxiety i don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way as a parent i have huge fears that i have sons 14 and
0:09:34 17 that they’re going through something and don’t tell me or anybody that’s my fear that they’re in the
0:09:40 room and if i felt the same way when i had problems at school i wasn’t going to talk to my mom about it i was
0:09:45 a single mother i just wasn’t going to come to her and that’s always been my biggest fear is that
0:09:53 um well anybody doesn’t reach out but especially with my kids like how do i create some level of
0:09:59 comfort or fluidity around communication because i i do worry that you know i would bet the majority of
0:10:05 the stuff they’ve dealt with i never knew about and anyway any more of a statement than a question but
0:10:10 any thoughts on trying to make sure that people close in your life reach out when they’re struggling
0:10:16 well i would say you know scott you and i grew up in a different generation right and luckily this
0:10:22 generation is talking much more about anxiety depression mental health disorders so that’s fantastic
0:10:31 and all i can say is what i tried to do as a parent i definitely had times when i worried substantially
0:10:36 about two of my three children the third one not so much because she was so verbal i kind of always knew
0:10:43 what was on her mind but the older two and what i learned over that time was the more i could be
0:10:50 venerable and name what i was afraid of or what i dealt with at their age i think the more it caused an
0:10:58 opening for a conversation i will say i hear from more parents of boys or i did when my girls and my son
0:11:04 were in middle school high school that boys tend to not be in general um as verbal about naming their
0:11:09 emotions especially because they’re maturing a bit later than girls and so i think in those cases you
0:11:15 have to create more openings and opportunities so i learned with two of my three that they would talk
0:11:20 over a dinner alone with me and we just made a regular routine of dinners alone another one talked to
0:11:26 me more when we would go out walking so we made a regular routine of going out walking and guess what
0:11:31 i still employ those tactics now that they’re adults we’ll be right back after a quick break
0:11:42 support for prop g comes from vanta starting a company is incredibly gratifying it can also be
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0:15:09 you’re raising a son i’m writing a book on masculinity and i have two sons so i can’t compare and contrast
0:15:16 what it’s like to raise girls versus boys but what have you been your observations and how or if and
0:15:22 how you’ve changed your approach to parenting between your son and your daughters well first of all for
0:15:29 me at least it was more about personality i mean kids come into the world with a good chunk of their
0:15:34 personality i think developed and we can only i think affect what my mom used to say were the two ends of the
0:15:41 spectrum help them you know raise up their good sides and try and keep the low sides down so my kids all
0:15:47 three were quite different personalities but i will say you know i that my son and he and i were just
0:15:53 recently talking about this he matured a bit later than the girls did you know at those ages and so i did
0:16:00 have to talk with him more about his friends even later than i talked to my girls like you want to make sure
0:16:06 your kids are surrounded by a good community and good friends and if you see a bad one you you know
0:16:11 in middle school you get to help them more on that in high school you know it gets trickier right
0:16:17 and so um i did have to have more conversations with my son about you know what are you noticing about
0:16:22 this friend what do you like about this friend or what don’t you like about that friend so he could
0:16:27 compare and contrast good friendships to be able to really see who was true in his life
0:16:37 so you also talk a lot about how difficult it is still for women to get real power what do you mean
0:16:44 by real power and what still gets in the way i mean there’s a lot of data showing that women are doing
0:16:49 quite frankly just really well right women under the more college attendance from women women under the
0:16:52 age of 30 and urban centers are making more money more single women own
0:16:59 homes the graduate schools are chock full of women now more women seeking tertiary education than men
0:17:06 but you say that or that women still have a difficult time seizing real power define real power and what
0:17:13 you think uh are still some of the obstacles facing women sure i think we all have power inside of us
0:17:21 boys and men women and girls you’re absolutely right at the statistics you’ve talked about where women are
0:17:29 starting to thrive at those levels but when we send them out into society into their careers there’s a
0:17:37 noticeable shift and you are not seeing women at the very top of professions they’re starting to make it in
0:17:44 middle management you’re seeing more female cfos and and chief legal officers or head of hr but you know
0:17:54 how many ceos in the fortune 500 are women how many entrepreneurs are women how many at the top of the
0:18:02 medical profession how many of those are women and so what i’m seeing is that women are stalling at certain
0:18:07 levels for all kinds of reasons and partly though there are barriers in society that are holding
0:18:13 women back and we need to break down those barriers because to me real power is when a woman can use
0:18:20 her voice and advocate exactly the way she wants she has full decision making authority authority over her
0:18:29 resources and she’s setting direction so when i look at who creates our public policy i still don’t see
0:18:35 enough women at the head of the senate or the u.s house of of representatives i don’t see enough women
0:18:42 in state legislatures that’s where we’re making policy when i look at who are the heads of studios and what
0:18:49 movies are being made those tell our stories how many female directors do you see so we’re still stalling
0:18:55 out in society and that’s why i feel at least for me my work is how do we make sure we continue to break
0:19:03 down the barriers and lift women up all the way as we also bring along boys because you have great
0:19:09 statistics which i’ve read and i see and i see it anecdotally of boys now struggling more at the sort
0:19:16 of middle and high school level and college level right so we actually need to do both so there’s there’s
0:19:22 no getting around it you know the data i’ve seen is that while young women are thriving where women
0:19:27 really take a hit professionally quite frankly is when they have kids and that is the corporate world
0:19:32 still hasn’t figured out a way to maintain a woman’s trajectory and the corporate world is very
0:19:39 unforgiving of people who leave for even a year so i guess moving to and also i think it’s like 80 or 85
0:19:45 of the fortune 500 at one point i think there were more ceos named john than women like not that long
0:19:50 ago three or four years ago so there’s clearly i mean there’s clearly some nuance here clearly there’s
0:19:57 still really big obstacles for women around as you put it seizing real power i i believe that the
0:20:02 quality of opportunity doesn’t always mean a quality of outcome i’m not sure there will ever be 250 women
0:20:07 uh fortune 500 ceos uh and that’s a longer conversation as to why but there should definitely
0:20:16 be more than 80 but what can we do because is it laws is it a different approach is it it doesn’t
0:20:20 appear i mean is it is it going to be a naturally occurring phenomena because there’s more women in
0:20:25 college and college is a strong predictor of senior leadership is it that young women aren’t as risk
0:20:30 aggressive for whatever reason and they need different upbringing about risk and entrepreneurship like
0:20:36 if you had a magic wand you have a lot of resources you have a big voice you’ve identified the problem
0:20:40 what do you think of the two or three things we can do as a society to try and help
0:20:46 women at those senior levels get over the hump okay so one of the biggest barriers for women in the
0:20:55 workplace is caregiving even in the private sector less than 27 percent of women have access to paid
0:21:04 family medical leave we are the only the only high income country in the world that doesn’t have a
0:21:11 federal paid family medical leave policy and i don’t believe it should be maternity leave i believe it
0:21:17 should be paid family medical leave because if you look at societies take the nordic countries where
0:21:26 they’ve had paid family medical leave for a long time say 30 years what happens both the women and the men
0:21:34 take it and what it does is the man participates longer in the rearing of the children he appreciates
0:21:40 his wife’s role more and you break down the norm in society that oh the woman should go take care of the
0:21:46 kid and and then there’s not also a career penalty for her taking that time off because the man’s doing
0:21:53 it as well when we get to that point of really waking up to having a paid family medical leave
0:22:00 policy at the federal level we will change society and so one of the things i am doing with many many
0:22:06 partners is pushing on this we got very close in the last administration we missed it at the federal
0:22:12 level by one vote it was a senator a male senator but we have it in 13 states and the district of
0:22:18 columbia now and so we’ve got to keep that’s one barrier we have to break down and keep pushing forward
0:22:25 again i believe if you have more women in state houses and you have more women in on the hill in the
0:22:31 in dc we’ll get that policy passed but we’ll get it passed even before that because we do have to have
0:22:37 like-minded men and boys who believe in these things in terms of women just take i’ll take one example
0:22:43 risk which you brought up i don’t believe women are less risk averse i really just don’t we talk about
0:22:49 that a lot but when you look at the statistics if you want to start a new business as a female
0:22:58 entrepreneur four percent four percent of venture capital funding goes to women and so when you talk
0:23:04 about when you actually do the surveys of the women who’ve run run the gauntlet take it on sandhill road
0:23:10 in silicon valley they hear they’re too risk they won’t take enough risk they’re not taking enough
0:23:15 risk they’re taking too much risk they haven’t thought of their business plan when you put a male next to
0:23:21 them they run the gauntlet and they do much better so to me it’s a bias we have in society that men
0:23:28 and women have so what do we need to do we need to make sure more limited partners are looking at
0:23:35 women-led businesses and quite frankly people of color businesses because i believe women have a
0:23:41 different lens on society than men it’s not good or better it just is different and i believe they have
0:23:47 good business ideas and we shouldn’t as as an investor and i am moving money in this direction i don’t
0:23:50 believe we should leave money on the table i think those are good businesses that will help us get
0:23:57 through some of these caregiving struggles that we are facing now as a nation especially with an aging
0:24:06 population yeah i would say the greatest exposure to inequality i registered or witnessed was in the
0:24:11 90s i came of age the dawn of the internet i graduated in business school in 92 and i raised a bunch of
0:24:17 money i lived in san francisco starting internet companies and i i’m embarrassed to admit this
0:24:23 i never dawned on me that every one of us that was raising tens of millions of dollars in venture capital
0:24:30 we were all white dudes you weren’t even allowed to be gay i mean you couldn’t be or outwardly gay
0:24:40 you couldn’t it was all the same person it was all uh white men typically in their 30s
0:24:48 who had great credentials stanford or berkeley i went to berkeley and all of that risk capital was
0:24:54 crowded into what is that you know 11 percent of the population you know that’s fragment and it just
0:25:01 never dawned on me that why aren’t you know non-whites getting funded why aren’t women getting
0:25:07 funded and things have gotten better i remember katherine dylan i mean granted it started from a
0:25:11 terrible place but katherine dylan who’s my business partner here i remember we raised money from general
0:25:18 catalyst to kind of arguably one of the better venture capitalists east of the mississippi and we
0:25:22 went in there for the last round and it was part of the last round of funding we raised i think 17 million
0:25:26 bucks or something in a a round for one of my companies and we had to meet with all the partners
0:25:32 and all 27 of the partners granted this was 15 13 years ago all 27 of the partners were men
0:25:39 and it didn’t even dawn on me and katherine and maureen basically they said to me what the fuck i’m like
0:25:44 what’s wrong and they’re like they couldn’t find one woman but i do think it’s gotten a lot better
0:25:50 but where do you see the the friction we know the problems where do you see the friction and how do we
0:25:58 address it yeah so in addition to my philanthropic dollars i also have a large investment fund because
0:26:06 i believe it’s so important to put my money where my mouth is and to role model what’s right do i expect
0:26:13 and so it is it’s going that funding is going to limited partners who are over indexing on women
0:26:20 and people of color businesses because i believe if i can prove that i can get a good return from that
0:26:25 then people won’t leave you won’t you’ll have men saying oh wait a minute i want to crowd in on that
0:26:30 business i don’t want to leave funding on the table right there’s a great opportunity now with female
0:26:36 sports you’re seeing those sports teams finally coming up and doing better billy jean king has been on
0:26:42 this you know forever but now you’re seeing people like serena williams has a great investment fund
0:26:48 there’s monarch collective so you’re seeing the rise of women’s nba and i believe you’re going to start to
0:26:54 see the rise in more other sports for women that is a fantastic place to put money down just as one
0:27:01 example there are many more types of businesses so i’m funding limited partners who are funding many
0:27:08 others again with this thesis that i have and we’ll see if it proves out to be right so you’ve um
0:27:11 speaking of philanthropy you’ve committed a billion dollars towards women’s health
0:27:21 and uh so just first off uh i i just want to say thank you and uh and that is i i talk a lot about
0:27:26 and i’m very passionate about the struggles that young men face in our society and the inspiration
0:27:33 for me focusing on this area was data i started getting from this um brooking scholar named richard
0:27:38 reeves he’s literally my he’s literally my yoda on the topic and he called me and he said i’m going to
0:27:45 start my own institute and despite the fact that your billion dollars is geared towards women’s health
0:27:51 the american institute for boys and men headed by this this person that’s literally changed my life
0:28:00 uh richard reeves you gave him uh or pledged 20 million dollars and well so first thank you and
0:28:04 and and the second is why did you decide given that the billion dollars is focused on women’s health
0:28:10 to give 20 million dollars to the american institute for boys and men okay so yeah just to clarify a
0:28:20 little bit i put down a billion dollars on behalf of lifting up women and others in society 250 million
0:28:26 of that is going to women’s health we have a something called the action for women’s health so 250 million
0:28:35 a quarter of the billion then i took 12 global leaders and gave each of them 20 million they can spend a
0:28:41 small portion of it on their own organization but the goal is really for them to find other organizations
0:28:48 doing like-minded work so richard reeves was one of those 12 global leaders because i absolutely believe
0:28:56 that boys need to be doing better and men in society we have to have good role models for them as he talks
0:29:04 about teachers coaches men need good places to say hey i can fit in society even though society is
0:29:10 changing and so to me he’s on the forefront of that with his men and boys institute and i wanted to fund
0:29:16 that and see also who else does he choose to fund we’ll be right back
0:29:26 the regular season is in the rear view and now it’s time for the games that matter the most
0:29:31 this is kenny beecham and playoff basketball is finally here on small ball we’re diving deep into
0:29:37 every series every crunch time finish every coaching adjustment that can make or break a championship run
0:29:43 who’s building for a 16 win marathon which superstar will submit their legacy and which role player is
0:29:48 about to become a household name with so many fascinating first round matchups will the west
0:29:53 be the bloodbath we anticipate will the east be as predictable as we think can the celtics defend their
0:29:59 title can steph curry lebron james koat leonard push the young teams at the top i’ll be bringing the
0:30:04 expertise to pass and the genuine opinion you need for the most exciting time of the nba calendar
0:30:10 small ball is your essential companion for the nba postseason join me kenny beecham for new episodes
0:30:15 of small ball throughout the playoffs don’t miss small ball can you beecham new episodes dropping
0:30:18 through the playoffs available on youtube and wherever you get your podcasts
0:30:30 right now in courtrooms across the country but mostly in and around dc the future of the tech industry
0:30:36 is on trial that sounds hyperbolic but it’s true google just lost a case that will change the way that the ad
0:30:41 business works on the internet and maybe change google forever and meta is on trial about whether
0:30:46 it’s going to have to spin off instagram and whatsapp some of the most important parts of mark zuckerberg’s
0:30:52 empire on the verge cast this week we discuss why this is happening where it might go and what the new
0:30:56 internet might look like all that on the verge cast wherever you get podcasts
0:31:06 this week on prof g markets we speak with ryan peterson founder and ceo of flexport a leader in global supply
0:31:12 chain management we discuss how tariffs are actually impacting businesses and we get ryan’s take on the
0:31:18 likely outcomes of this ongoing trade war if they don’t change anything in this 145 duty sticks on china
0:31:26 it’ll it’ll take out like mass bankruptcies talking like 80 percent of small business that buys from china will just die
0:31:30 and millions of employees will go you know as will be unemployed i mean it’s sort of why i’m like
0:31:35 they obviously have to back off the trade like that can’t be that they just do that
0:31:42 i don’t believe that they’re that crazy you can find that conversation exclusively on the prof g markets podcast
0:31:51 we’re back with more from melinda french gates
0:31:58 so this is a loaded question but i’ll ask it anyways uh i believe that the biggest problems in our society
0:32:03 can be somewhat reverse engineered to income inequality you’re one of the wealthiest i would imagine one of
0:32:07 the wealthiest women in america what are your thoughts on income inequality and how we address it
0:32:15 i absolutely see the income inequality in the united states and i do not think it’s good for us
0:32:22 as a nation and i think you have too many people low-income people who are really struggling and
0:32:30 struggling in their communities you know my dad grew up at a time that his dad ran a small machine shop
0:32:35 in new orleans got turned over to the war effort after that it got turned back into a machine shop
0:32:44 but my dad grew up in a family where there were not a lot of resources and yet because of georgia tech
0:32:49 he was able to do a work study program and still become an engineer and then he got a scholarship
0:32:56 to stanford right but you’ve pointed out which i think is true it is far harder to get into university
0:33:04 these days than when i grew up or you grew up or my dad grew up and it’s far harder to find a good
0:33:12 living wage to be able to purchase your first house so i don’t have all the policy solutions for that but
0:33:17 i do think there are some policy solutions for that and i particularly my heart goes out to black people
0:33:24 the redlining that we did in our country made homes unaffordable to them and they couldn’t even live in
0:33:29 certain neighbors neighborhoods that absolutely those disparities need to be reversed
0:33:35 when i look at you and your ex-husband’s approach right extraordinarily successful extraordinary
0:33:44 beneficiaries of a capitalist economy you know unprecedented wealth but my sense is like and
0:33:50 like a lot of your colleagues of your generation i’ll say our generation you do take civic responsibility
0:33:57 seriously you know trying to advance women’s health trying to cure malaria i mean these are
0:34:05 you know for lack of a better these are good things and i worry or what i witness is this new generation
0:34:12 of tech leaders who are even aggregating arguably more wealth and in my view have more have a bigger debt
0:34:20 to america and the world i don’t see that same level of like a comity of man it seems as if what they want
0:34:27 is to get tax credits or subsidies from the government or reduce regulation once they’re kind of over the
0:34:33 hump they want to be protected by the law but not bound by it and i get the sense they just don’t have
0:34:40 the same even in the gilded age the you know the carnies of the rockefellers you know full body contact
0:34:47 violence to get to that point of wealth but once they got to that point of wealth really took you wanted
0:34:52 to build big beautiful works and give back and kind of cement their legacy as people who were seen as
0:34:59 patriots and i don’t get that sense from this next level of tech leadership one do you agree with that and
0:35:08 why do you think that is i don’t think tech leadership is a monolith i think you’re seeing
0:35:16 certain ones being held up in society right now all i can say is that i believe if you are wealthy
0:35:23 you know this extreme level of wealth anybody who has you know 500 million dollars my gosh you have
0:35:30 more than enough wealth you you have a moral obligation to give it back and you have benefited
0:35:36 if you started a business in this country you have absolutely benefited from this country i’ve traveled
0:35:41 the world where people say my gosh you know i couldn’t begin to start a business like that in my
0:35:49 country so you have something to give back and all i can say is that you know warren and my ex-husband
0:35:56 bill and i set out with this giving pledge to really try and role model for society that if you
0:36:02 have gotten great wealth you should be giving it back have has everybody started to give back
0:36:10 absolutely not but do we have a group of them who are yes for sure and um what i can say is that the
0:36:15 community that of that that are giving back they’re talking to one another they’re learning they’re trying
0:36:20 to figure out how to do it well they’re trying to figure out how even with their kids we now have a
0:36:26 whole next generation of the giving pledge of their adult children and adult grandchildren who are giving
0:36:32 back so i think we have to role model that this is what’s right for society and that hopefully over time
0:36:39 will put pressure on those who are not it even goes beyond that though i’ve just been so disappointed i see
0:36:44 these some of these tech bros or some of those i don’t call it right wing i don’t even know how to
0:36:51 but they attack someone like mackenzie bezos i’ve seen them attack you i’ve seen them as if your
0:36:59 your philanthropy and your efforts are somewhat you know that there’s something mendacious or malicious
0:37:05 there and it’s sort of like you you might be wrong but your heart’s in the right place i think that’s
0:37:11 the worst thing you could say and yet they take it to this and some of these people have really big
0:37:20 platforms and they want to create this sort of conspiracy that you’re up to harm and i don’t know
0:37:24 it’s interesting they seem to have really centered in on mckenzie for some reason which it just makes no
0:37:33 sense to me at all isn’t that incredibly upsetting for you i don’t get it i ignore it so i can you
0:37:39 really can you really ignore yes yes i know who i am and i know what i’m doing and i know what my
0:37:46 values are and why i’m giving back i mean sure i’m not sitting on the sidelines i mean to me it’s like
0:37:51 it’s so easy to sit on the sidelines and as roosevelt used to say you know criticize from the
0:38:00 sidelines i’m in the arena doing the work i’ve have visited my gosh probably more low-income countries
0:38:06 certainly than i ever thought i would in my lifetime i see the difference that you know these health
0:38:13 tools make in low-income countries i see the difference when a woman has access to a good paid
0:38:20 family medical leave policy it changes society so you know i think when you’re not doing the work and
0:38:26 you’re not in the arena it’s easier to criticize others and to project onto others or make them
0:38:32 look bad because you don’t want to go do that work that’s you know that’s up to them if that’s how they
0:38:38 want to act fine but it doesn’t bother me my work goes ahead so we’re pretty much exactly the same age
0:38:44 and turning 60 was sort of maybe it’s because i’m a man i’m going through a midlife crisis but
0:38:53 i have the last few years especially my 60th was like pretty seminal for me and has changed a lot of
0:38:59 my perspective and the way i think i approach life you know we’re sort of on the back nine and i don’t i
0:39:02 don’t know if you’re religious i’m not i think at some point i’m going to look into my kids eyes and
0:39:08 know our relationship is coming to an end and i’m and that end is barreling faster than i’d like
0:39:14 it’s weird that time is just i mean decades are becoming years years are becoming months you know
0:39:21 and i’m curious if you’ve registered any difference in your approach to life or your perspective as you
0:39:27 know now that you have a six handle on your on your birthday cake absolutely and i actually think
0:39:33 i crossed this when i turned 50 i said to myself outright i’m on the back half of life now at 50
0:39:41 and i knew it hopefully and i yeah and i so i said to myself is at 60 if i’m not living my life the way
0:39:47 i want to live it now something is wrong like i am fortunate enough that i don’t have to work right
0:39:54 that’s an enormous privilege and that look i get to organize my time and somebody once said to me you
0:40:00 have to paint on the canvas of your own life and i thought isn’t that true no one else can paint on my
0:40:06 canvas so if i’m not organizing my life in the way i want to see my parents or to see my children or my
0:40:14 two now granddaughters and do the work that i believe in in the world that’s on me and um i you know you
0:40:21 enter a point where i think you i hope i hope i’m in this generative stage of life right and really
0:40:27 thinking about my adult children what have i passed on to them what would i like to continue to pass on
0:40:32 are there words i haven’t sent to them or things regrets i have that i’d like to go back and tell
0:40:38 them i’m sorry that on that particular day i wasn’t my best self with you but look if we don’t do it now
0:40:46 we could be gone easily tomorrow so easily so you’ve checked a lot of boxes right you’re professionally
0:40:52 hugely successful you’ve aggregated huge wealth it sounds as if you have nice kids and a good
0:40:59 relationship with them it sounds as if you have good friends but go five years out what does success
0:41:04 look like for you in five years and what boxes that aren’t checked are you looking to check
0:41:11 well i really set my horizons on a 10-year horizon because look we are taking i’m trying to take big
0:41:19 swings at what warren buffett would say are the hard problems society has left behind for better or for
0:41:25 worse and so those will take 10 years to play out but i certainly in the five-year horizon hope to see
0:41:31 far more states with a paid family medical leave policy i we are beginning to turn the crank on that
0:41:38 and change the momentum on that i hope we are doing far more basic science on women’s health
0:41:46 so that we can come out with more drugs that help women over time both in the u.s and globally and i do
0:41:53 hope that we can see more women in state legislatures in five years because that will signal that we’re on
0:41:59 our way to getting more women up on capitol hill if i could accomplish those three big things and see
0:42:06 progress on those i will feel like wow we’re on the right track in a superficial question but i’m curious
0:42:13 so i assume some of my listeners might be curious when you have the type of wealth you i’ve always
0:42:17 said that there’s people that spending you can be good at money or you can be bad at spending money
0:42:22 and then i know a lot of people who don’t have a ton of money but are better at spending it and i know
0:42:25 a lot of people that have a crazy amount of money and i just don’t think they’re very good at spending it
0:42:31 what do you spend a lot of money on what do you spend less money on than people would expect
0:42:41 um that’s funny question let me think i probably spend more money on travel i learned through travel
0:42:49 um i was just in southeast asia gosh i learned so much in a place i’d never been and then i would say
0:42:54 i also travel to see my loved ones because my loved ones are across the country right and so it’s the
0:43:00 experience of being there and the joy of those moments so i’d say that’s something i spend more
0:43:08 money on what do i spend less money on um i don’t know probably groceries because i’m a terrible
0:43:14 terrible cook i just got an air fryer and my brothers were like why you eat out so much
0:43:19 so i probably spend less money on groceries all right just as we wrap up here i want to do just
0:43:24 a quick uh kind of rapid fire so last piece of media you consumed that sort of moved you
0:43:32 a book by tim snyder called on tierney that’s too deep last piece of streaming media you really enjoyed
0:43:39 oh streaming media um i went back well i’m watching you may think this is too deep too i’m i’m watching
0:43:46 pachinko i love cultural fiction and it’s about the korean and japanese and the cultural tension there
0:43:56 after world war ii i love it uh biggest fear or phobia biggest phobia is claustrophobia um biggest fear
0:44:00 and it plays out when i’m scuba diving put it that way so that’s where it still comes up but i’m
0:44:06 working on it one place you could vacation the rest of your life what would it be australia
0:44:13 oh no kidding best piece of advice you’ve received set your own agenda or someone else will
0:44:19 that’s for my mom biggest influence on your life up until say the age of 25
0:44:29 my father he really believed in me i write about this in the book and he saw me that i could be good
0:44:36 in math and science and he made sure at every step of the way i knew that three words on your tombstone
0:44:44 what would you want them to be loved by family and friends made a difference in the world had a big
0:44:50 heart i like that melinda french gates is a philanthropist businesswoman and global advocate
0:44:55 for women and girls she’s the founder of pivotal an organization committed to accelerating women’s
0:45:00 power and influence worldwide and previously co-chaired the gates foundation melinda is also
0:45:07 a best-selling author whose latest book the next day is out now she joins us from her home in
0:45:12 seattle melinda thanks so much for your good work especially your support of the american institute
0:45:17 and boys and men it makes a huge difference and i’ve really enjoyed the conversation
0:45:20 thank you scott thanks for having me
0:45:39 positive of happiness what will mark my trip to london what will be the thing i want to remember when
0:45:45 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
0:45:51 one of the things i want to remember i want to come through my head is what will be the iconic moment for
0:45:59 me um that happened on when was it i think it was saturday sunday night and that was at the royal albert hall
0:46:03 which is arguably one of the most beautiful venues in the world and one of the things i love about it
0:46:10 is that you can only play there once so instead of just rolling through a city and then the lead
0:46:15 guitarist has to have a cheat note saying where the fuck are we now oh it’s great to be here at you know
0:46:20 the great western forum in los angeles by the way that was from the 70s it’s been rebranded several times
0:46:25 they say this is it i’m playing one of the most beautiful venues in the world and this is the first
0:46:30 and last i’m ever going to play this venue so they show up and they practice and they’re given access
0:46:37 to the royal albert hall orchestra which is incredible unbelievable venue stagehands and uh the last thing
0:46:41 i saw there was surfe de soleil and they just did an amazing job with it anyways i went and saw one of
0:46:45 my favorite artists and an album that sort of changed my life i just thought it was so beautiful and gives
0:46:51 me so much peace when i listened to it i went and saw beck and the album is morning phase and uh when
0:46:58 i first moved to florida i moved there because i was escaping new york in the sense that it was 2008
0:47:05 i had lost everything i was i had that point from all exterior metrics that had a quote-unquote successful
0:47:10 career and yet i woke up because i was so concentrated in tech specifically in a company called red envelope
0:47:17 which went chapter 11 in the great financial recession i kind of woke up and had very little
0:47:21 money and kind of negative net worth and it was really humiliating to have taken all this risk and
0:47:25 had all this curb success and end up uh in a financially strained environment and of course about that
0:47:31 moment mild son decided to come marching out of my partner at exactly the wrong moment and then
0:47:37 uh fast forward three years we’re applying to get him into preschool in manhattan and we applied to
0:47:40 seven schools and we got into zero because it was speech delay and i thought fucking i’m out of here
0:47:45 i’m i’ve been an entrepreneur and single my most of my life i’m used to rejection but i’m not used to it
0:47:52 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
0:47:59 to buy a house we got a second kid just had our second son and i thought need a home need to stop renting
0:48:05 and found a great home that we could fix up exactly what we wanted in this lovely little hamlet called
0:48:12 gulfstream and bought a home on the water just perfect brought in a general contractor that we
0:48:17 knew and we were going to make it into our dream home and uh goldman sachs had this group that would
0:48:21 manage the money of small business people hoping that someday our company will get bought for a lot
0:48:25 of money and that we’d someday be rich such that they would have a built-in network of wealthy
0:48:29 high net worth people even though i didn’t have a lot of money i was running with goldman and i said
0:48:33 okay i have this home i think it was two and a half million dollars and i said i have the down which is
0:48:39 about half a million and i need a mortgage for two million and i said no problem and then we’re getting
0:48:43 towards closing where i’m supposed to show up with the two million dollars the two and a half million
0:48:47 dollars and goldman calls me and says we can’t give you a mortgage and i said well why is that and
0:48:54 i said well you own 40 of your company l2 and l2 last year lost three million dollars so we have to
0:49:00 take 1.2 million dollars away from your annual income and you have negative income and we can’t
0:49:05 get you a mortgage i’m like well it’s great to work with goldman who allocates the losses of my company
0:49:09 which you’re supposed to do on a venture-backed company to grow and by the way we ended up selling
0:49:14 the company i don’t know six years later for 160 million bucks but i couldn’t get a fucking
0:49:20 mortgage and i couldn’t buy this home that my family had my partner had just fallen in love with
0:49:25 and that made for a really uncomfortable ugly conversation going home and saying i’m not only
0:49:30 not a provider but i can’t get a fucking mortgage for our dream home and then called the real estate
0:49:36 agent and the sellers and say we lost our financing i can’t afford this home and then finally we got
0:49:41 another home uh about a year two years later built a beautiful home in delray what was beautiful for us
0:49:47 on a quarter acre small piece of land but we said we have boys we have to have a pool and we used to
0:49:56 get up in the morning and we would turn on my favorite album morning face and we had a dog most
0:50:00 beautiful dog in the world sweetest dog in the world a vishla named zoe and she would we would try
0:50:05 and throw the tennis ball into the pool to try to get her to go in the pool because our youngest would only
0:50:10 go in the pool the dog was in the pool and we kept throwing balls in there and she wouldn’t go in
0:50:14 and our youngest nolan would see that and then finally he would just jump in the pool
0:50:20 uh to get zoe to jump in anyways it became this pavlovian reaction where on weekends when we turn
0:50:25 on morning phase our youngest would come bounding down the stairs and jump in the pool and then the
0:50:30 dog would jump in after him and it was just such a nice moment of joy anyways the royal albert hall
0:50:34 orchestra opens and then beck comes out and he’s playing the kind of the opening song for morning
0:50:40 phase and my partner just starts weeping and i know why she’s weeping we go back and music can
0:50:42 do this like nothing else we go back to this moment
0:50:53 when our our little boy who could barely walk would jump in the pool when hearing that song on weekend
0:50:59 mornings and get the dog to jump in behind him and i believe like what gloria vanderbilt said that the
0:51:03 happiest moments in your life or the happiest period in your life will be when you look back
0:51:08 on when you had little kids and that’s definitely true for me those are the moments i really miss and
0:51:13 a lot of it is not just because they were wonderful moments but because they’re gone forever because that
0:51:18 little boy is no longer around he’s now on you know on tick tock all day and you know talking about
0:51:26 girls and starting to smell funny and he’s got underarm odor jesus christ that’s a thrill anyways this was such a
0:51:31 wonderful moment for us uh that uh to be at such a beautiful venue and to be thinking about
0:51:37 you know that wonderful time with our with our boys uh also are not okay but wonderful to lean in
0:51:44 to when things move you what is it about something that inspires you or makes you emotional because you need
0:51:51 to register these things to inform your life what’s important to you what has registered what have you
0:51:55 noticed in your life what are you going to miss what are the things you’re going to think about
0:52:03 at the end and to not really lean into these things it is a tragedy and it’s also not a given you need
0:52:09 to learn how to lean into these things you need to practice you need to laugh out loud you need to register
0:52:27 your sadness when something moves you stop and let it move you feel it lean into those emotions
0:52:57 this episode was produced by jennifer sanchez our intern is dan shallon drew burrows is our technical
0:53:02 director thank you for listening to the property pod from the box media podcast network we will catch you on
0:53:08 it’s saturday for no mercy no malice as read by george hahn and please follow our property markets pod
0:53:16 wherever you get your pods for new episodes every monday and thursday
0:00:12 we’ve got a podcast for you the headlines can sound really bad but putting those in context
0:00:17 often like they don’t play out the way that they’re first portrayed listen to explain it to
0:00:23 me for reasons to actually be optimistic about the environment new episodes every sunday morning
0:00:25 wherever you get your podcasts
0:00:40 episode 345 345 is the area code belonging to the cayman islands in 1945 the first microwave oven
0:00:46 was invented i like my girlfriends like my microwaves cool on the outside hot on the inside
0:00:57 and kills every baby i put in them oh that was wrong that was so wrong go go go
0:01:10 welcome to the 345th episode of the prop juke pod everyone is freaking out at that joke is this
0:01:16 the end if we’re gonna go down let’s go down with all guns blazing all right what’s happening i am
0:01:24 back in london and it feels alien because the sun is out it hits 62 degrees today um we’ve have a
0:01:29 fantastic episode today we speak with melinda french gates a philanthropist businesswoman and global
0:01:35 advocate for women and girls probably the wrong joke for that anyway as we discuss with melinda her new
0:01:41 book the next day transitions change and moving forward we also get into her philanthropic efforts
0:01:46 what she learned from raising a son and why women still face barriers to claiming real power today
0:01:49 so with that here’s our conversation with melinda french gates
0:02:12 melinda where does this podcast find you in seattle seattle that would make sense yeah home for me
0:02:17 home for you what percentage of your time do you spend there and where what’s your second favorite
0:02:22 place i’m probably half the time in seattle and my second favorite place is being with my
0:02:27 granddaughters somewhere on the east coast new york or florida that’s nice where in florida
0:02:33 uh they’re down in this sort of palm beach area but inland from that yeah i have a home in uh delray
0:02:39 beach i really enjoy it down there and i miss it uh so let’s bust right into it in the opening of your
0:02:45 new book the next day you write that you’ve organized a book around transitions that were formative in your
0:02:51 life you mentioned leaving home becoming a parent losing a friend ending your marriage and leaving the
0:02:57 gates foundation walk us through if you can each of these pivotal moments and highlight some of the key
0:03:03 insights well i wrote this book because i think you know we all go through transitions in life and i’m
0:03:08 very honest in the book that i’ve turned 60 and so by now i’ve gone through lots of transitions as you
0:03:15 said leaving home for me that one was really exciting to go to college but then i got there and as i
0:03:20 described in the book i felt like a fish out of water as a woman in computer science and i had to
0:03:26 adjust to that i talk about joining microsoft that was again a very exciting time in the computer
0:03:32 industry i loved it but again i was there weren’t very many technical women i leave my career to start
0:03:38 raising my children uh knowing i would go back but that was an enormous transition for me to leave the
0:03:44 workforce and raise children and then you know we started the gates foundation and i chose to leave
0:03:50 that last year and strike out on my own in philanthropy so big big transitions some exhilarating
0:03:56 some scary but i think they’re things we learn and we gain resilience by going through lots of
0:04:02 transitions so obviously you’re playing at an entirely different altitude but my family is
0:04:05 blessed with a certain level of economic security and i constantly get questions around how do you
0:04:13 maintain your children’s grit and the answer is i’m not sure we have um you obviously your kids i would
0:04:19 imagine this is an issue that that you face how do you try and instill a certain level of values
0:04:25 and grit and an appreciation for work in in your kids given obviously the extraordinary opportunities
0:04:34 and privilege they have sure and my three children are all now adults ages 22 25 and 28 but what i would
0:04:43 say is i was incredibly purposeful about it from the day they were born and i knew they were being born into
0:04:50 a life of incredible privilege but i grew up in a middle-class family and i knew that if i could instill
0:04:59 those values and make our life as normal as i could for them and constantly live out my values in the home and through
0:05:04 the work we were doing in the world and bring the work home and talk about it around the dinner table
0:05:09 as well as i took them out on age-appropriate field trips even when they were very young
0:05:15 we went and visited places around seattle that they could give their time and eventually when they were
0:05:21 old enough i took them to pretty rough places in africa because so they could see that seattle was one
0:05:28 pinprick on the globe and that if you have some level of wealth and privilege there is something
0:05:34 you can do with your life to give back and i believe that’s true for everybody who’s born in the united
0:05:41 states no matter what their wealth income you have time and energy and talents and sometimes even money
0:05:47 to give back so in addition to taking them and exposing them to people aren’t less fortunate did you have
0:05:57 any more pedestrian tactics like chores or athletics anything like that absolutely first of all i felt
0:06:02 like my kids should not be homeschooled they should be in a school environment so that we were working
0:06:06 through all the issues the kids work through with their peers and that i needed to work through with
0:06:14 other parents we absolutely had chores they had an allowance and we had an agreement about their
0:06:20 allowance they got it weekly it wasn’t for specific chores it was for it was an allowance but they were
0:06:26 expected to do their chores and the agreement i had with them is that became their budget for buying
0:06:32 clothing uh for buying things they wanted anything else went on their christmas wish list or their
0:06:38 birthday wish list from our extended family um and the other agreement i had with them is because of who
0:06:45 we were neither they nor i were ever allowed to tell how much it was per week because everybody would
0:06:51 have an opinion oh that’s all the gates kids gets or oh my gosh that’s so much money that they get
0:06:59 but it turned that it i think it taught them to budget early and learn the value of money one of the
0:07:04 things or i think one of the reasons are common themes through the accolades or the positive reception
0:07:10 your book is that you are pretty strikingly vulnerable and raw and out there with pretty sensitive topics i
0:07:16 you know when you read memoirs quite frankly you’re usually reading kind of the starched version of their
0:07:21 life written by someone else that they’re the hero in everything and everything’s for the better and ends
0:07:27 well and there’s some life lesson in it and you seem pretty vulnerable in it you talk a lot about
0:07:34 dealing with panic attacks and anxiety and we are raising a generation of people who are
0:07:40 suffering more from anxiety or greater levels of anxiety than any previous generation you have kids
0:07:46 you struggled or been open about your struggles with anxiety what advice can you give to young people
0:07:53 who might be struggling with anxiety pretty much every human being has anxiety at some level
0:08:01 and i know many business leaders that i have been around i’ll say many of them male or even prime
0:08:07 ministers i was i was uh practicing backstage for something and i saw this prime minister going into
0:08:13 q a session and he was practicing with his team because he knew there were going to be anxiety provoking
0:08:21 questions and the only reason i even say that is because i think we have to realize all of us deal with it
0:08:29 and the more we can be honest about it and bring it forward and name it and then reach for support
0:08:37 and other people and resources the more we can overcome it and partly you do have to lean forward
0:08:43 into it i often say to myself in the back of my mind and i’ve said this to my three children both when
0:08:48 they were in middle school high school and now adults just when anxiety makes you feel like you want to
0:08:55 fall backwards as soon as you start to feel that falling backwards you have to push yourself to lean
0:09:01 forward and say what can i do in this moment who can i reach out to on text how do i reach you know a
0:09:09 trusted friend a parent a therapist a counselor and that the more you practice going through those anxious
0:09:14 times the more you’re going to get better at it and push through even some of the bigger ones
0:09:21 yeah i love the statement of dan harris that action absorbs anxiety and something that gives me
0:09:27 anxiety i don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way as a parent i have huge fears that i have sons 14 and
0:09:34 17 that they’re going through something and don’t tell me or anybody that’s my fear that they’re in the
0:09:40 room and if i felt the same way when i had problems at school i wasn’t going to talk to my mom about it i was
0:09:45 a single mother i just wasn’t going to come to her and that’s always been my biggest fear is that
0:09:53 um well anybody doesn’t reach out but especially with my kids like how do i create some level of
0:09:59 comfort or fluidity around communication because i i do worry that you know i would bet the majority of
0:10:05 the stuff they’ve dealt with i never knew about and anyway any more of a statement than a question but
0:10:10 any thoughts on trying to make sure that people close in your life reach out when they’re struggling
0:10:16 well i would say you know scott you and i grew up in a different generation right and luckily this
0:10:22 generation is talking much more about anxiety depression mental health disorders so that’s fantastic
0:10:31 and all i can say is what i tried to do as a parent i definitely had times when i worried substantially
0:10:36 about two of my three children the third one not so much because she was so verbal i kind of always knew
0:10:43 what was on her mind but the older two and what i learned over that time was the more i could be
0:10:50 venerable and name what i was afraid of or what i dealt with at their age i think the more it caused an
0:10:58 opening for a conversation i will say i hear from more parents of boys or i did when my girls and my son
0:11:04 were in middle school high school that boys tend to not be in general um as verbal about naming their
0:11:09 emotions especially because they’re maturing a bit later than girls and so i think in those cases you
0:11:15 have to create more openings and opportunities so i learned with two of my three that they would talk
0:11:20 over a dinner alone with me and we just made a regular routine of dinners alone another one talked to
0:11:26 me more when we would go out walking so we made a regular routine of going out walking and guess what
0:11:31 i still employ those tactics now that they’re adults we’ll be right back after a quick break
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0:15:09 you’re raising a son i’m writing a book on masculinity and i have two sons so i can’t compare and contrast
0:15:16 what it’s like to raise girls versus boys but what have you been your observations and how or if and
0:15:22 how you’ve changed your approach to parenting between your son and your daughters well first of all for
0:15:29 me at least it was more about personality i mean kids come into the world with a good chunk of their
0:15:34 personality i think developed and we can only i think affect what my mom used to say were the two ends of the
0:15:41 spectrum help them you know raise up their good sides and try and keep the low sides down so my kids all
0:15:47 three were quite different personalities but i will say you know i that my son and he and i were just
0:15:53 recently talking about this he matured a bit later than the girls did you know at those ages and so i did
0:16:00 have to talk with him more about his friends even later than i talked to my girls like you want to make sure
0:16:06 your kids are surrounded by a good community and good friends and if you see a bad one you you know
0:16:11 in middle school you get to help them more on that in high school you know it gets trickier right
0:16:17 and so um i did have to have more conversations with my son about you know what are you noticing about
0:16:22 this friend what do you like about this friend or what don’t you like about that friend so he could
0:16:27 compare and contrast good friendships to be able to really see who was true in his life
0:16:37 so you also talk a lot about how difficult it is still for women to get real power what do you mean
0:16:44 by real power and what still gets in the way i mean there’s a lot of data showing that women are doing
0:16:49 quite frankly just really well right women under the more college attendance from women women under the
0:16:52 age of 30 and urban centers are making more money more single women own
0:16:59 homes the graduate schools are chock full of women now more women seeking tertiary education than men
0:17:06 but you say that or that women still have a difficult time seizing real power define real power and what
0:17:13 you think uh are still some of the obstacles facing women sure i think we all have power inside of us
0:17:21 boys and men women and girls you’re absolutely right at the statistics you’ve talked about where women are
0:17:29 starting to thrive at those levels but when we send them out into society into their careers there’s a
0:17:37 noticeable shift and you are not seeing women at the very top of professions they’re starting to make it in
0:17:44 middle management you’re seeing more female cfos and and chief legal officers or head of hr but you know
0:17:54 how many ceos in the fortune 500 are women how many entrepreneurs are women how many at the top of the
0:18:02 medical profession how many of those are women and so what i’m seeing is that women are stalling at certain
0:18:07 levels for all kinds of reasons and partly though there are barriers in society that are holding
0:18:13 women back and we need to break down those barriers because to me real power is when a woman can use
0:18:20 her voice and advocate exactly the way she wants she has full decision making authority authority over her
0:18:29 resources and she’s setting direction so when i look at who creates our public policy i still don’t see
0:18:35 enough women at the head of the senate or the u.s house of of representatives i don’t see enough women
0:18:42 in state legislatures that’s where we’re making policy when i look at who are the heads of studios and what
0:18:49 movies are being made those tell our stories how many female directors do you see so we’re still stalling
0:18:55 out in society and that’s why i feel at least for me my work is how do we make sure we continue to break
0:19:03 down the barriers and lift women up all the way as we also bring along boys because you have great
0:19:09 statistics which i’ve read and i see and i see it anecdotally of boys now struggling more at the sort
0:19:16 of middle and high school level and college level right so we actually need to do both so there’s there’s
0:19:22 no getting around it you know the data i’ve seen is that while young women are thriving where women
0:19:27 really take a hit professionally quite frankly is when they have kids and that is the corporate world
0:19:32 still hasn’t figured out a way to maintain a woman’s trajectory and the corporate world is very
0:19:39 unforgiving of people who leave for even a year so i guess moving to and also i think it’s like 80 or 85
0:19:45 of the fortune 500 at one point i think there were more ceos named john than women like not that long
0:19:50 ago three or four years ago so there’s clearly i mean there’s clearly some nuance here clearly there’s
0:19:57 still really big obstacles for women around as you put it seizing real power i i believe that the
0:20:02 quality of opportunity doesn’t always mean a quality of outcome i’m not sure there will ever be 250 women
0:20:07 uh fortune 500 ceos uh and that’s a longer conversation as to why but there should definitely
0:20:16 be more than 80 but what can we do because is it laws is it a different approach is it it doesn’t
0:20:20 appear i mean is it is it going to be a naturally occurring phenomena because there’s more women in
0:20:25 college and college is a strong predictor of senior leadership is it that young women aren’t as risk
0:20:30 aggressive for whatever reason and they need different upbringing about risk and entrepreneurship like
0:20:36 if you had a magic wand you have a lot of resources you have a big voice you’ve identified the problem
0:20:40 what do you think of the two or three things we can do as a society to try and help
0:20:46 women at those senior levels get over the hump okay so one of the biggest barriers for women in the
0:20:55 workplace is caregiving even in the private sector less than 27 percent of women have access to paid
0:21:04 family medical leave we are the only the only high income country in the world that doesn’t have a
0:21:11 federal paid family medical leave policy and i don’t believe it should be maternity leave i believe it
0:21:17 should be paid family medical leave because if you look at societies take the nordic countries where
0:21:26 they’ve had paid family medical leave for a long time say 30 years what happens both the women and the men
0:21:34 take it and what it does is the man participates longer in the rearing of the children he appreciates
0:21:40 his wife’s role more and you break down the norm in society that oh the woman should go take care of the
0:21:46 kid and and then there’s not also a career penalty for her taking that time off because the man’s doing
0:21:53 it as well when we get to that point of really waking up to having a paid family medical leave
0:22:00 policy at the federal level we will change society and so one of the things i am doing with many many
0:22:06 partners is pushing on this we got very close in the last administration we missed it at the federal
0:22:12 level by one vote it was a senator a male senator but we have it in 13 states and the district of
0:22:18 columbia now and so we’ve got to keep that’s one barrier we have to break down and keep pushing forward
0:22:25 again i believe if you have more women in state houses and you have more women in on the hill in the
0:22:31 in dc we’ll get that policy passed but we’ll get it passed even before that because we do have to have
0:22:37 like-minded men and boys who believe in these things in terms of women just take i’ll take one example
0:22:43 risk which you brought up i don’t believe women are less risk averse i really just don’t we talk about
0:22:49 that a lot but when you look at the statistics if you want to start a new business as a female
0:22:58 entrepreneur four percent four percent of venture capital funding goes to women and so when you talk
0:23:04 about when you actually do the surveys of the women who’ve run run the gauntlet take it on sandhill road
0:23:10 in silicon valley they hear they’re too risk they won’t take enough risk they’re not taking enough
0:23:15 risk they’re taking too much risk they haven’t thought of their business plan when you put a male next to
0:23:21 them they run the gauntlet and they do much better so to me it’s a bias we have in society that men
0:23:28 and women have so what do we need to do we need to make sure more limited partners are looking at
0:23:35 women-led businesses and quite frankly people of color businesses because i believe women have a
0:23:41 different lens on society than men it’s not good or better it just is different and i believe they have
0:23:47 good business ideas and we shouldn’t as as an investor and i am moving money in this direction i don’t
0:23:50 believe we should leave money on the table i think those are good businesses that will help us get
0:23:57 through some of these caregiving struggles that we are facing now as a nation especially with an aging
0:24:06 population yeah i would say the greatest exposure to inequality i registered or witnessed was in the
0:24:11 90s i came of age the dawn of the internet i graduated in business school in 92 and i raised a bunch of
0:24:17 money i lived in san francisco starting internet companies and i i’m embarrassed to admit this
0:24:23 i never dawned on me that every one of us that was raising tens of millions of dollars in venture capital
0:24:30 we were all white dudes you weren’t even allowed to be gay i mean you couldn’t be or outwardly gay
0:24:40 you couldn’t it was all the same person it was all uh white men typically in their 30s
0:24:48 who had great credentials stanford or berkeley i went to berkeley and all of that risk capital was
0:24:54 crowded into what is that you know 11 percent of the population you know that’s fragment and it just
0:25:01 never dawned on me that why aren’t you know non-whites getting funded why aren’t women getting
0:25:07 funded and things have gotten better i remember katherine dylan i mean granted it started from a
0:25:11 terrible place but katherine dylan who’s my business partner here i remember we raised money from general
0:25:18 catalyst to kind of arguably one of the better venture capitalists east of the mississippi and we
0:25:22 went in there for the last round and it was part of the last round of funding we raised i think 17 million
0:25:26 bucks or something in a a round for one of my companies and we had to meet with all the partners
0:25:32 and all 27 of the partners granted this was 15 13 years ago all 27 of the partners were men
0:25:39 and it didn’t even dawn on me and katherine and maureen basically they said to me what the fuck i’m like
0:25:44 what’s wrong and they’re like they couldn’t find one woman but i do think it’s gotten a lot better
0:25:50 but where do you see the the friction we know the problems where do you see the friction and how do we
0:25:58 address it yeah so in addition to my philanthropic dollars i also have a large investment fund because
0:26:06 i believe it’s so important to put my money where my mouth is and to role model what’s right do i expect
0:26:13 and so it is it’s going that funding is going to limited partners who are over indexing on women
0:26:20 and people of color businesses because i believe if i can prove that i can get a good return from that
0:26:25 then people won’t leave you won’t you’ll have men saying oh wait a minute i want to crowd in on that
0:26:30 business i don’t want to leave funding on the table right there’s a great opportunity now with female
0:26:36 sports you’re seeing those sports teams finally coming up and doing better billy jean king has been on
0:26:42 this you know forever but now you’re seeing people like serena williams has a great investment fund
0:26:48 there’s monarch collective so you’re seeing the rise of women’s nba and i believe you’re going to start to
0:26:54 see the rise in more other sports for women that is a fantastic place to put money down just as one
0:27:01 example there are many more types of businesses so i’m funding limited partners who are funding many
0:27:08 others again with this thesis that i have and we’ll see if it proves out to be right so you’ve um
0:27:11 speaking of philanthropy you’ve committed a billion dollars towards women’s health
0:27:21 and uh so just first off uh i i just want to say thank you and uh and that is i i talk a lot about
0:27:26 and i’m very passionate about the struggles that young men face in our society and the inspiration
0:27:33 for me focusing on this area was data i started getting from this um brooking scholar named richard
0:27:38 reeves he’s literally my he’s literally my yoda on the topic and he called me and he said i’m going to
0:27:45 start my own institute and despite the fact that your billion dollars is geared towards women’s health
0:27:51 the american institute for boys and men headed by this this person that’s literally changed my life
0:28:00 uh richard reeves you gave him uh or pledged 20 million dollars and well so first thank you and
0:28:04 and and the second is why did you decide given that the billion dollars is focused on women’s health
0:28:10 to give 20 million dollars to the american institute for boys and men okay so yeah just to clarify a
0:28:20 little bit i put down a billion dollars on behalf of lifting up women and others in society 250 million
0:28:26 of that is going to women’s health we have a something called the action for women’s health so 250 million
0:28:35 a quarter of the billion then i took 12 global leaders and gave each of them 20 million they can spend a
0:28:41 small portion of it on their own organization but the goal is really for them to find other organizations
0:28:48 doing like-minded work so richard reeves was one of those 12 global leaders because i absolutely believe
0:28:56 that boys need to be doing better and men in society we have to have good role models for them as he talks
0:29:04 about teachers coaches men need good places to say hey i can fit in society even though society is
0:29:10 changing and so to me he’s on the forefront of that with his men and boys institute and i wanted to fund
0:29:16 that and see also who else does he choose to fund we’ll be right back
0:29:26 the regular season is in the rear view and now it’s time for the games that matter the most
0:29:31 this is kenny beecham and playoff basketball is finally here on small ball we’re diving deep into
0:29:37 every series every crunch time finish every coaching adjustment that can make or break a championship run
0:29:43 who’s building for a 16 win marathon which superstar will submit their legacy and which role player is
0:29:48 about to become a household name with so many fascinating first round matchups will the west
0:29:53 be the bloodbath we anticipate will the east be as predictable as we think can the celtics defend their
0:29:59 title can steph curry lebron james koat leonard push the young teams at the top i’ll be bringing the
0:30:04 expertise to pass and the genuine opinion you need for the most exciting time of the nba calendar
0:30:10 small ball is your essential companion for the nba postseason join me kenny beecham for new episodes
0:30:15 of small ball throughout the playoffs don’t miss small ball can you beecham new episodes dropping
0:30:18 through the playoffs available on youtube and wherever you get your podcasts
0:30:30 right now in courtrooms across the country but mostly in and around dc the future of the tech industry
0:30:36 is on trial that sounds hyperbolic but it’s true google just lost a case that will change the way that the ad
0:30:41 business works on the internet and maybe change google forever and meta is on trial about whether
0:30:46 it’s going to have to spin off instagram and whatsapp some of the most important parts of mark zuckerberg’s
0:30:52 empire on the verge cast this week we discuss why this is happening where it might go and what the new
0:30:56 internet might look like all that on the verge cast wherever you get podcasts
0:31:06 this week on prof g markets we speak with ryan peterson founder and ceo of flexport a leader in global supply
0:31:12 chain management we discuss how tariffs are actually impacting businesses and we get ryan’s take on the
0:31:18 likely outcomes of this ongoing trade war if they don’t change anything in this 145 duty sticks on china
0:31:26 it’ll it’ll take out like mass bankruptcies talking like 80 percent of small business that buys from china will just die
0:31:30 and millions of employees will go you know as will be unemployed i mean it’s sort of why i’m like
0:31:35 they obviously have to back off the trade like that can’t be that they just do that
0:31:42 i don’t believe that they’re that crazy you can find that conversation exclusively on the prof g markets podcast
0:31:51 we’re back with more from melinda french gates
0:31:58 so this is a loaded question but i’ll ask it anyways uh i believe that the biggest problems in our society
0:32:03 can be somewhat reverse engineered to income inequality you’re one of the wealthiest i would imagine one of
0:32:07 the wealthiest women in america what are your thoughts on income inequality and how we address it
0:32:15 i absolutely see the income inequality in the united states and i do not think it’s good for us
0:32:22 as a nation and i think you have too many people low-income people who are really struggling and
0:32:30 struggling in their communities you know my dad grew up at a time that his dad ran a small machine shop
0:32:35 in new orleans got turned over to the war effort after that it got turned back into a machine shop
0:32:44 but my dad grew up in a family where there were not a lot of resources and yet because of georgia tech
0:32:49 he was able to do a work study program and still become an engineer and then he got a scholarship
0:32:56 to stanford right but you’ve pointed out which i think is true it is far harder to get into university
0:33:04 these days than when i grew up or you grew up or my dad grew up and it’s far harder to find a good
0:33:12 living wage to be able to purchase your first house so i don’t have all the policy solutions for that but
0:33:17 i do think there are some policy solutions for that and i particularly my heart goes out to black people
0:33:24 the redlining that we did in our country made homes unaffordable to them and they couldn’t even live in
0:33:29 certain neighbors neighborhoods that absolutely those disparities need to be reversed
0:33:35 when i look at you and your ex-husband’s approach right extraordinarily successful extraordinary
0:33:44 beneficiaries of a capitalist economy you know unprecedented wealth but my sense is like and
0:33:50 like a lot of your colleagues of your generation i’ll say our generation you do take civic responsibility
0:33:57 seriously you know trying to advance women’s health trying to cure malaria i mean these are
0:34:05 you know for lack of a better these are good things and i worry or what i witness is this new generation
0:34:12 of tech leaders who are even aggregating arguably more wealth and in my view have more have a bigger debt
0:34:20 to america and the world i don’t see that same level of like a comity of man it seems as if what they want
0:34:27 is to get tax credits or subsidies from the government or reduce regulation once they’re kind of over the
0:34:33 hump they want to be protected by the law but not bound by it and i get the sense they just don’t have
0:34:40 the same even in the gilded age the you know the carnies of the rockefellers you know full body contact
0:34:47 violence to get to that point of wealth but once they got to that point of wealth really took you wanted
0:34:52 to build big beautiful works and give back and kind of cement their legacy as people who were seen as
0:34:59 patriots and i don’t get that sense from this next level of tech leadership one do you agree with that and
0:35:08 why do you think that is i don’t think tech leadership is a monolith i think you’re seeing
0:35:16 certain ones being held up in society right now all i can say is that i believe if you are wealthy
0:35:23 you know this extreme level of wealth anybody who has you know 500 million dollars my gosh you have
0:35:30 more than enough wealth you you have a moral obligation to give it back and you have benefited
0:35:36 if you started a business in this country you have absolutely benefited from this country i’ve traveled
0:35:41 the world where people say my gosh you know i couldn’t begin to start a business like that in my
0:35:49 country so you have something to give back and all i can say is that you know warren and my ex-husband
0:35:56 bill and i set out with this giving pledge to really try and role model for society that if you
0:36:02 have gotten great wealth you should be giving it back have has everybody started to give back
0:36:10 absolutely not but do we have a group of them who are yes for sure and um what i can say is that the
0:36:15 community that of that that are giving back they’re talking to one another they’re learning they’re trying
0:36:20 to figure out how to do it well they’re trying to figure out how even with their kids we now have a
0:36:26 whole next generation of the giving pledge of their adult children and adult grandchildren who are giving
0:36:32 back so i think we have to role model that this is what’s right for society and that hopefully over time
0:36:39 will put pressure on those who are not it even goes beyond that though i’ve just been so disappointed i see
0:36:44 these some of these tech bros or some of those i don’t call it right wing i don’t even know how to
0:36:51 but they attack someone like mackenzie bezos i’ve seen them attack you i’ve seen them as if your
0:36:59 your philanthropy and your efforts are somewhat you know that there’s something mendacious or malicious
0:37:05 there and it’s sort of like you you might be wrong but your heart’s in the right place i think that’s
0:37:11 the worst thing you could say and yet they take it to this and some of these people have really big
0:37:20 platforms and they want to create this sort of conspiracy that you’re up to harm and i don’t know
0:37:24 it’s interesting they seem to have really centered in on mckenzie for some reason which it just makes no
0:37:33 sense to me at all isn’t that incredibly upsetting for you i don’t get it i ignore it so i can you
0:37:39 really can you really ignore yes yes i know who i am and i know what i’m doing and i know what my
0:37:46 values are and why i’m giving back i mean sure i’m not sitting on the sidelines i mean to me it’s like
0:37:51 it’s so easy to sit on the sidelines and as roosevelt used to say you know criticize from the
0:38:00 sidelines i’m in the arena doing the work i’ve have visited my gosh probably more low-income countries
0:38:06 certainly than i ever thought i would in my lifetime i see the difference that you know these health
0:38:13 tools make in low-income countries i see the difference when a woman has access to a good paid
0:38:20 family medical leave policy it changes society so you know i think when you’re not doing the work and
0:38:26 you’re not in the arena it’s easier to criticize others and to project onto others or make them
0:38:32 look bad because you don’t want to go do that work that’s you know that’s up to them if that’s how they
0:38:38 want to act fine but it doesn’t bother me my work goes ahead so we’re pretty much exactly the same age
0:38:44 and turning 60 was sort of maybe it’s because i’m a man i’m going through a midlife crisis but
0:38:53 i have the last few years especially my 60th was like pretty seminal for me and has changed a lot of
0:38:59 my perspective and the way i think i approach life you know we’re sort of on the back nine and i don’t i
0:39:02 don’t know if you’re religious i’m not i think at some point i’m going to look into my kids eyes and
0:39:08 know our relationship is coming to an end and i’m and that end is barreling faster than i’d like
0:39:14 it’s weird that time is just i mean decades are becoming years years are becoming months you know
0:39:21 and i’m curious if you’ve registered any difference in your approach to life or your perspective as you
0:39:27 know now that you have a six handle on your on your birthday cake absolutely and i actually think
0:39:33 i crossed this when i turned 50 i said to myself outright i’m on the back half of life now at 50
0:39:41 and i knew it hopefully and i yeah and i so i said to myself is at 60 if i’m not living my life the way
0:39:47 i want to live it now something is wrong like i am fortunate enough that i don’t have to work right
0:39:54 that’s an enormous privilege and that look i get to organize my time and somebody once said to me you
0:40:00 have to paint on the canvas of your own life and i thought isn’t that true no one else can paint on my
0:40:06 canvas so if i’m not organizing my life in the way i want to see my parents or to see my children or my
0:40:14 two now granddaughters and do the work that i believe in in the world that’s on me and um i you know you
0:40:21 enter a point where i think you i hope i hope i’m in this generative stage of life right and really
0:40:27 thinking about my adult children what have i passed on to them what would i like to continue to pass on
0:40:32 are there words i haven’t sent to them or things regrets i have that i’d like to go back and tell
0:40:38 them i’m sorry that on that particular day i wasn’t my best self with you but look if we don’t do it now
0:40:46 we could be gone easily tomorrow so easily so you’ve checked a lot of boxes right you’re professionally
0:40:52 hugely successful you’ve aggregated huge wealth it sounds as if you have nice kids and a good
0:40:59 relationship with them it sounds as if you have good friends but go five years out what does success
0:41:04 look like for you in five years and what boxes that aren’t checked are you looking to check
0:41:11 well i really set my horizons on a 10-year horizon because look we are taking i’m trying to take big
0:41:19 swings at what warren buffett would say are the hard problems society has left behind for better or for
0:41:25 worse and so those will take 10 years to play out but i certainly in the five-year horizon hope to see
0:41:31 far more states with a paid family medical leave policy i we are beginning to turn the crank on that
0:41:38 and change the momentum on that i hope we are doing far more basic science on women’s health
0:41:46 so that we can come out with more drugs that help women over time both in the u.s and globally and i do
0:41:53 hope that we can see more women in state legislatures in five years because that will signal that we’re on
0:41:59 our way to getting more women up on capitol hill if i could accomplish those three big things and see
0:42:06 progress on those i will feel like wow we’re on the right track in a superficial question but i’m curious
0:42:13 so i assume some of my listeners might be curious when you have the type of wealth you i’ve always
0:42:17 said that there’s people that spending you can be good at money or you can be bad at spending money
0:42:22 and then i know a lot of people who don’t have a ton of money but are better at spending it and i know
0:42:25 a lot of people that have a crazy amount of money and i just don’t think they’re very good at spending it
0:42:31 what do you spend a lot of money on what do you spend less money on than people would expect
0:42:41 um that’s funny question let me think i probably spend more money on travel i learned through travel
0:42:49 um i was just in southeast asia gosh i learned so much in a place i’d never been and then i would say
0:42:54 i also travel to see my loved ones because my loved ones are across the country right and so it’s the
0:43:00 experience of being there and the joy of those moments so i’d say that’s something i spend more
0:43:08 money on what do i spend less money on um i don’t know probably groceries because i’m a terrible
0:43:14 terrible cook i just got an air fryer and my brothers were like why you eat out so much
0:43:19 so i probably spend less money on groceries all right just as we wrap up here i want to do just
0:43:24 a quick uh kind of rapid fire so last piece of media you consumed that sort of moved you
0:43:32 a book by tim snyder called on tierney that’s too deep last piece of streaming media you really enjoyed
0:43:39 oh streaming media um i went back well i’m watching you may think this is too deep too i’m i’m watching
0:43:46 pachinko i love cultural fiction and it’s about the korean and japanese and the cultural tension there
0:43:56 after world war ii i love it uh biggest fear or phobia biggest phobia is claustrophobia um biggest fear
0:44:00 and it plays out when i’m scuba diving put it that way so that’s where it still comes up but i’m
0:44:06 working on it one place you could vacation the rest of your life what would it be australia
0:44:13 oh no kidding best piece of advice you’ve received set your own agenda or someone else will
0:44:19 that’s for my mom biggest influence on your life up until say the age of 25
0:44:29 my father he really believed in me i write about this in the book and he saw me that i could be good
0:44:36 in math and science and he made sure at every step of the way i knew that three words on your tombstone
0:44:44 what would you want them to be loved by family and friends made a difference in the world had a big
0:44:50 heart i like that melinda french gates is a philanthropist businesswoman and global advocate
0:44:55 for women and girls she’s the founder of pivotal an organization committed to accelerating women’s
0:45:00 power and influence worldwide and previously co-chaired the gates foundation melinda is also
0:45:07 a best-selling author whose latest book the next day is out now she joins us from her home in
0:45:12 seattle melinda thanks so much for your good work especially your support of the american institute
0:45:17 and boys and men it makes a huge difference and i’ve really enjoyed the conversation
0:45:20 thank you scott thanks for having me
0:45:39 positive of happiness what will mark my trip to london what will be the thing i want to remember when
0:45:45 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
0:45:51 one of the things i want to remember i want to come through my head is what will be the iconic moment for
0:45:59 me um that happened on when was it i think it was saturday sunday night and that was at the royal albert hall
0:46:03 which is arguably one of the most beautiful venues in the world and one of the things i love about it
0:46:10 is that you can only play there once so instead of just rolling through a city and then the lead
0:46:15 guitarist has to have a cheat note saying where the fuck are we now oh it’s great to be here at you know
0:46:20 the great western forum in los angeles by the way that was from the 70s it’s been rebranded several times
0:46:25 they say this is it i’m playing one of the most beautiful venues in the world and this is the first
0:46:30 and last i’m ever going to play this venue so they show up and they practice and they’re given access
0:46:37 to the royal albert hall orchestra which is incredible unbelievable venue stagehands and uh the last thing
0:46:41 i saw there was surfe de soleil and they just did an amazing job with it anyways i went and saw one of
0:46:45 my favorite artists and an album that sort of changed my life i just thought it was so beautiful and gives
0:46:51 me so much peace when i listened to it i went and saw beck and the album is morning phase and uh when
0:46:58 i first moved to florida i moved there because i was escaping new york in the sense that it was 2008
0:47:05 i had lost everything i was i had that point from all exterior metrics that had a quote-unquote successful
0:47:10 career and yet i woke up because i was so concentrated in tech specifically in a company called red envelope
0:47:17 which went chapter 11 in the great financial recession i kind of woke up and had very little
0:47:21 money and kind of negative net worth and it was really humiliating to have taken all this risk and
0:47:25 had all this curb success and end up uh in a financially strained environment and of course about that
0:47:31 moment mild son decided to come marching out of my partner at exactly the wrong moment and then
0:47:37 uh fast forward three years we’re applying to get him into preschool in manhattan and we applied to
0:47:40 seven schools and we got into zero because it was speech delay and i thought fucking i’m out of here
0:47:45 i’m i’ve been an entrepreneur and single my most of my life i’m used to rejection but i’m not used to it
0:47:52 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
0:47:59 to buy a house we got a second kid just had our second son and i thought need a home need to stop renting
0:48:05 and found a great home that we could fix up exactly what we wanted in this lovely little hamlet called
0:48:12 gulfstream and bought a home on the water just perfect brought in a general contractor that we
0:48:17 knew and we were going to make it into our dream home and uh goldman sachs had this group that would
0:48:21 manage the money of small business people hoping that someday our company will get bought for a lot
0:48:25 of money and that we’d someday be rich such that they would have a built-in network of wealthy
0:48:29 high net worth people even though i didn’t have a lot of money i was running with goldman and i said
0:48:33 okay i have this home i think it was two and a half million dollars and i said i have the down which is
0:48:39 about half a million and i need a mortgage for two million and i said no problem and then we’re getting
0:48:43 towards closing where i’m supposed to show up with the two million dollars the two and a half million
0:48:47 dollars and goldman calls me and says we can’t give you a mortgage and i said well why is that and
0:48:54 i said well you own 40 of your company l2 and l2 last year lost three million dollars so we have to
0:49:00 take 1.2 million dollars away from your annual income and you have negative income and we can’t
0:49:05 get you a mortgage i’m like well it’s great to work with goldman who allocates the losses of my company
0:49:09 which you’re supposed to do on a venture-backed company to grow and by the way we ended up selling
0:49:14 the company i don’t know six years later for 160 million bucks but i couldn’t get a fucking
0:49:20 mortgage and i couldn’t buy this home that my family had my partner had just fallen in love with
0:49:25 and that made for a really uncomfortable ugly conversation going home and saying i’m not only
0:49:30 not a provider but i can’t get a fucking mortgage for our dream home and then called the real estate
0:49:36 agent and the sellers and say we lost our financing i can’t afford this home and then finally we got
0:49:41 another home uh about a year two years later built a beautiful home in delray what was beautiful for us
0:49:47 on a quarter acre small piece of land but we said we have boys we have to have a pool and we used to
0:49:56 get up in the morning and we would turn on my favorite album morning face and we had a dog most
0:50:00 beautiful dog in the world sweetest dog in the world a vishla named zoe and she would we would try
0:50:05 and throw the tennis ball into the pool to try to get her to go in the pool because our youngest would only
0:50:10 go in the pool the dog was in the pool and we kept throwing balls in there and she wouldn’t go in
0:50:14 and our youngest nolan would see that and then finally he would just jump in the pool
0:50:20 uh to get zoe to jump in anyways it became this pavlovian reaction where on weekends when we turn
0:50:25 on morning phase our youngest would come bounding down the stairs and jump in the pool and then the
0:50:30 dog would jump in after him and it was just such a nice moment of joy anyways the royal albert hall
0:50:34 orchestra opens and then beck comes out and he’s playing the kind of the opening song for morning
0:50:40 phase and my partner just starts weeping and i know why she’s weeping we go back and music can
0:50:42 do this like nothing else we go back to this moment
0:50:53 when our our little boy who could barely walk would jump in the pool when hearing that song on weekend
0:50:59 mornings and get the dog to jump in behind him and i believe like what gloria vanderbilt said that the
0:51:03 happiest moments in your life or the happiest period in your life will be when you look back
0:51:08 on when you had little kids and that’s definitely true for me those are the moments i really miss and
0:51:13 a lot of it is not just because they were wonderful moments but because they’re gone forever because that
0:51:18 little boy is no longer around he’s now on you know on tick tock all day and you know talking about
0:51:26 girls and starting to smell funny and he’s got underarm odor jesus christ that’s a thrill anyways this was such a
0:51:31 wonderful moment for us uh that uh to be at such a beautiful venue and to be thinking about
0:51:37 you know that wonderful time with our with our boys uh also are not okay but wonderful to lean in
0:51:44 to when things move you what is it about something that inspires you or makes you emotional because you need
0:51:51 to register these things to inform your life what’s important to you what has registered what have you
0:51:55 noticed in your life what are you going to miss what are the things you’re going to think about
0:52:03 at the end and to not really lean into these things it is a tragedy and it’s also not a given you need
0:52:09 to learn how to lean into these things you need to practice you need to laugh out loud you need to register
0:52:27 your sadness when something moves you stop and let it move you feel it lean into those emotions
0:52:57 this episode was produced by jennifer sanchez our intern is dan shallon drew burrows is our technical
0:53:02 director thank you for listening to the property pod from the box media podcast network we will catch you on
0:53:08 it’s saturday for no mercy no malice as read by george hahn and please follow our property markets pod
0:53:16 wherever you get your pods for new episodes every monday and thursday
Melinda French Gates, a philanthropist, businesswoman, and global advocate for women and girls, joins Scott to discuss her new book The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward.
They also get into Melinda’s philanthropic efforts, what she’s learned from raising a son, and why women still face barriers to claiming “real power” today.
Follow Melinda French Gates, @melindafrenchgates.
Algebra of Happiness: Morning Phase by Beck.
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