Welcome. Welcome to armchair expert. Experts on Expert. I'm Dan shepherd, and I'm joined by Lily Padman.

Hello.

How are you?

Great.

Okay, this is the episode.

Long time coming.

Long time coming, but not very long coming.

Like a week and a half coming.

But this explains our trip to India, even though we've already explained our trip to India. Yes, but this is the interview we got to do with Bill at the end of a 14 hours day in his hotel room. Very unique situation for us.

Very super fun. We had just had dinner, which was really lovely, and then we sat down for a little chat.

We were in a faraway land, another country. I was about to say it's the only time we've ever interviewed someone in another country, but that's not true. We did two in England one time.

That's right.

We need a map in here. There's so much wall space. Let's also put up a map and we got to put pins in.

Yeah, that's fun.

Yeah. Places. We've interviewed people, and then that could be its own little weird challenge.

Maybe we could do a standing globe because we have more space for that.

Oh, one thing I want to do before you listen to Bill Gates, he is supported by such an incredible group of people, and I just want to give a couple shout outs to Alex, Joanna, and Hari, who's on the ground in India. Christy and Christy and Mara and guy. There were so many people. I guess it's what you'd expect the team around Bill would be, but every person was so capable and smart, and we just truly enjoyed hanging with everybody.

Yeah, it was such a good group.

Yeah. It's hard to not give a major shout out to Hari, who is the lead person in the foundation in India.

He is, yeah. He runs the India sector of the foundation.

And before we began, he was generous enough to have a little meeting with us before the whole trip kicked off. And I basically was like, I don't know how it all works. Can you kind of start at the beginning? And he gave us a soup to nuts. How the foundation arrived in India, exactly what they do. So by the time we joined Bill the next day, we fully understood it, and we were just blown away with him. So shout out to Hari. I'm sure he doesn't listen to podcasts, but regardless, maybe someone in his life does. So please enjoy. Live from India, Bill Gates.

He's an object. He's an.

Did you bring us in your luggage?

Oh, yeah.

In fact, this. Anna, backup. Check. Check. Okay. Greg.

No.

Okay, that's it.

We got three, two, one.

Get a little closer to you.

I thought she was the technician.

You did.

We actually have one. He's just not here. So you got us.

Okay. This is a first in so many ways. We've never been on a trip with someone for a week before we interviewed them. We've never interviewed anyone in their hotel room.

Well, you got to do that more often.

I guess my first question I was thinking about is, do you want to.

Tell people who we're with? And. Yeah, who are we with?

William Gates. I'm assuming your birth name is William.

William Henry Gates. The third is my birth.

You're a third?

I am.

Did you have any impulse to do a fourth?

Negative impulse.

Negative. What happens? I know you would go by senior, then junior. What does the third go by?

My nickname in the family was Trey, because I'm the third and my dad was Bill. But then the weird thing is, when I got to be well known, then people would call my dad Bill Gates senior, which is not a real thing, but that was his name.

That is weird if you're the second and you're junior.

The nice thing was my dad's credit cards said junior on them. So when people would look at me and say, you're not old enough to have a credit card, I said, it says junior right there. It's clearly a young person's credit card.

All juniors are young.

Trey. That's cute. I like that.

I'm curious if you recognize that press is part of the mission, right. That in order to be as effective as you can be for the Gates foundation, there's some element of press and forward facingness. But I would imagine if I were you, I'd feel like it was kind of such a waste of your resources. In general, how do you feel about having to do this part of it?

Well, the work we do, the cost to deliver, even, just, say, vaccines in Africa, even our foundation, although it's the largest by foundation standards, compared to the cost of actually buying all the vaccines and getting them delivered to, just, say, all the kids in Africa, that would be too much for us. So we have to partner with governments who have these aid budgets and convince them, hey, let's pool money together. In that case, a thing called the Global alliance for vaccines. And so telling the story of saving children's lives and how incredible that is, that's how we get the voters in these democratic countries to say to their politicians, please use some very tiny portion, less than 1% of the government's budget, to help other countries, including these amazing life saving vaccines. And so telling the story is very important. That's what makes it legitimate for us to get politicians to step up.

Well, this week we saw you give, I think, three different speeches. And then, of course, we saw you in many situations where you're just kind of answering questions. And I was thinking, you're abnormally good at it for someone of your tech prowess and scientific background. And I wondered, has this developed, or were you pretty good at this aspect of it from the beginning?

Now, in no sense would I say I'm a natural. Steve Jobs was a natural. Although he would rehearse, and it was always fun to watch him kind of rehearse, because part of his genius was when he would finally do it, he would make it look like he's just thinking it up right there. And the person sitting in the audience think, oh, he's looking at me and just making this up right now with me. And I'll never achieve that level. But in my twenty s, the idea of telling the story of personal computing and how it would empower people and companies should give their employees these things to do email and spreadsheets, it was a big part of the job. We even called it evangelization. Some people might not like that we stole a term of religion. But telling the story of the magic of software is something that certainly by the time I was in my 30s, that was a big part of the job, and going all over the world and understanding, okay, how do you do that in Japan? How do you do that in China? How do you do that in Brazil?

I was watching you make the speech today at the IIs, which, for people who don't know the IIs, is like the MIT of India, Indian Institute of Technology, and there's Iit of them. Did I not say it right? Just say Iis?

You might want to say it again because it was Iit, not is I fact check.

And we need some things to fact check.

Yeah, that's true.

You'll find that it's iit.

Let me save you a fact to check. But you're making a pretty long speech. And I was checking in with, like, how often are you glancing down at your notes? There's different columns of it. One is being able to have someone ask you a question that could be for you. I'm sure you could get way too esoteric and lose everybody. So you have this. I mean, not to compare you to Oppenheimer, but they say his gift was being able to take these really complex thoughts and articulate them for people to understand. And so that's like one skill set, but then the just straight speech making is to me a completely other skill set. And you obviously at this point you were just confident you can do. Yeah. Like you didn't seem like you're panicked at all that you're going to get through those many pages.

No, it's a big part of the job I had at Microsoft and the job I have now, explaining what we're up to in hopefully straightforward way that connects with a particular audience. Some thoughts have been drafted there, but I wasn't sticking that closely to it. In fact, when somebody asked me, hey, should we just put out that draft thing? I said no because I had a lot of thoughts about how can I connect with this audience and how do I make the stories here work with them anyway. I like trying to explain things and I like getting feedback. Okay, what stories resonated or what didn't connect?

Has it gotten harder, do you think, over the years as social media has gotten kind of crazier and news has gotten crazier and there's so much pushback, do you feel like it's harder to do these things because you might get picked at more?

You're always going to be picked at the particular issue that is the primary thing for the foundation is global health, that is saving lives in developing countries, both in terms of research and resources to buy things like the vaccines or the HIV medicines or bed nets that we should be generous in doing that. It has moved out of the mainstream somewhat from the turn of the century through about 2015. The United nations had these millennium development goals and they were very straightforward. There were just eight of them. And poverty was one and saving lives was another one that was so popular that when they did the next round, the sustainable development goals, they picked over 100.

Oh, wow.

And so it got very diffuse and you can't argue with them. It's like handicapped people should have wheelchairs. I agree. Small island states, we should try to avoid them being submerged with sea level rise. So once you have something that seems to be like the agenda for the world that people paid attention to for those 1st, 15 years when it was novel, then it got broader. And as the world gets near term crises, Ukraine, Middle east, divisiveness domestically, something like Africa, that's a bit far away and not many people actually go there. It's going to be pushed down a little bit in terms of what people have time for. And so global health right now is not quite as central in the dialog. And you even have, there's a form of politics. It's almost isolationist in terms of why should we help other countries, even if it's less than 1% of our money and it saves millions of lives and they're counting on it. Isn't that framework of caring about others sort of a sucker's deal?

You know, we got to go to a lot of places with you this week. We went to the Microsoft 25th anniversary in Hyderabad. We went to an agricultural command center. We went to a reclamation project in a slum, I'll add right now it's still called slum here. So don't think I'm being disrespectful. I think that took us all by surprise.

That's what I'm talking about. That's the thing we have to do now. It's like we're allowed to say that, guys, don't worry.

Yeah, it's not a pejorative here, but I watched you go to all these places and one thing that was kind of impossible to miss, being just 9ft behind you, is you're warping the reality around you.

They shoot all the dogs away. They didn't want the dog to meet me. I don't know, or bite me.

Well, as you know, I appointed myself your security, so I was praying a dog would make a run for you. But I'm watching you move through and there's a kind of bubble of excitement around you and people are very intimidated by you, interested in you. Let's also add you're there to potentially give life changing funds through the foundation. So there's this huge incentive for them, I'd imagine, to show great progress. And what I noticed was people are acting in a very specific way and I'm wondering how you correct for that. One instance in particular is you were just simply trying to find out of the work that had been done, how much of the labor had been completed by the women in the community. And I saw you have to take like seven stabs at that before you got the answer. You've got like many purposes for being there. It's like a, you've participated in it, you want to see it. You also want to let them know that you're sincere about all this. But also you are always evaluating. I'm imagining the efficacy of these endeavors and you're trying to get real answers and I wonder how aware of it are you?

And then how do you correct for what you're being told? I would imagine there's a bit of an exaggeration that's built in or progress that might seem a little suspicious when.

You take a tour, that particular project is going to put their best foot forward. Even the day before, there was probably some cleanup done there. Yeah, I asked that question where I said, hey, when your friends come to your place, do they go, whoa, how did incredible. You get picked for the before and.

After you said specifically, are your friends jealous when they come over? And that's weirdly what cracked through all of the weird, warped reality. It was like they started talking amongst themselves immediately.

Remember, I'm looking more at the broad statistics, so nobody can fool me about children's deaths because there's a data gathering effort that we fund. We do autopsies of kids and really look at the cause of death and we ask relatives. It's pretty fantastic that we not only know the number of children that die, but we really get to the bottom of what they're dying of so that we're directing our resources into that. But you get a feel for do women's groups bring women together? Because individual women may not be listened to, sadly, that by having them speak as a group, does that take their voice in terms of, hey, the school teacher didn't show up or the vaccines weren't available and create feedback for the super basic issues that they have this awareness of. And it turns out women's groups are a powerful concept. That's the first time I'd seen one that was focused kind of on rehabilitating the slum and the idea that that work of building walls and toilets, that they were really doing that and that was the most efficient way to get that done.

You'll see.

I'm going to have to learn a lot more.

Now.

That's not a huge area of funding. If I was confused about something having to do with malaria, because we are the biggest malaria funder, I would totally get to the bottom of it. And when I leave these visits, I'm sending lots of mail asking questions about, wait a minute, when you construct a toilet or even when you buy, they had that electric meter, right?

Just for people don't know. So this was a slum that before this project started, no one had any toilets inside. There were no electric, no running water, no water electricity.

If they had it, it was scavenged or it was bootlegged electricity. And here they'd regularized water supply. Electricity supply. If the economics really work, if it's scalable, that's a much better life than in a really tough slum, like an african slum, where it's pretty tough conditions and fortunately, the indian government raises a fair bit of money, and so the projects we do in India, we typically are a pretty small portion. Like if the government is willing to fund everything except having some very analytical, capable people, because they have a salary structure, makes it harder for them to bring in an expert. We fund the expert salary, but that's maybe 1% of the money. It's just making sure the 99%. And mostly it's in the health system or agricultural system, where we are very specialized and deep in those areas.

I'm going to go through the steps, which I learned on this trip, of how it actually works from acknowledging or identifying a problem. Then what could be a novel or creative solution, then getting a proof of concept, all that. I want to go through that, but we're on the trajectory, which is the other thing I noticed. So there was that in the rehabilitated slum, but also at Microsoft, also when meeting with your friend Nandan and dealing with lots of experts, you have a very specific way you hear information, and then you can just see your head going three steps down the line. Well, that must be a problem there. Why would you add a step? Why isn't it end to end? What is kind of shocking is like, you have no problem. I was saying to Monica, if I was a cartoonist, my cartoon of you this week would be poking holes in balloons. That's what you do. And luckily, especially, like, Nandan loves that about you. He can't wait to see you attack these things. He spent so much time, and I wondered, this is a weird analogy, but work with me. I watched a doc on chess players, and a lot of the masters have ultimately become paranoid recluses because they have spent so much of their time forecasting disaster that their brain just works that way at some point.

And I'm wondering, is that just your nature, do you think? Or is there something about having coded for so long that you're going like, five lines ahead all the time to see how is this going to break down in a little bit here? I wonder if you have an explanation for why your brain works that way or so quickly spots those inconsistencies.

I'm always trying to figure out, okay, what is the simplest approach here? What are the necessary steps and what are the unnecessary steps? Have I ever seen something like this be done more effectively? Or can they explain why they go through all these things? Because after all, particularly in developing countries, the more complicated you make things, it makes it completely unaffordable. My twenty s and thirty s, I would take software projects and I'd go through the design and I'd say, okay, can we make this run faster? Can we write the code smaller? Can we share between these two parts of it and make it simpler? Fortunately, most of those software projects were wildly successful. The direction I was able to give on design or user interface played some part in our software outcompeting and allowing us to sell at radically lower prices than other people did, which was a key element that personal computers got cheap and software got cheap. And so the idea that you can think through solutions and you may be able to point out bad architecture, I enjoyed doing that. And as I've moved from software into global health, I've been able to work with incredibly smart people and see the questions they ask.

And we've had a lot of successful things in global health. We've had a lot of dead ends in global health. And over time, people who do reviews with me, they are able to even predict what I'm going to ask. Sometimes you'll see someone who knows in reviews where they'll see a group just saying things, and they're going, oh, no, they didn't explain that well. That's part of the learning curve is, okay, think through. Could this have been simpler? Will this really work? We have competitors who are taking a different path. Have we really given credit to them that maybe there's something better about their approach than what we're doing socially?

It's an interesting position to hold where now I imagine people expected of you in Nandan's case, he's looking forward to it. But is that hard for you socially, to be so disagreeable and challenging at all times in a meeting?

You better not be confused about the purpose of the meeting. If the purpose of the meeting is for everybody to have a good meeting, then I'm the guy who doesn't want to waste money, and I want to make sure this is not soft thinking. I better moderate that. And so there's a spectrum of, when I'm testing my own thinking and I see some flaw, I'm like, oh, you're so dumb. I've got to think better. So I'm very tough on myself. If it's a group of engineers at Microsoft that I've worked with for ten years and who know I think they're smart and we're in it together, we're going to win or lose together, and there's no doubt of that. I can say that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

I think there's footage of you saying.

That I don't say it much anymore.

From then eighty s and ninety s.

There's some good footage, but we have very limited time. The stuff I agree with, there's no need to mention. So when I moved from Microsoft, where it's really top engineers and some of the people sitting in the meeting would be people who work in the field, their genius is often a softer set of skills than thinking all the numbers through that. This could be 10% community building and relationships. The idea of using a little bit of sarcasm, it can come across as, I'm not even sure you belong here. And so at the end of a meeting you want feedback on, was it motivating the people in this meeting to find a solution? Or did it motivate them to not work on this problem or refresh their resume when I wanted to keep them? So I did have to learn a lot about new domains. When people can say five smart things at Microsoft and one dumb thing, and I'm not wasting any time on the.

Five smart things, I won't bring them.

Up, that means good job. Even inside the foundation, it's not that hardcore. And as soon as you're meeting with partners, you better say, oh, thing 12345 are so smart.

But maybe.

Well, I am. In many contexts where I'm meeting with politicians and prime minister potential partners, early in my press days, somebody would ask a question that had some assumption built into the question that was really wrong, and I'd be like, hey, your thinking's not very good here. And then I remember it was one I did in France when I was like 23 years old. And the guy ran France, said, did you want that guy to feel bad at the end of the interview? And I was like, no, but he feels bad. But I was like, but he was wrong. And he's like, yeah, but was it important to correct him? Well, I had been behaving like I was in a meeting with very top people. So, yes, it does take a while to understand all the different situations you're in. Let me take an extreme case. In Japan, there are meetings where essentially no information is exchanged. Just the fact you're there and being so respectful and you're saying, thank you all for coming. Thank you for coming. It was so good. And you want to say, are you going to buy my product? But that would be impolite.

And you're just like four meetings away. Thank you. And the guy who makes the decision is not the senior guys. You're being nice to the senior guys, even though the guy who's really going to make the decision is over there. You're hoping, well, after this ceremonial thing, I'm going to go try and grab that guy. So, yes, the world of motivating people and showing respect and having people learn very quickly. I wanted to run Microsoft, so we were making mistakes and doing things right three times the speed of our competition. And there's a certain type of personality that belonged in those engineering meetings, which is more like how I treat myself.

Right.

Steve Jobs was a person who could be brutal, and it was clearly he was brutal to himself when he would make a mistake. And the idea of not applying that to others, sometimes he missed that.

That's why I want to give you credit, because I think a lot of people at the level you are don't do that. They don't adapt to the situation. They say, like, well, I'm me and I've done all of this, so everyone needs to adapt to me.

I have people who've worked me for a long time in those meetings and people who haven't. And so at the end of the meeting, saying to people, how did I do? A, in terms of delivering the facts, and b, in terms of motivating people. And one thing that's interesting is they'll often say to me, you were such a wimp, they don't realize you told them their thing is wrong. Absolutely. There are cases you back off too far, say, I'm 80% guilty of being too tough, and only 20% of the time do they kick me. So many times I'm like, and somebody who knows me will say, the coded way you told them their approach is wrong, they didn't even get it. Having people who know you, who help calibrate you to the situation, send a follow up email, hey, I'm sure glad you're on the team. I'm really sure you're the one who can figure this out. But, boy, it sure looks tough to me. Let's figure it out.

Did you ever have trouble transitioning to your interpersonal life? For me, when I was directing movies, I'd be somewhere 12 hours a day where my opinion mattered a ton. And on the car ride home, I'd have to literally have a mantra. It's like, about to walk in the house, and my opinion is the least valuable.

I'd say that being a CEO is even tougher than that, because you're in a meeting from nine to ten, internal meeting, this design is wrong. 10:00, there's a customer. 11:00 there's an interview. 12:00, there's an employee quitting that you don't want to quit. That was not on your schedule, and you're eating while you're dealing with that, so you better not carry over. Wow. I saw a bunch of geniuses in that last meeting, or that was the bozo meeting of all time. If you carry that over to your next meeting, it's going to really randomize the world. And there are executives who don't like that that what happened in the meeting before really matters to the way they behave in the next one. So I'd say in my 20s, within a certain range, I was forced to be so multitasking, I kind of enjoyed that. Wow. Now I need to reset, and I always take notes so that I can go back and recreate what I was thinking during a meeting so that when I may not get time to send follow up email, but my notes are so extensive, I can essentially retransport my brain back to what I was feeling at the end of that meeting and recapture what I want to communicate.

Well, that was one of my favorite parts of this whole week as a fellow left hander. I was clocking your hand every look at it right now. It looked like you stuck your hand up a can of paint's ass every day. By the end of the day, it was just covered in blue. And I thought, this is fantastic. This guy has created so many solutions, and he can't outsmart left handedness in a pen. It was comforting.

Or, I don't care that my hand.

Looks right, just doesn't care.

Okay. Another thing that was kind of revealing is we got some really fun time with you one on one this week, and I would want to ask you a question, and I would recognize the answer you'd want to give me required so much prerequisite knowledge. I mean, I asked you a question, and you had to start at the beginning of the planet Earth. You're like, okay, so planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old. And then you took me through the two different cell types that got together.

And it was like 35 minutes.

And I both enjoyed it, and I thought, this poor fucking man can't really tell you anything that actually he's thinking about without bringing you up to speed all the time. And I know that's a hard question to even address, but do you find it at all laborious, or do you get lonely at all that you have to bring everyone up to speed so often? Do you feel a sense of isolation from that?

No, not at all. I mean, there are domains that people are specialized in that they're way smarter than me in.

I'd like to know which.

I even have friends like Nathan Mirvold or Lowell Wood that, in a very broad sense, are smarter than I am.

We need to interview those.

But the idea of being able to explain something in a succinct form is such a cool thing, and it requires you to know a field so well. Like, okay, where did life come from? And I've really studied that. It's taken me a long time to understand, okay, what are the key things? Not the key things. The London Science Museum that I took my son to a bunch of times does a really good job on this. But no, it's kind of fun to explain computing because there's so much noise that people think, ooh, this is so complicated. But it's really just a few concepts. And if you know the history of life or how computers work, and I know there are subjects like quantum computing that I vaguely understand, but I know I can't explain it to someone else, so I need to work on my understanding of it to get to the point that is my acid test. I love teaching calculus because it's 100 times simpler than it's made out to be with all those funny symbols, and only hard kids understand it. We don't even know why they invented it. They invented us to make people look stupid.

No, but Newton invented it for a reason, and I can explain to you why. It's a thing about the world that had to be invented. And that's why I like watching great courses, is because you see a guy named Timothy Taylor teaching economics or the history of the Bible. There's a couple of courses there where these guys know the subject so well that they're able to take the key points and explain how they fit together.

So you don't have a great grasp on quantum computing.

No.

You'd think it's the kind of thing I know because I have a huge mathematical background and a huge computing background, but I'd still have to put months in.

Have you gone to see the ones that are functional right now or the ones that are close?

Yeah. Microsoft has a big program on this, so I can bullshit about it and you'll think I'm telling the truth.

That's the thing. Your bar is much different than the rest.

No, but I really don't understand it. Richard Feynman always said, the easiest person to fool is yourself. So the idea of, do I really know this statistic? Do I really understand the chain of causation or why it's so complicated. I mean, last night I had a dinner about non communicable diseases with experts. And there would be things that I would just stop them and say, no, explain gestational diabetes, which happens to be diabetes a woman gets during pregnancy. I needed them to explain to me. Okay, why? And do you get diabetes later? Anyway? It's great when you have experts who bring you up to speed quickly and.

You have no vanity about that, obviously.

No. If I don't understand something, it's okay to say I'm very lucky in that sense.

Well, when one's self esteem is coming so much from your intellectual capability, I could see where it would be harder for you.

Actually, not really. I mean, it's like if you're rich, you don't have to buy fancy clothes, right?

Yeah, it's the Green Beret.

Who doesn't surprise you that they're rich. And so my asking a stupid question, it's okay. And I'm able to try and learn complicated things because I always have people who will straighten me out.

Yeah.

So when I fall off the rope and it's like, wait a minute, what is going on here?

You have a little safety.

Yeah. If you ever decide to learn biology and you get confused, send me an email.

You said it and we are going to take you up on it. Unfortunately for you, you'll be getting emails.

You'll have taught me how to play bridge first, but yeah, we'll get around to that.

This feels like a good time for me to mention that you did a speech at IIt fireside. Yes. For all the students, and it was so amazing. And they did a rapid fire, which I thought was awesome. Did you enjoy that?

I like things where you go off and read for weeks and understand something and simplify it. But I also like quick fire things. And in a sense, because they can ask me anything, it gives them a better sense of how I think because it can't be precanned. It can't be. I asked chat GPT four to write the speech. Or I asked Nathan to write the speech about asteroids.

Well, one of the most interesting things I've ever seen happen.

We both wrote it down at the same time.

Yeah. I was like, oh, my God, she asked you in a quick fire, if you had a superpower, what would it be? And you said, I wish I was smarter.

I would want to be smarter.

Yeah. The whole room could not handle that answer, including us. I mean, I don't know. You tell me. It didn't feel like that was faux humility that's truth to you?

No, I'd like to be smarter more.

Than you'd like to fly. Like, in my mind, I'm like, you've already got smart covered. Let's fly. Let's get invisible and take a walk through the showers. Or do something that you can't already do.

I'll double down on the thing I'm semidecent at.

I'd like to be truly decent at zero ego.

That one was shocking. But the one that was infuriating is you were asked, if a time machine existed, would you rather go forward or backward? And then, what a terrible answer you had. Why don't you tell people what a shit answer you had?

I really didn't want to take advantage of it.

Yeah, you said neither.

I read a lot about the past. I love history. I love history of science. But somebody's summarizing that for me, actually going and seeing specific activities. Okay, there are a few that might be cool.

Napoleon on a battlefield, maybe, or anything like that, from a safe distance.

It'd be interesting to see Einstein doing his work to Bennett Lee, Los Alamos when they're working on the bomb project, which I read most of the books that try and cover that we have.

Christopher Nolan for that. We don't need to go back in time.

You're only alive a certain amount, so taking a lot of it to go back and watch a specific thing in the past, I don't know, that wouldn't be that huge to me. And then the future, it's kind of like cheating. When I'm reading a book, I don't let myself read the last chapter. I force myself to read the book.

Delayed gratification sequence.

I'd be so confused the rest of my life. Did I just cheat and learn that because I was in the future, or did I actually figure that out?

Yeah, it's true.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Okay, let's talk about India. I think it's really relevant why you're here. I guess there were many aspects of you committing so many resources and having an office here that hadn't occurred to me. As far as the list of things that the gates foundation would hope to figure out and address, they're here. But it also has these crazy reserves and assets of technology, and it's an incredible place for this stuff to get proven out. So could you just tell us the value of India and how things that can be modeled here can be then exported, basically. Why is it such a great place for gates?

The US is incredibly innovative, and it gets smart people from all over the world, and it's very advanced. But if you take the way we do health care in the US, we have tons of doctors and hospitals and tons of money. The way we do health care in the US has no relevance to how you do healthcare in developing countries. Even the way we do agriculture. We've got big machines. You don't even have to get on the machine anymore. You just sit in your office and have it go do things. So it's not like if you took a farmer from the US and took them to Africa and said, hey, help us out here, they'd be like, where's the machine? And yet India over the last 30 years has gone from being quite poor to what's called lower middle income. So they've done well, but particularly in the poorer parts of the country, they're still dealing with incredibly limited resources. And so the idea of how do you get from where Africa is today to where India is within people's lifetime? They remember all the steps they took to get the vaccine covered job, to communicate with women by organizing them into groups to collect a little bit of taxes so they could build more roads, so they could do more education, because they really have been making progress.

20% of humanity lives in India, so it's a very, very important country. India as a whole is actually a little bit bigger than the entire population of Africa. Now. Africa is growing in population and will get to be a lot larger. India still has some population growth. They just passed China, and China is starting to shrink just a little bit. Anyway, India has a vibrancy to it and a willingness to try low cost approaches that makes it a place where it's functional enough, with enough talent, that they can either take something that was done in rich countries and make it cheap, or invent new ways of doing things.

You started here with HIV, trying to educate and curb what was forecasted to be an enormous catastrophic. Yeah. So you had success with that?

Yeah, that was incredibly successful. So what had happened was that HIV had gotten into the sex workers, and so there was a prevalence of up to 50%, and unless that was brought down, it would start to spread into the general population and then skyrocket and create an almost worst case situation.

What year was this? Again, sorry for context.

Yeah, this is all in the early 2000s.

Okay.

The forecasts weren't fake, that unless interventions were made. In fact, Thailand had seen a pretty big explosion that had gone through commercial sex work into the general population, and India was tracking along those lines we were lucky enough to hire an incredible team of people here, and that was their big priority. We worked very closely with the government. We'd be like, hey, we're going to create a community for sex workers. And they'd be like, what, you think I'm supposed to tell my constituents that we helped pay for a community center? And we'd say, yes, a clubhouse for sex workers?

I think that'd be hard to do in the United States, let alone impressed.

Yeah. And when they would get together in their communities, we'd keep saying to them, hey, need to use condoms and insist on condoms. And they'd say, okay, fine, but the police are beating us up, and we have no way of saving.

Well, and even the condom became evidence of the sex work, so the police had to be urged to not use that.

Yeah, that was good, not bad. The number of lessons in that, where you'd sit and listen to the stories of the sex workers, why were you in this work, and what's your aspiration for your children, and what's it like? Those were very tough conversations, but that's what allowed us to build these communities that eventually did such a good job in insisting on safe practice, basically condom usage, that a large scale HIV epidemic was averted in the country. And the government, to its credit, took on enough of that program that it stayed that way.

Another enormous area in India has been the vaccines and the production of vaccines. We've all kind of benefited globally from this. So tell us the progress there and why India has been so instrumental in the vaccine space.

Yeah, so the biggest thing the gates foundation has done, we've done a lot of things because we're lucky to have a lot of resources. But so far, the most impactful thing we've done is in vaccines. To get new vaccines invented, to get vaccines to be made at very, very low prices, and then to make sure there's enough money that for the poorest countries, they get the vaccines for free, so they can get them out to all of their kids. So we created a group to buy vaccines called the Gavi, the Global alliance for vaccines. And then we worked first with the western manufacturers to bring their prices down. But they have a limit because everything's fairly expensive. And when they first designed the vaccine, they're in a hurry. And if you're going to charge $200 for a vaccine, the fact that it costs you $20 to make it versus $2, it's not a big deal. If that saves you a year to be the first on the market, that's the right way to do it. And if you reduce the cost and then the vaccine doesn't work, that is very, very bad. And so a lot of the low cost vaccines are through partnerships with indian manufacturers.

The highest volume vaccine company in the world is here in India, actually in Pune, called serum, and it's very well run. They do a good job. We have to make sure that they have low cost competitors. So I met with a couple of other vaccine companies on that Tuesday in hydrobod. We provided a lot of support to those companies to keep them strong and make sure the market has prices that are lower and lower and lower. So even as we add new vaccines, like an HPV vaccine to stop women from getting cervical cancer, that's a new one. We've brought the prices down enough that we can still afford the overall vaccine package. So the indian manufacturers have been fantastic.

Now, from the time you guys started working here in India till now, the amount of childhood deaths before five years old are a third of what they were when you started. And the population's grown, and that's a gross number, not a percentage. So, enormous success here.

Mind blowing.

This is millions.

Make sure when you say it to people that they actually hear what you say, because mostly you'd think, nah, nah, that's too good to be true. He must have misspoken. He must not mean that. But it's not a third less. It's a third as many. And that adds up to millions of kids that would have died. Their lives were saved. Now, the indian government deserves the bulk of the credit for that, but we were there showing them the way, funding experts, and so we got to play a catalytic role.

I was educated on this while we were here, which is the unique thing you can provide, is you guys can run very high risk experiments where, if they fail, nobody loses their job in government. That's the real service you can provide. Yes. Take these kind of high risk gambles, improve that. Something will work.

That's part of it. We can have a very smart team where we are doing these child autopsies and saying, hey, these kids are all dying of diarrhea. And people are like, really? When we would say, you should introduce rotavirus vaccine, they would say, you really haven't shown us. Is that really what the deaths are from? Or there was a form of pneumonia they were dying from. They weren't sure. Yeah, it could be a lot of things. So making sure that we're saying, hey, if you bring out the rotavirus vaccine, it will save over 100,000 children per year. And so it's worth doing. We had to develop all that evidence. We had to fund serum to create a low cost vaccine. And I would always have quarterly meetings at the foundation where I'd say, okay, what percentage of the world's children are getting this vaccine, which is a vaccine that all the rich kids were getting and none of the poor kids were getting when we started. So people would come in and say, okay, what's going on in Indonesia? What's going on in India? What's going on in Nigeria? And do we have the manufacturing capacity up?

Do we have the price down? Do we have the evidence? The country hadn't introduced a new vaccine for 20 years. And so the whole idea of there's these vaccines you should introduce. There was no one in government who had that in mind, but we found amazing people here, some of whom, in their own way, were already trying to say that. But we got that very much to critical mass. And then once you get one country to implement it, countries are willing. If you say, hey, your country, you have twice as many children dying as this other country. Both motivated the moral and political survival instinct of the person who's hearing that one or both of those things kick in and they're like, what are you saying? Yeah, and we have a group here that's funded by us and rich countries that pays for these vaccines.

You just have to say, yes, yeah, and add it.

So it's a tiny bit more time when the kids come in because there's one more vaccine.

As you move through this list, you start adding more and more stuff, or maybe from the very get, there's been more and more. But now on this list and the things that are happening in India started with the HIV project. But the vaccines, the malaria, agriculture, education, and all the meetings that we attended address all of those things. How do you shift focus? As you get your arms around one thing, you start realizing, oh, this is feeding in more upriver. How does something like education get on the agenda? Or agriculture?

The original two goals of the foundation were health globally. So inequality in health, helping poor countries have their kids survive as much as rich countries, all lives have equal value. And that became, by far, biggest thing. Over two thirds of our resources are global health. Our second cause was education in the United States, which is the system that I and most successful people benefited from. I went to public schools through 6th grade, and then my parents told me I should go to this private high school.

Did you like it, by the way?

Well, at first I didn't, because in my elementary school, I was the smart kid who didn't give a damn. And then when I got to this private school, that niche didn't exist totally. There were only three niches. There were the smart kids who did give a damn, the sports guys and the morons. And because I was such a joker, in 8th grade, there was a quiz where they were pairing people up and they paired me up with a true moron. And I was like, wow, I have fooled them.

But I'm no longer in on the joke.

Did I really want to? I mean, this was a school where when you had free periods, the smart people got to go off in their own study hall and do whatever they wanted, and the rest of us had to sit in desks. So I decided I would join the.

Smarts who give a shit.

Smart students with the bullet. Anyway, how did I get off on that?

Sorry, I took us there, but I.

Find that interesting schooling right now. I remember education. We had global health and education, and we stuck to those for quite a while because we had a learning curve in terms of us understanding it, hiring good people, understanding our role, building the partnerships. But when Warren Buffett made a gigantic commitment in 2006 to give, during his lifetime, huge resources to the foundation, tens.

Of billions of dollars. Right.

At this point, it's over 30 billion. Yes, we added agriculture. We wanted to add agriculture, but we weren't sure his commitment helped us. And there's a history in agriculture of Norman Borlaug creating better wheat and rice and corn.

The green revolution.

This was one of the green revolution.

Wonderful lectures we got on the plane. We learned the entire history of the green revolution.

Incredible.

Yeah. Were you there when they gave me the little statue?

Okay.

Yeah, they offered me the medium sized one, but I went with the small.

You got so many trinkets and plaques this week. I was like, there's going to have to be another plane.

Yeah. Where do you keep all of the accoutrement that gets given?

We melt them down. But global health, we are gigantic. Every disease we work on, we in the US government are by far the biggest funders. HIV, they're bigger than us. All the others, two thirds, were in global health education. Outside the US, we're a modest player. Now, it's super important, but thank God there are other people. I wish there were a lot more. That's about 80 million a year for us.

So when we were going around with you, something that was ever present was how much AI is already being used for almost everything that you're addressing. It was fascinating. We learned about the dpi and the Upi. And everyone in India now has a verified identification digitally. Digitally. And they can now get the funds that were promised to them that people wouldn't sign off on. They're also a way to move money that's been standardized through open source. And even when you get into the agriculture, the AI can read the nitrogen level and the forecast and it can update you on what you should be doing to deal with this vulnerability of this crop. So it's a little miraculous that these two worlds of yours are combining in such a complementary way right now. Doesn't seem kind of interesting that this is now playing such a huge role in all these different.

I always knew that software at first the PC, but eventually the mobile phone, there'd be a lot we could do with that. In fact, one of the first foundation projects was putting personal computers and libraries in the United States so people could come in and use the Internet because they wouldn't have a good connection or a PC in their house. And that was a project that worked very well. It was great working with all those librarians. The fact that now AI offers so much promise, it is wild. And that the team at Microsoft has kept me engaged because I've been writing memos about when AI comes, we need to do the personal agent. When I comes, we need to do this. And so now they're like digging these memos out and going, oh wow, would you come to our meeting? And the CEO of Microsoft, who's a very special person, Satya has drawn me in and some of the people only know my reputation from like 20 years ago. When I'm in a meeting they're just like, oh, he's going to rip that.

Shit out of everything he's about to blow.

They're like, oh, he's so nice. But I'm like, you just thought I would be so rude.

Bar is low. Yeah.

Wait, do you take time? I know you don't, but do you take time to be proud of all of this? You have to before you go to bed.

Motivating that we've hit a modest number of dead ends. We've funded HIV vaccines, so far nothing. So we're 600 million of dry holes and we're digging another 300 million dollar hole that we'll see what's there. But the percentage that are like that is very small in terms of hiring great people, building partnerships, having impact. The foundation has gotten way better than I expected it would. Weirdly, our US education work, not our biggest thing, but still quite big, many billions we've had a positive effect, but nothing dramatic. It's not a field where you can say half as many kids drop out or math scores are 30% better. So unless you move the macro numbers, you really have to say, okay, these charter schools I funded, please go visit them at noon and you'll be impressed. Which, yes, I can tell you that, but we haven't changed that field. We have not met our aspiration. In fact, nobody who works in that field has done anything now. We still believe in it. And the latest iteration is, okay, we're going to use AI, God darn it. And this time we'll get it. The AI stuff you're seeing, to be clear, is very early.

So the actual benefit of AI in many of these areas, it's still nascent, but over the next two or three years, agricultural AI, health advice, AI, drug discovery AI, it's going to be really big.

Even there was an environmental impact. Like, we saw a way that people would be connected to charging stations. There's all kinds of outcomes for this.

Yeah. I mean, because AI is kind of like a free worker that can scan lots of things and come up with good advice, whether it's a technical support call or I'm trying to figure out what college to go to or what courses to sign up for. And almost anything you think about, if you train the AI properly and you get the user in front of it, the fact that except for a little bit of cost of running that back end, it's kind of like free work. And so people are just getting their mind around all the incredible things that can be done. And of course, I'm using it all the time and saying, okay, no, it's not good enough for this, but wow, it is good enough for that.

Can I tell you the one I heard this week, though, that I'm concerned about so much of it makes total sense, even health. The fact that there would be markers, that it would make a probabilistic call, that would be very high accuracy. The fact that in agriculture, we know what percentage of nitrogen is optimal. The area that concerns me is these hypothetical questions, and they largely were around education. One was just a random question a parent could ask, like, my kid won't get off the screen. How do I get them outside, right? And then the AI would make a suggestion on how that would be done, or this kid's reading at this level, what should be done. I feel like in regards to humans, my fear of it is they're all high percentage guesses, right? Or the highest percentage guess but the data for this would be the social sciences, which are so flawed in so many ways. I'm not sure how AI is ever advising humans. I'm concerned it's going to create a fake normal the way the DSM in psychology has created, like a fake normal. If you think of 20% of kids being neurodivergent, how is this model, this LLM, going to not prescribe what is highest percentage success rate?

Does it not reinforce this notion of the norm?

If it's a problem that humans are not good at dealing with, then present techniques don't create some novel approach. Like if you're a telemarketing group and the AI has listened to every call and said, wow, some people close a lot of sales quickly, and some people never close a sale slowly. It's going to learn from the very best and mimic that. And so in that domain, even though you have a variety of customers, it can probably capture all the dimensionality and be an awfully good telemarketer thing. I mean, that actually is happening when it comes to psychological counseling. The amount of data we have and our ability to market and say, okay, this was a brilliant session, and the dimensionality of okay, what was the problem of the kid when you said, okay, what are those horrible thoughts you're having? There's so many different things. We probably don't have a corpus of data either to make a superhuman psychologist or a computer psychologist. So we have to understand where we have data that embodies the expertise. If you have information that very capable humans, you can make them super performers, you probably can make the AI be a super performer.

And some things are very objective, like, did you close the sale or not? Or did the kids survive or not. There are some things in terms of, like, cheering people up. It's a little harder to come up with that metric if you're a marriage counselor and half your customers get divorced, is that a failure? Maybe not. Maybe you got them to get out of an awful relationship early. It's very hard to score. We find this in our health work. The clarity of wow, the kids survive, wow, the kids brain developed fully. We don't get a lot of flak of no, we don't care about children dying. But when you go into schools and you say, hey, we need to spend more time on math, then they're like, well, wait a minute, that's less time in band, or you're overloading that kid, or you told them they got the wrong answer and that must have been very tough. You're just doing such a good job telling them their mistakes. You're ruining these kids. They're thinking that there's one right answer and they're taking too many tests. I'm not trying to make fun of these things. In education, I naively entered in saying, hey, we all agree on what we're trying to do here.

And then I was like, actually, given the finite resources, how much time should there be for band? If you decide the school day is short and you only have a certain number of school days, I can make the pro band or the antiband argument. So education has turned out to be softer. Psychiatry and psychiatry counseling. I do think eventually ICE will be helpful because you want somebody who you've been talking to for a long time that is immediately available and sympathetic, and if detecting certain circumstances can escalate to a human expert and really dump out very quickly what is going on. So I actually think in mental counseling, AIS will play a role, but, boy, are we going to have to be very careful about that, and that's going to require a lot of work that has not been done yet.

You have three children. I only have two, but just having two, the notion that there would be a good piece of advice that would apply to both of them is preposterous.

Other than, like, donate, learn a lot about a lot of different things. Their ability to read is pretty incredible. And so if you just wrote two pages about each of your kids and how they're different, try doing this in chat GPT four and said, hey, what kind of encouragement advice should I give to child one versus child two? I think you'd be surprised the fluency of these things. Now, I wouldn't say, therefore, take it blindly. Give up, go take a nap, clock.

Out for the day.

But the night that I was blown away by the AI, I had said passed the advanced placement biology exam, and it was incredible on the biology stuff. And then we said to it just to show that, oh, of course, won't know this. What would you say to a parent who has a sick child? And it gave it better answer than any of us in the room could have given? The place where it falls short, in which there are still many, are not as easily predictable as you'd think.

What's an area that it hiccups, actually, complex math.

It doesn't know to check its answers. A sudoku puzzle. You have to do a lot of recursive reasoning, and it doesn't know to take extra time. So it just takes a very limited time, and it prints out an answer. And you say it's wrong, it'll say, oh, I mistyped.

It's an error.

Where is the typewriter that you mistyped on?

What finger did you use?

And it's like, but fuck, that's what all the humans said whenever they were told they got something wrong.

Oh, my God.

To say that I mistyped, and it's so apologetic, and it says, it'll try again, but of course, it gets it wrong again.

Now, you're kind of infamously optimistic, and I like that about you. You're always a voice of optimism in a very Steven Pinker way.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And I love that about you. And I think it's really a service you provide. But also, I heard you say several times this week that there are elements of AI that not only do you not understand, but that no one really knows how it's working. And in that moment, I think you could go either way with that to recognize that you're not even sure how it's doing, what it's doing, nor is anybody that could be a cause for alarm. Or maybe just wonder. It seems like you lean towards just wonder, does that scare you at all? That there are elements of it that can't be explained?

Only 100 humans in the world, and we all kind of knew each other, and we were working on a. And we got to this point, we could have a meeting and somebody could say, hey, let's go slow, or let's table this thing for a little while. When you have 7 billion people in your countries that are competitive and companies that are competitive, and AI is going to help you invent new drugs and create this tutor, the idea that there may be some level of capability that will make us wonder about how to organize society and spend our time. When people say, oh, well, in the world of AI, what should I teach my kid? There's a certain level of AI where I don't know the answer to that question, because society will reorganize how it thinks about time and what counts in this world of excess. Maybe it's 40 years away, or maybe we'll hit some limit and these things won't get as good as I expect. I don't have answers for that. But the idea that we're going to stop and, okay, just one company will stop or one country will stop, and that all these wonderful things that we know, just let us go a little further.

But then will, you know, and will you get some collective motivation to all say, stop? I'm actually thinking now, maybe we'll have a world where parts of the world have chosen to use AI in full, and other people are more like, get your buggy out, baby.

Get your abacus out. We're going to figure this out the hard way. Yeah, I work backwards from the reality you're addressing, which is, sure, maybe even the US could make a policy and decide, but then Russia has it first or then China has it first. So all we're doing is saying we won't have it and China will. And that, I don't think, is an option anyone's going to take.

No, it's tricky. The collective action problem of maybe at some point down this path, it is so confusing that reorganizing around, but it's basically by all our standard metrics, good news, you can work less, you can spend more time at home, you can have more food availability. When you get confused, you get a tutor who's as good as the two super smart people I know. You don't even have to wake them up. So there's so many good things down this path of increased productivity. People say we have aging societies. Well, if the robots and the AIs are doing work, it's okay to have an aging society, right?

But take a brain like yours, how would you feel just being by the pool all day?

It doesn't fit how I've organized my life.

You would never do that, even if AI was sort of doing everything.

But it'd be confusing if the AI. Everyone has experience in their lives where there's someone who's so much better than you. It's like, why do I even try? So if I. And the example I give is malaria eradication. I am very proud of the fact that I think that's a worthwhile cause. And it's got a level of complexity in terms of science and risk and different types of science and regulation and experiments that my life's work puts me in a position to hire great people and build this team. And that team knows that they love their work because they are going to eradicate malaria. And they check in with me and I say, no more of that, less of that. Let me get you connected up to this group and we're on this quest that is so wonderful.

It'll be in history books if we.

Succeed, of course, then people won't know what malaria is.

Exactly.

It's the dog that didn't bark. If the machine literally says to me, hey, I'm going to do this better than you are by Wednesday meeting. And I know you enjoy pickleball. And Pickleball is a human endeavor that you seem to have accepted the fact that you're not even in the top 10% and you can still get fun out of it. Whereas this malaria eradication thing, you really only enjoy it because you actually think you're unique.

You're at the forefront.

You had to think it through in a way that hadn't happened before. So you go play pickleball and listen to somebody's jokes, and I'll take care of this for you.

Well, and I'll end on this. The other great observation we made this week is how addicted you are to pointless and useless games, be it wordle or spelling b or all these things. So I think the AI will know exactly what game to give you, and it'll just be an endless, hedonic treadmill.

Your whole life is figuring out the real well.

Those are social games. I mean, I enjoy doing them because friends, people are doing them. Well, I do actually play bridge all by myself. That is kind of weird. You can actually go online and play with robots.

Oh, wow. Yeah. It's a little addicty. Yeah.

I limit it, but it's.

We should tell people we didn't get to play spades, but we will in this lifetime, play spades.

As soon as your schedule gets freed up more by AI, we're going to.

When malaria is eradicated or when the machine takes it over, I will write a book about optimal spades.

Well, Bill, from the bottom of my heart, this has been such an incredible experience. I wouldn't have learned any of this without your invitation. I really don't know how we're here. Monica and I, the whole week have been like, he's got to be wondering, why the fuck?

Why did they let them come here?

India.

To share together the beauty and mystery and the challenges of India. It's wonderful. And it's so human. It does make you remember, okay, the great things that we know. As much as the US is in this deeply polarized, troubled state. We are the gold standard. So much learning and aspiration. So I think to come here always takes you out of your normal life, and it gives you distance. It gets you to appreciate some things. And in a way, things are simpler here because they're still dealing with the basics and they're kind of focused on some great things and so much talent and energy in the country. Anyway, it's fantastic you could come.

Yeah, it's palpable. It's like we've almost got to time travel to a period where America was in this stage. That sense that they're going to do it.

Fascinating. Yeah.

But even today, we were driving by something, and there was a little girl with her grandma, and she was just, like, pulling on her grandma, annoying. Her grandma being so annoying. And I was like, man, everyone has to go to another country and just see this so they recognize we really are all the same. Everyone is pulling on their grandma's shirt.

And even in the very poorest country, taking care of your children and doing unbelievable things to help your family.

Yeah. That you wouldn't even do for yourself.

It's really unifying. Yeah. Cool.

Well, thank you so much.

That was a blast.

Okay, so we are at a very fun meeting right now, and one of the members of the team said he was so excited to meet me. And I said, what had you seen me in? And then what did you say? Tell him why you were excited to meet me, Christian. Because. Because you know I'm married to Kristen, right? That's why.

Let's hear it.

I'd say yes. Okay. That was wonderful. I needed everyone to know that I was only famous by way of my wife. Okay, stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Stay tuned to hear Miss Monica correct all the facts that were wrong. That's okay, though. We all make mistakes.

Hi.

Hello.

I was just doing connections.

Yes. I'm really jealous. I feel like you've left me in the dust. Oh, this is appropriate. Ding, ding, ding.

Okay.

Because didn't you learn about it on this trip?

Exactly.

If not learned about it, really got a hard pitch for it.

I really learned about it on this trip with Bill. The New York Times game connections, which is similar, I guess, like, in the vein of wordle. It's a word game.

Word game. Wordplay.

And everyone probably already knows about it, but I'll explain it. There's a bunch of words.

How many? 16.

Yes. And you have to group them into four groups of four. And sometimes it's confusing. Like, one could go with another one. It's really fun.

New one every day that feels adjacent to one of our favorite games. That one where you have a list of words and you go, okay, this is three. I'm going for three. And then you say, proctologist. Okay. Code name.

Still murder code names. But I think it's harder.

It's harder than code names.

And. Yeah. So Bill talked about it on the trip, and he plays it. And then I had dinner with Callie and Max and my friend Robbie from home. He was in town. They all play.

Uh huh.

And so now we're all four on a text chain, and we send each other, the results every day.

Oh, fun. So it's competitive and what time is the measure of success?

No, really, just how many mistakes.

Okay, so they measure your mistakes.

Yeah.

So you're going for zero mistakes. Time is not relevant, is timed.

But I don't.

Only if two people tied with the same amount of mistakes, then we go to the time.

Yeah, that's right.

As a time breaker.

Yeah, it's fun.

Similarly, the girls are now playing Catan.

Yeah. They're finally of the age.

Yeah. From zero to eleven. You're watching paw patrol and you're watching blues clue. I'm making shit up. But nothing's really at your level of interest.

Right.

It's a concession. You're playing uno fun game, but for me lacks a little strategy.

Sure.

But now they can play spades, albeit they can't get through a whole game. But they can play a few hands. But Katan, we play from beginning to end.

That's so fun.

It truly is like a huge breakthrough. It's like inching towards when your kids are just your bros and you hang out and do all your favorite things together.

That's the benefit of having children that are close in age because if they were further apart, you'd have to wait.

You and Neil could never.

Oh, no, never.

Delta knows how to play. She doesn't have strategy yet, so she builds roads in every direction without any real.

Are you telling?

Yeah, but there's like a level at.

Which she doesn't want to hear it.

Exactly. You got to really tread lightly. Well, I just say, do you want any help strategy wise? No. Okay, great. Then build those roads.

Yeah.

You can't build a house there because it's too close to the other two houses. It's a road to nowhere but go crazy.

Yeah. That's how people learn.

So I rely on you to condense a five hour show into five minutes for me. So I presume you watched the Academy awards yesterday.

Yes.

Okay, what happened? What are the highlights? What did I miss? I saw on comments this morning that many armchairries clocked that Tom Hansen had been thanked directly.

Robert Downey Jr.

Which is how I deduced that Robert had won, which is awesome. Congratulations.

Congratulations. Yeah. I actually wondered that. When he got shouted out, I was like, I wonder if any armchairs are watching. And then they know who that is.

They did. They were. And they were excited and I was delighted. Did he say Tom Hansen or did you say my lawyer?

He said of the.

One of the good boys. Sexy boys.

Yeah. Okay. Speaking of. Wait. Okay. Okay. Before we get into the Oscars, but it's related.

Okay.

You did deliver the best boy award to Jimmy.

That's right. Went to his house.

Yep.

More information that is needed. But my suspicion was that it was like days before the.

Yeah.

So I'm like, there's no way I'm going to see. But you and I and Rob were all going to Austin, to south by.

Right.

So I just hit him up, like, hey, I really. I want to come give you something when you're free. And he's like, well, weirdly, I'm free from three to on the same day that Rob presented it to us. So I got over there and, yeah, I gave it to him. And he really, really liked very. I think I told you, Rob. Yeah. It's pretty blown away with the quality and the craftsmanship of the award.

Yes. He sent an email and it said, in quotes, best might be overdoing it. I'm a pretty good boy, but I love this skull trophy and will do my best to explain it to all. Thank you both for the kind gesture and thanks my man Rob for this serious statuette. Xoxo.

Read your response. It's so good.

And then I said, only a best boy would try to convince us they weren't a best boy. Classic. So glad you love your face trophy.

Very funny response. When someone has a knockout response. Then you'll notice I never responded.

Oh, sure.

I was like, what are we going to do? Monica did everything that could be done.

I think the best boy trophy really had an impact because he killed it.

Did he kill it?

Yeah.

Oh, wonderful.

It was so funny. I laughed out loud a lot.

Really? Will you set the stage for me? Who were you watching with?

I was watching with Laura.

Okay. At her house or your house?

At her apartment.

So cats and dogs everywhere.

Okay.

Just want to know the whole scene. Matt's cutting hair in the corner.

Well, Matt.

Oh, no. He was working, probably.

Yeah. He had three clients that day. Celebrity hairstylist to the stars. But he was there for a chunk, so he watched with us for some amount.

Okay.

We had snacks.

Oh, fun. What was on the menu?

Well, she did. I was in charge of some of the snacks. And I didn't do a great job.

Dropped the ball a little bit.

A little?

Were you dragging ass a little bit yesterday? Like, I was.

I was so tired. I'm still so tired. I think I thought it was my period.

Well, I'm sure that's not helping anything, but we did have, like, a really breakneck paced trip to India, where we went to three states within it for a week. And then we came home for a few days, then we went to Austin. Then we had a very full slate of activities in Austin. Then we flew home. Yeah. On the flight home on Saturday, it was starting to hit me. And then yesterday I was just like, yeah, I'm at, like, 57% energy.

Yeah. Were you able to relax?

No, because I had been gone, so it's like super dad time. So, no, I didn't really get a break. But I did go to bed on the earlier side. I was asleep before ten.

That's good.

Had the craziest dreams. I won't bore anyone with them, but, of course, as you would expect, one of the dreams that went on forever is that I had to fight in the UFC against two different people.

Oh, that's an Easter egg.

That took up a lot of my. Yeah, but, okay, back to Laura's. You kind of shit the bed on the snack.

Well, I got good hummus. I was at Arowan, so my choices?

Junk food there.

Right, exactly. So I got hummus and small carrots and crackers. And then there's a kismet rotisserie there at Sportsman's lodge. So I bought schmaltze potatoes.

That's fun.

And a yummy dip.

Okay, so that's pretty nice. But on the healthier side.

Yeah.

No ruffles with ridges.

No. Yeah, unfortunately not. Okay, so what I realized my favorite jokes in general are silly jokes.

Okay.

Like, I like silliness. I don't like.

Right, right.

I just don't find that you don't.

Like mean spirited ones.

Yeah. It's just not for me, for lack.

Of a better term, like the Ricky Gervais style. That's a pass for you.

I mean, I think he's super talented and super funny, but I like silliness.

Yeah.

I find that much more entertaining and harder to do. Like, harder to pull off and be, so. But there was a great bit with Easter egg John Cena.

Okay, what happened?

It was great. So Jimmy said there was this crazy thing that happened at the Oscars in the 70s or something, whatever. They showed a clip of this guy streaking behind the announcer. He says something like, that's crazy. Like, obviously, like a cue.

Yes.

And then you see John Cena, like, poke his head out from the back and he's like, jimmy. And he goes up and he's like, what? That you're supposed to come out. And he's like, I don't feel comfortable doing this anymore. And they have this whole bit and he said, john Cena said, the male body is not a joke. And Jimmy says, mine is. It was so funny.

No one ever.

And then he walks out, but covering his penis area with the card.

Oh, he's naked.

He's naked.

How'd he look?

Great.

Yeah. Great big muscly, very muscly buffet of mussels. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Easter egg buffet of mussels.

So, yeah, that was so funny. There was so many funny. I'm sorry. I don't know why I found this fart. So this joke so good. It was for adapted.

Uh huh.

And he said, I wonder at what age they tell the screenplay.

It's adapted. That's funny.

I laughed so hard.

The only joke that got to me is somehow Kristen laughed looking at her phone. And I said, what are you laughing at? And she said, oh, someone just sent me that. Kimmel said, oh, Bradley, you're here with your date tonight. Is your mom.

Yes.

How many times can you bring your mom before you're dating your mom? Is that what it was? Yes. That's pretty funny.

How many times can you bring your mom as your date before you're dating your mom? It was very funny.

And he probably had a good chuckle at that.

He's such a good sport.

Yeah. He truly is.

It was great. I thought they killed it. I texted Molly that morning, McNairney. And I said, hey, thinking about you today. Hope it's minimal stress. And she, huh? I feel like I'm going to die, but I can't because there's no room in the immemorium. And then I told her to drink electrolytes.

Of course, she needed to keep hydrating. Classic Monica 101.

Speaking of.

Yeah.

When we were in Austin, someone collapsed.

I'm like, how are you going to tell us?

I won't go into details until I can. I guess later, maybe never, though. Why?

Because no one wants to be put on shout out that they collapse.

I'm not going to say who was.

Oh, okay.

But we were somewhere, and someone collapsed.

Okay. Yeah.

And I got very panicky about it. I felt very thrown.

Yeah. Shook.

I didn't see the collapse. I just overheard someone saying, blah, blah, blah, collapse.

So and so collapsed.

And we're calling an ambulance. And then we were leaving this.

Making our quick exit.

Yeah. And I thought about it for, like, an hour. I had to reach out and get confirmation that this person was okay.

Who you didn't know?

I didn't know this person.

Yeah. Never met him.

Never met him. I don't know who he is. I had to Google to figure out who he was, and then I had to text someone to ask, hey, I heard someone collapsed. Do you know if they're okay? And I was given confirmation that they were okay, and it was just some dehydration.

Right.

So if only they had had electrolytes.

Yeah, it is funny. I don't want to get into an argument over it, but there's not, like a rapid test for dehydration. So it's like, when I think it is a bit of a blanketed explanation for a lot of stuff. It's not like the ambulance came and then they put a swab in his mouth and they looked at it and they went, oh, it was dehydration. Or drew his blood and ran a test.

No, they didn't do any tests.

Yeah, I think is mostly pretty much a high probability guess that people make.

But you can do a test, I think once you're in the hospital, you can tell your levels.

Tell your salinity level.

Yeah, exactly. Which is correlated.

Yeah, I just don't think they do that.

They don't do that. Upon arrival at the theater.

And he didn't go to the hospital.

No.

Funny enough, I saw the unnamed person the next day in the. I thought, this is a funny story, kind of. I thought you and I were meeting for breakfast at the hotel at 1030. So I was, like, working out, and I planned this thing perfectly. And I was confused that you texted me at, like, 1020.

I said, at like, 1010. I said, do you want to meet at 1020?

Right in the lobby. And I was thinking to walk another flight of is down to the lower lobby. I thought that was a little like, you were really ahead. But you had told me it was hard to get the reservation. So part of me was like, okay, somehow it was hard to get a reservation at our hotel. It seemed weird, but I just went along for it. But then I was like, I had planned everything out perfectly to be done right at 1030 to walk into the thing.

Yeah.

You were off site.

You were, like, at the restaurant.

You were 7 miles away, which is.

Where the reservation was. I told you the name of the restaurant, but you must have thought that.

Was the name of it. Downstairs. They give all these hotel. They all have a name.

Sure.

Even though it should just be the Hilton restaurant.

Right.

And then. So I then text you, this is like Abbot and Costello. Because then at 1030, I'm down. Down. Wandering around the restaurant downstairs, I bump into the aforementioned man or woman who collapsed. They looked healthy as a horse. Great.

So happy to hear it.

I even felt weird asking about how they felt. I was like, it's nice to check in. Yeah. How are you feeling? Oh, good. Then I was like, where are you? And you're like, I'm seated.

I'm on the back patio.

And I'm like, you're outside? Because I'm in. Oh, man. So then I go outside, and there's nowhere to sit outside. And I'm thinking, anyways, then I had to get an Uber and then come to you. And then it was a delicious breakfast, but it was a comedy of errors. Okay. Back to the Academy Awards.

Yeah, it was great.

And then. So Downey won.

Downey won. Emma Stone won.

Oh, wonderful.

Killian Murphy won.

Oh, wow.

Oppenheimer won.

And I think this was Downey's third time being nominated.

It was first win, though.

First win.

Yeah.

First big win.

There were some great speeches. It was great. It was a great show.

Wonderful.

Yeah, it was fun.

Was had.

It was fun. They did a great job. And then they're back at work know.

Yeah, right back at it. No rest for the wicked.

That's right. Yeah. So I watched that.

We had a great time in Austin. We did several great meals. I got to sneak away and go to Barton Springs for an hour. It was closed really bad. Every now and then I like to come on here and complain about Barton Springs, even though it's my favorite place on earth.

Dumb thing to close it during south by.

I think it was a bad weekend for them to pick because basically it was closed all weekend. But when I went on Google on Saturday, it said it was open. So I go down there, it's not open. So then we went to acid Springs.

Yeah. What I call acid Springs.

Yeah. On the other side of the dam. And I went with Ange, who I had nominated for a best boy award. And you summarily rejected it. With good reason. Yeah. I sent her the clip, actually, because I thought she'd get a kick out of it. Why did I. I said, because she's too horny, remember?

Is that why?

I don't know.

You just said, she is a best boy. I think there's only so many slots.

Yeah. And she's not a best boy. She's a rascal in a great way.

Right.

She's so sweet, though. And then her voice is so sweet. So we went down there for an hour, took a swim. That was really funny. Caught up, found out that our babies are born on the same day, which was a big pop out for us. I don't know how we went a whole year without figuring that then.

Yeah.

Rob, did you have. Yeah, saw a lot of people. Saw a lot of people. A lot of fun. Did you have a lot of good meals? We shared a wonderful meal on Thursday night together. Thursday night, yeah. I had Uchiko and Arlo Gray, which.

Were both really good.

Oh, wonderful. Vunderbar.

Yeah. We had so much fun. I went shopping.

Shop.

I did some shopping. Lots of vintage stuff, which I enjoy doing.

Big challenge, getting that carry on bag to fit.

Yeah, I had to do a big.

You know, I don't think we ended up with a conclusive result. We kind of ran an experiment, which was, if you live where we live in Los Angeles, you have this really tough decision. Either fly out of Burbank, which is twelve minutes from our house, and takes five minutes to go through security. It's couldn't be easier. But the only direct to Austin out of there is southwest, or go to LAX and fly first class, which is 45 minutes away. LAX is a beat down.

45 minutes.

We'll get to that. So by the time we exited the terminal, everyone was going up the front staircase. And thank goodness the gate attendant said, like, we're boarding from the back of the plane, too. So when we walked out, I was like, let's go. And I sprinted to the back staircase of the plane. We went up, and as luck would have it, right as the throng of people was coming towards us, they hadn't made it all the way to the exit row yet, so we got the exit row. I even got the seat without a seat in front of it.

Yeah, you had tons of space.

I was in heaven. There was a gorgeous guy that sat next to you.

Yes, he was.

Oh, baby. From the air force.

Now.

Works in publicity for JPL.

Yeah. What a shout out.

Honk.

He was.

Fuck. Easy flight there. It was great. Worked out wonderful. So, so far, Burbank southwest is winning. Then we flew out, and that was nice, too. We had first class, and I got to watch Ferrari on the airplane. I had brought a gangload of assault lick with so much. An embarrassing amount of barbecue on the flight with me. We landed. So far, I'm like, oh, I think that's the move. And then the ride home was over an hour. I think it was such a long.

Ride home, and it was Saturday, so it shouldn't have been necessarily. It is a hundred percent no brainer for me. If Burbank is an option. I'm doing it. I'm 100% doing it. Every time I'm flying southwest. I don't care.

Verdicts in.

For me, it's like I'm never doing that again.

Yeah.

It's different for you. I will say it's different for you. For me, you can't tell. I can't tell. To me, the win of the twelve minute drive home.

Yes.

Is so much exponentially better than. Because I can kind of sleep on the southwest flight, too.

For you.

If it doesn't lay flat.

Exactly.

Then there's no real upgrade.

100%.

Yeah. It's totally negligible for you.

Yeah.

For me, the legs are something, but, yeah. If I were you, it's like, yeah, reclines, I don't know, four degrees more.

Yeah.

And you slept the whole way, though.

I'll ask. I did. Yeah.

You were out cold.

I know.

And then I farted and snored.

No, I didn't.

Yeah. And sneezed and coughed. Everyone in the cabin was like, whoo, who's smelling? I was pointing at you. I was like, it's her. It's a little one.

I did not. Oh, my God. That's so scary.

This little monster up here. Little gremlin.

No, I didn't do it. I was so quiet.

No, I didn't.

Smelled great.

In fact, I didn't smell a single fart on that flight, which is very rare. You always.

There were lots of farts on the way. Or, like, just bad smells. Anyway. Still worth it. Still worth it.

Absolutely.

But. Okay, so I slept that whole plane flight, and then I went to bed at nine, was, like, asleep, I think by 930. And I woke up at ten.

No fucking way. You slept.

But it was daylight saving.

So you slept 12 hours? Yeah, after the 3 hours on the.

Plane and I was still tired, I kind of kept lying down again even after that.

Makes me feel less bad about being truly exhausted yesterday because I was like, what's going on, shepherd, you fucking wimp. Let's go.

Let's go.

It's time to go.

Why can't you just.

I hiked. I was like, I had to hike and did. To do three loops of the rock climb part. I'm like, come on, you wimp. Oh, my piece of shit. You lazy bastard. Push.

You're allowed to sleep.

Well, actually, I can't if I'm away on a hike. But I couldn't go upstairs and sleep. They come and go, what the fuck is going on?

Right?

Yeah, it was go time yesterday. They missed me, which is so.

I'm sure.

Yeah.

What'd you guys do?

Oh, man. So Delta was basically a fly girl.

What?

Do you remember the fly girls?

Yeah.

On living color.

Yeah.

Jennifer Lopez, one of the ridge. So these, I think, fourth grade boys, third or fourth grade boys started a band called Busin Boys.

Okay.

And they all do sleepovers at someone's house that has some gear. And then the school has some kind of after school. Mine is a public school. So radical. They have, like, an after school program, maybe called beats or something. So these kids wrote a rap, and there's like, six of them in the group. They're the bussing boys, and they did a live performance during the basketball game outside yesterday. And then. So four of the gals wanted to be involved, and Delta was one of them. So we had to go to the school and watch the bus. And boys with their first live performance. And they were rapping, and it was so cute. I was laughing. I was having that kind of cry laugh where I couldn't believe how sweet this was. It was actually really good.

Wow.

They did two songs. They didn't mess up at all.

Wow.

And then what was so adorable is the fly girls. They would do cartwheels through frame, one after another.

Nice.

Some of them were round off. Some of them were. And just to see Delta every time, run across and do her two cartwheels, and then wait on the Cylons. And then the chorus came. They would go the other way. I was laughing hysterically at how cute this whole thing was. And the songs were fucking good. I'm like, yeah, this is how it happens. Two of the boys in particular seem to have written it. They're the best friends. It's not inconceivable if this is where they're at in third or fourth. Like, they'll probably be amazing artists.

Jay Z's.

Yes. I mean, they are already certainly much better than Rob and I could ever be in a fucking rap group.

Wow.

Fun India. Right? So I don't have any know. Bill is.

Bill.

Bill's. Bill. Bill's be billing.

Yeah. So there's no facts. And we've sort of talked about the trip.

Yeah.

I did talk to my parents. We had a facetime. I told them about everything that we did, and they were.

You tell them how bad you want to go to Carolyn out again.

Yeah. We were all talking about doing that replanning. Yeah. Which is really fun. Let's see. Oh, well, I remembered. I don't know if I cut this last time, but I was trying to remember something last time, I couldn't remember.

Oh, my God. Okay, great. So a week later.

Yeah, a week later. What I wanted to tell you is that I broke my car a little bit.

You backed into a rock?

Yeah, a small rock. But that was big enough to hurt the car a little bit.

Rocks are that way. They usually win a fight with plastic.

It was a decorative rock. I was backing up. I was frazzled.

I want to see it. I wonder how much of it I could take out with my old trusted number two rubbing compound. I make miracles happen with that. You do number two rubbing compound? Yeah. I've, like, drugged cars along things and been like, oh, fuck. That's gonna have to get repainted. Look at all the shit on it. Just get on it with that fucking number two. You know, what's the truth is I actually don't even have number two anymore. Number two was a Meguiar's product. And I try to order it sometimes on Amazon, but I just have a rubbing compound. But you can get.

So what, number two is the brand or something?

No, Maguire's had, like, many different products and they were just numbered, which I appreciate. Fuck all these names. Just give me numbers. If you got ten products, just number the products.

Oh, wow. Okay.

So, yeah, Maguire's number two was their rubbing compound.

Oh, so now you have a different brand.

Yeah, but I still call it number two because that, to me, number two is like, it's the miracle worker. Well, as a poop, Brie would, like, fuck up her whole Toyota. And she'd come in and go, I need the number two. All right. I'd get out of my toolbox and go down with the number two.

Yeah, I want that. That sounds like something also number two.

We like number two.

We do. Speaking of number two. Yeah, my pencils came. My fancy pencils.

Okay.

That arrived. That were at the row fashion show.

Oh, right.

That have been gifted.

Yes. And they are so nice. Do you want one? I have a lot.

Boy, that's a tricky question. Because I want one. Because it's probably pretty. But I don't ever use pencils. I don't like pencils. I like pens. And then I have another thing that's just in my space that will never get used. And I don't know why I have it. That gives me a lot of anxiety. I don't know. Do you get anxiety from that? I was even looking at my nightstand the other day and I'm like, I should just take a huge trash can, take my arm and wipe the whole thing into the trash can because clearly I haven't touched any of those things for a year.

Right.

And I should just dump them all in the trash can. Even, like, a business. I'll have a stack of business cards if I ever go to whatever I'm going to. And it's like, I never go there. And then ten years goes by. Throw everything away, right?

Yeah, throw stuff away.

Yeah. But like, that pet soul, I would look at it. Oh, Monica gave that to me. That's so nice. But shit would be piling up, and I'd be trying to decide, and then I'd feel really guilty throwing something away that you gave me, so I'm inclined to not want it.

I understand that.

You feel me, right?

Well, I feel that with the kids, every time. They draw. Well, yeah, but I love it. But they draw me lots of pictures, which I love. But I think it's bad luck if I throw them away.

It is. Yeah.

But then I have 400 pieces of paper that has, like, two lines of color on it.

But that at least could be just put in one folder. Pencil in your photo.

I put them in my memory box, which is a drawer now.

Okay. But I'm sure they wouldn't take up more than one photo. Like, one trapper photo.

Over these years, they have accumulated.

They have, yeah.

Which is great. Sometimes I keep one on the fridge or two on the fridge, but I.

Don'T want to advise your style in your home. But you should think about taking, like, eight of your favorites and pressing them all onto one board and framing it.

There's a few I want to frame, like, a collage, but, you know, like, sometimes I'm over, and Delta is just like, here you go.

Yeah.

And she's just like, it's cute, but it's just.

She didn't put the time.

It's not a piece of work. She just did it really quick and then wants me to have it. And of course I want it, but I can't throw that away.

And was it Lincoln that made you a full sculpture of you?

No, a painting. And I have.

Oh, but what about the one that. The clay sculpture of you.

Oh, with the big. Yeah, yeah, I have that too.

Didn't Lincoln make that?

She did. She did?

Yeah. That should go in a loose sight box.

I think it could, yeah.

Don't put that in a folder because it'll get smashed into a pancake. Will you do me that favor and not put it in a will?

I will.

I want to send my heart and love out to Mrs. Sheeman.

Yeah. She's the one that spoke.

Always said folder. And your pencil.

Pencil, pencil, pencil.

Grab your pencil and your folder. I loved it.

Fodder. How would you spell that? F o r d e r. Foder.

Folder.

Fodder.

Grab your pencil and your folder. Folder. There's a little bit of an ode in there. Like f o w d e r. Folder.

Folder.

Grab your pencil and your folder.

Did you think it was kind of hot?

No. She was married to Mr. Sheeman. This is the cutest thing. I guess this is hot.

Me? Cute?

She was the home x teacher, so she taught us how to sew and bake.

Yeah.

And then he was the shop teacher. Yeah, that's like, very. They were the hands on couple at Muir in your high school.

Who is the hottest teacher you've ever.

Ooh, great question. I think Mrs. Briggs. Okay, maybe second grade.

Oh, wow.

Third grade, she was like, blonde. I think her husband was like, high up in GM. So they lived in a really fancy house in our neighborhood. I mean, there wasn't terribly fancy houses, but there was a nicer section of Axford Acres closer to the water where the newer builds were. And I think she and her husband, who was high up in GM, lived in kind of a swanky house. And she dressed really nice and she had like blown out blonde hair.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. She's the only one that didn't. She did not look like a teacher. Yeah, she looked like Joan Rivers or something. Oh, no. But she could have hosted a talk show. Daytime talk show.

Joan Rivers is very.

But I don't think that's. I don't think I didn't have a crush on her, but I think if I ever had a crush on a teacher, I think it was Mrs. Giglio, probably my kindergarten teacher, because she was so sweet and kind and she was.

Pretty and she was probably young.

She invited me over to her house to have spaghetti once.

What?

Yeah, she had had my brother, then she had me, and then she had Carly.

She did?

Yeah. She's the only teacher we all had.

Was she. How old?

16.

Was she like, was she young?

She had to have been if she had my brother, me and my sister, because that's a twelve year gap. And she was still young when she.

Oh, wait, but you're saying. Yeah. Was she young or was she like an old lady?

No, she was young.

And she invited you over for spaghetti?

Yeah, in the best way.

It wasn't grooming.

No, I think she knew some wild stuff was going on.

She was taking you in. And what did she talk to you about while she made you spaghetti?

I cannot remember at all. I just remember and fuck, man, do.

You think you made it up?

I mean, that'd be a nuts thing to make up, but again, you can't really trust anything anymore. What was it you thought. You thought your mom was in the CIA? Is that. She had an audition for NSA?

No, I knew she wasn't in it.

You thought she got groomed?

No.

You said recruited. Yeah.

That's different than groomed. Groomed is normally.

Wait, did you originally mean to work there? I thought you were saying as an asset. As a.

There.

It made it sound because we were talking. In fact, we were talking about the guy who had learned to recruit people overseas. And then you go, oh, my God, my mom was once recruited. I took that to mean they wanted to use her as an asset.

Oh, no.

As an informant.

No, I thought she was recruited to work at the.

So that explains everything.

She wasn't. But she was NSA. Yes. So I wasn't that far.

I'm glad we cleared this up because I still, up until this moment, thought you meant they had been trying to. Yeah, like they were going to urge her to go get a job at the indian embassy or something.

She wouldn't be a good spy.

No, she sounds like a southerner. She would not have passed as Indian.

And she doesn't do accents, like.

Like you also don't do accents. Sounded like she doesn't do accents. Like me.

So many.

I'm pretty. I'm going to stand by the fact that Mrs. Giglio invited me over to have spaghetti.

Okay? I think that's cute.

Okay.

So that's the hottest teacher you ever had?

I know you had a bunch of hot teachers.

Well, we all know about the hottest that was. Professor. I don't know if we can count professors in this game. Are we allowed?

No.

Okay.

I wish I was hot for one of my teachers because I would have been super charming and stuff, and I probably would have done good in the class, but you got a smirk on your face right now. You're like. You're remembering.

Well, I'm remembering a hot teacher.

Which one?

I can't say.

Why? Because they hooked up with a student?

No, but I still have enough of a connection to this person in some ways that you wouldn't want them to.

Know that you thought they were hot? This is where you and I differ.

Appropriate. This would have been inappropriate that you.

Thought they were hot.

Well, just. It could get this person in trouble.

Interesting.

He was very flirty with us. Yeah, and he was hot.

We had a teacher in my high school who was married to a 19 year old that had gone to the high school a year before. I didn't like the guy and everyone like he was everyone's favorite teacher and I was like no, 40 and he's married to one of the students and then the claim was they didn't start dating till after he was she graduated. Yeah, I'm fucked. I was younger but maybe he's 38, I don't know.

Oh God.

Yeah, he was like not a young.

Are you sure he wasn't like 28?

No, I definitely wasn't because I was then 1718, I knew what 28 was all about. He was definitely late 30s or 40.

Oh my God, yes.

And a friend of mine used to go, she was a grade ahead of me but she was friends with the girl he married and she would go with. Her boyfriend was also older than her and went to u of M and they would go and hang out at this dude's house on the weekend and party.

Oh boy.

I'm like this is not great, this is dicey. Yeah, it's not good but in general do we differ on this or not?

Okay.

I always wanted to get to somebody if someone thought they were hot. I just think it's the nicest thing to hear ever. You and I agree.

You do think that?

I do. Don't you always want to know if someone thinks you're hot? Such a nice feeling to hear that.

If it's going to put me in a weird position. No, I actually don't want to and that's rare that it would put me in a weird position. Yeah.

I'm trying to think of a scenario.

There are circumstances but let's just say.

That someone from the trip we just took to India told me on the side like Monica is really hot. We interacted with a lot of people.

Yeah, we did.

We probably met like 25 people from the foundation. Otherwise if they had told me Monica is really hot, you would want to know, right?

I would want to know after. Okay. I don't think I'd want to know during while. I then had to interact.

Okay.

Because it can make you alter or change how you're behaving. So yeah, we're different in that way.

I guess you're healthier. What if it was someone you had the hots for though?

Are they single and available?

Then you want to know immediately because.

Then there could have been a. I would want to know. I think if it was a legit opportunity. Yeah, but if it wasn't then no.

Okay. I'm glad. It's crazy to me that took us eight years to figure out the guidelines of when I should tell you someone said you're hot or not. Although I tell you because people tell me all the time. I send you texts all the time. Screen grab.

Yeah, but that's fine, because I'm not around them.

Yeah. Okay, good.

I'll keep that up. You can keep doing. Don't worry about that.

But there was a guy on the trip, and I told him that the women thought he was hot.

I know.

And he was very happy.

But I wish you hadn't done that.

I didn't say any names. You're giving me. Monica has, like, a couple signatures. She's got the eye roll, but then she's got the head tilted way down, looking up through the brows. And I'm getting that right now.

This is a very smart person. And he definitely knew who you were talking about?

I don't know.

Yes. Well, it's fine. It's fine. But I do think you're a bit willy nilly with those types of things.

Not as professional as I should be.

Well, there we go. You're easy to talk to, right? You're so easy to talk to. And people tell you things, and people, they want you to be in on their thing. Excited. Like, you know, they tell you secrets and stuff and want you to be into their story.

Okay. I don't know if I agree, but I'm accepting what you're telling me.

Okay. And I think people do that. Assuming that I won't pass it on. That's, like, secret knowledge.

Boy. Okay, so you might have a really valid point here. So if it feels like I was betraying someone's trust, I would not want to do that.

I know you don't feel like that.

Yeah, I don't feel like I'm doing it. There were a bunch of stuff I heard on the trip that I would have never said. But when I hear, like, people think people are cute, and I don't say the name, I just say, I've heard from some women on the trip. Let's be honest too. What really happened was I offered for this person to go ahead of me. Like, we were all funneling into a place, and I offered for this person, and they said, no, you go first. And I said, no. I said, good looks before height. And he said, I don't think so.

Yeah.

And then I said, well, I disagree. I've heard from some women on the trip that they think you're very handsome. So please go.

Right.

So that was the situation. It wasn't like I went and tugged the guy's shoulder and like, hey, guess what? There's some people on the trip.

No. You said if you heard the way some of the women talk about you, you'd blush.

Oh, yeah. That's exactly what I.

Which is more than what you just said.

1 second, Rob.

Would you love to hear.

Fine. That's fine. I'm not talking about the way the men feel right now. If I had said talking about the way the women feel. Talked about it.

If I had said the specific women's names, I think I would have felt like I had violated your guys'I.

Know. But you're doing it through your filter, right?

Totally. I'm willing to acknowledge that I'm more comfortable with it than maybe other people are. And maybe that's worth me looking at. And so great. So you just hit me with your boundary. I'll respect it. And from my point of view, if you ever hear someone thought I was hot, please tell me.

Yeah, I do tell you.

Do you?

Yeah.

Okay, well, don't get mad.

I tell you all the time.

Okay.

I told you that the girl sitting next to me at the thing we were at thought you were hot.

What thing we were at. Where at?

I can't say yet. In Austin.

She didn't say I was hot.

Yeah, she clapped when you went up and she liked you.

Okay, that's Monica.

I knew that that didn't happen. You told me that she clapped and she. Turns out she was a fan. That's lovely. And I'm really glad you told me that. I just specifically. No one said I was hot.

She said it in the way she clapped. I can tell.

No one told you that they thought I was hot. But if someone tells you that, I.

Think, no, this means so hot.

No.

I do tell you, though, when I hear that and people tell you all the time to your face. You're so handsome and you're so buff and you're so.

Boys.

Definitely tell me I'm girls too. I should have written it down.

You should have. But you're acting like it's so frequent. It makes me think that you'd be able to remember a single example.

I don't think I should spend my energy writing down when people are telling you you're hot.

Okay, it's fine.

But it did happen recently. A woman did. And I remember thinking, like he says, no, women do. And then they did.

Oh, but then you didn't tell me you were there. I was. Anyways. All right, moving on.

Anyways.

But you know my boundaries. They don't exist. And then. Same for you. Rob. Rob. If you ever. If anyone ever tells you that I'm hot, please tell me. I'll let you know. And then if anyone tells me that you're hot, would you like to tell me?

Just not when the person is right.

Right.

You understand?

Yeah. I feel like I'm similar.

Yeah. I think you're the.

I'm the od man out.

Yeah.

That doesn't surprise me. I accept that. I'm willy nilly, man. I'm like, you know me. I'm flirty and wild. Yeah. And it's not everyone's comfort zone.

Right.

Yeah. Rob, I think you're hot everywhere we go. If I ever get the ear of any gals, they always think Rob's so cute. And he is. He's so cute. I might have to do a cutest boy award for Rob. It wouldn't be as good of a reward if you had to make your own bronze bust, would it?

Yeah. That's asking a lot.

Okay. Well, this was fun.

Yeah.

I like doing this show with you guys.

Thank you. Me, too.

All right. Love you.

Love you.