Why giving away our wealth has been the most satisfying thing we've done... | Bill and Melinda Gates

2,933,660 views

2014-04-02 ・ TED


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Why giving away our wealth has been the most satisfying thing we've done... | Bill and Melinda Gates

2,933,660 views ・ 2014-04-02

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:13
Chris Anderson: So, this is an interview with a difference.
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On the basis that a picture is worth a thousand words,
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what I did was, I asked Bill and Melinda
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to dig out from their archive
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some images that would help explain
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some of what they've done,
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and do a few things that way.
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So, we're going to start here.
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Melinda, when and where was this,
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and who is that handsome man next to you?
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Melinda Gates: With those big glasses, huh?
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This is in Africa, our very first trip,
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the first time either of us had ever been to Africa,
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in the fall of 1993.
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We were already engaged to be married.
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We married a few months later,
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and this was the trip where we really went to see
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the animals and to see the savanna.
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It was incredible. Bill had never taken that much time
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off from work.
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But what really touched us, actually, were the people,
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and the extreme poverty.
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We started asking ourselves questions.
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Does it have to be like this?
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And at the end of the trip,
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we went out to Zanzibar,
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and took some time to walk on the beach,
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which is something we had done a lot
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while we were dating.
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And we'd already been talking about during that time
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that the wealth that had come from Microsoft
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would be given back to society,
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but it was really on that beach walk
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that we started to talk about, well,
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what might we do and how might we go about it?
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CA: So, given that this vacation
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led to the creation of
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the world's biggest private foundation,
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it's pretty expensive as vacations go. (Laughter)
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MG: I guess so. We enjoyed it.
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CA: Which of you was the key instigator here,
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or was it symmetrical?
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Bill Gates: Well, I think we were excited
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that there'd be a phase of our life
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where we'd get to work together
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and figure out how to give this money back.
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At this stage, we were talking about the poorest,
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and could you have a big impact on them?
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Were there things that weren't being done?
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There was a lot we didn't know.
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Our naïveté is pretty incredible,
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when we look back on it.
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But we had a certain enthusiasm
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that that would be the phase,
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the post-Microsoft phase
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would be our philanthropy.
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MG: Which Bill always thought was going to come
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after he was 60,
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so he hasn't quite hit 60 yet,
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so some things change along the way.
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CA: So it started there, but it got accelerated.
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So that was '93, and it was '97, really,
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before the foundation itself started.
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MA: Yeah, in '97, we read an article
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about diarrheal diseases killing so many kids around the world,
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and we kept saying to ourselves,
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"Well that can't be.
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In the U.S., you just go down to the drug store."
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And so we started gathering scientists
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and started learning about population,
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learning about vaccines,
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learning about what had worked and what had failed,
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and that's really when we got going,
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was in late 1998, 1999.
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CA: So, you've got a big pot of money
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and a world full of so many different issues.
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How on Earth do you decide what to focus on?
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BG: Well, we decided that we'd pick two causes,
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whatever the biggest inequity was globally,
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and there we looked at children dying,
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children not having enough nutrition to ever develop,
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and countries that were really stuck,
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because with that level of death,
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and parents would have so many kids
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that they'd get huge population growth,
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and that the kids were so sick
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that they really couldn't be educated
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and lift themselves up.
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So that was our global thing,
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and then in the U.S.,
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both of us have had amazing educations,
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and we saw that as the way that the U.S.
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could live up to its promise of equal opportunity
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is by having a phenomenal education system,
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and the more we learned, the more we realized
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we're not really fulfilling that promise.
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And so we picked those two things,
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and everything the foundation does
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is focused there.
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CA: So, I asked each of you to pick an image
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that you like that illustrates your work,
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and Melinda, this is what you picked.
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What's this about?
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MG: So I, one of the things I love to do when I travel
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is to go out to the rural areas and talk to the women,
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whether it's Bangladesh, India, lots of countries in Africa,
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and I go in as a Western woman without a name.
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I don't tell them who I am. Pair of khakis.
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And I kept hearing from women,
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over and over and over, the more I traveled,
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"I want to be able to use this shot."
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I would be there to talk to them about childhood vaccines,
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and they would bring the conversation around to
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"But what about the shot I get?"
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which is an injection they were getting called Depo-Provera,
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which is a contraceptive.
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And I would come back and talk to global health experts,
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and they'd say, "Oh no, contraceptives
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are stocked in in the developing world."
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Well, you had to dig deeper into the reports,
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and this is what the team came to me with,
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which is, to have the number one thing
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that women tell you in Africa they want to use
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stocked out more than 200 days a year
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explains why women were saying to me,
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"I walked 10 kilometers without my husband knowing it,
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and I got to the clinic, and there was nothing there."
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And so condoms were stocked in in Africa
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because of all the AIDS work that the U.S.
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and others supported.
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But women will tell you over and over again,
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"I can't negotiate a condom with my husband.
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I'm either suggesting he has AIDS or I have AIDS,
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and I need that tool because then I can space
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the births of my children, and I can feed them
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and have a chance of educating them."
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CA: Melinda, you're Roman Catholic,
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and you've often been embroiled
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in controversy over this issue,
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and on the abortion question,
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on both sides, really.
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How do you navigate that?
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MG: Yeah, so I think that's a really important point,
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which is, we had backed away from contraceptives
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as a global community.
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We knew that 210 million women
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were saying they wanted access to contraceptives,
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even the contraceptives we have here in the United States,
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and we weren't providing them
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because of the political controversy in our country,
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and to me that was just a crime,
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and I kept looking around trying to find the person
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that would get this back on the global stage,
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and I finally realized I just had to do it.
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And even though I'm Catholic,
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I believe in contraceptives
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just like most of the Catholic women in the United States
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who report using contraceptives,
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and I shouldn't let that controversy
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be the thing that holds us back.
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We used to have consensus in the United States
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around contraceptives,
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and so we got back to that global consensus,
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and actually raised 2.6 billion dollars
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around exactly this issue for women.
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(Applause)
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CA: Bill, this is your graph. What's this about?
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BG: Well, my graph has numbers on it.
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(Laughter)
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I really like this graph.
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This is the number of children
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who die before the age of five every year.
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And what you find is really
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a phenomenal success story
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which is not widely known,
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that we are making incredible progress.
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We go from 20 million
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not long after I was born
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to now we're down to about six million.
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So this is a story
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largely of vaccines.
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Smallpox was killing a couple million kids a year.
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That was eradicated, so that got down to zero.
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Measles was killing a couple million a year.
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That's down to a few hundred thousand.
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Anyway, this is a chart
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where you want to get that number to continue,
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and it's going to be possible,
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using the science of new vaccines,
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getting the vaccines out to kids.
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We can actually accelerate the progress.
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The last decade,
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that number has dropped faster
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than ever in history,
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and so I just love the fact that
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you can say, okay, if we can invent new vaccines,
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we can get them out there,
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use the very latest understanding of these things,
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and get the delivery right, that we can perform a miracle.
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CA: I mean, you do the math on this,
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and it works out, I think, literally
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to thousands of kids' lives saved every day
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compared to the prior year.
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It's not reported.
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An airliner with 200-plus deaths
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is a far, far bigger story than that.
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Does that drive you crazy?
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BG: Yeah, because it's a silent thing going on.
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It's a kid, one kid at a time.
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Ninety-eight percent of this
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has nothing to do with natural disasters,
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and yet, people's charity,
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when they see a natural disaster, are wonderful.
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It's incredible how people think, okay,
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that could be me, and the money flows.
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These causes have been a bit invisible.
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Now that the Millennium Development Goals
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and various things are getting out there,
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we are seeing some increased generosity,
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so the goal is to get this well below a million,
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which should be possible in our lifetime.
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CA: Maybe it needed someone
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who is turned on by numbers and graphs
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rather than just the big, sad face
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to get engaged.
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I mean, you've used it in your letter this year,
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you used basically this argument to say that aid,
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contrary to the current meme
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that aid is kind of worthless and broken,
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that actually it has been effective.
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BG: Yeah, well people can take,
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there is some aid that was well-meaning
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and didn't go well.
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There's some venture capital investments
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that were well-meaning and didn't go well.
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You shouldn't just say, okay, because of that,
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because we don't have a perfect record,
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this is a bad endeavor.
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You should look at, what was your goal?
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How are you trying to uplift nutrition
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and survival and literacy
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so these countries can take care of themselves,
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and say wow, this is going well,
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and be smarter.
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We can spend aid smarter.
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It is not all a panacea.
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We can do better than venture capital, I think,
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including big hits like this.
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CA: Traditional wisdom is that
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it's pretty hard for married couples to work together.
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How have you guys managed it?
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MG: Yeah, I've had a lot of women say to me,
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"I really don't think I could work with my husband.
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That just wouldn't work out."
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You know, we enjoy it, and we don't --
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this foundation has been a coming to for both of us
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in its continuous learning journey,
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and we don't travel together as much
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for the foundation, actually, as we used to
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when Bill was working at Microsoft.
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We have more trips where we're traveling separately,
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but I always know when I come home,
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Bill's going to be interested in what I learned,
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whether it's about women or girls
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or something new about the vaccine delivery chain,
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or this person that is a great leader.
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He's going to listen and be really interested.
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And he knows when he comes home,
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even if it's to talk about the speech he did
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or the data or what he's learned,
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I'm really interested,
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and I think we have a really collaborative relationship.
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But we don't every minute together, that's for sure.
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(Laughter)
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CA: But now you are, and we're very happy that you are.
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Melinda, early on, you were basically
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largely running the show.
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Six years ago, I guess,
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Bill came on full time, so moved from Microsoft
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and became full time.
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That must have been hard,
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adjusting to that. No?
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MG: Yeah. I think actually,
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for the foundation employees,
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there was way more angst for them
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than there was for me about Bill coming.
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I was actually really excited.
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I mean, Bill made this decision
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even obviously before it got announced in 2006,
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and it was really his decision,
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but again, it was a beach vacation
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where we were walking on the beach
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and he was starting to think of this idea.
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And for me, the excitement of Bill
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putting his brain and his heart
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against these huge global problems,
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these inequities, to me that was exciting.
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Yes, the foundation employees had angst about that.
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(Applause)
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CA: That's cool.
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11:53
MG: But that went away within three months,
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11:54
once he was there.
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11:55
BG: Including some of the employees.
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11:57
MG: That's what I said, the employees,
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11:58
it went away for them three months after you were there.
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12:00
BG: No, I'm kidding. MG: Oh, you mean, the employees didn't go away.
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12:03
BG: A few of them did, but —
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12:05
(Laughter)
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12:06
CA: So what do you guys argue about?
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1943
12:08
Sunday, 11 o'clock,
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12:11
you're away from work,
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12:12
what comes up? What's the argument?
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12:15
BG: Because we built this thing
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12:17
together from the beginning,
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12:20
it's this great partnership.
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12:21
I had that with Paul Allen
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12:23
in the early days of Microsoft.
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12:25
I had it with Steve Ballmer as Microsoft got bigger,
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2812
12:28
and now Melinda, and in even stronger,
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12:31
equal ways, is the partner,
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12:33
so we talk a lot about
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12:35
which things should we give more to,
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12:37
which groups are working well?
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12:39
She's got a lot of insight.
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12:41
She'll sit down with the employees a lot.
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12:42
We'll take the different trips she described.
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12:44
So there's a lot of collaboration.
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12:48
I can't think of anything where one of us
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1976
12:50
had a super strong opinion
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12:53
about one thing or another?
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12:55
CA: How about you, Melinda, though? Can you? (Laughter)
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12:58
You never know.
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12:59
MG: Well, here's the thing.
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13:01
We come at things from different angles,
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1739
13:02
and I actually think that's really good.
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1932
13:04
So Bill can look at the big data
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2008
13:06
and say, "I want to act based on these global statistics."
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13:09
For me, I come at it from intuition.
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1866
13:11
I meet with lots of people on the ground
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1933
13:13
and Bill's taught me to take that
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1980
13:15
and read up to the global data and see if they match,
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2623
13:18
and I think what I've taught him
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13:19
is to take that data
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13:20
and meet with people on the ground to understand,
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13:22
can you actually deliver that vaccine?
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13:24
Can you get a woman to accept those polio drops
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13:27
in her child's mouth?
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13:29
Because the delivery piece
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13:30
is every bit as important as the science.
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2203
13:32
So I think it's been more a coming to over time
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13:35
towards each other's point of view,
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1295
13:36
and quite frankly, the work is better because of it.
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13:40
CA: So, in vaccines and polio and so forth,
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13:42
you've had some amazing successes.
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3799
13:46
What about failure, though?
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1232
13:47
Can you talk about a failure
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13:49
and maybe what you've learned from it?
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2096
13:51
BG: Yeah. Fortunately, we can afford a few failures,
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2568
13:53
because we've certainly had them.
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13:55
We do a lot of drug work or vaccine work
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4374
14:00
that you know you're going to have different failures.
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3276
14:03
Like, we put out, one that got a lot of publicity
361
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2227
14:05
was asking for a better condom.
362
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1301
14:07
Well, we got hundreds of ideas.
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1494
14:08
Maybe a few of those will work out.
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3194
14:11
We were very naïve, certainly I was, about a drug
365
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3379
14:15
for a disease in India, visceral leishmaniasis,
366
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2616
14:17
that I thought, once I got this drug,
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1651
14:19
we can just go wipe out the disease.
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1356
14:20
Well, turns out it took an injection
369
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2580
14:23
every day for 10 days.
370
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1636
14:24
It took three more years to get it than we expected,
371
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2387
14:27
and then there was no way
372
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1458
14:28
it was going to get out there.
373
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2368
14:31
Fortunately, we found out
374
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14:32
that if you go kill the sand flies,
375
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3162
14:35
you probably can have success there,
376
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2122
14:37
but we spent five years,
377
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1855
14:39
you could say wasted five years,
378
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1378
14:40
and about 60 million,
379
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2007
14:42
on a path that turned out to have
380
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1340
14:44
very modest benefit when we got there.
381
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4165
14:48
CA: You're spending, like, a billion dollars a year
382
888387
3444
14:51
in education, I think, something like that.
383
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1935
14:53
Is anything, the story of what's gone right there
384
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4024
14:57
is quite a long and complex one.
385
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2456
15:00
Are there any failures that you can talk about?
386
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3922
15:04
MG: Well, I would say a huge lesson for us
387
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1790
15:05
out of the early work is we thought
388
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1248
15:07
that these small schools were the answer,
389
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2533
15:09
and small schools definitely help.
390
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1470
15:11
They bring down the dropout rate.
391
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1524
15:12
They have less violence and crime in those schools.
392
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2600
15:15
But the thing that we learned from that work,
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2146
15:17
and what turned out to be the fundamental key,
394
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2534
15:20
is a great teacher in front of the classroom.
395
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2064
15:22
If you don't have an effective teacher
396
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1607
15:23
in the front of the classroom,
397
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1066
15:24
I don't care how big or small the building is,
398
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2156
15:26
you're not going to change the trajectory
399
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1654
15:28
of whether that student will be ready for college.
400
928560
1953
15:30
(Applause)
401
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4595
15:35
CA: So Melinda, this is you and
402
935108
2310
15:37
your eldest daughter, Jenn.
403
937418
3554
15:40
And just taken about three weeks ago, I think,
404
940972
1899
15:42
three or four weeks ago. Where was this?
405
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1584
15:44
MG: So we went to Tanzania.
406
944455
1756
15:46
Jenn's been to Tanzania.
407
946211
842
15:47
All our kids have been to Africa quite a bit, actually.
408
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2703
15:49
And we did something very different,
409
949756
2215
15:51
which is, we decided to go spend
410
951971
1827
15:53
two nights and three days with a family.
411
953798
2419
15:56
Anna and Sanare are the parents.
412
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3101
15:59
They invited us to come and stay in their boma.
413
959318
3034
16:02
Actually, the goats had been there, I think,
414
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1499
16:03
living in that particular little hut
415
963851
1399
16:05
on their little compound before we got there.
416
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2671
16:07
And we stayed with their family,
417
967921
1498
16:09
and we really, really learned
418
969419
1934
16:11
what life is like in rural Tanzania.
419
971353
1853
16:13
And the difference between just going
420
973206
1614
16:14
and visiting for half a day
421
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1719
16:16
or three quarters of a day
422
976539
1462
16:18
versus staying overnight was profound,
423
978001
2398
16:20
and so let me just give you one explanation of that.
424
980399
3491
16:23
They had six children, and as I talked to Anna
425
983890
2129
16:26
in the kitchen, we cooked for about five hours
426
986019
1775
16:27
in the cooking hut that day,
427
987794
1643
16:29
and as I talked to her, she had absolutely planned
428
989437
1811
16:31
and spaced with her husband
429
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1470
16:32
the births of their children.
430
992718
1437
16:34
It was a very loving relationship.
431
994155
1655
16:35
This was a Maasai warrior and his wife,
432
995810
2303
16:38
but they had decided to get married,
433
998113
1909
16:40
they clearly had respect and love in the relationship.
434
1000022
3335
16:43
Their children, their six children,
435
1003357
1611
16:44
the two in the middle were twins, 13,
436
1004968
2519
16:47
a boy, and a girl named Grace.
437
1007487
2253
16:49
And when we'd go out to chop wood
438
1009740
1573
16:51
and do all the things that Grace and her mother would do,
439
1011313
2435
16:53
Grace was not a child, she was an adolescent,
440
1013748
2592
16:56
but she wasn't an adult.
441
1016340
1477
16:57
She was very, very shy.
442
1017817
1751
16:59
So she kept wanting to talk to me and Jenn.
443
1019568
1761
17:01
We kept trying to engage her, but she was shy.
444
1021329
2835
17:04
And at night, though,
445
1024164
1606
17:05
when all the lights went out in rural Tanzania,
446
1025770
2807
17:08
and there was no moon that night,
447
1028577
1504
17:10
the first night, and no stars,
448
1030081
1722
17:11
and Jenn came out of our hut
449
1031803
1826
17:13
with her REI little headlamp on,
450
1033629
2817
17:16
Grace went immediately,
451
1036446
2138
17:18
and got the translator,
452
1038584
1356
17:19
came straight up to my Jenn and said,
453
1039940
2090
17:22
"When you go home,
454
1042030
1233
17:23
can I have your headlamp
455
1043263
1175
17:24
so I can study at night?"
456
1044438
1730
17:26
CA: Oh, wow.
457
1046168
1082
17:27
MG: And her dad had told me
458
1047250
1484
17:28
how afraid he was that unlike the son,
459
1048734
2087
17:30
who had passed his secondary exams,
460
1050821
1662
17:32
because of her chores,
461
1052483
1530
17:34
she'd not done so well
462
1054013
1438
17:35
and wasn't in the government school yet.
463
1055451
1804
17:37
He said, "I don't know how I'm going to pay for her education.
464
1057255
2535
17:39
I can't pay for private school,
465
1059790
1826
17:41
and she may end up on this farm like my wife."
466
1061616
2579
17:44
So they know the difference
467
1064195
1129
17:45
that an education can make
468
1065324
1025
17:46
in a huge, profound way.
469
1066349
2997
17:49
CA: I mean, this is another pic
470
1069346
1421
17:50
of your other two kids, Rory and Phoebe,
471
1070767
3406
17:54
along with Paul Farmer.
472
1074173
4138
17:58
Bringing up three children
473
1078311
1614
17:59
when you're the world's richest family
474
1079925
3002
18:02
seems like a social experiment
475
1082927
2296
18:05
without much prior art.
476
1085223
3572
18:08
How have you managed it?
477
1088795
1535
18:10
What's been your approach?
478
1090330
2215
18:12
BG: Well, I'd say overall
479
1092545
2633
18:15
the kids get a great education,
480
1095178
1762
18:16
but you've got to make sure
481
1096940
898
18:17
they have a sense of their own ability
482
1097838
1702
18:19
and what they're going to go and do,
483
1099540
1989
18:21
and our philosophy has been
484
1101529
2373
18:23
to be very clear with them --
485
1103902
1222
18:25
most of the money's going to the foundation --
486
1105124
1545
18:26
and help them find something they're excited about.
487
1106669
4341
18:31
We want to strike a balance where they have
488
1111010
1395
18:32
the freedom to do anything
489
1112405
1793
18:34
but not a lot of money showered on them
490
1114198
3340
18:37
so they could go out and do nothing.
491
1117538
3129
18:40
And so far, they're fairly diligent,
492
1120667
2978
18:43
excited to pick their own direction.
493
1123645
3208
18:46
CA: You've obviously guarded their privacy carefully for obvious reasons.
494
1126853
5568
18:52
I'm curious why you've given me permission
495
1132421
2194
18:54
to show this picture now here at TED.
496
1134615
1625
18:56
MG: Well, it's interesting.
497
1136240
1137
18:57
As they get older, they so know
498
1137377
1841
18:59
that our family belief is about responsibility,
499
1139218
3009
19:02
that we are in an unbelievable situation
500
1142227
2115
19:04
just to live in the United States
501
1144342
1618
19:05
and have a great education,
502
1145960
1691
19:07
and we have a responsibility to give back to the world.
503
1147651
2048
19:09
And so as they get older
504
1149699
1053
19:10
and we are teaching them --
505
1150752
1020
19:11
they have been to so many countries around the world —
506
1151772
2360
19:14
they're saying,
507
1154132
1132
19:15
we do want people to know that we believe
508
1155264
1752
19:17
in what you're doing, Mom and Dad,
509
1157016
1501
19:18
and it is okay to show us more.
510
1158517
1961
19:20
So we have their permission to show this picture,
511
1160478
2652
19:23
and I think Paul Farmer is probably going to put it
512
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1715
19:24
eventually in some of his work.
513
1164845
2455
19:27
But they really care deeply
514
1167300
1602
19:28
about the mission of the foundation, too.
515
1168902
2425
19:31
CA: You've easily got enough money
516
1171327
1922
19:33
despite your vast contributions to the foundation
517
1173249
2591
19:35
to make them all billionaires.
518
1175840
1634
19:37
Is that your plan for them?
519
1177474
1517
19:38
BG: Nope. No. They won't have anything like that.
520
1178991
2336
19:41
They need to have a sense
521
1181327
1935
19:43
that their own work is meaningful and important.
522
1183262
6536
19:49
We read an article long, actually, before we got married,
523
1189798
3472
19:53
where Warren Buffett talked about that,
524
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2645
19:55
and we're quite convinced that it wasn't a favor
525
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2249
19:58
either to society or to the kids.
526
1198164
3254
20:01
CA: Well, speaking of Warren Buffett,
527
1201418
2068
20:03
something really amazing happened in 2006,
528
1203486
2664
20:06
when somehow your only real rival
529
1206150
2960
20:09
for richest person in America
530
1209110
1552
20:10
suddenly turned around and agreed to give
531
1210662
1370
20:12
80 percent of his fortune
532
1212032
2593
20:14
to your foundation.
533
1214625
1717
20:16
How on Earth did that happen?
534
1216342
1736
20:18
I guess there's a long version and a short version of that.
535
1218078
1978
20:20
We've got time for the short version.
536
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1382
20:21
BG: All right. Well, Warren was a close friend,
537
1221438
3755
20:25
and he was going to have his wife Suzie
538
1225193
4657
20:29
give it all away.
539
1229850
1555
20:31
Tragically, she passed away before he did,
540
1231405
3441
20:34
and he's big on delegation, and
541
1234846
3598
20:38
— (Laughter) —
542
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2158
20:40
he said —
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1411
20:42
CA: Tweet that.
544
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855
20:42
BG: If he's got somebody who is doing something well,
545
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3161
20:46
and is willing to do it at no charge,
546
1246029
4457
20:50
maybe that's okay. But we were stunned.
547
1250486
2378
20:52
MG: Totally stunned. BG: We had never expected it,
548
1252864
2096
20:54
and it has been unbelievable.
549
1254960
1565
20:56
It's allowed us to increase our ambition
550
1256525
3140
20:59
in what the foundation can do quite dramatically.
551
1259665
3617
21:03
Half the resources we have
552
1263282
1504
21:04
come from Warren's mind-blowing generosity.
553
1264786
2884
21:07
CA: And I think you've pledged that
554
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884
21:08
by the time you're done,
555
1268554
1790
21:10
more than, or 95 percent of your wealth,
556
1270344
1878
21:12
will be given to the foundation.
557
1272222
1895
21:14
BG: Yes.
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1154
21:15
CA: And since this relationship, it's amazing—
559
1275271
3749
21:19
(Applause)
560
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3366
21:22
And recently, you and Warren
561
1282386
2637
21:25
have been going around trying to persuade
562
1285023
1880
21:26
other billionaires and successful people
563
1286903
1976
21:28
to pledge to give, what,
564
1288879
1523
21:30
more than half of their assets for philanthropy.
565
1290402
5758
21:36
How is that going?
566
1296160
2415
21:38
BG: Well, we've got about 120 people
567
1298575
3172
21:41
who have now taken this giving pledge.
568
1301747
2438
21:44
The thing that's great is that we get together
569
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2606
21:46
yearly and talk about, okay,
570
1306791
2109
21:48
do you hire staff, what do you give to them?
571
1308900
1965
21:50
We're not trying to homogenize it.
572
1310865
1227
21:52
I mean, the beauty of philanthropy
573
1312092
1048
21:53
is this mind-blowing diversity.
574
1313140
2007
21:55
People give to some things.
575
1315147
1163
21:56
We look and go, "Wow."
576
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2679
21:58
But that's great.
577
1318989
1108
22:00
That's the role of philanthropy
578
1320097
1129
22:01
is to pick different approaches,
579
1321226
2487
22:03
including even in one space, like education.
580
1323713
1992
22:05
We need more experimentation.
581
1325705
2371
22:08
But it's been wonderful, meeting those people,
582
1328076
2904
22:10
sharing their journey to philanthropy,
583
1330980
2232
22:13
how they involve their kids,
584
1333212
1104
22:14
where they're doing it differently,
585
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1834
22:16
and it's been way more successful than we expected.
586
1336150
2706
22:18
Now it looks like it'll just keep growing in size
587
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2695
22:21
in the years ahead.
588
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2563
22:24
MG: And having people see that other people
589
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3512
22:27
are making change with philanthropy,
590
1347626
1704
22:29
I mean, these are people who have
591
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2336
22:31
created their own businesses,
592
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1045
22:32
put their own ingenuity behind incredible ideas.
593
1352711
2648
22:35
If they put their ideas and their brain
594
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2226
22:37
behind philanthropy, they can change the world.
595
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2533
22:40
And they start to see others doing it, and saying,
596
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2291
22:42
"Wow, I want to do that with my own money."
597
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2040
22:44
To me, that's the piece that's incredible.
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CA: It seems to me, it's actually really hard
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for some people to figure out
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even how to remotely spend that much money
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on something else.
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There are probably some billionaires in the room
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and certainly some successful people.
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I'm curious, can you make the pitch?
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What's the pitch?
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BG: Well, it's the most fulfilling thing
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we've ever done,
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and you can't take it with you,
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and if it's not good for your kids,
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let's get together and brainstorm
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about what we can be done.
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The world is a far better place
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because of the philanthropists of the past,
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and the U.S. tradition here, which is the strongest,
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is the envy of the world.
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And part of the reason I'm so optimistic
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is because I do think philanthropy
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is going to grow
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and take some of these things
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government's not just good at working on and discovering
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and shine some light in the right direction.
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CA: The world's got this terrible inequality,
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growing inequality problem
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that seems structural.
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It does seem to me that if more of your peers
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took the approach that you two have made,
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it would make a dent
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both in that problem and certainly
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in the perception of that problem.
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Is that a fair comment?
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BG: Oh yeah. If you take from the most wealthy
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and give to the least wealthy, it's good.
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It tries to balance out, and that's just.
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MG: But you change systems.
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In the U.S., we're trying to change the education system
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so it's just for everybody
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and it works for all students.
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That, to me, really changes
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the inequality balance.
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BG: That's the most important.
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(Applause)
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CA: Well, I really think that most people here
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and many millions around the world
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are just in awe of the trajectory
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your lives have taken
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and the spectacular degree to which
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you have shaped the future.
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Thank you so much for coming to TED
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and for sharing with us and for all you do.
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BG: Thank you. MG: Thank you.
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(Applause)
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BG: Thank you. MG: Thank you very much.
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BG: All right, good job. (Applause)
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