Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Melinda French Gates

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Businesswoman and philanthropist Melinda French Gates feels like a bit of a newbie about being Conan O’Brien’s friend.Melinda sits down with Conan to discuss her introduction to computer science while at Catholic school, getting her start at Microsoft, the importance of giving back, and why education, especially of women, is critical to developing personal autonomy.For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone].

Hi, my name is Melinda French Gates and I feel like a bit of a newbie about being Conan O'Brien's friend. A newbie in what way? Meaning you're new to this whole Conan mania that's sweeping the nation. Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell, brandy shoes, walking blues, climb the fence, books and pens. I can tell that we are gonna be friends. I can tell that we are gonna be friends. Hey, Conan here.

Every now and then, instead of doing the normal Conan and Brian needs a fan, we'd like to do something a little different, a little off the beaten path for us, whether it's a Halloween murder mystery game we're playing or talking to a notable person who's doing something kind of cool or interesting in the world. Well, that's what we're doing today. My guest is a philanthropist and businesswoman and a global advocate for women and gender equality. And I'm thrilled she's here today. I've never met her before, but very glad she's in the studio. Melinda French Gates, welcome. I'm very careful never to say nice to meet you because I think I've met everybody and

whenever I accidentally say that, it turns out I've met the person and I get chewed out, especially when it's a relative. But I know that I haven't met you before. We haven't met. And we do have some connections because my wife is from Seattle, lives on Lake Washington. And so I'm part of that, I've been part of that whole vibe where I've been indoctrinated into the Seattle vibe. And I have a good friend that works at the Gates Foundation.

And so I've been familiar for a long time with all the amazing stuff that you guys are doing. And we'll talk about that, but I like like to sort of start on the personal. Okay. Which is, what do you think of my appearance? No. It's the skin a little dry. Should I moisturize? Give me time. This is a new friendship. Okay. Very, very well said. You and I have some things in common which is we're both race Catholic. How Catholic are we talking in your situation? Like there's Catholic, then there's Catholic. That's true. And I'm not from Boston. So, no. But no, my parents went, I went to school, Catholic

school, K through high school to a senior year, all the way through. And even in grade school, K through high school to a senior year all the way through. And even in grade school, you know, we went to church as part of the school's curriculum, I guess you'd say, two or three mornings a week, separate from Sundays. I always think if there's a crucifix in every classroom, that's fairly Catholic. That's true, that is very Catholic. And usually a statue of Mother Mary.

Yes, right. And that actually is the water fountain as well. You turn a crank on the side. They just think of any way they can get Mary or Christ in there. So raised in a very Catholic family. And what's interesting, one of the things that was interesting to me

because I was raised the same way, and then we diverge, you were interested in computer science. I believe we are almost exactly the same age. And what's interesting to me is that you became interested in computer science fairly young. How old were you when you? I was probably 14, and I got very, very lucky

because I was going to an all girls Catholic school. And my math teacher, I kind of, I was a math nerd. I knew I was pretty good at math and she selected, she asked about 10 of us girls, did we want to join a computer science class? She had just convinced the head none of the school to bring computers into the school and so I was part of her first computer science class.

I think when I was about the same age, 14, going to public schools in just outside Boston, I remember they brought us one day to this room that at the time had what was considered a small computer. I think it was the size of a Buick sedan. And it was punch cards. Oh yeah. And I knew immediately, I had a visceral reaction

that lives with me to this day. This is not for me. And so I've barely touched a computer since. But what fascinates me about your story is that I'm guessing highly unusual to be around other girls your age that are really interested in computers. Definitely. I mean, it's still somewhat unusual.

And the fact that I was exposed, I had it, first of all, a female teacher who knew math, had seen these computers at a conference, knew to bring them in. And then to just say to us, girls, you can be good at this. And she was learning to program at the same time we were, and she would let us even get ahead of her. But she just saw that it was this amazing opportunity. And so for me, I had no idea I'd be that interested in computers, but I was hooked. To me, it was like a game.

It was like figuring things out. And so then I went to college. I selected a university that had a new computer lab in it, which was Duke University. They had a big grant from IBM and then who knew that from there, I would go to business school and then get hired by Microsoft. So it literally changed my life. Okay. So this is interesting to me because you hit this fork in the road,

and probably you were in rooms where you might have been the only woman. Oh, for sure in college. You back by sophomore year, computer science, yes, one or two of us at most. Right, and then you hit this fork in the road, which is you, it's time to go to work and you have a job offer from IBM and there's an opening at Microsoft.

Microsoft is much smaller, sort of making its way. IBM is probably the... Well established. Extremely well established. It's the company. You decided not to go with IBM. Why is that? Well, I had worked two summers for IBM back in Dallas where I grew up, and it was great. I enjoyed it immensely. We were working more, as you talked about earlier on a Buick size computer, we're working more on a mainframe. But I had a job-standing offer coming out of business school from IBM, but I went to meet my hiring manager at IBM in Dallas and she said, are you ready to accept?

And I said, well, I'm not quite. You knew I was going to interview other places. I have one last interview to do and then I'll come back and let you know. And she said, would you mind asking me where? And I said, said well it's this little company up in Seattle you might have heard of called Microsoft. And she said to me, she stopped me dead in my tracks and she said do you want a piece of advice. And I said sure. And she said if you get a job offer for her there go. And I was absolutely shocked and I said why. And she said, because as a woman, I think you would do quite well at IBM,

but you're gonna have to move up the ranks and that takes a long time to get into managerial position. And she just said, a young company like that, that's growing so quickly, I think your chances of accelerating your career are huge. And so at the time I then went to Microsoft, I interviewed all males on my interview schedule, which wasn't unusual coming out of computer science.

And then they did make me a job offer. And the company was about 1,100, slightly more employees than that when I joined in four buildings. So it was like a little, almost like a little college campus. And I knew no one when I moved to Seattle, other than a great aunt who was in her late 80s.

So I was really moving across the country. I'd moved from Dallas to then Duke, and then after Duke, I moved to Seattle to take this amazing job offer. It's interesting to me, because I've seen this with my own daughter. She was always encouraged by her teachers and by my wife that, yeah, math, calculus, computers. my wife that, yeah, math, calculus, computers, of course, there was no sense that someone would be instructed, would be telling a daughter that maybe that's not the right way to go.

And I think that was, strangely enough, kind of a prevalent attitude, like so many things with women, it was a prevalent attitude that maybe that's not for you. I mean, I'm in comedy and I think I was aware growing up that when a guy was being really funny, adults were really laughing and if a woman was being really funny,

sometimes the mom would be like, you know, please just try and be a little more ladylike. And it's just like, well, these are conditioning things that I think are fortunately dissolving, going away. I hope. I hope so. We have absolutely made progress for women and girls in this, in this country, but there is a lot of it that's also being rolled back.

So just as we go forward, we sort of roll back. I mean, even in computer science, when I was graduating, about, you could say back then, about 37% of the class were women. And we thought we were on our way up, like medicine and law. That's now 50% of graduates are women. But quite honestly, those numbers came down for a long time, and they're just now beginning to tick back up. And so we do have to do special things to make sure girls know you can be good in math, you can be good in computer science, and so that it feels welcoming to them because it has been a very male dominated industry. And yet, I believe women have a lot of creative talent they could

add to things. Right. Or to create products. It's funny because I was encouraged, you know, in some areas, and then it turned out that, no, I shouldn't have been encouraged. I should not have been encouraged to be a long distance runner. I shouldn't have been encouraged.

You know, that people were- But you really were. No, no, I was terrible. But you were encouraged. No, no, I, I, I, so. Oh, sorry. Yes, actually just because I had long legs, but there were... That's all right.

I'm saying sometimes the other thing is true, and this wasn't gender-based, but it was just people saying... They were looking at me saying, well, you're a very lean guy with long legs. You can be a great distance runner. And it turned out that I had the respiratory system of a very sick three-year-old boy as a 19-year-old. So, no, that was not true. But I think your larger point is well taken

that a lot of this is, there's a lot of probably two steps forward, one step back or three steps forward, one step back. Definitely. And it's surprising to me, quite frankly, even in today's world that that is the truth of where we are. And I think to your point, I mean, I do think we encourage young boys that they can be anything, anything they want to be in society. Whereas I think girls for so long have gotten other messages.

And I think we finally are giving girls messages, they can be anything in society. But then when we send them out into the world, the world inadvertently has been set up for white males. And so they reached these road blocks and these barriers that are hard to push through. There are some parts of your story that are, I mean, it's quite remarkable with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that I believe, as of last year, a foundation, I think you've taken, I don't wanna say it's 59, but close to $60 billion has gone into the foundation. This raised all kinds of questions for me.

The first came from Catholicism, which is you did not come from money, you weren't raised in an affluent home. And then you find yourself in this position with this kind of money, and it's, I mean, the most rarefied world that you can imagine, and there's, but you're Catholic,

which means I'm guessing guilt, conflicting, conflicted feelings about what is my role? If we have this money, what am I supposed to do with this? How do I reconcile this? Because there's so much guilt that comes with that upbringing. Is that any of that resonate with you? There's definitely guilt that comes with that upbringing. For me, I wouldn't say it was around money though per se.

And maybe that's because the high school my parents sent me to was an all girls Catholic school run by these very liberal Ursuline nuns. And their motto was Serviam, that is to serve. And so we went out into the community. And so I saw the public school two miles down the road and was there tutoring in the classroom helping the teacher who's trying to teach 30 students, half of whom don't speak English, right? And then I was out at the Dallas County Courthouse.

So they sent us out to serve. And their point was even one person can make a difference in somebody's life. And so I literally came out of high school with this notion in my head that, well, okay, whatever I do with whatever career I have, I want to have a career, I want to be a working woman and have a family for sure, but also I should give back, even me as one person. So then, yes, when I come into this unbelievable wealth that I never could have imagined, I thought, okay, well, it's not about helping one person, it's about how do we help hundreds or thousands or ultimately millions and how do we do that in a way

that is true to our values, but that it should be done. Nobody needs to have wealth of that level. Nobody, I promise you. This is, okay, this gets into something that's in society right now, just a huge topic, which is we find ourselves in this age, it's a little somewhat akin to the late 19th century where there's incredible fortunes, just massive fortunes. And sometimes it's not even clear how the money was made.

I'm not always, sometimes someone says, yeah, I'm in SendTech and that's why I have $700 billion. And they go, what's SendTech? And they say, well, you know, what we do is we take a percentage of the nodule. What's the nodule? Well, you know, of course, it's a percentage of the gross of what you don't have multiplied

with what someone else could have. And it's just, I'm lost in this miasma. I'm crushing BioCoin. Yeah, yeah. Is that the same thing as Bitcoin? No, completely different, you idiot. But I think, you know, you can get lost because I understand when someone finds a mountain and gets copper out of it.

I don't know. But my understanding starts to go away after that. And I certainly understand how Microsoft made that money, but we live in this world where there's these massive fortunes, people are wondering, well, how does this work in a world where so many people don't have much? You and Bill made this decision,

we're going to give away the vast majority of this money and try and put it to work in ways that will help society. Not everybody does that. Not everybody does that. And I think we were both fortunate that we both came from families that believed in giving back, give back your time, give back your energy, give back your wealth. And so we actually made that decision before we got married, that the vast majority of the wealth would go back to society. And then we met Warren

Buffett, again, before we got married, and he really influenced us. He had this belief that we shouldn't have a society like you saw happen in Europe where you had the aristocrats and then you had the money handed down generation after generation. And so he had the idea that we would form something called the giving pledge, which is to go around and get wealthy people in the United States and ultimately around the world to pledge to give away at least half of their wealth. And I think his influence on us on that piece was also just enormous. A question that comes to mind is, what would you say to someone in that position of having

tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars who isn't giving, what would you say to them privately in a conversation that might influence them to give that money away? Well, you have to end, you know, I try to understand where they're coming from and certainly not judging or shaming in any way, but just to help, try and help explain how giving back has changed my life or our lives. I mean, you, you can't believe what you learn through it, what you learn about other people, what you learn about yourself, situations that you'll end up getting to be in. I never thought I would travel the world the way I've gotten to, or to be in so many rural

communities and I've had so many amazing conversations, for instance, on the continent of Africa or in Southeast Asia. And so we try to motivate them by saying, look, you can have a second career. You have no idea how much you're going to get back by giving this money away. And then I guess the question becomes, there are so many problems. And I think to myself, just being in my position, which is I've been extremely fortunate. And is I've been extremely fortunate and my wife and I believe in giving back, but what I've noticed is the volume of problems

in the world, you can get stymied by just, because everyone has a very legitimate reason why their money for their cause will help the world more than anybody else. And it's sorting that out. And I understand at the Gates Foundation, there's a Foundation, there's a lot of research that goes into this disease by doing this, we could really help the world in an important way. And then someone else is saying, I need help with my used car lot.

And it's probably really interesting. We get those requests too. Do you really? Do you have people ever coming to you and saying, you know, my restaurant needs a little help or? We get a lot of requests. By the way, I'd like to just apologize for my request about 15 years ago. I wanted a new pool and so I wrote the Gates Foundation

and got a very curt letter back and I could have afforded it myself. I just thought, hey, I'll get a Gates grant, you know? The answer, I mean, you were in the right and I apologize. You know, we get those requests, but this is what I would say again, Warren Buffett influenced us greatly. He said, pick your target

Once you know what's in your bullseye and you focus on that You will keep getting better and better and better at it and you will feel better about the pieces that you don't Go after so we were also, you know, we still and then too. I remember we're getting just heartbreaking letters You know a child with leukemia or cancer. But as we looked out, there were a number of Americans who were working on those problems with research institutes. But so once we picked our bull's eye, then it felt better to let things go. And so I tell most people, starting your backyard, pick something you're passionate about, something that you feel like you could get your hands around, start to just learn about, and you'll find what you're passionate about.

I think the more people find something they're passionate about working on, the more they put their intellect, their money, their muscle behind it. And quite frankly, a lot of people ask me these days about raising children in great wealth because it is not easy. I'm raising children in great wealth because it is not easy I'm sure even in your situation. It's not easy when I think great wealth is a exaggeration in my case and remember I have a gambling problem We lost a lot of it. I also invested very poorly in a theme restaurant But I agree with you

This is a there've been all these studies and just anecdotally, you know that children that think they don't have to work do not thrive. It's a terrible track record. And I'm looking at you, Gaurley, because I know that, yeah, you were raised in great wealth. Well, I'm also not paid for this job. So we need to talk. He's here as a volunteer. I'm serving. Yeah, he's serving. And, but no, I'm, it raises a really good question about how children can be almost disabled or neutered at an early stage if they feel they never have to work.

Literally just, you know, my wife will say to me, I want our children to be happy, I want them to be nice to other people and I want them to be able to pay their rent. And I think that's actually just keeping it simple like that. But as you know, there are a lot of children of very wealthy people who don't feel that there's any encumbrance on them

at all, which is kind of devastating. Yeah. And I felt like I would rob my children of an opportunity if they didn't grow up feeling they had a contribution to make to society. And so we really, even amongst the great wealth, try to really encapsulate more of them inside the house, more of a middle class, which is what I grew up in as my, as a bill then, middle class household. And I will say, this is the thing about giving back when people ask me about raising their children in wealth, is if you're giving back and you take your kids out

to see things in their community, homelessness, the place that's giving out meals or repackaging things. Or I took my kids out early and often to Africa after they were 10 and took them into age-appropriate places. But it instilled in them that they would have their own career. They should figure out what they're good at and contribute to society in whatever way they wanted to.

But they should also give something back. And they got to see a side of the world, a different lens that they weren't growing up in. And I think it really shaped who they have become. I'm curious because one of the best answers a parent can give if you're out with your little kids and they want something is to say, we can't afford that. You're not gonna get away with that, you know?

And even, I mean, if my kids wanted a Porsche, I could say, yeah, we can't afford that. But because they knew I was doing well, I knew that that was something my parents could tell me that shut it down immediately, we can't afford it. But if you're walking around with your kids at a young age and they point to something, you can't say that. You can't say we can't afford it.

It has to be a different message, which is that's not for right now or... Just because you can doesn't mean you should. So again, I remember my oldest daughter when she became a teenager wanting some really fancy purse that she'd seen in a window of somewhere. And she kept saying, why won't you buy it for me? And I said, because you don't need to be walking around with a purse that costs that much money in your all girls Catholic school

when other girls don't have it. And just because I can, does it mean I should? Right, I heard a story that really made me laugh once. I don't know if it's, it might be apocryphal, but Jackie Onassis was walking down the street with JFK Jr. when he was a boy. And maybe he's like 10 years old or 11 or something and she's married to Aristotle Onassis

and he sees something and he says like, mom, can I have that? And she says, no, no, no. And we can't, no, no, no, we're not gonna buy that. That's very expensive. And he stops and had like a meltdown in the middle of the street and went, you're the richest woman in the world.

You're married to Aristotle, isn't it? That always cracked me up, a kid who was very aware. It says here in Forbes. I don't know, just having access to, I have records. I have statements. Your tax returns. Our kids certainly keep us grounded. Yeah, but I think that's something that is important,

obviously very important. And then the bigger question is, I think we're both, I think a couple of months older than you are about the same age. And I remember turning 60 was kind of a, huh, what am I doing? Moment where I wasn't bad, I'm happy.

This is actually the happiest phase of my life, but I started to weigh things differently. And also I'm facing being an empty nester soon. And I know that you are an empty nester. So I guess I'm asking you, what's gonna happen? I'm really freaked out. And can I have a Gates grant? For the second pool in your backyard?

I think a second pool would really help me handle being an empty nester and 61. So just think about it. I don't know if the paperwork I have to fill out. But when you and Bill were together and working on the Gates Foundation, you had certain priorities. Have what you've wanted to focus on now changed

since you guys divorced, since your life has changed so much. Have your priorities changed or things that you wanna focus on? Yeah, I would say this. It certainly, I feel like I'm in a bit of a transition, right? Like I did go through a very public divorce a few years ago, but the Foundation's mission, I had really brought in back in around 2012, really a focus on women that just as I would be out in

the developing world, seeing that women were not far enough, were not, didn't have any power often in their lives. I really started to bring that into the foundation and we have continued that and we continue that work at the Gates Foundation. I'm still there, I'm still working a lot. But really, I realized that out of our grant giving, we weren't getting as much if we didn't focus on women, because they are the center of the family and they often are the ones deciding who eats, in what order, can the kids get educated or not. I also formed, though, in 2015, a company called Pivotal Ventures, which is my own separate work, separate from the foundation. That's really focused on the U.S. How do we help women and people of color step into their power in this country? At the

foundation, we do work on the U.S. education system because we believe every child should have a great education and they don't. But then to do this specific work in the U.S., I really have done that through Pivotal Ventures. And again, I'm spending now that I have more time because I have three children who are now, as you said,ures. And again, I'm spending now that I have more time because I have three children who are now, as you said, out of the house, I'm spending even more time on that because to see things like the Dobs decision happen

in this country just breaks my heart, should not be happening in this day and age. Or the Alabama court ruling. Or the Alabama court ruling. Which, and then you read the judge's decision and it's invoking the wrath of God and fertilized eggs and you just, I don't know, it's quite shocking.

It's unbelievable. And I believe that if we had more women in positions of power, more female politicians in the state houses,'s 7,000 positions there more women in Congress more women on benches in These key places more women governors. We wouldn't be making these kind of policies We just wouldn't that's the truth and yet we haven't gotten women far enough fast enough in politics in their financial lives and even culturally, it's still very hard to get movies made about what's actually happening in society. We're starting to like to go for these big ticket models.

And again, I believe if more women were fully could step into their power, we'd be telling other stories in the society because we have a different lens on society, but the world is not there yet. And so as we worked on this, the Gates Foundation, through the lens of low-income countries, I realized there was so much more work to be done in our own country as well. Again, this goes to the point of how many problems there are in the world. But the state of public education in the United States, I always find particularly upsetting that we are the richest nation in the world. We're capable of doing anything.

And somehow educating our children became the lowest priority is a mindblower. I was very fortunate to go to public schools because there were great public schools where I was going and I think that was an amazing experience for me and then it is not a great place to get an education if the school doesn't have any resources and then you have, you know, it's a difficult situation

here in California, here in Los Angeles. Absolutely, every child deserves a great teacher. And yet it's become very much a system about the adults in the system. And I do think after COVID, it became even harder to be a teacher or to be a nurse in society, right? And so we have a lot to really look at in the US to figure out, you know,

how can we change this? Because I do believe education like this from my parents, education can be a fantastic equalizer. But if you don't start with a good education in our country, it just gets harder along the way. There's an amazing statistic that clearly shows the correlation, direct correlation between the more education a woman has, the longer she delays having children starting a family because she wants to make sure that she's autonomous. And it's pretty amazing. It's like a one-to-one.

The graph is shockingly simple. And that fact is true all over the world. You educate a girl and she becomes a woman. She delays the birth of her first child. She will also, if she can, space the births and have fewer because she knows then she has economic means to put into raising those children. knows then she has economic means to put into raising those children. And that there is literally no country in the world also that hasn't gone from low to middle income without also making sure women had access to contraceptives. Because when you can space those births and have fewer children, just it makes the family wealthier, it makes the family healthier, and then you can educate them.

And education changes everything, just everything. I've seen the statistics. I completely believe it's true yet. My upbringing flies in the face of that, which is my mother extremely well-educated, my father brilliant, extremely well-educated, and I'm one of 75 kids. And we were just...

But I think that has something to do with the Vatican more than anything else. But no, it is true that it's very simple. And educating women, well, first of all, educating all children, but specifically, educating women is a very important goal and that's a very clear fix. I don't wanna say it fixes everything,

but as you said, I think it's all about autonomy. And if you're uneducated and in your teens and having kids, your chances of being autonomous and being able to educate your kids and give them what they need, they just start, it starts to drop very quickly. Very quickly. And in many countries, a woman is basically destined

for poverty. She starts having children in her teen years. And yet there are many places where that is still the norm and older man takes a young teenage girl as his bride. And so there are a lot of norms that have to be broken through so that girls can be fully educated. I know you have traveled to Africa with Michelle Obama, Amal Clooney.

Were you working on a specific problem there? Was there a specific issue that you were focusing on? We were really focusing on child marriage. How do you keep girls from being married before the age of 18, looking at the entire system all the way from the legal system, which is a mall's piece of it, to how do you educate girls in schools

to know not to be married, which is kind of Michelle's piece. And my piece is kind of all the pieces in between, like what connects those systems and how do you break through the norm? Because no girl, no child, no girl should be married before age 18. Again, her chance of having any autonomy in life

is minuscule. We sat down and talked with many girls while we were there about both how they were trying to break through the cycle, but also ones who had been locked into that cycle, how did they get themselves out and what else could be done? It was quite an informative and eye-opening trip, I think for all three of us. I would think it would be probably the greatest tool is seeing. So if a child sees a manifestation of an adult living a different way and succeeding, that might be the most powerful educational tool. So it's seeing examples. And again, related to my field, I've talked to so many young women comedians

who say it took them seeing Ellen DeGeneres or Elaine Booslor or I mean seeing and on and on and on seeing over and over, Amy Schumer seeing these other comedians and saying, hey, she looks like me. That's something I wanna do and she's doing it and she has her own special. And that might be the most powerful tool of all.

Is show them that it's, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that role modeling, I always say this, that in society, I think men can look up in society in almost any industry and see three dozen different archetypes and say, well, I don't want to be like that guy or that guy, but I might be interested in being like any of those three. Young girls can't yet look up in society and say, wow, of all the female politicians, there's

so many. I'd like to be like that one or of all the female comedians. I don't think I'm like her, but I'd like to be like her. Every industry, we should have at least three dozen archetypes of women. And until we get there, it's just, it's difficult. And society often will tell girls they can't be something or they won't see. You can't really be what you can't see, right? The reason I knew I could be good at math, not only do I have a great math teacher, but my father worked on these Apollo missions and he talked about often that having women mathematicians on his teams made them better.

And I would go to the company picnics with my parents, you know, every summer. And yes, he'd introduce me to the female mathematicians and I could say, oh, I could be like that woman. Right? How cool was that? Amazing. So, and your family, you grew up in Texas,

you would go to the launches. For sure. You would go to the Apollo launches. Yeah. Well, we would watch them, let's be clear, we would watch them on TV, on an old black and white TV. But at the other engineers' houses, we would all get together as a family and watch the Apollo launches, because it was such a big deal to my dad who worked on these. I thought you went there in person, forget it. This podcast, this podcast isn't gonna air now. Road trip to Houston. I mean, come on, I watch those things on TV too.

And it didn't make you wanna be a mathematician? No, no, I just, I wanted the outfit. I wanted the astronaut suit, but I wanted to stay here on earth and be a comedian. I don't know why that makes sense. You wanted Planet of the Apes. I wanted Planet of the Apes. I wanted to be an earthbound astronaut who had gone back in time, actually forward in

time, apologies, and spoiler alert to a world that's dominated all by apes. And we're here. See, the magic of this podcast is you were talking about such important lofty and brilliant ways to try and help the world. And we got us to Planet of the Apes very quickly. And that's really the magic here, is that we can ruin anyone's mission in life to make it a better world. Well, Melinda, it's very nice to meet you. And I think it's very cool that you're taking what many people, including myself, if I had that kind of money,

I'd just be in Vegas living in a gold house. And yeah, walking around naked, I would just lose my mind. Not sure I'd want to see that. Just gotta be honest. Hey, I thought we were friends. I was just about to say, why don't you and your wife come visit me in Seattle? But, um, I'm a little less sure now.

Listen, the naked thing is aspirational. I've never been naked up to this point. I shower in a three-piece suit. I'm just saying, someday down the road, you know? No, no, no, no. It's very cool to meet you. And I very much admire how seriously you're taking, some people might look at this situation you're in very differently and you've clearly have a very big

conscience and you are working very hard to do the right thing. So my hat's off to you and I'm not wearing a hat. That's what I need a grant for. I need a gate grant for the... Yeah, it'll be a reasonable hat. I'll give you that. No, no, no, I want a really nice hat.

Anyway, Melinda, thank you very much for being here. Oh, thanks for having me, Conan. Conan O'Brien needs a friend. With Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian and Matt Gorely. Produced by me, Matt Gorely. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Nick Leow and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf. Theme song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino.

Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brendan Burns. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista and Brick Khan. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review

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