Pod Save the World - Bill Gates on preventing the next pandemic

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

Tommy and Ben talk about the latest in Ukraine, including Ukrainian attacks on targets in Russia, Biden’s $33 billion aid request, and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s insane attempt to blame the Jews for the Holocaust. Then they cover the upcoming election in the Philippines, France’s resurgent left, Saudi Arabia, a former CIA agent turned life coach, QAnon runs for congress and more humiliation for Tory party MPs. Finally, Tommy talks with Bill Gates about his new book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic.With our constitutionally protected right to abortion under attack, abortion funds are working nonstop to make sure people can still access (and afford) abortion.Visit votesaveamerica.com/roe to learn more, donate, and take action.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, welcome back to America. Did you bring us anything? I brought you the kind regards of the people of Holland, you know. A snow globe. By the way, a trinket. Not a trinket. I always get my daughters, so I get them the airport magnets, and they now have a pretty massive collection of airport magnets. I was in the Netherlands for a very strange holiday. It's called King's Day. And it's just every year on the King's birthday, near as I can tell, they put on Arne's, and get shit-faced. And like, if the king dies, like in the next king, the holiday will change to that king's birthday. It's kind of an interesting idea for a holiday. You just pick somebody's birthday and you get hammered on it, you know?

I mean, it sounds a lot like a lot of holidays we know and love it. That's a pretty. You know, like that's a beauty. I love it. Yeah. Well, we're glad to have you back. How's the jet lag? It's not great.

Because I was there, as you know, on a family vacation. largely. Then I was back here for a week. Then I was back there. And I'm like, you know what? This was easier when I was 32. And well, yes, let's just leave it at that. I was going to make a Ronnie Jackson joke, but I won't. Ronnie Jackson, the famous white house drug dealer at a room. Anyway, we are going to talk about Ukraine, the upcoming election in the Philippines, French politics, Saudi Arabia, torture-loving life coach has been. porn in parliaments and then great foreign policy minds that may or may not be heading to Congress. And then later in today's episode, you're going to hear my interview with Bill Gates, Ben,

about his new book about how to prevent the next pandemic. How about that shit? Did you feel like even from a distance there was a danger of the microchip or whatever it is that Bill Gates is putting in everybody? I could feel it going off when I asked bad questions. I accidentally asked him if he invented the iPod and it started like stinging my back of my neck. I just want to before we get into the substance, I do want to point out that you seem to have gotten COVID right around that interview.

I did like probably catch COVID on the Tuesday that I interviewed him, although it showed up in the little test on Friday. It's an interesting book. I read it over the weekend. It's a quick read. I mean, he like touches on all the stuff you just mentioned, the disinformation, but then also his plan for how he thinks the world. should be dealing with COVID. I mean, it won't surprise you to hear that he does not feel like

we're doing enough to prevent the next pandemic, even if a lot of parts of the response to the coronavirus, COVID-19 pandemic, were pretty good, notably the vaccine development process. But, you know, check it out. Yeah. Why not, right? Check it out. Bill Gates, world historical figure. Yeah. Big deal. Don't miss offline this week, Ben. John talks to tech policy expert Renee Doresta about Elon Musk buying Twitter and free speech. I know you know Renee Dorest. She's like someone I followed on Twitter for a long time, like super smart about all things disinformation. Also, given all the awful news that broke last night, where we are learning that the Supreme Court is like on the cusp of overturning Roe versus Wade, check out this week's strict

scrutiny podcast. It's a fantastic new show, new part of the Cricket Network. Leah Littman, Kate Shaw, who we worked with Ben, Melissa Murray, three brilliant women, law professors, lawyers, geniuses. They break down the draft ruling. What we know, what we don't know. they're the only people I wanted to hear and provide the context with this opinion. And, you know, just the other context for the world has been is like right before I was

signing on to do this, I was reading a piece in New York Times about how backwards the United States is from a global perspective when it comes to abortion rights. Since 2013, 31 countries have expanded access to abortion. Only three have rolled it back. Nicaragua, Poland, which we've discussed in its right wing, tilt, and now the United States. So great company there. Yeah, I've been struck in just the last, you know, however many hours it is, 12 hours since getting that kind of devastating news.

I've heard from like people in other countries, you know, like as if we're, you know, some of some, it's interesting what this must look like from abroad. It makes no sense. Like people don't understand people saying like, I didn't think that could actually happen in your country, right? But it is like what happens when you get a court packed with far right judges. But yeah, to your point, we've covered on the show. like deeply Catholic countries like Mexico and Argentina. Like, like, they can move in the direction of abortion rights. It's insane that this is where we are in 2022.

Yeah, completely insane. So check out strict scrutiny. Fantastic show. They will understand this even better than we do. I promise you that. So, Ben, let's go to Ukraine because the war there is raging on. A few updates in major developments, just worth noting off the top. So the British government releases these,

of intel assessments of the war on Twitter, either daily or a couple times a week. They said that this week that Russia has committed 65% of its entire ground combat force into Ukraine, and more than a quarter of those units have been rendered combat ineffective. I assume that means like busted equipment, tanks, not enough troops to man it. They also believe that 15,000 Russian troops have been killed and up to twice as many have been wounded. So an enormous cost for the Russians in just a few months here. President Biden requested $33 billion in aid for Ukraine. Speaker Pelosi just led a delegation to Kiev and to Poland for meetings about Ukraine. Germany seems to have finally gotten behind a European oil embargo on Russia, and that could come

into effect as soon as the end of the year. Germany also said they now are ready to back Sweden and Finland in their efforts to get into NATO. So again, huge shift for Germany in terms of the last two months. And then, you know, there's been all these stories about how the Ukrainian military and intelligence services have gotten bolder and have started hitting targets across the border within Russia itself. Those range from fuel depots, military research institutes. There was a mysterious fire at a textbook company warehouse that had just, I guess, tried to erase the word Ukraine from its textbook.

So that was interesting. So then I think we could pause there. I've been thinking about this kind of scenario from the very beginning, like whether Ukraine would want to go across the border and strike targets in Russia. There's like obvious strategic military reasons to blow up like an ammo depot or a fuel Depot. There's also this kind of psychological question of whether doing so, like whether Russians hearing air raid sirens in a city just outside of Moscow brings the war home to them, makes it more real, makes it more threatening, makes them question it, or whether it could

galvanize public opinion in support of the war because they feel like they're being attacked. Have you been surprised by these cross-border attacks by the Ukrainian military? And do you have a sense of like how that might cut in terms of public opinion? Well, you know, they've been really interesting about it because they don't claim credit, but they also kind of, you know, they kind of wink at you a little bit. Yeah, they do the Israeli kind of non-ton-out-rail. Yeah, yeah. And so clearly that's part of a strategy that they have. I think that the common thread in all the things that you just talked about is the sense that we're entering into

like a pretty long and protracted phase of the war, right? So this ground battle in Dombas is a much more grind it out on the ground military conflict, then the kind of failed lightning maneuver on Kiv that we saw. The $33 billion in assistance, which included things like budgetary support for the Ukrainian government for the next five months, you know, that's not just like rushing in some weapons for like the, you know, next couple weeks. That's like preparing them to be on a sustainment model for fighting for a period of months. And then, yes, like striking targets inside of Russia, you know, is clearly going to, on the one hand, have some psychological impact inside of Russia that this war could actually cause damage here and probably some morale boost inside of Ukraine. But it's also likely to potentially harden some Russian opinion that has already coalesced in the kind of rally around the flag or maybe rally around the disinformation machinery that we've seen. But to that end, actually, I understand why the Ukrainians would take that risk, because

the Russians, the Russian people are so locked inside of some alternative universe that it's not like you got a sense that they were like ripe for some uprising here. You know, like there, there didn't seem to be any potential for a near term tipping point that would be somehow upset by the Ukrainians doing this. I think what's interesting is how does this interact with two questions. The first is, like, the U.S., as we talked about, has been reluctant. We're giving them weapons to kind of push back against Russian offensives, but not the kind of weapons that are, like, designed to, like, go win the war.

Like, here's all the tanks and here's all the planes and here's all the long-range artillery that could be used to bomb targets inside of Russia. And so since this is happening, you have to wonder how it may impact that calculus. And whether or not the U.S. kind of knows that this is happening or gets any forewarning. about what these types of targets are. And then the second is whether Russia will become more aggressive in hitting the weapons that are flowing into the Ukrainians, you know, because now, you know, they're in this fight, they're in it for the long term. They see the U.S. sustaining and strengthening and strengthening the Ukrainian military and they see stuff blowing up in Russia. Will they get more

aggressive and bombing kind of border resupply of those weapons that are flowing all the way to the front in ways that could be precarious, you know? $33 billion. Like my jaw dropped when I saw Biden float that number. I mean, Biden, today is May 3rd. Biden is visiting a Lockheed Martin facility that makes javelin missiles as we speak. That is the weirdest message event I can ever imagine in White House history. It was like, what if I told you, Tommy, like five years ago that Joe Biden would be visiting a Lockheed Martin javelin anti-tank manufacturing facility?

the day after it leaked that the Supreme Court was overturning Roe v. Wade, I mean, it's just a strange time we're in, man. Yeah, I would say why. What's going on? I mean, back to this question of like how the war is going over in Russia. There are reports this week about a Russian oligarch who criticized the war and was severely punished and forced to basically sell his assets and a fire sale and go into hiding. There's also reports that the U.S. believes that Russian intelligence orchestrated an attack on. on Dmitri Muratov, who's a Nobel Prize-winning journalist who would criticize the war. They threw, I think, acid in his face. So that's the price of dissent. We did an interview with a woman named Maria Adiva, who's a researcher at the European Expert Association. She studied disinformation.

She talked a bit about how Russian propaganda is being used to justify the Russian war crimes that we've seen. Here's a clip. The exact battalion, which was killing civilians, children, rapes, women in Bucha, they all get the medals from Putin for what they have done. So now the propaganda is working to create this support for the new and new war crimes committed here. You will see that the numbers of the support of Putin and his actions and generally the politics of Russia and this war, the support is growing. And that means that the propaganda and this information

inside Russia. They are working. For example, we have a woman that lives in the subway here in Kharkiv, and she calls her mother in Moscow telling that she lives there because her house was bombarded by Russian planes. And her mother will not believe her because she will tell her this is just you are Ukrainian propaganda. These are the Nazi government in Kiev that does it to you. There are numerous such situations when false relatives will not believe people for Ukrainians who stay here and who suffer from this war. You know, depressing stuff there, Ben, in terms of any hope that the reality of this war would break through in Russia. And, you know, there might be some sort of popular uprising against it.

We just seen no sign of that. Yeah, I think it definitely underscores that the idea that, you know, some people had. when the war began is that because there are so many connections between Russians and Ukrainians, because there are the kind of family ties that she referenced, that perhaps the shock at the potential atrocities in Ukraine or shock at the idea that in very, you know, Russian-speaking cities like Kharkiv, the Russian public wouldn't want to be engaged in those types of atrocities. I think the tragic truth is the combination of propaganda and disinformation, you know, that's just not happening. Like the Russian public either is not looking at what its military is doing

or doesn't care what its military is doing because it's whipped into such a frenzy. And again, that just feels like all this kind of contributes to this war continuing. The reality, though, is that something you said about the British report, the Russians' capacity to sustain kind of this pace of deployment absent more mobilization of more troops and frankly just the fact that they're draining down their weapon stocks and sanctions are going to make it harder for them to kind of restock. Putin may need to kind of hit the pause button at times, right? Like I, you know, I've mentioned this before, but be very mindful or wary if you see Putin say, well, I want to ceasefire to negotiate about whether that's just him buying time to kind of take a breather and before they start up again.

But all this suggests, like, a Russian public that is hardening. Those who are against the war, many of them are leaving. And, you know, the Ukrainians are obviously getting more and more, I don't use the word radicalize because it has a negative connotation. But, like, their interest in, like, making peace with Russians, particularly if it involves surrendering more Ukrainian territory and leaving the Ukrainians who live in that territory to Russian. rule, that seems less likely. So all this points to kind of this conflict continuing for the foreseeable future. Yeah, I mean, I think that actually kind of speaks to why Biden put forward this huge $33 billion request, because I think they're going to go all in on supporting the Ukrainian military now where they, before the Russians can kind of reconstitute the army and resupply.

But to your point there, Ben, about sort of the hitting pause or creating sort of a political framework to slow down the military effort. There's reports today that U.S. intelligence officials believe that Russia is planning to fully annex territory in eastern and southern Ukraine. That basically means holding sham elections or a referendum in Denezk or, you know, basically coercing people into voting in favor of independence or to become part of Russia. On the one hand, like, that's not surprising to read. This is the Russian playbook. The Russians did this in Crimea. They forced those the Crimean people to essentially vote in favor of secession. But, you know, Russia holds up those results. They pretend it lends some legitimacy to their annexation. I guess my question is, like, who is going to buy this now?

You know what I mean? Like in the past, you could imagine some waffling European country pointing to the results of a sham referendum and being like, see, it's what the people wanted. Like, we can keep importing Russian gas or whatever. But like now, after Bucha, after Maripol, like, who was going to to be fooled by this? Why even bother? I don't know. Well, I think there's kind of three audiences. So, and I should say, and I was just checking the date, um, uh, today because May 9th is victory day in Russia and that's like a, usually a big kind of militarized holiday. And a lot of the suspicion was that Putin was trying to kind of wrap up the war by May 9th. That doesn't look likely. Yeah, good luck with that, there was even a bizarre report that Pope Francis said, um, that Victor Orban had told him that Putin said

the war would be over by May 9th. But it may be, yeah, exactly. Like the idea that a NATO prime minister had a heads up on that is a little concerning, but we'll put that aside. Jesus. But the, I say that because I think he may want something for May 9th, right? Some, like maybe it, you know, and there was some rumors that he might do a national mobilization to conscript more troops on May 9th, but he may want to lift up one of these sham referendum

or announce it. And look, I think there's three audiences. The first is in Russia where he can, I think, more easily use one of these things to say, see, look, we have liberated the oppressed Russian-speaking public of ex part of Ukraine, Lehansk, Denez, whatever it is. And they just become, you know, essentially kind of a part of Putin's propaganda play at home. Then the second is like these kind of swing states, right, where Russian propaganda and disinformation can get more legs. So obviously China, where the media is totally filtered through

what the government wants there. But even in a place like India or South Africa, where there's a lot of anti-American, anti-NATO sentiment, kind of mixed in with some longstanding ties with Russia, this kind of just muddies the water, gives it both sides feel to it. And so, could gain some traction there. I think it's at this point, yeah, his capacity to convince anybody in Europe or the United States or, you know, countries like Japan and others that have taken a stand, that's not even really the audience in a way. Those audiences, I think Putin may want to, that waffling European nation that you

did a hypothetical about, those are the countries that might be more susceptible to him saying, like, well, I want to ceasefire now and I want to negotiate. So no need to move forward with your plans to move to a, you know, you know, you know, European oil embargo, you know. That may be the next turn in Putin's kit here. Hell, you might be able to get Tucker Carlson, maybe Margie Taylor Green, maybe J.D. Vance, get some Republicans on board, you know, see what you can do here. The other last thing on Ukraine, Ben, is I noticed that Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has been building bridges with the Jewish community. Lavrov did an interview with the Italian TV where he was pressed on the question of why Putin wants

to denotify or says he wants to denotify. a country that is led by a Jewish president. Lavrov's response was, quote, Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it means nothing. For a long time now, we've been hearing the wise Jewish people say that the biggest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves, end quote. For the record, this is baseless. There's some speculation about like one of Hitler's grandfather's that he might have been Jewish, but there's no evidence of that. Regardless, the suggestion that Jews are responsible for the Holocaust is one of the most cynical, disgusting things a human being could say. Israeli Prime Minister Nftali Bennett seems to agree. He said that the, quote, goal of such

lies is to accuse Jews themselves of the most awful crimes in history, which were perpetrated against them. Ben, I admittedly have never concocted a pretext for a war. But I kind of think that if you end up blaming the Jews for the Holocaust, it doesn't suggest that the sales job is going too well. What do you think of Sergei's little? little slow up here. Well, in comparing Zelensky to Hitler, that's really something. I mean, I, it's interesting, you know, because look, Lavrov, I've been a lot of meetings of that guy. And he's a man who seems to be, you know, in his job, in part because he can lie with complete casual ease. But he's not an idiot. Like, he's clearly like a smart guy, a deeply experienced guy.

And so there's just something extra chilling about someone who you know. is not a moron saying like the most awful shit imaginable right and and also the fact that this denotification rationale that they had at the beginning that they're still so fervently committed to it you know it permeates like all their prop again if you ever like go down and red pill the russian media they're just screaming about Nazis i saw the craziest fucking segment on Russian television, like speculating about the date that the Germans announced something was some Nazi day of import. And so it was like real Alex Jones. But I mean, like, Lavrov and all these people are so, it's such a cult of Putin that,

you know, that's probably not Lavrov's first choice of even how to gaslight, but he has to do it. Like, he has to go out and somehow your job as foreign minister of Russia is now to make the case that Zelensky's a Nazi and a Jewish guy could be a Nazi. It just, that's the degree to which Putin has like a vice grip on these people's brains. We talked about Dmitri Medvedev, hardly like a bloodthirsty guy. He's more like a, you know, London oligarch type Russian. You know, he's said the most chilling shit too. Like all these people are so in line with or afraid of or whatever the motivation is behind it.

not only they defending this, they're defending it on exactly the terms that Putin wants, which is this Nazi thing. It's really dark. Yeah, Lavrov's going full gerbils here. Yeah. Ironically, I mean, the fucked up part is, you know, when you hear reports from, you know, Ukrainian civilians who survived in places like Bucha, they over and over and over again, say, like, soldiers come to their house, kicked on the door and say, like, where are the Nazis? You know, so it's like, this propaganda is permeating.

It is working among the rank and file troops who are actually fighting the war. And I think, like, leading to atrocities. It's horrific. All right, that's all I got for Ukraine. Why don't we take a quick break? And we come back. We are going to talk about some big elections coming up in the Philippines. All right, so there's a big election coming up in the Philippines.

We have talked about the current president, Rodrigo Duterte, several times in the show, mostly in the context of his brutal war on drugs, which is basically, you know, instructing his goons to kill people first, to ask questions later. The current vice president, Lenny Robredo, who is a Duterte critic, is running against Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the late dictator. Yeah, Kim, make the shit up, who locked up and tortured tens of thousands of people and his family stole billions of dollars from the country before fleeing in the 80s. This election, like so many elections recently, is just like a wash and disinformation on social media. A lot of it is focused on whitewashing. the Marcos family's history. So in a sense, like what they're voting on is not just about

Duterte's tenure or the drug war or, you know, picking the next leader of the Philippines because Duterte is term limited out technically. I think his daughter's running for vice president as well. But it's also about potentially like rewriting the history of the Philippines. Marcos Jr. is popular with young voters who didn't live through the military dictatorship, who don't know people who are detained, tortured. The vote is on May 9th. Ben, anything you're watching for in this one or just sort of like thoughts about the stakes? Well, it looks like we should say.

I mean, it looks like Marcos is poised to win pretty substantially, right? I mean, he's doubling up, I think, his nearest rival in most polls. And, you know, a few things. I mean, Duterte is involved here. Like, his daughter is running for vice president, but vice president as the Marcos-affiliated candidate. And, you know, point one is I'm sure that. there's some deal. You know, there's some questions around corruption in Duterte. I'm sure that in exchange for his support, the Duterte family has kind of carte blanche to do whatever the

fuck they want, right? You know, so keep your eye on the corruption angle here. Because, I mean, remember the Marcos family, Amelda Marcos famously had one of the better shoe collections. I'm dating myself here. Yeah. But if you want to go on a rabbit hole, just Google Amelda Marcos shoes. They took like $10 billion in 1986. Insane. Insane. insane amounts of money. Massive amounts of money. Yeah, and that's the other thing. It's just how depressing and cynical it is that, like,

this is literally a merger of two dictatorial families. You know, like, the Marcos family and the Duterte family. And that's, like, the best that the Philippines can get. I know. This is Don Jr. running with George P. Bush in, like, you know, 2034. That's exactly what it is. And, you know, the reality is that the, Duterte has been somewhat, popular with his kind of identity politics like Strongman's Act. But also like, you know, there's a

huge Facebook meta disinformation or propaganda problem. You talk to Maria Reza about it, the Nobel laureate from the Philippines. There's a, you know, there's just kind of a big media advantage for Marcos and Duterte. And Filipino civil society in opposition has been put on the defensive. It's been divided against itself. And so I think it's depressing sign because, you know, Southeast Asia is going to be kind of critical to the direction of world events, particularly as you see this kind of decoupling of the democratic and authoritarian worlds. And there are not many democracies in Southeast Asia. The Philippines has been one. But when you look at, you know, the direction of the Filipino democracy, it's not great. And, you know, raises questions about Indonesia,

the biggest country in Southeast Asia, which is kind of up next for an election, there's some worries that the existing president, Jacoey, might try to extend his term. So it's, you know, it's not a great situation. You know, like, it's never great when the son of the dictator who was chased out of town after assassinating and torturing enemies, the son of the dictator is elected. That's never like a good bellwether. No, super, super depressing news. follow Maria Reissa and Rapleaders if you want to learn more about this because they're doing

amazing work out there. Okay, so that was a bummer of a story. Here's some good news, potentially at least very interesting news. So we covered the results of the French presidential election a couple weeks ago. President Macron beat the far-right opponent Marie Le Penh. France's parliamentary elections in June. On Monday, there were some reports that the Green Party in France and the party, you know, the group backing the leftist leader, Jean-Luc Melanchon, have reached a deal to join forces. So that means they won't compete against each other for seats in parliament. The goal here being to collectively win a bunch of seats, create a coalition of leftist lawmakers in parliament, and then actually put pressure on Macron from the left.

We've talked about this before. He is radically centrist, and he's been pushed to the right over the years because of pressure from Marine Le Pen, Eric Zamore, the even more radical lunatic who ran in the presidential. So this could be an interesting and important alliance. at an effort to create some, you know, liberal political pressure on the French presidency. So fingers crossed. Yeah, I think, I mean, the reason I think this is really positive is the French left has been just totally fractured really since Francois Hollande, who was a socialist, ended his presidency in 2017.

And I just, it's not healthy because what you've seen is you've got like a really consolidated far right. And as we noted, Marine Le Pen getting over 40% of the vote, then you got like a kind of really like eager, enthusiastic neolib, you know, like centrist in Macron. And you just need like a healthy left, you know, to do both for the, for the parliamentary purposes and potentially to push France on things like climate change. But in the longer run, just to have a better alternative next time around than just Le Pen or some version of centrist politics. And, you know, I think there's going to have to be a generational change at some point. Moulanchon is like, you know, Bernie's age.

You know, yeah, he's old. You know, Bernie's got a little more vigor. But, yeah, so a good step, but I think the thing to watch is whether the left can stay united and there can be some kind of emerging leadership that. can put forward an alternative vision of France. And that's a longer-term project. Yeah, and get some real power in parliament. Because, you know, there's reports that, you know,

Macron could have an absolute majority out of these elections, but also that Le Pen could gain, like, up to 100 seats. So, you know, need a little more balance than that. And the weird thing is that that party of Macron, so it's just like he built it from scratch. Yeah, Almarch. So I remember going over there after the last election and a meeting with some of these on marsh lawmakers.

And they were all over the map ideologically. There were some younger, more progressive people, then there were some, like, more conservative people from rural areas. So it's a useful governing vehicle from McCrone, but it's not evolving into some kind of long-term, coherent party that I can see, you know. Yeah, yeah, me either.

Switching gears here to the Middle East. There was a report today in the Wall Street Journal that CIA director, Bill Burns, traveled to Saudi Arabia last month to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mahmab bin Salman or MBS. We don't know what they discussed. It probably included oil production, the Iran deal, the war in Yemen, Russia, Ukraine, that kind of basket. This comes after the journal did a long piece a couple weeks ago on U.S. Saudi relations.

It included an anecdote where MBS reportedly shouted at Jake Sullivan, Biden's National Security Advisor for bringing up the Saudi government's execution of a journalist named Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, MBS reportedly told Jake not to bring it up again and said that the Saudis won't boost oil production. So MBS basically wants to be recognized as head of state because that will give him some sort of legal immunity for Khashoggi's killing. So I don't know, Ben, cool, cool ally. I'm not sure what else to say here. It's good stuff. I just, I find this all kind of depressing. You know, I imagine that they're really, the Russians and the Chinese are probably putting the full court press on the Saudis to kind of like, you know, pull them into their orbit a little bit. And, oh, we won't bring up Jamal Khashoggi. Don't worry about it. You know, like, we'll hang out with you with that, bring that stuff up. I mean, like, we always forget that we have some leverage here in the sense that, like, you know, the Saudis depend on us for their security and, and arming them. But I just say, like, we should just say, like, it's just kind of depressing. Like, The reports that Biden doesn't want to go back in the Iran deal because he's refusing to lift a Trump designation that was made after Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a terrorist organization, a designation that accomplishes nothing practically, but it's just kind of American politics.

The war in Yemen continues with U.S. support. And, you know, we kind of keep trying to make up with MBS without having to do it publicly, you know, like all these private channels. And I'm, you know, I see why. If I was sitting in the White House, I see the imperative of, hey, here's this giant oil-producing country that can swing things this, where or that in terms of oil prices. But if we are in a battle of democracies versus autocracies, I don't know how the Democratic team wins with MBS in its starting lineup. You know, like, it's like the guys on the other team, you know. And I also don't think that there's any Saudi bailout that's going to deal with energy prices in any kind of sustainable way. Clean energy is the only way to do that too. So like getting right, getting on the right side of this, both in terms of clean energy and democracy, those two imperatives, probably the two biggest imperatives in the world today, the survivability of democracy and dealing with climate change, neither of those answers run through Mohammed bin Salman.

Yeah, and there's a bunch of reporting about how, you know, because of the war, because of the pandemic, nothing has happened on clean energy in the first few months of this year. And that's obviously time we don't have to waste. Ben, in this long Wall Street Journal story about like the U.S.-S.-Saudy relationship, this paragraph triggered me so hard. I'm just going to read a verbatim. The Saudis were dismayed by the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as the Biden administration's ongoing efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal. They've also begun to question the U.S. military commitment to the Middle East and bristle at present. that the kingdom will fall in locks up with Washington. Okay. So I know it's like a statement of fact,

but it's like, I don't care that you didn't want to end the war in Afghanistan. I don't care that you don't like the Iran deal. Why should we be more committed to the Middle East? And like, when have you ever fallen in locks up with Washington? This whole story is about Saudi Arabia giving the middle finger to the United States. Well, yeah, you know what I'm dismayed about? I'm fucking dismayed about the fact that you chopped up a journalist in a consulate in Turkey. I'm dismayed that you lock up your political opponents, including members of your own family. I'm dismayed at the war in Yemen and the tens of thousands of people who've been killed there for no coherent objective. I'm just made that the Saudis medal in our politics on issues like Iran so that what?

we cannot have an Iran deal and therefore be forced to confront an Iran that is on the doorstep of a nuclear weapon. And guess what the Saudis will want us to do then? They'll want us to go to war for them in Iran to remove that regime for them with American troops, right? Not Saudis. They love it when Americans fight for their interests. I'm dismayed that they have not said word one against a brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. I'm just made about their support for warlords in eastern in Libya, who have been a permanent kind of cancer on that country. I'm dismayed by the fact that Maham bin Salman thinks that, you know, he can sit in Riyadh and dictate terms to Washington.

This is crazy. What kind of relationship is this? Where, like, they, you know, just sit there and lob, you know, hand grenades of criticism at the United States, who, by the way, have made plenty of mistakes of our own. But often that we've made mistakes sometimes when we do things like. support the Saudis in Yemen. That's a huge mistake that we made. So I just don't think that this, if you read the Wall Street Journal sometimes, you think that the goal of the U.S. Saudi relationship is for the Saudis to like us. And so therefore, if we're not doing

everything that they want us to do, that's somehow a mark against us, let's not forget what type of leadership we're talking about. Yeah, we got a homicidal maniac with a sovereign Wealth Fund, who's buying off Jared Kushner and giving us the finger. And, you know, there was the whole thing about the 9-11 attackers coming from Saudi Arabia. We won't go down that road. A couple lighter things to close, Ben. So just on a personal level, do you ever feel kind of like aimless like you could use some life advice? Just about every day these days, Tommy. Okay. The world is like that, you know. I have got the answer for you. So the CIA analyst played by Jessica

Chastain in the movie Zero Dark 30. has left government and she's become a life coach. Reuters had a long profile of her a few weeks back in it. She continues to defend waterboarding. The piece also talks about her husband, who was also at the CIA, led the team that hunted for bin Laden. He is now a fan of QAnon and called on President Trump to impose martial law after he lost the election. So, Ben, I just want to flag this for a couple of reasons. One, it's notable and pretty disconcerting that you have these like unapologetic torture fans who come out of government and we've learned our like crazy conspiracy theorists. That's not good. Two, people constantly suggest that the

Obama White House was behind zero dark 30 and like shape that narrative and that we like like this pro torture narrative. That is not the case. Like look to people like this this woman and her husband who were shaping this pro torture narrative. It like drives me crazy to this day. Yeah. I mean, And so this is an interesting rabbit hole. We don't have to go all the way down it. But like you were there like zero dark 30 was the CIA was super into that movie. You know? And the CIA provided without by the way like this was not run through the White House.

I think sometimes people assume the White House is everything. But like as was the case and was deeply reported on the amazing podcast winds of change. The CIA has their own relationships with, you know, Hollywood and in individual. films, and they pushed hard the narrative in Zero Dark 30, which is a very particular CIA narrative around waterboarding's connection to the information that got bin Laden. And I think everybody's looked at this feels like that movie turned the dial way up in terms of the relevancy of that information versus other information, whether or not it could have been gotten in other ways. So that's a really important point for the record. I don't know if I'd want a life coach that it's

into waterboarding though, Tommy? Like it doesn't it kind of like... No, me either. I'm kind of deal, if you're dealing with, like, anxiety or, like, is that, is that what, but it is like, the degree to which, like, people that have been in the middle of the war on terror, like, Mike Flynn, too, like, become, you know, enter this, the Q&N spectrum is, is, there's some lesson in that, like, maybe, you know, people being engaged in and associated with and interacting with that kind of violence for that long period time is not necessarily healthy for your information intake. But not what I'm looking for in a life coach.

Is that really the person you want to help you make that big decision about whether to take that next job or not, you know? No. And apparently there's a lot of like sort of health and beauty elements to this too. I'm not sure the waterboarding helps there either. But you know, Ben, I'm glad you brought up Q&ONN because, look, foreign policy doesn't come up often in congressional campaigns. But when it does, we hear at POTS of the World pay attention. We are on it. So we just want to play for you guys a clip that I think you found this on Twitter, Ben, from a Republican primary debate for Arizona's second congressional district. Let's give it a listen. Military aid to Ukraine. What do you think, Ron? I support military aid to Ukraine, but I want to

say that we would not even be in Ukraine if President Biden did not shut down the Keystone pipeline on the first day. Because now that that's shut down, we have to get our oil, and we're getting it from Russia, and we're getting all these problems through the Ukraine. And That would not have happened if Biden did not. So you see the Ukraine, the pipeline, help prompt Russia to invade Ukraine. Yes, sir, because we've got all of this oil coming through from Russia to the United States,

and they want the better routes to bring the oil through. Can I clarify? This is what I'm talking about. That's not why they went into Ukraine. They went into Ukraine because Ukraine didn't want to be part of NATO. Listen, you're trying to be, you're trying to work on a national stage and you don't even know why the war started in Ukraine, it had nothing to do with the Keystone pipeline.

The Keystone pipeline caused the inflation and the increase in our gas prices. The reason why they went into Ukraine is because Russia won it Ukraine as they had them pre-World War II, and Ukraine wanted to be part of NATO. Respond, please? He's right. I made a mistake.

The first voice you heard, there is Ron Watkins. He is believed by a lot of people to be the person or one of the people behind the Q&on conspiracy theory, or at least he hijacked it at some point along the way. The second voice was Walt Blackman. But it's just so rare that you hear so much wrong in one minute of a debate. It's incredible. I didn't even really know where to start. I started watching this and I thought, this is amazing. And then the reveal at the end just kills it, right? But I, I mean, the Keystone Pipeline talking point was he started and I'm like, oh, this is super interesting because this is so fucking dumb, right? The idea that like if we had the Keystone Pipeline, like they wouldn't invade it.

And it felt like a talking point that he had no depth underneath it. But then he kept talking himself into different places. Like it was like a robot where like the water had been spilled and it's, you know, suddenly it's not just Keystone Pipeline. it's that the Russians want to build a pipeline, I guess, to America. Right. Yeah. Underwater? Underwater, it's a long ocean.

And like, what can, he, there's, it wasn't enough that he was just giving a bad right-wing talking point. There had to be, like, a conspiracy theory nexus to it, right? And then, yeah, like, why, you know, I mean, once you've gone that far out on a limb to just kind of surrender after the other dude says, like, they want to go back to before World War II, which is maybe, like, there's a lot right in that answer, but there's a little bit wrong, too. Like, I don't know.

There's a lot going on there. I like, I always starts by miss speaking, too, and he's like, no, Russia invaded Ukraine because Ukraine didn't want to join NATO. It's like, ah, no. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say, like, there's just, I actually, it was kind of depressing, right? Like, this is the, there's like kind of...

He's running for Congress. There's like World War III level conflict out there, and this is, like, the discussion about it out in America, like, and we can do better. better people. Let's do a little bit better. And again, like, Ron Watkins, there's a great documentary on HBO Max, I think. It's

Beyond the Storm or something like that, about how Ron was probably the person behind the Q&N conspiracy theory. This is the dude who convinced, like, the former head of the unit at the CIA that was hunting bin Laden. So, again, not really speaking well about any part of our politics here, or the

security state. Yeah, it's not a great day for analysts who help get bin Laden. when they're they're they're they're they're they're they're Q and on adjacent at all you know I mean I get that like if you're sitting there piece and things together and everything there are conspiracies in the world but like QNon is not yeah you know QN is red string was your business for a while yeah yeah I mean Kerry Mathis it you know like you could see her you could see Carrie from Homeland getting a little Qie you know couldn't you see that oh 100 percent 100 percent um well listen the last thing before the Gates interview just to to make us feel better about ourselves is is is a quick political update from the UK. A 65-year-old conservative British MP named Neil Parrish resigned on Saturday after he was caught watching porn on his phone while in Parliament. Paris said he was trying to search for a brand of tractor called The Dominator.

And you can guess what he says happens next. This excuse gets more confusing because he was caught looking again. the first time he said it was an accident, the second time was on purpose. So this is the Boris Johnson party for you, Ben. Parties in porn. Porn, cocaine, you know, not since the Ted Cruz's like porn,

Twitter porn, has there been a lamer excuse, right? I mean. Truly the best. What, you know, the Tory, come on, guys. Like, come on, Britain. Like, you give us, like, Shakespeare.

this is this is not the best you're not sending your best no no boris johnson's given a speech today i think to the ukrainian parliament yeah i mean there there's like uh you can laugh at this guy he's a fucking clown but there's also like a huge misogyny problem within the tory party and within uh british parliament itself and like you know great way to show it by just literally watching porn on the floor did you see this story the daily mail on sunday had this story uh angela reiner who's one of the big labor stars very exciting young woman uh politician And there was a story that Boris thought that when she was sitting facing him and like prime minister's questions or whatever,

that she would try to spread her legs like Sharon Stone and basic instinct or something. I'm like, there's a lot of misogyny. Boris actually apologized or condemned it or whatever. But there's a lot of just misogyny swirling around over there, you know. I mean, there is over here, too. We just repealed Roe v. Wade apparently. So I'm not. Yeah, yeah.

Just giant glass house in our side of the Atlantic. I'm not, as usual, I'm not emuning ourselves from criticism here. But that seems like they need to focus on that all bit. Yeah. If I were Boris Johnson, I would go through life assuming that no one of any gender was trying to seduce me at any time. That's kind of like, that would be my operating principle if I were Boris Johnson. Fair point. Fair point. All right. Well, on that note, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you'll hear my interview with Bill Gates about his new book about how to prevent the next pandemic. I am thrilled to welcome to the podcast today, the founder of Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the author of the new book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, which is out

now, Bill Gates. Great to see you. I'm holding up the book for those watching for some reason, but it's a podcast. So, Bill, thanks for doing this. I read the book over the weekend. Highly recommended. It's a great sort of summary of what happened, what went right, what went wrong and what to do next. For me, the big takeaway is, despite all the death and the suffering and enormous economic costs from COVID, the world is just still not prepared for the next pandemic. You sketch out some proposals for how you think we can fix that. Can you give listeners the sort of the gist of where the shortfalls are in planning and what needs to get done to close those gaps? Well, it's pretty disappointing that we didn't take it seriously before it happened because

the tens of millions of deaths and economic damage don't even cover the educational loss and the depression. So it's worth having an investment in a surveillance team at the global level. It's worth spending a lot to invent better tools, even better vaccines, and then strengthening health systems so we see this stuff earlier. I really do expect that now we will take these warnings to heart and build up these capacities. And this year, while it's still crushed our mind, it's a good time to actually make those investments. So one, you know, you put forward this plan as the GERM. I forget exactly what the acronym stands for. It's about, you say, 3,000 people, a billion dollars a year basically in spending. And that's

for a sort of global infrastructure to monitor diseases. How big is that in terms of the investment you think we need globally to prepare for the next pandemic? Well, since this one cost us over 14 trillion, and a lot of the things I advocate are extremely beneficial, even in years. We don't have a pandemic. You know, that billion a year for the global epidemic response and mobilization team germ, you know, it's very small. They would be full time and they would run drills, just like we do war games or fire drills. They'd make sure that every country, can get diagnostics and quarantine policies in place very, very quickly. And if you look at COVID who had the low death rate, countries like Australia that are less

than 10% of the death per capita compared to the United States, it was that first 100 days where they rolled out diagnostics and quarantine. you know, any rich country could have done that and in the future every rich country should. Yeah. This subject matter area, this discussion in the book even can get scary in places. You know, I worked in the White House, National Security Council. I was in some very scary meetings about pandemic preparedness and diseases. So I want to get to the scary stuff in a second.

But first, I mean, you also talk about some pretty hopeful areas of research and development and advances that you have worked on. or heard about the layperson may not have, that might give us some hope and feel a little better about this before we get into the scary stuff. Can you give us some examples of those? Yeah, in the diagnostic area, every country should be able to diagnose their entire population in a month.

And PCR machines are getting cheaper. We can get swabs out to people. We can make it so you don't have to stick it deep in your nose. So that's kind of the first line. The therapeutics took two years to come out. If we have libraries ready in advance, those therapeutics could be available very early. And then finally, with vaccines, although we celebrate the incredible work that allowed those to come out within a year, the vaccines were not perfect.

You still get breakthrough infections. People have been vaccinated. Omicron can infect. The duration of protection we're getting from these vaccines. appears to be a lot shorter than we'd like. And they're just not good enough in terms of variance in order to use them to eradicate this disease from humans. So a lot of R&D against those product profiles, and I'm very optimistic in five to 10 years, we can get the full R&D agenda done and have an amazing set of tools for the next time.

The other thing that just sounds miraculous to me is the idea that we could have a vaccine to inoculate us against all coronaviruses. I mean, what's the time frame for something like that, do you think? Yeah, there was some very promising work done funded by the Gates Foundation and others about a universal flu vaccine. Flu, even when it's not an epidemic, causes huge disease burden if pregnant women get flu in the first trimester that leads to all sorts of bad outcomes for their children. So we'd love to get rid of all these respiratory viruses.

The coronavirus family is a big one. The flu family is a big one. Then there's a third one. And so it'd be well worth once you have the right tool trying to go for a full eradication and getting rid of the yearly burden as well as the risk that in humans it mutates into a more fatal form. Yeah. So, you know, a point you make in the book often is that, you know, as bad as COVID was,

it could be worse. The pages that kind of made my jaw drop, literally, was when you started talking about smallpox, which spreads in the air, kills around a third of the, everyone infected, this disease has been eradicated, but it still exists in research facilities in the U.S. in the form of Soviet Union. You write about how the U.S. has enough vaccine doses for everyone, but, few people are currently vaccinated because it was eradicated so long ago. Why not vaccinate everyone now? And has your concern about smallpox increased since the war in Ukraine started?

Well, bioterrorism is a very scary topic. And the things I say in my book we should invest in would be able to stop a natural pandemic, one that comes, you know, across the, species boundary like COVID did. If you want to stop bioterrorists, then what you have to do in terms of immediate surveillance in places like airports is a lot more dramatic. And so it builds on everything I have in the book. You at least want to do those things at a minimum, but it's not the full answer to bioterrorism. And as you say, that's quite scary because a pathogen can be far more fatal than COVID was. And advances in biology, although they're mostly phenomenal because they'll give us ways of treating cancer and solving Alzheimer's and even infectious diseases. They also

tend to arm non-state actors to be able to build bioterrorism weapons. Yeah, it's quite frightening. So just stepping back a little bit. I mean, one of the areas where, you know, you've taken some criticism is the question of waiving drug company intellectual property rights as a way to get more vaccines or drugs produced. In the book, you helpfully walk through all the regulatory and manufacturing complexity involved in these processes, especially when it comes to new technologies like mRNA vaccines. And you argue that, you know, it's just not enough to release the recipe for the vaccine. You need the Jose Andres, the chef there to.

walk you through the steps, the data about the trials, and manufacturing itself, et cetera. So I am far from an expert in any of this. But I guess my question is, if you're talking about a pandemic, a COVID, an HIV, why wouldn't governments just say to vaccine or drug makers, hey, in this specific case, you're required to release the recipe and you're required to send your Jose Andres over to your competitor to make the vaccine? Like you talk about these second sourcing arrangements when essentially you license out this technology.

but I guess why not force it to happen, incentivize it to happen, say, hey, we'll fund this as a government, because it does seem clear that, you know, you say the IP waiver may not have meaningfully increased supply for this year, but if this is an endemic virus, it does seem like we'll need these boosters for years and years, right? Yeah, so the vaccine that got invented at Oxford and became the AstraZeneca vaccine, that's exactly what happened. We funded a CIRM Institute of India to build up their factories the foundation did, and they took that Astrosenica approach, and they made over 1.4 billion vaccines. Today, COVID vaccines are in such oversupply that they've actually stopped production.

And so those kind of agreements where Astrosenica went out to over 20 places to try and get manufacturing done, the key decisions were all made by the spring of 2020. And so it's a little weird in the fall of 2021 to have people raising the IP issues for this specific pandemic. In general, IP is very complicated. Sometimes there's too much. Sometimes there's too little. And we'll have to keep tuning that. But for the COVID vaccines, the, you know, the second sourcing deals were done and, you know, eventually we got into this excess supply situation. Got it. What other area you touched on in the book that's been much debated, much written about is this question of COVID's origin, right?

There's the lab leak theory. There's the majority of scientists who believe that COVID emerged from a natural transfer to an animal to a host to a human host. obviously that origin story for COVID matters in terms of U.S.-China relations, for example, or I guess peace of mind for people who are suffering and want to know the answer. But from an epidemiological perspective, do you think that the origin story of COVID is particularly important or relevant to know? Well, sure. I mean, I think it's extremely clear. It came from the wet market.

But the need to be careful about biosafety in any lab that's dealing with viruses, we could always repeat that that's equally important. With smallpox, the last few deaths was an accidental lab release in the UK where one person died of smallpox and the other person committed suicide because they were involved in that mistake. So, you know, biosafety is important, but no one's suggesting this was an intentionally created thing. And it, you know, it's going to happen again. And what you do once it starts really doesn't change in terms of where it came from. Do you think that some of the research that has been debated or discussed as well, like, you know, going into these caves, in China and seeking out, you know, bats to get these viruses from directly or the gain of function research? I mean, are there limits that should be put on those areas? Do you think they're necessary?

How are you thinking about that? Well, you need a lot of debate about that because seen in advance that there's a virus over in another species that with the small changes could cross over, that could get you ready to say, okay, how do I make a drug, an antibirital drug, against it or an antibody that would work against that. So for example, in flu, people did look at how hard would it be for flu to get back to the Spanish 1918 version. And it was all this controversy that, well, if you publish those articles, isn't that a roadmap for a bioterrorist and therefore should you be careful?

And so it's very complex how much we should we should look, ideally we'd be able to look and see what might come in a way that's not enabling bad actors. You know, I'm confident that, you know, we didn't do any sort of bad gain of function thing in this case, but that examination and then simulations, we probably do need to get more sophisticated so we can think, okay, what might the next thing look like? You know, sort of associated with this COVID pandemic was a pandemic of disinformation or a pandemic of conspiracy theories for lack of a better word. I mean, you yourself have you spent

billions of dollars trying to eradicate diseases, manage COVID, and yet people still have in some large numbers decided that you were trying to inject them with tracking devices for some reason. What do you make of this kind of conspiracy thinking? Like, does it drive you crazy? Like, what is that like? It's a complete surprise to me. Obviously, you know, I understand the digital template that is part of what is magnified these sort of fringe views and allowed people who want over simple explanations, you know, there's a bad guy. That's why there's a pandemic or, you know, the general negativity towards vaccines, which is very dangerous because, you know, vaccines aren't just important for COVID. They're important for measles and pertussis and, you know, they save tens of millions of

lives. So in a way I can joke around about, you know, that by spending billions on vaccines, somebody says that I'm making billions. But it is a serious topic. that we have to ask ourselves, could the communication of trusted people be better? Because clearly the vaccine fears that weren't fully justified, you know, the fears about masks and things. You know, there was a cost here that we didn't get trusted advisors to have clear messages so that, you know, the elderly rates of vaccination were like 95%. Yeah, I mean, you sort of walk through the timeline of all the various government or CDC messages around masking. It is disheartening to look back. I mean, look, but at the same time, it was a new virus.

It was a novel coronavirus. It was an evolving data set. I mean, I don't know. Do you have thoughts on fixes for how to better communicate about an evolving pandemic or medical crisis like this? Well, the ideal is that you have somebody who's an epidemiologist. who they're hearing from constantly, and then, you know, secondary voices of different political or religious or ethnic backgrounds who, you know, are largely able to echo that central message.

So it wasn't clear in this case who the messenger was, at least in the U.S., and there were a lot of things like scaling up diagnostics that nobody really took responsibility for. To this day, it's not clear. Is that the CDC's job or not? You know, organizing trials, large trials of therapeutics, which part of the government would do that. So there's a lot of retrospective of what went wrong, you know, where the U.S. was expected to do best of any country

when an outbreak showed up. But in fact, we're, you know, as bad as any rich country, you know, we didn't benefit from all that. The one thing we did well is we funded the vaccine research from many, many companies, but otherwise we're just a, we had a mediocre response. Yeah, I mean, I think anyone who's seen enough movies, seen Independence Day, et cetera, I always hope that when the aliens came down to take on humanity, we would unite against them. But, you know, COVID left me wondering, maybe not.

I'm not sure. Again, if you want a great retrospective on the pandemic, the book is Bill Gates, how to prevent the next pandemic. Last question for you. Just curious if you're planning to buy Facebook, TikTok, any other social media company, you want to break the news here, give us some clickbait. You know, we're getting on those Elon Musk trending stories. No.

You know, I love the fact I get to write books and try and explain important topics, but you won't see me as a buyer of any social networks. Okay, that's probably wise. Yeah, I'd rather see, you know, people who are good at other things, keep doing those things rather than by Twitter. Anyway, Bill Gates, thank you so much for writing the book and for talking with me today and have a great day. Thanks. Thanks again to Bill Gates for joining the show. Ben, sorry, I got the cocoa and I'm not in the studio, but, you know, hopefully I'll see you next week. Yeah, I hope to see you next week. And thanks to all the many patriotic, non-crazy

members of our intelligence community. I just want to be clear. They're not all, they're not all cue adjacent here. There's some wonderful people. Some good friends of ours come out of that world. There's some good ones. And there's also, we should be clear, that when I go out and ask friends

who may or may not have worked alongside some of the folks we talked about earlier, they were well-known problems within the CIA and caused huge problems for the agency. And I think they were all glad they left. Well, Mike Flynn, yeah, too. I mean, that guy wasn't helping. Yeah, Flynn.

Flynn, all the above. Anyway, that's all we got. Feel better, though, man. Feel better, hang in there. You, is anything helping? Like, do you take an Advil or you drinking fluids there? Like, what's the COVID regimen? I've been crushing day quill today and some nightquil at night just to kind of, like, get through the symptoms.

Mostly, it's just an annoying cold that's kind of lingering. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, un-vaxed, this would have really sucked. Yes, yes. Hopefully it'll be okay. I remember you can kind of sense that, you know, like, boy, this is bad, but I can kind of feel how this would be much worse if I wasn't vaccine boosted. And like just the unknown of it all, you know, like no new virus. You don't know how bad it's going to get.

You know how long it's going to last. Like, you know, it definitely like kind of ameliorate some of that. Yes. Yes, it does. Well, feel better. Thanks, buddy. And see you guys soon. See you.

See you. Positive The World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Mewis. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chathwick. Kyle Seguin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth, who upload our episodes as videos at YouTube.com slash crooked media.