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- [00:00]
IXL Representative
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- [01:01]
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- [01:37]
Stephen Colbert
Thank you everybody. Please have a seat. So nice of you to be here. Welcome to the Late Show. I am your host, Stephen Colbert. Ladies and gentlemen, habemus a big story because the Vatican's got that new Pope smell. Just after noon eastern, 6pm God time, white smoke emerged from the Vatican roof tube. And where there's smoke, there's pontiff. The new Pope is former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who is the first American Pope. Pope sa, Pope sa, Pope sa. I love it. Now, the thing about becoming Pope is that you have to leave your old name behind. Which works out great for him because I'm pretty sure Prevost is also the name of a weight loss medication. And the new pontiff chose the name Pope Leo XIV in honor of Saint Leonardo of Caprio, who famously decreed, I'm Pope of the world. Yeah. It's not just. It's not just that Leo is an American. He was born in Chicago. This means, this means officially I Can no longer imitate the Pope using an Italian accent. From now on, the Pope's gonna sound like, hey there, it's your buddy Leo, the deep dish. Papa, just talk to God and not even he can help the White Sox. Sorry. First order of business, I will be canonizing Michael Jordan. Now, let's end by saying da prayers. There we go. There you go. Leo was actually a surprise pick. He wasn't on any of the lists because he was made a cardinal less than two years ago. And he's pretty young for a pope at 69. Nice that he's so young.
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Instacart Advertiser
Though.
- [03:56]
Stephen Colbert
Born in the U.S. leo addressed the crowd in Italian and Spanish, but. But not English. Hey, I'm an American. I shouldn't have to press 2 for Pope. All right. Speak English like Jesus did. Wow. Wow. Of course, of course. Thank you. Thank you. Of course, the first thing a Pope says when addressing the faithful in St. Peter's Square will be forever associated with his Papacy. And here's how Leo introduced himself to the world. Peace be with you all. It's a lovely catchphrase and so much better than Pope Leo XIII's. Did I bless that? Poor choice. Really poor choice. There was an hour long wait between the white smoke and Leo's introduction. So cable news switched from a close up on a chimney to something much more dynamic. A close up of a balcony while the new Pope was fitted in his papal garments in the Room of Tears, so named because the papal vestments do make your butt look big. Now, just like at the Met Gala, a big part of the day was outfits. Specifically all of the hats, hats, hats. The Pope was chosen on the third vote of the day, but there was a false alarm earlier when the smoke looked a little white, but two seconds later, it was very clearly black. I'm just going to say it. That system is too ambiguous for the modern world. Don't reveal the Pope via smoke. It's 20, 25. You reveal him via cake. It's a Pope reveal party. If it's a blue cake, it's a boy Pope. And if it's a pink cake, it's also a boy Pope. It's always going to be a boy Pope. This is one of the shortest conclaves in the history of the Vatican. And one reason for that is reportedly, food for the cardinals at the conclave was not so good. Well, yeah, it's church food. Church food is not so good. According to several cardinals, you don't eat very well and the food is not exciting. It's a conclave, Padre. It's not supposed to be an exciting culinary experience. There's a reason it's held in the Sistine Chapel and not the Sistine Benihana. Another cardinal said the menu was food you could eat at a train station. Okay, rude. And it's free. Imagine if this guy's Yelp review was of Jesus. Second miracle. Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes. But let me just say, the salmon needed salt and I'm gluten free. One star. Of course, you wouldn't do that. How's it going? Everybody good over there? Yeah. Everybody single? Of course. There's lots of speculation on whether Leo will continue the progressive reforms of his friend Pope Francis. No one knows for sure yet. But we do know that in February, he did tweet, JD Vance is wrong. Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others. Holy Father, you had me at J.D. vance's wrong. One person not appearing on any balconies right now is the First Lady. Reportedly, everyone in the White House is asking, where is Melania? Because out of 108 days since Trump's inauguration, she spent fewer than 14 days at the White House, according to one historian. We haven't seen such a low profile first lady since Bess Truman, which, of course, makes sense. Melania was clearly inspired by Mrs. Truman's famous catchphrase, Be Bess. In Melania's absence, the President himself has taken to performing some duties that would typically fall to a First lady, like carefully selecting light fixtures for the White House residents, redesigning the Rose Garden, greeting tour groups in the East Wing, and hosting receptions for Women's History Month, and, of course, sleeping in a separate bedroom from himself. On Sunday. On Sunday. On Sunday. On Sunday, the President explained to Kristen Welker of Meet the Press why Melania is not around. She's a very private person, which I respect a lot. Yes, she's a very private person who has film crews following her around for the $40 million documentary about her life. And I'm just as private, actually. Jim, can we get a shot of me being private from camera one? Stop looking at me. I'm too shy. Stop it. Stop. Oh, and other not so good stuff. The Department of Education has eliminated their grant for PBS children shows. Yeah, I agree. That is terrible. All children and parents have fond memories about all the PBS kids shows except Caillou. The cuts resulted in the loss of $23 million from the program called Ready to Learn, which will now become the Trump program. Oh, Trump's also got a new nominee for Surgeon General. Wellness Influencer and woman on Dateline who poisoned her stepson with antifreeze, Kayce Means. Means has been called a conspiracy theorist. She is not licensed to practice medicine and is a close ally of HHS Secretary RFK Jr. Which puts her in the company of. Puts her in the company of his other close medical advisors, Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, O.J. simpson, Bill Cosby. One thing, Dr. Cosby, of course, one thing the new Surgeon General nominee has in common with RFK Jr. It's her love of raw milk. Here's what she says about it in her new. I want to be free to form a relationship with a local farmer, understand his integrity, look him in the eyes, pet his cow, then decide if I feel safe to drink the milk from his farm. Yeah. Cause we all have time for that. Ah, shoot. We're out of milk. Kids. I'll be back in four months after I fall in love with the farmer and. And try to get to second base with a cow. Now to the actual big news of the day, Ladies and gentlemen. Americans have united in a class action lawsuit across 13 states to sue Burger King for falsely advertising the size of the Whopper. Look, there's no shame in it, Burger King. A lot of guys lie about the size of their Whopper, but the truth is the average size is a lot smaller than you think. But still very small. The plaintiffs claim that in Burger King commercials, The whopper appears 35% larger than the actual burger. Well, I guess you can't believe everything you see on TV. I just pray that I never learned that McDonald's cheeseburgers can't hold public office. Burger King 50 times mayor. Burger King denies all these accusations, saying that the food in the commercials is the same as what they serve in store, but acknowledges that its photographers style sandwiches more beautifully than workers do in restaurants. Okay, well, let's dive into the evidence. This is the Whopper from the commercial. Here's what Whoppers really look like. And they're both gorgeous, but I get it. Things always look a little more attractive on tv. For instance, here I am on camera. I'm a knockout, but if you saw me in person, you'd see this. Honestly. Honestly. Honestly. Still a snack. We got a great show for you tonight coming up. Bill Gates.
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- [14:03]
Stephen Colbert
Folks, you know my first guest as the businessman and philanthropist who started Microsoft. This morning he announced that he'll be giving away virtually all of his wealth over the next 20 years to the cause of saving and improving lives around the world. Please welcome back to the Late Show, Bill Gates. Good to see you again. How are you?
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Bill Gates
Great to be here.
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Stephen Colbert
Doing all right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This morning you announced that you'll be giving away nearly all of your money faster than expected.
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Target Advertiser
Wow.
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Stephen Colbert
You'Re a renowned philanthropist, but why'd you make that decision and why now? And do you need my routing number?
- [14:49]
Bill Gates
Well, it's kind of a special year for me. I'll turn 70 later this year. And the foundation is celebrating its 25th anniversary. And so it's a chance to look back and say, wow, we've exceeded our expectations. You know, we took as our biggest cause saving children's lives. And when we got started, it was over 10 million a year. Now it's less than 5 million a year.
- [15:15]
Stephen Colbert
And 10 million, what can you be more specific?
- [15:20]
Bill Gates
10 million children under 5 died in the year 2000. And it's come down every year to now it's below 5 million will die this year. So that's 5 million too many. But we cut it in half. And we did that by creating very inexpensive vaccines and working with others to buy those and get them out to all the world's children.
- [15:45]
Stephen Colbert
You had always said, you had said, and check my math here, but you'd always said that you were going to give away at least 10, half of your wealth before you died, and 99.9% of it in the years after death. Wind down the foundation, everything like that. Why did you accelerate it?
- [16:09]
Bill Gates
I think these next 20 years we can do some miraculous things. We can finish polio eradication that with any luck will be done in the next five years. We can get rid of malaria that's killed hundreds of millions of people over the years. We can take even HIV, which we won't get to zero, but cut that by over 90%. We have a lot of innovations in the pipeline. I know there'll be rich people 20 years from now for whatever we don't get done. They'll understand the geopolitics or the AI at that time. And so I'll have until I'm 90 and then I'll get to retirement.
- [16:52]
Stephen Colbert
Just. Well, I mean, that's such a noble goal. I'm just curious, not to put too fine a point on it, how much cash are we talking here? What do we got to give away at this point?
- [17:05]
Bill Gates
Yeah, so for the first 25 years, we gave bit over 100 billion. And for these next 20 years, we'll give over 200 billion.
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Stephen Colbert
Wow. You know, given how you've dedicated sort of the second half of your career into these altruistic, especially having to do with vaccines and medicine, it must be a very interesting, if not troubling time for you when there's so much scientific skepticism, especially around things like vaccines, which certainly didn't start in Covid, but accelerated during COVID As a renowned advocate for global health, what do you make of the fact that the new administration has effectively dissolved USAID, axed more than 80% of the programs it funds, fired thousands of employees, cut the CDC budget by 4 billion, down from 9.2 billion. The NIH, they've fired 1,300 NIH employees, canceled more than $2 billion in research grants. They're going to cancel PEPFAR, they've pulled out of WHO, and they plan on terminating more than a billion dollars in funding for gavi. Tell the people what GAVI is.
- [18:17]
Bill Gates
So GAVI is a group that was founded the year the foundation got started to buy vaccines for the poorest children in the world. One of the things I learned in the 1990s is I was thinking, okay, what do I do with all this Microsoft wealth that was generated is I learned why kids were dying. And I learned that a lot of those kids, over a million, were dying from diarrhea. In fact, Nick Kristof wrote an article that I read and sent a note to my dad, hey, let's work on this. I found out that rich kids were actually getting a vaccine so that they didn't get the disease, although they weren't really at risk of dying. And nobody had cost, reduced it and got money to get that to all the children. And so we did the work to get the price down. The foundation did itself. And then GAVI is an alliance of governments and our foundation that buys those vaccines. And so the majority of that reduction has come from getting out those new vaccines. So the us, the UK government's been the top giver. We're the second, the US government's the third. And so I hope to convince the Congress, who will decide the budget in time to stay in Ghabi. But right now there's a proposal that they zero out that which is about 300 million a year.
- [19:41]
Stephen Colbert
Now, one of the odd things about the president administration is that even though there are things that are already allocated for things like research, is that the president and the people who work for him have said we're just not going to do it. He signs executive orders and says the money's not going to go there. So it doesn't really matter what Congress does. So while what you say is hopeful it may not happen, you're a data driven guy. This claims to be a data driven group of people. A lot of people tech bros over there in the government these days. Not that you're a tech bro, you're pre tech bro. You're a code bro. I don't know what to call you.
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Bill Gates
Old bro.
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Stephen Colbert
Old bro. Okay. Does it make any sense to you? Does the rationale make any sense to you? Do you talk to these people? You must talk to some of them and say, why are you doing this, guys?
- [20:23]
Bill Gates
No, I think I've been out in the field with the people who work for USCID and seen the brilliant work they do and how important that is. Unfortunately, there was a weekend where it was decided they were criminals and they were put in the wood chipper. And so we lost a lot of capacity there. Now we can get it back. Eventually Congress is the one who will have the final word on this. And even I'm not even sure the administration understands what's going on in the field because we do have, for the first time in 25 years, we, we have more children dying. Instead of it going down, it's now going up. And unless we reverse pretty quickly, that'll be over a million additional deaths.
- [21:09]
Stephen Colbert
And you lay some of this at the feet of Doge and of course Elon Musk. And I hope I'm getting this even close here. You said the picture of the world's richest man being involved in the death of the world's poorest is not a pretty one.
- [21:24]
Bill Gates
That's right.
- [21:27]
Stephen Colbert
Well said, well said. I mean, not that all billionaires know each other, but have you called him to say, what gives, man? Don't you know, don't you know, that this is going to be on you, that you have blood on your hands.
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Bill Gates
Well, at this point, you know, he's withdrawn from reality.
- [21:48]
Stephen Colbert
Where is he withdrawn from?
- [21:51]
Bill Gates
He's headed to Mars. And so I do, you know, I'm looking forward to getting more time with President Trump. I had a couple of meetings with him and you said you had a good meeting with.
- [22:03]
Stephen Colbert
Yeah, absolutely.
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Bill Gates
I thought on things like HIV and polio, we wouldn't see the 80% cut. So, you know, I'd love to talk to him, Secretary Rubio, but then, you know, also all the members of Congress will, you know, get to have their say. And historically, you know, this was started by President Bush. The increase in aid, the generosity, and it was maintained on a bipartisan basis. And I know, you know, there probably have to be some cutbacks in the government budget. If it was, you know, 15%, I would figure out work with the government to make sure. The impact was pretty modest. But what we're talking about here is, is quite devastating.
- [22:45]
Stephen Colbert
We have to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Bill Gates, everybody.
- [22:58]
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- [23:01]
Stephen Colbert
Rise to the occasion.
- [23:01]
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- [23:04]
Stephen Colbert
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- [23:07]
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We take the hitch together.
- [23:10]
Bill Gates
We're on the same team.
- [23:11]
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I'm right here with you no matter what.
- [23:15]
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- [23:18]
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- [23:25]
Stephen Colbert
Plus.
- [23:29]
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- [23:57]
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- [24:32]
Stephen Colbert
We're back with the author of the memoir Source Code, Bill Gates. One of the things that is Most praiseworthy about President Bush was his support of pepfar.
- [24:41]
Bill Gates
Absolutely.
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Stephen Colbert
And one of the most things that was praiseworthy about President Trump sincerely, was Operation Lightspeed to actually get that vaccine done. Why do you think there is such an anti science bias now? Why do you think that is associated so much with one political point of view which traditionally and philosophically shouldn't have any political basis?
- [25:05]
Bill Gates
Yeah. Or Operation Warp Speed, which allowed the creation of a COVID vaccine in less than a year, had very strong leadership from President Trump and his administration and it literally saved millions of lives. And so, you know, the idea of, okay, let's accelerate some other things, you know, let's. We have some science that shows that we think we can cure hiv so you don't even need to take the medicine. And President Trump has a chance to get behind that and accelerate that and finally end the AIDS emergency. The idea of some of these anti science things, I think digital media gets a little blame for that. The fact that people felt things went overboard during the pandemic. But there's a part of it that is quite mysterious to me.
- [26:01]
Stephen Colbert
If you do talk to the president, please like mention to him that, you know, he likes that people like him. People will like him for supporting the sciences and helping to cure HIV and find a cure for things like Alzheimer's and cancer and that sort of thing. I mean, that's an easy win for him.
- [26:19]
Bill Gates
Yeah. The NIH budget, the medical research budget, they are suggesting pretty dramatic cuts to that. And that's another one where the Congress usually has said, no, no, we want Alzheimer's research and cancer research and even the latest tools, including what's called mRNA, to be used to improve our health.
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Stephen Colbert
You have a book, you have three part memoir of your life. This source code, this is leading up to Microsoft.
- [26:50]
Bill Gates
That's right at the end there. I'm a couple years into Microsoft, moving back to Seattle. I'm 25 and it looks like things might work.
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Stephen Colbert
Yeah. You dropped out of Harvard, right?
- [27:01]
Bill Gates
I did.
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Stephen Colbert
Do you recommend that?
- [27:04]
Bill Gates
If you have an idea that might be super important and very timely, then go ahead. Otherwise, get your degree.
- [27:14]
Stephen Colbert
Bill, thanks so much for being here. All right, see you again. Bill Gates, everybody. Thank you for listening to the Late Show Pod show with Stephen Colbert. Just one more thing. If you want to see more of me, come to The Late Show YouTube channel for more clips and exclusives.
- [27:34]
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- [27:37]
Stephen Colbert
Rise to the occasion.
- [27:38]
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- [27:41]
Stephen Colbert
We're firefighters. We're gonna find a way to get you out of here.
- [27:44]
Bill Gates
We take the history together. We're on the same team.
- [27:48]
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I'm right here with you. No matter what.
- [27:51]
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I would never leave you hanging in the deep end.
- [27:55]
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