 First of all, we don't we don't get a chance to be Presidents of an incredible man like you that has so much wisdom and knowledge and So I want to check in with you on the state of the world What's happening? What do we have to watch out for how do we make it better you always talk about the arc of justice How do we make it bend towards it? Well, you've heard me say a million times that basically As we've learned the last few years that bad news makes more news and good news and triggers more you know retweets and all that and So a lot of good news is not known the trend lines are better than the headlines. That's all true but There are some alarming Trend lines in the world and In America so let's talk about it in general in spite of all this fighting you hear about in Syria and Yemen and Sudan and other places basically The level of organized institutionalized violence is still pretty low by historical standards That doesn't mean that we don't have a calamitous crisis in the Middle East And it's one of the big drivers of the fact that we have more refugees than at any time since World War two and Also in some places in Africa the headlines Are deceiving when it comes to climate change the recent article just came out Saying that the bottom line on sustainability in 2018 is what we got about 12 years to get ourselves in the position to do something really really serious Good news is you could do it economically. I Continue to believe beyond the shadow of a doubt That if we change the way we produced and consumed energy It could lead us into a new era of economic prosperity it could avoid the most calamitous consequences of climate change And it could put off it could bias 10 or 20 years before we might have to face the consequences of the fact that The combined revolutions in artificial intelligence robotics and nanotechnology couldn't make this could make this the first Technological revolution since the dawn of the industrial age to kill more jobs than it creates and when that happens We will either have to pay calamitous tax rates to support idle people or figure out a way to democratize the benefits of productivity and shorten the work week everywhere and if people are still producing the same amount pay I'm the same amount we were But that's going to be a massive organizational undertaking and therefore I'm really worried about the climate change thing. I think The Paris agreement is good. It's possible that America Just because of the governor's and the mayor's who agree Could meet its Paris goals even with the United States the current administration rejecting it but it's a really really serious problem and You know, I've done and I don't have a lot of money for this in my foundation But I do a lot of work in the Caribbean With governments and with the private sector trying to make the Caribbean the first completely green energy Electricity region in the world. They have the highest electric rates in the world You all remember this if you're interested in it for what you're investing in the highest electric rates in the world and It's the one place where you can go right now and invest in all the solar and wind energy you want make a profit and lower electric rates and One of the reasons that Puerto Rico's in a trouble. It's in the day is the way they did their Utility, I won't bore you with all the details, but I'm I have been trying now This will be the 11th year. I have been banging my head against that wall trying to get him to change this but I'm worried about that. I'm worried about the preservation of democracy with the current information eco structure. I Mean if you look at what happened in Brazil, for example They elected a guy that wanted to tear down the rainforests. Whatever you think about president Lula He cut deforestation in the rainforest by seventy five percent Tearing down the rainforest is basically a dumb idea unless you're an individual person. This is like individual worst is growth fences There is almost no top soil in the rainforest So you can cut down an acre of rainforest and plant soybeans for a couple of years, and then it's not any good anymore You run through the soybeans the cattle grazed it over in a year and eat up all the top soil There's just it's just it's a lousy idea There are tens of millions of acres in Brazil Not under cultivation Not in a rainforest Brazil and Argentina have the biggest stretch of land in the world with 20 feet of top soil They need something like the land rust we did in Oklahoma and other places in the 19th century in America And still they elected a guy who basically Promised to be an authoritarian Because of their sense that Everything's out of control in Brazil and democracy wouldn't work for them anymore because They got rather wealthy with commodity products high then they got low and then they had the corruption scandals And they went back to that you've got But you had a a nationalist government on the verge of taking over Austria and Austria has got one of the best balanced economies in Europe Not a lot of income inequality a lot of agriculture a lot of manufacturing and it's more than the Alps and opera It's a very interesting country But they're still scared of the other So I think we got a I think democracy and all this pollution of the social media and People are lying on that for news and they're not knowing whether it's true or not adds to the fragility of democracy because if you're a citizen and You believe that you never will know for the rest of your life Whether of what you read or try to learn about any problem is true or not, then you might as well just pick the best dictator Let everybody run for dictator and pick the one you like best because you're never going to be able to be an informed citizen Anyway, this is a mortal threat To democracy and we're gonna have to really fight to reestablish the norms of democratic society. I think International cooperation for peace and for denuclearization and continuing to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction Is a danger? I think to continuing economic dislocation is a danger. I Think that for if you're an American I Think that People are saying well as all this nationalist movement is this about economics or is it about race or is it about culture? and the real answer is it's about all of it because if you're not part of The real problem is not poverty so much as it is a sense of stagnation and all over the world There are vast populations that used to be the dominant social and political forces in their country with the feeling of economic social and Psychological stagnation That's why you got life expectancy going down among A lot of white working-class people in areas where this opioid epidemic is going. Wow on the other hand We have reduced overall global poverty Overall life expectancy is going up worldwide Infant mortality is going down. There's a lot of good stuff happening but What we really need to do is go back to thinking and this is an age of resentment and quick judgment and It's just inadequate to meet the kind of challenges we face so I Think I'm very encouraging United States about all these women that are running for office and winning I think but mostly because if you look at them, they're incredibly diverse They're not all alike at all in terms of their politics or anything else The congressional elections in the last time were fascinating to me because There were people with all these different backgrounds that shared one thing in common they were well connected to the people they were trying to represent and and that That I think is important Because it was real my favorite Who turned out to be a harbinger of the 2018 election was the transgender woman who won 20-year Republican seat in the Senate in Virginia and here's her speech Running for the state Senate in Virginia, Northern Virginia She defeated a 20-year Republican incumbent She said I do not want you to vote against me because I'm transgender But I don't want you to vote for me because I am I want you to vote for me Because you can't get to work on time and you can't get home in time to have dinner with your kids And the other guy's been there for 20 years and all he wants to do is challenge or channel the rhetoric coming out of Washington I don't care about any of that I want you to go for me because I'll help get you to work on time and get you home to have dinner with your kids And she won in a walk Why because she gave the politics back to the people in a way they could identify with and because the election was so Inherently interesting it was covered in a totally neutral way. I Don't know about the social media, but I mean, you know the TV and the newspapers and everything that just with neutral cover Just this is interesting. I mean if you told me Three years ago that a Native American Lesbian kickboxer could be elected to Congress in Kansas. I Wouldn't believe it, but I'll tell you this If you saw her stick you'd have voted for her I Mean because she was connected to the people she was trying to represent and A lot of this is going to have to be handled at the grassroots level where people are just giving the political system back to the voters and Anything that you should all attune your ears to that too and the issues you're interested in don't let people get between you and what you need from your government because We could be looking at 50 or 70 years of calamity in the world if the democratic structures continue to weaken and these authoritarian impulses that you see in China and Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Iran all over everywhere if it gets more instead of less You want to free more people you don't want off time down and You want people to feel comfortable with diversity not threatened by it and I think that's at the core of all of this You charge this with implementing the 17 apps and I Appreciate that very much. You have a lot of people from around the world here with different and high levels of influence What can we do as individuals to save democracy from? Social media pollution you mentioned and all the well, I think you can First of all Most politicians are people Don't forget that They really are I mean I realize I can't tell you I could always tell if I was looking at somebody and I wasn't a person of them I remember when some of the craziest stuff was going on when I was running in 92 and it accused me of Inresponsible of the deaths of two boys on a railroad track and just all kinds of crazy stuff, you know I call this young man who had worked for me since he was 25 years old And I said we think about all this stuff they're saying he said they're talking about someone. I'm not familiar with he said I just Not too long ago I went I Was home in Arkansas and I drove 70 miles down to a little Retirement facility to see my high school world history teacher who was 14 years older than me so he was 86 then and He was dying and he had Alzheimer's But I knew who he was for an hour a day So I went to see him at the appointed hour and he was clear-headed and we had a great hour But and he was later an education aide for me when I was governor and I was thinking about I I think My advice is that you should do things They give your endeavors meaning to ordinary people It's not a person Republican or Democrat whoever they voted for for president anything else can't identify with what you're trying to do You ought to be able to build 90% support for any reasonable things are trying to do and Then you ought to deal with a legitimate concerns people have For you know, a lot of people push back on you on all this transparency stuff but the truth is I Think the benefits you would get out of a transparent system and you have bent over backwards Not to try to stand like a skull or you know make people feel bad or anything like that But there are just so many this system grew up in in such a way as we all know with layer upon layer upon layer of this that and the other thing and Those of you who are in it know you're dealing with this problem today, and there's some other problem next week and all that I think We have to examine all this now. We've reached the point where the cost of avoidable deaths are unsustainable On a human as well as an economic level and the options for dealing with it or before us But we can't get from here to there I Don't know those people feel it's all right, and I think if I were you I would try to broaden the popular base of support by it For not describing people who disagree with you as demons, but giving the issue back to the people Look at one of the people one of these close races They wanted because for once Everybody was forced to just get real What can you do? What can you not do what are you gonna do when you get up in the morning? I think that's my advice. My advice is that You should try to broaden the base of support and Make it an issue that everybody cares about because most people Trust me they They're really interested in this anybody's ever been in a hospital is interested in this But they don't know much about the details and We got some serious public health challenges in America To go way beyond hospital safety just public health challenges, and I hope My advice is I would do that and I would try to look for unlikely allies, and I think you know you pay We pass those two bills at the end of the last Congress and President Trump sign them overwhelming bipartisan support a Lot of these people gonna be looking for things they can do with members of the other party and I'd load up But just keep it real don't don't call anybody names don't turn anybody's temperature up We got enough people foaming it's a mouth on television every day Nobody you don't want to see one more person you think needs a shot We just make something good happen, and I think you know I Think we need that everywhere. I wish I've had several people who went through the photo line from Great Britain what was gonna happen now I Think it the people ought to be given another vote That'd be not I don't know if it's possible but they clearly Are uncertain about where to go and So I also think If I might Make some defense of the poor beleaguered politicians In a democracy one of the things that you do face is that there are limits to how much Change people can absorb and understand at one time, especially when so many of those changes affect their identity You know where am I in the midst of all this What does it mean to be British or American or? South African How Cyril Ramaphosa who's a really smart businessman in South Africa? Going to deal with the fact that there are landless South Africans It would like to have access to land and he would like to give them access to land without having to throw anybody off Their land because otherwise he winds up with all the problems they got in Zimbabwe Which he doesn't want and shouldn't have I mean these these are problems all over the world and he It all comes down to identity and we have got to develop a level of consciousness Which enables us to embrace diversity and To create stakeholder societies So that People that don't have a lot of money, but have a lot of skin in the game get hurt, too That's what I think that the big problem in every one of these issues when you get right down to it is that and Mandela was a genius at that You know hosting a world rugby cup and at a time when rugby was a symbol of the apartheid lowers There's one black guy on a rugby team from South Africa that won a world cup and Mandela went all over the country wearing his Rugby jersey He knew what he was one smart guy But we have to find a way to give each other a sense of social and personal security and worth and belonging and then Make these changes including the changes that you need here that you can't do without some government support of some kind for example, if you want to Get people to share things which might Cost them a lot of money. There's got to be a way to make adjustments for that that would give greater incentives to do that and the government can't afford to do all this stuff without the private sector not everywhere and even Even if you look at the national health system in the UK, they still have Various things that are done in the private sector that feed in to the health eco structure that are quite important That's my advice my advice is Build a broader base and learn how to talk about this in simple terms so that People understand at what you're doing could enable their grandchildren to live longer healthier lives I love that there seems to be two types of people one That sees that also helping others is in their self-interest and one that sees that only helping themselves in their clan is in their self-interest First of all is a second group right? And if they're not right What can we do to get them to see that their self-interest is? Also in helping others here you talk about the interdependence and the truth is in the short run it looks like they are right right now But they're not That is ever since our our first ancestors moved from being Isolated people who coupled to families and Then the clans all of human existence has been in part a struggle between us and them Who's us who's them? For a long time when we were all hunter-gatherers There was a real rational basis to us and them if there's a limited amount of food You want us to get it and so they can't have it But as soon as any cooperative endeavor started including agriculture, we began to have examples of win-win situations Where our lives would be richer if other people did well, too and then all the great faith systems Judaism Buddhism Confucianism Christianity Islam And it's non political form Allah put different people on the earth not that they might despise one another but that they might know one another and Learn from one another Everybody had ever thought about the fleeting nature of individual human life and the fleeting nature of power And what you really will value on your deathbed Which is not who you whacked and made feel small But who you love and who you like have a flower smelled in the springtime Eventually comes to the place where You realize that it's the the best solutions are win-win that life is not a zero-sum game. We are social creatures I've recommended this book twice to two of these Patient Safety Conferences, but if you want to the best single volume book making this argument read E. O. Wilson's the social conquest of earth He's almost 90 years old now He is a prize-winning Microbiologists who is the world's foremost authority on ants and he is a wise man with the mind of a young man and So he wrote these three books that he thought were the capstone of his life And he got a bunch of energy and went right into more But anyway, one of them is called the meaning of human existence and there's another one and then there's But the most important one for the time you're living in and what you're trying to do about building this movement Is the social conquest of earth and he traces in so far as you can know it in about 240 pages the history of all life on the planet and He concludes that the most successful species that ever lived If you define success is the opportunity to be extinguished and escaping it and enduring our ants termites bees and people and Honey bees are in trouble today, but there are lots of other bee species that are doing well He said the reason that all four of them did so well is that they are the greatest cooperators and He gives lots of examples of all species and he said now people are the greatest Corporators because they have two things ants termites and bees don't have consciousness and a conscience But because they are self-aware They are prone to arrogance and error. So we keep having to pull our chest in the side of the fire right before we get burned But so far we've avoided it and it's basically an optimistic book and It's hard on him being optimistic because species are disappearing from planet earth at the most rapid rate in 10,000 years and other consequence of climate change and resource abuse and But he explains that the only way you can do it is if there is a very very high level of cooperation and that's really what I believe talk about climate change and There was a major scientific report recently released by 13 different federal agencies talking about the consequences of climate change and I Want your take on What about security related to climate change well first of all this is going to be we're already living with this There's no question that water shortage for example has aggravated the problems in the Middle East You can get on the internet and see the 20 hottest places on average on earth and They're in Iran Iraq Bahrain Saudi Arabia three or four in Algeria interesting enough one in California Phoenix and one other in America, but most of these places are poorer and destabilized Because of the loss of natural resources. This is going to get worse the Ice caps are melting more rapidly now The ice cover on Greenland is rousing more rapidly if it does and all probability not only will the Sea levels rise, but they will block the current flow of the Gulf Gulf stream If that were to happen there would be more storms on The East Coast of America Blocked from being blown out to sea which the prevailing winds normally do and the far north could get even colder in the winter and These things will interrupt life as we know it. I mean I In the 2016 election we I experienced what could have been a climate change consequence of in North Carolina where the Storms that year hit America very hard and people's lives were too disorganized to vote. I mean, that's just a minor example I mean this We could lose a massive amount of flour to a lot of our coastal cities here a Lot of Manhattan could be underwater and It's the looks like the Atlantic will go south if you will before the Pacific does But this is going to be incredibly disruptive and it doesn't have to happen But it is happening. We've had it's not an accident in each of the last three decades insured losses From natural disasters have tripled the cost of insured losses have tripled and Keep in mind that's just measuring what rich folks are going through Because poor folks don't have insurance and poor countries don't have insurance systems so it's not like this isn't going on and When my daughter was in high school all of her Cured little friends used to say denial is not just a river in Egypt. I mean We basically are even those of us that think of ourselves as tree-huggers are Denying how imminent this is And there's just a thousand things we could do to make it better and we ought to do it and Reorganizing ourselves would literally generate work businesses opportunities a thousand more people like you were 30 years ago when you started this company and God only knows how many jobs and it would put off the day of reckoning When we had to figure out what the hell we're going to do about artificial intelligence robotics and nanotechnology and the combination of them I personally think we'll wind up going for a four-day work week So everybody can handle the dignity of work and So we don't have to have Exorbitant tax rates to pay for those of us who have it to pay other people to exist without the dignity of work Could be a happy time if we do it right But this but the climate change thing is an existential threat and and the United States Military and intelligence people have thought of it as a serious security threat since 2000 and Have been trying to tell everybody this And more than ever we need all of us to be nice to each other because you never know who needs to move to whose home You know the wall we're trying to build one day might be blocking us trying to get shelter from Mexico into Mexico Yeah, look America we can laugh the First thing one of the interesting things is this wall deal is coming at a curious time in our history We had a lot more illegal immigrants coming Undocumented immigrants coming to America when I was president because we were leading the world out of a slow period and We were like a magnet and Mexico was fairly dysfunctional and then president the DO and his successors began to modernize Two presidents ago the president of Mexico was a man named Calderon Calderon Created a hundred and forty or one president ago one hundred and forty tuition-free universities Last year Mexico educated a hundred thousand engineers We were three times their population. We educated a hundred and twenty thousand So you only see about Mexico when there's some big narco trafficking violence But the truth is they're trying to build a sustainable economy and the net in migration From Mexico since 2010 has been zero. I don't have the last two years. I'm just telling you that from 2010 through the end of 2014 140 50,000 more Mexicans went back to Mexico and came to the United States The end migration is from Central America from countries that have been wrecked by the narco traffickers our biggest Immigration crisis is illegal heroin and cocaine from south of the border and Illegal fentanyl coming in from China in cargo containers Which is another reason it would be better I have no objection to us having serious trade disputes with China over certain issues But most of what they did was done in the first 15 years of this new era and now China is spending a lot of money trying to clean up their environment and Trying to make sure that they're more influential than we are because they save and we squander and So they're investing money not just in China, but also in Africa and other Asian countries and elsewhere and They got it. I Still think people would prefer our model if they think it works Because the Chinese have also become more authoritarian and territorial Which I personally believe is a mistake We're better off sharing the future You should prepare for the worst we should realize that there are very few permanent victories our permanent defeats and Political affairs and demons rear their head all the time Most of what's happened hadn't surprised me all that much because I grew up in the south in the 1950s and 60s I've seen this movie before But it won't end well unless we change what we're doing the but up anyway, I think I Believe that The good news is none of our problems are insoluble. The good the bad news is they are Consistent solving them is inconsistent with tribal Sephardist nationalism It is inconsistent with an us and them mentality. It is inconsistent with Wanting everything in an eight-second sound bite and it is inconsistent with looking for who you can resent today Instead of how we can all build tomorrow together and so It's not is and if you're looking for a quick hit. It's not as emotionally satisfying as all this other stuff and it's also I Mean, you know, it's one thing to talk about how terrible things are in West Virginia It's another thing to figure out what to do with people who are buried deep down in Appalachia With no good roads out to the even the nearest populated areas overnight we got a math and Look at the roads that connect West Virginia to Kentucky for example or don't I mean so anyway, I just think We just need to we're getting there We just need to take a deep breath and realize that we're still around Because we've always been able to cooperate but have been extremely careless I think with our Assets we take for granted that our democracy will always be there We take for granted that we'll always come back. We take for granted that all this, you know The dinosaurs are feeling pretty good about themselves to to let asteroid struck 65 million years ago. I Mean they were a lot bigger and stronger than we are So you just you don't know how much time you have and you just got to sort of Make the most of it, but I think on balance. I feel good and especially feel good about what we could do if we'd stop Believing life is a zero-sum game and realize that when when works better than when lose You know you mentioned that when things are in disarray when we have politics of fear and division that Entrepreneurs like me won't come out to solve some of the problems that need to be solved But I think one of the reasons that you hit on that we've slowed down in our success in Getting people to commit to do more in helping save lives is because of the disarray around the world When there's no stability, it's hard to get people to pay attention on the the luxuries if you will although These are far far far away from being well I agree that look first of all it's people are distracted and worried and they don't want to do and They figured and the economy is finally It's hard to underestimate How much damage the financial crisis did to the body politics? Not just in America, but elsewhere but for example We are not in the second year of job growth. We are in eight and a half years in counting of solid job growth and One of the reasons we're doing as well as we are is that our economy is outperforming most of the countries but still the workforce participation rate it's about 62.7% of People by age So you say the unemployment rate three point seven percent it is But there's still a lot of people that are out there who were left out of it We got up to sixty seven percent participation rate in my last two years so our four percent unemployment rate was in effect lower than three point seven now because everybody who wanted to work could and You still you have all these people that are out there that they just feel trapped they We're sitting the one thing that that I know about you is that you would not be here if you did not think you could make this better Isn't that right? You may be frustrated, but you wouldn't have showed up here if you didn't think you could You have no idea maybe how many people there are who get up every single day in this country With all of its assets never mind all these places around the world And they look in the mirror, and they think every one of their tomorrows will be just like yesterday and that is a devastating feeling and it stagnation Hurts worse than poverty, and I'm not being insensitive look I think I'll be the last American president talking about public health whoever lived in a home without indoor plumbing Great political story, but trust me That is way overrated living without indoor plumbing But my point is We I Just I don't want us to be careless. I want us to be caring and careful but I'm I'm upbeat our economy is very strong and We would already have triggered more economic growth in Europe Had the Brexit thing not derailed the prospect of our having a better trade relationship with them We would have had a more balanced approach to Asia and Created incentives for the Chinese and us and the Europeans to work together not across purposes you know, there's a It's this is hard work. You got to work at this and and every national leader should be You should work for the best and plan for the worst but working for the You know assuming the worst and acting on it and then hoping it comes out alright It's not a very good strategy and that's kind of what we're doing too much up now. I mean, I think but on balance there is not a single problem the world faces that can't be dealt with in an intelligent way and We just kind of waited too long to deal with it And we got a jerk out of it and get the show on the road that's a there is These scientists that said in that article a couple months ago that we only had 12 years to really put ourselves on a trajectory for massive Reduction and carbon emissions to avoid the worst consequences of climate change Maybe they've overstated a little bit, but I wouldn't gamble. I think they're probably right But the good news is it's happening when almost everywhere in America clean energy is cheaper than the alternative now That's just one example but saying something's cheaper is a lot different than Saying well if you're gonna close the coal-fired power plant, how are the people that have made the investment recover their investment and How do you affect the transition and somebody's got to be doing all this work? This is hard work. It's so much more fun. Just to get on TV and badmouth somebody And doesn't take any effort for some people It's more fun you see what I mean, it's like this patient safety thing I can get up and give you all kind of speeches I don't have to get up and run a hospital or more I Don't have to run a medical equipment company and figure out You know, are we gonna pay for all this and what's transparency and what happens and all that there are details And all this the devil is always in the details but that's why Stakeholder groups committed to a common goal of the it's the only way to do this and if you keep You know, and I'm not surprised that the rate at which you're increasing the number of lifestyles slowed down because it was bound to happen You picked the low-hanging fruit Which you exactly should have done Think of all the lives you save By picking the low-hanging fruit now you got to go figure out how to plant a new orchard That's why I've got Dave mayor and Mike Ramsey coming Mr. President Can you talk about the current opioid epidemic and what is your latest thoughts on how to address it? It's like about something that creeped up on us. Well, the good news is there a there are Some communities there was a big article on Dayton, Ohio recently that have really shown how you can take whatever resources you have and make it better and We need to get much more there needs to be money devoted. There was some money in One of these budget bills to spend more money at the federal level to help communities deal with it That's good But What I focus on when my foundation that I think is important is 70,000 people died of drug overdoses last year Most of them opioids were involved 45% of the people who died of overdoses involving opioids Were not alone That is there was somebody in the room with them somebody next door Or they were in a public place a party or Public where somebody was in 20 steps One wonderful little Irish company adapt who's just been sold to a bigger company made us a great deal on nasal spay naloxone Narcan and Agreed to give a free package to every high school in the country as they could as their profits permitted and Then to any colleges and universities that wanted them and we've given out I don't know 6,000 passages maybe 50,000 doses or something but The truth is this is another one of these things like the AIDS drugs We should in the near term Have many many many many times that like people who live in communities That have opioid problems a lot of them just random people should have those things with them Because people are just dropping Like flies 70,000 people and you can bring people back You still have to get them in detox and you have to get them in treatment You got to do all this other stuff, but you got to save their lives first So I think we need more of that the other thing is It's like you want to do education in the curriculum of patient safety I've talked to a lot of young people who've been through drug treatment And I always ask them the same thing Because Hillary and I have five friends who've lost their children in this epidemic and three of them One I don't know one was a heroin addict who'd been through nine rehabs and just didn't want to live anymore Love these parents thanked them whole deal and checked out But three of them died because It's smart as they were they did not know that you cannot mix opioids with any amount of alcohol and fall asleep Without running a serious risk of dying because it deadens the part of your brain and tells your body to breathe while you're sleeping and One of them worked for Hillary and had worked for me and was a wonderful luminous young man Across the street neighbor a coast of our Albanian Immigrants they had five children one son same thing happened to him Anyway, I don't want to bore you with the details. You've all got these stories, but my point is There was no Education program I asked person after person after person the only university I knew that was actually providing basic information on this was when Donna Shalala who is now in Congress from South Florida and was president of the University of Miami and Wisconsin and Hunter College and Secretary of HHS under me and then was president of our foundation for a while She had a program to do this at Miami, and I don't know anybody else who did it was just because of her public health background and so I Talked to young people about it all time I mean from people that come up to me and tell me they just come out of rehab and they're thankful that I'm working on this so I Decided we would start working with state legislators, and now we're trying to get all kinds of legislation passed. I talked to a doctor who's from Southern Pennsylvania and Apple the northernmost edge of Appalachia and I Think that these states should make it very clear that they will Permit and support and when necessary finance the use of methadone and buprenorphine as transitional age to get people off of it But I talked to a Pentecostal preacher friend of mine Who's that it's interesting, you know, I mean did I don't even know if he ever voted for me but he's like a brother to me and I love this guy and his wife and we've been friends 40-something years and her nephew had a Opioid problem and I said Anthony, do you know That they're not requiring this in any state in the union. They're not requiring schools and public colleges to tell the students That they can die if they mix alcohol and opioids Three weeks after I told him that I'm not making this up three weeks after I told him that the governor Signed a law requiring that to be done And There are so we started working with faith communities. We've got this big group in Houston now that's helping us and We can do this. It's something we can all agree on and We need to do a lot more of that so I'm gonna do a lot of work this year on the with the colleges and universities or the schools and try to get the state legislations to do that and then It's more controversial, but I feel very strongly I've talked to enough doctors who dealt with this and I talked to my daughter who knows a lot more about it than we do and I'm convinced that we've got a push For people who are severely addicted. We got to produce but push for the more options to use transitional Treatment that includes methadone and buprenorphin Maybe even start teaching our kids and fourth or fifth grade about oh, yeah But that well this bill that I'm talking about required them to start Education and elementary levels wonderful, and it was it's a great thing when we ought to do that every state in America You can hear something that you could do. I know it's not on your agenda here, but you should see what is your state's laws? Are your country's laws? What what can why shouldn't kids be told this? Why shouldn't I tell you something in these areas that are really riddled with adults these kids that are six and seven years old that have parents that are doped out they know it and if a child comes home and says, please mommy, please daddy if you're gonna take these Other than you know oxycontin or whatever it is. Please don't have anything to drink it can kill you if you fall asleep You might never wake up That have a big difference 70,000 people is twice as many people as get killed by gunshots every year More than twice as many people who died from auto accidents every year I mean, it's a lot breathtaking and we've so That's for whatever it's worth if you could help us a little on the side with that I'd appreciate it we'll do I've Witness firsthand what your foundation and the CGI is done So I want to ask you and I and I think it's Was such a force for good and I really hope you restart CGI again It motivated so many people to do more like I like me who made the commitment to you to get to zero preventable deaths What are the what are the most important priorities for your foundation right now? What are we gonna see I mentioned a couple of them we're trying to ramp up our opioid work. We do basically we do health Economic development Education and civic engagement that's basically what we do and So I'll just mention a few things we did I talked about the opioid work. I told you we're going to Puerto Rico We're doing that as a CGI group The global initiative when we had it nationally internationally every year We basically had an independent Review of all the commitments made What percentage were kept what we're gonna be kept? where people in fact helped or not and after 11 years the Review and I said that we had helped 430 million people in 180 countries. I mean it was it's And With commitments worth Around a hundred billion dollars so people like you and What I try to do is just get people together and figure out You know how they can help each other do what they want to do and I Would start it again and a heartbeat if I knew they weren't going to be Targeted You know, there's it and I knew there was there's an appetite for it people the only difference between my meeting and all these other fancy meetings is Well these other people have many including people I really respect like I really liked Mike Wimberg and he gave all this money to Play for college scholarships at his old alma mater, you know, that's a big deal But they have meetings and then if rich people want to do something they can't I have Our meetings and please people that are like you who are starting and rising and I think that People go to too many meetings where nobody asked them to do anything The reason I like your meeting here is that everybody leaves here knowing what they're supposed to do, right? so We just I never dreamed it'd be as successful as it was because We told them all at the beginning if you don't promise to do something or if you do and then you don't even try Then don't come back next year. Please don't come back. We only want people here who are actually going to do We all go to these meetings. Everybody talks do something. It can be small Or it can be big or it can grow into something big But I mean we had a college kid come up with an Idea to find you like this drugs that were adulterated We have one of these for college university students every year current global issues and he found a way to test it Kind of like your non-invasive Testing and he found a way to scan and more than 25% of the drugs that were being shipped at the time to poor countries were Corrupted in somewhere or another or ineffective That young man he was a penniless college student in five years later. He sold the company for $450 million Because he helped so many people and now he's out doing more for more people So I think you know, I'd like to do it again But right now I'm focused on finishing our work in Haiti We we raised $500 million for Haiti and we still got about a hundred million to spend And we're going to try to help Puerto Rico Virgin Islands and Dominica This is a global initiative. We're continuing our climate change work Which is an important part of our economic as well as our environmental mission our Major education initiative is called too small to fail and Chelsea oversees that we're closing in on putting a million books out to low-income families in Unusual places we've helped to create 83 new parks around America that are learning parks and We made a partnership with listen this 7,000 coin operated laundry sites Because poor people have to go to the laundromat to wash their clothes and they're sitting there with their kids with nothing to do So now we're trying to make libraries in all 7,000 of those places I Love these guys. It turns out they were dying to be asked to do something They never thought about how much dead time was going on in their places of business where they could actually make something good happen. So We try to do that. We're doing that and The most fun thing I do probably right now except for the university meeting is George Bush and I run a leadership program together that is pretty well evenly divided by party for young professionals most of them are between 25 and 40 and They go to his library mine the stats library and London Johnson's library and study presidential decision-making Then they apply them what they learned to contemporary problems and they try to work things together And now they're starting local chapters all over America Because people are just starved for some way to work together and quit fighting and my my favorite site was we had these two Gulf War amputees They'd lost their legs either in Iraq or Afghanistan. It could have been Afghanistan and they were each tough guys and they wound up being best friends with a very Imposing large African-American woman who runs a gay rights movement in Arkansas and these guys came to me and said and she did too She said we didn't know anybody like them were we didn't know people like you know We didn't we were stunned to see how much we had in common, you know when you Stop carrying around your armor and just open your eyes. It's good things happen So I love that that that's a lot of fun But so I'm trying to stay busy in my old age, so And that's what I'm doing Long as I can do it and raise the money for it or pay for it. I'll keep doing it. Thank you for doing it Thank you so much for coming any closing thoughts comments to to our team out here. You just remember Almost no group in America Would ever be able to make a claim to have done more good unless they save us from a climate catastrophe or avoid a Weapons holocausts or a total meltdown in the face of cyber threats Then you if you got rid of all preventable deaths If 7,000 70,000 people are dying every year of drug overdoses, but 200,000 are dying of preventable deaths in hospitals Just think of it. That's just one country if you could do this globally think what it would do and you still don't have Anything like the number of partners that you should have and Now you pick the low-hanging fruits. So now you got to go figure out how to do the hard stuff and I think I Just can't imagine That any of us in our lives could find something more meaningful to do Then save in another couple hundred thousand lives a year, you know, that's more people that are dying in any war Currently being waged Think about that you can do this Thank you