a kid. signing a 30-year mortgage on a home. scary sure but no match for our colossal self-belief. we re supposed to do scary. without scary, we don t get to be brave. buy in. quickenloans/home buy. refi. power. and we are back with bill gates. bill you recently did something very strange. you drank a glass of water that
innovation here on gps, but i m fascinated by innovation in action. so while in seattle, i went to visit a man with whom i love to talk about everything. nathan herville got his ph.d. in physics, studied with stephen hawking and then for years was the chief technology officer at microsoft. he now runs a company called intellectual ventures. there he gets to indulge his passions. he spent time, money and brain power on such diverse subjects as bread baking nuclear power, and dinosaurs. his company is working on all three plus much more. one of his latest projects was spurred by a challenge from bill gates who asked him to help solve a tough problem. how to keep fragile medicines cold in hot climates in developing countries where constant electricity is far from a guarantee. the team tinkered and tinkered until they found a solution. reporter: nathan a pleasure
and the city often called america s gateway to asia is seen as a truly global innovation hub. the real estate market is hot, and the minimum wage now $11 an hour will soon jump to $15 an hour. something people hope will aid with the city s wide income gap. so the lights stayed on and for many the city thrived. today a more appropriate billboard might read willed edthe next person to come to seattle invent a way to keep the lights on without warming the planet. they might do it right mere. the correct answer to the gps challenge question is c. although the u.s. dollar over the years has added fancy bells and whistles like fancy 3-d ribbons and watermarks, it hasn t changed since 1929 when a reshuffle landed andrew jackson on the $20 bill. the group women on 20s hopes to
joining me now, bill gates. bill a pleasure to have you on. great to be here. so give me your sense of where the american economy is these days. a lot of people say yes, we do have a recovery. yes, compared to the rest of the world, the united states is doing well. but we re just not getting the kind of growth we used to and that something has changed. that this is the new normal. you re not going to get back to 3% 4% 4.5%. well gdp growth doesn t capture mass improvements that take place, particularly digital innovation. it s not quite as negative a picture as appear gdp look will give you. explain that. you think there s stuff going on that s improving quality of life that isn t being measured properly. that s right. when you use wikipedia, it is
i keep encouraging governments to raise their energy r&d budgets. and it s disappointing, given the importance of energy for the poorest in the world and this imperative that we get zero co2 emission, that the r&d budgets haven t gone up more. i m funding some new work in nuclear. there s a lot being funded in storage. i m involved in some of those. the solar space has gotten lots and lots of funding. so there s good things happening, but i think we should be trying to accelerate that because rather than subsidize this stuff when it s not economic funding the r&d to get it be economic that is the only real solution. bill gates, always a pleasure. next on gps, from seattle, how great would it be if u.s. election campaigns were shorter, had no negative tv ads, and didn t require a billion dollars to win?