How Bill Gates knew he was different

With a net worth estimated north of 100 billion dollars, Bill Gates is taking time out for a look back at a most uncommon life. He's talking with Lee Cowan. Mr. Gates, I'm Dr. Leonard Hofstadter. We've actually met before. Bill Gates may not strike you as an actor, certainly not a comedic one. I mean ever since I was a little kid I've looked up to you like like a hero. But he can be Do you like a tissue? How about a hug? How about a tissue? Even when he was arrested at the age of 21, his smile makes you think there was a lot more going on in that head than just computer calculations. I was driving from Albuquerque up to Seattle and I got three very serious speeding tickets. You got three? Yeah. On that one trip? On that one trip. What's a long trip? This is great. I love this little car. Yeah these are pretty nice. We were relieved to learn that the top speed of his all-new all-electric Fiat red was only about 100 miles an hour. That car was a birthday gift from Bono. Yep, that Bono, as if there's any other. Well we've been working together on this global health stuff for a long time. These days he's known largely for his philanthropic work especially on global health issues. To date the Gates Foundation has given away nearly 80 billion dollars in grants. Most of that from Gates and his former wife Melinda's own pocket. But for most of us he'll always be the Microsoft guy. This is my last keynote. Even though he stepped down as CEO a quarter century ago. The one thing that really held me back was what if I leave and the company's doing very poorly. A. I'll feel bad and B. I won't know whether to you know jump back in or not. But you know fortunately I've never had to even think about it because my successors have been amazing. He was the boy wonder. The Harvard dropout and became a billionaire in his 30s by focusing not on building computers but selling the software that ran them. Please welcome Bill Gates and the Bill Gates dancers. By the time he launched Windows 95 he was on top of the world. He had every right to be dancing to the Rolling Stones and yucking it up with the likes of Jay Leno. Windows 95 is so easy even a talk show host can figure it out. But on this day as he drove us to his favorite drive-in Burger Master a Seattle institution. How's it going? Great. All right. Welcome to be a starter for you. Gates seemed less like one of the world's richest men. We're here to go. What do you think? We'll do the tray on the window. And more like the kid who just used to come here with his dad. Decades before he'd be calling sports heroes rock stars and world dignitaries his friends. My social skills were very slow to develop. So except for a few boys similar to me I didn't have that many friends. He's not saying that for sympathy he's just being analytical. It's the way his mind works and it's the way the first of his three-part autobiography is written. Here is the the setup the source code that you know almost certainly was going to lead to some pretty amazing impact. Bill Gates knew he was different. So did his parents so did his teachers. Had he been growing up today he says he likely would have been diagnosed as autistic. Well when I'm concentrating I'll actually sometimes start rocking which bothers people without my even you know sort of being aware of it so I haven't even outgrown that type of behavior. Is the rocking kind of a soothing thing? Is it something you just do to concentrate? It must be. I mean it's a habit. I mean they did put me on a rocking horse to help me go to sleep. They did put me in a cradle so it's definitely their fault. Whether he is or isn't on the spectrum matters little he says. I mean even today there's not like some magic medicine that gets rid of the bad part and lets you keep the good part. He writes that his parents took him to therapy sent him to private school and tried to unglue him from his books by getting him into like skiing even football. I was forced to now that was on there were three teams there was the varsity the JV and then uh the even below JV and so we were the lowest tier and amongst that third tier I was semi-decent but that's all it can be said. Almost everything he viewed through the As you talk about math and being good at math and how that kind of revealed all these hidden structures in life and gave all the chaos of the world a certain amount of order which if you're like me who's not good at math all I see is sometimes chaos. I don't see the patterns. I don't see the the structures. Well you know I think science is a beautiful thing that you know physics, chemistry, biology. The more you learn the more kind of the pieces fit together because all these topics connect. You're called a genius and I will well no I don't think that embarrassed you at all. They call you a genius. In conversation 40 years ago with her own Jane Polly the then William Gates III made it clear he was in charge of his destiny. I'm used to to having a company where the ideas that I have are something that I can easily pursue. Are you competitive you think? Yes I and people would say I'm competitive. Yes definitely. I mean there was an industry panel once where everybody was disagreeing with me and at the end of the panel one of the competitors says look Bill is wrong. Bill works so much harder than we do. He's going to succeed. We might as well just give in. You don't get to be part of that one percent club without making a few enemies along the way. He is a complicated guy. Forcing us to divorce the internet from our operating system would be like requiring one of the automakers to sell cars without car stereos. Some say he was ruthless in his business practices and there are plenty of charges that today is just part of a new American oligarchy. You write in the book about how you said when you first came here as a freshman that you were like a kid in a candy store. There were glimpses of his determination even as a freshman at Harvard. My room was this one here on the first floor. He almost got kicked out for breaking the rules in the computer lab. It turned out I had used by far the most computer time and so they were like well what are you doing you know you're an undergraduate what the heck. Great to see you. Yeah it's impressive you're here. His computer science professor Harry Lewis remembers him well. Years ago he dug out the original code that Gates started writing over Christmas break in 1974. This was a work of beauty. Those pages of basic interpreter code became the bible of the software revolution. The 69 year old Gates says he's made plenty of mistakes including meeting with financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Although the tabloids had a field day with his divorce he now says that was one of his life's biggest regrets. You know when I was a student you know I was just trying to learn a lot. I was very curious. But for every critic. How do you decide what to work on as somebody who's gone through many stages of their career. There are just as many like these students at Harvard who speak of Bill Gates in the same breath as Thomas Edison. Hey you finished yours. You did well. I almost finished mine and I got a double. Like his burger sometimes Bill Gates has bitten off more than he can chew in his life. Maybe it was a way to challenge himself even in the face of those who still want to challenge him. I've been unbelievably lucky and led a very interesting life. It's not it's not stopping.