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0:14

demand. This is

0:17

Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. My

0:19

guest, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is one of

0:21

the most recognizable people in America. For

0:24

much of the past four years, he's been the

0:27

public face of the government's response to the COVID

0:29

pandemic. Earning admiration and

0:31

gratitude from millions and from others,

0:34

condemnation for masking requirements, business

0:36

school and travel restrictions, and

0:39

among the most darkly conspiratorial for

0:41

somehow causing the catastrophe. Both

0:44

points of view were on display at a House

0:46

committee hearing where he was thanked profusely by Democrats

0:49

and told he should be in prison by

0:51

one Republican. But Fauci's leadership

0:54

role in protecting the nation's health

0:56

predates COVID by decades. He

0:58

headed the National Institute of Allergy

1:00

and Infectious Diseases at the National

1:03

Institutes of Health for 38 years

1:05

before retiring in 2022 to take

1:07

an academic appointment. He

1:09

played leading roles in responding to the

1:11

AIDS crisis, the Ebola outbreak, the SARS

1:13

epidemic, the threat of anthrax and more.

1:16

He became a skilled Washington player,

1:18

advising seven presidents and constantly briefing

1:21

Congress in public and private hearings.

1:24

And he never gave up seeing

1:26

patients, at one point climbing into

1:28

protective gear resembling a spacesuit to

1:30

treat a hospitalized Ebola patient. Anthony

1:33

Fauci is now a professor at Georgetown

1:35

University with a joint appointment at the

1:37

School of Medicine and the McCourt School

1:39

of Public Policy. He tells

1:41

his story in a new memoir titled

1:43

On Call, The Doctor's Journey in Public

1:46

Service. Well, Dr. Fauci, welcome back

1:48

to fresh air. Thank you. It's good

1:50

to be back with you. I

1:52

got to say, congratulations on this book.

1:54

It is a remarkable journey. And

1:57

although there is a lot of science, I want to tell readers

1:59

it is... accessible and readable.

2:03

And having kind of followed you through

2:05

this long journey and so many battles

2:07

of public health issues, I have

2:09

to ask what it is like for you at

2:11

this point in your life, having done so much

2:14

in your field, getting the Presidential

2:16

Medal of Freedom from a Republican president.

2:19

What is it like now to be known

2:22

to tens of millions of Americans who associate

2:24

you really only with this terrible pandemic and

2:26

this at a time when our politics are

2:28

so bitterly partisan, you know,

2:30

and social media can effectively communicate disinformation?

2:34

Yeah, it's a little bit of a distortion

2:36

of reality. And I think in your introduction,

2:39

you laid that out pretty well. The

2:42

story of my commitment to public

2:44

service, to science, medicine and public

2:46

health dates back more

2:48

than half a century when I came to

2:50

the NIH as a

2:53

fellow in infectious diseases and immunology

2:55

54 years ago.

2:57

And as you mentioned correctly, that

2:59

I've been the director, I had been director of

3:02

the National Institute of Allergy and

3:04

Infectious Diseases, which is responsible for

3:06

the funding or conduct of

3:09

most of all the research in

3:11

the United States and in some

3:13

respects worldwide and in the field

3:15

of infectious diseases, that in fact,

3:17

because of the nature

3:19

of the gripping

3:21

nature of COVID on the country over

3:23

the last four plus years, that

3:27

I was pretty well known in

3:29

the scientific community for those decades

3:31

involving way back to the

3:33

early years of HIV, but to the

3:35

general public. I'm known predominantly

3:38

as the person who was communicating

3:40

with the American public during

3:42

those terrible years of the peak

3:45

of COVID. So it's a bit

3:47

of an unusual feeling where some

3:49

people only know me for that,

3:51

whereas the people who really understand

3:54

my history understand that it

3:56

goes back literally, as you mentioned, decades

3:59

and decades. You know, I mentioned

4:01

this House committee hearing that you

4:03

appeared at, I guess it was a couple of

4:05

Mondays ago. I watched a lot

4:08

of it. I gather that,

4:10

you know, you're no longer a government

4:12

employee. You appeared voluntarily, is that right?

4:14

Yes, I did, of course. And

4:17

how do you feel about it? How do you feel about the experience? Should

4:19

you keep doing this? Well,

4:21

I mean, if you look at the hearing itself,

4:24

it unfortunately is a very

4:28

compelling, reflection

4:31

of the divisiveness in our country.

4:34

I mean, the purpose of hearings,

4:36

or at least the proposed purpose

4:39

of the hearing, was to figure out how

4:42

we can do better to help

4:44

prepare us and respond to

4:46

the inevitability of another pandemic, which almost

4:49

certainly will occur. But if you listened

4:52

into that hearing, as you described just

4:54

a little bit ago, on the Republican

4:57

side was a vitriolic ad

5:00

hominem and a distortion

5:02

of facts, quite frankly,

5:05

as opposed to trying to really get down

5:07

to how we can do better

5:09

in the future. It was just attacks

5:11

about things that were not founded in

5:13

reality. You know, I've

5:16

been, as you said, testifying literally

5:18

at hundreds of congressional hearings over

5:20

the last almost 40 years

5:23

during the time that I've been the director.

5:25

And there have been situations

5:27

that are somewhat politically charged in

5:30

the sense there's been, you

5:32

know, a diversity of ideological opinions

5:35

and how one views a particular

5:37

issue, which is fine. I think

5:40

diversity of opinion and diversity of

5:42

ideology is healthy for the country.

5:45

But what we saw at that

5:47

hearing was not diversity of opinion.

5:49

It was pure divisiveness and ad

5:52

hominem attack, which is really unfortunate

5:54

because it's counterproductive to

5:56

what we would have hoped a

5:58

hearing of that type would be. get us

6:01

to, namely, to be better off from

6:03

what we learned from it. But there was nothing

6:05

that was better off at that hearing. You

6:07

just had to listen to Marjorie Taylor

6:10

Greene and her rant about dogs

6:12

and things. I didn't even know what she was talking

6:14

about. Yeah. You know, I can remember a day

6:16

when public hearings were actually

6:18

opportunities for lawmakers to learn things, actually

6:21

ask questions they didn't know the answer

6:23

to, and hear expert witnesses educate them.

6:25

And this was pretty performative, which seems

6:28

to be the way things are

6:30

today. One of the things they

6:32

focused on so much was the cause

6:34

of the pandemic and whether or not it

6:36

came from an animal

6:38

in the Wuhan wet market or might

6:40

have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of

6:42

Virology, this lab there. And you said

6:46

you have an open mind about

6:48

that, but it's clear that the

6:50

research that your organization funded, NIAID,

6:52

could not have spawned

6:54

this virus. And you're clear about that. Yeah,

6:56

I have an open mind about whether or

6:59

not this could have been a lab

7:02

leak versus a natural occurrence,

7:04

a spillover, which historically is

7:07

overwhelmingly how new

7:09

viruses get into the human population.

7:11

So since we don't know definitively,

7:14

I keep an open

7:16

mind. But the thing that

7:18

I'm pretty certain about and most

7:20

experienced virologists are, if you look

7:22

at the viruses that

7:24

were studied under the

7:27

NIH grant that went as a

7:29

subaward to a laboratory in China,

7:32

the viruses themselves that were studied

7:34

were so distant, we

7:36

use the word phylogenetically distant, that

7:38

means they were so distant

7:41

in evolution from what turned

7:43

out to be SARS-CoV-2 that

7:45

it would really be virologically

7:47

and molecularly impossible for

7:50

those viruses to be the

7:52

viruses that were the

7:54

cause of what turned out to

7:56

be SARS-CoV-2. It just would be

7:58

virologically impossible. So that's the

8:01

thing I was pointing out at the hearing

8:04

that still is compatible with my keeping

8:06

an open mind that somewhere

8:08

a lab in China or

8:10

anyplace else could have

8:12

been working on a virus that actually slipped out of the

8:15

lab. And that's what I mean by keeping

8:17

an open mind. However, if you look at the

8:20

vast majority of

8:22

experienced evolutionary virologists, not only

8:24

from the United States but

8:27

throughout the world from Australia, from Canada,

8:30

from the European Union,

8:32

the UK and the United States, the

8:35

very strong evidence is suggestive

8:37

strongly that it

8:40

comes from a natural spillover from an

8:42

animal reservoir. There was a lengthy piece

8:44

in the New York Times which sort of aired

8:47

some of these issues and offered a different point of view.

8:49

I'm not going to ask you to respond to that.

8:51

It's really pretty technical. But one

8:53

question I did want to ask is how

8:55

much does it matter whether

8:57

we discover whether it was a natural

9:00

occurrence or a lab leak in

9:02

terms of fighting future infections? Sure.

9:04

I mean, if you know definitively

9:07

what the cause was, then you

9:09

would put your resources

9:11

and effort into making

9:13

sure that that doesn't happen again. But

9:16

in the context of

9:19

not knowing whether it was

9:21

a natural occurrence or

9:23

a laboratory leak, you

9:25

can do a lot of productive things

9:27

even if you don't definitively know. Because

9:29

if it's either one or the other,

9:32

you should be directing

9:35

your efforts to

9:37

preventing either from happening again. If

9:40

you look at a lab leak possibility,

9:43

you should make sure that there are

9:45

very stringent controls. And

9:47

if it was, which most

9:49

virologists think it was, a

9:52

natural spillover from an animal

9:54

reservoir, you need to

9:56

put more controls on the animal-human

9:59

interface. I mean bringing

10:02

animals from the wild that

10:04

could be infected with viruses that

10:06

might jump species, and bringing them

10:09

into close contact with humans like in

10:11

a wet market where people come in

10:13

to shop for these exotic animals, you've

10:16

got to put controls on that. And

10:19

you've got to not encroach on

10:22

the environment as much, namely

10:24

pristine places where animals that

10:26

might have pathogens in

10:28

them that could spill over. So

10:30

in some respects, it

10:32

doesn't really matter what it is. You should be

10:35

trying to prevent either from

10:37

ever happening. You

10:40

grew up in an Italian-American family

10:42

in Brooklyn. Your

10:44

dad ran a pharmacy. You

10:47

know, you were a smart kid and a good

10:49

student. You write that in your neighborhood, most of

10:51

the kids were either athletes or tough guys. Hoods,

10:53

which is a term we don't hear so much

10:55

anymore. Which were you? Well,

10:59

I was an athlete at

11:02

a young age, eight or nine years

11:04

old. I just really became fascinated with

11:06

both baseball and basketball, and

11:09

I just loved it. I loved team sports. Then

11:11

when I went on to high school, I was

11:13

the captain of my high school basketball team in

11:15

New York City, which was really a lot of

11:17

fun. And I think was, you know, formative

11:20

for me in understanding the importance

11:22

of teamwork and discipline and things

11:24

like that. But I was

11:26

correct. We had a very

11:28

interesting neighborhood. It was ethnically 90

11:31

plus percent Italian-Americans in the neighborhood where

11:33

I grew up in. But

11:35

it was a warm, embracing neighborhood,

11:38

you know, a high degree of

11:40

family and neighborhood spirit. You

11:43

went to Holy Cross College and

11:45

then Cornell Medical School, where you graduated first

11:47

in your class. And it was the Vietnam

11:50

era. And it was actually the draft, wasn't

11:52

it, that kind of sent you into public

11:54

health? Yeah, I mean,

11:56

when when you reached a certain level, I

11:58

think was the fourth. an

14:00

obscure weekly mortality report from the Centers

14:02

for Disease Control. You write

14:04

that when you read about 26 men who

14:07

died for these unusual forms of pneumonia and

14:09

cancer, that when you read that they were

14:11

all homosexual, you write that it

14:13

was the first time a clinical report

14:15

gave you goosebumps. Why? Robert

14:19

H. Reilly Well, because I had

14:21

been involved in infectious diseases for

14:23

the prior nine years

14:25

when I came back for my chief residency

14:28

in medicine in New York City at the

14:30

New York Hospital Cornell Medical

14:32

Center in 1972. For the

14:34

next nine years, I was

14:36

very steeped in being an infectious disease

14:38

consultant at the

14:41

NIH for patients usually

14:43

who had cancer and who

14:45

were immunocompromised and

14:47

would get secondary opportunistic infections.

14:50

And I had never seen anything like this.

14:52

So when I said I got goosebumps, I

14:55

knew that even though

14:57

this was brand new, this 26 first

15:01

five young gay men and then

15:03

a month later a report of 26, curiously

15:07

and amazingly all young

15:09

otherwise well, previously

15:12

well, gay men with

15:14

this devastating disease that was destroying

15:16

their immune system, I knew

15:18

I was dealing with a brand new disease. And

15:21

up to that point, there were no brand new

15:24

diseases. I mean, if you

15:26

look historically going back, when was the

15:28

last time an absolutely brand new disease

15:31

was recognized? And even though at the time

15:33

in the summer of 1981,

15:35

we didn't have a name for the

15:38

disease, we were

15:40

calling it strange names like gay

15:42

related immunodeficiency or gay cancer because

15:46

of the Caperschisar coma. We

15:48

didn't have an etiology, but the

15:50

epidemiology of the disease, namely how

15:53

it was spreading its pattern of

15:56

spread strongly suggested

15:59

that It was an infectious disease that

16:01

was sexually transmitted because

16:04

of the epidemiological patterns. And

16:07

the thing that got me goosebumps is that this

16:09

was totally brand new and

16:12

it was deadly because the young men

16:14

we were seeing, they were

16:16

so far advanced in their disease

16:18

before they came to the attention

16:21

of the medical care system that

16:24

the mortality looked like it was approaching 100%.

16:29

So that spurred

16:31

me on to do something that I mentioned

16:33

in the book clearly

16:35

was to totally change the direction

16:38

of my career to devote

16:40

myself to the study

16:43

of what was at the time

16:45

almost exclusively young gay men with

16:47

this devastating, mysterious

16:50

and deadly disease which we ultimately

16:52

a year or so later

16:55

gave the name of AIDS to. Right.

16:58

You write that when you made that decision to

17:00

really focus on that, that it was against the

17:02

career advice of a lot of folks that you

17:04

knew. You write that you think

17:06

of this next period from roughly 1982 to

17:09

the late 80s as the dark

17:11

years of your medical career. You say

17:13

you might have post-traumatic stress

17:15

from it. Tell us

17:17

about that. You know, Dave,

17:20

up to that time, I had

17:22

been fortunate enough to

17:24

have developed therapies

17:27

for inflammatory diseases of the

17:29

blood vessels called the vasculitides,

17:31

which are not rare, but

17:34

they're unusual diseases that

17:36

had about 100% mortality.

17:39

And I developed some therapeutic

17:41

protocols that

17:44

really were transformative and led to a 93

17:46

to 95% remission rate. So for

17:50

a period of several years,

17:53

I was on a high as it were with

17:56

regard to results because of those people who had

17:58

a disease that other Otherwise, a

18:00

year or two earlier would have killed them.

18:03

I had developed the therapies that

18:06

was essentially saving their lives. So I was

18:08

dealing with a person,

18:10

you know, with the situation where

18:13

everything I did was almost a

18:16

positive result. And I felt

18:18

very good about that. You know, that if you're

18:20

a physician and you're involved

18:22

in really making people better, that's

18:24

just a wonderful feeling. The

18:27

other night, when I changed the direction of

18:29

my career, all

18:33

of a sudden I was taking care of

18:35

people who were desperately ill, mostly

18:38

young gay men who

18:40

I had a great deal of empathy

18:42

for. And

18:44

what we were doing was, you know,

18:47

metaphorically like putting band-aids on hemorrhages because

18:49

we didn't know what

18:51

the etiology was until three

18:53

years later. We

18:55

had no therapy until several,

18:58

several years later. And

19:01

you know, although we were trained to be

19:03

healers in medicine, we were healing no

19:06

one and virtually all of

19:08

our patients were dying.

19:10

So it was such a sharp contrast

19:14

with what I had been doing for

19:17

the previous nine years or

19:19

so to what I was doing now, which

19:22

was just trying to comfort people and

19:25

take care of their opportunistic infections,

19:27

which sooner or later was

19:30

killing most of them anyway. That's what I meant,

19:33

you know, by the dark years of

19:35

my professional career, which spills over into

19:37

your personal life because it's impossible. And

19:40

that's what I meant when I said that

19:42

I and many of my colleagues who were

19:44

really in the trenches back

19:47

then before we had therapy really

19:50

have some degree of post-traumatic

19:52

stress. I describe in

19:54

the memoir some very, very devastating

19:57

experiences that you

19:59

have. have with patients that you

20:02

become attached to, who you

20:04

try your very, very best to help them.

20:06

But at the end of the day, it almost

20:09

always is something that leads to the

20:11

death of the individual. It was a

20:13

very painful experience. We're going to need

20:16

to take another break here. Let me

20:18

reintroduce you. We are speaking with Dr.

20:20

Anthony Fauci. He led the National Institute

20:23

for Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38

20:25

years. His new memoir is On Call,

20:27

A Doctor's Journey in Public Service. He'll

20:29

be back to talk more after this

20:32

short break. I'm Dave Davies, and

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21:59

app. President

26:00

Clinton said, well, why don't we just do

26:02

that? And he turned to his

26:04

chief of staff, who was Leon Panetta at the time,

26:06

and says, well, why don't

26:08

we try to make that happen? I thought

26:10

he was essentially humoring me because he

26:13

was being nice to me and saying,

26:15

thank you very much, great suggestion. But

26:18

as it turned out, a few months later, he announced

26:21

that he was going to get a vaccine research

26:23

center built on the NIH

26:25

campus very, very quickly. And

26:28

with that, we recruited from all over

26:30

the country people of multiple disciplines who

26:33

would come to work predominantly to

26:35

work on an HIV vaccine. But

26:38

as it turned out, over the years,

26:40

the excellence of the individuals who were

26:43

brought together led to

26:46

work on other vaccines, including

26:48

the successful development of

26:50

an RSV vaccine. And then most

26:52

recently, they played a major role

26:54

in the development of a successful

26:56

COVID vaccine. So that

26:59

conversation in 1996 in

27:01

the Oval Office with President

27:03

Clinton had enormous implications.

27:06

Ultimately, I hope we will

27:08

develop a vaccine for

27:10

HIV. But little

27:12

did we know back then that multiple

27:14

years later, the investigators

27:16

that we recruited to

27:19

that vaccine research center would play a

27:21

major role in the

27:23

development of a successful COVID vaccine. Now,

27:26

you know, you're right at some point in the book

27:28

that you learn how important it was to develop relationships

27:30

with people who can make things

27:32

happen. And this is a case of where, you

27:34

know, you had trust and

27:37

you had the trust of

27:39

the president. And this really mattered because there was somebody

27:41

who wanted to make a difference and had the power

27:43

to do it. It's quite a moment, isn't it? You

27:47

know, it is. It's

27:49

a terrific feeling and it

27:51

only can occur related to

27:53

the issue that I

27:55

said about always being honest and not being

27:57

afraid to tell things as they are.

34:00

at the same time as making sure

34:02

that you and your colleagues don't

34:04

get infected in the process. We

34:07

need to take another break here. We

34:09

are speaking with Dr. Anthony Fauci. He

34:12

led the National Institute for Allergy and

34:14

Infectious Diseases for 38 years. He has

34:16

a new memoir. It's called On Call,

34:18

A Doctor's Journey in Public Service. We'll

34:21

continue our conversation after this short break.

34:23

This is Fresh Air. I'm Rachel Martin.

34:25

After hosting Morning Edition for years, I

34:27

know that the news can wear you

34:30

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35:33

So let's talk about your experience with

35:35

COVID. I mean, you'd had great relationships

35:38

with the many presidents that you had

35:41

served. You were known. I gather

35:44

you didn't have a lot to

35:46

do with Trump until this issue arose. And

35:49

yet you became kind of the public

35:51

face of this. There

35:53

came a point when you were working

35:55

with the task force, which Vice President

35:57

Mike Pence headed, that you were going

35:59

to have to to contradict the president.

36:01

You're going to have to publicly refute

36:04

his message, for example, his embrace of

36:06

hydroxychloroquine. So how did

36:08

you decide to handle that? Richard S.

36:10

Bilyeu, Jr. Well, it was not an easy

36:12

decision because I

36:14

have a great deal of respect for the

36:16

office of the presidency of the United States

36:19

that I had served under

36:21

multiple presidents. But

36:24

I felt I had a responsibility

36:27

to preserve my own professional

36:30

and personal integrity as well

36:32

as importantly to fulfill my

36:34

responsibility to whom

36:36

I really serve, namely the people of the

36:39

United States of America. And when

36:41

the president started to say things, I mean,

36:44

he wanted so badly for this to

36:46

end because the fact that we

36:48

were you know, it was January, then

36:50

February, then March, and then people started thinking about

36:54

pretty soon we were going to get into

36:56

election mode. And he really

36:58

wanted, understandably, the outbreak to essentially

37:01

go away. So he started

37:03

to say things that were just not true,

37:05

like it's going to disappear like magic, it's

37:07

going to go away, don't worry

37:09

about it, we have everything under control. And when

37:12

it became clear that that was not the case, then

37:14

he started to say things that

37:16

were just scientifically untrue, like hydroxychloroquine

37:18

is essentially the end all that's going

37:21

to take care of us. So

37:23

I just felt that I had to when asked, get

37:26

up and just tell the truth and say

37:28

when a reporter asked me, the

37:31

president says this is going to go away like magic, is

37:33

that true? And I would have to say no, according

37:36

to my estimate, it's not going to go

37:38

away like magic. And

37:40

they would ask me about hydroxychloroquine

37:42

and I'd say no, there's

37:44

no scientific evidence that hydroxychloroquine works.

37:47

And in fact, there is evidence that it might be

37:50

harmful. And that, you know,

37:52

was the beginning of a situation that put

37:54

me at odds, not

37:56

only with the president, but more intensively

37:58

with his staff. But I felt I

38:01

had to do it. There was no turning

38:03

back. I could not give

38:05

false information or sanction

38:09

false information for the American public. I just

38:11

could not do that. Right, it was interesting

38:13

as you described this relationship with Donald Trump,

38:15

that you're both New Yorkers, and he kind

38:17

of liked you for that. You kind of

38:19

had this background. And

38:21

you write that after you would

38:23

be in these COVID briefings when you were

38:25

both there, that he would sometimes pull

38:28

you into a side room afterwards to

38:30

talk about what. You

38:33

know, there were a couple of things. I mean,

38:35

he, you know, a very complicated figure. We

38:38

had a very interesting relationship, was very correct.

38:40

I don't know whether it was the fact

38:42

that he recognized me as kind of a

38:44

fellow New Yorker, but he

38:46

always felt that he wanted to maintain a good

38:48

relationship with me. And even, you

38:51

know, when he would come in and start

38:53

saying, why are you saying these things? You gotta be more

38:55

positive. And he would get angry with me. But

38:58

then at the end of it, he would always say, we're okay,

39:00

aren't we? I mean, we're

39:02

good, things are okay. Because

39:04

he didn't want to leave the conversation

39:06

thinking that we were at odds

39:08

with each other, even though many in his staff

39:11

at the time were overtly at odds with

39:13

me, particularly

39:15

the communication people and

39:17

people like Peter Navarro and others. So

39:20

it was a complicated issue. There were

39:23

times when you think he was very favorably

39:26

disposed and then he would get angry at some of

39:28

the things that I was saying, even

39:30

though they were absolutely the truth. Yeah, well, I think

39:32

readers will enjoy a lot of the direct quotes that

39:35

you have him because they're pretty salty. And in particular,

39:37

I believe at one point in the spring of 2020,

39:40

when remember when Easter was approaching

39:42

and Trump had agreed to some restrictions on,

39:44

you know, activity and mitigation measures, but he

39:46

really wanted to get this over with and

39:48

get the country back open. And,

39:52

you know, you were, you know, giving a different message. You

39:54

were saying, no, we've still got a lot of deaths and

39:57

a lot of infections in hospitals. We have to stay with

39:59

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43:01

know, it's hard to imagine a more difficult

43:03

situation where there's this terrible pandemic, which is

43:06

highly infectious, highly deadly. And

43:09

you're operating, you know, at best, even

43:11

in good faith with incomplete information, like what

43:14

should the social distancing number be? And, you

43:16

know, how effective are masks depending on what

43:18

we know about how it spreads? And you

43:20

say in the book that, you know, there

43:22

were certainly things that you would have done

43:24

differently if, you know, if you'd

43:27

had more information. But

43:29

yet, did you ever get the feeling that the

43:31

president really cared to listen

43:33

to the science that he – when you would

43:35

explain things, he was taking it in? You

43:40

know, it's tough to get into someone's mind

43:42

about what they were thinking, how much attention

43:44

they were paying. But I

43:46

can tell you that he did not get

43:49

into the details of understanding the

43:51

science. It was more

43:53

the broad big picture he wanted the

43:56

outbreak over and he wanted

43:58

to get down to the business of, you know,