after 5a years at the nih and almost a0 years as the director of an institute, you know, all the things that i've done — research and developing vaccines — what do i want to do for the last five or more years? and i think that the pretty clear answer was to maybe serve as an inspiration for young people who are either interested in a career in public service or already are in a career of public service. your undergraduate, you didn't study medicine, though. you studied classics. i studied classics. greek, latin and the romance language and philosophy in undergraduate, and then i went to medical school... i tookjust enough sciences to get me into medical school. do you remember any of your classics? i could give you the first five lines of the iliad and the odyssey. go on. i would be very... he recites in ancient greek. you still remember it. good for you. and being back at georgetown, where your children were born, you were married... and my wife went to undergraduate here and she got a phd here. right. so i got some pretty thick... so this is home? yeah, it is. it really is. when you come back here, do the students want to hang out with you a lot? yes. do they? that's nice, right? i love it. i think i've been interviewing you for over a dozen years. easily. ebola. right. zika. obviously covid. hiv. yeah. and you're still doing it. i'm still doing it, yeah. at the age of...? 82. can i have what you have? can you...? could you just sell what you have? he laughs. how do you do it? how are you so...? i don't know. seriously, you look 70. thank you. do you work out all the time? yeah. yeah, every day. like, workout workout? no, mostly power walking. i used to run a lot of marathons and ioks but then i, a few years ago, switched it over to power walking. right. and, you know, a little bit with weights. right. very healthy diet? now... he laughs. i can't tell a lie! they laugh. obviously, when we're doing this, you pull up in the two vans... right. you have permanent security. that has changed since i first knew you. you didn't have that. well, the attacks on me that are, you know, are so preposterous, they would be ludicrous if they weren't so serious about the lies and the make—up and the conspiracy theories. it's like, you want to tell them, "are you serious? !" you know? just complete fabrication of things. just horrible. do you ever get used to it? have you got used to it? no. the whole people following you and... you never get used to it because i don't have any privacy any more. i can't go up to the corner and grab toothpaste in the... right. ..in the walgreens, unless somebody comes. and my wife is particularly disturbed by the lack of privacy that we have. yeah. look, the toll of your career is being paid by your wife. the threats against my wife and my kids are almost equal to against me. by the way, there's dahlgren chapel, where chris and i... that's where you were married, right? yeah. it's beautiful. yeah, it's really nice. do you still go there? no. you don't practise any more, do you? no, i don't. why? erm... a number of complicated reasons. go on. we have a whole corridor. he laughs. first of all, i think my own personal ethics in life are, i think, enough to keep me going on the right path. and i think that there are enough negative aspects about the organisational church... mm—hm. ..that you're very well aware of. i'm not against it. i identify myself as a catholic. i was raised, i was baptised, i was confirmed, i was married in the church, my children were baptised in the church, but as far as practising it, it seems almost like a pro forma thing that i don't really need to do. are you happy, guys? yeah. 0k. we were talking about... half the country seems to love you and half the country seems to loathe you. there doesn't seem to be much in between. and i'm sure the numbers are not like that. maybe it's 80% one way, or 20% the other way, but the volume of the rhetoric on both sides... right. ..is indicative of the kind of figure that you have become. how did it happen that a public health official becomes... ..the recipient of so much divisiveness? i don't know precisely, but i believe it's the fact that... ..the divisiveness... ..generally throughout the world, but very profoundly in the united states... ..anyone who observes what's going on here in the united states realises that we're living in an era of profound divisiveness. i was really the person that articulated to the general public, the united states public, and then, ultimately, the global public, about what was going on and what needed to be done or not. that was fine, except that i got caught up in... ..my own country of having to disagree publicly... ..with the president of the united states, which was a painful thing for me to do. you know, the far—right extremists think that i did that for political reasons, i was a nancy pelosi plant, or something, in the white house, which i certainly wasn't. it was very uncomfortable for me. but i had to. i was forced to speak out and say, no, that's not true, it's not going to disappear like magic. hydroxychloroquine is not the cure—all for this. that i generated, on the one hand, a lot of praise and sometimes even over—adulation on the part of people who are looking for some comfort and some realism and some sober facts about how they can protect themselves. on the other hand, it generated an incredible amount of hostility among the extremists. i don't like the extremes. it is not realistic that... ..doughnuts are made with my face on them, that...you know, candles with my picture on them. voting the sexiest... is that almost as weird? that's. .. that is weird. and that's not positive. he laughs. so i'm in a situation where i'm a moderate type of a person and you have the extremes of just over—the—top adulation and then you have extremes of over—the—top hate, where people actually want to kill me. so, becoming a sex symbol in your late 70s... that is not something that i... he laughs. ..i aspired to. that's not one of my aspirations! if somebody had told you when you were graduating from medical school that this is what was going to happen to you, would you have chosen the same path? you know, when you... katty, it's a great question, and the answer is yes. and i'll tell you why it's yes. because if you look at the things that i was fortunate enough and privileged enough to have had the opportunity to make contributions in... in fact, as painful as the stress and the threats and the animosity towards me on the part of some, erm...it was worth it. i mean, it was worth being involved from day one of hiv. then, when we're having a covid outbreak, a historic outbreak, to be the director of the institute that was responsible, again, with the pharmaceutical companies, for developing the life—saving vaccines, to me, all of the other baggage which i wish wasn't there, it's worth it to have had the opportunity to do that. you know, obviously, you mentioned aids and the aids crisis, and i guess that's where. .. the controversy around you started there, with the demonstrations against you and the lack of... ..what was perceived as a lack of research and commitment from the government, and those... even then, people wanted to murder you. yeah. no, they didn't want to... no, they said you were murdering them. but they didn't want to murder me. there's a difference. let me explain. i'm glad you brought that up, because people often say... you know, they show pictures of the 1980s, the late �*80s, with demonstrations — "fauci, you're killing us." yeah. and then they show pictures now of steve bannon saying, "cut his head off." and, you know, desantis saying, you know, get rid of him, hang him, or what have you. the difference in those two things are like peanuts and watermelons difference. and the reason is that with the hiv activists, their making those kinds of statements against me were attention—getting devices. that is totally different than people who are spreading misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and almost malicious attacking science and scientists. it is beyond apples and oranges. it's completely different. have you figured out how to... ..puncture the balloon of misinformation? i don't know... how to bring conspiracy theorists or vaccine sceptics over to what you're thinking. is there...? have you...? do you think you've gained any insight that would be useful for everybody on that? it's very, very difficult. i'm trying to figure out what the best way is. what kind of commonalities that you have... ..when you have people who are of the bent, that are absolutely convinced, that the election was stolen, even though you have 30—plus judges who have, some of which were trump appointees, who declared that absolutely it was not — it was a valid, well—done election. what about vaccine sceptics? how do you talk? how do you...? yeah. is there a way? well, i think... have you converted anybody? yeah, i have. if you can get people to look at the data and at least have a conversation with you, you can win some of them over. there's nothing wrong with being a far conservative, far—right, far—left, nothing wrong with that. that makes for a healthy, heterogeneous society. but when you use that to make very, very poor decisions when it comes to your health is really disturbing. so i don't know how to crack that nut, katty. i don't. you've described yourself as a kind of athlete. when a new infectious disease comes along, one you haven't encountered before, that you feel like you're a runner. yeah. that you're in a race. yeah. do you feel like most of the time you've won the race... ..when you look back at your career? did you run fast enough? you know... ..if you run a race without any injuries and you go over the finish line and you're fine, that's one kind of race. but going through the pain and the sorrow... i mean, the first years, from 1981... ..to the time we were... ..we had therapies for hiv, the first one of which was in �*87, but it only modified the disease, it didn't make anybody get fully in remission. only until the mid and late 1990s, when we had the triple combinations of drugs. but those first years for me as a physician were the dark years of my professional life, but also the dark years of my life, because i lived it, you know, 18, 19 hours a day, of people, young, otherwise vigorous men, who you got to know and like and love, coming in, essentially all of them dying, and that was a very, very difficult experience to have. i mean, i still have a little bit of a post—traumatic stress when i think about those years. so, did we ultimately win that race? did we develop drugs that now, if a young person comes in who has newly acquired hiv, and you put them on a triple combination, sometimes with one pill that contains three drugs and know that you can get the level of virus durably below detectable so that you can look the person in the eye and say you can essentially live a normal lifespan, all other things being considered? provided something bad doesn't happen to you, the chances of you living a relatively normal, maybe one or two years less than someone else who doesn't have hiv, you feel like you've won the race, but you can't erase the years of all the death that you've seen and experienced, who's died right in front of you, and that... so that's where i think that even though you say you won the race, at a personal cost you won the race. so that's where i think that even though you say you won the race, at a personal cost you won the race. it's interesting that you say that... i was going to ask you if you had ptsd, and it's interesting that you raise the aids crisis and not covid. it's a different type. it's a different type, because the ptsd of day after day, morning, noon and night, personally taking care of desperately ill and dying young people, that gives you one type of a post—traumatic stress. the post—traumatic stress of the early months of covid, i wasn't sleeping, i wasn't eating, i wasn't drinking. if it wasn't for my wife, christine, when she would see me come home at night, says, "you've got to drink some water. "did you eat anything today?" you know, i was losing weight. and it was... that is a different kind of a stress. that was more of not personally failing, but seeing all of these things accumulate and happen to you. you've dealt with seven presidents. yes. starting with reagan. reagan, right. in fact, he did not have a good track record in dealing with the aids crisis. that was your first experience of dealing with a president. how do you manage to get the best possible out of them? yeah. how did you work with them to get what you needed? that's a great question. and it relates to a principle that i've lived by, starting with president reagan. i remember when i was called the first time to go brief president reagan, and i was talking to my friend, who i consider — he's about 15 years older than i — as a mentor. and he said, "you know, one of the things "you should remember, "whenever you go into the white house "and go under that awning of the west wing "to go in to see the president, "you should whisper in your own ear, "this may be the last time that i'm going to be walking into this building, because you may have to tell the president an inconvenient truth that they don't like to hear, which means you may not get asked back again. so if you're ok with not getting asked back again, you're going to do fine, because they're either going to respect you or they're going to shoot the messenger. and i've lived by that with every single president where i had to be very honest with them, very respectful, but never be afraid to tell them the cold, honest truth. and i did that with reagan. and i did that with george hw bush. and i did that with clinton, and george w bush, and obama, and trump, and now with biden. and it's always a little bit different, but it always needs to be driven by being honest and clear and articulate in what you're saying to them and not being afraid to disappoint them. and for the most part, that worked. for the most part. a little tricky at the end, perhaps. a little tricky. i have something to show you. yes. so, we're going to let the cameras reset. 0k. and then we're going to go and walk... i have... 0k. it won't surprise you, but i want to show you anyway. 0k. i wish i could say i was giving you a present, but i'm not giving you a present. i'm just going to show you something. this is the, dr fauci, this is your life moment. so, we were talking earlier about how you studied classics and you were good... yeah. ..reciting the iliad, but i think your destiny was always to be in medicine. that is... what is this? that is 83rd street, on 13th avenue in brooklyn. that's my father's pharmacy where i used to, on my schwinn bike, deliver prescriptions for the houses around the neighbourhood. and that window up there was my bedroom, right there. so you lived above the shop? i lived right above the pharmacy. and my father worked in that place seven days a week, and on the weekends and summers i used to deliver prescriptions on my bicycle. he went to columbia and studied... yeah. he became a pharmacist. my father went to columbia. was he happy when you became a doctor? forget that greek and latin business. no, he was quite, quite proud of me. i bet he was. yeah, yeah. i bet he was. i love this photograph. if you had not been a top doctor, this is what you would have been. yeah. yes, iwas... i love sports. i was a very good basketball player in high school. but then my father, who you see here... yeah. i get the genes from him. uh-huh. he was very, very fast. he was actually the new york city high school athletic association champ in high school in the 220— and the imo—yard dash. so i inherited his speed, which made me a really good basketball player, but i also inherited his height. ok, no disrespect, and i don't know very much about sports, but i do know that basketball players are kind of giants. well, so i... and i hate to point out the obvious, but... yeah, no, iactually was a really good high school basketball player. did you ever play with barack obama? no. talking of your relationship with presidents, itjust occurred to me. he's such a great guy. i challenged... you know, he's, like, 63" and he's very good. so i've gotten to know him well and we've become sort of friends, and ijoke around saying i want to challenge him to playing basketball because i'm so fast that no matter how good he is, i'll be able to dribble around him, and he says, "don't trash—talk me, "because i'll really take care of you on the court." wow. what a beautiful lady she is. that was 1985, right here in georgetown. i've been lucky enough to meet your wife. she is an extraordinary woman... she's very... ..who has an extraordinary career of her own. yes, she is quite accomplished. she's done some incredible things in clinical bioethics. she's one of the most respected bioethicists in the country. do you feel that... ..christine and your daughters have paid the price of your... ..success and celebrity? and i don't mean celebrity crassly, because i know you never sought it... yeah. ..but that they are the ones that have paid the price? yeah, they... my three daughters take some characteristics from me and some from christine. the thing that they take from christine is they're a very private person. they don't like attention, they don't like publicity. and they like to just do their thing and they're all public—service—minded and like to lead a good life. they really don't like what's going on. i mean, they're paying the price. i mean, my daughters, they're in their early 30s, you know, they get threatened. they get crazy people who know their phone number, know where they work. you know, it's very frightening for a 31—year—old girl to get a text message saying, "we know where you live," you know, and that's really disturbing. did you feel guilty about that? i do a little bit, yeah. it's a lovely photo. yeah, it's great. did you know you were going to be influential? did you grow up thinking...? no, no. ijust wanted... i just... i wanted to serve people. i wanted to do something. you've done it. well, i hope so. congratulations. thank you. and thank you very much. oh, you're welcome. thank you. you're welcome. here's the catch—up. tonight, more changes to vapes and giant pandas. but first, the cop28 climate summit has kicked off in dubai. it's a meeting held by the united nations each year where world leaders talk about action to tackle climate change. so, what are the headlines from day one. the u in. chief said that it would be the hottest year on record for 2023. and £330 million for countries hit by climate change and disasters. and controversy over the fact that the host country, the uae, is one of the world's top producers of oil. i is one of the world's top producers of oil.- is one of the world's top producers of oil. i think the fossil fuel _ producers of oil. i think the fossil fuel industry - producers of oil. i think the fossil fuel industry has - producers of oil. i think the fossil fuel industry has had | producers of oil. i think the l fossil fuel industry has had a lot of power over the cop process for a long time and i think that this has sabotaged the process. so we need to dismantle the power and give the power back to the people. some other stories now. elf bar and lost mary will stop selling vapes that taste like soft drinks soon because they've been criticised for appealing to kids. they're calling for stricter rules around who can sell vapes and how they're displayed. next tech is being used to help give people their accents backment and until now, young people in wales who use devices to communicate haven't had a welsh accent as an option. but a new programme will allow them to choose between north and south wales accents on the nhs for the first time. and time now for ten seconds of giant pandas. visitors at edinburgh zoo have been watching these guys for the last time before they are sent back to china as their loan is “p back to china as their loan is up in december. i'm sure they'll be hugely missed. they are just adorable. they'll be hugely missed. they arejust adorable. you're they'll be hugely missed. they are just adorable. you're all caught up now. see you later. hello. there are still a number of the cold days before things turn milder well in week. fresh snow call during thursday and friday and into parts of southwest england. a couple of snowmen standing testament to that. but did you know, november snow really unusual in the uk. these white areas show that over the last 30 years on average, we kept much less than a day of lying snow on the ground for the vast majority of us with snow tending to be limited to the higher hills across the pennines and the mountains of scotland during november. now, the other feature of the weather, of course, is it's freezing cold and we're starting off again friday morning with the temperatures plummeting down to about minus eight in the countryside. watch out for icy stretches, particularly where they feed in in eastern areas and where we've seen the snow and rain across the south as well. a few mist and fog patches to clear out of the way, but otherwise, most of the uk with a fine day with sunshine. showers continue to feed in off the north sea and they'll probably tend back towards rain and sleet towards the coastline, but inland with these kinds of temperatures, you could see some further flurries of snow just about anywhere across the eastern side of the uk. but no great amounts expected. that takes us into friday night and again largely clear skies. could have a few showers working into western areas where things could turn icy. but temperatures, i wouldn't mind betting, could get down to about minus 10 in the coldest spots in rural scotland. so a particularly bitter night and a really cold start to saturday. into that cold air, we have a weak weather front that's going to be moving in from the west and this brings the prospect of more wintry weather. here comes that front bringing with it some patches of rain, sleet and snow to northern ireland, spreading to parts of scotland, england and wales through the day. now, isuspect england and wales through the day. now, i suspect the snow may well tend to be confined to hellieriers really with lower areas probably more likely on balance to see rain and sleet with this this temperature. but temperatures struggling and not getting much above freezing so cold weather. into sunday, a low press your moving in from the west, but there's a lot of uncertainty about how quickly this is going to move in. this is one of the quickest models and so if this was to be right, we'd be looking at some rain moving in from the west, maybe with a little bit of snow on the leading edge. and eventually, the weather would be milderfrom eventually, the weather would be milder from the southwest. but notice, it stays dry and cold in the northeast of the uk. bear in mindf cold in the northeast of the uk. bear in mind f that area of low pressure ends up being slow the rain would be slower to get in. the transition to slightly milder air would also be slower and more of us would have dry weather with sunnier spells but cold weather. beyond that for monday and tuesday, the uncertainty is still with us, really. i suspect the overall theme is that it stays cold with a mixture of sunny spells and a few wintry showers. any snow probably tending to be confined to hills, really. and through the latter part of next week, it's then that we start to see the jet stream amplify, get bigger, in other words. these wave patterns, and it's this that ultimately is likely to bring us some milder air. and so, a very gradual rise in temperatures, but i think towards the middle or maybe the end of next week, we'll be looking at temperatures getting back closer to average for this time of year after this really lengthy spell of cold weather. but before we get there, we have got some further severe frost to contend with. bye for now. the race, at a personal cost you won the race. live from washington, this is bbc news. our hostages released as there is rumours of another extension to the temporary truce between israel and hamas. the us warns israel it must protect civilians in gaza, before restarting military operations. it is imperative that israel acts in accordance with international law and the laws of war. day one of the cop28 climate summit in dubai brings a surprise breakthrough, as delegates from around the world meet in dubai. plus, a murder plot involving a sikh activist was foiled, but broader questions remain — we break down the latest developments between the us and india. hello. i'm sumi somaskanda. thank you forjoining us. a truce between israel and hamas may be extended for another day, as negotiations continue for more hostage—prisoner swaps.