Entertainers & Athletes

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Text: J.P. Morgan. Summer reading list 2024.

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Hi. I'm Darin Oduyoye. And welcome to the 2024 JPMorgan summer reading list series. This year marks the 225th anniversary of JPMorgan Chase's earliest predecessor, The Manhattan Company, founded in 1799 to bring fresh water to New York City after a yellow fever epidemic.

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A document header reads, Queries to the superintendent of the Manhattan Water Works and his answers thereto.

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And so to celebrate this anniversary, we are proud to present the book The Worth of Water, written by innovative, civil, and environmental engineer Gary White and acclaimed actor, film producer, and screenwriter Matt Damon.

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The two authors smile in a photo within the book. Text: A wonderful friendship.

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Both are here today to talk to us about all things water and about their book. Matt and Gary, welcome.

Thank you.

Thanks. It's great to be here.

Before we get into how the two of you got connected, there are so many fascinating stats in this book. Can you just level set for people, how big is this water crisis?

It's mind-boggling, actually. There are 2.2 billion people on the planet who are not able to access a safe drink of water consistently.

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A Black woman fills a jug with water from a pipe.

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And that is about one out of four people, which is-- again, it's the first hurdle we have to clear when we talk about this because people can't believe it. If you grew up in the West, you've probably never really been thirsty, let alone considered that you would have to organize your entire day around trying to find a safe water source.

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A Black woman carries a jug under her arm as she walks barefoot on a sandy street. Another woman carries a large water jug on her back.

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I started thinking about how I could get involved, how I could make a difference. And I very quickly learned that this is a vastly complex issue. And so I wanted to partner with the very best person that I could in the space. And when that person wouldn't take my call, I ended up with Gary.

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Actually, that's interesting. So when did you actually meet Matt, Gary?

The first time we met was actually at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2008. And Matt had created an organization called H2O Africa. And I'd co-founded Water Partners.

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Photos in the book depict Matt at the podium of the Clinton Global initiative, Matt shakes President Clinton's hand, Gary sits with an African Woman by a water spout.

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But it just seemed like there was so much in common with what we were doing. And we brought, I think, some complementary skill sets to this issue, the engineering side, of course, and then Matt being able--

Gary has three engineering degrees. And I can do monologues.

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We complement each other perfectly.

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Well, it's no secret that you were able to bring a lot of attention and still do. And along the course of the whole-- how many years has it been now-- 15, 16-- this guy has become literally one of the world's water experts.

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Matt and Gary walk together within a small crowd in an African village.

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And then so we just merged the two organizations.

One of the things that was so interesting about this book and flowed so well was the fact that it came from two different points of view and you put it up front. How did that decision come to be?

It just seemed like the most sensible way to do the book and to have it feel conversational. We come from two totally different places. And so we wanted the book to reflect those journeys. And I should also say we did do the book on tape. So if you don't want to read it, we will read it to you if you want to go on a long drive, the dulcet tones of Gary White's voice.

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Riveting. Riveting-- will make any road trip better.

You guys started out with the goal of wanting to tackle the global water crisis in your lifetime.

Yes, that was our mission statement.

How do you do that?

Step by step.

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But one of the key innovations that Gary had was Gary had spent his adult life in these communities.

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Grainy photos of Gary with people in rural village communities.

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And he understood that people in these communities were already paying for water, sometimes many times more than the middle and upper class were paying for them because they weren't connected to the infrastructure.

And so Gary's innovation, which was so brilliant, was to take the ideas of-- that Muhammad Yunus pioneered with microfinance and apply it to the water sector. And it's borne out-- these loans pay back at over 98%.

The other thing that, Gary, you mentioned was in order to solve for this, you had to engineer your way out of it. What do you mean by that?

As an engineer, you're taught to break down a problem and analyze it and try to figure out how to build the right solution. And for me, it moved beyond traditional engineering into, really, financial engineering. And the only way you can get there is by looking to philanthropic capital to leverage market capital.

And so that's the case with water credit. And now with these loans that Matt was talking about, more than 60 million people have gotten access to water through finance, through small loans. That's

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Two women sit together, one holding paper money and the other writing amounts on a note pad.

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over $5.5 billion that have churned through our partner network of about 140 partners around the world that actually make these loans in partnership with us.

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A woman washes cloth in a plastic basin with a young child wrapped on her back. A woman with a bindi grins up at us as she catches clear water in her hands from a spout.

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And so you can see if we can create that financial plumbing that can tap into the capital markets, that can scale to an enormous degree.

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Matt and Gary sit in a group of adults and children of color.

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So for those people who want to be a part of what you're doing, how can they get involved?

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A woman pumps a lever as water spouts inter her plastic jug.

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We've got on-ramps for everybody. On the donor side, we need your donor dollars to de-risk a loan portfolio so that we can really scale this. But we also have-- for a conscientious investor, we have competitive returns, but also a massive social impact that you can really quantify because if you're investing with water equity, you know exactly all these lives that you're going to touch. And you can count it in the millions of people.

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School children wash their hands under a row of water spouts over sink basins.

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This problem is solvable, and not theoretically, not hypothetically. So we've known how to make water safe for over 100 years. And so if you can combine that compassion with the enlightened self-interest if you're an investor to come into this, then it has a lot of opportunity.

Well, we all enjoyed the book at JPMorgan. We're thrilled to feature it as our 2024 anniversary spotlight. Thank you for the great work that you guys are doing. And we look forward to sharing this book with all of our clients around the world.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

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Text: Summer reading list 2024. J.P. Morgan dot com slash reading list. Hashtag S.R.L. 2024. Icons: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. J.P. Morgan.

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Text, J.P. Morgan. Summer Reading List 2024. Darin Oduyoye, Chief Communications Officer, J.P. Morgan Asset and Wealth Management.

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Hi, I'm Darin Oduyoye, and welcome to the 2024 JP Morgan Summer Reading List Interview Series. We are thrilled to be joined today by acclaimed actor and author Jake Gyllenhaal, whose most recent book, The Secret Society of Aunts & Uncles, is featured on JP Morgan's 2024 Summer Reading List.

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The cover of “The Secret Society of Aunts and Uncles. Unlceology. Auntology. Written by Jake Gyllenhaal and Greta Caruso. Illustrated by Dan Santat.

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Welcome, Uncle Jake.

Thank you so much.

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So great to see you again.

Great to see you.

So tell us, what drove you to decide to write a children's book?

My

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Text, Jake Gyllenhaal, Actor, Producer, Co-Author, “The Secret Society of Aunts and Uncles.” Pages of the book by Jake Gyllenhaal and Greta Carus. Illustrations of cartoonish characters. Horses covered in bubbles. Scooba divers. A passage reads, “Welcome to the wonderful in-between, where no parent ever steps toe, much less foot, or hoof, or paw.”

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best friend and I have-- we've been friends since we were kids. And I think we have a relatively playful attitude about things. And we talked at different times. She's a wonderful writer, and we've talked at different times about writing something together. We've tried different things. And she had recently become an aunt, and I'd been an uncle for a while.

And we just tossed around this random idea like, oh, no one's ever written a children's book about being an aunt or an uncle. There's like this empty space in the library for this subject. And so we thought, let's try our hand at that. So we went off and started to write this book.

You mentioned being an uncle. I also am an uncle, two nieces. And it can be a very special thing.

Yes.

I'm curious. Was there anything personal that sort of made its way into the pages of the book?

Oh, my, the whole thing is personal. I mean, not only me being an uncle, but me having been a nephew, I really like to think of the two main characters-- I have a piece of me and both of them. But, yes, there's things like the Great Aunt Gloria. My niece's name is Gloria.

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More pages of the book. A girl sits with her head in her hands and a bag beside her. A man gestures her to go as two other kids follow a woman with similar bags. Another scene of a driver flicking beans at a passenger with red glasses on a car ride.

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Mona is in there. Ramona is my other niece's name. And my Uncle Bob, who is my uncle, is in there. And there's lots of different things.

But really, I think the red glasses that the Leo wears, I have pretty bad eyesight. And I had glasses when I was a kid. And

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A ballet class.

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my nieces both love to dance. And my eldest niece, Ramona, is a fantastic dancer. She's just extraordinary. So, yes, there are many personal things that made it in there. Though I have no Uncle Muncle Carbuncle. That's completely fictional. Though I wish I had an Uncle Muncle Carbuncle.

Don't we all? You mentioned Verona. Have you read the book to her and your other niece?

Well, Ramona is now 17.

Ah.

And my other-- it took us four years to write this book through the pandemic and everything that went on. So they read it themselves. But, yes, I read it to them both and in different drafts I did. And I have sat around the dinner table with my sister and my nieces. And we've all cried about it because I wrote it for them and my love for them and my relationship with my sister and how important it is to me and what a fantastic mother she is. And that's a big part of the whole book. So, yes, we've all read it together in different forms.

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More pages with a dance sequence.

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One of the other big things of the book is that it really invites conversation. So it's much more than storytelling. Was that something you intended?

Absolutely. I think the best stories I know are not just what is going on, on the surface. It's all about subtext and really about, to me, being able to see each other is such an important aspect of love. Being able to love is being able to listen and see. And that's what I think I've learned from being an uncle. And that's what I wanted the book to be about.

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Leo poses in a dancer pose in the spotlight. Later he’s tucked into bed by a man who says “And now I see you too.”

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And when I felt seen as a kid, was when I felt loved-- continues to this day. And my aunts and uncles really saw me a different way than my my parents did, and thank god for them.

One of the other things that is so weaved throughout the book is adventure. And you, of course, have played lots of adventurous roles. And did any of your prior roles enter into the inspiration for the book?

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The uncle and nephew makes faces at an ice cream. Skydivers, a horse with bubbles on its head, a scuba diver, and a boy in a shirt and tie follow a woman with her eyes closed.

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Not necessarily the roles I played, but when I was a kid, I loved The Magic School Bus. And I loved books that took you sort of into other worlds, as I think we all do. But as a kid, picture books in particular. In The Magic School Bus, they went down into places and explored stuff. And I wanted to bring that love of books of mine as a kid, and one of them being that book and those books, and that sense of adventure.

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Leo and his uncle eating pizza.

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So, yeah, I don't know about roles I've played, but I definitely love an adventure. That's for sure.

Those books tend to have a lot to do with illustration as well. What was the collaboration like with the illustrator? Yeah.

It was wonderful. Dan is an incredible illustrator and storyteller. And it was different, I think, than he's experienced. I really looked at making the book a little bit like I looked at making a film. And I always longed for-- we first wrote the text, then we sent it to Dan.

And then I realized, being with illustrator is like being in an editing room. And if you're in an editing room, oftentimes, you're exchanging ideas. You're trying things. The image then becomes a way of expressing the word. And I always wanted as little words as possible, though it was hard to do that.

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A podium with the text, Sat Stellar Aunt-Uncle Test.

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And so we had this process towards the end, particularly the last couple of months, where he would give me ideas, and we'd work in real time. He would literally draw as we were talking. He'd be like, I didn't know if you want me to cut out all-- I said, cut out all those lines. You can put that in the image and do this. And then we were starting to basically shape together. And that was one of the most inspiring, joyful processes of the whole thing.

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The uncle winks back to Leo surrounded by boxes of stationary and notebooks in the back seat.

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Audience is key, clearly, in everything that you do across the mediums of film, live stage, which we're so excited about you and Denzel Washington--

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--Broadway and Othello. But audience is obviously key here, too, with the book. What do you hope audiences get from this story?

I just really hope that they have a little bit of a laugh, that it's enjoyable, that they love the illustrations, and that particularly I think about my mind as a kid and my imagination and my love of diving into images. And these beautiful images that Dan has drawn, I hope that they have a little respite with someone they love and walk away going, wait a second. Am I really listening and seeing the person that's in front of me?

You've had great success with Road House, serving as the host of the 49th season finale of Saturday Night Live, now success with the book. Will we see you revisit the role of author again?

Ah. I would love to. I would love to. I think it's all about the idea and the inspiration. And I've learned a lot through making this book. And I learned a lot about what I want to do with something next. I have a real desire, doing something with very, very, very few words, which seems to be very hard and takes a long time.

So, yes, I hope so. I hope so. But these things take time. To make something simple, my mother always said to me that if you want to learn about a subject, first, go to the children's section-- and any subject. And I really take that to heart because to do something simply is the hardest thing to do. It takes time. And that's what a great children's book does. So, yes, I would love to try my hand at it again. But I recognize what a difficult medium it is.

All right. Well, on behalf of JP Morgan and recent and experienced uncles and aunts, we thank you for writing The Secret Society of Aunts & Uncles. We are thrilled and excited to share this with our clients around the world. And we, of course, do hope that you return to the role of author once again.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jake.

Thanks for having me.

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The cover of “The Secret Society of Aunts and Uncles, Unlceology. Auntology. Written by Jake Gyllenhaal and Greta Caruso. Illustrated by Dan Santat. Summer Reading List 2024. JP Morgan dot com slash reading list. Hashtag SRL 2024. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. J.P. Morgan.