Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Mike Linus. And hello to those of you who've come here from the Jacobin Radio feed.

I'm Luke Savage, and my esteemed co-host, Will Sloan, is currently away.

He's probably at a film festival somewhere in the American Midwest or Three Stooges retrospective.

I don't ask too many questions. I'm more of the politics guy. Anyway, by way of

briefly introducing my guest on this episode, what follows is a conversation with investigative

journalist Tim Schwab, who among other things is author of a recent book called The Bill Gates Problem,

reckoning with the myth of the good billionaire. It's an excellent book that not only contains

many revelations that cut through Gates' meticulously airbrushed public image, as seen on a recent

Netflix docu-series that we talk about as well, but also raises broader questions about the whole

enterprise of billionaire-driven philanthropy, the way public health and education are being cannibalized

by organized wealth, and the extent to which the kind of soft power that often accompanies that wealth

works to constrain our social and political discourse, manipulate the media, and undermine democracy.

Now, I don't recommend the docu-series itself unless you're a masochist,

but I do recommend Tim's book, and I hope you enjoy the conversation.

I'll also just say, for those of you who may not know, that you can find a whole lot more of us

at patreon.com slash michaelanus. Five Yankee dollars a month gets you an extra episode every week,

and also access to what is by now, our massive back catalog of old episodes, interviews,

and bonus content. So, cheers, and I hope you enjoy the show.

Hello, I'm Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. In this video, you're going to see the future, Windows. Microsoft first came up with

the Windows concept back in 1983. And today, the leading software users have switched into the

Windows environment.

Among other things, you know, you just published a book, how it's been going.

...