Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor in chief of

Current Affairs magazine. My guest today is Professor Lindsay McGoy of the University of Essex, where she is Professor

of Sociology and the author of books, including No Such Thing as a Free Gift, the Gates

Foundation on the Price of Philanthropy, and the Unknownknowers how strategic ignorance rules the world.

Professor McGoy, thank you so much for joining me.

It's great to be here.

Now, I have to say, in 2015, when you published your book on the Gates Foundation,

no such thing as a free gift.

People, if they don't remember back in 2015, there at that point had not been much

criticism at all of the Gates Foundation. And I'd like to actually step back almost into those times, because I think

especially with some of Bill Gates's actions surrounding vaccinations and COVID and the very

public divorce and all the sort of personal scandals, the shine has come off the Gates Foundation a little

bit.

But I think it's worth remembering that at the time that you started investigating and writing about the foundation, there was really a sense that they could do no wrong.

And it was bizarre.

So could you start by, we start by talking about why you decided to

dwell on and really quite heavily criticize the Gates Foundation at the time?

Sure. Yeah, that's a great question because to really look at the transformation that has taken place when it comes to his public reputation is an interesting sociological question to try to understand.

How did this person go from a sort of a hero to a villain in such a short time span?

So I think for the general public, it was generally assumed that to give money away to any

cause was a good thing.

But, you know, as you'll be aware, for people who come from a socialist background, people

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