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Hello, it's Amol here with an extra special bonus episode of the Today podcast,

because I have been speaking to undoubtedly one of the most interesting, consequential,

and wealthy people anywhere in the world.

And he, ladies and gentlemen, is none other than Bill Gates.

Best known, of course, as the founder of Microsoft, who was for many years the world's richest man

and America's most famous geek. There is, as you're about to hear, so much more to his story

than you might think. In fact, a couple of years ago,

I travelled to Kenya to spend a few days with him for my TV series, Amol Rajan interviews. Back then,

we talked about eradicating poverty and disease about his work ethic and his wealth, about

conspiracy theories and about Elon Musk. So this time, in this latest interview, we're going to cover

different, slightly earlier ground, which, if anything, is even more fascinating. He has

written a new memoir. It's called Source Code, Source S-O-U-R-C-E. If it was Source Code as in

tomato ketchup, that would be a very different book. But it's called Source Code, My Beginnings, and he opens up in it about his early life, the relationships that shaped him

and those extraordinary nascent days in 1960s and 1970s West Coast America when he and others

were trying to get a company called Microsoft off the ground.

Today, Microsoft is worth around about $3 trillion.

As you hear, we do get onto some of the juicy and, yes, controversial issues of modern day technology and America,

including Elon Musk's relationship with Donald Trump and Bill Gates's concerns about polarization

and the way in which social media and algorithms are driving that.

But we start off with, well, where he started off.

This is, to begin with at least, Bill Gates's origin story.

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