Hi everyone, welcome back to Michael and us, 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 Sloane 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's

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 Michael and us.

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.

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