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Welcome to The Atlantic interview. I'm Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic.

Bill and Melinda Gates are now more than 20 years into a project in which they're trying to give away all of the money that Bill made when he founded and grew Microsoft into one of the world's largest corporations.

They still have billions of dollars to go, but they've already spent billions working against malaria and other infectious diseases, helping to improve schools and trying to alleviate extreme poverty.

Every year, Bill and Melinda Gates write a letter to the public about their projects.

And this year, the letter is even for them, unusually optimistic.

But, of course, I'm judging that against my pessimism.

I've spoken to Bill Gates repeatedly in the past, and I bring my pessimism to his optimistic view, and I try to convince him that he's wrong to be so optimistic.

And he tries to convince me to be a little bit brighter about the world.

You know, if you go back in time, the primary thing we had to do was try and grow enough food,

and there were regular famines and, you know, high levels of violence and low levels of literacy.

You know, now the progress in terms of tools of health, whether it's in rich countries or all other countries has been very phenomenal.

You know, our awareness of the gap that 5 million children still die before the age of 5,

you know, that's horrific.

So there's nothing to be complacent about.

So being an optimist isn't, you know, saying we don't need to solve problems, but human systems, including

science and markets and governments and philanthropy, have improved the key objective measures

...