Why Bill Gates is worried

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, News Commentary, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2018

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“To put it bluntly,” wrote Bill and Melinda Gates in their foundation’s annual Goalkeepers Report, “decades of stunning progress in the fight against poverty and disease may be on the verge of stalling. This is because the poorest parts of the world are growing faster than everywhere else; more babies are being born in the places where it’s hardest to lead a healthy and productive life.” There is no topic in the philanthropic world more fraught than population growth. The history of efforts to analyze and address it is filled with bad predictions and cruel solutions. The Gateses, though, are trying to take a different approach to the issue. Rather than seeing a population problem in the demographic projections, they’re framing it as a poverty problem — and, for that matter, an opportunity. In this conversation, I talk with Bill Gates about the report and about much more: the geographic and political forces that have held African development back, whether economic growth brings political freedom, the risks posed by artificial intelligence, and how we should weigh future human lives and current animal suffering. This conversation also marks the launch of a new Vox podcast and section, Future Perfect, which focuses on evidence-based ways to make the world a better place. You can find the section at Vox.com, and you can find the podcast, which is hosted by my colleague and friend Dylan Matthews, wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy! Recommended books: The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness by Andy Puddicombe Educated by Tara Westover Big Debt Crises by Ray Dalio Find the Future Perfect podcast on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ART19 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for the show comes from Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice produced with Vox Creative.
0:07.0	Thousands of Afghans were forced to flee their homes and fear for their lives when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021.
0:14.0	The UK government pledged to take in 20,000 of them as refugees.
0:19.0	But in the first year, only 22 Afghans have been approved for asylum in the UK.
0:23.0	So what happened?
0:25.0	And what does this mean for the tens of thousands of people left behind?
0:28.0	Hear that story on the latest episode of Into the Mix. Subscribe now.
0:58.0	The whole lot of collaboration, the possibilities really do become endless.
1:03.0	Atlassian for projects impossible alone.
1:08.0	If there was a philanthropist 500 years ago that said, no, I'm not going to feed the poor, I'm going to worry about the existential risk.
1:16.0	I doubt their prediction would have made any difference in terms of what came later.
1:28.0	Hello, welcome to The Clanch on the Vox Media Podcast Network.
1:37.0	I begin with an announcement that will be exciting to a couple of you.
1:41.0	We're looking for an executive producer of audio for Vox's podcast.
1:44.0	This is a senior job. It'll be driving the editorial direction of our whole podcast operation.
1:48.0	And in that role, a big piece of it will be working with me on this show.
1:52.0	I would love someone who knows the show, who his idea is about where it could go, what it could become, who should be on it.
1:56.0	You can find the job listing by going to Vox Media.com slash careers.
2:01.0	Again, that is Vox Media.com slash careers scroll all the way down to studio job listings and you'll see the job.
2:06.0	Today's show. Today's show is special.
2:08.0	It coincides with some launches for us here at Vox of a new section called Future Perfect and of a new podcast called Future Perfect.
2:15.0	You can subscribe to Future Perfect wherever you get this podcast.
	...

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