NYT’s Anupreeta Das on Bill Gates, Microsoft, & Tech Billionaires

The Learning Curve Anupreeta Das

[00:00:10] Alisha Searcy: Welcome back to the Learning Curve podcast. I’m your host, Alisha Thomas Searcy, and joined by my wonderful co-host, Albert Cheng. Hey, Albert. Hey, Alisha. How’s it going? It’s been a bit. It’s been a minute since we’ve been together, so I’m glad to be back with you. That’s right. That’s right.

[00:00:39] How’s the baby? Baby’s good. Baby’s healthy. I guess that’s what’s important. That’s right. Well, congratulations again. Thank you. Thank you. We’re excited for you and your family. And so, we’ve got an exciting show this week. And of course, we’ve got to start with our stories of the week. My story comes from Chalkbeat, Chicago.

[00:01:01] And of course, I chose this story because I was just in Chicago all last week for the Democratic National Convention. Ah, yeah, yeah. And that was an exciting time. But this particular story is about Noble Street College Prep heads back to school 25 years after first opening its doors. And so I chose this story because it talks about Brenda Cora, who was actually one of the original students.

[00:01:27] So the school opened in 1999 and was one of the first charter schools granted by Chicago Public Schools 25 years ago. And so, to have her now come back, she is the chief of schools. Wow. Yeah. So, it was pretty fascinating to think about the significance of a school that started 25 years ago. She was a student.

[00:01:51] It’s a college prep program. She graduates, goes to college, you know, has experiences and then comes back as a principal and now chief of schools and leads several of the schools within the network. And so the story goes on to talk about the kind of the history of this school and, you know, It talks about the fact that the law in Illinois was passed in 1997 to create this new concept, right, called charter schools.

[00:02:18] So here’s the kicker for me. There were two pieces of this article that I really want to point out. Number one is the fact that the article points out this idea of charter schools. emerged out of, quote unquote, the progressive movement and was popularized by Albert Schenker, catch this, the former president of the American Federation of Teachers.

[00:02:40] Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Which I did not know, because of course, when you think about charter schools and you think about the opposition to charter schools, a lot of the opposition actually comes from teachers’ unions.

[00:02:51] Albert Cheng: Right.

[00:02:52] Alisha Searcy: And so not giving an opinion there, but I’m just saying, I did not know that Teachers unions were a part of starting charter schools in 19, in the 1990s.

[00:03:01] So that was some history for me that I did not know and someone who’s worked on this issue for a long time. Yeah. And the whole goal was to create schools free from bureaucracy and certain regulations to experiment and innovate. And I think what I love about that is teachers know more than anyone else the importance of having more freedom to do what they need to do in classrooms on behalf of kids.

[00:03:24] And be able to be free from bureaucracy. So that kind of inspired me to think about the fact that, you know, there was a teacher who really started this in Illinois. But the other thing that was interesting to me in this story, it talks about how the current mayor of Chicago, who, as we all know, is a former teacher union leader.

[00:03:43] Now, the union is criticizing the district’s system of school choice, where it allows families to leave their assigned neighborhood school to attend a wide array of selective magnet charter schools and others, and he says, or they say, that it creates a hunger game scenario for students. So it was a little disappointing to read that and to know that the Board of Education is actually reevaluating how school choice works in Chicago public schools and they’re going to share more details in the forthcoming strategic plan.

[00:04:15] And so my point here is, you have 25 years of this school, 5, 000 of those alumni from this school have earned bachelor’s degrees since its opening. They’re serving 12, 000 students across the district, 17 high school campuses, and now there’s conversation about perhaps limiting public school choice within Chicago public schools.

[00:04:37] Yeah. So, this article, while celebrates the start of the new school year and 25 years of obviously doing great work, it’s also pointing out that there could be limitations coming. Yeah. And that makes me sad.

[00:04:48] Albert Cheng: Yeah. That, that really is a sad thing. You know, I mean, it’s fascinating that you have an alum of those schools coming back to lead.

[00:04:56] And that’s impressive. And, and actually, you know, as you were talking about this, Alisha, it reminded me that we actually have high quality research on the Nobel. Network of charter schools, and they’ve been one of these charter networks that have demonstrated success in improving both test scores, so kind of your short-term student achievement outcomes, and also longer term.

[00:05:19] College graduation rates, college completion rates. This person that’s coming back to lead. I think it’s just one story in a whole group of alum who’ve been really successful and not just at improving math and reading achievement while they’re in school, but continuing to experience a lot of educational success even after they leave.

[00:05:36] So look, I mean, if there’s a reason to keep a charter school network going. You know that high quality research study that was done a couple of years ago. Uh, actually more than a couple now, I guess time has flown, but that’s one reason to keep supporting this network and making sure that more students can have the opportunity to go to that network.

[00:05:55] Alisha Searcy: Absolutely. We must. So, if you’re listening, Chicago, please make sure you keep these options open for all of their students.

[00:06:02] Albert Cheng: That’s right. Well, hey, Alisha, you know, speaking of college, I found an article in Forbes this week. And the title kind of caught my eye. Its Higher Education Changed the Graduation Goalposts. Uh, can we wait? And so naturally I was intrigued. I’m like, well, what, which goalposts are they talking about? And in this one, they’re talking about how, actually, you know, I don’t know your experience, but way back when, when I was in school, the expectation was you would finish in four years. And sure, you could take five or six if you wanted to, but four kinds of was that Default option, you know, everyone kind of went in thinking that, yeah, we’re going to aim for four.

[00:06:39] And what this article is talking about is how we’ve changed that to six years now. And so, six years is kind of this default option or this expectation that we have. The author’s critiquing that and look at the same, I mean, he acknowledges that look, not some people just need to take more time, family circumstances might make six years kind of more reasonable than four years.

[00:07:00] And he gets that. But, you know, he’s, he’s arguing that the. Shift in thinking about six years as the default expectation does a disservice to a lot of other students and families for whom four years is sufficient, um, and he points out how things like, hey, look, a lot of college major programs can be done in four.

[00:07:21] A lot of families go in saving up to pay for four years. And when the student’s not finishing in four, there’s a cost to that. And, you know, I just kind of thought about, you know, even after college and just thinking through our education system broadly, I’d love to see us figure out a way to help all of our young people kind of get started on, on life and their careers and settled more quickly than we do.

[00:07:46] I mean, we put them through 13 years of primary, secondary, and then You know, four or six years of undergrad. And a lot of times now there’s this push to get more credentials after your bachelor’s, a master’s, a PhD, med school is another whole thing. And wow, we are, and I’m kind of, I kind of did this for my life and we kind of make a lot of folks spend many years of their lives, the prime kind of prime years of their lives in school. I wonder if we could do something to help push that down, kind of rethink how we do credentialing and training. Yes. Uh, just so that kids can get started, you know, and, and, and become self-sufficient.

[00:08:25] Alisha Searcy: I like that a lot. I finished college in four years. I went in as; I had dual credits. I got high school, I got college credits in high school, so I went in as a sophomore and I was able to do a double major, but that was a lot of work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In four years. Kudos to you. I mean, that’s, that’s impressive.

[00:08:43] Thank you. But I worry about the expense of that. My parents could barely, particularly my mom, could barely afford those four years. And I had a lot of student loans that, you know, thanks to Joe Biden, by the way, those are now done. But I think to your point, like we have to rethink credentialing. What does a college degree mean now?

[00:09:04] And so extending this to now six years concerns me because we already have college completion issues. Yeah. Yeah. So, you then extend it to six years. What will that do for the cost? What will that do for completion percentages? And I understand that there may be some students that need more time, and I can appreciate that, but I think it begs the question about how we look at the system.

[00:09:26] All together, how long it should take. What does it mean to have this degree? What can you do with it? And I, for one, went back many years later to get a master’s degree. Number one, because I was ready to get out, right? And to your point, get out and see the world and start working and contributing to society.

[00:09:42] So I appreciate you bringing this story. And I think the conversation must continue. As I think about this, I have a 17-year-old who’s on her way to college next year. Yeah. Yeah. She’s a senior this year in high school, so this is a real conversation in our household.

[00:09:56] Albert Cheng: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, hopefully this conversation on higher-ed can keep going. I know there’s lots of issues going on in higher-ed, so there’s plenty to talk about over the near future, I think. Absolutely. Well,

[00:10:06] Alisha Searcy: we want our listeners to stick around because after the break we’re going to have more Anupreeta Das, who is a South Asian correspondent and former finance editor of the New York Times and author of Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King, Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World. We’ll be right back.

[00:10:25] Anupreeta Das is a South Asia correspondent and former finance editor of the New York Times who oversaw coverage of Wall Street. Including Banking, Investing, Markets, Insurance, and Consumer Finance. She’s the author of Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King, Bill Gates, and His Quest to Shape Our World. Previously, Das spent nearly a decade at the Wall Street Journal, where she helped run the paper’s coverage of business and technology, focusing on corporations and the issues affecting them.

[00:11:04] Das was also a reporter at the Journal. She wrote stories about finance, investing, and Wall Street, including a groundbreaking series she conceived and co-authored about family offices, the private investment firms of the extremely wealthy. She holds degrees from Boston University, London School of Economics, and the University of Delhi.

[00:11:25] Anupreeta, we are so honored to have you on the show. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you. I’m excited to be here. Excellent. Well, we’re going to jump right in. So, my first question, Bill Gates is arguably the most iconic high tech pioneer, multi billionaire of the early information age. And you’ve written an acclaimed and provocative biography, Billionaire Nerd, Savior King, Bill Gates and his quest to shape our world.

[00:11:53] Can you briefly share with our listeners how you became interested in writing this book, as well as the big picture of why people should better understand a world changing businessman like Bill Gates?

[00:12:05] Anupreeta Das: I first became interested in Gates in 2014 when I learned about how widely his Vast fortune was invested from land to stocks and bonds to a hotel and about his close friendship with Warren Buffett, who I was writing about at the time for the Wall Street Journal.

[00:12:23] So when the divorce happened in 2021, his divorce from Melinda French Gates, I was at the Times, and I got roped into the reporting of the fortune and how it might be divided. It was also the end of this story. It’s a two-year period during which his connections to Epstein came out, and then he had the divorce and the news of his, you know, extramarital affairs.

[00:12:43] And I became curious about who this person was and how his public persona had evolved over the decades and what it says about the power and influence of billionaires and our complicity with engaging and sustaining those images. So, in a way, I have taken to describing my book as a biography of an image of a man rather than the man himself.

[00:13:06] Alisha Searcy: Very interesting. So going back to the 19th century America and Gilded Age, industrialists and financiers, including people like Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller, they’ve long captured the public scorn and imagination as You’re Robber barons and captains of industry. Can you give us some historical context about these super wealthy capitalists, their tensions and with our democratic sensibilities, and whether the world of Bill Gates and tech giants is similar to or something entirely new and different from America’s tycoons of the past?

[00:13:44] Anupreeta Das: I see a continuity definitely. Anytime you have great wealth at the same time as you have rising inequality, which was true both of the Gilded Age and of the past several decades, those with vast fortunes are going to be the target of ire in society, especially during the Gilded Age and the comparisons with Gates during the 1990s when the U.S. government went after Microsoft. They seem to have gotten there. Wealth through questionable practices, questionable business practices. So, it was about the capture of massive wealth through unscrupulous means, allegedly unscrupulous, and dominating certain industries that gave rise to the term rubber barons. And when the government then accused Microsoft of maintaining an illegal monopoly, the comparisons between Gates and Rockefeller were instant, with the idea being that Microsoft controlled 90 percent of the software market the way Standard Oil had dominated the oil market from transport to refining.

[00:14:44] And, um, if you look at it today with all of the big companies from Google to Amazon coming under scrutiny for their practices. It’s, again, that same idea that some companies have gotten extremely large, some people have gotten extremely wealthy, and that is creating this imbalance, and it needs to be investigated. And so, you have governments, both the EU and the US government, looking to build cases, looking to go after some of our largest companies.

[00:15:13] Alisha Searcy: And speaking of which, I want to ask you more about that. So, United States of America versus Microsoft Corporation was a landmark American antitrust law case at the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. And the U. S. government accused Microsoft of illegally monopolizing the web browser market for Windows. And so, can you talk more about this historic episode in the career of Bill Gates and how this high-profile court case shaped Microsoft and other tech monopolies in the U. S. and the legal governance of software and technology?

[00:15:47] Anupreeta Das: Bill Gates in the mid-1990s, I mean, he was a top, not only corporate America, but he was the richest man in the world. And he held that post for more than 15 years. And so, this was a man who was at the top of his game and Microsoft’s business practices were not, not welcome in the Valley.

[00:16:10] Now, Microsoft was based in Seattle and in Silicon Valley, you had a crop of new young companies like Netscape who were seeing the future of computing in a different way. They were looking at the internet, you know, as the platform upon which the next generation of computing would evolve, whereas Gates was looking at the personal computer, which is what Microsoft had built its entire business on.

[00:16:36] So when the antitrust case happened in 1998, and you have the next two years, Microsoft was entirely distracted just by having to respond to the U.S. government’s accusations. And Gates himself, I think, He was tired by the end of it and his performance during the trial when he was seen as being petulant and arrogant and even debating the meaning of the word, if at one point, I think really was damaging to his reputation.

[00:17:07] So in 2000, he. stepped away from Microsoft as its CEO. And I think it was almost a joint decision. I remember talking to someone from my book who said that Gates very much felt wounded by the idea that the U. S. government was going after one of its shining examples of innovation. And a company that was so, so renowned and so he felt wounded, but also, he had become a distraction for Microsoft. And so it made sense for him to step away. And Microsoft spent the next decade addressing some of the antitrust concerns. And of course, the request or, or the ask from the US government to break up the company never happened, but it was a period of adjustment for Microsoft.

[00:17:52] Alisha Searcy: So, I want to step back for a moment and talk more about the man. He’s best known for being a leader in the microcomputer revolution of the 70s and 80s. As you mentioned, co-founding the software company Microsoft, where he was a chairman, CEO, and president. But can you talk to us about his upbringing, formative educational experiences, and how he built Microsoft and the Windows operating systems into this global business empire?

[00:18:19] Anupreeta Das: Gates was part of a, an upper middle class, privileged family and background. He grew up in Seattle and his parents were very well known in the community. And his mother was a community worker, and she was on the board of United Way. She was very closely involved. With the University of Washington. His dad was one of the top lawyers in the area and ran a huge law firm and he grew up in a very stable family with two sisters, and he had access to computers very early on.

[00:18:52] And this was in the 1950s and sixties where the University of Washington had one of the first. personal computers and Gates was able to walk to the lab and tinker around with the computer and learn, left to himself to learn how these things work very early on. And his combined with his brilliance and this access to technology at a very early stage, well before these computers were popular, I think gave him a huge advantage in going.

[00:19:25] to Harvard and beginning to think about how to build a business and how to use technology to build a business where there was none. I mean, you have to think about in the 1970s, software was something that was free and that’s not what people thought was worth paying for. And Gaines’s biggest success was in marrying That tech brilliance to his capitalist instinct, seeing and creating a market for software and building Microsoft off of that, right?

[00:19:56] That software was the thing to charge money for and the hardware around it could be commoditized, but the software was proprietary and that kicked off the personal computing revolution.

[00:20:08] Alisha Searcy: Very interesting. I hadn’t, I didn’t realize that. And so before I turn it over to my co-host, I want to ask you one more question. In your book, Billionaire Nerd, Save Your King, Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World, you write, we love origin stories of tech wonder kinds like Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft. Tales of sleep starved young men, almost always men, building companies of their dreams in dorm rooms and rented garages. End quote. Could you discuss Gates and Allen, their friendship, their business relationship and the innovative tech culture they established at Microsoft and how the company has redefined America’s wider corporate culture?

[00:20:51] Anupreeta Das: Gates and Allen were friends. They grew up in Seattle and they both went to Harvard and Gates of course dropped out and Allen was two years older. And the story goes that Alan saw a copy of, I think, Popular Mechanics. Don’t quote me in the magazine. But, you know, there was an ad from the computer hardware maker, MITS Altair, and they were looking for someone to write a piece of software to operate the computer. And Alan ended up calling the company saying that he had a program.

[00:21:25] And the reason why Alan called was because he was the older of the two. And once Altair, once the executive said, okay, we’re interested, that’s when they started writing that code using a basic program and then adapting it. So, it was kind of like vaporware today to have something before you actually have it.

[00:21:44] And Microsoft then was born in the late seventies and it was a company where individual competition and a very competitive culture, a very combative culture was encouraged. And Gates and Alan obviously were very close friends, but Alan had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and wasn’t spending as much time at Microsoft as Gates was.

[00:22:08] And at one point, which goes to show Gates’s cutthroat instincts, he argued that Allen should have a smaller team. I’m going to go into a little bit more detail about this. So, it’s a Peace. Calm down toward the end of it, but it just showed you that Gates was very single handed, like, single minded about Microsoft and its success, and it very much mirrored Gates’s personal approach.

[00:22:40] So that competitiveness is very, very inherent to a lot of companies, tech companies and otherwise, but I think I would say that the culture There are more HR practices. There are systems in place where if people feel threatened or unhappy, they can at least go and use those systems. Now, how much those systems are used is a different conversation and I couldn’t tell you about that, but they’re at least in place. Whereas during Gates time, Microsoft’s early years, you didn’t have that at all. Very interesting.

[00:23:14] Albert Cheng: Well, Anupreeta, you just talked about Paul Allen, and let’s bring in somebody else that I think people are more familiar with probably, Steve Jobs. You’ve written, in August 1997, Steve Jobs strode the stage at Apple’s Macworld event in Boston, electrifying the audience with his forceful, clear, and magnetic delivery.

[00:23:33] Gates sat in one of Microsoft’s offices. television studios thousands of miles away in Seattle watching his nemesis. So, tell us about the relationship and business rivalry between Gates and Jobs, and really as well as how did these tech moguls use their media relations to shape their public images and perceptions of their companies?

[00:23:53] Anupreeta Das: Gates and Jobs were rivals. I mean, they were two giants in a fast-growing industry, shaping the revolution. And Apple and Microsoft had partnered at times, but also couldn’t stand each other, both these companies. The aesthetic was very different, and Jobs, as the world knows, was a design maven, and he, uh, really created a desirable product and he thought Microsoft’s products were shoddy and he said so many times.

[00:24:29] At the same time, Jobs had this very magnetic delivery. He was extremely, you know, he could go on stage and electrify an audience. And I spoke to someone who was with Bill Gates during this announcement that Apple was making a partnership. with Microsoft. And Gates is watching Jobs just like excite the audience and like build up the excitement, the enthusiasm.

[00:24:56] And Gates turns to this person that says, how does he do it? And you know, that, that, that was kind of the crux of like Gates’s approach to the media and to his physical and his media image and presence. Now, I think that people have learned the importance of media image, and there’s a lot of training that goes into how people present themselves, both in front of lawmakers when you’re hauled to Congress, and also how you speak to a broader audience. And I think Gates does have a role and did have a role in the tech world in teaching people how to not become that kind of example.

[00:25:40] Albert Cheng: Let’s talk about someone else who’s a central figure in Bill Gates life, namely his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, and you write about her extensively in your book. Could you just discuss her early life, relationship and family with Bill, how they worked together to build the Gates Foundation, which I think many of the listeners are going to want to Familiar with as one of the most influential philanthropic forces in the world. And really, I mean, it didn’t end well. So, you know, how did Bill Gates, uh, I guess, inappropriate behavior towards other women kind of lead to the way things are now?

[00:26:11] Anupreeta Das: Yeah, Melinda grew up, she’s from Texas. And she’s an engineer and extremely bright and has an MBA degree and joined Microsoft as one of the few women at that time.

[00:26:25] And she met her boss famously when she sat next to him at dinner. And their relationship started then. And he was the boss and she was a mid to senior level executive in one department of Microsoft. And I think their marriage in 1994, and she eventually stepped away from the company and they had three kids in 2000.

[00:26:49] They started their foundation and Melinda initially took a less of a, she was a less visible presence in the foundation’s activities. But once her kids were, their kids were older and once the Buffett money. So, Warren Buffett gave, uh, committed to give, uh, most of his fortune to the Gates Foundation during his lifetime.

[00:27:10] And the foundation was suddenly awash in cash and Melinda started coming to the foundation a lot more and Gates had stepped down as the chairman of Microsoft in 2008. So, that was, uh, a new stage in her life and in her public life and she did have to fight to find a foothold at the foundation because Gates was very used to having things done a certain way and meetings were centered around him and designed to accommodate his interests.

[00:27:41] And then when Melinda came in, she had a different style, and she was almost seen as a counterpoint. She had more empathy. And so, it was different, it was different for the people at the foundation to accommodate, to adjust to, but they did. And she really did want to build a presence. She kind of focused the foundation on gender and women’s equality.

[00:28:03] And that eventually led her to create this role for herself as a female, independent philanthropist. Their relationship was very sensual. Both to the origin story of the foundation, and so much so that when they got divorced in 2021, they had kept it a secret. Basically no one knew except their closest family and their inner circle that this was happening because there was a sense that it would destabilize the world of philanthropy because of the influence of the Gates Foundation.

[00:28:39] And the reason why, there are many reasons, and Melinda has been pretty forthcoming about the reasons why she felt like she couldn’t continue in that relationship anymore, and part of it was because of Gates meeting with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, who died in 2019. Now, she didn’t say directly that that was the reason, but she said that was that, you know, and people have told me that, the fact that she told Gates not to interact with him, and he did so anyway, was a contributing factor. And also, Gates’s womanizing and the fact that he had had extramarital affairs was well known enough. Even if it was not part of his public image. And so, I think that was something else that played into Melinda’s decision to eventually leave him.

[00:29:32] Albert Cheng: Well, I want to get back to talking about his public image in a little bit but let me ask you. For some, some more information about the foundation. So again, this is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation based in Seattle, one of the largest charitable foundations in the world. I think their holdings right now are over 75 billion in assets, and they focus on numerous issues, including global health care.

[00:29:55] Reducing extreme poverty, educational opportunities, and climate change. And it’s almost taken on this near omnipotent influence across all of philanthropy. Tell us more about the Gates Foundation, how it works, how it wields considerable power and influence, and talk about its track records. I guess there’s some success in global healthcare. And then I kind of have a front row seat being a policy professor to see some of the failures in American K-12 education. So, what impact has this foundation had?

[00:30:27] Anupreeta Das: The main impact, I think, of the Gates Foundation, now so many decades after its founding, is the way it institutionalized. so called big philanthropy. Traditional philanthropy among the wealthy was more about writing a check, giving money to a hospital, to a museum, letting the experts do what they did with the money that you gave them. But with Gates and the Gates Foundation, there was much more of an effort to be involved in how that money was directed and where that money went and how to assess and what metrics to assess to determine the success of the program that they were investing in.

[00:31:11] Now for Gates personally, vaccines and public health were very important issues to address around the globe. In the U.S. it was very much Focused on schools, but globally public health was a big priority for, for Gates. And when you have that kind of money, when you’re giving away billions of dollars a year, especially in the global South, where dollars go a much longer way, you are influencing the priorities of the nonprofits that you’re giving money to, because often if you’re giving to polio, for instance, a nonprofit that’s working on polio is going to have more money than a nonprofit that’s working on some other health issue.

[00:31:53] So that skews the priorities of a lot of nonprofits on the ground. Now, the Gates Foundation also exerts influence on global policymaking bodies like the WHO, to which it is one of the biggest donors, and it also has these networks and vaccine alliances that it helps fund. It also, of course, funds a lot of research.

[00:32:14] So the visible and less visible aspects of the Gates Foundation are enormous in terms of their influence. And global, they have. About 40 different program strategies and someone described it as having so much money just meant that there were no tradeoffs, right? You didn’t have to choose between X and Y and how you chose determined, again, what happened on the ground, and it reflected the foundation’s priorities.

[00:32:45] And if they thought that this. This program was more important than something else. That’s what they would go for. And then they would hold the grantees, the donees, to very rigorous reporting standards. And they had their own metrics of assessment. And while with private dollars, the good thing is that you can, you know, take risks that government money can’t, and corporations won’t.

[00:33:10] And so there is this ability to take a lot of risks and walk away if a program doesn’t work. But then there are implications of that on the ground. And one of the criticisms of the Gates Foundation is that people don’t quite understand how success is being assessed and that the foundation ignores local realities because it has a very Western and top-down nature of giving money. And so, so there are a lot of criticisms of the foundation, but it’s undeniable that their influence is enormous in the world of global health and development.

[00:33:47] Albert Cheng: Right. Well, so let’s talk about something more recent, which is the decline really of his public image. And so, you know, despite giving 2 billion to COVID response efforts and a lot of other efforts.

[00:34:00] From 2019, if I’m not mistaken, to the present, that’s really the beginning of the dramatic decline in his public reputation. And you’ve talked about his divorce with Melinda French Gates. You’ve referenced the connection to Jeffrey Epstein. How did these events really irreparably damage Gates reputation? And then what else was going on?

[00:34:21] Anupreeta Das: In 2019 when the news first came out that Gates and Epstein had met in connection to philanthropy, it was surprising, and it was shocking to a lot of people because unlike some others who had met Epstein years before he was registered and convicted as a sex offender.

[00:34:42] Gates’ first meeting was in 2011 when it was pretty widely known that Epstein was a convicted sex offender. So that. That knowledge, I think, when it came out, surprised a lot of people because then they began wondering that, okay, was this about philanthropy or was it about something else? Now, Gates has always maintained that he was extremely sorry for having met Epstein and having given him the credibility by meeting with him multiple times.

[00:35:14] But that created a stain because You’d think that someone that is, who is so well known with such brilliance and so many people managing his image would not have that kind of lapse of judgment, right? Even a Google search, and I, I’m still surprised by it because of how easy it is. It is to find stories about Epstein going back to the 90s, that this was a shady character, and to then agree to meet with him because he was pitching a philanthropic vehicle that he thought the Gates Foundation, you know, would benefit from, and Gates reportedly met Epstein several times, and then This donor advised fund on this vehicle that Epstein was pitching didn’t work out.

[00:36:01] But even if there is nothing more to it, and we’ll never know, and I didn’t find this out in my reporting, and there’s been nothing except conspiracy theories, I think the very fact of that connection was very difficult for Gates to get out of. And then in 2020, One, because of the divorce and soon after you had, you know, tales of his extramarital affairs.

[00:36:25] And I remember a Microsoft employee telling me that it felt like God had fallen to earth because here was a man so revered and so held up so high. Because of what he was doing, these things taken together really, really hurt him publicly.

[00:36:44] Albert Cheng: Well, let’s maybe zoom out from just the present and talk about maybe his larger legacy. Really, Bill Gates has unquestionably been among the most influential business elites and public figures in our era. The impact of Microsoft, the Gates Foundation, and his public intellectual leadership is vast as you’ve described. Could you just discuss what you think Bill Gates’ lasting legacy is likely to be? As well as what are, you know, what are the cautionary lessons for us about tech billionaires and philanthropists who exercise oversized authority on democratic societies?

[00:37:18] Anupreeta Das: For Gates, I think his lasting legacy will be his philanthropy. Of course, he is unique in the sense that most billionaires and public figures have one or maybe two turns on the public stage, and Gates has had so many. And it’s not like Microsoft was merely a successful company. It was the dominant company for decades and still is an enormous company. You know, one of, one of the largest companies till today. And Gates then turned and did the same thing with philanthropy. You could argue that he built the biggest private philanthropic organization in the world.

[00:37:56] And that has that this kind of Dominance in public health and global development. And it’s, it’s an interesting comparison that makes you think about who Gates is in terms of his ambition and the success in this pursuit of fame, but also this hubris in a way of knowing and believing in himself and knowing that.

[00:38:18] And he’s talked about this too, how building Microsoft basically out of nothing gave him the confidence and put him in the, what can I do next category. But I do think today, given that he has built the foundation into this enormous organization, he’s focused on climate change, and he is sounding the alarm on that.

[00:38:39] And his legacy will very much be, to me, someone who will be remembered as someone who tried and succeeded to a large extent in introducing a new And I think he does provide a template for other philanthropists to pursue a more data driven philanthropy, you know, that is almost capitalist in the way it measures social good in terms of return on investment.

[00:39:08] And I think that creates a new template for philanthropy. At the same time, I would say, say that the world of health and development is confusing and chaotic and having a very technocratic top-down approach of fix it solve it approach isn’t always successful and can actually have a lot of backlash and like development is so slow.

[00:39:31] And it’s, for instance, the pandemic set back the goals that the world was trying to meet in terms of global health by several years, you know, and the sustainable development goals that the Gates Foundation has adopted very closely as its model. The world is not going to meet those goals in time, and already you have climate change.

[00:39:49] And so, you know, for every two steps forward, there’s a step back, and Gates is someone who tried. I think that is and tried and built something and created new standards. I think that’s how he will be remembered.

[00:40:05] Albert Cheng: Before we conclude this interview, Anupreeta, I’d like to give you an opportunity to read a passage from your book.

[00:40:12] Anupreeta Das: Yeah, I’ll read one that I think captures what I tried to do with this book, using the image of one man. To engage with some broader themes, the evolving image of Gates is much more than a story about one man. or a tale about capitalism and philanthropy. It is a story about American society and the peculiar cultural and moral ecosystem within which we operate.

[00:40:39] It is a story about how we embrace images mediated by the press and popular culture from nerds to narcissists and turn caricatures into truths. It is about our worship of billionaires in whose spectacular success We see so much of the promise of America and the articulation of the ideas we hold dearest.

[00:41:00] The rugged, frontier pushing, fortune seeking, self-made individual, the ragpicker turned raja, the even, fertile earth upon which we plant the seeds of our dreams, where the harder you toil and the greater your success. Scale and luck. The higher your ascent and the bigger your harvest gets. A story is also a story about the swift rise of technology billionaires and their reign over our lives.

[00:41:25] It’s a story about America’s longstanding tradition of generosity supercharged by billionaire money. It is a story about how billionaires actively and constantly manipulate their money and power to hide in the shadows or shine on this. Stage to achieve their preferred outcomes in collective goods such as education and the environment. Plutocrats, whether we know it or not, are our shadow rulers, private actors, shielded by their wealth, and we are unwitting accomplices to the perpetuation of the system.

[00:41:59] Albert Cheng: Well, so we’ve been speaking with Anupreeta Das, who’s the author of Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World. Anupreeta, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation and getting to know the man Bill Gates a little bit more. So, thanks for your time.

[00:42:13] Anupreeta Das: Wonderful. I’m so happy to be on this podcast and talk to you about these themes.

[00:42:29] Alisha Searcy: Wow, Albert, that was great. We’ve all heard the story about Bill Gates and his college dorm room, right? But now it was nice to add a lot more color to that story and really get an understanding of who he is.

[00:42:42] Albert Cheng: Yeah, I really enjoyed that.

[00:42:43] Alisha Searcy: Absolutely.

[00:42:44] Albert Cheng: Well, why don’t you give us our Tweet of the Week? Sure, yeah, the Tweet of the Week.

[00:42:48] This week, actually, you know, we plugged this last week, but we’re going to plug it again. So let me read the tweet first. It’s actually from Pioneer Institutes. Curious about how education savings accounts are transforming homeschooling. Tune in to Pioneer’s brand-new podcast, Homeschooling Journeys, starting September 5th, where Curious Mike dives into the creative ways parents are customizing their kids’ education.

[00:43:11] So, I know, uh, a lot of people get podcasted out. I mean, there’s too much to listen to, but check this one out. Really get to know what’s going on in education. I mean, we’re, we’re in a. The middle of a paradigm shift with ESAs and the rise of homeschooling. So, check out this podcast by Curious Mike, who’s a senior fellow at Pioneer, but also stick around for, you know, our podcasts. Don’t stop listening to Learning Curve, even though I know I’ve got a lot more to listen to now, you know? But hey, Alisha, you know, it was great to co-host with you again.

[00:43:41] Alisha Searcy: Always, Albert, glad to be back and back together.

[00:43:44] Albert Cheng: Yeah, yeah. And speaking of having too many podcasts to listen to, I’m going to go ahead and tease next week’s episode of The Learning Curve, which I’m particularly excited about.

[00:43:53] We’re going to have Professor Richard Holmes, Order of the British Empire. He’s also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the British Academy. And we’re going to talk to him about his award winning two volume biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. So many of you might be familiar with that poet, particularly if you read Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner back in school, or maybe you read it more recently than that. So anyway, I’m looking forward to that and I hope to see you next week as well. See you then.