Listener supported, WNYC Studios.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Long before Mark Zuckerberg was toying with something called the Facebook as a Harvard student,

and before Elon Musk ever dreamed of self-driving cars and conquering space, Bill Gates was running Microsoft.

Windows established itself as the dominant operating system for most of the world's personal

computers.

Gates was the avatar of a new breed, the tech mogul.

And for a long time, he was rated the world's wealthiest person.

His new memoir, source code, explains just how he got there.

Microsoft remains one of the world's most valuable companies.

But for nearly 20 years since stepping back at Microsoft, Bill Gates has devoted himself almost entirely to philanthropy.

The Gates Foundation is one of the largest non-profits funding public health around the globe.

And that's made him, maybe to his surprise, a divisive figure, particularly where vaccines are concerned. It's also

put him in a tricky spot politically. The Foundation needs to work closely with the federal government

on public health. And yet, Gates did not join Musk, Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos at the inauguration.

And I should note here that Bill Gates and I talked just before the funding freeze last week

had thrown so many agencies, including public health programs, into a state of chaos.

You know, at a certain point, it emerged that you donated tens of millions of dollars to the effort to elect Kamalares.

Donald Trump won, and we are now witnessing many of your colleagues in the tech world at the highest level,

Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, flocking to Mara Lago and want to be as close to power

as possible.

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