{"id":3496797,"date":"2023-04-26T12:18:32","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T12:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3496797"},"modified":"2023-05-03T00:23:10","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T00:23:10","slug":"crazy-town-episode-70-kinder-colonialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2023-04-26\/crazy-town-episode-70-kinder-colonialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Crazy Town: Episode 70. Kinder, Gentler Colonialism: Bungling Billionaires and Their Arrogant Adventures in &#8220;Saving the World&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"height:15px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div><div id=\"buzzsprout-player-12715712\"><\/div><script src=\"https:\/\/www.buzzsprout.com\/244372\/12715712-kinder-gentler-colonialism-bungling-billionaires-and-their-arrogant-adventures-in-saving-the-world.js?container_id=buzzsprout-player-12715712&#038;player=small\" type=\"text\/javascript\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><div class=\"gb-button-wrapper gb-button-wrapper-af35d9a5\">\n<a class=\"gb-button gb-button-736fa41c gb-button-text btn res-btn-blue\" href=\"https:\/\/lnk.to\/crazytownWB\">Listen on your favorite app<\/a>\n\n<a class=\"gb-button gb-button-f8db5292 gb-button-text res-btn-yellow\" href=\"\/crazy-town-podcast\/episodes\">See all episodes<\/a>\n<\/div><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-b18365bc\">\n<p>Meet Bill Gates, the philandering philanthropist who attempts to remake the world&#8217;s operating system in his own image. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.<br><br>Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.<br><br>For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/RSIC-Journal\">peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis<\/a> from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD.<br><br>Sources\/Links\/Notes:<\/p>\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Bill Gates, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/633968\/how-to-avoid-a-climate-disaster-by-bill-gates\/\"><em>How to Avoid a Climate Disaster<\/em><\/a>, 2021.<\/li>\n\n<li>Alan Guebert, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmandfoodfile.com\/2022\/10\/28\/given-what-we-dont-know-why-do-we-act-like-we-do-know\/\">Given What We Don&#8217;t Know, Why Do We Act Like We Do Know?<\/a>,&#8221; <em>Food and Farm File<\/em>, September 25, 2022.<\/li>\n\n<li>Gates Foundation, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gatesfoundation.org\/ideas\/media-center\/press-releases\/2010\/01\/bill-and-melinda-gates-pledge-%2410-billion-in-call-for-decade-of-vaccines\">Bill and Melinda Gates Pledge $10 Billion in Call for Decade of Vaccines,<\/a>&#8221; January 2010.<\/li>\n\n<li>Bill Gates TED Talk, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=dz\">The next outbreak? We&#8217;re not ready<\/a>,&#8221; 2015.<\/li>\n\n<li>Erin Banco, Ashleigh Furlong, and Lennart Pfahler, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/09\/14\/global-covid-pandemic-response-bill-gates-partners-00053969\">How Bill Gates and partners used their clout to control the global Covid response \u2014 with little oversight<\/a>,&#8221; <em>Politico<\/em>, September 14, 2022.<\/li>\n\n<li>Anand Giridharadas, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/539747\/winners-take-all-by-anand-giridharadas\/\"><em>Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World<\/em><\/a>, October 1, 2019.<\/li>\n\n<li>Timothy A. Wise &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/sites.tufts.edu\/gdae\/files\/2020\/07\/20-01_Wise_FailureToYield.pdf\">Failing Africa\u2019s Farmers: An Impact Assessment of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa<\/a>,&#8221; Tufts University, July 2020.<\/li>\n\n<li>Anmar Frangoul, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/amp\/2023\/02\/07\/private-jet-use-and-climate-campaigning-not-hypocritical-bill-gates-.html\">Bill Gates on why he&#8217;ll carry on using private jets and campaigning on climate change<\/a>,&#8221; CNBC, February 7, 2023.<\/li>\n\n<li>Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy, <a href=\"https:\/\/darajapress.com\/publication\/post-capitalist-philanthropy\">P<em>ost Capitalist Philanthropy: Healing Wealth In The Time Of Collapse<\/em><\/a>, October 17, 2022.<\/li><\/ul>\n<\/div><p><em>How would you rate this episode\u2019s Phalse Prophet on the Insufferability Index?<\/em>&nbsp;Tell us in the comments below!<\/p><figure class=\"gb-block-image gb-block-image-eadc0d2d\"><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1300\" height=\"801\" class=\"gb-image gb-image-eadc0d2d\" src=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"CT-insufferability-index-1\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1.jpg 1300w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1-600x370.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1-304x187.jpg 304w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1-1024x631.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1-768x473.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1300px) 100vw, 1300px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-804370c4\"><div class=\"gb-inside-container\">\n<div class=\"gb-grid-wrapper gb-grid-wrapper-f48fde78\">\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-629232bd\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-629232bd\"><div class=\"gb-inside-container\">\n<div class=\"gb-grid-wrapper gb-grid-wrapper-7f88ec35\">\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-cbd72d0c\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-cbd72d0c\">\n<p class=\"gb-headline gb-headline-c5808738 gb-headline-text\">It\u2019s time for the annual <em><strong>Crazy Town Hall!<\/strong><\/em> This exclusive webinar on June&nbsp;6, 2023 is our way of thanking listeners who support the show financially. We hope you&#8217;ll join us!<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"gb-button-wrapper gb-button-wrapper-b3e2e76e\">\n<a class=\"gb-button gb-button-98146f92 gb-button-text res-btn-yellow\" href=\"https:\/\/postcarbon.org\/supportcrazytown\">Register Now<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-5110cafb\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-5110cafb\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/CT-hosts-with-tree-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3496932\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/CT-hosts-with-tree-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/CT-hosts-with-tree-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/CT-hosts-with-tree-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/CT-hosts-with-tree-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/CT-hosts-with-tree.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-5e08cfe8\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-5e08cfe8\"><div class=\"gb-inside-container\"><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-d7c3aa7a\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h2 id=\"at-34967970\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Episode Sponsor<\/h2><div id=\"ac-34967970\" class=\"c-accordion__content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/share.descript.com\/embed\/aMvUW1B1t9T\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-ebc14cda\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h2 id=\"at-34967971\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Transcript<\/h2><div id=\"ac-34967971\" class=\"c-accordion__content\"><pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">Jason Bradford\nI\u2019m Jason Bradford\n\nAsher Miller\nI\u2019m Asher Miller.\n\nRob Dietz\nand I\u2019m Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town where the local seed swap has been cancelled for intellectual property violations.\n\nMelody Allison\nHi, This is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in season five, we\u2019re exploring Phalse Prophets and the dangerous messages they\u2019re so intent on spreading. If you like what you\u2019re hearing, please let some friends know about this episode, or the podcast in general. Now on to the show.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nHey, guys, Rob, Jason, how are you guys doing today?\n\nRob Dietz \n\nDoing pretty well.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nNot too shabby.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nGood. I\u2019ll be honest, I spent most of last night on the internet doing some digging on conspiracy theories. I\u2019m gonna tell you why. When I feel particularly crazy I like to look and scan on the horizon to see who\u2019s crazier than me. It makes me feel a little bit more sane.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nThere\u2019s at least one or two of them out there.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nSo I was feeling \u2013 it took a while \u2013 here\u2019s the problem.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nIt\u2019s about relative status.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nRelative status. I was feeling particularly verklempt or something. I wasn\u2019t in a good place. So it took me like seven hours of rabbit holing things. So I was curious what conspiracy theory stuff have you guys come across in recent years? You\u2019re like, \u201cOh, chef\u2019s kiss.  That\u2019s beautiful.\u201d\n\nJason Bradford \n\nThere\u2019s so many good ones. But the one that leaps to mind is the whole notion that JFK Jr. is still alive. And he\u2019s like working with Trump to fight the evil Satanic Illuminati people. I guess in Dallas sometime last year hundreds of people were gathered waiting for him. So the JFK Jr. one is one.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWait. What did they say when he didn\u2019t show up?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nI don\u2019t know.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nTraffic sucks right now. You know?\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWell, that is a pretty good one. My favorite \u2014 I used to live in D.C. and I would always take people to that very, very fake museum, the Air and Space Museum, where they had the stuff on the lunar landings.  Yeah, totally fake.  What lunar landing, right?  That was my favorite is that \u2013 We talked at some point about that documentary, \u201cRoom 237,\u201d that Stanley Kubrick was behind the fake filming of the lunar landing. It\u2019s just \u2013 It\u2019s brilliant.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nThat\u2019s a good one. That\u2019s a good one.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nI wouldn\u2019t put it past him.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI love it.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nSpeaking of not putting past people, I\u2019m gonna go for one that was quite common a couple years ago. It\u2019s still beautiful in so many ways. Bill Gates microchipping us through the vaccines.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nThat one is particularly relevant for us today. Because our phalse prophet is none other than the microchipper himself. Yes, we\u2019re going to be doing Bill Gates. So let me, for you guys and for our listeners, let me just run through real quick bullet points on Bill Gates. I think most of us are familiar, but let\u2019s just \u2013\n\nJason Bradford \n\nHe plays tennis.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nThat\u2019s not true.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, he\u2019s a tennis player.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nAlright. So he was born in Seattle, Washington in 1955. He is a storied computer nerd, probably one of the earliest of that species. You know, he basically made it to high school in time to start messing around with computers. He goes to Harvard, drops out in 1975 to found the company Microsoft with his buddy, Paul Allen. And then he of course, takes over the operating system for most of the computers in the world, becomes the youngest billionaire ever, and in 1995 he became the richest man in the world.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWow, that 20-year run from college dropout to richest man in the world.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah. Well and then \u2013\n\nAsher Miller \n\nAlexander the Great did it faster. Might have been richer, actually.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWhat college did Alexander drop out of?\n\nAsher Miller \n\nHe didn\u2019t need to drop out of college, buddy.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nSo then he goes on and he founds the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the year 2000 or so to address health and education issues. He gets named Time Magazine Person of the Year with Melinda, and with Bono. Here\u2019s a little bit of trivia, the lead singer of U2 jumps in there. And then in 2008, he shifts from being the full-time guy at Microsoft to being a full-time chair of the foundation. And you know, he\u2019s now a big giver instead of a taker, right?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah. No, that\u2019s great. What a storied history.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nWe\u2019re done, right? The podcast is over.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWe\u2019re gonna dive into, you know, there is a little controversy and stuff. He got divorced recently. And so he\u2019s been in the news for that. And also the previously mentioned conspiracy theory that\u2019s popped up in the news.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nThat\u2019s had to be his biggest news story, right? I mean, I\u2019m sure, if you Google Bill Gates, you gotta come up with microchip in the vaccine somewhere at the top of the list, right?\n\nAsher Miller \n\nYeah, maybe a little Epstein stuff thrown in there.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOh yeah, that\u2019s true. Haha.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nAllegedly.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah. Yeah. So he\u2019s got some notoriety in there, right.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nYeah. For me what\u2019s interesting about Gates, just in terms of his like career arc or whatever is like, there has been some mythmaking around him, or kind of a persona that was created. And I don\u2019t know if it was intentionally created or if it just sort of happened. But you know, this whole idea of like, he was this geek, you know, he was portrayed a lot in the media as sort of like this kind of geeky dude that you know, will happen to become the richest guy in the world. And that really hid the fact that the guy was a real predator. I mean, he was a shark. And the practices that Microsoft put into play in terms of like dominating the marketplace, becoming a monopoly, we could probably do a whole podcast just on that in terms of like, false prophethood. We won\u2019t get into that, but you know, like, my dad worked with him quite a bit and interacted with him. That persona, let\u2019s just say, of him being kind of the simple geek or whatever, not so true.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOkay. Yeah. So, the other part of the story about his persona is he was kind of a frugal guy and maybe had the calculator in his pocket and the pen kind of thing, whatever it\u2019s called, and the thick glasses and unassumingly ate burgers, you know, from his favorite fast food joint. But then he ends up building this just ginormous house over the lake Hundreds of millions of dollars in value, whatever. It\u2019s crazy, crazy sized, luxury, private jet around the world. So really, he ended up becoming one of the billionaire class. Really kind of, in some ways, going from this unassuming image to really sort of flaunting wealth in some respects.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, I mean his mansion is legendary. Like 66,000 square feet.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, but were you we\u2019re not even going to talk about how billionaires end up being corrupted by the wealth and just being over consumptive. We\u2019re not going to focus on that.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nOkay, well . . .\n\nAsher Miller \n\nWe\u2019re not?\n\nRob Dietz \n\nNo. Another thing we\u2019re not going to focus on, but just has to get mentioned is he is now the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. He owns 242,000 acres. That\u2019s a little bit more than what you got on the farm outside our studio windows here.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nLoser.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah. Pretty, you know, say what you will about that, but that\u2019s maybe a dangerous thing for somebody to own that much land.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYep. And he buys land around cities hoping It\u2019s going to turn into another city kind of thing, too. They call it transitional land.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, he wants to build smart cities in the desert.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah. Okay, smart. That\u2019s very smart.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nHe\u2019s also a large investor in a bunch of different companies that are working on clean energy technology, so to speak, miracles. He has a fund called Breakthrough Energy. And, you know, he has been quite outspoken about climate \u2013 We could talk about that maybe a little bit later. But his push around, you know, this investment is beyond investing heavily in wind and solar and nuclear. He\u2019s been looking for what he calls energy miracles. So investing in things like that. Which I just have to say, it reminds me of my absolute favorite cartoon of all time by Sidney Harris. Do you guys remember that one where there\u2019s two people at a blackboard? And there\u2019s like this whole math computation thing that happens and in between these two sections there\u2019s like a little thing written on the board that says, \u201cThen a miracle occurs.\u201d And the professor is like, \u201cI think you need to be a little more explicit here in step 2.\u201d\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, Energy Miracles is a really telling term.  And in that book, he goes over this equation where CO2, so like emissions of CO2, let\u2019s say, is equal to the number of people, they call P, times the services per person, S, times the energy per service, or E. And then C is the CO2 output per unit of energy. And so basically saying that you have to multiply all these. All these factors go into how much CO2 is actually going into the atmosphere.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nRight. It\u2019s the number of people times the amount they consume times the amount of energy that\u2019s wrapped up in that, times the emissions, rather than the energy.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nExactly. And in order to get to net zero, which he calls about, we need to get one of these numbers to zero is the case. Like if you think about multiplying, one is a zero. Pick one of the four. And so he picks \u2013\n\nAsher Miller \n\nJust pick them out of a hat.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nHe picked P, right. He wants zero people on the planet.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWell that\u2019s what the whole vaccine is for.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nAnd the buying of farmland. He actually only wants 1. He wants himself.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nHe\u2019s going to buy it all and starve us. Anyhow. Well, that\u2019s a whole other rabbit hole you can go down to. But anyway, of course what he\u2019s asking for is these miracle technologies where we have zero CO2 emissions per unit energy. And honestly, we\u2019re actually not going to get into that, but other episodes will go into how kind of wackadoodle this is.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWait, wait. Are you telling me there might be a false prophet who\u2019s got something to do with the climate miracle tech sector?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nThere\u2019s many out there. There\u2019s many out there.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nIt\u2019s a real growth industry, Rob. Invest now.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWell, yeah. Gates is already investing. He\u2019s a leading indicator of what I should invest in.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nIt is ironic, I have to say. You know, Gates is also pretty influential. He has this like, I think it\u2019s called Gates Notes or something like that. He reads these books and then he writes on a blog, you know, things that he\u2019s thinking about. A lot of people read this shit. And he\u2019s talked a lot about and read a lot of Vaclav Smil books, right? And I find that so fascinating, because it\u2019s like, and the dude could get on a call with him. You know, Bill Gates can talk to anyone. I mean, he\u2019s one of the preeminent voices on energy issues.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, limits to growth and . . . \n\nAsher Miller \n\nWell, he\u2019s more of a nuanced person, I think. I wouldn\u2019t put him in the limits of growth camp, necessarily, but he\u2019s absolutely someone who sees energy as a central, if not the central driver, of society, right.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nHe\u2019s done some amazing data analyses too where he looked at the mass of land mammals and shows that 97% of remaining mammals \u2013\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOh, that was him?\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, that\u2019s people and livestock.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nOur domesticated animals, yeah. In any case, you know, Vaclav Smil, I would say is much more of an energy realist. And apparently Bill Gates loves his stuff but then somehow can just compartmentalize or I don\u2019t know.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, Vaclav Smil does not believe in miracles. Let\u2019s just put it that way.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nYes, let\u2019s put it that way.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah. Why are we giving him a hard time?\n\nRob Dietz \n\nOkay. Well, so we\u2019ve catalogued a few areas we could have gone with Bill Gates as a Phalse Prophet, but I\u2019m going to let you know why we\u2019re picking him for this episode and it\u2019s kind of counterintuitive. The reason we\u2019re doing this is because of his philanthropy and his second career as a philanthropist. You\u2019d think that he\u2019s trying to do good, like I was joking around \u2013 He\u2019s now a giver. Why? Well I mean, yeah, let\u2019s talk about this. I mean, it\u2019s really nice, because he says that, \u201cI believe with great wealth comes great responsibility.\u201d\n\nJason Bradford \n\nSpiderman.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, he\u2019s got Uncle Ben\u2019s wisdom. So that\u2019s good. You know, anybody that believes like that has got to be all right. And he wants to give back to society. What\u2019s the rest of his quote, he says, \u201cIt\u2019s a responsibility to see that those resources are put to work in the best possible way to help those most in need.\u201d\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, sounds fine with me. I mean, good for him.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nSo why are we picking him again? What\u2019s wrong with this philanthropic . . . ?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOkay, well, let\u2019s turn to that \u2013 His philanthropic exploits. Okay. So he actually established the foundation, the Gates Foundation thing, in 1994, okay? But of course, he didn\u2019t quite retire and go full time to that until more recently. It\u2019s now the largest philanthropic foundation in the U.S. with an endowment over 50 billion. And it has been involved with projects related to the eradication of infectious diseases, focusing on things like malaria and polio that don\u2019t get a lot of dollars from the wealthy nations. Transforming food systems, near and dear to my heart, eliminating poverty, climate and energy a little bit nods to that, as well as transforming education.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI\u2019m just \u2013 maybe there\u2019s a spoiler alert, but I\u2019m thinking his way of changing food systems might not be that near and dear to your heart.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWell, let\u2019s now . . . Let\u2019s just go through \u2013\n\nRob Dietz \n\nLet\u2019s just see what happens.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nI will say, so I\u2019ve been involved in nonprofit work since what? 1996. And I think it\u2019s hard to underestimate the impact that the foundation has had in the world of philanthropy. I mean it really sent shockwaves when he first really endowed this huge Foundation. He has so much wealth. He was the richest man in the world, you know. And then he had Warren Buffett throw money in after him and be like, whatever Bill wants to invest in with his philanthropy, I\u2019m gonna back it. And you know, they have been the 800 pound gorilla in the room for a lot of things. And in part also for like their approach to philanthropy and what they expected. You know, they\u2019re pushing for certain measurable outcomes and sort of things that changed the culture of philanthropy a lot.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nHave we looked up \u2013 Actually have we fact checked how much gorillas weigh?\n\nAsher Miller \n\nIt\u2019s a good question. Yeah. It\u2019s probably more than 800 pounds.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nI don\u2019t know. There\u2019s mountain gorillas, there\u2019s a lowland gorillas, there\u2019s male, there\u2019s female. It\u2019s complicated.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWell, gorillas will be our next Phalse Prophets so be sure to get those facts gathered. Well, so let\u2019s dive into his African Food and Farming Odyssey. So the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation essentially launched this group called AGRA, which stands for the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa. Rockefeller Foundation was also a backer in 2006. But it\u2019s two-thirds funded by Gates. And the point of it was to increase food output on the continent. And over the last 17 years, AGRA has spent a billion dollars trying to double crop yields and income for small scale farmers across 13 countries.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nSounds pretty comprehensive.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nPretty big, yeah. And of course, maybe that Green Revolution moniker sent a few shivers down the spine. So the idea is AGRA is reviving Green Revolution ideas, promoting high yield seed varieties that are fed with synthetic fertilizer. And of course, protected by doses of pesticides.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nCan we just make sure that our listeners know what we mean by the Green Revolution?\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, so that\u2019s going back to Norman Borlaug. The idea of, we\u2019ve got to increase, his specialty was wheat, but basically small grain crops. And we\u2019ve got to grow as many as we can, as fast as we can, to support the burgeoning population.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAnd it was a combination of mostly the merger of breeding for the ability to use the synthetic fertilizers. And so historically, the crops could only use so much nitrogen. So if you applied more nitrogen, they\u2019re like, I don\u2019t know what to do with this. Because nature never had that much nitrogen available. But what you\u2019re able to do with the breeding, and what Norman Borlaug figured out was, he could breed for these crops that have very heavy yields because they could use nitrogen, but they also were agronomically harvestable. So part of the problem was, for example, you have this nitrogen that crops get so big, and they just fall over and lodge. So he figured out how to make these dwarf varieties of wheat that would stand up still and could be harvested by combines. But that technology suite got applied then to all kinds of crops, staple crops. Not just wheat.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, pretty much any grain right?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, grains and like soybeans, or whatever. So . . .\n\nAsher Miller \n\nAnd obviously, it had a huge impact in terms of world population and hunger and all that. It was also a vehicle for converting fossil fuel energy in a sense.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAnd it postponed the Ehrlich Population Bomb, right? Sort of that fear got diminished by the fact that you suddenly had massive increases in yields of agricultural products.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nKind of an interesting note about Borlaug as he said exactly that. He said, Hey, this is a good \u2018solution\u2019 \u2013 I\u2019m putting that in quotes \u2013 For the time being. You know, we\u2019ve kind of pushed our problems out into the future. But don\u2019t pretend like you can just keep doing this forever.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWhen I read about Norman Borlaug, I actually see the guy was a very complex human being that understood the broader aspects of what he was doing. He wasn\u2019t a purist, like technology solves everything.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nOkay. Somebody who might not have understood the broader aspects was Bill Gates. Can we turn to him?\n\nAsher Miller \n\nYeah, so let\u2019s get back to Bill and Melinda\u2019s excellent adventure in farming and food production in Africa and why we want to talk about it. So there\u2019s a guy named Alan Guebert &lt;Goo-Bear&gt;?.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nNo, no, no, no that\u2019s Alan Guebert &lt;Ghee-Bert&gt;. He\u2019s a buddy of ours. He writes the Food and Farm File, which is, he\u2019s hilarious. He\u2019s snarky, but super insightful.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nSorry I mispronounced your name, Alan.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, sorry.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI like that. I\u2019m gonna call him Goo-bear from now on.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nCall him Goober.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nHe grew up on a dairy farm in the Midwest.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nAnyway, he wrote back in September 2022 something called, \u201cGiven what we don\u2019t know, why do we act like we know,\u201d And he sort of gives a perfect setup for this whole exploration of people like Bill Gates and the Foundation coming into Africa, and now a quote here: \u201cMost of American agriculture sees Africa as one vast nation and one vast market. It is, of course, neither.  Africa, in fact, has more nations (54), more languages (over 2,000), and more cultures (3,000-plus), than any other continent on Earth. It\u2019s also the world\u2019s second largest and second most populous continent with three times the population and twice the area as North America [. . .]given our broad ignorance of Africa, why do we still think we know what\u2019s best for this culturally rich, incredibly diverse, enormous continent\u2019s farm and food sectors?\u201d\n\nRob Dietz \n\nBecause I have a billion dollars.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWell, so what happened over the past 17 years in Africa with AGRA and trying to export the Green Revolution. So Timothy Wise, a research fellow at Tufts University, said that instead of this sort of doubling, right? There was a 30% increase in hunger across those same 13 nations where AGRA was applying Western techniques. And where there were gains in yields, they could be attributed more to extensification, so the addition of more land under cultivation, than to the intensification, or more crop production per acre.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, and there were other poor results environmentally as well. There\u2019s strong evidence of negative impacts like acidification of soils, because he\u2019s got these monocultures and you\u2019re cultivating with synthetic fertilizers. Same things we see here.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nAnd there was little evidence of significant increases in the incomes or the food security of the small-scale food producers. There was a lot of indebtedness as farmers were unable to pay loans that they took out for the seeds and fertilizer. AGRA farmers were also stripped of their autonomy as they were restricted to using the seeds and the fertilizers that were mandated by AGRA project leaders. And this led to the decline in more nutritious staple crops, so the region\u2019s sweet potatoes and millet.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nThat\u2019s great. Good results.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nBut it was well intentioned guys.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nIt\u2019s not surprising too to know that AGRA has extensive ties, of course, financial ones, with the big agribusiness firms like Bayer and Cargill and, yeah, great!\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah. Okay. Well, we\u2019re just running through things now. We\u2019re gonna go in more critique later. So that\u2019s sort of the basic for their food and farming transformation of Africa, but we\u2019re gonna have more to talk about.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nSo look, if you look at what the Gates Foundation does, this is an enormous foundation, right? It\u2019s the, what? I think it\u2019s the largest private foundation in United States. There\u2019s a lot of areas that they focus on. I want to focus on the vaccines, though. In fact, This is probably the area where they\u2019ve gotten most attention for the Foundation\u2019s work.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nBoth in the real side and the conspiracy theory side.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nYeah. So in 2010, they announced that they\u2019re, and they were doing stuff before this but this is an example. In 2010, they announced that they would be spending $10 billion over the next decade on developing and deploying vaccines in the poorest countries around the world for diseases like polio. They really have a goal of eradicating polio and also trying to figure out ways of tackling malaria. These kill or maim millions of people.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOr just make people sluggish. I\u2019ve known a lot of people that have malaria off and on it\u2019s awful.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nMore than that, though, I would say they\u2019ve gotten attention in more recent years for their involvement in COVID vaccine specifically.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nI mean, to his credit, Bill Gates warned well in advance of the risk of a pandemic. He gave a 2015 TED Talk, for example, titled, \u201cThe next outbreak: Why we\u2019re not ready.\u201d\n\nRob Dietz  Yeah. And they may have been readier than our government or the public because they kind of started doing stuff when the pandemic hit. So, Gates Foundation and key partners in the vaccine work, they collaborated and lobbied for distribution of vaccines. So they spent almost $10 billion since 2020. So they\u2019re really pumping out the money. That\u2019s the same amount as the U.S. lead agency that\u2019s fighting COVID abroad. So you know, you\u2019ve basically got the Gates Foundation doing the work of a government. They set up this thing called Covax, which is a consortium that wanted to get testing and vaccines deployed in countries that are low-middle income. It\u2019s kind of interesting, maybe similar to the farming deal, they didn\u2019t really achieve their objectives. So Covax had this aim of delivering 2 billion vaccine doses by the end of 2021. And it had only delivered 319 million doses. So it fell quite a bit short. And only 20% of people on the continent of Africa were vaccinated as of August 2022.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nYeah, there\u2019s a great piece that was done by Politico and another newspaper, I can\u2019t remember right now, sort of investigating the role of the Gates Foundation and these Gates Foundation and Welcome Foundation jointly funded projects. There\u2019s kind of like a spiderweb, I don\u2019t want to be, you know, conspiratorial minded about this. But of like, organizations have been set up over the years that the Gates Foundation has its hands in, that played this really big, outsized role kind of in deployment. And to their credit, they were trying to advocate to get vaccines and testing in low and middle income countries. But there\u2019s some big questions about the approach that they took. So the biggest controversy of all, to me, is their opposition to lifting intellectual property protections, right? So, Gates has been very outspoken, directly basically, about it. And Anand Giridharadas,Yeah, sorry, Anand. I\u2019m messing up names today. He\u2019s a journalist and author of a book that I think people should really read that\u2019s very apropos of this topic on philanthropy called, \u201cWinners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.\u201d And he wrote a little bit about Bill Gates\u2019 his attitude towards intellectual property of the vaccine makers, right. And he said, quote, \u201cDirectly asked him during an interview with Sky News if he thought it would be quote, unquote, helpful to have vaccine recipes be shared. Gates quickly answered, \u201cNo.\u201d Asked to explain why not, Gates, whose massive fortune as founder of Microsoft relies largely on intellectual property laws that turned his software innovations into 10s of billions of dollars in personal wealth said, quote, \u201cWell, there\u2019s only so many vaccine factories in the world and people were very serious about the safety of vaccines. And so moving something that had never been done, moving a vaccine, say from a Johnson &amp; Johnson factory into a factory in India, It\u2019s novel. It\u2019s only because of our grants and expertise that it could happen at all.\u201d So now he goes on. He says, \u201cWell, who appointed this billionaire Head of Global Health?\u201d\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWell, he did.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nThis was a quote from Nick Dearden, the Executive Director of Global Justice now, which advocates for patent waivers. He was asked that in light of Gates\u2019 comments. And then what he said, Nick said was like, \u201cOh, I guess he did.\u201d\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI would like to appoint this guy. He\u2019s looking in the mirror.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWhat\u2019s ironic is he gives the example of India which is one of the major pharmaceutical producers on the planet.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nIt\u2019s back to this idea of like, we know how to do stuff and these poor countries don\u2019t know how to do anything.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nIt\u2019s just bizarre.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nIt\u2019s on his calendar each day. Appoint myself Chair of Global Health. Appoint myself Chair of the Tennis Team. Appoint myself Chair of Whatever.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWell, you say you don\u2019t want to be conspiratorial, I think that those are the real conspiracies. Like there are people out there with enormous influence and power. And yes, they talk, they communicate, they have webs of relationships. That\u2019s the real conspiracy we should be looking at.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nOh, it\u2019s a web. Remember Uncle Ben.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOkay, listeners, I want to remind you all that I have this paper out. It\u2019s called, \u201cA species level taxonomic treatment of the false prophets, with hypotheses on their origin and evolution.\u201d\n\nAsher Miller \n\nHas this been peer reviewed? This paper yet?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWell, Rob\u2019s looked at a part of it.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nDylan the dog.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nI love Dylan. It\u2019ll go through rigorous peer review by the time it\u2019s on our website. But anyhow, this was a pretty straightforward one and It\u2019s not that exciting. We\u2019ve had some exciting Phalse Prophets, a Cyborgian, Kurzweil was pretty exciting. But Bill, Bill\u2019s a classic Double Downer, alright? And we\u2019ve had them before. And these are basically guys that, you know, they know we\u2019re on a completely unsustainable path, but they basically believe we\u2019re just going to keep doing what got us into this mess, only harder. And they really believe in some kind of technology that will help us get through this but they\u2019re kind of agnostic on the details. Like Bill is just like, invest in all these companies. Energy miracle.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, energy miracle. Magic seeds. It\u2019s all going to happen.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nIt\u2019s all going to happen. I don\u2019t have a lot more to say at this point, but the paper is looking good.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWhat\u2019s the Latin name on that Double Downer?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOkay, This is kind of tough \u2013 Homo deorsum-duplici\n\nRob Dietz \n\nNow see, I thought since you are the designer of this taxonomy it\u2019d be Homo deorsum-bradfordi\n\nJason Bradford \n\nI don\u2019t practice these. I don\u2019t practice saying these\n\nAsher Miller \n\nOh, you\u2019re right that you would have named it after yourself.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nActually, you\u2019re not allowed to name it after yourself. I\u2019ve got a couple species named after me.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nName it after Rob.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nI could name it after Rob.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nNo, no. Okay, so we\u2019re gonna dive into the troubles here with our false prophet and this broken model of philanthropy. But before we really start hammering those points, I do want to say that I think Gates and the Gates Foundation, there\u2019s some positive there, right? I mean, first of all, very, very good intentions, working in parts of the world that maybe are underfunded or don\u2019t have as good of access to resources as other parts. There\u2019s also this issue of trying to invest in things that governments or businesses aren\u2019t ready to invest in. So I think we want to be careful not to just say that\u2019s all bad.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nYeah, maybe It\u2019s more about approach and that\u2019s part of why we wanted to talk about Bill Gates and this approach to philanthropy.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, I mean, one example is, you know, you can think of climate. I mean, you know, his starting point is climate is real. We\u2019ve got to do something about it. That\u2019s what that book that he wrote recently is about. But the Koch brothers or you know, other quote \u201cphilanthropists\u201d aren\u2019t exactly in that camp. Now, of course, at the same time, he\u2019s got his hypocritical sides. You know, he likes to fly around in a private jet. That\u2019s been in the news recently. Like, why are you flying around the world and a private jet and then telling people to reduce their emissions?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, that\u2019s tough for all these super wealthy people. I get it, you know. Not everyone that\u2019s a billionaire is like that, but I see why it\u2019s hard to avoid doing that in some respects.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWell, I\u2019ve been asking why you\u2019re cruising around your farm and that electric golf cart when I have to walk.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nWell, It\u2019s a Rolls Royce golf cart.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOh my god. That thing is so awesome.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nSerious power. Yeah, you\u2019ve got the little champagne holder and everything.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nI toss the fertilizer from it.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI hate it when I\u2019m behind you and all that cigar smoke is just wafting back.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nMy tobacco farm is fantastic.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nOkay, so yeah, okay, dude is a hypocrite, check. I mean, we could say that about a lot of people.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nNot the three of us here.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nOf course. We\u2019re not hypocrites here, no. So I want to talk about philanthropic colonialism. So if we think about philanthropy, and his kind of philanthropy, as sort of an expression of the colonial mind, you know, this idea that, like, you\u2019re coming in to a place, and you know best. You are full of your power. Your sense of, we talked about this, in the case of early colonization, right? It was supported sanctioned by the Catholic Church, right? You\u2019re there to convert these poor humans. So it\u2019s a little bit of that same mindset of coming in and saying, we need to lift these poor people out. They\u2019re losing out on life. On the potential of life, on progress, right? You know, in one case, it was like, you guys are gonna die and go to Hell. You\u2019re not gonna go to heaven. In this case it\u2019s like, you\u2019re not fulfilling what your life\u2019s purpose is. So we need to lift people out of this. So take them poverty and subsistence agriculture and all that.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAccess to modernity is the greatest thing we can give people.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI thought you were referring to, they\u2019re missing out on having a closet just loaded with trinkets and too many clothes.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWe\u2019ll get there. Yeah, I mean, you get them into the cities, you know, you have machines, do the labor, etc, etc. So they get their goodies.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI think of it is\u2026 savior syndrome is a phrase that kind of popped in mind. Like, \u201cHi, I\u2019m gonna come in and tell you how to run things. Because, you know, look at look at how well I\u2019ve done where I am.\u201d\n\nAsher Miller \n\nAnd look, people have written extensively about this and organizations that work on these issues. Like Oakland Institute does really important work in Africa and other places around. It sort of land grabs, and sort of taking people who\u2019ve had traditional ways of living, subsistence agriculture, you know, these tight local communities, and either relocating people to cities, as you mentioned, Jason, or are basically taking these folks and just like wiring them directly up to the global economy. Now you have to be producing for the global economy. As we talked about with AGRA stuff, you\u2019re getting seeds from us, you\u2019re getting all this stuff. You have to use the things that we\u2019re telling you to use.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYou\u2019re in debt to us too. Don\u2019t forget that part.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nYou\u2019re in debt to us and you\u2019ve got to sell to these markets. And that basically, under the guise of saying, oh, we\u2019re lifting up, we\u2019re creating more prosperity for you. Putting aside whether that actually happens or not for a second, it\u2019s the idea that now you have to be absolutely plugged into the global economy, and you\u2019re dependent upon it now.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah. There\u2019s this interesting notion, and we\u2019re gonna get into this in other episodes so I\u2019m not going to belabor it. But there\u2019s the idea in the agricultural world, actually, so it applies in this specifically as well, of the notion of sparing versus sharing approaches to preserving biodiversity in nature. So the sparing approach is what the Gates Foundation is doing. They\u2019re basically saying, when you have people who have to interact with nature for their subsistence, they are destructive to nature. And the world cannot have people doing this kind of livelihood, because they are going to destroy the planet. And so their thought is that we will have them to move into cities, make their agriculture more efficient, so you can spare the space and nature can now thrive. The other approach that you see is the agroecological approach or the sharing approach with nature. The idea being, people can live in place and have livelihoods. If they do it in a way that is responsible, humans in nature kind of co-evolve and cohabitate places.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nLook, I\u2019m in favor of conserving areas and sort of maybe not keeping people out. But you know, like, you restrict what you can do in them. Like a national park or something like that. And we\u2019ve discussed on this show the half-earth deal that EO Wilson\u2019s Foundation supports and the idea of just space for nature. But to take people off of the land and say, you can no longer act responsibly and have some livelihood based on the resources available, that\u2019s utterly ridiculous.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nIt really is insane when you think about it because you look at indigenous communities, and let\u2019s take fire practices, you know. Let\u2019s take how people deal with forests, right? It wasn\u2019t like we had these pristine, untouched forests in North America. It was that the indigenous communities had a relationship with the land, you know. They would practice basically preventative fire techniques and things like that. And now we\u2019re learning actually that maybe we should think about implementing those versus what we\u2019ve been doing. It\u2019s amazing. The hubris of thinking, well we know best, right? We know best on how to do stuff. Rather than think about these indigenous communities, these land base communities, where you have countless generations who have built this incredible repository of knowledge that gets passed down from generation to generation about how to live with the actual land that they\u2019re living with. And dealing with scarcity. And we\u2019re gonna go to them and say, \u201cYou don\u2019t know what the fuck you\u2019re doing.\u201d\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, but how much money do they have? Come on now.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAnd dealing with risk. They also know the reason they don\u2019t just grow one highly productive crop is because they hedge. And so they don\u2019t do monocultures and they don\u2019t do the high yield grain. They also grow these tuber crops, for example. I mean, they\u2019re hedging constantly because nature is variable. And all this worry about the climate, and Bill Gates will talk about how the climate is gonna really harm these people. We need to help them. It\u2019s like, they actually have a lot of the basic understanding of how to hedge risk and survive and persist.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nWell, and I also think about what all that does for the human soul, right? So you\u2019re talking Jason about taking people off of their traditional land and putting them in cities as part of progress, or whatever. And again, you know, I was just saying you have these communities with countless generations of knowledge. And we\u2019re going to look at them and be like, \u201cYou guys don\u2019t know what you\u2019re doing.\u201d We also have, we are a species that has evolved, co-evolved with nature. Literally symbiotic relationship. You look at your gut biota, right? And we\u2019re gonna say, no, we\u2019ve got to take us out, stick us in these cities, these artificial environments, right? And it\u2019s like, no wonder, I mean this is simplistic, but no wonder people are sick. No wonder people are depressed.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAnd now there\u2019s what\u2019s called Nature Deficit Disorder.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nWe\u2019ve disconnect people from where we\u2019ve evolved to live. It\u2019s very similar to, you know \u2013  In some ways, the perfect metaphor for this, perfect in a really dark way, is how we take it. We thought it was wise to take young children, you know, children from Native American communities here or First Nations in Canada, stick them in schools to basically indoctrinate them into western culture. And we\u2019re doing this to save them, right? To help them. And what happened?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nIt\u2019s a good analogy.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nThey\u2019re depressed and suicidal and miserable, and, you know, maybe they turn to dependencies on things. Whatever it is, it\u2019s like. . .\n\nJason Bradford \n\nIt\u2019s very sad.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI love it how we take these concepts, like you\u2019re talking about forest bathing, like It\u2019s a scientific thing that it\u2019s healthy to be \u2013 That used to be living!\n\nAsher Miller \n\nLike a new discovery.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYou didn\u2019t go out and bathe in the forest. You just were living.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nI know. I guess that\u2019s one of the things I discovered when I started farming was how happy I was. And then they started like, \u201cOh, these soil organisms produce this organic molecule that when you breathe it, it makes you happy.\u201d Like, \u201cOh, that\u2019s good.\u201d\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWell, there\u2019s more to the philanthropic disaster than just the colonialism, as well. I think the entire model is built on something utterly screwy. So you have the idea that a person like Bill Gates amasses this incredible fortune by essentially runaway ruthless business practice, right? You monopolize and beat the crap out of your competition.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAnd then you get to play God.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nThen you build a philanthropic endowment and use that endowment to combat all the problems that occurred because of the ruthless run away business practices. It\u2019s kinda circular.\n\nAsher Miller\n\nThat\u2019s the circular economy, Rob!\n\nRob Dietz\n\nIt\u2019s really frustrating.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nIt\u2019s a beautiful thing.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nIt\u2019s almost like this little fiefdom, like as I mentioned, God or . . . Who decides now how all this wealth gets spent? And it\u2019s Bill, right? He\u2019s appointed. He\u2019s self-anointed.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nAt least that guy, as I said before, he has a heart and he seems well intentioned, conspiracy theories aside. But yeah, you can come up with all kinds of foundations that are tax free, you know, nonprofits that are doing just horrible work, like Post Carbon Institute. No, but like there\u2019s the Ayn Rand Institute. There\u2019s all these just wonderful \u2013\n\nAsher Miller \n\nI think, well intended, benign, or ruthless and evil, wherever they are on the spectrum, the bottom line is, there is an accountability there, right? I mean, these foundations are accountable to their own board of directors or trustees, you know. Which are usually the people who have made the money in the first place, you know, the people they know. And, you know, we can have a whole conversation about the decision making and the strategy of foundations to address that. You made this comment, Rob about going in to try to fix a circular economy. Of fixing the things that you basically broke in the first place? That\u2019s a little bit philanthropy as well, you know. And to think that the people that are often the trustees or directors of these foundations, who themselves profited and benefited from that system, that they\u2019re going to look at this system in a way and say, \u201cOh, we can actually address and should address the source of the problem in it.\u201d\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWell, the other thing I think that\u2019s important: There\u2019s a lot of hubris, thinking they know what\u2019s going on. But there\u2019s also the applying of this sort of business model, sort of perspective, to everything. To have to turn \u2013 It\u2019s almost like, these people need to be given these, like the Africa agriculture example, a suite of things they can buy, to grow things they can sell. It\u2019s like, first of all, they\u2019re trying to make subsistence farmers businesspeople. And I think it\u2019s because they\u2019re trying to carry over their business success, the idea that if they have success in business, they know now how to create success in other realms of policy. And I just don\u2019t think that\u2019s necessarily true at all.\n\nRob Dietz \n\n Yeah, I think one of the things that you see a lot is they think profit has to be an incentive for doing something. So you were talking earlier about the vaccine, Asher and how Gates, his response of, \u201cNo, we don\u2019t want to just make this freely available.\u201d Or, \u201cWe need to protect that intellectual property and earn profit, because who\u2019s going to make this stuff unless you can take away billions of dollars?\u201d That goes way back with him. I don\u2019t know if you guys were aware, but when he left Harvard and started Microsoft, almost right off the bat, he wrote this open letter that was really aimed at computer hobbyists, people that were screwing around with programming at the time. And it was to rail against the sharing of software. He was like, \u201cThis is a terrible practice.\u201d And there\u2019s some merit to his argument and that his point was, those of us working on making software, we need to be able to make a living. Otherwise, we\u2019re not going to spend the time on it. We\u2019re going to be off doing something else. So to a point that makes sense, but for frickin sake, like, you don\u2019t have to be so protective of everything that you become the richest man in the world because you were able to secure that intellectual property, right?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYou know, some of the greatest things people do they do because it\u2019s about something they find joy in, they find pleasure in, they want to give beyond their own narrow interests, they want a community, they want to \u2013 So it\u2019s just crazy that that\u2019s what he thinks drives people\u2019s behavior. And one element of what drives behavior is, yeah, I need enough to get by. But most people, this is enough to meet their basic needs, and then they want to flourish in these other ways. So I just think his entire model of what motivates humans is wrong.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nAnd It\u2019s not just his model. I mean, that\u2019s what you brought up, Jason, this sort of business lens to view all of this stuff.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nAnd we refer to him as a Double Downer. And I have to say, I think that there\u2019s a valid rationale for what he\u2019s saying, at least saying in that letter if I interpret it correctly, which is, look, you know, you can\u2019t expect people just to make this stuff and you not pay for it, basically. Because people will start making it or it will be shitty or whatever, do you know what I mean? And in the system that he operates in, the capitalist world, the capitalist economy that we\u2019ve created, that\u2019s a rational argument. You know, we could look at how you incentivize and create a different system where if people\u2019s essential needs are met, they\u2019re motivated to create things and share with the world because of other reasons, other motivations. So I think there\u2019s a validity to that argument. It\u2019s just what you had said, Rob, which is like, you go from that to like, now I\u2019m going to utterly dominate the computer software space, right? And ruthlessly destroy all competition. You know, it\u2019s like, you didn\u2019t have to go that far, dude.\n\nRob Dietz \n\n\u201cHey, hey. I wrote a letter about this, okay. I do have to go with that far.\u201d\n\nAsher Miller \n\nUm, I want to get back to something you talked about, Jason, or maybe you had said it, Rob, I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s convincing through the work that they\u2019re doing in Africa. You gotta get the seeds from the market, you gotta buy from the market, and you gotta sell to the market. You know, and this whole idea that plugging people into the market is the best thing you can possibly do for them. It reminds me a lot of the conversation we had about Bill Clinton where he was really into these public private partnerships where we can meet the needs of society and the most disadvantaged among us by really using the profit motive of businesses to kind of create these new markets or whatever, and lift people out of poverty. And that\u2019s that same sort of mindset to public private partnerships. Bill Gates has talked about this a lot. And it certainly was the approach to the sort of like the COVID stuff and the vaccines. It was like, we have to do these public private partnerships. You\u2019ve gotta get these pharmaceutical companies, and they should be driven by profit motives, and we partner with them as public entities. But always support the profit motive. Always.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nAgain, there\u2019s a logic to it, right? Because he\u2019s trying to invest where a company or a government wouldn\u2019t. But with his investment, he\u2019s hoping to bring them in and sort of spur some broader investment. So I kind of like that idea. But there\u2019s a limit to it.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nWe\u2019re also, as you say, there\u2019s also this role of philanthropy in it, right. So we\u2019re talking about public private partnerships between government and businesses. But in a sense, also, foundations are now stepping in to meet some of these \u2013 Maybe there are these areas where there isn\u2019t profit to be gained, right? So it\u2019s the role of foundations, you know. Which is basically pennies on the dollar of profit that people, individuals, have made out of the system. It\u2019s usually exploiting something, nature or other people, being put to areas where maybe there isn\u2019t a profit that can be had somehow because he can\u2019t rely on corporations to do it. So philanthropy will do it. But never the really the role of government. Our collective resources being put to market.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI do want to protect the forest. So I was going to start a timber company, cut it down, sell it, and then use the profits to buy a quarter of the land back and put that in a preserve. You guys like that idea? You with me?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYou\u2019re an evil genius?\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWell, this brings me to another point, which is this whole businessification. Is that a word? It might work when you\u2019re trying to sell software, or whatever. Basically, you have a very easy thing that you\u2019re after. You know, you\u2019re trying to sell a product or market a product so that you can maximize your profits and build shareholder value, whatever. You know, the thing that unifies businesses, well, that\u2019s so much trickier in the world of policy, you know. You have these huge issues like poverty, or climate change, or the food system doesn\u2019t work, right? And so there are a lot more goals. It\u2019s a lot more complex. A lot more people involved. And you can\u2019t just act like some dictator and go in and fire half of your staff.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAnd often the goals of public policy are different than the goals of business. In fact, they\u2019re the opposite. Right? I mean, selling more Cheetos is not a public policy outcome that we\u2019re trying to achieve.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nIt\u2019s unfortunate because America has done really well on that.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nYeah. And you reduce it down to things that you can measure. And those are not necessarily the things that are actually best, right. It\u2019s a pretty simplistic way of approaching things. You know?\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYou know, with policy, as our colleague Richard Heinberg has talked about pretty extensively, you tend to run into predicaments, not simple problems. These are very, very complex issues. When you try to apply some fix, you often have unintended consequences. And I don\u2019t know, maybe Gates has had a couple of unintended consequences along the way.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nI think there may be a strategy here that we\u2019re not recognizing, which is maybe the whole microchipping people, it\u2019s just a way of solving that predicament. Let\u2019s make sure that everyone acts in a certain way.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nSo that can control them. Yeah, evil genius.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI just take back everything I said about Gates.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOkay, now that we\u2019ve roasted Bill Gates, we get to sort of sum it up in a simple insufferability index reminder, This is based on a 0 to 10 criteria. Zero would be the real good people, like Harry Potter. 10 would be like Voldemort.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nI don\u2019t understand that one. Okay.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWell, he was really good. Or Neville.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nNelson Mandela.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYou\u2019re not very well read, Asher. So I wouldn\u2019t \u2013 You couldn\u2019t get that reference.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAnyway. Hermi-ohni, maybe. .\n\nRob Dietz \n\nHermi-ohni? Ha ha. What was it?  No, you got his disease. It\u2019s Alan Goo-bear and Hermi-ohni. Anyways \u2013\n\nAsher Miller \n\nThey\u2019re going on tour together.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nCan you order that in an Italian restaurant? Give me the Hermi-ohni with the red sauce.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nThat\u2019s a dessert. Anyhow. So what we\u2019re going to deal with is their intentions, you know, are they malevolent, power hungry, selfish human beings? Are they good with a nice awareness for the polycrisis? Personality \u2013 Do you like them? Are they nice enough? Or you couldn\u2019t stand to be in same room. Ideas \u2013 Are they completely wackadoodle? Could they be a fellow of Post Carbon Institute? And then scorers bias.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nOkay.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nOkay.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI want to start. I actually got to see Bill Gates live.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOh, nice.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nOh man. Did he do an encore?\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI know. Well, after we put our lighters up in the air and \u2013 So he came to my college. I mean, honestly, the mythology was so intact because this was probably in 1992, 93.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nSure, you\u2019re still in college.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nHe was like the head geek of the world. Microsoft was probably like the coveted job to go out and get. So he seemed pretty cool in a like geek sort of way to me. And I also just want to say his intentions, they seem good. I don\u2019t know despite what you said, Asher, about probably his geeky persona being a facade of sorts. I don\u2019t know. I feel like he might be a nice enough guy.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nSo your scorer\u2019s bias might be kind of leaning towards giving him extra point.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI don\u2019t know. I\u2019m just thinking on the intentions and personality side I\u2019m not scoring much.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nSo do you have a score in mind?\n\nRob Dietz \n\nBut pretty bad on his hubris and overstepping into places where he shouldn\u2019t be. So I\u2019m kind of in the, I think the 3-4 range.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nPretty low.  Okay. Okay. Interesting. I have a little bias because he is a tennis player. I saw him do an exhibition match doubles with Roger Federer on TV. On TV. I wasn\u2019t there because he brought professional tennis to Seattle, which hardly ever happens. Pro tennis rarely comes to the West Coast of North America. It\u2019s very upsetting. So anyway, I give a little bias there. He\u2019s not completely wackadoodle. He\u2019s a Double Downer so you gotta get a point there. He\u2019s, you know, he\u2019s a little full of himself. It\u2019s obvious. So I\u2019m going to give him a four as well. Yeah.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nOkay, the scorer\u2019s bias is going to come into play here for me.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOkay.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nFirst of all \u2014 intentions, I\u2019m going to score him low on that. By low we mean in the positive way, right.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nSo I think his intentions are actually pretty good. So I\u2019m gonna give him 1 for that right. Personality I\u2019m gonna mark him higher because I have it on good authority that he\u2019s a fucking asshole.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nI see. Okay.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nAt least he was in the business realm. Literally yelling and screaming at people.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nHe seemed nice on the court.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nOh, did he?\n\nRob Dietz \n\nAnd when he was hired to give a speech he seemed nice.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nOkay. So I\u2019m, you know, I\u2019m gonna go for a solid like 2.5 there. Wow. Okay. Okay.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAnd then ideas \u2013 I\u2019m kind of with you, Jason. I\u2019m gonna go pretty low there. I think he\u2019s not a total wackadoodle.. So I\u2019m gonna give him a one. Yeah, so we\u2019re at 4.5. But here\u2019s my scorer\u2019s bias, okay? This is giving the dude the benefit of the doubt because allegations are alleged of other behaviors that if they were true, put the dude in fucking Voldemort territory. Can we just acknowledge that without getting into it? Okay, so that\u2019s my little caveat there. My little asterisk. I forgot about that.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nSo you got him as a 12 then?\n\nAsher Miller \n\nI get him at a 4.5 right now, pending further information that might send it all the way into the 10.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWell, I want to congratulate Bill for being the lowest on our insufferability index thus far. Under a five on average. So congratulations.\n\nMelody Allison \n\nOther podcasts ask for a lot of stuff. Buy their merch, join their Patreon, donate your left kidney. We\u2019re just asking you to share the show. If you\u2019re like me and you find it funny and thought provoking then please tell three friends, hit that share button, and get some other people joining us in Crazy Town\n\nGeorge  Costanza \n\nEvery decision I\u2019ve ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI want to let our listeners know as we get going on the Do the Opposite that before we really get anywhere, we\u2019re going to send Bill an award for his banner score on the insufferability index.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nI think we have to wait until the end of the season.  Yeah, we don\u2019t know.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nOh true.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nAnd crown a champion.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nOkay.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nI think he\u2019s got a good shot at it. Okay, I know what\u2019s coming up.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nHe\u2019s seriously on the leaderboard. \n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, he\u2019s on the leaderboard for sure. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s gonna get knocked off.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nHe\u2019s putting up good scores.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nGood job Bill. What a skewed scale we have by the way. Like if Mr. Rogers were here, he\u2019d be like, \u201cWhat the fuck?\u201d\n\nRob Dietz \n\nI\u2019m the least of the worst. Okay, so in the do the opposite realm, how about if we start by not having these goddamn multibillionaires in the first place?  How about that? Yeah. If we\u2019re gonna allow that kind of business to take place then let\u2019s tax them. And the sad part about this is that even Bill Gates agrees with what I just said. At one point his father was in charge of the foundation. That\u2019s how he started it. He\u2019s like, I\u2019m gonna make the Gates Foundation and Dad, you run it. So Bill Gates Sr., he partnered with our buddy, friend of this podcast here, Crazy Town, Chuck Collins. We interviewed him and he\u2019s on our board here at Post Carbon Institute. And so he and Bill Gates Sr., they advocated for upping the estate tax and Bill Jr.\u2019s on board with that.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nInteresting idea. Yeah, he\u2019s been supportive of that.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nOkay, that\u2019s good.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nSo Bill himself wants to do the opposite.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nIsn\u2019t that interesting? Okay. Well, I\u2019m gonna come at this from the perspective of agricultural food system farming. And I\u2019m just thinking about like, there are all these groups in Africa doing work that is really counter to Gates. It\u2019s almost like you\u2019ve got these like Mothra Gorilla in Africa. That was really bad.\n\nRob Dietz\n\nWait, what are you talking about? Did you just take a Godzilla villain and pair it with a pseudo King Kong?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, That was just horrible.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nOkay. We\u2019re gonna up Jason\u2019s coffee and be right back with more on agro-ecology.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nYeah, I wouldn\u2019t call him Bambi, but what are these two evil things?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah, that\u2019s wrong. Anyway, what you\u2019ve got going on is, there\u2019s people who think about what to do if you have extra money, and you\u2019re a do-gooder, maybe you were in the Peace Corps or whatever. You\u2019re going somewhere. There\u2019s different ways of approaching other cultures, and thinking about quote, unquote, \u201cdevelopment\u201d and what it means. There\u2019s the Gates Foundation way, which seems to be, everyone needs to be like us and modernize and go into cities. And then there are people who actually have a respect for these other cultures, who are who are interested in learning about them, maybe even preserving or enhancing their life, but not in a way that\u2019s domineering. More about questioning and partnering. And I think those approaches need to be supported. Okay? And I want to kind of turn this around a little bit because the sickness we have in our modern world, this nature deficit and our inability to probably do anything functional for our own survival, aside from making money and then buying stuff from the machine, is really awful I think. And if you go to these places where people are, quote, unquote, \u201cpoor\u201d or \u201csubsistence,\u201d sure, you may have a hard time relating to them because they\u2019re in such a different world than you but maybe that\u2019s because your culture is kind of screwed up. And you need to learn from them. So anyway, that\u2019s sort of the do the opposite. Maybe we should be thinking about how to sort of just be a little more circumspect about the full-throated modernism we\u2019re all about. And not have so much hubris but have some humility when we\u2019re looking at these other cultures. Maybe we need to learn from them.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nI think it\u2019s a really interesting point there, which is one point you\u2019re making is that actually this whole thing could be flipped on its head. Instead of us quote unquote, coming from the global north of the west to \u201crescue\u201d people in Africa or in the global south or indigenous communities. That maybe the knowledge transfer might need to go in the other direction. But, at the same time, what I guess I would add to that is let\u2019s not colonize their wisdom either, their knowledge and practices. The approach needs to be one of humility and learning and reciprocity, rather than, like, holy shit, the consequences of everything we\u2019ve been doing for the last couple of centuries are coming to bear on us now.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nWe\u2019re desperate. We need you.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nTell us what to do. You know? Which is still an exploitative sort of approach, you know?\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAnd is there a role for some of modernism to merge a little bit with some of these places and some form of development?\n\nAsher Miller \n\nI think Ray Kurzweil is working on that.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nMaybe. I mean, vaccines might be kind of good in some cases, and maybe some of the communication devices we have. So yeah, I\u2019m not saying like, don\u2019t help in any kind of way. But face it in a different kind of perspective.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nIt\u2019s not like there isn\u2019t a role for scientific knowledge and expertise. I mean, you started off talking about agroecology which is about a kind of farming that takes into account the sense of place, the soils you have, the water, the kind of permaculture types of thinking.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAnd is willing to learn from sort of folk wisdom, so to speak.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nRight, folk wisdom, but also, there\u2019s a scientific piece to that.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nAnd you can do tests. And you can improve.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah. I mean, I see you operating the farm this way.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYou have? Nice.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nI just see him in his Rolls Royce.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nWith the cigar smoke wafting out the back.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nI do take that seriously. I consider it. Yeah, it\u2019s not easy. Because I didn\u2019t grow up in this, you know,\n\nAsher Miller \n\nI guess I would just add, so think about doing the opposite and here we are talking about Gates Foundation of philanthropy. Let\u2019s talk about doing the opposite in the role of philanthropy itself. And I would say almost like thinking about this as sort of like degrees of change, you know one is a different approach to how philanthropy sees itself. And I think we are starting to see some philanthropists who come to their philanthropy with much more humility. They see that the financial wealth that they currently have to share as not theirs to give. So they don\u2019t feel a control over it. They don\u2019t necessarily feel like coming with those resources has to be sort of a dictation on what you\u2019re supposed to do. And in some cases, you see philanthropy actually turning over some decision making to NGOs. Setting up systems where they\u2019re really turning towards experts out in the field, sometimes the very NGOs that they support, to help them figure out where they should be investing. So seeing much more of a partnership. I think if you go deeper than that, you start exploring, what is the role of philanthropy? What\u2019s it born out of? A good friend of PCI\u2019s, Alnoor Lada, and his partner in writing, Lynn Murphy, wrote a really, I would say, profoundly challenging book called, \u201cPost-Capitalist Philanthropy: Healing Wealth in the Time of Collapse.\u201d And in some ways it\u2019s like a love letter to say, \u201cLet this go. This is not yours.\u201d Do you know what I mean? All of this wealth comes from basically the exploitation of people in nature. You have to let it go. And we have to let the system that created that go. And even further than that, it\u2019s looking at one, the fact that we\u2019re relying so much on philanthropy to fix issues that are caused by the economy and responsibilities that the government has vacated. So we have to reassess that. And two, recognizing that the entire philanthropic model is built on growth. It\u2019s built on the whole edifice of it. The whole idea of you have an endowment, you grow your endowment, and you\u2019re giving 5% a year on that. And what you\u2019re actually trying to do is to keep growing your endowment more than you\u2019re spending it. It\u2019s pathologically insane. It\u2019s part of the growth system. And it only works if you\u2019re growing. And growth so far, as we\u2019ve talked about, is built on consumption. It\u2019s built on exploitation. It\u2019s built on the natural world. That\u2019s fucked up.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nYeah. It is.\n\nAsher Miller \n\nIt\u2019s not sustainable. And we have to completely rethink that altogether.\n\nRob Dietz \n\nYeah, I want everyone to know that what you just said is protected by intellectual property. And we plan on selling that, so anybody out there who wants to buy some wisdom, you know who to call.\n\nMelody Allison \n\nThat\u2019s our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app or just tell them in a face-to-face meeting. You can start some much-needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.\n\nJason Bradford \n\nIf you\u2019re like millions of patriotic, overweight Americans with diabetes and cardiovascular disease, you struggle with a painful dilemma. You want to get the COVID-19 vaccine to save yourself from the Chinese Fauci death virus, but don\u2019t want the Satan microchips from Bill Gates running around in your system, stealing your identity, and awaiting the signal from the Illuminati via 5G Cellular to destroy your pituitary gland. Until now, you may have been paralyzed with indecision, but not anymore. Based on the same technology that has kept JFK, Jr. alive and unaged for all these years, Nanosafe is a pill-based supplement, chock full of nanobots programed to scout and scour your innards, to immobilize and destruct the evil microchip trackers lurking anywhere in your holy corpus. Nanosafe: fighting evil and saving patriots with nano supplements.<\/pre><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meet Bill Gates, the philandering philanthropist who attempts to remake the world&#8217;s operating system in his own image. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3496803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[251744,251746,79720,213535],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3496797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crazy-town","category-podcasts","category-society","category-society-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3496797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3496803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3496797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3496797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3496797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}