‘Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates’ Premieres on Netflix

hcs_$reboot shared this report about Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates, a new three-part documentary that debuted Friday on Netflix from Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim: The Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist is asked what his worst fear is. It’s not family tragedy or personal pain. “I don’t want my brain to stop working,” he responds… A portrait emerges of a visionary who gnaws on his eyeglasses’ arms, downs Cokes and is relentlessly optimistic that technology can solve social ills. He is also someone who reads manically — he’ll scrutinize the Minnesota state budget for fun — and who is a wicked opponent at cards… While the series is largely sympathetic toward its subject, Guggenheim nevertheless presses Gates on everything from the federal antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s to his relationship with his mother. In a phone interview, Gates acknowledged that he balanced the camera’s intrusion with the chance to tell the world — and recruit help — about his efforts to help the planet and the poor… Each episode in the series introduces three huge global issues the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has tackled recently — safe sanitation technology, polio eradication and nuclear power — and then switches back in time to see how Gates solved other complex issues in his life as a younger man. “The series doesn’t do a traditional cradle-to-grave portrait of him. He wasn’t interested in that. I wasn’t interested in that,” said the filmmaker. Instead, he wanted to find out the source of his relentless optimism and his push to do all these great things…. Gates himself said he appreciated Guggenheim serving as a reality check for many of the seemingly intractable public health issues that his foundation has tackled. “I’m not that objective. It was interesting, through Davis’ eyes, to have him say, ‘Are you sure?’ Well, I’m not sure,” said Gates. “So I thought that was good. It made me step back.” At one point, Gates admits to eating Tang straight out of the jar.