The documentary "toggles between [Gates'] storybook upper-middle-class childhood, the creation of Microsoft, and his current status as the world’s second-richest man."[3] The opening sequence features a montage of archive footage, including Gates being caked in Belgium by Noël Godin, while on a visit to European Union officials.
Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates was released on September 20, 2019 on Netflix.[1] The release came after a summer of "unusually bad press" in which "The New Yorker published emails from the MIT Media Lab suggesting that Gates was "directed" by the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to donate $2 million to the institution (Gates' representative has pushed back on that characterization), and activists have organized protests and petitions against the Gates Foundation's decision to give Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a humanitarian award."[4]
Kent Evans, a teenage computer expert and friend of Bill Gates dies in an accident in 1972.
The second episode focuses on Gates' work to eradicate polio in Nigeria and advance polio vaccination, also exploring his youth and friendships, for example with Kent Evans and with Paul Allen, later the Microsoft co-founder.[5]
One review in 2019 said "Inside Bill’s Brain often feels more superficial than it actually is because it switches topics so freely". Much of this documentary is about his charity work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, not about his life, personality, or beliefs.[6] The same review said the second episode is the best one as it comes closest to "decoding" Gates.[6]
According to The Nation, "The documentary’s blind spots are all the more striking in light of the timing of its release, just as news was trickling out that Bill Gates met multiple times with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein." The documentary features an interview with Bernie Noe, a friend of Gates, but "Guggenheim doesn’t tell audiences that Noe is the principal of Lakeside School, a private institution to which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given $80 million. The filmmaker also doesn’t mention the extraordinary conflict of interest this presents: The Gateses used their charitable foundation to enrich the private school their children attend."[7]
