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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

The Gates Divorce

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

Daily News, News, News Commentary

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Divorces aren’t usually major news events. But in the case of Bill and Melinda Gates, the state of their union is in the public interest. For the last 20 years, the two have led one of the most influential philanthropic organizations in the world. What happens to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation once its founders are broken up? And what does it say about society’s dependence on billionaires that we even have to ask? Guest: Teddy Schleifer, reporter on money and influence for Recode at Vox. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

TETTI SHLIFERS BEAT OVER AT VOX IS RITCH PEOPLE.

0:09.0

So TETTI, how rich are Bill and Melinda Gates?

0:13.3

So Bill and Melinda Gates are worth about $145 billion, depending on the day, how you

0:19.2

calculate it, but...

0:20.2

That sounds like a lot.

0:21.2

That sounds like a small country.

0:22.8

It is a small country.

0:23.8

I believe they're now the fourth wealthiest people in the world.

0:26.8

TETTI found out these very rich people were getting divorced because he set up his

0:31.1

phone to ping him every time one of them tweets.

0:34.7

And it was funny because all I saw was like the link to an image, which I remember thinking

0:41.4

in that split second was someone unusual because Bill and Melinda Gates are fairly traditional

0:46.2

tweeters, like they don't do a lot of weird stuff on Twitter or their messaging is very

0:50.1

kind of practiced.

0:52.8

So the fact that there was a tweet with an image and no text certainly peaked my curiosity.

0:57.6

So I clicked within...

0:58.6

I love that you're the encyclopedia brown of Bill and Melinda's Twitter.

1:03.0

What were the first questions you asked yourself when you read the announcement?

1:08.1

So first, making sure I was not missing the word like not somewhere.

1:13.9

They are not divorcing.

1:15.5

I think this is how a lot of us responded to the news of Bill and Melinda Gates divorce.

1:20.2

Like those two really?

...

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