The Gates Divorce
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2021
⏱️ 24 minutes
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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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Teddy Schlafer's beat over at Vox is rich people. |
| 0:09.0 | So, Teddy, 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 calculate it. |
| 0:20.1 | That sounds like a lot. That sounds like a |
| 0:21.8 | small country. It is a small country. I believe they're now the fourth wealthiest people in the |
| 0:25.8 | world. Teddy found out these very rich people were getting divorced because he set up his phone |
| 0:31.4 | to ping him every time one of them tweets. 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 somewhat unusual because Bill and Melinda Gates are fairly |
| 0:45.3 | traditional tweeters. |
| 0:46.9 | Like they don't do a lot of weird stuff on Twitter. |
| 0:49.3 | Their messaging is very kind of practiced. |
| 0:52.6 | So the fact that there was a tweet with an image and no text certainly |
| 0:56.2 | piqued my curiosity. So I clicked within. I love that you're the Encyclopedia Brown of Bill and |
| 1:01.7 | Melinda's Twitter. What were the first questions you asked yourself when you read the announcement? |
| 1:08.0 | So first, making sure I was not missing the word like not somewhere. |
| 1:12.8 | You know, 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. |
| 1:20.0 | Like, those two? Really? |
| 1:22.6 | Bill Gates isn't Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. |
| 1:26.8 | And then that initial shock was followed by a big question. |
| 1:31.5 | What's going to happen with all that money? |
| 1:33.8 | Tons of private people get divorced and it's none of our business. |
... |
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