Bill Gates

TRANSCRIPT: In their annual letter and in this interview with Takeaway Host John Hockenberry, Bill and Melinda Gates examine three particular myths: That poor countries are doomed to ...

Since launching their foundation in 2000, Bill and Melinda Gates have granted nearly $30 billion to organizations and individuals working to eradicate poverty. In an interview on Tues...

How do you raise a child who's going to grow up to be wildly successful? (And maybe even a centibillionaire?) That's a version of the question every parent asks themselves. Every parent wants their kids to be successful, to be wise, to be decent people. Very few, when their children are born, think, “I want my kid to be the world’s first centibillionaire.”

Everyone from scientists to political pundits to movie stars to just plain folks seems to have an idea about how to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico these days. Nuclear weapons, hydraulic pipes, bails of hay, and high tech water cleaning systems have all been put on the table. Takeaway listeners join the fray with some of their proposals, including cameo appearances by Bill Gates and Samantha Bee.  

 

[Excerpted from Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime, by Bill Gates, Sr, Bill Gates, Jr.]

Some Second Thoughts About Thinking

In the early days of Microsoft’s success, when my son’s name was starting to become known to the world at large, everybody from reporters at Fortune magazine to the checkout person at the local grocery store would ask me, “How do you raise a kid like that? What’s the secret?”

At those moments I was generally thinking to myself, “Oh, it’s a secret all right . . . because I don’t get it either!”

 

Bill Gates has given us Microsoft, but his father Bill Gates Sr. is no slouch either.