Filed by KOSU News in Art & Life.
January 19, 2013

Back in the early 1990s, Melinda French was a rising star at a software company when the boss asked her out on a date. This was complicated because he was her boss, and frankly, he was kind of a nerd. But they fell in love and got married, and decided to raise a family, retire from the business, and in their spare time give away more money to charity than anyone else in the history of the world.

Melinda Gates is the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she focuses on family planning, agriculture, nutrition and U.S. education. (That nerdy boss, who’s now her husband, turned out to be Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.) We’ve invited her to play a game called “But I meant well, your Majesty.” Three questions about gifts given to Queen Elizabeth II.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support for NPR and Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me. But as host Peter Sagal notes, Melinda Gates appears in this segment “because there’s nothing more hilarious than her foundation’s work to fight poverty and disease worldwide.” [Copyright 2013 National Public Radio]