Hello, it's Chris Anderson here. You're about to hear a talk from Bill Gates at TED 2009.

He tries to convince the audience to help himself to massive global challenges, using a technique

that's, well, a little unorthodox. Afterwards, please check out the TED interview, the podcast

series that I host, where I sit down with Bill for a more intimate

conversation to try to understand topics like how he convinces billionaires to share their

wealth and how he thinks that ultra-rich should address inequality. That's the TED interview.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

I wrote a letter last week talking about the work of the foundation, sharing some of the

problems. And Warren Buffett had recommended I do that, being honest about what was going well,

what wasn't, and making it kind of an annual thing. A goal I had there was to draw more people in to work on those problems.

Because I think there are some very important problems that don't get worked on naturally.

That is, the market does not drive the scientists, the communicators, the thinkers, the governments to do the right

things. And only by paying attention to these things and having brilliant people who care

and draw other people in, can we make as much progress as we need to. So this morning I'm going

to share two of these problems and talk about where they stand.

But before I dive into those, I want to admit that I am an optimist. Any tough problem I think it can be solved.

And part of the reason I feel that way is looking at the past. Over the last century, average lifespan has more than doubled.

Another statistic, perhaps my favorite, is to look at childhood deaths. As recently as 1960,

110 million children were born, and 20 million of those died before the age of five.

Five years ago, 135 million children were born, so more, and less than 10 million of them

died before the age of five.

So that's a factor to reduction in the childhood death rate.

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