The Hundred Million Dollar Question - Part Two
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 6 September 2017
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What’s the best way to spend $100 million to fix one huge problem in the world today? That is the challenge laid down by the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, distributors of the “genius grant”. Ed Butler and a panel of expert guests hear the details of four of the final eight challengers, with ideas to transform the quality of the food we eat and to train eye surgeons to restore sight to vast numbers in Nepal, Ethiopia and Ghana. Is $100 million enough to tackle these challenges and what are the consequences, intended or not, of philanthropy on such a big scale?
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Ed Butler and today on BBC World Service we do have a rather big question for you. |
| 0:07.0 | A very big question. A hundred million dollar question. what problem can you solve? |
| 0:26.0 | That's Cecilia Conrad of the MacArthur Foundation, one of America's largest private philanthropic organizations. |
| 0:30.0 | It's posing the question by launching the 100 and change competition. |
| 0:35.0 | The aim to place one really big financial bet on a single proposal. |
| 0:40.0 | And the idea is to solve aous challenge facing the world today. |
| 0:44.4 | You get a hundred million dollars to do it. |
| 0:47.4 | Out of nearly 2,000 applications, |
| 0:50.6 | the MacArthur Foundation's narrowed those wannabe proposals down to just |
| 0:54.4 | eight, and we're working our way through them in two BBC programs, as the Foundation pushes |
| 1:00.0 | towards selecting a single winner by the end of this year. |
| 1:03.6 | Cecilia Conrad says that even before anyone's won, |
| 1:07.0 | the project has already got applicants thinking bigger |
| 1:10.1 | than they ever did before. |
| 1:11.5 | Some have told us they found that they were able to sharpen their thinking about their project |
| 1:17.0 | and it also encouraged them to think bigger in some cases. |
| 1:20.0 | Like what if we really tried to solve the problem as opposed to just keeping it at a |
| 1:24.4 | manageable level over a longer period of time? |
| 1:27.4 | So all going well it seems according to the MacArthur Foundation last week we |
| 1:31.5 | featured four of the eight semi-finalists in contention. |
| 1:35.9 | Their aims were to tackle the problems of child refugee education, river blindness in Nigeria, |
| 1:41.4 | infant mortality in Africa, and access to better diagnosis and medical |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.