Desert Island Discs

Bill Gates

Radio 4 Series 1 Episode 1
First broadcast 31st January 2016, 15:00
Duration: 35:17
Kirsty Young interviews entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates.

Clips from this programme

Opening Title Music-Desert Island Discs, Bill Gates

Duration: 00:16

Introduction-Kirsty Young interviews entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates: Microsoft & Charitable Foundation. Code

Duration: 01:17

Bill Gates: Timed in slots, from Microsoft to the Foundation, the Digital Revolution (Desert Island Discs)

Duration: 02:24

Desert Island Discs, Bill Gates- Music no 1: Under Pressure, David Bowie & Queen

Duration: 00:59

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, malaria, polio, HIV

Duration: 02:55

Desert Island Discs, Bill Gates- Music no 2: Willy Nelson, Blue Skies

Duration: 01:10

Bill Gates: Family, when Bill was young

Duration: 02:54

Desert Island Discs, Bill Gates- Music no 3: Ed Sheeran, Sing

Duration: 01:05

Bill Gates: Computers inspire him. Lakeside School, Paul Allen, girls, Harvard

Duration: 03:30

Desert Island Discs, Bill Gates- Music no 4: Jimi Hendrix, Are you Experienced

Duration: 01:05

Bill Gates: Paul Allen's discovery of a computer from the Hobbyist magazine, 1974, leaving Harvard for Microsoft, Apple II, Porsche

Duration: 02:45

Desert Island Discs, Bill Gates- Music no 5: U2, One

Duration: 01:04

Bill Gates: First 10 years of Microsoft, work standards, Windows 95, ruthless, low prices, relationship with Steve Jobs

Duration: 03:09

Desert Island Discs, Bill Gates- Music no 6: Beatles, Two of Us

Duration: 01:05

Bill Gates: Married to Melinda since 1994, Foundation criticism

Duration: 03:09

Desert Island Discs, Bill Gates- Music no 7: Sound Of Music, How Can Love Survive

Duration: 01:21

Bill Gates: Richest man in the world: Guilty pleasure? Why is he the way he is? Intensity, self-critical

Duration: 01:35

Desert Island Discs, Bill Gates- Music no 8: Hamilton, My Shot

Duration: 01:05

Bill Gates: Desert Island Discs book choice: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature. Luxury: The learning Company DVDs. Best Music: Willy Nelson, Blue Skies

Duration: 01:17

End Title Music & Credits

Duration: 01:13

Desert Island Discs

Dame Wendy Hall

First broadcast: 1st August 2014
Duration 31:14

Fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society, Dame Wendy fought long and hard to prove that her type of web science was highly significant and here to stay. If algebraic topology and open hypermedia systems really aren't your thing, Dame Wendy is also in demand as a brilliant communicator on, what can seem to outsiders to be, impenetrable topics. Her parents were from humble beginnings and it was clear from the get-go that their first born had a budding flair for numbers: aged six she was charged with teaching a group of schoolmates maths. The first in her family to go to University she rejected Cambridge, judging it "too stuffy". She says, "I get too excited about stuff. I love my life and am passionate about web science, women in science and shopping". Producer CATHY DRYSDALE

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Bill Gates

First broadcast: 31st January 2016
Duration 35:17

Kirsty Young interviews entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates.

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Demis Hassabis

First broadcast: 21st May 2017
Duration 36:00

Kirsty Young's castaway is Dr Demis Hassabis. An artificial intelligence researcher and co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, he is also a neuroscientist, a computer games designer, an entrepreneur, and in his youth, a world-class chess player. After taking his A Levels two years early, before going to university he worked on one of the most successful computer games of the 1990s, Theme Park. He graduated from Cambridge with a double first, and returned to the computer games industry, founding his own company in his early twenties. His passion had long been artificial intelligence and he says everything he's done has been part of a long-term plan to "solve intelligence" and then use intelligence "to solve everything else". He gained a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience where he deliberately chose to study topics where AI had failed so far: memory and imagination. After stints at MIT and Harvard, he co-founded his company in 2010, which was then acquired by Google in January 2014. In March 2016 their computer programme, AlphaGo, beat a world champion Go player at the game having taught itself how to play through a combination of two techniques - deep learning and reinforcement learning.

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