What is the most important global issue today?
The first question that went out as a weekly bounty, in March 2026: contributors in several countries were paid to put it to strangers in the same week. These are the answers the archive holds, all of them from people who were asked on the street with no warning.
Nobody named the same thing twice. The answers run from the price of a place to live to the temperature of the planet to the people who raise everybody else, and the one that took longest to arrive, from a man who had spent twenty minutes on grief first, was a single word.
Who answered, and what did they say?
These are the speakers’ own words, as they said them. We have not checked their claims.
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Length 1:04
Housing and finding jobs.
“I would say housing and finding jobs.”
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Length 1:47
Looking abroad instead of at home.
“I’d say the biggest problem right now is thinking the bigger problems are outside of our country and focusing on, you know, um, international interests instead of helping the people here.”
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Length 10:16
Education inequality.
“like the pipeline for social mobility especially in our country”
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Length 5:47
Black women.
“at any given time throughout history unfortunately and fortunately is black women … We are mothers even when we aren’t mothers, we are mothers.”
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Length 9:30
Global warming, because the Earth is alive.
“And I say that because the Earth is alive. … If the Earth was dead, we wouldn’t be here.”
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Length 8:11
The war.
“I would say probably like the war with Israel. Like cuz it’s affecting everybody.”
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Length 24:10
Harmony.
“Global harmony. … There’s enough hate in the world.”
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Length 5:42
Not an equitable world, for anyone.
“Biggest issue in the world right now, I would just say it’s just not a very equitable world for anyone, you know? It’s impossible. And it’s impossible everywhere.”
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Length 2:36
War, because it could end everybody’s life.
“I feel like the most important issue or globally would be war because it could end everybody’s life.”
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Length 3:22
Politics, dividing many cultures into two.
“it’s really just trying to divide two people. It’s really many people, different cultures, but it’s trying to divide them into two.”
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Length 2:20
Get ICE out.
“probably just get ice out. That’s about it for me.”
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Length 10:40
People not letting people live; division.
“We’re so focused on what divides us That it causes so much conflict in the world”
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Length 10:40
People treating other people’s business as their own.
“it comes down to people thinking other people’s business is their business”
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Length 2:53
Hard to name one for the whole world. Theirs is the government.
“It’s so hard to say like for the world, but like I mean Trump’s a big issue for our world”
What else has the archive asked?
- Is the internet good for us? 11
- What made you smile today? 17
- What is Ethereum? 10
- What do you think of the United States? 13
- How has the place you live changed in your lifetime? 8
- Do you have a message for the builders? 9
- What would you say to someone under ten? 12
- If you could ask people around the world one question, what would you ask them? 32
Every answer on these pages is a quote checked against the transcript of the video it came from. To put a question to your own street, see One Question. To find a word across every transcript, search.