. >> john fahey, the president of national geographic, says his organization's mission is to "inspire people to care about the planet." he hopes the bee will "foster a life long passion for learning about other cultures." here's how it works. the competition starts in schools. students compete against their classmates, and the winner then advances to the statewide competition. one winner from each state gets a ticket to washington, d.c., to compete at a national level. in all, four million students participated in the bee this year. >> i got interested in geography because i've traveled to many places around the world, like france, germany, singapore, australia. >> that's aadith moorthy, a grand champion. he says it wasn't easy to get to the top. >> well, there was a lot of hard work. i prepared 20 facts a day for 4 months, and i studied those facts. i learned that there are a lot of things in geography that i don't know. >> so, he developed a system for remembering some of the hardest facts. >> i think the most challenging thing is learning place names and how to pronounce them. you