Head of TED, Chris Anderson, on TED’s new chapter

0:00This message comes from Mint Mobile. Starting at$15 a month, make the switch at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment for three months. Five gigabyte plan equivalent to$15 a month. Taxes and fees extra. First three months only. See terms. Hey, TED Radio Hour listener, it's Manoush. And today we are going behind the scenes a bit with an update about TED. So TED is a nonprofit and it partners with NPR to make this show. But this show is just one of the many, many different things that the TED organization does. There is the TED conference with TED Talks, of course, which you hear every week.

0:41But also there's Ted's climate initiative called Countdown. There's its Audacious Project, which has given away hundreds of millions of dollars to other organizations. And the man behind all of it is Chris Anderson. Chris is a visionary, a tastemaker, a philanthropist. Over the last few decades, he has turned TED into a globally recognized media organization. But recently, he decided he needed to change things up. And he joined me to explain. Chris, thank you so much for being here. It's lovely to be here, Minouche. So before we get to your announcement, can you just explain to folks how you came to be the head of TED?

1:24Because it's quite a story. A TED head. Yes. We all are Ted heads at this point, Chris. It's a long story, actually. I was a media entrepreneur back in the 80s and 90s. Started in England, published a bunch of magazines, came to America to do the same, and was introduced to this quirky conference in California. It was all about technology and entertainment and design and weirdly how those three things might fit together. And so I think it was 1998 was the first time I went. I fell in love with it. You don't normally fall in love with conferences, but there was something about this group of people that made me excited.

2:04These were not just people doing the professional thing. They were dreaming. They wanted to think about cool things for the future. And so, yeah, I fell in love with it and found it strangely inspiring. And a couple of years later, I had the chance to buy it from its brilliant, quirky founder, Richard Saul Wurman. So I did that. And that happened right at the time my own company kind of, it didn't exactly blow up, but it had a torrid time during the dot-com crash. And so I left that and moved sideways into TED. And it became a nonprofit and it became my life's passion. Yeah. How do you describe to people what TED does now?

2:51There is still the annual conference, but it has grown enormously since you took over nearly 25 years ago. So something weird happened on the internet around about 2006, which was this weird technology called online video started to shake itself into existence. It was initially, if you remember, it was just like a few little low-res pixels in the corner of your laptop with dodgy audio. But it started taking off and YouTube happened and so forth. And we realized that this conference had content which others in the world might want to know about. And so we started to experiment with putting it up for free online.

3:32And to our amazement, it took off. These talks went viral. And so we kind of flipped how we thought about TED and saw it as just a way of sharing ideas with the world. Ideas were spreading, we called it. And in a shockingly short period of time, a lot of people came to hear about TED. demand for the conference actually went up, not down. We were worried by giving away the content, we'd lose our audience. But turned out the opposite happened. And so it encouraged us to go on this journey of trusting the internet almost, of giving away what we could give away. We gave away the brand in the form of TEDx licenses.

4:12And that really spread. There's about 3 ,000-plus TEDx events held around the world. It became a thing that people knew about, and TED Talks got played at schools, and it was all surprising and utterly delightful. So earlier in 2025, you let us all know that you were looking to hand over the reins to find what you were calling a new steward. And I just want to read you some of the headlines from that day in February 2025. Chris Anderson is giving TED away to whoever has the best idea for its future. Or the Morning Brew put it, the head of TED pulls a Willy Wonka. This idea that you were looking for someone who had the golden ticket.

4:56And here we are. Today, you do have an announcement. What has happened? So it's been an extraordinary nine months. We had an outpouring of amazing input requests, suggestions, offers. More than 80 organizations raised their hands. People waved nine-figure checks at us and so forth. But the more we thought about it, the more we couldn't picture going a for-profit route with this. So much of the culture of TED has been, it's the spirit of generosity. Speakers come and speak for free. Their words are carried around the world by people getting excited about them and sharing them for free. TEDx organizers give their time for free.

5:44That spirit is really what's carried us forward. And we couldn't picture how to maintain that in its full glory with everyone knowing that the controllers behind TED were, you know, one day going to cash in and get very rich. We thought that we needed to keep TED as a nonprofit and try and make it work that way and see if we could build the same excitement we were looking for for this new chapter that way. And we came up with an amazing solution. And you're the first person. This is just a preview announcement to you, Manoush, because of the incredible role you've played on TED Radio Hour. Thanks, Chris.

6:27As to the decision we made. So the person coming in as the new vision steward of TED is none other than Sal Khan, the incredible founder of Khan Academy. So here's a man who believes profoundly in the power of sharing knowledge freely online, on the internet, and what that can do. And his brilliant ability to explain, initially it was just math and science videos, but then it spawned this whole world of educational videos. for literally millions of kids and adults. So for him to be interested in teaming up with Ted was just a thrill. And as I've got to know him, I've become more and more excited about the potential here.

7:16Sal is not leaving Khan Academy. On the contrary, that is his life's passion. But what we both see is an extraordinary way in which these two organizations can amplify each other. So Sal is the new visioneer. And although I'm not leaving, I'm staying on the board, he's joining the board, he will carry the torch. I'll be supporting him and cheerleading him. And there's one other key piece to this puzzle. We're appointing a new CEO for TED for this next chapter. She's coming from within, from within the org, Logan McClure Davda. She is an amazing woman. She is. You know, she co-founded, actually, the TED Fellows program and has just been a joy to work with during many years at TED.

8:10She left for a bit and then came back as head of impact. So she's a hugely popular choice for new CEO. And that combination of Logan and Sal, I couldn't be more excited about. I just want to, you know, for the super fans here and the folks who really want to understand this, does this mean that Khan Academy and TED are merging? No, no, no, no, it definitely doesn't. They are their own organization. They've got an extraordinary board. They've got their own resources and a giant mission to accomplish. But that mission can actually be significantly expanded and enhanced by his teaming up with Ted.

8:51I mean, so Sal Khan's whole thing is about technology making education freely available, not just in the United States, across the globe. Does this new sort of steward, does that mean you're changing from being a media organization to being more of an educational one? Maybe you don't see a distinction between those two. Like, does it change the mission at all? It expands the mission. It doesn't take away a thing. The main conference that we do, Sal adores, and the media part of TED, the sharing of free talks online. Absolutely. I mean, that is media. Yes, it's also education. It's also the reason people tell us they listen to TED Talks.

9:40At the core of it is a desire to be their best selves, you know, to learn more, to empower themselves. I mean, that's kind of what education is, or at least what it should be. And so there's just massive alignment, I think. I want to ask you about the financial side of it. TED is, of course, a nonprofit, but you did say when you announced that you were looking for a new steward that you are a$100 million organization that breaks even, but that you felt that the organization needed a cash infusion to take it to the next level. Is Sal Khan providing that? Not directly. He does not come with a check, but he comes with a vision that's exciting enough to bring in all the resources we need.

10:26I'm completely persuaded of this. I've been, through the Audacious Project, I've been involved in raising significant sums for nonprofits. This is a philanthropic idea that is right up there. What I wanted in this process was to have just clarity of what the next chapter of TED could look like and who would drive that vision and how the pieces could be put together. Money follows vision. If you dream boldly enough, in today's world, often the money is out there. I have to say it is nice to have positive news in that it's a strange time in the United States. We see nonprofits being worried about their status as nonprofits being in jeopardy.

11:19We've seen federal funding cuts to science, to, of course, public media. There is a sort of wish, I think, from a lot of the people in those sectors that philanthropy will step in and fill all the gaps. But is that the long-term answer, relying on the largesse of wealthy people to make sure that we have good, free information and are able to meet the needs of the most vulnerable people in the world? Ah, there's so much to unpack from that, Manoj. I mean, first of all, I do think that philanthropy will play a much bigger part in our future. There is so much private capital accumulating out there.

12:05One of the things that the world needs urgently is for more imagination to be put to work to how to do truly great things for the planet. And I think those ideas probably exist and that they're under explored. But in the case of certainly of TED, I think the best use of philanthropy is to build something that then becomes self-sustaining. And that's what we see here. There's actually huge amounts of money spent in education today. Some of it misspent, you could argue, are spending trillions of dollars getting kids of all ages ready for a world that actually no longer exists. The world is changing so fast and education has not kept up.

12:51And so if we could come up with offerings that offer people knowledge that is more relevant for the future that's coming, that could be very valuable knowledge. And so I think I picture a future where, yes, TED Talks will always be available for free to anywhere in the world, but that there will be educational offerings that are not free and will self-fund the organization in a beautiful way. Yeah, I was wondering, like, how do you feel about all this? It must be bittersweet. It is. It's mainly sweet, though. But I mean, I'm going to stay part of it. And I think sometimes people hold on too long.

13:34You know, there's a whole generation out there full of ideas and energy and brilliance that needs to be given its shot. And so that's kind of what's happening here. And I think the result's going to be beautiful. I mean, it's interesting. People seem to want to get together in real spaces, have real experiences. They're kind of over the virtual thing. How do you see this sort of future of people coming together to exchange ideas? You know, there are some people who say, well, the TED conference, that one's for really rich people. And there are other people who might say, oh, you know, thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

14:14It's a meme for a reason that it's kind of like been there, done that. Like, how do you see what needs to happen to evolve what TED means so that it meets this moment of what people are looking for? I mean, first of all, I do think that in the age of AI, people are going to want actual contact with other flesh and blood human beings more than ever. And as far as the talks themselves, thank you for listening to my TED Talk. I guess that's, I think most people mean that affectionately. I guess it's definitely true that sometimes TED Talks have sounded cliched. You know, it suddenly became too much.

15:01And there are moments in TED Talks where people go, what if I were to tell you? And you go, you know, what if you didn't? What if you expressed it some other way? And that actually is happening. Like we really, one of the main pieces of advice we give speakers now is to be authentic, be fresh, you know, explain something in a different way, do it in their own voice. And there's been a lot of innovation in recent TED Talks that's just wonderful. for. So it's definitely a constant challenge, but we want to double down on it. When you actually go to the core, human to human communication is a very, very deep part of us.

15:40And I don't think that's going away. In fact, I think as we treasure our humanness evermore in the age of AI, I think it will matter more. Well, Chris, we really appreciate you coming here to tell us directly about your next chapter. I have no doubt listeners will be watching this next chapter very closely. So thank you, Chris. Thank you so much, Manish.

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