Head of TED: INCREASE Your HAPPINESS & ABUNDANCE! Our Simple STRATEGY To Reaching BILLIONS | Chris Anderson

0:27Welcome to the School of Greatness. excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Chris Anderson in the house. Good to see you, sir. Welcome to the show. To see you, Lewis. I'm happy to be here. Very excited about this. This is our first time meeting, and I've been inspired by your work and the organization that you've been a part of for the last 20 plus years with TED, and how you have changed the world in such a positive, informative way. So first, I want to acknowledge you for being of service to bring education and entertainment to the masses that is helpful for human beings, not hurtful.

1:02And it's just inspiring to see how you've been able to spread and build media around the world. So thank you for all the work you've done and inspiring me with this show and my work as well. Well, that's very kind. I definitely feel like we're fellow travelers here. Yes. And of course, this isn't really me. This is a huge team. on earth, good circumstances, lucky timing, all this stuff. But thank you anyway. Of course, yeah. Now, you have access to and you've met some of the wealthiest people in the world. And I've had the privilege of meeting a lot of wealthy people, billionaires as well. And there are some that seem to be extremely generous.

1:41Your book, Infectious Generosity, talks about the power of being generous. Now, some wealthy people have built businesses and seem to be generous with everyone. And other wealthy people seem to be a little bit more stingy with their wealth or with their money and their generosity. I'm curious, from your experience, do more wealthy people, you think, gain their wealth through being generous? Or is there other strategies that they do it? I'm not sure that most of them gain their wealth by being generous. I do think that many of them, once they are wealthy, seek to be generous. Not all of them succeed.

2:23It's actually a very hard thing to do effectively, as we'll discuss. But I also don't think that most of them really make their wealth through really annoying exploitation. There's a common, I mean, it's true that some do. But most modern fortunes are made by entrepreneurs who basically have some kind of tech dream that has become real. And in this connected age, instead of gaining like 100 customers or 1 ,000 customers, they have gained millions or in some cases billions of customers. because we're connected now across all countries, it is possible for people to make that kind of wealth like never before, just on the back of a really big and brilliant idea or service.

3:13So I don't think those wealth gains are evil in and of themselves. Inequality is definitely a problem in our world. But nonetheless, you know, people are extraordinarily cynical about the very wealthy. And so what I would say that from my encounters with them, and I've been very lucky because of my role at TED and because of my role in something called The Audacious Project, that I've got to meet some of them. And my honest belief is that many of them, I don't say all, many of them would love to give back to the world. They feel an obligation to give back to the world. They're excited at the prospect of giving back to the world.

3:55And I'd say that most of them are a journey to figure out the right way to do it because it turns out it's really hard to write a really big check to make a difference in the world and do it the right way. It can go wrong in so many ways. Absolutely. Now, there's a lot of smart people who've made a lot of money, but they haven't figured out the happiness equation, right? Do you feel like generosity increases your level of happiness when you are financially well off? I think being financially well off does in itself increase your happiness a little bit. What the science suggests is that there's a, you know, early on when someone's really poor, having more money makes a huge difference.

4:40The richer you get, the less difference each incremental dollar makes. It still makes a little bit of difference. And if someone doubles their wealth, on average, the measurements at least suggest that they get a little bit of extra happiness for it. But what is amazing is that they have an opportunity to get much more happiness again by being generous. And this is an underreported fact. I wish it was more widely known. There was a Gallup study done of a couple hundred thousand people across the world, asking them a bunch of different questions, including things like, did you contribute to a cause that you cared about recently.

5:19Those that had recently contributed to a cause on average showed a level of happiness, a greater level of happiness that was equal to their having doubled their income. Really? Yeah. Through giving? Through giving. So this is amazing. And this applies to anyone. Certainly, I've spoken to very rich people who have found their deepest meaning by some kind of generosity pathway, but anyone can do this. And when you think about how much blood and sweat and tears we put into, oh God, if only I could earn 20 % more, all my dreams could come true at least for six months. All of that happiness, this study suggests, is available by, instead, by adopting a generosity structure, building generosity into your life in some way.

6:07It surprises you by making you happy. That's interesting. And in the book, Infectious Generosity, you talk about an experiment where people were given$10 ,000 each, right? Right. What is this experiment and what were the findings of this? So this was a crazy, crazy fun experiment that I was lucky to have an inside view of. It was a partnership between the University of British Columbia and TED. And a donor in the TED community was willing to support it and give away basically$2 million. dollars, but to do it$10 ,000 at a time to 200 strangers on the internet. So we recruited people to come and be part of the mystery experiment.

6:47We didn't say anything about money. We said, this is going to be exciting and interesting, could be stressful, will involve some time commitments, but come on in if you're up for it. And a couple thousand people applied, and we picked 200 to represent a spread of countries and income levels and so forth. And yeah, they got this note saying, okay, welcome, you're in the mystery experiment. We would like to, it was like the ultimate scam email, right? We'd like to wire. Give us your bank details. We'd like to wire$10 ,000 into your PayPal account. No strings attached. So they were skeptical at first, but eventually they were persuaded that this was for real.

7:31And all they had to do was to report on what they spent the money on. So what was the criteria? you can use it to spend it on anything? You could literally, we said, you can use it to spend it on anything. So you could spend it on yourself, on your health. You could buy a car. You can do whatever you want. Ultimate vacation that you've dreamed of, et cetera. Absolutely anything. Interesting. The amazing thing is that on average, people gave away two-thirds of the money. Really? Two-thirds on average. And they got huge joy from doing so as well. The people who gave away more actually were happier than the people who didn't.

8:10And so this economist, traditional economic theory, rational agent theory, whatever, you would predict a different outcome than that, I think. And it turns out that people have in them, we all have in them, not just an instinct for generosity, but an instinct to respond to other people's kindness and to want to respond in kind. And this struck me as this is just such a beautiful thing because if you think about it, in this connected age, what does that mean? It means that if you can start a ripple of generosity, of kindness, there will be ripple effects. Wow. The wave is going to spread. And when you dig a little bit and look for stories, you find again and again beautiful examples of this happening online.

8:59it. Now, I'm curious your point of view on the flip side of generosity, where people feel like they have to give out of guilt, or wealthy people maybe are feeling pressured to give, or whoever, if you make any type of money, they're like, you should be giving more. You should be donating more to this cause. You should be giving more to your friends and your family. What happens when people give out of guilt? Is there still happiness, or is there more resentment? That's an interesting question. I don't know if that's been measured. I suspect there's less happiness in that thing. On the other hand, there may be less guilt and therefore maybe a little bit more happiness.

9:39And the thing is, Lewis, I don't care that much as to why people give. One of the problems with our culture right now is that we are obsessed with why people are giving and not the impact of their giving or how to give wisely. Here's the irony. In this connected era, there is more reason than ever to give, not out of guilt, although it's a transparent era, maybe lots of people can throw heat at you or something, but not really so much out of that, but out of opportunity. It's actually quite easy, as we discovered at TED, to give away something that people care about to an unlimited number of people for a total distribution cost of zero dollars.

10:28Wow. So this is incredible. This has never been possible before in history. And when you understand that people respond to generosity, why wouldn't you do that? I mean, we ended up reshaping our whole strategy just based on the fact that giving, the more we gave away, the more it benefited Ted. Whether it was done out of generosity or not, it would be the smart thing to do. So someone could critique that and say, well, but if it's not done out of generosity, it's not actually generosity. Well, why do we put these blocks in the way? We're in an era where we should be celebrating giving for every reason, because I think we're in an existential battle here between the good stuff spreading in our connected world and the bad stuff.

11:18We are hampering the spread of good stuff through cynicism, through nitpicking, through critiques, through all sorts of reasons. They're just terrible reasons to get mad at someone. So a rich person, let's say, does some act of charity and half of the people will say, well, how did he make that money? Well, that wasn't enough. You should have given more. Yeah, all this stuff, which has probably the indirect consequence of the next person saying, you know what, I'm just going to wait. Screw these cynics. I don't need that. And so by doing that, we're literally taking money away from other recipients.

12:01We should not be doing that. So I think we need to start celebrating imperfect generosity. I actually don't think generosity has ever been perfect. There's always been mixed motives. Give and your reward shall be in heaven. I was brought up to believe that. Well, I'm sorry. That's selfishness. It's like, okay, I'll give, but it's... I'm going to be rewarded later. Yeah. So now it's... Giving is still hard. It's always hard to let go of something. But we have lots of extra motivations that are actually exciting right now, which is that you can reach so many people. They'll be happy. They may or may respond and want to work with you or do something for you.

12:40at the very least, your reputation is impacted. Yes. And, I mean, this has happened to you in a beautiful way. Here you are. You've been laboring these last decade plus, putting out amazing content. And it's been hard work. Free content. Free content. But it's been a gift. And there are literally millions of people around the world who are grateful to you, or certainly should be, for the knowledge that you have brought into their minds that has changed them forever. that. This is really an amazing world that we're in right now, that that can happen. I feel very grateful. Again, I feel like you and I, I mean, you've been leading the way, but I feel like we've been able to spread positive messages for free to people and impact people who are willing to listen or who want to listen or watch the information.

13:27And you were saying how it's extremely hard to, I guess, get through the noise of chaos, fear, stress, and anxiety content online or news media that's showing only the bad parts of the world and the wars, diseases, and sadness, and suffering as opposed to... And it's very hard to spread a positive message in between all that for whatever reason. But I feel grateful that we've been able to do that. And I think when you make something that is of value to another person, that is generosity. 100 % and it's you know it there are so many ways you can do that now anyone who can create a beautiful image or or a gorgeous photograph or an amazing piece of ai let's say um or poetry or a software pro or you know an app or whatever there are so many ways to give things away in a way that many people can benefit and with the troponism we're so used to it we're actually drowning in this sort of deluge of free content that we forget how amazing this is.

14:33This only showed up last Thursday. You know, it's never happened before in history that people have had the choice of so much amazingness. And it actually, I find that almost switching from being, oh God, all these people are pestering me with their stuff to, I'm the recipient of a torrent of amazingness. It kind of puts you into a gratitude mode. And I kind of feel like we should be more grateful to the people who are doing this. A lot of people who are doing this are dependent on our, you know, let's go on to Patreon and actually support that incredible artist or that incredible photographer or whatever.

15:06Absolutely. And so it's an amazing time to be alive. There's all this stuff out there, and we very quickly forget it. It just becomes blasé. Sure. Now, when did you realize that generosity was important in your life? Were you always a generous person or is this something that you saw with Ted on how it started to unlock something inside of you personally? What was the shift or was this always who you were? I was brought up by missionary parents. My dad was an eye surgeon. My mother was a graduate who decided that she wanted to serve God by going out with him to these remote villages in Pakistan to offer free cataract surgery and so forth.

15:50to people who had imagery. That was your mom? That was her mom. My father did the surgery. She was there supporting them in whatever way. And definitely they were extraordinarily generous. I mean, basically with their whole lives, whatever you make of their beliefs. They were of service. Their whole life was service. Yeah, yeah. They made in the 50s and 60s like 30 pounds, 50 bucks a month was what they were paid. But they were joyful with it. And honestly, I was confused. Like, I found it daunting. So something must have rubbed off. There's a story I haven't told, I think, but my dad was involved in a terrible accident, ran over a kid, he died.

16:40And there was a whole... He was almost jailed. He refused to pay off the judge. refused to pay off the police. Took responsibility. Took responsibility for it. Ended up being cleared. And then, you know, made peace with the family. The father and his other son came, and we had a meal with them. And I apparently, I don't remember doing this, but I gave this boy my best toy. And, you know, we... I mean... How old were you? And how could you not, right? When, when, when, when. So I would have been like four years old or something then. Four or five. Wow. But the, but that's, that's it. So much of generosity is instinct.

17:30That's not, that's, there's nothing, you know, laudable about that. It's just, you see someone who's, here's a boy whose brother has been killed. You would do anything you could, anyone would. I've mostly felt guilty my life that I'm not doing enough really? yeah a little bit guilty I mean I've tried to you know put it aside but it's like I've never found I would say until recently actually until writing this book I've never found an answer to the Peter Singer argument Peter Singer as some people know has said look there is no all of us know that if we walked out of our door and saw a child drowning in a nearby pond, we would run into the pond, even if it meant getting our pants dirty or wet or whatever.

18:20You're wrestling the kid. Of course you would. And yet we know that there is a kid dying on the other side of the world who a check from us could save that life, and we don't write that check. And so the issue I've been wrestling with is generosity a bottomless pit of obligation? And if so, is there any pathway to a guilt-free life? Wow. And I couldn't find the answer to that. And I don't want a miserable life. And I know that most people don't. And I don't actually think that you can have moral rules that require people to have miserable lives because A, they'll be rejected, and B, that'll be more misery.

19:08So we have to think of a different way through it. So I've been wrestling with this my whole life. And I finally made peace with it, with that specific issue. And so I think there is a pathway to everyone finding their own form of generosity. For a lot of people, it's not about money at all. It's about gifting other things, any act of kindness or creativity. but there is a way to a guilt-free life that has some generosity in it, but it doesn't drive you to despair because there's still someone suffering on the other side of the world, and you are still buying a latte. Right. I find this interesting that you say this because you've essentially dedicated the last 20 plus years of your life to TED in spreading ideas of positivity, of change, of impact, of service to help people.

20:02And I don't know how many views or downloads Ted has received in the last 20 plus years, but I'm assuming billions and billions and billions and billions of people have consumed your content, been impacted deeply by it, have felt transformation, healing, tools to serve their life. And so, and to hear you say you still have, you know, You haven't figured out the solution to feeling guilty of not doing more is interesting. But at the same time, I understand where you're coming from because I really like what Scott Harrison has done at Charity Water and Adam Braun at Pestle of Promise, where water and education for kids is something that I've been donating to for many years.

20:43But it's almost like when you go to these places, you see the pain and the challenges that these communities might be facing that you don't face. you say, wow, there's so much that I could be doing more to help more communities. But there seems to be almost a limit of how much you can give to, or is there? I mean, it's like, you don't also want to be like homeless yourself and just say, I'm going to give everything away. That's right. That's right. Like, how do you navigate that decision-making? So here's what I did for the book. I did some math, basically. some people feel like the problems in the world are infinite I think they're large I don't think they're infinite and I I so I worked with a woman called Natalie Cargill who runs has a thing called longview philanthropy she actually have a very good TED talk about this about what what the The theoretical question, what would maximum philanthropy look like?

21:46Like, what is the most philanthropy that the world needs? And in a nutshell, this is slightly simplifying the argument, but in a nutshell, the numbers she came up with is that if we were giving away three and a half trillion dollars a year, this is the world, to philanthropy, we could tackle basically every single problem that philanthropy can tackle. And, you know, from poverty to inequality to the existential threats of things like AI to climate, to, you know, like pick your issue. Right. You could do all of that to the extent where the bottleneck then to problems would not be more philanthropy.

22:33It would be actually executing and doing it. So, you've got that number. Now, what would it take to raise that much in philanthropy? So again, we did the math. And what I was guided by was, just as a start point, with the two religious traditions that are out there. So there's a tradition in Judaism and Christianity of tithing, which is to say, give 10 % of your income to charity. You can afford it. And in Islam, there's this pillar of Islam, Zakat, which means give 1 40th of your wealth annually, 2.5 % of your net worth annually. That's interesting. For the very rich, for example, 10 % of income isn't really much of an ask.

23:22Many of them don't have much income, if any, anyway. They're living off their investments, basically. but 2.5 % of net worth annually is a real thing, ask. It's probably at least triple what they're giving right now on average. When you add up, if you say if the top 5 % or 6 % wealthiest people in the world did this, and actually if only a third of them did this, because some people won't ever get around to it, That would actually raise the three and a half trillion annually. So I think there's a case to circulate and accept among us this idea that we should, those of us who are reasonably comfortably off should agree a place which is the higher of 10 % of your income or 2.5 % of your network.

24:19If we did that, your obligations are done financially. There are other ways you can be good, but that is your obligation. If you do that, you're done, and you can find other ways to be generous or whatever. And it actually, so to me, it's a slightly quirky argument. Some people may not buy it or like it, but for me, it was this huge sigh of relief. But it also persuaded me to sign that pledge. Interesting. And I think if that was widely circulated, one, we could dream of an incredible future where instead of thinking of charities, it's slightly, you know, solve the later, put a Band-Aid on the latest problem and it's sort of kind of wearying, almost exhausting and annoying to think about.

25:06Instead, we would be thinking about this huge pot of cash and the ability to dream audaciously about what change could actually look like. You know, you could have spectacular problems. You'd be able to imagine what it would take to plant a trillion trees on our planet. and manage them effectively in forests so that it sequesters enough carbon to save the future, et cetera, and so many other things. And we could dream big. We could get excited about the future, and it would shift how we think about what the world of charity and philanthropy looks like. That's interesting. I guess one follow-up question there might be like, if someone wants to donate to charity, how do they know that that money is going to the cause versus the organization and getting lost in the organization.

25:55Right. That's a whole other conversation, I guess. The thing is, if you make a pledge, then it shifts your giving to strategic. So it makes it worth your while to actually find out an answer to that question. There you go. To do the research and all those things. Whereas normally we just, you know, you see a need, oh God, I better write a check and go, and I don't really know whether that organization's going to do anything or not. this says to you I'm going to give them at some point this year we're going to give away this much so our family or whatever we need to sit and think about this and you can basically most of the best non-profits have around them a community of supporters if you connect with them and learn the question to ask is not what percentage is their overheads or whatever because overheads Often the overheads are the most important part of what an org is doing.

26:53The question to ask is, are they effective? Are they getting results? Are they getting results? Yeah. And what is their point of leverage? Why are they being effective? Some charitable organizations have amazing answers to that question. And you could actually end up finding yourself with a community of people who will become great friends. And, hey, this is making me joyful and happy and excited. And I'm engaged and energized. So that shift from impulse charity to thoughtful charity, I think, is incredibly important. That's cool. I don't know if you've done the research on this or if maybe you've experienced this personally, but what unlocks in someone when they give financially, whether it's a little amount or a big amount, what unlocks emotionally, mentally, and spiritually inside of them when they physically give money?

27:43It's probably a slightly different story in each case. And just literally writing a check, per se, may not do anything. Like, the more we're biological beings, the more you can see the actual result of what you did. That has a big impact on how you feel. So, I mean, again, I would encourage people, if you're going to spend real money, to try and get involved with a charity and get to go on a field trip with them and get to actually see the people whose lives are being impacted. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing to do that. And if you do that, then you'll feel a glow of, wow, I like this version of me.

28:33I like this version of me that one was willing to be generous, two was willing to be thoughtful about that generosity, and three, look at these amazing new people I've met and look at what's happening. This is great. But it's probably a different case. I mean, look, there's many other ways to be generous. It's not just writing a check. And many other ways may well have almost like a more immediate payback, like in terms of being gratifying. Yeah, using your time and energy and things like that. Yeah, just connecting with someone on the street. Absolutely. A moment of generosity. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

29:08I've asked this similar question to a lot of wealthy individuals about abundance. And when they give, and it almost seems like people who make a lot of money, the more they give, the more they make. Not every year, every time, but it seems like something expands inside of them. When they give, and they almost give uncomfortably, like, ah, this is a big amount. And who knows what's going to happen with this money, but I'm going to give it because I want to be of service. so many of these wealthy individuals say that they made the most money that year or the next year, so much money came back to them in their business or their opportunities that they were up to.

29:48Have you seen the correlation with that? The more people give financially with a good intention, that more goodness comes their way financially in the future. So I definitely don't believe there's some kind of karmic woo-woo thing going on where where if you do that, somehow the universe says, direct more money to that person now. But I do think that in the age that we're in, generous people can get more done. They will attract great other people to want to work with them. So this is the thing about, if you ask the question, how is value created in our modern era? It's largely created through the creation of the products of human minds, creativity of different kinds, whether it's software, video, content in general, or even like here's a steel manufacturer.

30:50The software that optimizes how that steel is manufactured, that is probably where the competitive edge comes from. So to hire those people and to motivate them, they have a lot of choices about where they could work. They do not want to work for an evil company. They want to work for someone who is generous and who is doing their part to give back to the planet. And so I think that that effect probably does happen and that people will want to do that. I mean, even sort of take someone who a lot of people don't like right now, Elon Musk. His justification for Tesla being generous and giving away its patents, it wasn't directly for the benefit of Tesla, particularly in any way.