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Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness.
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Very excited about our guest.
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We have the inspiring Chris Anderson in the house.
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Good to see you, sir.
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Welcome to the show.
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Good to see you, Louis.
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I m happy to be here.
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Very excited about this.
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This is our first time meeting, and I ve been inspired by your work and your
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with 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.
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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.
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And it s just inspiring to see how you ve been able to spread and build media around the world.
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So thank you for all the work you ve done and inspiring me with this show and my work as well.
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Well, that s very kind.
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I definitely feel like we re fellow travelers here.
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Yes.
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And of course, this isn t really me.
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This is a huge team.
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Good circumstances, lucky timing, all this stuff.
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But thank you anyway.
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Of course, yeah.
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Now, you have access to and you ve met some of the wealthiest people in the world.
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And I ve had the privilege of meeting a lot of wealthy people, billionaires as well.
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And there are some that seem to be extremely generous.
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Your book, Infectious Generosity, talks about the power of being generous.
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Now, some wealthy people have built businesses and seem to be generous with everyone.
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And other wealthy people seem to be a little bit more stingy with their wealth or with their money and their generosity.
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I m curious, from your experience,
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Do more wealthy people, you think, gain their wealth through being generous?
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Or is there other strategies that they do it?
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I m not sure that most of them gain their wealth by being generous.
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I do think that many of them, once they are wealthy, seek to be generous.
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Not all of them succeed.
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It s actually a very hard thing to do effectively, as we ll discuss.
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But I also don t think that most of them really make their wealth through really annoying exploitation.
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It s true that some do.
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But most modern fortunes are made by entrepreneurs who basically have some kind of tech dream that has become real.
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And in this connected age, instead of gaining like
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a hundred customers or a thousand customers, they have gained millions or in some cases billions of customers.
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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.
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So I don t think those wealth gains are evil in and of themselves.
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Inequality is definitely a problem in our world.
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But nonetheless, people are extraordinarily cynical about the very wealthy.
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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.
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And my honest belief is that many of them, I don t say all, many of them,
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would love to give back to the world.
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They feel an obligation to give back to the world.
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They re excited at the prospect of giving back to the world.
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And I would say that most of them are on a journey to figure out the right way to do it.
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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.
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It can go wrong in so many ways.
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Absolutely.
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Now, there s a lot of smart people who ve made a lot of money.
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But they haven t figured out the happiness equation, right?
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Do you feel like generosity increases your level of happiness when you are financially well off?
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being financially well-off does, in itself, increase your happiness a little bit.
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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.
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The richer you get, the less difference each incremental dollar makes.
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This still makes a little bit of difference.
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And if someone doubles their wealth, on average,
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the measurements at least suggest that they get a little bit of extra happiness for it.
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But what is amazing is that they have an opportunity to get much more happiness again by being generous.
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And this is an underreported fact.
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I wish it was more widely known.
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There was a Gallup study done of a couple hundred thousand people across the world
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asking them a bunch of different questions, including things like, did you contribute to a cause that you cared about recently?
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Those 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.
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Really?
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Yeah.
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Through giving?
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Through giving.
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So this is amazing.
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And this applies to anyone.
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Certainly, I ve spoken to very
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rich people who have found their deepest meaning by some kind of generosity pathway.
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But anyone can do this.
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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.
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All of that happiness, this study suggests is available by instead by adopting a generosity, building generosity into your life in some way.
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It surprises you by making you happy.
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That s interesting.
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In the book Infectious Generosity, you talk about an experiment where people were given $10,000 each, right?
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Right.
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What is this experiment and what were the findings of this?
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This was a crazy, crazy fun experiment that I was lucky to have an inside view of.
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It was a partnership between the University of British Columbia and TED.
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And a donor in the tech community was willing to support it and give away basically $2 million, but to do it $10,000 at a time to 200 strangers on the internet.
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So we recruited people to come and be part of the mystery experiment.
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We didn t say anything about money.
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Really?
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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.
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And a couple thousand people applied.
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And we picked 200 to represent a spread of countries and income levels and so forth.
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And yeah, they got this note saying, okay, welcome, you re in the industry experiment.
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We would like to, it was like the ultimate scam email, right?
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We d like to wire- Give us your bank details.
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We d like to wire $10,000 into your PayPal account.
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No strings attached.
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So they were skeptical at first, but eventually they were persuaded that this was for real.
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And all they had to do was to report on what they spent the money on.
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So what was the criteria?
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You can use it to spend it on anything?
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You could literally, we said, you can use it to spend it on anything.
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So you could spend it on yourself, on your health, you could buy a car, you can do whatever you want.
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Ultimate vacation that you ve dreamed of, et cetera.
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Absolutely anything.
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Interesting.
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The amazing thing is that on average, people gave away two thirds of the money.
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Really?
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Two thirds on average.
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And they got huge joy from doing so as well.
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The people who gave away more actually
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were happier than the people who didn t.
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And so, economists, the traditional economic theory, rational agent theory or whatever, you would predict a different outcome than that, I think.
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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.
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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?
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It means that if you can start a ripple of generosity, of kindness, there will be ripple effects.
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The wave is going to spread.
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And when you dig a little bit and look for stories, you find again and again, beautiful examples of this happening online.
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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.
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What happens when people give out of guilt?
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Is there still happiness, or is there more resentment?
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That s an interesting question.
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I don t know if that s been measured.
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I suspect there s less happiness in that thing.
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On the other hand, there may be less guilt and therefore maybe a little bit more happiness.
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And the thing is, Lewis, I don t care that much as to why people give.
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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.
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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.
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It s actually quite easy, as we discovered at TED.
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to give away something that people care about to an unlimited number of people for a total distribution cost of zero dollars.
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Wow.
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So this is incredible.
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This has never been possible before in history.
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And when you understand that people respond to generosity, why wouldn t you do that?
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I mean, we ended up
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reshaping our whole strategy just based on the fact that giving, the more we gave away, the more it benefited Ted.
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Whether it was done out of generosity or not, it would be a smart thing to do.
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So someone could critique that and say, well, but if it s not done out of generosity, it s not actually generosity.
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Well,
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Why do we put these blocks in the way?
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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.
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We are hampering the spread of good stuff.
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through cynicism, through nitpicking, through critiques, through all sorts of reasons.
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They re just terrible reasons to get mad at someone.
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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?
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Well, that wasn t enough.
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You should have given more.
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Yeah, all this stuff.
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But which has
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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.
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And so by doing that, we re literally taking money away from other recipients.
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We should not be doing that.
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So I think we need to start celebrating imperfect generosity.
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I actually don t think generosity has ever been perfect.
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There s always been mixed motives, you know, give,
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and your reward shall be in heaven.
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I was brought up to believe that.
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Well, I m sorry, that s selfishness.
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It s like, okay, I ll give, but it s... I m going to be warned later.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So now it s, giving is still hard.
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It s always hard to let go of something.
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But we have lots of extra motivations that are actually exciting right now, which is that you can reach so many people
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They ll be happy.
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They may respond and want to work with you or do something for you.
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At the very least, your reputation is impacted.
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Yes.
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And I mean, this has happened to you in a beautiful way.
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Here you are, you ve been laboring these last decade plus, putting out amazing content, and it s been hard work.
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Free content.
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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.
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It has changed them forever.
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This is really an amazing world that we re in right now, that that could happen.
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I feel very grateful.
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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,
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and impact people who are willing to listen or want to listen or watch the information.
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And you were saying how it s extremely hard to
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I guess, get through the noise of chaos, fear, stress, and anxiety content online.
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Or news media that s showing only the bad parts of the world and the wars, diseases, and sadness, and suffering as opposed to.
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And it s very hard to spread a positive message in between all that for whatever reason.
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But I feel grateful that we ve been able to do that.
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And I think when you make something that is of value to another person, that is generosity.
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100%.
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There are so many ways you can do that now.
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Anyone who can create a beautiful image, or a gorgeous photograph, or an amazing piece of AI, let s say, or poetry, or a software program, or an app.
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There are so many ways to give things away in a way that many people can benefit.
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And the trouble is 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.
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This only showed up last Thursday.
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You know, it s never happened before in history that people have had the choice of so much amazingness.
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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.
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It kind of puts you into a gratitude mode.
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And I kind of feel like we should be more grateful to the people who are doing this.
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A lot of the people who are doing this are dependent on our
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you know, let s go on to Patreon and actually support that incredible artist or that incredible photographer or whatever.
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Absolutely.
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And so it s an amazing time to be alive.
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There s all this stuff out there and we very quickly forget it.
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It just becomes blasé.
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Sure.
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Now, when did you realize that generosity was important in your life?
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Were you always a generous person or is this something that you saw with Ted
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on how it started to unlock something inside of you personally?
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What was the shift, or was this always who you were?
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I was brought up by missionary parents.
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My dad was an eye surgeon.
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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 to people who had imagery.
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That was your mom?
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That was my mom.
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My father did the surgery.
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She was there supporting him in whatever way.
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And definitely, they were extraordinarily generous.
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I mean, basically, with their whole lives, whatever you make of their beliefs.
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They were of service.
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Their whole life was service.
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Yeah, yeah.
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They made, in the 50s and 60s, like 30 pounds, 50 bucks a month was what they were paid.
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But they were joyful with it.
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And honestly, I was confused.
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I found it daunting.
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So something must have rubbed off.
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There s a story, I haven t told it, I think, but my dad was involved in a terrible accident, ran over a kid.
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Wow.
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And there was a whole, you know, he was almost jailed.
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He was in, you know,
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refused to pay off the judge, refused to pay off the police.
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Took responsibility.
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Took responsibility for it.
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Ended up being cleared.
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And then, you know, made peace with the family.
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The father and his other son came and we had a meal with them.
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And apparently, I don t remember doing this, but I gave this boy my best toy.
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And how could you not, right?
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So I would have been like four years old or something then, four or five.
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Wow.
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So much of generosity is instinct.
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There s nothing laudable about that.
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It s just, you see someone, you hear a boy whose brother s been killed.
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You would do anything you could, anyone would.
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I ve mostly felt guilty my life that I m not doing enough.
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Yeah, a little bit guilty.
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I ve tried to put it aside, but it s like I ve never found
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I would say until recently, actually until writing this book, I ve never found an answer to the Peter Singer argument.
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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,
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we would run into the pond, even if it meant getting our pants dirty or wet or whatever.
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You d rest with the kid.
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You d rest with the kid.
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Of course you would.
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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.
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And we don t write that check.
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And so the issue I ve been wrestling with, is generosity a bottomless pit of obligation?
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And if so, is there any pathway to a guilt-free life?
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And I couldn t find the answer to that.
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And I don t want a miserable life.
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And I know that most people don t.
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And I don t actually think that you can have moral rules that require people to have miserable lives.
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Because A, they ll be rejected.
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And B, that ll be more misery.
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So we have to think of a different way through it.
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So I ve been wrestling with this my whole life.
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And I finally made
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peace with it, with that specific issue.
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And so I think there is a basic, I think there is a pathway to
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Everyone finding their own form of generosity.
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For a lot of people, it s not about money at all.
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It s about gifting other things, any act of kindness or creativity.
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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.
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Right.
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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.
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And 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
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been impacted deeply by it have felt transformation, healing, tools to serve their life.
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And to hear you say you haven t figured out the solution to feeling guilty of not doing more
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is interesting, but at the same time, I understand where you re coming from because, you know, I ve been, you know, I really like what Scott Harrison has done at Charity Water and Adam Braun at Pensacola Promise, where water and education for kids is something that I ve been donating to for many years.
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But it s almost like this, you see, when you go to these places, you see the pain and the challenges that these communities might be facing, that you don t face.
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You say, wow, there s so much that I could be doing more to help more communities.
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But there seems to be almost a limit of how much you can give to, or is there?
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I mean, it s like, you don t also want to be homeless yourself and just say, I m going to give everything away.
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That s right.
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That s right.
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How do you navigate that decision making?
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So here s what I did for the book.
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I did some math, basically.
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Some people feel like the problems in the world are infinite.
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I think they re large.
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I don t think they re infinite.
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I worked with a woman called Natalie Cargill, who runs, I think, Longview Philanthropy.
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She actually gave a very good TED Talk about this, about what
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The theoretical question, what would maximum philanthropy look like?
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What is the most philanthropy that the world needs?
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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 $3.5 trillion a year, this is the world, to philanthropy, we could tackle basically every single problem that philanthropy can tackle.
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from poverty to inequality to existential threats of things like AI to climate, pick your issue.
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You could do all of that to the extent where the bottleneck then to problems would not be more philanthropy, it would be actually executing and doing it.
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So,
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You ve got that number.
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Now, what would it take to raise that much in philanthropy?
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So again, we did the math.
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And what I was guided by was, just as a start point, were the two religious traditions that are out there.
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So there s a tradition in Judaism and Christianity of tithing, which is to say, give 10% of your income to charity.
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You can afford it.
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And in Islam, there s this pillar of Islam, Zakat, which means give 140th of your wealth annually, 2.5% of your net worth annually.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s interesting.
2
SPEAKER_00
For the very rich, for example, 10% of income
2
SPEAKER_00
isn t really much of an ask.
2
SPEAKER_00
Many of them don t have much income, if any, anyway.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re living off God knows what, off their investments, basically.
2
SPEAKER_00
But 2.5% of net worth annually is a real thing ask.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s probably at least triple what they re giving right now on average.
2
SPEAKER_00
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 round to it,
2
SPEAKER_00
That would actually raise the three and a half trillion annually.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I think there s a case to circulate and accept among us this idea that those of us who are reasonably comfortable to be off should agree a place which is the higher of 10% of your income or two and a half percent of your net worth.
2
SPEAKER_00
If we did that, your obligations are done financially.
2
SPEAKER_00
There are other ways you can be good, but that is your obligation.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you do that, you re done and you can find other ways to be generous or whatever.
2
SPEAKER_00
So to me, it s a slightly quirky argument.
2
SPEAKER_00
Some people may not buy it or like it, but for me, it was this huge sigh of relief.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it also persuaded me to sign that pledge.
2
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think if that was widely circulated, one, we could dream of an incredible future where instead of thinking of charities, it s sort of slightly, you know, solve the later, put a band-aid on the latest problem and it s sort of,
2
SPEAKER_00
kind of wearying almost and exhausting and annoying to think about.
2
SPEAKER_00
Instead, we would be thinking about this huge pot of cash and the ability to dream audaciously about what change could actually look like.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, you could have spectacular problems.
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SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_00
and so many other things.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
I guess one follow-up question there might be, 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?
2
SPEAKER_01
That s a whole other conversation, I guess.
2
SPEAKER_00
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
There you go, to do the research and all those things.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s right, 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 gonna do anything or not.
2
SPEAKER_00
This says to you,
2
SPEAKER_00
At some point this year, we re going to give away this much.
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SPEAKER_00
So our family or whatever, we need to sit and think about this.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you can basically, most of the best nonprofits have around them a community of supporters.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you connect with them and learn, the question to ask is not,
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SPEAKER_00
What percentage is there overheads or whatever?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because often the overheads are the most important part of what an org is doing.
2
SPEAKER_00
The question to ask is, are they effective?
2
SPEAKER_00
Are they getting results?
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SPEAKER_00
Are they getting impact?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
And what is their point of leverage?
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SPEAKER_00
Why are they being effective?
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SPEAKER_00
Some charitable organizations have amazing answers to that question and you can 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.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that shift from impulse charity to thoughtful charity I think is incredibly important.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s cool.
2
SPEAKER_01
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?
2
SPEAKER_01
Whether it s a little amount or a big amount, what unlocks emotionally, mentally, and spiritually inside of them when they physically give money?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s probably a slightly different story in each case.
2
SPEAKER_00
Just literally writing a check, per se, may not do anything.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re biological beings.
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SPEAKER_00
The more you can see
2
SPEAKER_00
the actual result of what you did, that has a big impact on how you feel.
2
SPEAKER_00
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, you know, go on a field trip with them and get to actually see the people whose lives have
3
SPEAKER_00
being impacted.
3
SPEAKER_00
It is a beautiful, beautiful thing to do that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you do that, then you ll feel a glow of, wow, I like this version of me.
3
SPEAKER_00
I like this version of me that, one, was willing to be generous, two, was willing to be thoughtful about that generosity.
3
SPEAKER_00
And three, look at these amazing new people I ve met and look at what s happening.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is great.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it s probably a different case.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, look, there s many other ways to be generous.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s not just writing a check.
3
SPEAKER_00
And many other ways may well have almost like a more immediate
3
SPEAKER_00
payback, like in terms of being gratifying and so forth.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, using your time and energy and things like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, just connecting with someone on the street.
3
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely, a moment of generosity.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_01
I 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.
3
SPEAKER_01
not every year, every time, but it seems like something expands inside of them.
3
SPEAKER_01
When they give, and they almost give uncomfortably, like, ah, this is a big amount, and who knows what s gonna happen with this money, but I m gonna give it because I wanna be of service.
3
SPEAKER_01
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.
3
SPEAKER_01
Have you seen a correlation with that?
3
SPEAKER_01
The more people give financially with a good intention,
3
SPEAKER_01
that more goodness comes their way financially in the future.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I definitely don t believe there s some kind of karmic woo-woo thing going on where if you do that, somehow the universe says, direct more money to that person now.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I do think that in the age that we re in, generous people can get more done.
3
SPEAKER_00
They will attract.
3
SPEAKER_00
great other people to want to work with them.
3
SPEAKER_00
So this is the thing about, if you ask the question, how is value created in our modern era?
3
SPEAKER_00
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 in a
3
SPEAKER_00
Here s a steel manufacturer, the software that optimizes how that steel is manufactured, that is probably where the competitive edge comes from.
3
SPEAKER_00
To hire those people and to motivate them,
3
SPEAKER_00
they have a lot of choices about where they could work.
3
SPEAKER_00
They do not want to work for an evil company.
3
SPEAKER_00
They want to work for someone who is generous and who is doing their part to give back to the planet.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I think that that effect probably does happen and that people will want to do that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, even sort of take someone who a lot of people don t like right now, Elon Musk.
3
SPEAKER_00
His justification for Tesla being generous and giving away its patents.
3
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t directly for the benefit of Tesla, particularly in any way.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was that this would allow him a better chance of recruiting great engineers.
3
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
The best engineers don t want to work for a company.
3
SPEAKER_00
They want to work for a court.
3
SPEAKER_00
They want to work for the electrification of the future.
3
SPEAKER_00
We are making that more possible.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think whether that s spoken or unspoken,
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SPEAKER_00
um the that that is that is a real thing that just just happens that people will be more want to support that that that kind of person beyond that i would say that even if that that person didn t make more money um i d bet that their life overall is is better is happier right from it because they re they you know that they are being a more
3
SPEAKER_01
whole person.
3
SPEAKER_01
So they may not be generating more abundance of money, but creating more abundance of wholeness, of happiness, of love, of peace, of harmony inside of them.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that is worth a lot of money.
3
SPEAKER_01
To create a feeling of inner peace, harmony in your environment, great relationships,
3
SPEAKER_01
I d rather have that than all the money in the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
There are companies who have had, I think, direct value creation as a result of their generosity.
3
SPEAKER_00
One example I speak about is Patagonia, for example, where a percentage of profits was paid to environmental causes and the whole ethos of the company was to be generous to the future of the planet.
3
SPEAKER_00
That very fact is what brought them hordes of sort of next generation customers who care about this stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
Chobani Yoga is known as a generous employer, employed a lot of people from challenged communities and was generous to them and gave them shares and so forth.
3
SPEAKER_00
And again, I think that is connected, that is part of the motivation
3
SPEAKER_00
why I buy Chobani Yoga, and I think many others buy Chobani Yoga.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s delicious, sure, but it s a good company where their generosity is built into their actual business strategy.
3
SPEAKER_01
How can people build generosity into their lives and their business strategies moving forward?
3
SPEAKER_01
So I think it s a different
3
SPEAKER_00
answer in the case of every business, but I think a really, really cool thing to do for any company would be to schedule a half day or a day s retreat with your most creative people to ask this question.
3
SPEAKER_00
what is the craziest thing that we could give away?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because every company has a lot of assets that, in principle, could be shared freely online.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I ve used the fantasy of Coke.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, like if I was going to Coke, I would say, OK, the secret recipe of yours of law that is supposed to be the source of all your wealth.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s a secret recipe that no one knows.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s why Coke is so amazing.
3
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, here s an idea.
3
SPEAKER_00
Give it away.
3
SPEAKER_00
give it away, publish it, let everyone in the world in their kitchen, show them in their kitchen how they can make their own Coke, and invite them to improve the recipe.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s like, I mean, there s, for one thing, there s too much sugar in Coke, for God s sake, so.
3
SPEAKER_01
How can you make it taste better with less sugar?
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, make that a challenge, and offer a $10 million price, you know, for the best, new, improved recipe.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re going to launch this new brand, The People s Coke,
3
SPEAKER_00
My prediction, if they were to do that, first of all, I think they lose zero competitive advantage, because everyone kind of knows what the recipe actually is, and we can reverse engineer it, for God s sake.
3
SPEAKER_00
But two, it s a really cool thing to do, and you could end up with a huge new brand, and a lot of delighted customers, because you are saying, here we are, we are committed to generosity, we are committed to a generosity stretch.
3
SPEAKER_00
And any company has knowledge that they could consider turning into a free online course.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re going to give away our competitive secrets because we want the world to get better.
3
SPEAKER_00
We want others to learn from what we re using.
3
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, we want a reputation for being the leader here in this knowledge so that we can recruit the best employees for the future.
3
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think it could be super powerful.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s really interesting.
3
SPEAKER_01
So ask the question, what is the craziest thing we could give away?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And maybe not giving away all your money right away, but what s something unique you could give away?
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
So definitely not suggesting stupidity.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
But being smart about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, when we gave away our brand,
3
SPEAKER_00
to allow TEDx organizers around the world to put on, anyone in the world could apply for a free license to put on the TED event.
3
SPEAKER_00
But they had to call it TEDx.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we had rules and we had tools.
3
SPEAKER_00
The rules said you had to label it TEDx, where x stands for local, so TEDx and your town name or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it means self-organized.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there were some other rules, you know, you ve got to stick to our format, and so forth.
3
SPEAKER_01
But you lacked control.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you control it.
3
SPEAKER_00
You choose, you do it where you want, you pick the speakers you want, and so forth.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we trust you to honor our values and our rules.
3
SPEAKER_00
But then you have a bunch of tools, which is...
3
SPEAKER_00
here is the great way to think about coaching speakers.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, here are some of the secrets that people have learned to how to make an event riveting and compelling and so forth, and how to build community.
3
SPEAKER_00
And what happened was that people, I mean, people learn from each other.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think from each other even more than they learn from us.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we ended up with 3,000 different curation teams.
3
SPEAKER_00
So Ted is 200 full-time employees.
4
SPEAKER_00
Out there in the world are 60 to 70,000 plus people who are putting on TED events on their own time, without being paid, at their own financial risk, and generating 25,000 videos a year, including many of the best TED speakers.
4
SPEAKER_00
And TED Talks, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Simon Sinek came through TEDx.
4
SPEAKER_00
Brené Brown came through TEDx.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we just gave away our brand and took some risks.
4
SPEAKER_00
What we got back was unbelievable.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s unbelievable what came back.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you could not build a global events business.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve got 10 employees overlooking that particular part of the business.
4
SPEAKER_00
generating all of that content.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s amazing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s all from generosity.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s careful generosity.
4
SPEAKER_00
In a way it s calculated.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s done with generous intent.
4
SPEAKER_00
But what it led to is so special.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s led to thousands and thousands of people being themselves unbelievably generous.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, I m curious, it sounds like this was one of the biggest and best decisions you ever made with TED was allowing local organizers to create events.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m assuming that was one of the top three best decisions.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think probably the number one decision, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Probably the number one.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, how many, if you could calculate, how much impact or views do TEDx events
4
SPEAKER_01
videos get and lives impacted versus kind of main stage TED annual conference, like what is the difference between impact and giving away the secret sauce and allowing others to manage and control it essentially under your guidelines versus you having complete control over everything and doing it all yourself.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think there s three big parts of TED that have an impact out there in the world.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s main TED, there s TEDx, and then there s TED-Ed, which is our youth-oriented thing, which is short animated videos.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think it s about a third, a third, a third.
4
SPEAKER_00
Really?
4
SPEAKER_00
They all have very approximately a billion views or impressions annually.
4
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_00
A billion views annually, each category?
4
SPEAKER_00
Each of those categories, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the TED portion of it is like 140 people or so doing that.
4
SPEAKER_00
The TED-Ed part is probably 40 people.
4
SPEAKER_00
The TEDx part is 10 people, and it s the same impact because it s 10 people plus 65,000.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s wild.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s really putting my business, my entrepreneur s hat on it.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like, how did that happen?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because that suggests, it is that more than anything that convinced me that in this connected age, the rules around what you give away
4
SPEAKER_00
have changed, they ve changed.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so every business should think hard about what is your generosity strategy?
4
SPEAKER_00
It could be the most important decision you make.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is fascinating.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, how long were you into TED until you decided to do TEDx?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like how many years was that?
4
SPEAKER_01
And when was the idea of like, okay, we need to spread this more.
4
SPEAKER_01
Let s just let other people do their own events.
4
SPEAKER_01
How did this go about?
4
SPEAKER_00
Right, right, right.
4
SPEAKER_00
I took it over at the end of 2001.
4
SPEAKER_00
2006 was when online video came along, and it became possible to give away content.
4
SPEAKER_00
On YouTube, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so that was, again, in its own way, a big, kind of scary decision at the time, but it worked out super well, because that is what spread TED to the world.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because before, you didn t give it away for free to people.
4
SPEAKER_01
We couldn t.
4
SPEAKER_00
You couldn t do it online, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, it was a once-a-year conference.
4
SPEAKER_00
TV, we tried to get it on TV.
4
SPEAKER_00
TV thought that public lectures are so boring, my friend, don t be silly, go away.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so it wasn t until we actually tried it online and they went viral that we realized that that was the thing we could do.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so
4
SPEAKER_00
we just decided to give away all of our best content.
4
SPEAKER_00
Somehow the conference, instead of withering away, accelerated, because more people knew about it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Was that your decision, or did someone say, hey, we should try this out?
4
SPEAKER_00
How did this go about?
4
SPEAKER_00
There was a team of us.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was a great, great team.
4
SPEAKER_00
I had a wonderful colleague back then, June Cohen, who helped lead the charge on this.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we were kind of looking, are we going to do this?
4
SPEAKER_00
Isn t this risking the whole thing?
4
SPEAKER_00
But we both just got really excited.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was the reaction from people who d watched the first couple of experiments we did where it wasn t clear to us before that the inspiration from a talk could work on video.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it amazingly did.
4
SPEAKER_00
That hadn t been obvious to me that that would work.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s so much in the room.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s the person.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s different than pixels on a screen.
4
SPEAKER_00
Turns out not.
4
SPEAKER_00
The inspiration and the insight and so forth can spread beautifully on video.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we went for it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it exploded.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was great.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was amazing.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was incredible.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was really, really thrilling.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so that was 2006 when that started to happen.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then when did TED-Ed start to happen?
4
SPEAKER_01
When did you realize, let s do this for animated kids, different styles?
4
SPEAKER_00
TED-Ed was another gift from giving away.
4
SPEAKER_00
We had a fellows program, so we gave away attendance at the TED conference to incredible people who couldn t afford to come.
4
SPEAKER_00
And one of the first people who benefited from that program, this guy called Logan Smalley, he came, he wrote to us and said, you know, I m an educator and you could do something for education.
4
SPEAKER_00
You could do something for kids, like, you know, shorter animated content.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we went for it.
4
SPEAKER_00
He, again, the spirit of generosity, he persuaded thousands of teachers and hundreds of different animation studios to
4
SPEAKER_00
basically either donate or strongly discount their services to create these little short five-minute videos.
4
SPEAKER_00
And again, they took off.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so we get notes from teachers saying, I ve been teaching all my life.
4
SPEAKER_00
I teach a new class, 30 people every year.
4
SPEAKER_00
So over my career, I ve reached 1,000 kids.
4
SPEAKER_00
and the lesson that I wrote for you, which is the best lesson that I love to give, that you turned into an animation, I ve now reached 100,000 kids in a week.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s, you know, so the emotion from that is thrilling.
4
SPEAKER_00
The feeling, the impact of it, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so, again, there s a sort of...
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a surprising element of generosity at every stage in that causal chain.
4
SPEAKER_00
A gift to Logan to come to TED, his gift to us with the idea, his work attracting an incredible team, and then hundreds of teachers giving their knowledge, animators creating these... It s so exciting to see that type of chain reaction.
4
SPEAKER_01
And if you hadn t been infectious in your generosity, then it wouldn t have effectively spread with more generosity.
4
SPEAKER_01
You talk about the ripple effect, like that one act of saying, hey, come here for free, since you re unable to afford this.
4
SPEAKER_01
They were so impacted, they said, let s reach out to more people and create a whole other arm, essentially, of your business or your foundation that serves and impacts millions of people daily.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s surprising.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was around about the same time that TEDx started that we started giving away, you know, like trying out these TEDx events to see just how badly they would either go wrong or not.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m sure not all of them go well, also.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s like you have to let go of the image of TED of like, oh, this was a, you know, a chaotic experience.
4
SPEAKER_00
We ve had a few embarrassing moments, for sure, where a speaker got booked who we... Was not the right fit, or... Yeah, pseudoscience, or something like that, or whatever.
4
SPEAKER_00
But the more amazing thing is how much it went right.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so, yeah, that was 2008 that that started.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you could go into the future 10 years, and you could imagine yourself 10 years in the future, and you could look back at yourself right now and have a conversation with yourself 10 years in the future, and if you could see everything that would unfold with AI or whatever else unfolds over the next 10 years,
4
SPEAKER_01
and all the different challenges of the world, but also the opportunities and beauty of the world, and the wisdom that you would create from the next 10 years, if you could step into that future self and give yourself three pieces of advice, what do you think your future self would tell yourself now?
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh my gosh.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s one hell of a question.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because you ve seen over the last 20 plus years
4
SPEAKER_01
So many things happen.
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And I m sure that if you could give yourself advice now, back then, maybe you would have told yourself what to do or different changes.
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But what do you see based on the trend of the last 20 years for the next 10 years?
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I mean, I haven t spoken
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publicly about this before, so I m not even sure whether I want to say this, but I have not said it since you asked.
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I mean, look, the logic of the strategy that we ve adopted, which is just embracing generosity, trying to figure out
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what we can give away.
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The more that we ve given away, every time we ve found an answer to that, we ve been surprised.
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And so, I think, I mean, look, I m 67 now, for Christ s sake.
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I m 67 now, for goodness sake.
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What s the secret to looking so good at 67?
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I think the logical thing that I need to figure out how to do in the next 10 years is how to give TED itself away.
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I shouldn t be running it forever.
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It s a non-profit.
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It s a very healthy operation.
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There s an amazing team there.
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Right now, I m the sole director of the foundation that runs it.
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and control, but ideas are for the world and for the future.
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Ideas last forever.
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My long-term dream, I guess, is that the best people who are giving talks today, they put their life into these talks.
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They re sharing so much experience and wisdom.
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I want those talks to be available for hundreds of years for, you know, if only just for historical curiosity, but I mean, ideas shape history more than anything.
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So, I want TED to have a long-term future and it won t be me running it.
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So, I somehow need to figure out in the next few years how to give it away and who to give it away to.
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Wow.
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But I don t have an answer to that question yet, but I m thinking about it.
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And so I guess what I hope my 10 years into the future self would say to me is, Chris, that conversation you had with Lewis 10 years ago, that was the start of something beautiful.
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I ve only got a few minutes left with you.
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I feel like we could talk for another few hours.
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There s so many more things I want to ask you, but I want people to get your book, Infectious Generosity, the ultimate idea worth spreading.
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I want people to get a copy of the book, get a few copies for your friends.
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This will be a powerful tool and resource to support you in creating more happiness in your life, because I truly believe that when we give,
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It s almost the most selfish act you can do because it feels so good.
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It fills you up in big ways.
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So being generous is almost selfish in a way, but it s a good selfish.
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Because I truly believe when you give and help others and you see how joyful they are in your giving,
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I don t know what you can do for yourself that is a better feeling, right?
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Obviously, you want to take care of yourself and be healthy and make sure your needs are met, but giving is one of the greatest tools.
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So I m so glad that you created this book for people to have access, tools, and resources on how to give more generously.
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and why it s so valuable and meaningful in your life.
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So I want people to get a copy of this by Chris Anderson.
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They can go to your website, infectiousgenerosity.org, which is an AI communication tool on how to give more generously, right?
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Yeah, there s an AI on that website.
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It s called TIG, the Infectious Generosity Guru.
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Ooh, okay.
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Tigger s a lot of fun.
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It can help you brainstorm what you can do.
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It listens to what your interests are, what your skills are, and then you can play with it.
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It s pretty cool.
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Okay, cool.
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So people can go there, infectiousgenerosity.org.
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They can follow you on Twitter or on X, which is your main platform of choice these days.
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They re in LinkedIn.
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You re at Ted Chris on X.
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And they can get the book anywhere books are sold Amazon and bookstores everywhere else.
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So make sure you guys get a copy of Infectious Generosity
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There s so many more things I would love to ask you about, but hopefully we can stay in touch and do this again in the future.
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But I have a couple final questions.
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This is a question I ask everyone towards the end of our conversation.
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It s called the three truths.
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So we asked you to go 10 years into the future, but I d love you to go as far as you can in the future to the last day, imagining it to extend your life as long as you want.
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But eventually, it s the last day for you in this world.
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And you have created everything you want from this moment until that last day, personally, professionally.
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You ve made anything you want to make.
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But for whatever reason, on this last day, in this hypothetical question, you have to take everything with you to the next place.
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So no one, we don t have access to TED content.
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We don t have access to your book.
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This conversation, it s gone.
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Everything you ve ever said, we no longer have access to.
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But on the last day, you get to leave behind three truths, three lessons that you know to be true that the world can have access to.
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What would those three truths be for you?
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Okay, now I get why people come back to this podcast.
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This is amazing.
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I think the single most amazing superpower that humans have is the ability to dream, to literally think of possible futures.
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and kind of test them in their minds and in conversations and in imagination.
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No one else can do this.
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We literally get to explore, if you like, possibility spaces.
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And then when we ve found one that a few of us think that s actually pretty cool.
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we have a shot at actually building it and shaping it so we can intentionally shape the future.
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This is the single most amazing thing about our species to me.
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So I guess I would say never forget that.
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Never forget that.
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Whatever the future is, whatever you re going on to, keep dreaming.
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And find fellow dreamers who... Because then you have a shot at building anything, you know?
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Building anything.
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That s one.
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I think I ve become more and more aware of the gift, one particular type of gift, which is the gift of encouragement.
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It s an easy gift in some ways to give to someone, but it can make so much difference to a life just to hear
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you know, in the sort of time-starved world that we re in, someone say, you are great, actually, what you re doing is great, thank you, go on, go on, don t stop, go on.
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And so, I think I d never want to forget that.
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Which is also a great form of being generous.
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Yeah.
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Encouragement.
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Yeah.
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And the final thing is to remember how complex we are.
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I mean, I m assuming that what might go forward is still human beings as we are with all our flaws and issues.
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Don t be owned by your lizard brain, by your instinctive self.
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Everything good in life comes by trying to figure out how to put your reflective self to use.
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guide that lizard brain.
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Our instinctive selves are beautiful.
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They have a lot of the best feelings, the most intense things that we do.
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They re our instinctive self behavior.
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But we need to bring our reflective selves to the party.
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So I would say, ultimately, it ll be my reflective self in that moment that looks back and says, so what do you think?
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What do we make of that life?
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Our reflective self is our storytelling self.
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And the stories we tell about ourselves are ultimately what endure and what we care about.
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Yeah, the meaning we give the stories that we have in our life.
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Yeah.
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Those are great truths.
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Chris, I want to acknowledge you again for the impact you continue to make and you ve made for such a long time on humanity.
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In a world where people can literally do whatever they want, you ve decided to do something impactful.
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So I appreciate the consistency of 23 plus years now of your involvement in TED and really bringing change in a positive way to the world and to humanity.
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So I m very grateful for your generosity and for your wisdom today on this conversation.
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And I hope we do more together in the future.
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My final question is, what is your definition of greatness?
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The ability to bring something great out of others.
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Any one person can be amazingly great, but that might just be one person.
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We re social.
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We re a social species.
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We need each other.
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We depend on each other.
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We re influenced by each other.
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The greatest greatness is the greatness that spreads.
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There you go, Chris.
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Thanks so much.
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much appreciate being here.
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I hope you enjoyed today s episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today s episode with all the important links.
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And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel
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exclusively on Apple Podcasts.
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Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well.
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Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.
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I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.
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And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now it s time to go out there and do something great.