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

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To see you, Louis. 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. And 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. Good circumstances, lucky timing, all this stuff. But thank you anyway.

Of course, yeah. You have been, 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. Your 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. It's actually a very hard thing to do effectively, as we'll discuss. But I think I also don't think that most of them really make their wealth through a really annoying exploitation. You know, 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 1000 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. So I don't think those wealth gains are evil in and of themselves. Inequality is definitely a problem in our world. But nonetheless, 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. And I would say that most of them are on a journey to figure out the right way to do it. Because it turns out it's really hard to write a really big cheque 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. the 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? 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.

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 strike, building generosity into your life in some way, it surprises you by making you happy.

That's interesting. And in the book Infectious Generosity, yeah, but 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. 'Cause it was done, 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, 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. We didn't say anything about money.

Really?

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 Mr. 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 question, no strings attached. So they were skeptical at first, but eventually they were persuaded that this was for real. And 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 can 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. And so, this economist, traditional economic theory, rational agent theory, whatever, you would 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. 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.

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, 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. And the thing is, Louis, 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, you know, 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.

Wow.

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. We are hampering the spread of good stuff through cynicism, through nitpicking, through critiques, through 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. But which has probably the indirect consequence of the next person saying, you, know what? I'm just gonna wait, screw these settings. I don't need that. And so by doing that, we're literally taking money away from other recipients.

Wow.

We should not be doing that. We should, 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, you know, 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 gonna be getting more than later.

Yeah.

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 well respond and want to work with you or do something for you. At 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, but- 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. This is really an amazing world that we're in right now 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. And 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, there are so many ways you can do that now. 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 bro or an app or whatever. There are so many ways to give things away in a way that many people can benefit. And the tRopists were so used to it. We're actually drowning in this sort of deluge of free content that we forget how amazing this is. This 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 the people who are doing this are dependent on our, you know, let's go onto Patreon and actually support that incredible artist or that incredible photographer or whatever.

Absolutely.

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 blase.

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, you know, free cataract surgery and so forth to people who had injury.

That was your mom?

That was her mom. My father did the surgery. She was there, you know, supporting him 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, 50 bucks a month was what they were paid. But they were joyful with it. And honestly, I thought I was confused, like I found it daunting. So something must have rubbed off. There's a story I haven't told it, I think, but my dad was involved in a terrible accident, ran over a kid. Who died. And there was a whole, you know, he was almost jailed. He was then, you know, refused to pay off the judge. refused to pay off the police without- 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 apparently, I don't remember doing this, but I gave this boy my best toy and, you know, we, I mean, and how could you not? Right? When, when, when. So I was, I would have been, like, four years old or something then. Four or five.

Wow.

But the, but that's, that, that's it. So much of generosity is Instinct. That's not, that's not, there's nothing, you know, laudable about that. It's just you, you see someone who's, he hears a boy who's, 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 whatever. We would rescue the kid. You would rescue 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? 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. So 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. of 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. 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, been impacted deeply by it, have felt transformation, healing tools to serve their life. And to hear you say 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, you know, I've been, you know, I really like what Scott Harrison has done at Charity: Water and Adam Braun at Pencils of Promise, where water and education for kids is something that I've been donating to for many years. 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. And 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 homeless yourself and just say, I'm gonna give everything away.

That's right. That's right.

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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, so I worked with a woman called Natalie Cargill who runs, who has a thing called Longview Philanthropy. She actually has a very good TED talk about this. About what, what the theoretical question, what would maximum philanthropy look like? Like 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. From poverty to inequality to the existential threats of things like AI, to climate, to pick your issue. 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. So, that's it, 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, as just as a start point, were 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 could afford it. And in Islam, there's this pillar of Islam zakat, which means give 140th of your wealth annually, two and a half percent of your net worth annually. Now it's interesting, you know, for the very rich, for example, 10% of income, isn't really much of an ask. Many of them don't have much income, if any, anyway. They're living off their investments basically. But two and a half percent 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 five or six percent wealthiest people in the world did this. And actually, if only a third of them did this, because some people won't ever... Right, right, right. Whatever, 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 two and a half percent of your net worth. If we did that, that your obligations are done financially. There are other ways you can be good. 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 charity as this 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. Instead, we would be thinking about this huge pot of cash and the ability to dream audaciously about what change could actually look like. 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. 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? That's a whole other conversation, I guess.

It's 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.

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. This says to you, I'm gonna give them a 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 nonprofits have around them a community of supporters. If you connect with them and learn, the question to ask is not what percentage is there overheads or whatever. Because overheads, often the overheads are the most important part of what an org is doing. The question to ask is, are they effective?

Are they getting results?

Are they getting results?

Impact.

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?

It's probably a slightly different story in each case. Just literally writing a check per se may not do anything. 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 the 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. I 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, absolutely. 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. 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. Have you seen a correlation with that? The more people give financially with a good intention, that more goodness comes their way financially in the future.

So I, I definitely don't believe there's some kind of karmic, you know, woo-woo thing going on where, where, you know, if you do that, somehow the universe says, direct more money to that person now. But I, I do think that in the age that we're in, generous people can get more done. Like, they, 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 in a, you know, here's a steel manufacturer, the software that you know, 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 so to 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. It was that this would allow him a better chance of recruiting great engineers.

Interesting.

The best engineers don't want to work for a company. They want to work for a court. So they, you know, like, and so, you know, they want to work for the electrification of the future. And so we are making that more possible, you know, and I think whether that's spoken or unspoken, that is a real thing that just happens that people will be more want to support that kind of person. Beyond that, I would say that even if that person didn't make more money, I bet that their life overall is better, is happier.

Right.

From it. Because they are being a more whole person.

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.

Yes, absolutely.

And that is worth a lot of money. To create a feeling of inner peace, harmony in your environment, great relationships, you know, I'd rather have that than all the money in the world.

There are companies who have had, I think, direct value creation as a result of their generosity. I mean, 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. That very fact is what brought them hordes of next generation customers who care about this stuff. Chobani yogurt 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. And again, I think that is connected in that is part of the motivation why I buy ciabatta. And I think many others buy ciabatta. It's delicious, sure, but it's a good company doing, you know, where their generosity is built into their actual business strategy.

How can people build generosity into their lives and their business strategies moving forward?

So I think it's a different 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. And to ask this question, what is the craziest thing that we could give away? Because every company has a lot of assets that in principle could be shared freely online. I mean, I've used the fantasy of Coke. If I was going to Coke, I would say, okay, this secret recipe of yours, of law, that is supposed to be the source of all your wealth. It's this secret recipe that no one knows, and that's why Coke is so amazing. Here's an idea, give it away. 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. You know, it's like, I mean, there's, for one thing, there's too much sugar in Coke, for God's sake.

How can you make it taste better with less sugar?

Exactly. Make that a challenge and offer a 10 million price. Look for the best new improved recipe. We're going to launch this new brand, the People's Coke. 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. Right. You can reverse engineer it.

Sugar and water.

For God's sake. 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. And any company has knowledge that they could consider turning into a free online course. We're going to give away our competitive secrets because we want the world to get better. We want others to learn from what we're using. 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.

Wow.

I think it could be super powerful.

That's really interesting. So ask the question, what is the craziest thing we could give away?

Yeah.

And maybe not giving away all your money right away, but what's something unique you could give away?

Exactly. So definitely not suggesting stupidity.

Right.

But being smart about it. You know, when we gave away our brand to allow TEDx organizers around the world to put on, anyone in the world could apply for a free license to put on the TEDx. But they had to call it TEDx. We had rules and we had tools. The rules said you ought to label it TEDx where x stands, you know, it's a local, so TEDx and your city, town name or whatever. So it means self-organized. And there were some other rules, you know, you've got to stick to our format and so forth.

But you lacked control.

But you control it. You choose, you do it where you want, you pick the speakers you want and so forth. And we trust you to honor our values and our rules. But then you have a bunch of tools, which is here is the great way to think about coaching speakers. 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. And what happened was that people, I mean, people learned from each other, I think, from each other even more than they learned from us. And we ended up with three different curation teams. So Ted is 200 full-time employees. 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.

TED Talks, right? Yeah, yeah.

Simon Sinek came through. TEDx, Brené Brown came through TEDx. So we just gave away our brand and took some risk. What we got back was unbelievable. It's unbelievable what came back. And you could not build a global events business. I've got 10 employees overlooking that particular part of the business generating all of that content. It's amazing.

How much?

It's all from generosity.

Yeah, that's incredible.

But it's generosity. It's careful generosity, okay? In a way, it's calculated. It's done with generous intent.

Fascinating.

But what it led to is so special and it's led to thousands of thousands of people being themselves unbelievably generous.

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. I'm assuming that was one of the top three best decisions Yeah, I think probably the number one decision, right?

Probably the number one.

Now, if you could calculate how much impact or views do TEDx event videos get and lives impacted versus kind of mainstage TED annual conference, what is the difference between impact in 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?

Yeah. I think there's three big parts of TED that have an impact out there in the world. There's main TED, there's TEDx, and then there's TED-Ed, which is our youth-oriented thing, which is short animated videos. I think it's about a third, a third, a third, really. They all have a very approximately a billion views or impressions annually. And a billion views annually each category. Each of those categories. Yeah. And what it, and the TED portion of it is like 140 people or so doing that. The TED-Ed part is probably 40 people. The TEDx part is 10 people. And it's the same impact because it's 10 people.

Marriage to everyone else.

1,000, you know, it's wild. Like it's really trying to putting my business, my entrepreneurs had on it. It's like, how did that happen? Because that suggests it is that more than anything that convinced me that in this connected age, the rules around what you give away have changed. They've changed. They've changed. And so every business should think hard about what is your generosity strategy. It could be the most important decision you make.

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This is fascinating. Now, how long were you into TED until you decided to do TEDx? Like, how many years was that? and when was the idea of like, okay, we need to spread this more, let's just let other people do their own events. How did this go about?

Right, right, right. I took it over at the end of 2001. 2006 was when online video came along and it became possible to give away content.

On YouTube, yeah.

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.

Because before YouTube, you didn't give it away for free to people.

We couldn't.

You couldn't do it online.

Yeah. You know, it was in a once a year conference. TV, we tried to get it on TV. TV thought that public lectures are so boring, my friend, don't be silly, go away. And so it wasn't until, you know, we actually tried it online and they went viral that we realized that that was the thing we could do. And so we just decided to give away all of our best content. Somehow the conference instead of withering away, you know, accelerate it because people more people knew about it.

Was that your decision or did someone say, hey, we should try this out? How did this go about?

It was, there was a team, there was a team of us. It was a great, a great team. I had a wonderful colleague back then, June Cohen, who, who helped lead the charge on this. And, you know, we, we were kind of looking, can, are we going to do this? Isn't this risking the whole thing? But We both just got really excited. 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. And it amazingly did. And I just, that hadn't been obvious to me that that would work. There's so much in the room, there's a person and there's- Right, right. It's different than pixels on a screen. Turns out not, you can, you know, the inspiration and the insight and so forth can spread beautifully on video. So we went for it and.

It exploded.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was great. It was amazing.

It was incredible.

It was really, really threatening.

And that was 2006 when that started to happen. And then when did Ted Ed start to happen? When did you realize let's do this for animated, you know, kids, different styles?

Ted Ed was another gift from giving away. We had a fellows program, so we gave away attendance at the TED conference to incredible people who couldn't afford to come. And one of the first people who benefited from that program, this guy called Logan Smalley, he wrote to us and said, you know, I'm an educator and you could do something for education. You could do something for kids, like shorter animated content. And we went for it. Again, the spirit of generosity, he persuaded thousands of teachers and hundreds of different animation studios to basically either donate or strongly discount their services to create these little short five-minute videos. And again, they took off. And so we get notes from teachers saying, I've been teaching all my life. I teach a new class, 30 people every year. So, you know, over my career, I've reached a thousand kids. And the lesson that I wrote for you, which is the best lesson that I love to give, that you turn into an animation, I've now reached 100,000 kids in a week. And it's, you know, so the emotion.

From that is the feeling, the impact of it, yeah.

And so, again, there's a sort of a surprising element of generosity at every stage in that causal chain. 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.

And if you hadn't been infectious in your generosity, then it wouldn't have infectantly spread. Right. With more generosity, you talk about the ripple effect, like that one act of saying, Hey, come here for free. Since you're unable to afford this, 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.

Yeah, it's surprising. It was around about the same time that TED-Ed started that we started giving away, you know, like trying out these TEDx events to see it just how badly they would go wrong or not.

And I'm sure not all of them go well also. It's like you have to let go of the image of TED of like, oh, this was a chaotic experience.

And... We've had a few embarrassing moments for sure, where a speaker got booked.

Who was not the right fit or.

Pseudoscience or something like that, whatever. But the more amazing thing is how much it went right. And so yeah, so that was 2008 that that started.

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, 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?

Oh my gosh. That's one hell of a question.

Because you've seen over the last 20 plus years, so many things happen. 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. But what do you see based on the trend of the last 20 years for the next 10 years?

I haven't spoken publicly about this before, so I'm not even sure whether I want to say this. let's say I do since you asked. I mean, look, the, the logic of the strategy that we've adopted, which is just embracing generosity, trying to figure out what we can give away, the more that we've given away, that every time we've found an answer to that, we've been surprised. And so I, I think, I mean, look, I'm, I'm 67 now, for Christ's sake. But I'm 67 now, for goodness sake.

And what's the secret to looking so good at 67?

And I, 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. Like, take. I shouldn't be running forever. It's a non-profit it's, it's a very healthy. operation. There's an amazing team there. Right now, I'm the sole director of the foundation that runs it. I'm in control. But ideas are for the world and for the future. Ideas last forever. My long-term dream, I guess, is that the best people who are giving talks today, they put their life into these talks, they're sharing so much experience and wisdom. I want those talks to be available for hundreds of years, if only just for historical curiosity. But I mean, ideas shape history more than anything. So I want Ted to have a long-term future and it won't be me running it. So I somehow need to figure out in the next few years how to give it away and who to give it away to. Wow. and [No. But I, I don't have an answer to that question yet, but I'm thinking about it. And so I guess I, what I hope, 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, that was the start of something beautiful.

I've only got a few minutes left with you. I feel like we could talk for another few hours. 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. I want people to get a copy of the book, get a few copies for your friends. 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, it's almost the most selfish act you can do because it feels so good. It fills you up in big ways. So, Being generous is almost selfish in a way, but it's a good selfish. Because I truly believe when you give and help others and you see how joyful they are in your giving, I don't know what you can do for yourself that is a better feeling, right? 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. So I'm so glad that you created this book for people to have access tools and resources on how to give more generously and why it's so valuable and meaningful in your life. So I want people to get a copy of this by Chris Anderson. They can go to your website infectiousgenerosity.org, which is an AI communication tool on how to give more generously, right?

Yeah, there's an AI on that website. It's called TIG, the Infectious Generosity Guru. Ooh, okay. TIG is a lot of fun. It can help you brainstorm what you can do. It listens to what your interests are, what your skills are, and then you.

Can play with it. It's pretty cool. Okay, cool. So people can go there, infectiousgenerosity.org, they can follow you on Twitter or on X, which is your main platform of choice these days. They're in LinkedIn. You're @tedchris on X, and they can get the book anywhere books are sold, Amazon, bookstores everywhere else. so make sure you guys get a copy of Infectious Generosity. 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. But I have a couple final questions. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end of our conversation. It's called the Three Truths. 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. Imagine you get to extend your life as long as you want. but eventually it's the last day for you in this world. And you have created everything you want from this moment until that last day, personally, professionally, you've made anything you want to make. But for whatever reason on this last day in this hypothetical question, you have to take everything with you to the next place. So no one, we don't have access to TED content, we don't have access to your book, this conversation, it's gone. Everything you've ever said we no longer have access to. 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. What would those three truths be for you?

Okay, now I get why people come back to this podcast. This is amazing. I think the single most amazing superpower that humans have is the ability to dream, to literally think of possible futures and kind of test them in their minds and in conversations in imagination. No one else can do this. We literally get to explore, if you like, possibility spaces. and then when we've found one that a few of us think that's actually pretty cool, we have a shot at actually building it and shaping it so we can intentionally shape the future. This is the single most amazing thing about our species to me. So I guess I would say never forget that. Never forget that whatever the future is, whatever you're going on to, keep dreaming. And find fellow dreamers who who, because then you have a shot at building anything, you know, building anything.

That's one.

I think I've become more and more aware of the gift, one particular type of gift, which is the gift of encouragement. 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 it, you know, in that sort of time star world that we're in, someone say, you, you are great. Actually, what you're doing is great. Thank you. Go on, go on. Don't stop. Go on. And so I think I'd never want to forget that, which is also a.

Great form of being generous. Encouragement.

And the final thing is to remember how complex we are. I mean, I'm assuming that what might go forward is still human beings as we are with all our flaws and issues. It's don't be owned by your lizard brain, by your instinctive self. Everything good in life comes by trying to figure out how to put your reflective self to use to guide that lizard brain. Our instinctive selves are beautiful. They have, like, a lot of the best feelings and the most intense things that we do are kind of, you know, they're our instinctive self-behavior but. But we need to bring our reflective selves to the party.

So. Absolutely.

I would say. It's ultimately, it'll be my reflective self in that moment that looks back and says, so what do you think? What do we make of that life? Our reflective self is our storytelling self. And the stories we tell about ourselves are ultimately what endure and what we care about.

Yeah, the meaning we give, the stories that we have in our life. Yeah, those are great truths. 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. In a world where people can literally do whatever they want, you've decided to do something impactful. 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. So I'm very grateful for your generosity and for your wisdom today on this conversation. and I hope we do more together in the future. My final question is, what is your definition of greatness?

The ability to bring something great out of others. Any one person can be amazingly great, but that might just be one person. We're a social, we're a social species. We need each other, we depend on each other, we're influenced by each other. The greatest greatness is the greatness that spreads.

There you go. Chris, thanks so much. Appreciate you being here. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. 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 exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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