How to make generosity contagious (w/ Chris Anderson) (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Chris Duffy:
You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. What's the best gift that you've ever been given? For a long time my answer to that question would've been a Christmas sometime in late elementary school where my parents gave me a box of these chocolate covered peppermint sticks that I was obsessed with and I couldn't find anywhere. And then, they also gave me a box of collectible Star Wars trading cards.

I experienced true transcendental ecstasy in that moment, like I do not think the human brain even is able to process higher levels of excitement than I reached opening those two presents back to back.

But now, as an adult, I've come to think about meaningful gifts more broadly than just pictures of Chewbacca and obscure candies. Today, I would tell you that some of the most meaningful gifts I receive are people's time, their vulnerability, their kindness, and their willingness to listen to me and to see me.

And that is a type of generosity that I actually hadn't thought very deeply about until I read a book by today's guest, Chris Anderson. Chris is the head of TED, and so I guess he's kind of my boss. He is also a person who has spent his career thinking about how to give things away. And what it means to do that effectively and responsibly, whether that means attention or support or money. Chris's new book is called Infectious Generosity, and this is how he defines what infectious generosity is.

[00:01:24] Chris Anderson:
At its broadest, it's just any generous act that sparks someone else to be generous. The hope, the belief is that in our connected age, we can spark chain reactions of generosity, ripple effects across the world to take on the nastiness of what is out there right now. But it could be literally, it could be a kind act that is noticed by someone and shared on social media, or it could be someone just writing a check that in a way that has ripple effects coming from it. It's a thoughtful piece of philanthropy, if you like, that can have infectious effect. There's all kinds of ways to be generous and therefore there are all different kinds of infectious generosity. But the one thing we know is that they have all been massively dialed up in the connected era we're in right now, and I think that aspect of generosity has not been fully taken into account, which is why I wrote this.

[00:02:20] Chris Duffy:
We will be back with more from Chris in just a moment, but in the meantime, here are some messages from our very generous sponsors.

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[00:02:40] Chris Duffy:
Today, we're talking generosity with Chris Anderson.

[00:02:43] Chris Anderson:
Hello, I'm Chris Anderson. Uh, the guy lucky enough to run TED, and I'm also the author of Infectious Generosity.

[00:02:51] Chris Duffy:
For people who haven't read the book, can we just list, uh, some, but not all of the ways that generosity can exist?

[00:02:56] Chris Anderson:
I mean, it starts with literally a generous mindset of just being willing to pay attention to someone else. So you're walking down the street, you know, you notice someone there who might be needy in some way. You have a decision to make. Do I look at them? Do I give any of my attention to them? Most of the time, we don't do that. It's uncomfortable. We just keep on walking. But that, that gift of attention is actually where all, all generosity starts.

There's obvious gifts like volunteering or just doing a nice generous act to someone, someone who might need a, a, a kind word for example. There are gifts of hospitality or gifts of creativity. You know, the artists who do something magical and then it spreads over the internet. They may never know just how many minds they've lit up, but I mean, that's a form of generosity that can become infectious. Just enchantment. Or there’s the generosity of just sharing your contact list, sharing, bringing someone into your network. That can be absolutely transformative for someone's life.

And then one of the most important forms of generosity, I think, in, in the divided age that we're in right now, is having the courage to be someone who attempts to bridge, you know, to listen to people on the other side, to listen to 'em with respect and try and find language that doesn't just inflame a situation, but, you know, finds common understanding in some way. It's, uh, could be a very scary thing to do, but it, it's amazing when a situation turns like that. And I, I, in many ways, I think our future depends on more people being willing to do that.

[00:04:33] Chris Duffy:
In my favorite interpersonal relationships, the ones that mean the most to me, one of the things that I think is really defining of them is a generosity of interpretation, right? Like the, the idea that you can make a mistake or say something a little bit wrong and that this person will be generous in how they interpret that. That they'll, they'll see the, the best version of you and that they'll give you credit for stumbling and not immediately jump to, uh, you know, and making into a fight or to judging you.

And I think that's also feels like something that is very unique and less common than it may be once was because of the way that social media and that digital technologies work, where, you know, you say something not quite perfect and it's the same as saying something horrible.

[00:05:15] Chris Anderson:
A hundred percent. It's a real problem. We are rewarding people who've become expert at, at uh, nailing what is wrong with someone else. You know, you see the slightest imperfection. Boom. You go in for the kill and kind of destroy them on social media in some savagely, witty way that wins you followers and, uh, ruins their life. Maybe. Instead of asking what's wrong with something, a much better question is “What is right with something?”

I think it's been in many ways, generosity's curse for many years is that we tend to view it through this lens of perfection. Even philosophically, we've, people have argued that generosity is only real generosity if it's done from the absolute purest of intent, there can be no other motivation for doing it. Otherwise, it's, it's not really moral. I think we have to let go of that. Every single thing we do, there are mixed motivations. No one would do anything if there wasn't some kind of psychological reward. Even if the only reward you get is you are, you are solving your conscience a little bit. That's still a little act of pleasure that, you know, there's something in it for you in that, and so we just have to stop. critiquing every act of generosity saying, “You know what? Maybe that person was actually being a little bit cynical there,” or “They're just doing that to bolster their reputation,” or “They had some surreptitious purpose,” or “They weren't nearly generous enough. Why didn't they do more?” How about if instead of saying that you, do, you find the, you find the generous interpretation of it?

[00:06:38] Chris Duffy:
We've been talking about other kinds of generosity, but of course, financial generosity, giving what extra you have, whether that's a little or a lot, is a, is a big piece of generosity. And, and when it does come to money, you talk about some practical pieces that can make giving much more impactful. And one of those is committing to a norm and having that be public. And in the book you talk about drawing inspiration from several religious traditions here. Can, can you tell us about that?

[00:07:05] Chris Anderson:
So the trouble with a lot of financial giving is that we just do it on instinct. Like you just, you know, there's a moment comes, there's a tragedy on the news, and you suddenly feel motivated to text in some money to help, or, you know, a friend is in need and we, we help them out then, and we, we don't stop and think about how to best use our money.

Strategic generosity in your financial giving is, is really important to take the time to think about it and kind of to plan it. You know, almost like on an annual basis, what am I gonna spend this year and what am I gonna do it on? And a huge tool for helping with that is to make some kind of pledge of, you know, I'm going to spend during the year this much of my income.

So there are two pledges that have, are out there, basically honed down over hundreds of years by some of the main religious traditions. Uh, Christianity and Judaism have focused on tithing 10% of your income. Um, should be given away.

That's a big challenge for a lot of people. Possibly even bigger challenge, certainly for people who are super wealthy, is the Islam tradition of zakat, which is two and a half percent of your net worth given away every year. That's at least three times what most very rich people are giving away. It's a challenge, but it's actually an affordable amount.

Most wealthy people, their wealth is going up by more than that every year. So it should be doable, but it's, it's just about that becoming a norm. What I suggest in the book, if you're religious, then yes, go, go with one of those traditions and maybe consider giving the money beyond just to a religious organization. If you're not religious, do you aspire to having ethical standards that are at least as high as the religions that we know of? Well, I think most people would say yes. Well then, how about deciding to commit to the higher of those two? That puts a big pot of money on the table that you are then forced to think about strategically.

How do I spend this wisely? It's a big ask to make of everyone, and it's not something that I think everyone has to do right away. It's something to aspire to build up to, depending on what stage you are in your life.

[00:09:20] Chris Duffy:
Yeah, I, One thing that I like about that as an idea is that it is challenging, but still feels like a goal that is attainable, right? 10% is a lot, and I think one of the beauties of a percent, as opposed to a set number is that it goes up in the years when you make more, you give more, and in the years when you make less, you give less. And I, and I think, of course, there are going to be many times and many people where they're not making enough to have an extra 10% and interestingly, I think that people who are in that situation are often proportionally more generous anyway, giving more of their income and of their worth than the people at the very top. But if you don't have the money, you can give your time. You can give your energy. The, that’s where the other forms of generosity can come in.

[00:10:05] Chris Anderson:
Yeah, and there's a wonderful website out there called Givingwhatwecan.org, where you can make a, a pledge, you, it could be 10% of income or they've now added in the ability to pledge a percentage of net worth. You could do that, you can build up to it, and then you can join a kind of a community of other people who have done the same thing.

And it is a challenge. It really is a challenge for a lot of people. And it's good that we're in an age where that isn't the only way you can give. Like, if you have creative talent, for example, hello, we’re in an age where you can give away amazing things on the internet to literally millions of people.

I would argue that the kind of, the things that creative people do, whether it's writing software or music or incredible art or whatever it is, or, or providing videos that share powerful knowledge, those things actually matter. You know, those non-material things, we spend so much of our time immersed with them.

So if you can give away something powerful there, wow, what an opportunity you have. And then there's a beautiful gift in the tail, which is that those gifts carry with them an incredibly important currency for our era: reputation. You know, you can become known everywhere because of that type of gift.

[00:11:22] Chris Duffy:
I think that's really accurate and, and beautiful. And also there's a little piece of me that's just because of the, the creative background that I come from in comedy where I'm a little skeptical of people being like, “And my gift to the world is my jokes.” I'm like, “Well, maybe you should volunteer at a soup kitchen too.” You know? You might wanna not just give your jokes out to the world. I think we could use a little bit of donations too.

[00:11:42] Chris Anderson:
I mean, this is the journey that everyone has to figure out for them, for themselves. What is your authentic generosity journey and, and it will be a different answer in every case, but I think the, the, the beauty of just asking the question and doing something, you know, you get meaning out of it. You get… so many people wrestle with this, like, what is on life actually for? You feel kind of useless a lot of the time. This, I promise, delivers meaning and, and ultimately a form of happiness, quite a deep form of happiness that I think is profound and it, there's such a sort of multiplier effect there.

I mean, look, I, I wrestled with this stuff my whole life. I was, I was brought up religious. I had incredible, incredible parents who were so generous with their whole lives and I kind of felt often just guilty. Honestly, like I, like, I, I wasn't doing enough. I knew that the whole point of life was not to go shopping or focus on your interest, but to try and do something bigger than, you know, work for something bigger than you are.

I often thought I wasn't doing that. And actually I think, uh, honestly, a lot of people carry that, their head in Sunday school, you're supposed to be nice to people and so forth. But, but when it comes down to it, life is very, very demanding. It's just hard to pay attention to that stuff. And I was incredibly lucky that when, through TED, you know, we had this crazy thing happen 17 years ago where, where it was suddenly possible to give away all our content. TED used to just be like an annual conference.

Uh, and a few hours after I took it over, online video came along and we suddenly had this big moral dilemma of, “Wait a sec, you're a nonprofit. You, you could be giving away all this inspiring content to everyone in the world, not just the rich people who come to TED, but that will kill the conference.” And then we got nothing. And so there was this battle and you know, my parents' voice in my head, a very brave team of people around me. You know, we went for it, and it changed. It changed everything. You know, instead of killing demand for the conference, it, demand soared because TED had gone viral, suddenly millions of people visiting a website that no one had heard of before.

And then that led to, you know, okay, well we'll give away our brand too, in the form of TEDx. And so suddenly, you know, there's 3000 events being held around the world that we could never possibly have done. And TEDx has ended up churning out, you know, 200,000 videos. Uh, I mean, it's just, it's absolutely unbelievable what came back and, and for me personally, the experience of generosity shifted from this onerous burden to, “Wait a sec. This is thrilling.” You know, this is amazing. This is so exciting.

When you're in an era where generosity can become infectious, not only can you have more impact, it's actually, we can deal with our inner demons a bit this way as well, because there is, there is so much joy to be had when something you do and can give is seen by a lot of people.

[00:14:30] Chris Duffy:
That is one of the things that is most counterintuitive in a way, and I think anyone who's listening can experience that, right? Certainly anyone who's listening isn't gonna have the opportunity to be the head of TED in a moment where you can decide whether or not to give away the videos for free online, which turned out to be this transformative decision.

But I think that we all have these moments where you have this reflexive thought of like, “If I give, then I will have less.” And sometimes that may be true, but I think you make a really compelling case that in many situations, many more than we naturally intuit, giving away actually leads to having more for everyone.

[00:15:09] Chris Anderson:
It's definitely complicated, right? You're an artist. You’re trying to make your living online. Like, you know, your whole income is based on strictly controlling who has access to your creations. You give it away, you've got nothing. So, I mean, you still have the art, but so does everyone else. It, you know, part of the value of a lot of creative things is in the exclusivity.

And so in, in that sense, giving things away really does take away what you've got. I have huge r-respect for all artists, musicians. You know, it's, musicians are a situation where, because of the power of Spotify and a lot of the, you know, the deals that have been struck with the record companies, I mean, it's incredibly hard to make a real living from music, just from online views and streams, whatever.

Today you have to be, you have to be at such scale for that to happen. And so, yeah, a, a, a plead to say, “Yeah. Infectious generosity online, give away your stuff.” It could, it could sound very tone deaf. I still think that, that it's worth pondering and dreaming about because it, it doesn't necessarily apply to all that you do, but it may be that there's a case to pick something really great that you've done and give it to the world and see what happens.

[00:16:24] Chris Duffy:
Generosity, on a one-to-one person level is, is so clearly a good thing, right? This is what we tell even the littlest kids that sharing is good, but then when it starts to get out on these broader scales, especially when technology gets involved, there’s something that is incredible about being generous and giving away freely, but I also feel this tug of, “I'm being generous, but someone is making money off it and it's not me.” And is that generosity then, or is that exploitation and, and I actually don't know the answer. Right? I think it's complicated.

[00:16:58] Chris Anderson:
Yeah. I mean, it's definitely easier for people who have some other source of income. You know, there's a guy online who I really like. His name is Massimo Orciazzo. I think he, he, he on, on uh, X and Instagram, he goes by Massimo if you look for him. He’s wrestling with, with a just terrible health condition. But nonetheless spends every day he, he shares online just so many examples of the magic of the universe. Just incredible science, beautiful images, video that makes, makes my jaw drop.

I learn something from him. I still get a sense of wonder, and to me there is so much generosity there in what he's doing. I've had the joy of being able to write to him and thank him from so much for it. 'Cause I really think he and others like him who are using social media to spread goodness instead of snark and evil are undersung heroes of our age.

[00:17:58] Chris Duffy:
We're gonna take a quick break for some ads and then we will be right back.

[BREAK] [00:18:12] Chris Duffy:
And we are back. We're talking with Chris Anderson about infectious generosity. You talk in the book about how you have some skepticism of public policy solutions. To me, I, I think a lot of times when I think about these big systemic issues, the way that we can all come together and solve them by being generous is almost just by paying taxes and by voting for, for policy solutions where we can affect millions of people.

But I know that you, you have some skepticism around that, so I'd actually just love to hear why that’s, why that's a piece of skepticism for you.

[00:18:43] Chris Anderson:
Actually, I'm not at all anti policy. I, I think, I think in many, many, many, many, many circumstances, the government is, is the answer. And, and I think governments have crucial roles to play and I, I support people paying their fair taxes, probably higher taxes than we have right now. I just don't know how to contribute to that. Like I don't, I don't know how to navigate government, and I do know that there are many circumstances as well where governments are incredibly inefficient. It would also be a travesty to try and say that all of our problems should be solved by government.

One of the best things that philanthropy can do is actually show government had to be much better. So I think, I think there's an absolutely a synergistic relationship between philanthropy, if you like, and, and government. And my book is focused on infectious generosity and so it's, it's in general outside the world of public policy, but I absolutely respect people who want to devote their lives for that. I think that's pretty heroic and uh, anything you could do to make government more efficient, I’m all in.

[00:19:47] Chris Duffy:
What does generosity look like in your own life? What are some, some of the ways in which you struggle with or succeed in at being generous?

[00:19:56] Chris Anderson:
I don’t necessarily put my personal life out there as a good example, but certainly, you know, if I'm in the street and I see someone, uh, a homeless person, whatever, about one time in three or four at least I will, I will stop and try and have a conversation with them and just understand how they, how they got there. I, I find it awkward to do, I mean, I'm an awkward, I'm an introvert, you know, I find that stuff hard.

Financially, the biggest sort of game changer for me has been getting involved with this thing called The Audacious Project, where we try and raise really significant amounts for, for nonprofits, for social entrepreneurs who have crazy big dreams that they've had trouble getting funded and we bring people together for that. Um, I sometimes chip in money to those projects. That's been very, very exciting to do. For example, one of the things that The Audacious Project has supported is Code for America who took crazy government processes that were blocking billions and billions of dollars of aid because poor people couldn't actually get through the 45 pages of application to, to get to it, turning it into simple, modern UI that you could do on your phone and unlocking a huge amount of money that way.

So a little bit of philanthropy there unlocked a huge amount of sort of, uh, government aid. I'm, I'm, I get excited by unexpected ways of doing generosity. Like, I like quirky experiments, for example, that I've done a few times. So when I went, when I went back to my school, they invited me back. I teased the group. I said, “Okay, here's my phone. If you dare, put in your email address. I, I, I wanna recruit you for a crazy experiment.” So about 12 of these kids did. And so I, so I said, “Okay, well here's the experiment. I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you a thousand pounds and you can spend it whatever you want.”

And the headmaster at the school kind of gasped and, you know, images of drug fueled parties at the end of the, the uh… Of course that didn't happen. Every single one of them spent almost all the money on causes or whatever. I mean, I did say that they had to tell me what they were spending on.

And so maybe there's mixed motivation there. I don't mind mixed motivation. So I kind of got joy outta giving away the money. But, but even more joy out of learning from it and seeing ripple effects happen from it. Two years after that, one of the kids wrote me and said, this was, this was about the most important educational experience I had at school. That is just deeply satisfying for me. So I guess the slightly quirky creative part of me loves to find an odd, oddball ways of, of being generous when I can.

[00:22:24] Chris Duffy:
What's one of the most generous acts that you've experienced towards yourself? A person or a moment of, of real generosity that stuck with you.

[00:22:33] Chris Anderson:
I will tell you the story of Sunny Bates. When I, you know, I was an entrepreneur, media entrepreneur, came to America. And I met Sunny. She's a, at the time she was like a recruiter. I met her at a conference and she decided she was just gonna introduce me to people. She said, “Chris, you have to come to this conference. It's called TED. You know, you'll enjoy it. Trust me, you'll enjoy it. It's weird, but you'll enjoy it.” And I pushed back. She said, “No, trust me. Come.” And, and I did. So if it wasn't for Sunny, you'd, none of you, I think, would've ever seen a TED Talk. Like it's that gift of opening up your contacts, introducing you to people. You know, I was this awkward entrepreneur, this awkward Brit in a strange land. She made it so much easier for me to find my tribe.

[00:23:20] Chris Duffy:
You know, when I think about generous acts towards myself, that really made a difference and changed the shape of my life, I think similar to you, right? It's not. Necessarily that someone spent money or gave me the most expensive gift or, or gave me something big, it, it's often this kind of like thoughtfulness or inclusion or, or seeing of me in a way that helped me to see myself more clearly. Right?

Like, there was a moment several years ago where I was in a really low personal and professional moment. My wife was really sick, and I was her full-time caretaker, and it just took all the effort of every day to just stay afloat and kind of out of nowhere, uh, a friend of mine, my friend Fred, sent a box of frozen tamales over to our house.

And then, they were not even good tamales. They were at best, like decent tamales. But just the, the idea that someone saw that I was in a tough moment and wanted to help out in any way by, you know, making it so that I didn't have to think about dinner that night, that is just this act of generosity that I will never forget for the rest of my life because it, it was in a moment where I needed, I needed something.

And that was the life raft that got sent that way, that like everyone has really tough personal tragedies and, and challenges in your life. I, I wonder if those moments seem to heighten generosity and the experience of generosity for you too.

[00:24:44] Chris Anderson:
Yeah, absolutely. My mother passed away, uh, three weeks ago, so I've been thinking about her nonstop and the biggest gift she gave me, all of us really, was just absolute conviction that you would never be happy unless you, unless you live for something bigger than you were. And when someone goes like that, the motivation to live up to her ideals is, is hugely increased.

I lost my daughter back in 2010. At the time she was 24 years old. She was, she was this bright, sparkly kind of crazy young woman, but so generous. You know, all her friends spoke about how generous she was, and I resolved to try and carry her spirit forward. There's a lot of her in this book as well.

[00:25:31] Chris Duffy:
One of the things that I also thought was most like intellectually interesting in the book is you talk about how, and this is as someone who's worked in media for your career, you talk about the incentives for media often lead to stories that are not about generosity, that are about suffering and violence and terror and horrible things. For those to be the primary thing that we experience when we look for news about the world. I think that the idea of generosity and the idea that this actually is something that most people really want to not just experience, but also to participate in, that is such a different vision of human nature.

And, uh, listen, this is my bias, but I believe that is a more accurate vision of humanity than the violent, cruel vision of humanity. And you actually have some really specific tips for people who work in media or in newsrooms to highlight the generous nature of humanity rather than just the dramatic, violent, cruel nature of humanity. Can you give us a few of the pieces of advice that you would challenge for media professionals to employ?

[00:26:36] Chris Anderson:
Yeah. I mean, look, I'm a, I'm a journalist. I was trained as a journalist and spent a lot of time puzzling, uh, about this. I think journalists are incredible professionals. They, by and large make every effort to, you know, report factually and, and fairly, but that actually still leads to terrible trouble, and it's for two reasons.

One reason is just that there is a human bias to being more interested in the dark. It's for evolutionary reasons, for survival reasons. It was more important to pay attention. You know that rustle in the dark. So many media have discovered this, that the way to grab people's attention is to fill their news diet with threat. This is dangerous. Bad people are on the horizon. This could kill you. You know, here's a really horrible crime story, but from an actual data perspective, it gives a completely misleading view of the world.

And there's a stat I quote in the book, which, which I wish everyone knew and, and should be in a way, the headline of every news summary before you read what's followed. You know, 160,000 people died yesterday. That's about the number who die every day. There's a lot of misery every day. They fill our minds as this is the actual picture of what the world is and what gets lost is all the amazing things that happen because the other terrible part of the, the structural problem is that good things happen slowly. Bad things happen quickly.

It's actually a consequence of the second or thermodynamics when all said and done. But it take, it takes a long time to construct something amazing that is good. You know, to say a building, you know that it gets dreamed of over three years, built, what, over eight years after the dream first happened. Here's your building, lighting up the city. There is almost no point in that sequence when someone puts that on the front page of the newspaper. But if someone puts a bomb under it and takes it out in two seconds, then that's global coverage for, you know, a week. We, we think of the world in terms of destruction, not construction.

You can easily have a news diet where every single story is in itself true, but collectively it is giving you entirely the false view of the world. What could you do about it? You still, you have to have news that is interesting to people. Find the interest. You know, like there's, there's, people are interested in digging out the stories of the hidden hero who has been working for three years on some health preventative thing, and now they find that the numbers are in, and it looks like they've actually, they're saving a thousand lives a year. Use your professional skills to turn that into the incredible story that it is.

There are so many ways that with a bit of effort, you could turn what seems at the first stage, like a boring sort of data-driven news story into something that captures people's attention. Likewise, on the bad news stuff, you've gotta give context. You know, it, there’s, we’ve got a whole generation of parents who are frightened to let their kids go out and play in public, because there are a few nasty stories have happened, but I mean if, if so, if you present a story about a kid you know, going missing, at some point, you need the context. What, how many kids go missing now versus 20 years ago? I bet the number is down.

There's just a lot that could be done if you committed to saying, “You know what? We’re gonna try and make our news in service of what is actually significant in the world, and we're gonna make that a competitive edge.” I think people don't want good news per se. They want the actual news, but the actual news actually is much better news than, than what you are getting.

[00:30:17] Chris Duffy:
So, to, to think about some ways in which anyone who's listening can also create some more of this good news themselves. You know, if you, if before I talked with you or before I read the book, I would've said, of course, if you run an organization like TED, you have the ability to connect wealthy people with people who have really important ideas, and there can be some funding there, but that's not something that everyone can do. That's what I would've said, but I think that you actually give seven really practical steps for how almost anyone can create what you call an audacious event that allows for there to be this local type of funding.

And, and. I, you know, sometimes this goes by, like, participatory funding. Sometimes it's mutual aid, sometimes it's a giving circle, but there's all different forms that can happen at just about any level. Can you talk to us about how a regular person should think about creating one of these events and, and catalyzing some change in their community?

[00:31:12] Chris Anderson:
I think first step is just to get together a group of friends you think you, you'd, you'd enjoy to do something cool and innovative in your community together. Next step, look for the two or three coolest causes that are, that are out there. Maybe it's someone who wants to create a new skateboard park in the place, or a, a, a library or a theater or, or someone who's got a great idea for how to reduce the homeless problem locally or whatever it is.

Um, you find those people, um, and you invite them to make their best pitch as almost as if money was no object. A lot of those people are scrapping by with just tiny little donations from here and there, and they're having to make do, they're not really being given a chance to dream. Give them a chance to dream.

So let's say you can find someone who says, “Uou know, I've been thinking about it, and this would transform our community, this. This is… and I, here's how I can get it done.” So you then, and this is the hard part, you try and gather three or four or five or six or 10 people locally who are capable of funding, and you try and pull them together at one time.

This is the key for Infectiousness, for gen-generosity to become infectious. You try and bring them together at one time, and then you let one of these ideas present. But even if you just picture one person coming in and presenting to this group, they've got a chance to ask, because this is a big ask and it's exciting, and because there are other people in the room and people there are seeing peers and they, they want to look good with each other, if you like. All it takes sometimes is for one person to say, “Funny, well, you know what? I kind of like this. It's hard, but I like it. I’m in if you are. Let’s do this together.”

And, and you can in, in the most amazing minute of your life, see, see six people go, “Okay, I'll do it. I'm in too. If you guys are in, I'm in.” Boom. You've, you've created this little infection among six people and something amazing can happen that cannot only create a beautiful new thing in your community, can actually change the conversation between the resentfulness of, you know, against the rich and so forth.

It gives a, a lot, a lot of the people with the resources are actually dying to do something constructive. And it's much better that they do it in this kind of environment than they pick something that they think is what the community needs. And people will say, well, maybe, maybe not. And you’re just trying to launder your reputation or whatever.

It's, it's better done this way. I would love, love, love, love to see some people try this experiment. I'm pretty certain that there's something exciting here that could be transformative.

[00:33:59] Chris Duffy:
I didn't actually realize that this was something that had happened to me in my own life, but genuinely, I would not be here talking to you or have the career that I have if it weren't for a very similar type of situation. Which is, I was teaching at an elementary school in Boston and I was trying to do comedy on the side, and I had this idea for a show, but I had no money.

I needed a recording device, a digital recorder so that I could make a podcast, and there was an organization in Boston that was called FEAST Mass. So like Feast Massachusetts, and Feast was an acronym that stood for funding emerging arts sustainably together.

So what it was was they would get a big group of people and they'd have a chef. A chef would cook a big meal for everyone. Everyone would pitch in and help cook and clean. And this big group of people, it was $20 to get in or pay what you can. And they covered the cost of the meal. So they covered all the cost of the ingredients, and then all of the rest of that money went to whoever was voted the best idea of the night.

And so they'd have five people present their ideas and whoever was the most compelling idea, you got the money. And I went and I presented my idea for this podcast and, and comedy show where comedians interviewed scientists about their work, and I won. And I used that to start the show.

And that changed the course of my life. I mean, like genuinely I would not be here if it weren't for that, and I couldn't have done it if it weren't for this group of people that on that night decided, “Hey, that's a compelling idea. That's funny. That seems interesting. Let's see what happens.”

[00:35:24] Chris Anderson:
Yeah, that's great. I love that.

[00:35:25] Chris Duffy:
Well, Chris Anderson, thank you so much for making the time to be on the show. It's been a, a real pleasure and, uh, Infectious Generosity. It's a, it's a fantastic book. I'm really glad that you wrote it.

[00:35:34] Chris Anderson:
Thank you, Chris. Wonderful talking with you. Thank you.

[00:35:39] Chris Duffy:
That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Chris Anderson. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com.
How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the TED side by today's guest, Chris Anderson, and also by the incredible team of folks who are not named Chris: Banban Cheng, Daniella Balarezo, Chloe Shasha Brooks, and Joseph DeBrine. This episode is fact-checked by fellow non-Chrisses, Julia Dickerson and Matheus Salles.

On the PRX side, our show is put together by a team who is as generous as they are infectious: Morgan Flannery, Noor Gill, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. And of course, thanks to you for being so generous with your time and listening to our show. You make this all possible.

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