I first met today's guest Chris Anderson 20 years ago at a gathering that at the time was small and rather unknown.

It was called the TED conference. Chris thought he could turn

Ted into something big. I thought he was a hopelessly optimistic dreamer. As so often

happens, I was wrong. I certainly felt, okay, I now know what I am going to be doing. There is so much

potential here.

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Leavitt.

I'm fascinated by success stories, cases where somehow an idea takes off and goes from nothing to being part of everyday life.

TED Talks are a great example of that phenomenon.

How many TED Talks have you watched? I probably watched a hundred. The vast

majority of guests on this podcast have given TED Talks. I've given too. How did Chris

Anderson make TED Talks such a phenomenon? I want to find that out today.

Other than Wikipedia maybe, I can't think of another website that's been devoted to content generation

that's had as big and is positive an impact on how people think as TED.com.

The most watched videos have over 70 million views and every year

there are over 3 billion views of TED Talks. It is just an incredible success story.

Well thank you, Steve.

It's lovely to be here and yeah, no, it's when things go viral, it's very thrilling.

It's pretty cool.

Now when things succeed the way Ted has, they acquire this air of inevitability after the fact.

But I was around Ted pretty early on 20 years ago as my first exposure,

and I can credibly say that nobody at that time

had even the slightest hint of what Ted would become.

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