Head of TED Talks Shares a New Vision of Generosity
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.4 • 921 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2024
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As head of TED, Chris Anderson has had a ringside view of the world’s boldest thinkers sharing their most uplifting ideas. Inspired by them, he believes that it’s within our grasp to turn outrage back into optimism. It all comes down to reimagining one of the most fundamental human virtues: generosity. What if generosity could become infectious generosity?
Chris offers a playbook for how to embark on our own generous acts—whether gifts of money, time, talent, connection, or kindness—and to prime them, thanks to the Internet, to have self-replicating, even world-changing, impact.
Shermer and Anderson discuss: what makes TED successful • power laws and giving • charging vs. giving away • altruism • being good without God • billionaires • how the average person can participate • public vs. private solutions to social problems • donor fatigue.
Chris Anderson has been the curator of TED since 2001. He holds a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University. His new book is Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show. The Michael Sherber Show It's Michael Schurmer. |
| 0:25.0 | It's time for another episode of the Michael Schurmer show brought to you by The Skeptic Society and Skeptic magazine. |
| 0:30.0 | Here's our latest issue in print for color. You can pick it up at any |
| 0:34.4 | fine bookstore or just go to skeptic.com slash magazine and we'll ship you one |
| 0:39.7 | right here from the offices in Santa Barbara, California. |
| 0:42.5 | Or you can get the digital version |
| 0:44.1 | and download it and read it on your preferred computer |
| 0:47.7 | or platform or iPhone where you're working out |
| 0:50.4 | or whatever it is you're doing. |
| 0:52.6 | All right, my guest today is Chris Anderson. |
| 0:55.4 | He has been the curator of Ted since 2001. |
| 0:58.6 | His Ted mantra, ideas worth spreading, |
| 1:01.7 | continues to blossom on an international scale. |
| 1:04.4 | He lives in New York City and London, but was born in a remote village in Pakistan and spent |
| 1:08.6 | his early years there in India, India and Afghanistan, where his parents worked as medical missionaries. |
| 1:15.0 | After boarding school in Bath, England he went on to Oxford University |
| 1:18.6 | graduated in 1978 with a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. |
| 1:22.4 | Chris then trained as a journalist working the degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. |
| 1:23.2 | Christend trained as a journalist working in newspapers and radio and founded future publishing |
| 1:28.6 | that focused on specialist computer publications, but eventually expanded into other areas such as cycling, hey, |
| 1:34.9 | cool of that, music, video games, technology, and design. |
| 1:38.5 | He then built Imagine Media, publisher of Business 2.0 magazine and creator of the popular video game users |
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