Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I'm Jacob Goldstein. I host a Pushkin podcast called What's
Speaker 2: Your Problem? And I am here randomly talking to you
Speaker 2: right now because today is the day before Giving Tuesday.
Speaker 2: Giving Tuesday, as you may already know, is the Tuesday
Speaker 2: after Thanksgiving, and it's supposed to be the day we
Speaker 2: give money to charity. And I'm gonna be honest with you.
Speaker 2: In my middle aged, somewhat calcified heart, I cringe a
Speaker 2: little bit every time I hear the phrase giving Tuesday.
Speaker 2: I think Giving Tuesday is not a real thing. It's
Speaker 2: not a real day. It's just something somebody made up
Speaker 2: a few years ago. But that cynicism is not helping anybody.
Speaker 2: In fact, as it turns out, it isn't even helping me.
Speaker 2: I know this to be true because over the past
Speaker 2: decade or so, research has made two things really clear. One,
Speaker 2: giving money away makes us feel better than we think
Speaker 2: it will make us feel. In other words, we underestimate
Speaker 2: the benefit to ourselves of giving money to others. That's
Speaker 2: thing one think. Two is this, there are charities that
Speaker 2: are proven, proven by really robust evidence, to do a
Speaker 2: tremendous amount of good with the money we give them,
Speaker 2: So Today, I and my colleagues at Pushkin are leaning
Speaker 2: into Giving Tuesday. We are putting out this special Giving
Speaker 2: Tuesday show to get into this evidence to really understand
Speaker 2: why giving money makes us happy, why we don't do
Speaker 2: it more, and who we should give money to. To
Speaker 2: start out on the show, I'm going to talk with
Speaker 2: Lori Santos. Laurie's a Yale psychologist who hosts a Pushkin
Speaker 2: show called The Happiness Lab, and Laura and I are
Speaker 2: going to talk about the evidence that shows that giving
Speaker 2: makes us happy and then the obvious puzzle that follows
Speaker 2: from that evidence. If giving makes us so happy, why
Speaker 2: don't we give more? Later on the show, I'll talk
Speaker 2: with Ellie Hasenfeld. Ellie is the co founder and CEO
Speaker 2: of GiveWell, and he has spent nearly two decades scouring
Speaker 2: the world studying the research to try to figure out
Speaker 2: which charities do the most good with every dollar. And
Speaker 2: then finally I'll talk with Maria Konikova and Nate Silver.
Speaker 2: Maria and Nate are a pair of writers who host
Speaker 2: a Pushkin podcast called Risky Business, but they're also both
Speaker 2: professional poker players. They are people whose livelihoods depend on
Speaker 2: making optimal bets. So I'll be talking to them about
Speaker 2: how they bring that thinking to their charitable giving. Lorie Santos,
Speaker 2: tell me why I am not giving enough money to charity.
Speaker 1: Well, it's probably because your mind is leading you astray, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're like a smart person, right. You probably
Speaker 1: think through what would be the pros and cons of
Speaker 1: giving a charity. You probably do some simulations in your
Speaker 1: head about how it would feel for you, and you
Speaker 1: know how the recipients of that money would feel. And
Speaker 1: there's just tons of psychological evidence showing that when we
Speaker 1: do those simulations, we get them really really wrong.
Speaker 2: Huh. We don't know what makes us happy with giving money,
Speaker 2: as with everything.
Speaker 1: As with everything. Yeah, I mean, in some ways, the
Speaker 1: giving money part shouldn't be surprising.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I have a whole podcast about how we get happiness
Speaker 1: wrong all the time. But this one's really insidious because
Speaker 1: it means that we're like leaving opportunities not just to
Speaker 1: make ourselves happier kind of on the table, but we're
Speaker 1: also leaving opportunities to just do good in the world
Speaker 1: and do good in society on the table too. So
Speaker 1: in some ways, it's like even sadder Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like people talk about win win, This is like lose lose.
Speaker 2: It's right, I feel worse and everybody feels worse.
Speaker 1: And it's another case where we could be building the pie.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You know, say I have you know, ten bucks sitting
Speaker 1: around in my pocket, Right, it could spend it in
Speaker 1: a way that makes me happy, or I could donate
Speaker 1: it to a good cause. Right, I probably feel better.
Speaker 1: The research would show spending at ten dollars on a
Speaker 1: good charity, then I would feel kind of blowing it
Speaker 1: on myself. But now the money is going to increase
Speaker 1: happiness in other people, right, presumably somebody who really needed
Speaker 1: that money. And so we're losing these opportunities to grow
Speaker 1: the pie. And we really just need to understand this
Speaker 1: bias better so that we can be happier.
Speaker 2: So you learn it to the research that shows that
Speaker 2: giving money away makes us happier. Tell me more about that, Like,
Speaker 2: what is the academic work that's been done on this subject.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well there's tons of studies now, you know. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite is a really straightforward one. It comes
Speaker 1: out of the lab of Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues
Speaker 1: at the University of British Columbia, and their method is
Speaker 1: really straightforward. They walk up to some person on the
Speaker 1: street and they say, hey, do you want to be
Speaker 1: in a psych study? I think the person kind of
Speaker 1: begrudging all he's like, okay, fine, But then it starts
Speaker 1: out it's an awesome psych study because Liz and her
Speaker 1: colleagues just hand you twenty bucks and she're like cool.
Speaker 1: The key, though, is that she tells you how to
Speaker 1: spend that money. She either says, hey, by the end
Speaker 1: of the day, do something nice for yourself with this money.
Speaker 1: Treat yourself, you know, it's something you wouldn't have expected.
Speaker 1: Or by the end of the day, do something nice
Speaker 1: with this money for somebody else. Right, you could donate
Speaker 1: it to charity, you could buy your friend a Lotte, Right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, but it has to be for somebody else.
Speaker 1: And then the key is that she calls participants later
Speaker 1: that day and even in some cases later in the week,
Speaker 1: and what she finds is that people tend to feel
Speaker 1: happier when they donate the money to somebody else or
Speaker 1: do something nice for somebody else with the money, more
Speaker 1: so than they feel when they spent the equivalent amount
Speaker 1: of money on themselves, and the study I love because
Speaker 1: it's just so straightforward. It's just suggests that what we
Speaker 1: predict will happen, right, And Liz has actually done these
Speaker 1: studies where she asks a different group of participants, Hey,
Speaker 1: imagine you were in the study where I walked up
Speaker 1: to you on the street and gave you twenty bucks?
Speaker 1: Would you be happier spending that on yourself or somebody else?
Speaker 1: And like robustly people say, oh, I'd be happier spending
Speaker 1: on myself, right, because I get something out of the deal.
Speaker 1: But what she finds is that we're just our prediction
Speaker 1: is just totally wrong. When we spend on others, we're happier.
Speaker 2: So I feel like there's a subtlety there in the
Speaker 2: spending on others group. Right. It is in some ways
Speaker 2: more intuitive to me that like, whatever, buying lunch for
Speaker 2: my friend would make me happy because my friend would
Speaker 2: be so happy and we'd be happy together, and the
Speaker 2: thing would be happening in this very you know, social,
Speaker 2: real physical way, Like I get that one. It seems
Speaker 2: less obvious to me that like giving twenty bucks to
Speaker 2: a charity helping people in sub Saharan Africa would make
Speaker 2: me happy, even though clearly intellectually, analytically, I know that
Speaker 2: the twenty bucks going to sub Saharan Africa is going
Speaker 2: to do more to increase abstract human happiness than buying
Speaker 2: lunch for my friend who could have bought lunch for herself. So, like,
Speaker 2: how does that piece of it work? How do we
Speaker 2: think about that piece of it?
Speaker 1: You are onto an important point, which is that there
Speaker 1: are better and worse ways to give to charity, right
Speaker 1: in terms of like boosting our own happiness and sort
Speaker 1: of feeling the impact from that, we are we are
Speaker 1: a lot happier if we can see the impact of
Speaker 1: our work, right, But even when we don't see the
Speaker 1: impact of our work, the act of donating winds up
Speaker 1: making us feel better than we think. Again, I share
Speaker 1: the intuition that you have, Jacob, Right, Like, I know
Speaker 1: these studies. I can kind of quote the stats and
Speaker 1: I still don't have the intuition that it works. But
Speaker 1: the results really just suggest that we feel better than
Speaker 1: we assume we will.
Speaker 2: Why do you think we get it wrong? I mean,
Speaker 2: I know we get everything wrong, But why do you
Speaker 2: think we get this wrong? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean we get everything wrong? Right, Our minds I
Speaker 1: wish we could just like update like mind two point
Speaker 1: zero would be so much better. I think there's some
Speaker 1: there's some reasons that we get this one wrong. One
Speaker 1: is sort of when we're doing an active kindness, what
Speaker 1: we focus on as opposed to what the recipient will
Speaker 1: focus on. Right, I'm sort of focused on whether or
Speaker 1: not my gift is kind of in some sense competent,
Speaker 1: Like am I doing the right thing? Am I picking
Speaker 1: the right charity? Maybe in more local acts of kindness?
Speaker 1: Am I doing it the right way? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't want to be awkward. I don't want
Speaker 2: to be rude or make this person feel some sense
Speaker 2: of obligation or reciprocity that might not work for them.
Speaker 2: Overthinking it, you're saying we're over things.
Speaker 1: But in terms of the overthinking, that's not what's happening.
Speaker 1: On the other side. You think of the recipient of
Speaker 1: a compliment, right, If you know, if someone walks up
Speaker 1: to you in the streets like, hey, you know love
Speaker 1: those glasses? They really see you, Jacob, like nicely done.
Speaker 1: You're not thinking you you mean it and I like it,
Speaker 1: But you're not thinking of like did they say it right?
Speaker 1: Did they use the right adjective, was it cool glasses
Speaker 1: or stylish? You're just like, oh my gosh, I'm surprised,
Speaker 1: and I have this incredible warm feeling. And so this
Speaker 1: is part of the disconnect, is that when we're making
Speaker 1: the decision to do something nice, we're overthinking, we're caught
Speaker 1: up and if we're doing it right and so on.
Speaker 1: But the recipients they don't feel any of that. They're
Speaker 1: just like, oh my gosh, I feel amazing. And so
Speaker 1: we kind of mispredict what they're paying attention to when
Speaker 1: they react, and that means their reactions are often a
Speaker 1: lot more positive than we expect. And then we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess it was nice to do that
Speaker 1: kind thing for somebody.
Speaker 2: It's the broader lesson of like everybody's just thinking about
Speaker 2: themselves all the time. We're thinking about ourselves as givers
Speaker 2: and am I the optimal giver? Am I giving in
Speaker 2: the optimal way? But the recipients aren't thinking about you.
Speaker 2: They're just thinking about.
Speaker 1: Them Yeah, And we get so caught up in the
Speaker 1: awkwardness of it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You know, how many compliments have you not given just
Speaker 1: because you're like, oh, I don't want to do it
Speaker 1: wrong or seem weird and some of Nick Eppley's a
Speaker 1: professor at the University of Chicago's data. He finds that
Speaker 1: about a third of the compliments we think in our heads,
Speaker 1: we don't actually tell the people around us, right, which
Speaker 1: when you think compliments usually are received really well and
Speaker 1: make people's day, it's like a lot of positivity that's
Speaker 1: just like stuck inside people's heads that we're not giving out.
Speaker 2: Friction seems like another interesting piece, right, there's like you're
Speaker 2: in your own head too much. And the other core
Speaker 2: piece is like, ah, I don't know. I'm just some
Speaker 2: guy in the world. How do I figure out who
Speaker 2: to give to? And like, I feel like that one
Speaker 2: is underrated in the world in general. Right, Like we
Speaker 2: just we're like water, We just flow to the easiest route.
Speaker 2: I mean, how do you see that playing out in
Speaker 2: charity more generally, in giving more generally?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that friction is a huge thing, right.
Speaker 1: I Mean a good friend of mine just had a
Speaker 1: baby with his wife, and my instagraction was like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I should do something nice for them. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll get them some food or some onesies or something.
Speaker 1: But I was like, do I just show up at
Speaker 1: their house? Like do they have any dietary restrictions that
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting about?
Speaker 2: Is this we?
Speaker 1: Like all again, all this overthinking in my head. But
Speaker 1: another good friend of ours was like, I'm setting up
Speaker 1: a meal train. Here's the day you click on this, lin,
Speaker 1: It's super easy, right, what you're going to you know,
Speaker 1: give him if it's a lasagn or whatever, here's how
Speaker 1: you drop it off. She just made it really easy
Speaker 1: for me to do the nice thing that I was
Speaker 1: thinking about doing. Anyway, I needed somebody to make that
Speaker 1: friction go away for me to help. And so I
Speaker 1: think there's so many cases of this in terms of
Speaker 1: what we could do to do nice things for others,
Speaker 1: whether that's with a charitable donation or even just like
Speaker 1: you know, asking a friend if they need some support,
Speaker 1: checking in on the people we care about, sharing compliments
Speaker 1: and so on. The friction kind of gets in the way.
Speaker 1: And I think this is the idea, is that we
Speaker 1: can overcome the friction by kind of reducing how much
Speaker 1: work it is for us to do the nice thing. Right,
Speaker 1: next thing is just texting a friend or you're already there,
Speaker 1: you know, like you know in the subway and you
Speaker 1: compliment somebody who's walking by. Right, these are the kinds
Speaker 1: of things that we can do quickly, and if we
Speaker 1: do them enough, then there's a second way that we
Speaker 1: can reduce friction, which is that it just kind of
Speaker 1: becomes a habit. Right, if we just get in the
Speaker 1: habit of doing this over and over again, doing more
Speaker 1: and more nice things, then all of a sudden, it
Speaker 1: just becomes easier. Because so much that we know about
Speaker 1: human psychology, even though we're kind of you know, in
Speaker 1: the crappy beta version, shows that when we do something
Speaker 1: over and over again, it just becomes easier to do
Speaker 1: that same thing. And so one of the giving Tuesday
Speaker 1: practices that I talk about in my show that Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab is just hey, practice doing nice things, and it
Speaker 1: will make it easier. You'll kind of experience less friction
Speaker 1: over time, just because, like it's just the thing you
Speaker 1: do when you see somebody you know at work, who
Speaker 1: you know is wearing something nice or they do something
Speaker 1: great in a team meeting. You'll just get good at
Speaker 1: expressing compliments, expressing gratitude. It'll just become second nature.
Speaker 2: Told you, So, you have this project through your show
Speaker 2: the happiness lab of giving money away, like built on
Speaker 2: this premise that we're talking about that not only would
Speaker 2: recipients be better if people gave more, but the givers
Speaker 2: themselves would be better if people gave more. You have
Speaker 2: this project that you do every year for Giving Tuesday,
Speaker 2: which is coming up. Tell me about that project. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the site that we've worked with is this group
Speaker 1: called giving multiplier dot org, and their goal is to
Speaker 1: fight a different kind of thing that can go wrong
Speaker 1: when we think about donating to charities, which is that
Speaker 1: many of us really do want to be kind of
Speaker 1: competent about it. We want our money to go to
Speaker 1: really good causes in the world, but we also kind
Speaker 1: of fall prey to the causes that feel really close
Speaker 1: to my heart, right you know, like I might want
Speaker 1: to give to my local food bank, which is great,
Speaker 1: you know, it's good to do that, but that ten
Speaker 1: bucks I give to my local food bank, it might
Speaker 1: not have as much impact as you know, giving to
Speaker 1: somebody maybe an extreme poverty right in like Sub Saharan Africa.
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't really analyzed as my local food
Speaker 1: bank doing the best with the money and so on,
Speaker 1: and so Giving Multiplier dot org has this has this
Speaker 1: really nice combination of they say, Okay, you really feel
Speaker 1: compelled to give to your food bank, but what if
Speaker 1: you gave just part of that ten bucks to one
Speaker 1: of these so called super effective charities. Right they've done
Speaker 1: the research. They're like the dollar that you give from
Speaker 1: that ten bucks to the super effective charity is going
Speaker 1: to go even further. And so they kind of allow
Speaker 1: you to make this distinction between your your heart and
Speaker 1: what you kind of really feel locally, the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that make you feel good because you can see
Speaker 1: the impact in your community versus what's doing the best
Speaker 1: work out there and giving. Multiplier dot Org this year
Speaker 1: has picked a really great super effective charity which is
Speaker 1: called Give Directly. This is this group that just gives
Speaker 1: these unconditional cash transfers, like no strings attached, like cast
Speaker 1: bonus to people living in extreme poverty.
Speaker 2: And there's a Happiness Lab. You are l right, shout
Speaker 2: it out, Shout it from the rooftops. What is it?
Speaker 1: It's giving Multiplier dot org slash Happiness Lab super easy.
Speaker 2: Go right now. Phones are open, operators are standing by,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: And one of the things we've seen is that a
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners will donate five bucks, three bucks
Speaker 1: in some cases, but those kinds of donations really add up,
Speaker 1: and especially if part of your donation is going to
Speaker 1: one of these super effective charities, like that dollar is
Speaker 1: going a really long way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll say, And I know, like analyzing super effective
Speaker 2: charities ends up being about like randomized controlled trials, which
Speaker 2: is great, like real evidence. But I will say that
Speaker 2: I actually for a story I did ten years ago
Speaker 2: or so, I went to Kenya to a village where
Speaker 2: Give Directly was giving money, and I saw how profound
Speaker 2: the impact is. I mean, it's people get one thousand
Speaker 2: dollars at least at that time, no strings attached, and
Speaker 2: like I talk to a guy who bought a motorcycle
Speaker 2: so that he could start a motorcycle taxi business. Right,
Speaker 2: So it's not just like they buy food and then
Speaker 2: the money runs out. It's people have no capital, they
Speaker 2: have no money, and so getting a th thousand dollars
Speaker 2: allows them to make these investments that can change their
Speaker 2: lives forever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We saw that last year where we really focused on
Speaker 1: Give Directly in particular and one community specifically. So we
Speaker 1: worked with this community, Kebobo in Rwanda, which is a
Speaker 1: tiny village just on the outside of Kigali, the capital.
Speaker 1: But they just like all, most of the people in
Speaker 1: the community live off less than a dollar a day,
Speaker 1: and just like you're saying, they just lack so many
Speaker 1: of the basic conveniences that we take for granted. Right,
Speaker 1: they have to hike two hours to get access to water,
Speaker 1: and then the water comes back and it's like, are
Speaker 1: you going to drink some water? A you're going to
Speaker 1: give your kid a shower? Right, There's no access to
Speaker 1: schools and these kinds of things. And last year, Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab listeners were able to generate over one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for this community in particular, And so, just like
Speaker 1: you're saying, give directly, was able to give each person
Speaker 1: in the community one thousand dollars unconditional cash transfer, and
Speaker 1: the money went to things like motorbikes like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: fixing roofs, buying mattresses. Right, most of the people in
Speaker 1: Kebobo were sleeping on the floor. They just didn't have
Speaker 1: access to a mattress. But some people did these really
Speaker 1: creative things that one of the things I didn't expect
Speaker 1: is that one of the couples that got the cash transfer,
Speaker 1: bought a pub, which you might think like, oh, they
Speaker 1: got a pub.
Speaker 2: A pub it like a bar, like a I love that,
Speaker 2: But the bar.
Speaker 1: Like wound up employing people in the community. It became
Speaker 1: this community hub where people could get together with each
Speaker 1: other at night, and it's generated more income for them.
Speaker 1: So now they're turning kind of the side of their
Speaker 1: pub that they put together into a little mini grocery store,
Speaker 1: which is one of the first spots that people can
Speaker 1: buy food in town, so that they don't have to
Speaker 1: leave town. And so it's like, if you leave it
Speaker 1: up to people's ingenuity, they kind of come up with
Speaker 1: these interesting things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a really simple idea. Like the
Speaker 2: reason I wanted to do that story all those years
Speaker 2: ago is like people know what they need, right, Like
Speaker 2: they know if they need food or a motorcycle or
Speaker 2: a roof, they just don't have the money, yes, right,
Speaker 2: So like if you give them the money, they can
Speaker 2: buy what they need. That's the great thing about money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is something we forget with gifts in general.
Speaker 1: I think this comes up in charity, but there's also
Speaker 1: a work you know, giving Tuesdays sort of the prelude
Speaker 1: to other holidays and gift giving moments coming up, and
Speaker 1: it's just something we get wrong all the time. Like
Speaker 1: we want to be able to come up with the
Speaker 1: creative gift for somebody, but one of the best ways
Speaker 1: to figure out the best gift is to just ask
Speaker 1: people what do you want? And if you buy someone
Speaker 1: that thing, they're going to be happy because that was
Speaker 1: what they wanted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it goes back to the like we're thinking about
Speaker 2: ourselves right, even when we're giving gifts this notionally you know,
Speaker 2: other focused thing, we're actually like, oh am I a
Speaker 2: good gift giver? Am I a good It's just ego.
Speaker 2: It's just we're just screwing ourselves with our ego as always. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was great to talk with you, Laurie. It was
Speaker 2: It was truly a delightful conversation. Thank you.
Speaker 1: This is super Thanks for sharing the love on Giving Tuesday.
Speaker 2: Laurie Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale and
Speaker 2: the host of the Happiness Lab. They have a whole
Speaker 2: episode on the psychology of generosity coming out this week.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a minute with my conversation with
Speaker 2: Ellie Hassenfeld. Who spent nearly two decades scouring the planet
Speaker 2: to find the most effective ways to spend money on
Speaker 2: other people. Okay, so Laurie Santos explained convincingly that giving
Speaker 2: away money makes us feel good. So now the question
Speaker 2: is who do we give the money to? That is
Speaker 2: basically the question that Ellie Hassenfeld asked himself almost twenty
Speaker 2: years ago. It's a question that led him to co
Speaker 2: found give Well, where he's now the CEO, and it's
Speaker 2: a question that, in some really interesting ways, as you
Speaker 2: will hear, has started to change the way charities themselves
Speaker 2: think about what they do. To start, I asked Ellie
Speaker 2: how he came to found GiveWell in the first place.
Speaker 4: Back in two thousand and six, I was a couple
Speaker 4: of years out of college working at a hedge fund,
Speaker 4: and a friend, Holding Karnowski, and I wanted to give
Speaker 4: to charity. And at the time, we were trying to
Speaker 4: give a few thousand bucks away and we wanted to
Speaker 4: find charitable organizations that were getting a lot of bang
Speaker 4: for their buck. And when we went looking online for information,
Speaker 4: we just couldn't find great information about what charities do
Speaker 4: and how well it works. We heard a lot about
Speaker 4: the overhead ratio, how much did they spend on administration
Speaker 4: versus programs, but nothing that said this is what they're
Speaker 4: doing and this is how many people they'll help with
Speaker 4: their programs. We spent months trying to answer this question.
Speaker 4: The two of us got a little bit obsessed with it,
Speaker 4: and eventually, after about a year of working on this
Speaker 4: project left our jobs to start give Well as a
Speaker 4: full time project. And the idea was to create the
Speaker 4: resource that we had been looking for as donors well.
Speaker 2: And there is this interesting sort of broader idea in
Speaker 2: the charity world, right in the philanthropic world, which is
Speaker 2: what are they measuring? You Know, you can have a
Speaker 2: charity that builds schools, and they might tell you how
Speaker 2: many schools they build, but presumably you're not actually giving
Speaker 2: money to build the school, right, You're giving money so
Speaker 2: that children get a better education. And so I'm curious,
Speaker 2: I mean, as you started to look deeper at the
Speaker 2: time as you founded give Well, like what was just
Speaker 2: the basic landscape of measurement within the charity world, Like.
Speaker 4: It's just really hard to get information about the outcomes
Speaker 4: that we cared about that I think donors ultimately do
Speaker 4: care about and those outcomes would be things like, do
Speaker 4: you save children's lives if you are providing funds for
Speaker 4: health programs? If you're trying to reduce poverty, do you
Speaker 4: increase people's incomes so that they can buy more of
Speaker 4: the kinds of things that they want? And I would
Speaker 4: say that buy and large. This information was not available
Speaker 4: when we were calling up organizations and asking them for information.
Speaker 4: They were often shocked that anyone would be even asking
Speaker 4: a question like this, because it was just in two
Speaker 4: thousand and six, two thousand and seven. It was completely
Speaker 4: unusual that someone would be wondering about like what what
Speaker 4: is the program actually accomplishing? What is the impact that
Speaker 4: it's happening on the world?
Speaker 2: Huh? I mean, is it almost a rude question? Was
Speaker 2: it almost like? Look, we're spending our lives helping these people,
Speaker 2: We're giving them cows, we're building clinics, Like who are you?
Speaker 2: What are you asking about? Why? Where do you come
Speaker 2: off asking these questions?
Speaker 4: I think it's definitely an odd question to ask something
Speaker 4: that I say a lot internally. I could well now
Speaker 4: is that you know, we're the people who react skeptically
Speaker 4: to organizations saying we're just trying to help people around
Speaker 4: the world, and we say, well, how do you know
Speaker 4: and can you prove it? And you know, that's not
Speaker 4: a socially normal thing to do, but I think it's
Speaker 4: necessary because gosh, it's so hard to have an impact
Speaker 4: on people around the world, and asking those questions helps
Speaker 4: get better information so we can shure that funding goes
Speaker 4: to the best place.
Speaker 2: So you do have this short list of pop charities
Speaker 2: that seems kind of like the center of what you
Speaker 2: do in some way. Right, you've looked at all of
Speaker 2: these charities in the world, then you've landed on this
Speaker 2: very small number. Briefly, what are they?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you know, these top charities account for about
Speaker 4: two thirds of the funds we direct. There are four
Speaker 4: of them. One is the Against Malaria Foundation, which delivers
Speaker 4: malaria nets in Africa. The second one is called Malaria Consortium,
Speaker 4: and we support their Seasonal Malaria Chemo Prevention program. That's
Speaker 4: a preventative malaria program giving medicine to young children. The
Speaker 4: third one, and these are in no particular order, but
Speaker 4: the third one is Helen Keller International's Vitamin A Supplementation program.
Speaker 4: This is a program that gives a small amount of
Speaker 4: vitamin A children under the age of five, and it
Speaker 4: is shown in numerous studies to reduce child mortality. And
Speaker 4: then finally, New Incentives, which is the organization that provides
Speaker 4: conditional cash trans or small cash transfers to encourage immunization.
Speaker 4: You know, the top charities reflect you know, roughly two
Speaker 4: thirds of the funds that we direct, and we see
Speaker 4: them as the you know, really that tried and true.
Speaker 4: Like if you're a donor and you want to have
Speaker 4: a lot of impact and you want to have confidence
Speaker 4: in that impact. These are organizations that we have followed
Speaker 4: for many years and we have a lot of confidence
Speaker 4: in because they are there's a lot of evidence that
Speaker 4: supports their impact.
Speaker 2: So how do you get from sort of generally being
Speaker 2: interested in charity and in you know, research driven outcomes
Speaker 2: to specifically focusing on saving the lives of children in
Speaker 2: the developing world. Yeah, I mean so, at.
Speaker 4: Its core, GiveWell is about finding outstanding programs that we
Speaker 4: can support with the aim of having the most impact
Speaker 4: with the funds that we direct. And when we started,
Speaker 4: we didn't know where we were going to find those programs,
Speaker 4: So we were looking at health programs focused on low
Speaker 4: income countries, but also social programs focused on New York
Speaker 4: City where we lived at the time, so job training programs,
Speaker 4: education programs, et cetera. And after our first year of
Speaker 4: work where we were focused on both US social programs
Speaker 4: and also global programs, we looked at the data and
Speaker 4: just saw how big the difference was in what a
Speaker 4: dollar could accomplish overseas versus at home. And just to
Speaker 4: make it concrete, you know, we estimate roughly, but I
Speaker 4: think it's the right ballpark that five thousand or so
Speaker 4: dollars will avert the death of a young child in
Speaker 4: a low income country. That's about what it costs to
Speaker 4: put a child through school for a couple of years
Speaker 4: in a New York City charter school. And so that
Speaker 4: differential really showed us that the opportunities to use money
Speaker 4: to have a big impactor over on the world where
Speaker 4: we're stronger overseas, and it drove us. It drove us
Speaker 4: to focus our efforts there. We're finding the groups that are,
Speaker 4: I think, like importantly like not sure that their own
Speaker 4: programs are working, and so want to ensure that they're
Speaker 4: gathering the data so that they know where the programs
Speaker 4: are effective, where they're struggling so that they can make
Speaker 4: changes to run those programs more effectively.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so that's an interesting idea, right, Like
Speaker 2: that idea of the groups themselves being unsure, it requires
Speaker 2: a sense of what is what is the real end point? Right?
Speaker 2: I think quite often and reasonably, like things are clearly
Speaker 2: helpful if you whatever, give someone a cow and you
Speaker 2: know training on how to take care of that cow, like,
Speaker 2: pretty clearly that person is going to be better off
Speaker 2: than if you hadn't done it, And so it might
Speaker 2: not be obvious to say, oh, we need to measure, well,
Speaker 2: how much does it cost to give them the cow?
Speaker 2: How much better off are they? Are there things we
Speaker 2: could change that would be even more helpful, Like most
Speaker 2: people clearly don't do that, right, Most people in their
Speaker 2: jobs in many domains are not constantly measuring and trying
Speaker 2: to optimize.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I just think the stakes are so
Speaker 4: high that it's just absolutely critical that there is a
Speaker 4: recognition that failure can happen and we have to do
Speaker 4: the best we can. Billions of dollars go to health
Speaker 4: aid every year, and the stakes are quite literally life
Speaker 4: and death. And so therefore the difference between some of
Speaker 4: the best programs that can very roughly say, avert the
Speaker 4: death of a young child for approximately five to ten
Speaker 4: thousand dollars, and then other programs which could have very
Speaker 4: limited impact I think in the worst case, even cause harm.
Speaker 4: Measurement in that feedback loop to say this, we want
Speaker 4: to see whether it's working, we want to see the
Speaker 4: extent to which it's working, and we want to learn
Speaker 4: from what we've done so that we can do better.
Speaker 4: That's true for the organizations we work with. That's true
Speaker 4: for us as an organization. You know, we're trying to
Speaker 4: follow the same project of learning from our own track
Speaker 4: record in history to make better decisions in the future
Speaker 4: and hopefully help people even more. The groups that we
Speaker 4: work with most, and I think the kinds of people
Speaker 4: who are most drawn to what we're doing, whether it's
Speaker 4: donors or practitioners, are people who's I think their interest,
Speaker 4: you know, the idea that they have that we have
Speaker 4: is to try to find the way to use charitable
Speaker 4: dollars to accomplish as much good as possible. And if
Speaker 4: that idea is preventing HIV and young children, then great.
Speaker 4: And if we can do better, if we can distribute
Speaker 4: oral rehydration solution to prevent deaths from diarrhea, or if
Speaker 4: we can encourage a testing and treatment to prevent cases
Speaker 4: of tuberculosis and children. What I ultimately care about. The
Speaker 4: thing that's important to me is just helping children, and
Speaker 4: I'm not drawn to the specific cause or disease as
Speaker 4: much as the outcome, which is trying to enable more
Speaker 4: people to live long, healthy lives.
Speaker 2: I feel like, you know, traditionally philanthropy was largely about
Speaker 2: making donors feel good, and maybe it still is to
Speaker 2: some degree, the nature of human nature being what it is.
Speaker 2: But it seems like the growth of give well and
Speaker 2: of sort of research driven philanthropy more generally has coincided
Speaker 2: with the long boom of Silicon Valley, right, And it
Speaker 2: strikes me that the kind of people who get rich
Speaker 2: in tech are more numerically driven, are more metrics oriented
Speaker 2: perhaps than earlier generations of rich people well, and that
Speaker 2: that might be sort of part of what is going on,
Speaker 2: part of the wind at your back, part of the
Speaker 2: rise of research driven philanthropy. You buy that.
Speaker 4: I think there's a kind of person in tech and
Speaker 4: also in parts of finance. Those are the two sectors
Speaker 4: from which we draw most of our donors who have
Speaker 4: I think the perspective that they take on the world
Speaker 4: as one we know that there's a lot we can
Speaker 4: be wrong about. We know there can be big differences
Speaker 4: in the investments we make or the decisions we make.
Speaker 4: As a company leader, we also know that we can
Speaker 4: be wrong and we want to learn about how to
Speaker 4: do it better. And I do think we see that
Speaker 4: coming out of those industries and it's a big part
Speaker 4: of what has helped us grow to the size that
Speaker 4: we are today.
Speaker 2: So you were mentioning that when you first started out
Speaker 2: and you were calling up charities and saying, what evidence
Speaker 2: do you have that you're actually helping people basically, and
Speaker 2: they would say, how dare you? Who are you? Why
Speaker 2: are you asking me this? I'm spending my life helping people.
Speaker 2: What do they say now when you call them up?
Speaker 2: Has that changed?
Speaker 4: Very practically? It's changed for us because when I was
Speaker 4: calling people up almost twenty years ago, I was offering
Speaker 4: them a thousand bucks and you know, now we have
Speaker 4: a lot of funding to give, and so that does
Speaker 4: make them more responsive.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's interesting. So there's a sort of pull. So basically,
Speaker 2: because you're directing hundreds of millions of dollars a year,
Speaker 2: organizations have an incentive to be more research based.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean very fundamentally. You know, there's a there's
Speaker 4: a problem so to speak, in the charitable market where
Speaker 4: the person deciding to open their wallet is not the
Speaker 4: person who's ultimately receiving the service. So there's a disconnect
Speaker 4: between the recipient and the giver. Where in the consumer
Speaker 4: market that we're used to, you know, I purchase my
Speaker 4: laptop and then I also use it and see how
Speaker 4: good it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I think, and if it sucks you,
Speaker 2: you that company goes out of years.
Speaker 4: Out of desness. But that's work security if you're great
Speaker 4: at fundraising from donors but terrible at delivering a program
Speaker 4: no one might ever know. And so very I think
Speaker 4: just concretely give well has helped support the literal in
Speaker 4: a very small way, the creation of an incentive to
Speaker 4: operate in a way that is focused on demonstrating impact,
Speaker 4: because the dollars that we have to give, the dollars
Speaker 4: that we have to influence, are going after that evidence
Speaker 4: of strong impact. And I should say, of course, like
Speaker 4: we are just part of a larger and I think
Speaker 4: ever growing ecosystem. You see this in the academics who
Speaker 4: launched the randomized control trial movement in economics, organizations like
Speaker 4: Evidence Action, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Give Directly. I
Speaker 4: mean this, It's a large and growing group of institutions,
Speaker 4: even beyond the scope of just give Well, that are
Speaker 4: operating in a way that is explicitly aiming to deliver
Speaker 4: great results and demonstrate that those results are coming to fruition.
Speaker 4: And I think that is just a massive change from
Speaker 4: where we were twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned give directly, and as it happens, the
Speaker 2: there's a sort of charitable giving project out of one
Speaker 2: of the shows at Pushkin that gives money to give
Speaker 2: directly basically. And I'm curious about give well sort of
Speaker 2: ongoing evaluation of give directly, Like what do you think
Speaker 2: what do you think of give directly as work in
Speaker 2: a quantitative professional way? Yeah, I think.
Speaker 4: Like, extremely, extremely highly of them. I've personally been a
Speaker 4: gift directly donor for many years, you know, continued to
Speaker 4: give to them last year and will this year because
Speaker 4: I really love what they do. I think it's just
Speaker 4: so critical to say, you know, with some of our giving,
Speaker 4: let's make sure that we're just supporting people to purchase,
Speaker 4: you know, what they most.
Speaker 2: Want still to come. On the show, Ellie talks about
Speaker 2: some of the most surprising things he's seen in his
Speaker 2: nearly two decades.
Speaker 4: In the charity world.
Speaker 2: What do you make of the fact that five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars can save a child's life?
Speaker 4: I think it is just an illustration of on some
Speaker 4: level how unjust our world is, you know, potentially how
Speaker 4: I think all of us, myself included, don't perhaps don't
Speaker 4: really take it seriously as we should, the kind of
Speaker 4: impact that we can have overseas. But fundamentally, you know,
Speaker 4: I think it shows that something is very broken in
Speaker 4: our system for allocating resources globally, because it's very hard
Speaker 4: to accept that it's possible to save someone's life for
Speaker 4: five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean with all the money, even with all
Speaker 2: the money that people give way, Like why don't people
Speaker 2: give enough money to buy bed nets for kids so
Speaker 2: they don't get malaria? Right? Like there's some amount of money.
Speaker 2: The more money people give, the less valuable each marginal
Speaker 2: net would be, right, Like, why haven't people given enough
Speaker 2: money to these programs to sort of give away all
Speaker 2: the bed nets that you need to give away, and
Speaker 2: give away all the malaria medicine that you'd need to
Speaker 2: give away to stop kids from dying of malaria, at
Speaker 2: least in these high intensity malaria areas where it's obvious
Speaker 2: that kids are going to die of malaria every year.
Speaker 4: I think, first of all, it's just worth noting how
Speaker 4: much progress we have made globally in the last twenty
Speaker 4: five years. The US government has given huge amounts to
Speaker 4: a program called pepfar focused on HIV, the President's Malaria
Speaker 4: Initiative focused on malaria, and has been instrumental in the
Speaker 4: creation of the Global Fund, which focuses on HTB and malaria,
Speaker 4: and GAVI, which focuses on immanizations. So since the year
Speaker 4: two thousand on a, funding going to global health problems
Speaker 4: has gone up a huge amount. It has plateaued more recently,
Speaker 4: but it's gone up a huge amount, and we see
Speaker 4: a massive reduction in child mortality. So we're doing a
Speaker 4: lot better today than we were in the recent past.
Speaker 4: And then I guess like, fundamentally, I don't know why
Speaker 4: people don't give more or even give more to these charities, right,
Speaker 4: It's it's more a question of direction. It's not even
Speaker 4: why don't people give more money. It's like, if it's
Speaker 4: really that easy to save a kid's life, like we
Speaker 4: want that number to go up, right, like the cheaper
Speaker 4: it is to save a kid's life.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's kind of you cuts both ways. Right
Speaker 2: on the one end, it's like, well, great, we know
Speaker 2: a thing that is helpful. But on the other hand, like, well,
Speaker 2: let's buy all the bed bets. So it's not so easy,
Speaker 2: do you know what I'm saying? Uh?
Speaker 4: Completely, And yeah, I think that you know, give Well
Speaker 4: raises about three hundred million dollars a year. A give
Speaker 4: Well that was raising a billion dollars a year would
Speaker 4: the marginal dollars would be much less less cost effective
Speaker 4: because we would have gone much further.
Speaker 2: Weirdly, you want to get to a place where it's
Speaker 2: more expensive to save a child's life, Like the more
Speaker 2: expensive it is, the less inequality there is in the world,
Speaker 2: the more kids' lives we're saving.
Speaker 4: Exactly exactly, you know. And then I think I Give
Speaker 4: Well itself is an institution that has raised much more
Speaker 4: money over the last fifteen years than was raised previously
Speaker 4: and is going and I think it reflects more people giving.
Speaker 4: Why aren't people giving more to these programs? I think
Speaker 4: because the honestly, the suffering and the poverty of say,
Speaker 4: the poorest parts of Sub Saharan Africa is something that
Speaker 4: we are largely blind to in our day to day lives.
Speaker 4: It's not you know, we cover natural disasters when they occur,
Speaker 4: but no one is covering literally the daily catastrophe of
Speaker 4: child deaths due to infectious disease in Sub Saharan Africa.
Speaker 4: You know, very roughly one thousand children die every day
Speaker 4: of malaria. We know how to prevent it, and that's
Speaker 4: not covered because it's well, I guess I don't know
Speaker 4: exactly why. That's a question for you, not for me,
Speaker 4: but it's not covered. And I think because of that,
Speaker 4: on some level, we're able to live as if it's
Speaker 4: not really there in that motivating force to get people
Speaker 4: to see it and then act, isn't isn't happening.
Speaker 2: You've been doing this now for fifteen years ish. If
Speaker 2: you go back to when you started, what's been surprising
Speaker 2: to you? What has happened in a way you would
Speaker 2: not have expected.
Speaker 4: I was really surprised when we started at how strange
Speaker 4: our questions seem to the organizations that we were going to,
Speaker 4: the question of how effective are your programs, how I'm
Speaker 4: sure you accomplishing and how do you know seems like
Speaker 4: a really an obvious question. Says are really surprising to me,
Speaker 4: how much we've grown. When we started this, I think
Speaker 4: we thought that we were just we were a couple
Speaker 4: of guys who had this idiosyncratic interest in an approach
Speaker 4: to charitable giving. And when we talked to people who
Speaker 4: worked in philanthropy, they they reacted like we were nuts,
Speaker 4: that no one would ever be into this. This is
Speaker 4: not what donors go to galas, and donors like stories
Speaker 4: and their names on buildings, and wow, it's shocking. You know,
Speaker 4: people are people are normal. People are just giving three
Speaker 4: hundred million dollars a year to help people around the world,
Speaker 4: and they're buying large anonymous they're not getting their names
Speaker 4: on buildings, and they're just you know, following along, trying
Speaker 4: to make as big a difference as they can in
Speaker 4: people's lives. So they'll never meet and you know, on
Speaker 4: some level that maybe that makes sense, but that's also
Speaker 4: really surprising.
Speaker 2: It seems like the happy surprised their happy surprise. I
Speaker 2: appreciate your time very much. It was great to talk
Speaker 2: with you. Yeah, that was great to be here. Thanks
Speaker 2: so much. Jacob Ellie Hasenfeld is the co founder and
Speaker 2: CEO of gif Well. Last conversation on the show is
Speaker 2: with Nate Silver and Maria Konikova. Nate is a statistician,
Speaker 2: Maria's a psychologist. They are both writers and together they
Speaker 2: host a podcast called Risky Business. They are also both
Speaker 2: professional poker players, and that's really why I wanted to
Speaker 2: talk to them about charitable giving. One of the things
Speaker 2: they do on their show is they talk about bringing
Speaker 2: a poker mindset to the decision making of everyday life,
Speaker 2: and so I wanted to hear from them how professional
Speaker 2: gamblers think about giving money away. So, like, the core
Speaker 2: idea of the show is making better decisions using this
Speaker 2: expected value framework right in like one sentence, what's expected value?
Speaker 3: Dec did value is the net benefit you expect to
Speaker 3: get averaged over all the uncertain outcomes. Now, I guess
Speaker 3: with charitable giving, maybe it's more deterministic. Where we know,
Speaker 3: for example, that mosquito nets in Africa have a high
Speaker 3: return on investment. They say lives and prevent male area
Speaker 3: at a relative of low costs. It's not like a
Speaker 3: random element there exactly, although there are always some implementation issues,
Speaker 3: but really it's a framework about utility.
Speaker 5: And I was just to jump in a little bit
Speaker 5: to say that, you know, we have the economic definition
Speaker 5: of expected value, and then when you look at behavioral
Speaker 5: economics and the way that people actually make decisions, you
Speaker 5: realize that there's a lot of psychology involved as well,
Speaker 5: and so calculating expected value is not as straightforward as
Speaker 5: just kind of doing these dollar calculations, because you know,
Speaker 5: how do you put a dollar amount on how good
Speaker 5: you feel after a decision or how bad you feel,
Speaker 5: or the regret that you might feel when you don't
Speaker 5: take a decision. And when we're looking at kind of
Speaker 5: the broader picture of expected value, you do have to
Speaker 5: try to quantify that a little bit and try to
Speaker 5: account for all of those different psychological factors that come
Speaker 5: into play as well.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite things about your show is when
Speaker 2: you talk about the culture of professional poker players. Basically,
Speaker 2: you're both professional poker players and you live in this
Speaker 2: universe where people treat money really differently, right, And there
Speaker 2: are these two terms that come up a lot on
Speaker 2: the show two kinds of people, knits and dgens. What's
Speaker 2: a knit? I'll leave this one to unit.
Speaker 3: A knit is basically George Costanzo. Right, It's like a
Speaker 3: neurotic risk of verse cheap, but more someone who is
Speaker 3: so neurotic that they aren't taking plus ev bets.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: They're two conservative for their your own good when it
Speaker 3: comes to playing poker hands, for example, and have a
Speaker 3: low openness to experience perhaps and can be annoying.
Speaker 2: They're the ones who want to itemize the bill. Uh
Speaker 2: when wait, I didn't eat the app. I shouldn't have
Speaker 2: to pay for one third of the app, that's the yeah.
Speaker 3: Whereas a djen is someone who likes to gamble, is
Speaker 3: risk tolerant maybe to their own detriment, is freewheeling with
Speaker 3: money and splashes around.
Speaker 2: Yes, and d gen is short for degenerate gambler, but
Speaker 2: in a loving way. Right, that's my Fausually, yeah, So
Speaker 2: in your experience, who is more generous a degenerate knit djen? Absolutely? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure. I don't think it's even close. You guys
Speaker 2: give to charity.
Speaker 5: I give to charitable causes that I believe in. So,
Speaker 5: for instance, I gave a lot of money to Ukraine
Speaker 5: when Russia invaded, and that is how kind of I
Speaker 5: calculate my charitable giving. I understand that mosquito nets in
Speaker 5: Africa are incredibly important. I have not given to malaria
Speaker 5: because that is not something that you know, I feel
Speaker 5: strongly about. There are other people feel strongly about that.
Speaker 5: So for me part of it. You know, I have
Speaker 5: given to educational causes. You know, I give to things
Speaker 5: that I have a connection with and that I feel
Speaker 5: also are underfunded.
Speaker 2: Mari, you mentioned given to Ukraine, and I mean I
Speaker 2: know you a little bit. I know your your life
Speaker 2: story seems connected to that. Right, tell me about your
Speaker 2: connection to helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So my dad is Ukrainian and my mom is from Moscow,
Speaker 5: and I was born in Moscow and then came to
Speaker 5: the United States when I was four years old and
Speaker 5: have always been very anti the autocratic tendencies of Russia,
Speaker 5: very anti Putin. And I think you know, when Putin
Speaker 5: invented invaded Ukraine, to me, that was a no brainer.
Speaker 5: I think at this point Ukraine is one of the
Speaker 5: only things standing between US and the Third World War. Basically,
Speaker 5: the fact that they're able to resist him. So for
Speaker 5: me it was incredibly personal. And so I'm all in
Speaker 5: on the Zelenski camp.
Speaker 3: Nate Silver, do you give money away? I'm having to reevaluate.
Speaker 3: I mean the short answers I haven't.
Speaker 2: Uh huh. Does either saying on a show that you
Speaker 2: haven't given money away or hearing Maria talk about giving
Speaker 2: money away like honestly does it you think it makes
Speaker 2: it any more likely that you'll give money away? You
Speaker 2: think it's going to have any effect on you.
Speaker 3: I'm generally not a person who is governed by guilt.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's I mean, I think I should.
Speaker 3: There's like a lot of long term financial planning that
Speaker 3: gets put off. I mean, these are discussions that you know,
Speaker 3: my household we've had and so we're we're aware of
Speaker 3: this question and what we want to do with our
Speaker 3: money in the long term, member thinking about it actively,
Speaker 3: but kind of things get short circuited during I mean, look, clearly,
Speaker 3: I think that you know, in some abstract sense, you
Speaker 3: are being selfish if you're not. If you have a
Speaker 3: comfortable life, then you are being selfish to not give.
Speaker 3: But it's easy to make excuses.
Speaker 2: I appreciate your honesty. So Nate, does that make you
Speaker 2: a knit and Maria the DJ in I never would
Speaker 2: have guessed, well, but I am.
Speaker 3: I think Maria is also I am generous in those
Speaker 3: other ways yea, and things like tips with things like
Speaker 3: you know, picking up checks, even a fairly expensive meals
Speaker 3: or something for my friends. And so maybe psychologically that
Speaker 3: feels more satisfying than the abstract charitable giving.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean that is an interesting tension, right, Like
Speaker 2: it feels better to buy lunch for your friend than
Speaker 2: to send the money off to somebody thousands of miles away,
Speaker 2: even though obviously the marginal benefit of that whatever one
Speaker 2: hundred bucks, fifty bucks, any any bucks, is clearly greater
Speaker 2: if you send it off thousand. Jacob in New Yorkers
Speaker 2: be great. I was trying to be I was trying
Speaker 2: to be a man of the people day and when
Speaker 2: are we getting dinner? I totally agree.
Speaker 5: And yeah, and I also just want to want to
Speaker 5: add a little bit to say that I think that
Speaker 5: in this particular case, like role models really do matter
Speaker 5: when it comes to charitable giving tendencies, so psychologically speaking,
Speaker 5: and one of the things that has made me actually
Speaker 5: kind of give more than I have in the past
Speaker 5: is my parents, who don't have a lot of money
Speaker 5: and you know, our single income because my mom uh
Speaker 5: no longer works, and they give a recurring donation every
Speaker 5: single month to causes that they believe strongly in, including Ukraine.
Speaker 5: And when I think about it, I'm like, you can't
Speaker 5: afford to do this, and yet they do it, and
Speaker 5: that you know it I won't say guilts me into
Speaker 5: but like it may, it makes me realize that, like
Speaker 5: you know, it is important when you are donating to
Speaker 5: causes where it actually makes a difference. Nate and I
Speaker 5: talked a lot on our podcast about kind of donating
Speaker 5: to political campaigns, and you know, don't donate to the
Speaker 5: presidential campaign because they don't need the money. But I,
Speaker 5: you know, I think that that's kind of that's what
Speaker 5: we're talking about at the end, Where do you donate
Speaker 5: in a way that your money actually makes an impact
Speaker 5: right now? And it doesn't have to be millions of
Speaker 5: dollars right you can leave. I hope I have millions
Speaker 5: to leave at the end of my life to good causes,
Speaker 5: but you know, there are causes where even a few
Speaker 5: hundred dollars actually can make a huge difference, but.
Speaker 3: I guess because there probably is some pleasure from it. Right,
Speaker 3: you kind of recognize the efemeral nature of money, and
Speaker 3: it's kind of more an emotional reaction.
Speaker 2: And then when.
Speaker 3: I mean thinking about charity, it's kind of the more
Speaker 3: rational part of your brain.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: You can make excuses along lines of, well, maybe just
Speaker 3: give it away at the end of my life, and
Speaker 3: I pay a lot of taxes, and you know, figuring
Speaker 3: out where to give is a discussion have with your partner,
Speaker 3: and that can get you know, we have disagreements about that,
Speaker 3: and so it's different than the kind of, oh, it's
Speaker 3: gett a nice bottle of wine and I'll pick I'll
Speaker 3: pick up dinner tonight because I know you had a
Speaker 3: rough tournament series or something like that.
Speaker 2: Huh. I never thought of you as such an emotional guy.
Speaker 2: So so I'm curious in particular, So this this show
Speaker 2: is about giving away money fundamentally, and you know, we
Speaker 2: can talk about, you know, maximizing ev and what charities
Speaker 2: are good, but there's also just this more general idea
Speaker 2: of pro social behavior. Spending money on your friends is
Speaker 2: part of this, and so I'm curious, what's your favorite
Speaker 2: Djen dropping a bunch of money on their friends on
Speaker 2: charity on anything story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well this isn't this isn't d Jenny, But I
Speaker 5: think it's something that is quite important. The poker community
Speaker 5: actually does give a shit ton of money to charity.
Speaker 5: You know, those aren't the fun D Jenny stories, But
Speaker 5: but that's I think, you know, I think it's important
Speaker 5: to note that poker players actually are on top of this,
Speaker 5: and there are a lot of poker players giving millions
Speaker 5: to charity and matching charitable donations.
Speaker 2: Thanks you, guys, it was a delight to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you. So just before we in the
Speaker 2: show here, I want to just mention one last thing.
Speaker 2: There was a moment in that last conversation when Nate
Speaker 2: was talking about the reasons he hasn't given money. You
Speaker 2: know how giving money to charity has tied up with
Speaker 2: all these other household financial planning decisions, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And I thought back to that thing that Lori Santo
Speaker 2: said at the beginning of the show about friction. You
Speaker 2: know how friction and not knowing how to give or
Speaker 2: who to give to winds up being this huge barrier.
Speaker 2: And I thought about how Ellie Hassenfeld has spent all
Speaker 2: this time trying to find charities that are very clearly
Speaker 2: doing good that you can just give money to and
Speaker 2: feel good about. So to close out the show today
Speaker 2: and to fight against friction in my own life, I'm
Speaker 2: going to go right now to that website that Laurie
Speaker 2: was talking about giving multiplier dot org slash Happiness Lab,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna give fifty bucks. Is it the perfect
Speaker 2: amount of money? I don't know. I'm just gonna do
Speaker 2: it right now. Thanks very much to Nate Silver and
Speaker 2: Maria Konakova, the host of Risky Business, Ellie Hassenfeld of GiveWell,
Speaker 2: and to Lorie Santos, the host of The Happiness Lab,
Speaker 2: who got me thinking about giving Tuesday in the first place.
Speaker 2: Today's show was produced by Lucy Sullivan and Isabelle Carter,
Speaker 2: edited by Sarah Nix, and engineered by Jake Gorsky. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Ryan Dilley, Farah Daygrunge, and Owen Miller. I'm
Speaker 2: Jacob Goldstein and I host the Pushkin Show What's Your Problem?
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.