Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hello Tim Harford here. It's a giving time of year,
Speaker 2: the kind of giving that means wrapping paper and shiny bows, certainly,
Speaker 2: but people also give to good causes. At least we
Speaker 2: hope they're good causes, but how can we be sure
Speaker 2: they're the best causes. In this special episode, Jacob Goldstein,
Speaker 2: the host of Pushkin's What's Your Problem, is trying to
Speaker 2: help us figure out how to get the most good
Speaker 2: out of our donations. He starts off talking with Dr
Speaker 2: Lorrie Santos of the Happiness Lab about the good that
Speaker 2: giving does for the donors. I'll be back again soon
Speaker 2: with another episode of cautionary tales, but while you wait,
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy this extra conversation.
Speaker 3: I'm Jacob Goldstein. I host a Pushkin podcast called What's
Speaker 3: Your Problem? And I am here rare talking to you
Speaker 3: right now because today is the day before Giving Tuesday.
Speaker 3: Giving Tuesday, as you may already know, is the Tuesday
Speaker 3: after Thanksgiving, and it's supposed to be the day we
Speaker 3: give money to charity.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna be honest with you. In my middle aged.
Speaker 3: Somewhat calcified heart, I cringe a little bit every time
Speaker 3: I hear the phrase giving Tuesday. I think Giving Tuesday
Speaker 3: is not a real thing. It's not a real day.
Speaker 3: It's just something somebody made up a few years ago.
Speaker 3: But that cynicism is not helping anybody. In fact, as
Speaker 3: it turns out, it isn't even helping me. I know
Speaker 3: this to be true because over the past decade or so,
Speaker 3: research has made two things really clear. One, giving money
Speaker 3: away makes us feel better than we think.
Speaker 1: It will make us feel.
Speaker 3: In other words, we underestimate the benefit to ourselves of
Speaker 3: giving money to others.
Speaker 1: That's thing one thin.
Speaker 3: Two is this, there are charities that are proven, proven
Speaker 3: by really robust evidence, to do a tremendous amount of
Speaker 3: good with the money.
Speaker 1: We give them.
Speaker 3: So today I and my colleagues at Pushkin are leaning
Speaker 3: into Giving Tuesday. We are putting out this special Giving
Speaker 3: Tuesday show to get into this evidence, to really understand
Speaker 3: why giving money makes us happy, why we don't do
Speaker 3: it more, and who we should give money to.
Speaker 1: To start out on the show, I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: with Lori Santos.
Speaker 3: Laurie's a Yale psychologist who hosts a Pushkin show called
Speaker 3: The Happiness Lab. And Lauria and I are going to
Speaker 3: talk about the evidence that shows that giving makes us happy,
Speaker 3: and then the obvious puzzle that follows from that evidence.
Speaker 3: If giving makes us so happy, why don't we give more?
Speaker 3: Later on the show, I'll talk with Ellie Hassenfeld. Ellie
Speaker 3: is the co founder and CEO of give Well, and
Speaker 3: he has spent nearly two decades scouring the world studying
Speaker 3: the research to try to figure out which charities do
Speaker 3: the most good with every dollar. And then finally I'll
Speaker 3: talk with Maria Konikova and Nate Silver. Maria and Nate
Speaker 3: are a pair of writers who host a Pushkin podcast
Speaker 3: called Risky Business.
Speaker 1: But they're also both professional poker players. They are people whose.
Speaker 3: Livelihoods depend on making optimal bets. So I'll be talking
Speaker 3: to them about how they bring that thinking to their
Speaker 3: charitable given. Lorie Santos tell me why I am not
Speaker 3: giving enough money to charity?
Speaker 4: Well, it's probably because your mind is leading you astray, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, you're like a smart person, right. You probably
Speaker 4: think through what would be the pros and cons of
Speaker 4: giving a charity. You probably do some simulations in your
Speaker 4: head about how it would feel for you, and you
Speaker 4: know how the recipients of that money would feel. And
Speaker 4: there's just tons of psychological evidence showing that when we
Speaker 4: do those simulations, we get them really really wrong.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 3: We don't know what makes us happy with giving money,
Speaker 3: as with everything, as with everything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, in some ways, the giving money part
Speaker 4: shouldn't be surprising. You know, I have a whole podcast
Speaker 4: about how we get happiness wrong all the time. But
Speaker 4: this one's really insidious because it means that we're like
Speaker 4: leaving opportunities not just to make ourselves happier kind of
Speaker 4: on the table, but we're also leaving opportunities to just
Speaker 4: do good in the world and do good in society
Speaker 4: on the table too. So in some ways it's like
Speaker 4: even sadder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like people talk about win when this is like lose, lose.
Speaker 3: It's right, I feel worse and everybody feels worse.
Speaker 4: And it's another case where we could be building the pie.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: You know, say I have you know, ten bucks sitting
Speaker 4: around in my pocket. Right, it could spend it in
Speaker 4: a way that makes me happy, or I could donate
Speaker 4: it to a good cause. Right, I probably feel better.
Speaker 4: The research would show spending at ten dollars on a
Speaker 4: good charity, then I would feel kind of blowing it
Speaker 4: on myself. But now the money is going to increase
Speaker 4: happiness in other people, right, presumably somebody who really needed
Speaker 4: that money. And so we're losing these opportunities to grow
Speaker 4: the pie. And we really just need to understand this
Speaker 4: bias better so that we can be happy.
Speaker 3: So you learn it to the research that shows that
Speaker 3: giving money away makes us happier. Tell me more about that, Like,
Speaker 3: what is the academic work that's been done on this subject.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well there's tons of studies now, you know. One
Speaker 4: of my favorite is a really straightforward one. It comes
Speaker 4: out of the lab of Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues
Speaker 4: at the University of British Columbia, and their method is
Speaker 4: really straightforward. They walk up to some person on the
Speaker 4: street and they say, hey, do you want to be
Speaker 4: in a psych study? I think the person kind of
Speaker 4: begrudging all he's like, okay, fine, But then it starts
Speaker 4: out it's an awesome psych study because Liz and her
Speaker 4: colleagues just hand you twenty bucks and she're like cool.
Speaker 4: The key though, is that she tells you how to
Speaker 4: spend that money. She either says hey, by the end
Speaker 4: of the day, do something nice for yourself with this money.
Speaker 4: Treat yourself, you know it's something you wouldn't have expected.
Speaker 4: Or by the end of the day, do something nice
Speaker 4: with this money for somebody else. Right, you could donate
Speaker 4: it to charity, you could buy your friend a latte. Right,
Speaker 4: it doesn't matter, but it has to be for somebody else.
Speaker 4: And then the key is that she calls participants later
Speaker 4: that day and even in some cases later in the week,
Speaker 4: and what she finds is that people tend to feel
Speaker 4: happier when they donate the money to somebody else or
Speaker 4: do something nice for somebody else with the money, more
Speaker 4: so than they feel when they spent the equivalent amount
Speaker 4: of money on themselves. And the study I love because
Speaker 4: it's just so straightforward. It's just suggests that you know
Speaker 4: what we predict will happen, right, And Liz has actually
Speaker 4: done these studies where she asks a different group of participants, Hey,
Speaker 4: imagine you're in the study where I walked up to
Speaker 4: you on the street and gave you twenty bucks. Would
Speaker 4: you be happier spending that on yourself or somebody else?
Speaker 4: And like robustly people say, oh, I'd be happier spending
Speaker 4: on myself, right, because I get something out of the deal.
Speaker 4: But what she finds is that we're just our prediction
Speaker 4: is just totally wrong. When we spend on others, we're happier.
Speaker 3: So I feel like there's a subtlety there in the
Speaker 3: spending on others group, right, Like it is in some
Speaker 3: ways more intuitive to me that, like, whatever, buying lunch
Speaker 3: for my friend would make me happy because my friend
Speaker 3: would be so happy, and we'd be happy together, and
Speaker 3: the thing would be happening in this very you know, social,
Speaker 3: real physical way, Like I get that one.
Speaker 1: It seems less.
Speaker 3: Obvious to me that, like giving twenty bucks to a
Speaker 3: charity helping people in Sub Saharan Africa would make me happy,
Speaker 3: even though clearly, intellectually, analytically, I know that the twenty
Speaker 3: bucks going to Sub Saharan Africa is going to do
Speaker 3: more to increase abstract human happiness than buying lunch for
Speaker 3: my friend who could have bought lunch for herself.
Speaker 1: So like, how does that piece of it work? How
Speaker 1: do we think about that piece of it?
Speaker 4: You are onto an important point, which is that there
Speaker 4: are better and worse ways to give to charity, right,
Speaker 4: in terms of like boosting our own happiness and sort
Speaker 4: of feeling the impact from that. We are a lot
Speaker 4: happier if we can see the impact of our work, right,
Speaker 4: But even when we don't see the impact of our work,
Speaker 4: the act of donating winds up making us feel better
Speaker 4: than we think. Again, I share the intuition that you have, Jacob, right, Like,
Speaker 4: I know these studies. I can kind of quote the
Speaker 4: stats and I still don't have the intuition that it works.
Speaker 4: But the results really just suggest that we feel better
Speaker 4: than we assume we will.
Speaker 1: Why do you think we get it wrong?
Speaker 3: I mean, I know we get everything wrong, But why
Speaker 3: do you think we get this wrong?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we get everything wrong right our minds.
Speaker 4: I wish I wish we could just like update like
Speaker 4: mind two point zero would be so much better. I
Speaker 4: think there's some there's some reasons that we get this
Speaker 4: one wrong. One is sort of when we're doing an
Speaker 4: active kindness, what we focus on as opposed to what
Speaker 4: the recipient will focus on. Right, I'm sort of focused
Speaker 4: on whether or not my gift is kind of in
Speaker 4: some sense competent, Like am I doing the right thing?
Speaker 4: Am I picking the right charity? Maybe an in more
Speaker 4: local acts of kindness. Am I doing it the right way? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I don't want to be awkward.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be rude or make this person
Speaker 3: feel some sense of obligation or reciprocity that might not
Speaker 3: work for them.
Speaker 1: You overthinking it. You're saying we're overthinking it.
Speaker 4: But in terms of the overthinking, that's not what's happening.
Speaker 4: On the other side. You think of the recipient of
Speaker 4: a compliment, right, If you know, if someone walks up
Speaker 4: to you in the streets like, hey, you know love
Speaker 4: those glasses. They really see you, Jacob, like nicely done.
Speaker 1: You're not thinking you you're not mean it, and I
Speaker 1: like it.
Speaker 4: But you're not thinking of like did they right? Did
Speaker 4: they use the right adjective? Was it cool glasses or stylish?
Speaker 4: You're just like, oh my gosh, I'm surprised, and I
Speaker 4: have this incredible warm feeling. And so this is part
Speaker 4: of the disconnect, is that when we're making the decision
Speaker 4: to do something nice, we're overthinking. We're caught up in
Speaker 4: if we're doing it right and so on. But the recipients,
Speaker 4: they don't feel any of that. They're just like, oh
Speaker 4: my gosh, I feel amazing, And so we kind of
Speaker 4: mispredict what they're paying attention to when they react, and
Speaker 4: that means their reactions are often a lot more positive
Speaker 4: than we expect. And then we're like, oh, I guess,
Speaker 4: I guess it was nice to do that kind thing
Speaker 4: for somebody.
Speaker 3: It's the broader lesson of like everybody's just thinking about
Speaker 3: themselves all the time. We're thinking about ourselves as givers,
Speaker 3: and am I the optimal giver?
Speaker 1: Am I giving in the optimal way? But the recipients
Speaker 1: aren't thinking about you. They're just thinking about.
Speaker 4: Them Yeah, And we get so caught up in the
Speaker 4: awkwardness of it. Right, you know how many compliments have
Speaker 4: you not given just because you're like, oh, I don't
Speaker 4: want to do it wrong or seem weird and some
Speaker 4: of Nick Eppley's a professor at the University of Chicago's data.
Speaker 4: He finds that about a third of the compliments we
Speaker 4: think in our heads, we don't actually tell the people
Speaker 4: around us, right, which, when you think compliments usually are
Speaker 4: received really well and make people's day, it's like a
Speaker 4: lot of positivity that's just like stuck inside people's heads
Speaker 4: that we're not giving out.
Speaker 3: Friction seems like another interesting piece, right, there's like you're
Speaker 3: in your own head too much, and the other core
Speaker 3: piece is like, ah, I don't know. I'm just some
Speaker 3: guy in the world. How do I figure out who
Speaker 3: to give to? And like I feel like that one
Speaker 3: is underrated in the world in general, right, Like we
Speaker 3: just we're like water, we just flow to the easiest rounde.
Speaker 3: I mean, how do you see that playing out in
Speaker 3: charity more generally, in giving more generally?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think that friction is a huge thing, right.
Speaker 4: I Mean a good friend of mine just had a
Speaker 4: baby with his wife, and my instagraction was like, oh
Speaker 4: my gosh, I should do something nice for them. Maybe
Speaker 4: I'll get them some food or some onesies or something.
Speaker 4: But I was like, do I just show up at
Speaker 4: their house? Like do they have any dietary restrictions that
Speaker 4: I'm forgetting about?
Speaker 1: Is this weird?
Speaker 4: Like all again, all this overthinking in my head. But
Speaker 4: another good friend of ours was like, I'm setting up
Speaker 4: a meal train. Here's the day. You click on this link.
Speaker 4: It's super easy, right, what you're gonna, you know, give
Speaker 4: him if it's a lasa or whatever, Here's how you
Speaker 4: drop it. Off, she just made it really easy for
Speaker 4: me to do the nice thing that I was thinking
Speaker 4: about doing. Anyway, I needed somebody to make that friction
Speaker 4: go away for me to help. And so I think
Speaker 4: there's so many cases of this in terms of what
Speaker 4: we could do to do nice things for others, whether
Speaker 4: that's with a charitable donation or even just like you know,
Speaker 4: asking a friend if they need some support, checking in
Speaker 4: on the people we care about, sharing compliments, and so on.
Speaker 4: The friction kind of gets in the way, and I
Speaker 4: think this is the idea, is that we can overcome
Speaker 4: the friction by kind of reducing how much work it
Speaker 4: is for us to do the nice thing. Right, Sometimes
Speaker 4: the nice thing is just texting a friend, or you're
Speaker 4: already there, you know, like you know, in the subway,
Speaker 4: and you compliment somebody who's walking by. Right, these are
Speaker 4: the kinds of things that we can do quickly, and
Speaker 4: if we do them enough, then there's a second way
Speaker 4: that we can reduce friction, which is that it just
Speaker 4: kind of becomes a habit. Right, if we just get
Speaker 4: in the habit of doing this over and over again,
Speaker 4: doing more and more nice things, then all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: it just becomes easier because so much that we know
Speaker 4: about human psychology, even though we're kind of you know,
Speaker 4: in the crappy beta version, shows that when we do
Speaker 4: something over and over again, it just becomes easier to
Speaker 4: do that same thing. And so one of the Giving
Speaker 4: Tuesday practices that I talk about in my show The
Speaker 4: Happiness Lab is just hey, practice doing nice things and
Speaker 4: it will make it easier. You'll kind of experience less
Speaker 4: friction over time, just because like it's just the thing
Speaker 4: you do when you see somebody you know at work
Speaker 4: who you know is wearing something nice or they do
Speaker 4: something great in a team meeting. You'll just get good
Speaker 4: at expressing compliments, expressing gratitude. It'll just become second nature
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 3: So you have this project through your show, the Happiness Lab,
Speaker 3: of giving money away, like built on this premise that
Speaker 3: we're talking about that not only would recipients be better
Speaker 3: if people gave more, but the givers themselves would be
Speaker 3: better if people gave more. You have this project that
Speaker 3: you do every year for Giving Tuesday, which is coming up.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that project.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the site that we've worked with is this
Speaker 4: group called giving Multiplier dot org and their goal is
Speaker 4: to fight a different kind of thing that can go
Speaker 4: wrong when we think about donating to charities, which is
Speaker 4: that many of us really do want to be kind
Speaker 4: of competent about it. We want our money to go
Speaker 4: to really good causes in the world, but we also
Speaker 4: kind of fall prey to the causes that feel really
Speaker 4: close to my heart, right you know, like I might
Speaker 4: want to give to my local food bank, which is great,
Speaker 4: you know, it's good to do that, but that ten
Speaker 4: bucks I give to my local food bank, it might
Speaker 4: not have as much impact as you know, giving to
Speaker 4: somebody maybe an extreme poverty right in like Sub Saharan Africa.
Speaker 4: You know, I haven't really analyzed is my local food
Speaker 4: bank doing the best with the money and so on
Speaker 4: and so giving multiplier dot Org has this has this
Speaker 4: really nice combination of they say, Okay, you really feel
Speaker 4: compelled to give to your food bank, but what if
Speaker 4: you gave just part of that ten bucks to one
Speaker 4: of these so called super effective charities. Right They've done
Speaker 4: the research. They're like the dollar that you give from
Speaker 4: that ten bucks to the super effective charity is going
Speaker 4: to go even further. And so they kind of allow
Speaker 4: you to make this distinction between your your heart and
Speaker 4: what you kind of really feel locally, the kind of
Speaker 4: thing that make you feel good because you can see
Speaker 4: the impact in your community versus what's doing the best
Speaker 4: work out there and giving. Multiplier dot Org this year
Speaker 4: has picked a really great super effective charity which is
Speaker 4: called Give Directly. This is this group that just gives
Speaker 4: these unconditional cash transfers like no strings attached, like cast
Speaker 4: bonus to people living in extreme poverty.
Speaker 3: And there's a there's a happiness lab. You are l right,
Speaker 3: shout it out, Shout it from the rooftops.
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 4: It's giving Multiplier dot org slash Happiness Lab super easy.
Speaker 1: Go right now.
Speaker 3: Phones are open, operators are standing by, you know.
Speaker 4: And one of the things we've seen is that a
Speaker 4: lot of our listeners will donate five bucks, three bucks
Speaker 4: in some cases. But those kinds of donations really add up,
Speaker 4: and especially if part of your donation is going to
Speaker 4: one of these super effective charities, like that dollar is
Speaker 4: going a really long way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll say, And I know, like analyzing super effective
Speaker 3: charities ends up being about like randomized controlled trials, which
Speaker 3: is great, like real evidence. But I will say that
Speaker 3: I actually for a story I did ten years ago
Speaker 3: or so. I went to Kenya to a village where
Speaker 3: Give Directly was giving money and I saw how profound
Speaker 3: the impact is. I mean, it's people get one thousand
Speaker 3: dollars at least at that time, no strings attached, and
Speaker 3: like I talk to a guy who bought a motorcycle
Speaker 3: so that he could start a motorcycle taxi business. Right,
Speaker 3: So it's not just like they buy food and then
Speaker 3: the money runs out. It's people have no capital, They
Speaker 3: have no money, and so getting one thousand dollars allows
Speaker 3: them to make these investments that can change their lives forever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we saw that last year where we really focused
Speaker 4: on GiveDirectly in particular and one community specifically. So we
Speaker 4: worked with this community, Kebobo in Rwanda, which is a
Speaker 4: tiny village just on the outside of Kigali, the capital.
Speaker 4: But they just like all, most of the people in
Speaker 4: the community live off less than a dollar a day,
Speaker 4: and just like you're saying, they just lack so many
Speaker 4: of the basic conveniences that we take for granted. Right,
Speaker 4: they have to hike two hours to get access to
Speaker 4: water and then the water comes back and it's like,
Speaker 4: are you going to drink some water? Are you going
Speaker 4: to give your kid a shower? Right, there's no access
Speaker 4: to schools and these kinds of things. And last year,
Speaker 4: Happiness Lab listeners were able to generate over one hundred
Speaker 4: thousand dollars for this community in particular, and so, just
Speaker 4: like you're saying, give directly, was able to give each
Speaker 4: person in the community one thousand dollars unconditional cash transfer,
Speaker 4: and the money went to things like motorbikes like you mentioned,
Speaker 4: fixing roofs, buying mattresses. Right, most of the people in
Speaker 4: Kebobo were sleeping on the floor. They just didn't have
Speaker 4: access to a mattress. But some people did these really
Speaker 4: creative things that One of the things I didn't expect
Speaker 4: is that one of the couples that got the cash
Speaker 4: transfer bought a pub, which you might think, like, ah,
Speaker 4: they got a pub, a puppet.
Speaker 1: Like a bar like a I love that.
Speaker 4: But the bar like wound up employing people in the community.
Speaker 4: It became this commun hub where people could get together
Speaker 4: with each other at night, and it's generated more income
Speaker 4: for them. So now they're turning kind of the side
Speaker 4: of their pub that they put together into a little
Speaker 4: mini grocery store, which is one of the first spots
Speaker 4: that people can buy food in town so that they
Speaker 4: don't have to leave town. And so it's like if
Speaker 4: you leave it up to people's ingenuity, they kind of
Speaker 4: come up with these interesting things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's a really simple idea.
Speaker 3: Like the reason I wanted to do that story all
Speaker 3: those years ago is like people know what they need, right,
Speaker 3: Like they know if they need food or a motorcycle
Speaker 3: or a roof, they just don't have the money, yes, right,
Speaker 3: So like if you give them the money, they can
Speaker 3: buy what they need.
Speaker 1: That's the great thing about money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And this is something we forget with gifts in general.
Speaker 4: I think this comes up in charity, but there's also
Speaker 4: a work you know, giving Tuesdays sort of the prelude
Speaker 4: to other holidays and gift giving moments coming up. And
Speaker 4: it's just something we get wrong all the time, Like
Speaker 4: we want to be able to come up with the
Speaker 4: creative gift for somebody. But one of the best ways
Speaker 4: to figure out the best gift is to just ask
Speaker 4: people what do you want? And if you buy someone
Speaker 4: that thing, they're going to be happy because that was
Speaker 4: what they wanted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it goes back to the like we're thinking about ourselves, right,
Speaker 3: even when we're giving gifts this notionally you know, other
Speaker 3: focused thing, we're actually like, oh am I a good gift?
Speaker 1: Giver? Am I a good It's just ego.
Speaker 3: It's just we're just screwing ourselves with our ego as always. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was great to talk with you, Laurie.
Speaker 1: It was truly a delightful conversation. Thank you.
Speaker 4: This is super Thanks for sharing the love on Giving Tuesday.
Speaker 3: Larie Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale and
Speaker 3: the host of the Happiness Lab. They have a whole
Speaker 3: episode on the psychology of generosity coming out this week.
Speaker 3: We'll be back in a minute with my conversation with
Speaker 3: Ellie Hassenfeld, who spent nearly two decades scouring the planet
Speaker 3: to find the most effective ways to spend money.
Speaker 1: On other people.
Speaker 3: Okay, so, Laurie Santos explained convincingly that giving away money
Speaker 3: makes us feel good. So now the question is who
Speaker 3: do we give the money to? That is basically the
Speaker 3: question that Ellie Hasn'tfeld asked himself almost twenty years ago.
Speaker 3: It's a question that led him to co found give
Speaker 3: Well where he's now the CEO, and it's a question that,
Speaker 3: in some really interesting ways, as you will hear, has
Speaker 3: started to change the way charities themselves think about what
Speaker 3: they do. To start, I asked Ellie how he came
Speaker 3: to found GiveWell in the first place.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand and six, I was a couple
Speaker 1: of years out of college working at a hedge fund,
Speaker 1: and a friend, Holding Karnowski, and I wanted to give
Speaker 1: to charity, and at the time, we were trying to
Speaker 1: give a few thousand bucks away and we wanted to
Speaker 1: find charitable organizations that were getting a lot of bang
Speaker 1: for their buck. And when we went looking online for information,
Speaker 1: we just couldn't find great information about what charities do
Speaker 1: and how well it works. We heard a lot about
Speaker 1: the overhead ratio, how much did they spend on administration
Speaker 1: versus programs, but nothing that said this is what they're
Speaker 1: doing and this is how many people they'll help with
Speaker 1: their programs. We spent months trying to answer this question.
Speaker 1: The two of us got a little bit obsessed with it,
Speaker 1: and eventually, after about a year of working on this project,
Speaker 1: left our jobs to start give Well as a full
Speaker 1: time project, and the idea was to create the resource
Speaker 1: that we had been looking for as donors well.
Speaker 3: And there is this interesting sort of broader idea in
Speaker 3: the charity world, right in the philanthropic world, which is
Speaker 3: what are they measuring? You Know, you can have a
Speaker 3: charity that builds schools, and they might tell you how
Speaker 3: many schools they build, but presumably you're not actually giving
Speaker 3: money to build the school, right, You're giving money so
Speaker 3: that children get a better education. And so I'm curious,
Speaker 3: I mean, as you started to look deeper at the time,
Speaker 3: as you founded give well, like what was just the
Speaker 3: basic landscape of measurement within the charity Worldlike.
Speaker 1: It's just really hard to get information about the outcomes
Speaker 1: that we cared about that I think donors ultimately do
Speaker 1: care about. And those outcomes would be things like do
Speaker 1: you save children's lives if you are providing funds for
Speaker 1: health programs, if you're trying to reduce poverty? Do you
Speaker 1: increase people's incomes so that they can buy more of
Speaker 1: the kinds of things that they want? And I would
Speaker 1: say that by and large this information was not available.
Speaker 1: When we were calling up organizations and asking them for information,
Speaker 1: they were often shocked that anyone would be even asking
Speaker 1: a question like this, because it was just in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, two thousand and seven, it was completely
Speaker 1: unusual that someone would be wondering about, like, what is
Speaker 1: the program actually accomplishing? What is the impact that it's
Speaker 1: having on the world? Huh?
Speaker 3: I mean, is it almost a rude question? Is it
Speaker 3: almost like, Look, we're spending our lives helping these people,
Speaker 3: We're giving them cows, we're building clinics, Like who are you?
Speaker 1: What are you asking about? Why where do you come
Speaker 1: off asking these questions? I think it's definitely an odd
Speaker 1: question to ask something that I say a lot internally.
Speaker 1: I can well, now is that you know, we're the
Speaker 1: people who react skeptically to organizations saying we're just trying
Speaker 1: to help people around the world, and we say, well,
Speaker 1: how do you know? And can you prove it? And
Speaker 1: you know that's not a socially normal thing to do,
Speaker 1: but I think it's necessary because gosh, it's so hard
Speaker 1: to have an impact on people around the world, and
Speaker 1: asking those questions helps get better information so we can
Speaker 1: ensure that funding goes to the best place. So you
Speaker 1: do have this.
Speaker 3: Short list of pop charities that seems kind of like
Speaker 3: the center of what you do in some way. Right,
Speaker 3: you've looked at all of these charities in the world,
Speaker 3: then you've landed on this very small number. Briefly, what
Speaker 3: are they? Yeah, so you know, these top charities account
Speaker 3: for about two thirds of the funds we direct. There
Speaker 3: are four of them.
Speaker 1: One is the Against Malaria Foundation, which delivers malaria nets
Speaker 1: in Africa. The second one is called Malaria Consortium and
Speaker 1: we support their Seasonal Malaria Chemo Prevention program. That's a
Speaker 1: preventative malaria program giving medicine to young children. The third one,
Speaker 1: and these are in no particular order, but the third
Speaker 1: one is Helen Keller Internationals Vitamin A Supplementation Program. This
Speaker 1: is a program that gives a small amount of vitamin
Speaker 1: A to children under the age of five and it
Speaker 1: is shown in numerous studies to reduce child mortality. And
Speaker 1: then finally, New Incentives, which is the organization that provides
Speaker 1: conditional cast trans or small cash transfers to encourage immunization.
Speaker 1: You know, the top charities reflect you know, roughly two
Speaker 1: thirds of the funds that we direct, and we see
Speaker 1: them as the you know, really the tried and true,
Speaker 1: Like if you're a donor, and you want to have
Speaker 1: a lot of impact, and you want to have confidence
Speaker 1: in that impact. These are organizations that we have followed
Speaker 1: for many years and we have a lot of confidence
Speaker 1: in because they are there's a lot of evidence that
Speaker 1: supports their impact.
Speaker 3: So how do you get from sort of generally being
Speaker 3: interested in charity and in you know, research driven outcomes
Speaker 3: to specifically focusing on saving the lives of children in
Speaker 3: the developing world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so, at its core, GiveWell is about
Speaker 1: finding outstanding programs that we can support with the aim
Speaker 1: of getting having the most impact with the funds that
Speaker 1: we direct. And when we started, we didn't know where
Speaker 1: we were going to find those programs, so we were
Speaker 1: looking at health programs focused on low income countries, but
Speaker 1: also social program focused on New York City where we
Speaker 1: lived at the time, so job training programs, education programs,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And after our first year of work where
Speaker 1: we were focused on both US social programs and also
Speaker 1: global programs, we looked at the data and just saw
Speaker 1: how big the difference was in what a dollar could
Speaker 1: accomplish overseas versus at home. And just to make it concrete,
Speaker 1: you know, we estimate roughly, but I think it's the
Speaker 1: right ballpark that five thousand or so dollars will avert
Speaker 1: the death of a young child in a low income country.
Speaker 1: That's about what it costs to put a child through
Speaker 1: school for a couple of years in a New York
Speaker 1: City charter school. And so that differential really showed us
Speaker 1: that the opportunities to use money to have a big
Speaker 1: impactor over on the world where we're stronger overseas, and
Speaker 1: it drove us. It drove us to focus our efforts there.
Speaker 1: We're finding the the groups that are, I think, like
Speaker 1: importantly like not sure that their own programs are working,
Speaker 1: and so want to ensure that they're gathering the data
Speaker 1: so that they know where the programs are effective, where
Speaker 1: they're struggling, so that they can make changes to run
Speaker 1: those programs more effectively.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so that's an interesting idea, right, Like
Speaker 3: that idea of the groups themselves being unsure. It requires
Speaker 3: a sense of what is what is the real endpoint?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: I think quite often and reasonably, like things are clearly
Speaker 3: helpful if you whatever, give someone a cow and you
Speaker 3: know training on how to take care of that cow,
Speaker 3: like pretty clearly that person is going to be better
Speaker 3: off than if you hadn't done it, and so it
Speaker 3: might not be obvious to say, oh, we need to measure, well,
Speaker 3: how much does it cost to give them the cow?
Speaker 1: How much better off are they? Are?
Speaker 3: There things we could change that would be even more helpful,
Speaker 3: Like most people clearly don't do that, right, Most people
Speaker 3: in their jobs in many domains are not constantly measuring
Speaker 3: and trying to optimize.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I just think the stakes are so
Speaker 1: high that it's just absolutely critical that there is a
Speaker 1: recognition that failure can happen and we have to do
Speaker 1: the best we can. Billions of dollars go to health
Speaker 1: aid every year and the stakes are quite literally life
Speaker 1: and death. And so therefore the difference between some of
Speaker 1: the best programs that can very roughly say, avert the
Speaker 1: death of a young child for approximately five to ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, and then other programs which could have very
Speaker 1: limited impact, I think in the worst case, even cause harm.
Speaker 1: The measurement in that feedback loop to say this, we
Speaker 1: want to see whether it's working, we want to see
Speaker 1: the extent to which it's working, and we want to
Speaker 1: learn from what we've done so that we can do better.
Speaker 1: That's true for the organizations we work with, that's true
Speaker 1: for us as an organization. You know, we're trying to
Speaker 1: follow the same project of learning from our own track
Speaker 1: record in history to make better decisions in the future
Speaker 1: and hopefully help people even more. The groups that we
Speaker 1: work with most, and I think the kinds of people
Speaker 1: who are most drawn to what we're doing, whether it's
Speaker 1: donors or practitioners, are people who's I think their interest,
Speaker 1: the idea that they have that we have is to
Speaker 1: try to find the way to use charitable dollars to
Speaker 1: accomplish as much good as possible. And if that idea
Speaker 1: is preventing HIV and young children, then great. And if
Speaker 1: we can do better, if we can distribute oral rehydration
Speaker 1: solution to prevent deaths from diarrhea, or if we can
Speaker 1: encourage additional testing and treatment to prevent cases of tuberculosis
Speaker 1: and children, what I ultimately care about. The thing that's
Speaker 1: important to me is just helping children. And I'm not
Speaker 1: drawn to the specific cause or disease as much as
Speaker 1: the outcome, which is trying to enable more people to
Speaker 1: live long, healthy lives.
Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, traditionally philanthropy was largely about
Speaker 3: making donors feel good, and maybe it still is to
Speaker 3: some degree, the nature of human nature being what it is.
Speaker 3: But it seems like the growth of give well and
Speaker 3: of sort of research driven philanthropy more generally has coincided
Speaker 3: with the long boom of Silicon Valley, right. And it
Speaker 3: strikes me that the kind of people who get rich
Speaker 3: in tech are more numerically driven, are more metrics oriented
Speaker 3: perhaps than earlier generations of rich people, and that that
Speaker 3: might be sort of part of what is going on,
Speaker 3: part of the wind at your back, part of the
Speaker 3: rise of research driven philanthropy.
Speaker 1: You buy that. I think there's a kind of person
Speaker 1: in tech and also in parts of finance. Those are
Speaker 1: the two sectors from which we draw most of our
Speaker 1: donors who have I think, the perspective that they take
Speaker 1: on the world as one we know that there's a
Speaker 1: lot we can be wrong about. We know there can
Speaker 1: be big differences in the investments we make or the
Speaker 1: decisions we make as a company leader. We also know
Speaker 1: that we can be wrong and we want to learn
Speaker 1: about how to do it better. And I do think
Speaker 1: we see that coming out of those industries, and it's
Speaker 1: a big part of what has helped us grow to
Speaker 1: the size that we are today.
Speaker 3: So you were mentioning that when you first started out
Speaker 3: and you were calling up charities and saying, what evidence
Speaker 3: do you have that you're actually helping people basically, and
Speaker 3: they would say.
Speaker 1: How dare you? Who are you?
Speaker 3: Why are you asking me this? I'm spending my life
Speaker 3: helping people. What do they say now when.
Speaker 1: You call them up? Has that changed? Very practically? It's
Speaker 1: changed for us because when I was calling people up
Speaker 1: almost twenty years ago, I was offering them a thousand
Speaker 1: bucks and you know, now how we have a lot
Speaker 1: of funding to give, and so that does make them
Speaker 1: more responsive. Oh, that's interesting. So there's a sort of pull.
Speaker 3: So basically, because you're directing hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 3: a year, organizations have an incentive to be more research based.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean very fundamentally. You know, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a problem, so to speak, in the charitable market where
Speaker 1: the person deciding to open their wallet is not the
Speaker 1: person who's ultimately receiving the service. So there's a disconnect
Speaker 1: between the recipient and the giver. Where in the consumer
Speaker 1: market that we're used to, you know, I purchase my
Speaker 1: laptop and then I also use it and see how
Speaker 1: good it is. Yeah, and so I think, and.
Speaker 3: If it sucks you, you that company goes out of dens.
Speaker 1: But that's not how it works security. If you're great
Speaker 1: at fundraising from donors but terrible at delivering a program
Speaker 1: no one might ever know. And so very I think
Speaker 1: just concretely give well has helped support the literal in
Speaker 1: a very small way, the creation of an incentive to
Speaker 1: operate in a way that is focused on demonstrating impact,
Speaker 1: because the dollars that we have to give, the dollars
Speaker 1: that we have to influence, are going after that evidence
Speaker 1: of strong impact. And I should say, of course, we
Speaker 1: are just part of a larger and I think ever
Speaker 1: growing ecosystem. You see this in the academics who launched
Speaker 1: the randomized control trial movement in economics, organizations like Evidence Action,
Speaker 1: the Clinton Health Access Initiative, give directly. I mean this,
Speaker 1: it's a large and growing group of institutions, even beyond
Speaker 1: the scope of just give well, that are operating in
Speaker 1: a way that is explicitly aiming to deliver great results
Speaker 1: and demonstrate that those results are coming to fruition. And
Speaker 1: I think that is just a massive change from where
Speaker 1: we were twenty years ago.
Speaker 3: So you mentioned give directly, and as it happens the
Speaker 3: there's a sort of charitable giving project out of one
Speaker 3: of the shows at Pushkin that gives money to give
Speaker 3: direct basically, and I'm curious about give well, sort of
Speaker 3: ongoing evaluation of give directly, Like what do you think?
Speaker 3: What do you think of give directly as work in
Speaker 3: a quantitative professional way? Yeah, I think, like, extremely, extremely
Speaker 3: highly of them. I've personally been a gift directly donor
Speaker 3: for many years, you know, continue to give to them
Speaker 3: last year and will this year because I really love
Speaker 3: what they do. I think it's just so critical to say,
Speaker 3: you know, with some of our giving, let's make sure
Speaker 3: that we're just supporting people to purchase, you know, what
Speaker 3: they most.
Speaker 1: Want still to come.
Speaker 3: On the show, Ellie talks about some of the most
Speaker 3: surprising things he's seen in his nearly two decades in
Speaker 3: the charity world. What do you make of the fact
Speaker 3: that five thousand dollars can save a child's life?
Speaker 1: I think it is just an illustration of on some
Speaker 1: level how unjust our world is, you know, potentially, how
Speaker 1: I think all of us, myself included, don't perhaps don't
Speaker 1: really take it seriously as we should, the kind of
Speaker 1: impact that we can have overseas. But fundamentally, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it shows that something is very broken in
Speaker 1: our system for allocating resources globally, because it's very hard
Speaker 1: to accept that it's possible to save someone's life for
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean with all the money, even with all
Speaker 3: the money that people give away, Like why don't people
Speaker 3: give enough money to buy bed nets for kids so
Speaker 3: they don't get malaria?
Speaker 1: Right, Like, there's some amount of money. The more money.
Speaker 3: People give, the less valuable each marginal net would be, right, Like,
Speaker 3: why haven't people given enough money to these programs to
Speaker 3: sort of of give away all the bed nets that
Speaker 3: you need to give away and give away all the
Speaker 3: malaria medicine that you'd need to give away to stop
Speaker 3: kids from dying of malaria, at least in these high
Speaker 3: intensity malaria areas where it's obvious that kids are going
Speaker 3: to die of malaria every year.
Speaker 1: I think, first of all, it's just worth noting how
Speaker 1: much progress we have made globally in the last twenty
Speaker 1: five years. The US government has given huge amounts to
Speaker 1: a program called PEPFAR focused on HIV. The President's Malaria
Speaker 1: Initiative focused on malaria and has been instrumental in the
Speaker 1: creation of the Global Fund, which focuses on HTB and malaria,
Speaker 1: and GAVI, which focuses on immanizations. So since the year
Speaker 1: two thousand, the amount of funding going to global health
Speaker 1: problems has gone up a huge amount. It has plateaued
Speaker 1: more recently, but it's gone up a huge amount, and
Speaker 1: we see a massive reduction in child mortality. So we're
Speaker 1: doing a lot better today than we were in the
Speaker 1: recent past. And then like, fundamentally, I don't know why
Speaker 1: people don't give more or even give more to these charities, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's more a question of direction. It's not even
Speaker 1: why don't people give more money.
Speaker 3: It's like, if it's really that easy to save a
Speaker 3: kid's life, like we want that number to go up, right,
Speaker 3: like the cheaper it is to save a kid's life.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's kind of you cuts both ways. Right
Speaker 3: on the one end, it's like, well, great, we know
Speaker 3: a thing that is helpful. But on the other hand, like, well,
Speaker 3: let's buy all the bed bets.
Speaker 1: So it's not so easy do you know what I'm saying? Uh? Completely,
Speaker 1: And and yeah, I think that you know, give Well
Speaker 1: raises about three hundred million dollars a year. A Give
Speaker 1: Well that was raising a billion dollars a year would
Speaker 1: the marginal dollars would be much less less cost effective, right,
Speaker 1: because we would have gone much further.
Speaker 3: Weirdly, you want to get to a place where it's
Speaker 3: more expensive to save a child's life, Like, the more
Speaker 3: expensive it is, the less inequality there is in the world,
Speaker 3: the more kids lives we're saving.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, you know. And then I think I Give
Speaker 1: Well itself is an institution that has raised much more
Speaker 1: money over the last fifteen years than was raised previously
Speaker 1: and is going and I think it reflects more people giving.
Speaker 1: Why aren't people giving more to these programs? I think
Speaker 1: because the honestly, the suffering and the poverty of say,
Speaker 1: the poorest parts of Sub Saharan Africa is something that
Speaker 1: we are largely blind to in our day to day lives.
Speaker 1: It's not you know, we cover natural disasters when they occur,
Speaker 1: but no one is covering literally the daily catastrophe of
Speaker 1: child deaths due to infectious disease in sub Saharan Africa.
Speaker 1: You know, very roughly one thousand children die every day
Speaker 1: of malaria. We know how to prevent it, and that's
Speaker 1: not covered because it's well, I guess it's I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly why. That's a question for you, not for me,
Speaker 1: but it's not covered. And I think that on some
Speaker 1: level we're able to live as if it's not really
Speaker 1: there in that motivating force to get people to see
Speaker 1: it and then act isn't isn't happening.
Speaker 3: You've been doing this now for fifteen years ish. If
Speaker 3: you go back to when you started, what's been surprising
Speaker 3: to you? What has happened in a way you would
Speaker 3: not have expected.
Speaker 1: I was really surprised when we started at how strange
Speaker 1: our questions seem to the organizations that we were going to,
Speaker 1: the question of how effective are your programs? How much
Speaker 1: are you accomplishing, and how do you know? Seems like
Speaker 1: a really an obvious question. Those are really surprising to me.
Speaker 1: How much we've grown. When we started this, I think
Speaker 1: we thought that we were just we were a couple
Speaker 1: of guys who had this idiosyncratic interest in an approach
Speaker 1: to charitable giving. And when we talk to people who
Speaker 1: worked in philanthropy. They they reacted like we were nuts,
Speaker 1: that no one would ever be into this. This is
Speaker 1: not what donors go to gala's and donors like stories
Speaker 1: and their names on buildings, and wow, it's shocking. You know,
Speaker 1: people are people are normal. People are just giving three
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars a year to help people around the world,
Speaker 1: and they're buying large anonymous they're not getting their names
Speaker 1: on buildings, and they're just you know, following along, trying
Speaker 1: to make as big a difference as they can in
Speaker 1: people's lives. So they'll never meet. And you know, on
Speaker 1: some level that maybe that makes sense, but that's also
Speaker 1: really surprising.
Speaker 3: It seems like the happy surprise, the happy surprise. I
Speaker 3: appreciate you time very much. It was great to talk
Speaker 3: with you. Yeah, that was great to be here.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much.
Speaker 3: Jacob Ellie Hasenfeld is the co founder and CEO of
Speaker 3: Gift Well. Last conversation on the show is with Nate
Speaker 3: Silver and Maria on a Cova. Nate is a statistician,
Speaker 3: Maria's a psychologist. They are both writers and together they
Speaker 3: host a podcast.
Speaker 1: Called Risky Business.
Speaker 3: They are also both professional poker players, and that's really
Speaker 3: why I wanted to talk to them about charitable giving.
Speaker 3: One of the things they do on their show is
Speaker 3: they talk about bringing a poker mindset to the decision
Speaker 3: making of everyday life, and so I wanted to hear
Speaker 3: from them how professional gamblers think about giving money away. So, like,
Speaker 3: the core idea of the show is making better decisions
Speaker 3: using this expected value framework right in like one sentence,
Speaker 3: what's expected value?
Speaker 5: Expected value is the net benefit you expect to get
Speaker 5: averaged over all the uncertain outcomes. Now, I guess with
Speaker 5: charitable giving, maybe it's more deterministic where we know, for example,
Speaker 5: that mosquito nets in Africa have a high return on
Speaker 5: investment they say lives and prevent male area at a
Speaker 5: relative of low costs. It's not like a random element
Speaker 5: there exactly, although there are always some implementation issues, But
Speaker 5: really it's a framework about utility.
Speaker 6: And I was just jump in a little bit to
Speaker 6: say that, you know, we have the economic definition of
Speaker 6: expected value, and then when you look at behavioral economics
Speaker 6: and the way that people actually make decisions, you realize
Speaker 6: that there's a lot of psychology involved as well, and
Speaker 6: so calculating expected value is not as straightforward as just
Speaker 6: kind of doing these dollar calculations, because you know, how
Speaker 6: do you put a dollar amount on how good you
Speaker 6: feel after a decision or how bad you feel, or
Speaker 6: the regret that you might feel when you don't take
Speaker 6: a decision. And when we're looking at kind of the
Speaker 6: broader picture of expected value, you do have to try
Speaker 6: to quantify that a little bit and try to account
Speaker 6: for all of those different psychological factors that come into
Speaker 6: play as well.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite things about your show is when
Speaker 3: you talk about the culture of professional poker players. Basically,
Speaker 3: you're both professional poker players, and you live in this
Speaker 3: universe where people treat money really differently. Right, And there
Speaker 3: are these two terms that come up a lot on
Speaker 3: the show, two kinds of people knits and djens. What's
Speaker 3: a knit?
Speaker 6: I'll leave this one to you, Nate.
Speaker 5: A knit is basically George Costanzo, right. It's like a
Speaker 5: neurotic risk of verse cheap, but more someone who is
Speaker 5: so neurotic that they aren't taking plus ev bets. Right.
Speaker 5: They're too conservative for their own good when it comes
Speaker 5: to playing poker hands, for example, and have a low
Speaker 5: openness to experience perhaps and can be annoying they're the
Speaker 5: ones who want to itemize the bill when the checks.
Speaker 3: Wait, I didn't eat the app. I shouldn't have to
Speaker 3: pay for one third of the app. That's the naty behavior.
Speaker 5: It, Yeah, Whereas a djen is someone who likes to gamble,
Speaker 5: is risk tolerant, maybe to their own detriment, is freewheeling
Speaker 5: with money and splashes around.
Speaker 3: Yes, and DGEN is short for degenerate gambler, but in
Speaker 3: a loving way, right, that's my favorite. Yeah, So in
Speaker 3: your experience, who is more generous a degenerate knit djen?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 6: I don't think it's even close.
Speaker 1: You guys give to charity.
Speaker 6: I give to charitable causes that I believe in. So
Speaker 6: for instance, I gave a lot of money to Ukraine
Speaker 6: when Russia invaded, And that is how kind of I
Speaker 6: calculate my charitable giving. I understand that mosquito nets in
Speaker 6: Africa are incredibly important. I have not given to malaria
Speaker 6: because that is not something that you know, I feel
Speaker 6: strongly about. There are other people feel strongly about that.
Speaker 6: So for me part of it, you know, I I
Speaker 6: have given to educational causes. You know, I give to
Speaker 6: things that I have a connection with and that I
Speaker 6: feel also are underfunded.
Speaker 3: Mari you mentioned given to Ukraine, and I mean I
Speaker 3: know you a little bit, I know your your life
Speaker 3: story seems connected to that, right, tell me about your
Speaker 3: connection to helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So my dad is Ukrainian and my mom is from Moscow,
Speaker 6: and I was born in Moscow and then came to
Speaker 6: the United States when I was four years old and
Speaker 6: have always been very anti the autocratic tendencies of Russia,
Speaker 6: very anti Putin And I think you know when Putin
Speaker 6: invent invaded Ukraine. To me, that was a no brainer.
Speaker 6: I think at this point Ukraine is one of the
Speaker 6: only things standing between us and the Third World War,
Speaker 6: basically the fact that they're able to resist him. So
Speaker 6: for me, it was incredibly personal. And so I'm all
Speaker 6: in on the Zelenski camp.
Speaker 5: Nate Silver, do you give money away? I'm having to reevaluate.
Speaker 5: I mean, the short answers I haven't.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: Does either saying on a show that you haven't given
Speaker 3: money away, or hearing Maria talk about giving money away,
Speaker 3: like honestly, does it you think it makes it any
Speaker 3: more likely that you'll give money away.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's going to have any effect on you.
Speaker 5: I'm generally not a person who is governed by guilt.
Speaker 1: Ah, that's I mean, I think I should.
Speaker 5: There's like a lot of long term financial planning that
Speaker 5: gets put off. I mean, these are discussions that you know,
Speaker 5: my household we've had and so we're we're aware of
Speaker 5: this question and what we want to do with our
Speaker 5: money in the long term, member thinking about it actively,
Speaker 5: but kind of things get short circuited during I mean clearly,
Speaker 5: I think that you know, in some abstract sense, you
Speaker 5: are being selfish. If you're not you have a comfortable life,
Speaker 5: then you are being selfish to not give. But it's
Speaker 5: easy to make excuses.
Speaker 3: I appreciate your hown So Nate, does that make you
Speaker 3: a knit and Maria the DJ in I never would
Speaker 3: have guessed, well, but I am.
Speaker 1: I think Maria is also.
Speaker 5: I am generous in those other ways yea, and things
Speaker 5: like tips with things like you know, picking up checks,
Speaker 5: even a fairly expensive meals or something for my friends.
Speaker 5: And so maybe psychologically that feels more satisfying than the
Speaker 5: abstract charitable giving.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean that is an interesting tension, right, like
Speaker 3: it feels better to buy lunch for your friend than
Speaker 3: to send the money off to somebody thousands of miles away,
Speaker 3: even though obviously the marginal benefit of that whatever one
Speaker 3: hundred bucks, fifty bucks, any any bucks, is clearly greater
Speaker 3: if you send it off thousands.
Speaker 5: Jacob in the York, fifty bucks would be great.
Speaker 1: I was trying to be I was trying to be
Speaker 1: a man of the people. And when are we getting dinner?
Speaker 6: I totally agree, and yeah, And I also just want
Speaker 6: to want to add a little bit to say that
Speaker 6: I think that in this particular case, like role models
Speaker 6: really do matter when it comes to charitable giving tendencies,
Speaker 6: so psychologically speaking. And one of the things that has
Speaker 6: made me actually kind of give more than I have
Speaker 6: in the past is my parents, who don't have a
Speaker 6: lot of money and you know, our single income because
Speaker 6: my mom no longer works, and they give a recurring
Speaker 6: donation every single month to causes that they believe strongly in,
Speaker 6: including Ukraine. And when I think about it, I'm like,
Speaker 6: you can't afford to do this, and yet they do it,
Speaker 6: and that you know it I won't say guilts me
Speaker 6: into but like it may, it makes me realize that,
Speaker 6: like you know, it is important when you are donating
Speaker 6: to causes where it actually makes a difference. Nate and
Speaker 6: I talked a lot on our podcast about kind of
Speaker 6: donating to political campaigns, and you know, don't donate to
Speaker 6: the presidential campaign because they don't need the money. But I,
Speaker 6: you know, I think that that's kind of that's what
Speaker 6: we're talking about at the end. Where do you donate
Speaker 6: in a way that your money actually makes an impact
Speaker 6: right now? And it doesn't have to be millions of dollars,
Speaker 6: right you can leave I hope I have millions to
Speaker 6: leave at the end of my life to good causes,
Speaker 6: but you know, there are causes where even a few
Speaker 6: hundred dollars actually can make a huge difference.
Speaker 5: But I guess because there probably is some pleasure from it, right,
Speaker 5: you kind of recognize the efemeral nature of money and
Speaker 5: it's kind of more an emotional reaction.
Speaker 1: And then when.
Speaker 5: I mean thinking about charity, it's kind of the more
Speaker 5: rational part of your brain.
Speaker 1: Right you can make.
Speaker 5: Excuses along lines of well, maybe just give it away
Speaker 5: at the end of my life. And I pay a
Speaker 5: lot of taxes, and you know, figuring out where to
Speaker 5: give is a discussion to have with your partner, and
Speaker 5: that can get you know, we'd have disagreements about that,
Speaker 5: and so it's different than the kind of oh, it's
Speaker 5: get a nice bottle of wine and I'll I'll pick
Speaker 5: up dinner to night because I know you had a
Speaker 5: rough tournament series or something like that.
Speaker 1: Huh. I never thought of you as such an amoe.
Speaker 3: So so I'm curious in particular, So this, this show
Speaker 3: is about giving away money fundamentally, and you know, we
Speaker 3: can talk about you know, maximizing ev and what charities
Speaker 3: are good, but there's also just this more general idea
Speaker 3: of pro social behavior. Spending money on your friends is
Speaker 3: part of this. And so I'm curious, what's your favorite
Speaker 3: djen dropping a bunch of money on their friends on charity,
Speaker 3: on anything story.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, this isn't This isn't d Jenny, but I
Speaker 6: think it's something that is quite important. The poker community
Speaker 6: actually does give a shit ton of money to charity.
Speaker 6: You know, those aren't the fun D Jenny stories, but
Speaker 6: but that's I think, you know, I think it's important
Speaker 6: to note that poker players actually are on top of this,
Speaker 6: and there are a lot of poker players giving millions
Speaker 6: to charity and matching charitable donations.
Speaker 1: Thanks you, guys, it was a delight to talk to you.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: So just before we in the show, I want to
Speaker 3: just mention one last thing. There was a moment in
Speaker 3: that last conversation when Nate was talking about the reasons
Speaker 3: he hasn't given money. You know how giving money to
Speaker 3: charity has tied up with all these other household financial
Speaker 3: planning decisions, et cetera, et cetera. And I thought back
Speaker 3: to that thing that Lori Santo said at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the show about friction. You know how friction and
Speaker 3: not knowing how to give or who to give to
Speaker 3: winds up being this huge barrier. And I thought about
Speaker 3: how Ellie Hassenfeld has spent all this time trying to
Speaker 3: find charities that are very clearly doing good that you
Speaker 3: can just give money to and feel good about. So
Speaker 3: to close out the show today and to fight against
Speaker 3: friction in my own life, I'm going to go right
Speaker 3: now to that website that Laurie was talking about giving
Speaker 3: multiplier dot org slash.
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab, and I'm going to give fifty bucks. Is
Speaker 1: it the perfect amount of money? I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna do it right now.
Speaker 3: Thanks very much to Nate Silver and Maria Konakova, the
Speaker 3: host of Risky Business, Ellie Hassenfeld of GiveWell, and to
Speaker 3: Lrie Santos, the host of The Happiness Lab, who got
Speaker 3: me thinking about giving Tuesday in the first place. Today's
Speaker 3: show was produced by Lucy Sullivan and Isabelle Carter, edited
Speaker 3: by Sarah Nix, and engineered by Jake Gorsky. Special thanks
Speaker 3: to Ryan Dilly, Farah Daygrunge and Owen Miller. I'm Jacob
Speaker 3: Goldstein and I host the Pushkin Show What's Your Problem?
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.