2024-12-02
51 分钟It's the season of giving: colorful paper and shiny bows, sure, and charitable giving, too. In this special episode, Jacob Goldstein, the host of What's Your Problem, gets smart about donating. Did you know that spending money on others makes you happier than spending money on yourself? Or that altruistic nerds have discovered four of the most impactful charities in the world (per dollar spent)? Have you ever wondered how poker players think about giving? Dr. Laurie Santos from The Happiness Lab, Elie Hassenfeld of GiveWell, and Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova from Risky Business talk about how to maximize your giving – and why you’ll be happy you did. Link to donate: https://givingmultiplier.org/happinesslab Listen to The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos Listen to Risky Business See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
I'm Jacob Goldstein.
I host a Pushkin podcast called what's yous Problem?
And I am here randomly talking to you right now because today is the day before Giving Tuesday.
Giving Tuesday, as you may already know, is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.
And it's supposed to be the day we give money to charity.
And I'm gonna be honest with you, in my middle aged, somewhat calcified heart, I cringe a little bit every time I hear the phrase Giving Tuesday.
I think Giving Tuesday is not a real thing.
It's not a real day.
It's just something somebody made up a few years ago.
But that cynicism is not helping anybody.
In fact, as it turns out, it isn't even helping me.
I know this to be true because over the past decade or so, research has made two things really clear.
One, giving money away makes us feel better than we think it will make us feel.
In other words, we underestimate the benefit to ourselves of giving money to others.
That's thing one.
Thing two is this.
There are charities that are proven proven by really robust evidence to do a tremendous amount of good with the money we give them.
So today, I and my colleagues at Pushkin are leaning into Giving Tuesday.
We are putting out this special Giving Tuesday show to get into this evidence, to really understand why giving money makes us happy, why we don't do it more, and who we should give money to.
To start out on the show, I'm going to talk with Lori Santos.