The Most Important Question Pods Fight Poverty: What Really Happens When You Just Give People Money?
Hey friends, I want to talk about something big. Change the actual world big, because the world won't unfuck itself, as we all know.
We are joining podcasts across the planet for Pods Fight Poverty, a campaign directly supporting our good friends at Give Directly. Now, if you've been with us since episode 116, which feels like a thousand years ago, you'll remember when we asked one of the most deceptively simple, world altering questions ever.
Why is just giving people money the most effective way to help them change their lives and maybe even end global poverty altogether?
To crack that open I had Caroline Teti and Michael Faye on the show, two people who've spent years with Give Directly, knee deep in data and logistics and lived experience, my favorite combination of things, and guess what the answer turned out to be?
People are the experts on their own lives. You are. So why aren't they? Different people need different things on different days. So if you want them to get exactly what they need, you give them the resources to choose cash directly, and that's what Give Directly does.
No middlemen, no guessing, just trusting other humans with the dignity and agency we would expect and that they deserve. Yeah, wild idea. It works. It works better than almost anything else we've tried.
So here's the part where you come in. None of us can erase global poverty by ourselves. Again, that's our whole tagline. But literally, any one of us can lift one person out of poverty, today, right now. So for Pods Fight Poverty, if you can head to givedirectly.org/important and chip in.
That's givedirectly.org/important. And look to take it even further, my wife and I already personally contribute to Give Directly every year, every month actually, which is the best way to support a group like this, by the way.
And thousands of you all do too. I'm gonna step it up and will personally match the next $5,000 in donations when you use our link, which again is givedirectly.org/important. So let's do it.
And to get you in the spirit, we're gonna revisit our conversation right now with Teti and Michael. It's funny, it's hopeful, it's deeply nerdy, and it'll remind you why this work matters every single day. Thanks as always for giving a shit.
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INI Book Club:
- “The Biggest Bluff” by Maria Konnikova
- “The Art of Reading Minds” by Henrik Fexeus
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