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Giving $500 to 1000 people to do something Drop Dead Generous - Tom Cledwyn - Sentientism 236
Episode Description
Tom Cledwyn describes himself as the "chief emailer" at Drop Dead Generous (he's actually the co-founder). Inspired by Chris Anderson's (of TED) book, "Infectious Generosity", Tom and his co-founder John Sweeney set up DDG as an experiment in sparking creative, fun, hopefully infectious generosity. They're giving away half a million dollars in $500 chunks to people who want to do something kind for someone else (whether human or not).
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"
Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips
01:15 Welcome
- Our introduction by Zoe Weil. Her two Sentientism episodeshere and here
04:00 Tom's Intro
- @dropdeadgenerous "It is a little left-field"
- Background in advertising, design and creative roles "A marketing guy"
- Working at Meta "for my sins" in Singapore and London
- Doing "silly boy experiments... self-discovery... in the direction of service and doing good and trying to make adifference"
- Now bringing marketing & creative skills directly into the space of social good
- "Championing kindness, generosity and giving... my heart and head have fallen into alignment for the time being"
06:04 What's Real?
- Family and community "that didn't really hold religion particularly closely", despite attending church schools
- Shifting from apathy about religion to "I became a quite aggressive #atheist "
- If someone had asked Tom as a child "Do you believein God"... "I would have thought you were referring to Le God, who is Matthew Le Tissier, Southampton's best ever football player... now, unfortunately, a very strange conspiracist"
- "I don't think I really asked myself those questions... I felt totally detached from it [religion]"
- "The history of war. How often it seemed, and stillseems, that religion plays a big part in what people are fighting for or against... I found that very hard"
- Reading the story of Prometheus stealing fire from Zeusand giving it to the people, then being eternally punished
- "That story really framed what I felt... religion wasa real was also a real shame... it seemed to give people an opportunity to put, through faith, whether their accountability, responsibility or hope in the hands of something other than themselves"
- "Angry teenage years"
- Moving to London "A big place to be lonely in... Ihave a history of depression"
18:40 What Matters?
42:45 Who Matters?
01:02:20 A Better World?
01:24:42 Follow Tom:
- The DropDeadGenerous ideas voicemail podcast
And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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