public wifi for your customers. private wifi for your business. strong and secure. good for a door. and a network. comcast business. built for security. built for business. ♪ >> we asked some of the best minds in the world and business, academia,, the arts , what are the most urgent problems facing humanity, and how do we solve them? the result is "big problems, big thinkers." terre: what is the number one major problem facing mankind? >> i think is the lack of education. >> politics has been getting dumber and dumber. >> there is a balance of green spirit. >> if we don't have a more sustainable way --

>> everybody has the capability of making a difference. >> remember your humanity. terre: hello, this is "big problems, big thinkers." i'm terre blair. in this series, we confront the challenges facing the human race and try to identify an ethical framework to help us overcome them. in this episode, defining a successful life. forward, whatoves are the contours for a successful life -- love, money, service to others? we will hear from the extraordinary group of men and women, all successful in their own ways as they share their answers and together provide their roadmap for a life well lived. >> we have this body and mind motion. billionaires,them

is it because of the money, no longer any emotional problems, then i think you have to accept money really brings real some of mybut mentallyich, but unhappy. terre: if you say someone measures as life fully by what they have, then they will end up in trouble? what kind of trouble? >> well, i tell the story of a woman here in omaha, a polish jew, who was in one of the worst camps in germany during world war ii. other members of her family were there and some didn't come out.

me and she said, warren, i am very slow to make friends because when i look into somebody's eyes, the question in --mind is would they hike me hide me? when you do to be 60 and 70 years of age, and you've got a lot of people who would hide you , which is to say a lot of people love you, then you have success. a lot of people who are 70 who's an unhappy indidu could i see a lot of people a lot of money who are seven years old and unhappy individuals. they would say he is in the attic. the ultimate satisfaction in life is not how big your bank account is. is whether the people

you wish loved you actually love you. terre: so are you successful? warren: i feel ok. i am not as successful as others. take your time, i'm doing fine. i do feel good about the people who work around me, people i have worked with, my children, grandchildren. it is not a function of money with those people. terre: you would say you are a success? warren: i am working towards it. terre: how do you measure your success in this lifetime? michael: i think looking in the mirror. some people will look in the mirror and say i made a lot of money. that is one way of measuring it. some people will look in the mirror and say i am a doctor, i saved some lives today. some people would say i'm a teacher and i taught some young kids and it's going to change their world. who knows -- in that group there may be a nobel prize winner or somebody that can stop the craziness of crime. there are lots of different measures of success. unfortunately, we tend to measure success in this day and age in dollar terms. how much the baseball player is getting paid, how much the actress or actor is getting paid

terre: how do you measure your success? michael: two daughters that turned out super and have their own lives and are doing very well. bloomberg philanthropy. my company has been phenomenally successful and created a lot of jobs for a lot of people. all the profits go into the foundation. with that, we have done a lot of on smoking cessation, working on eradicating polio with bill gates. helping the arts and helping governments at the local level work better. working on the environment. there are a lot of different things we are working on. i am proud of all of those. terre: do you think your wealth has led to greater happiness? michael: it is hard to argue that if you can buy things, some things you benefit from it. but most of my things that make me happy are the family and my job, i love. the foundation.

i am a big golfer. i would not tie it to money. at some point, particularly if you are as lucky as i am, every dollar is going into the foundation, into helping people. terre: are you successful? ms. albright: i do not know, depends on the day. i think that i have obviously been successful in some things. i have not succeeded in everything i have wanted to do. i have been successful in my children. i have three fantastic daughters who make me feel that i have succeeded in a very important way. with my grandchildren. i grew up in colorado. there was a motto on the "denver post" which said "there is no hope for a satisfied man." i would add woman to that. and my father used to say that, which means you should not think that you have accomplished everything.

you cannot sit back and say, "i am satisfied." i think it is hard to measure success. you just have to keep striving. steven: i think being successful is remaining curious. i think the minute you have closed down and the minute you have felt, i have had enough knowledge, that would be a failure. that would be a huge failure. failure of imagination. mr. cardoso: people ask me about success. first of all, i never look at success. it may occur here and there. if i have to look inside me, what is for me? it is to be capable to sleep well, not have in my conscience, you know, some facts which disturbed me. ok, maybe napoleon was a success, but napoleon was also capable to destroy so many things. to me, i have to compartmentalize what is external success with your own sense that, i did what was

possible to do. terre: do you think there is a happiness factor to being ethical and principled? ted: absolutely, no question in my mind. and i have studied it carefully. the people that are happiest are those doing the most good. the people that are most unhappy are the ones that are doing harm. warren: being principled is more a factor in being happy. i do think that as i look around at my contemporaries, people who have been through a lot, have had children die, ultimate tragedies in many respects sometimes. maybe they have been with a business that went broke at one time. and they had lots of successes, too. i do not know someone who is led -- anybody who has led a principled life and is unhappy. in effect, the people around

them love and admire them. thomas: mark twain said to always tell the truth and you do not have to remember what you said. if you always behave in an ethical way, you will sleep well at night. you will know that there is nothing to be exposed, nothing to hide. there's nothing to haunt you. you're not hiding some deep, dark secret. terre: you would say happiness is directly related to being principled? thomas: it is necessary but not sufficient for happiness. michael: it must be difficult to always be looking over your shoulder and wonder whether the law will catch up with you or not. my suggestion is do not do the crime if you cannot do the time, is the expression. mr. cardoso: i could not imagine a person without principles having a happy life. they have to lie. and the person who is not correct has to try to disguise. and to live trying to disguise cannot produce happiness. terre: do you think the

principal person lives a happier life? ms. albright: i do, but i do not think it is easier necessarily. i mean, happiness is something internal, you do not laugh all the time. i think that sometimes having a principled life puts you into difficult positions where you have to take stands that are not popular. and sometimes being popular makes people happy. but i think it is an internal happiness if you lead a principled life. prof. appiah: the central question in ethics is what is a good life. one perspective on that question is to ask yourself, looking back, towards the end of my life, how will i evaluate myself, how will i think about the value of my life, will i think it has been a meaningful life which i have achieved things worth achieving, helped people worth helping. being helped by people who love me and cared about me. there is no guarantee that a

person who is doing the right thing will necessarily have a large amount of pleasure in their life, but what they will have is deep satisfaction that comes to a moral person from knowing they have done or tried to do what was right. terre: trying to do what was is right, for some that is as easy as making a pledge. and so, what a pledge. that is next on "big problems/big thinkers." warren: i could take all my money and do what they used to do in egypt, i could use it to build the biggest tomb ever built. strikes me as a little crazy. ms. albright: there is a sense that you are put in this place to do good for people. you should try to do it whether you get dirty or not. ♪

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♪ terre: welcome back to "big problems/big thinkers." i am terre blair. as the song goes, money can't buy you love. but can it buy you happiness? take a look. thomas: my dad always used to say, "money cannot buy poverty." i am a believer in that. he said rich or poor, it is good to have money. it certainly helps, but it is not a guarantee of anything. the happiest times of my life have always been when i have been part of a group embedded in the community, doing something fun or large. that is what brings me happiness, the most satisfaction. when i am part of a team doing something big and great. it has nothing to do with money. prof. appiah: money is not the way to measure your life.

as i said, mostly people do. many people get the balance wrong. they think money matters more than it does. i think many people who have gotten lots of money figure that out. there are all these people who make a certain amount of money and they retire and sail around the world, and they say, that shows that if they thought making more money was the point, they would have gone on making more money and they realize that that is not so. terre: when is enough enough? warren: when you have everything your family could reasonably need in the way of the pleasures of life. i do not think cost-of-living and standard of living are synonymous. i get to eat what i like to eat. i get to live where i want to live. i get to drive the car i want to drive and all of that. but, it uses up some money, but if i spent 10 times as much or 100 times as much on it, i would

not be a happier person nor would i live a better life. dalai lama: billionaires size of stomach, same. and the fingers, only 10 fingers. so, some diamond ring, i think only one or two, nice. 10 rings looks not nice. and the stomach, same size. billionaire stomach, you see, bigger one, then of course they have some justification, more money. but the same size stomach, only two eyes. ms. halonen: every generation, every people should have a decent life. and that is already what gandhi said. that there's enough in this world for everybody's need, but not everybody's greed. and it does not mean that the you would have less quality in your life. it means that you have perhaps

some things less quantity but you will have enough quality. prof. appiah: i think money is a terrific invention. it has made huge amounts of things possible. without money, there would not be the sistine chapel. there would not be the rug on the floor here because it could not have gotten to me without money from the place in persia it came from. and so on. i am not against money. it's terrific, but it's a terrible mistake recognizing this to conclude that therefore we should give huge attention to those who have a lot of it. thomas: money can buy you comfort. it can buy you better health care. it can buy you certain opportunities and a meal at a good restaurant. and those can make you happy if you have got the underlying

thing first. if you're in an unhappy marriage, if you are in unhappy work setting, you could have all the money in the world, but it will not buy you happiness. warren: i could take all my money and do what they used to do in egypt, i could use that money to build the biggest tomb ever built. we could have it outside omaha, and i could literally get 50,000 guys to put them in loin cloths and haul granite around and make them forget all about egypt in 10 years. the net product of everything i had done in my life would be the world's biggest tomb, and maybe 1000 years from now people would come to omaha to see my tomb, but that strikes me as crazy. even modified versions of it. i just don't get it. michael: a cynic would say you cannot take it with you, although i do remember the cartoon with the family with vultures looking down on this codger on his deathbed and

he says, i know i cannot take it with me, but i can take the access code. terre: true. how did you feel the date you gave 99% of your wealth to philanthropy? warren: the timing of what i did in terms of making a pledge to philanthropy was affected by when susie died. when she died first, i had to make a decision of the best way to make use of the claim checks. money that had no utility to me and had enormous utility to others. i wanted to come up with a rational decision as the most useful way to get the money to society. she saw every person as individually important. she felt that if there were 6 billion people on this planet, everyone deserved the same chance in life and the same chance for health, the same chance for education. i am not as charitable as a person who puts $10 and a in the collection plate to give

up a christmas present for a child. i have never given enough that has affected me or my family. >> and people call this work. [laughter] : i hope that the pledge -- i would love to figure out ways to have helped that hit a broader area of society. we originally worked on the forbes 400 to get really wealthy people to focus on what can be done with their wealth and pledge what they will do with it. it is very easy for them to do it. the poorest group we are calling on has $1 billion, if they give half, what can you do with $500 million? if you need another million dollars beyond $500 million, you have to explain it to me. that is a lot of money. prof. appiah: thinking about that gives me a feeling of

elevation. this is a man who could have done nothing at all for the public good. he is under no legal obligation. but he chose to do something very productive. and self-effacing in a way. we should honor people like that. the more we honor people like that, the more it seems natural for people to do that and then ordinary people like myself who do not have billions will spend more time thinking about where our money should go and we die. -- when we die. terre: why should i care and do something for someone else when it has nothing to do with me? steven: because doing things for other people makes you feel good . it makes you feel good on a neurological level. there is a real benefit. and people who -- my understanding is that people who -- we know for a fact that your sort of psychological state has a huge effect on your physical state.

and that people who establish deep connections with other people, and even with animals, tend to live longer. there is on a pure survival level, there are good reasons to establish deep connections with other human beings. dalai lama: the whole 7 billion human beings are human family members. same human being, and then to face reality -- east, west, south, north -- heavily interdependent. in order to gain more successful or more happier sort of life, your own community, very much dependent on other community. that's now today's reality, so

thinking oneness of humanity is not just a moral thing, but practically. ms. albright: i found the story really very compelling. abraham lincoln in illinois, he was still in the legislature, was dressed up fancy on his way to springfield. he saw a pig struggling in the mud, and he got out of his carriage and he went and he freed the pig. the people with him said, "are you crazy? now you are all dirty and about to go for your session at the legislature. why did you do it?" he said, "i did not just do it not for the pig. i did it for myself because i felt that i needed to do the right thing." i think that is an interesting kind of thing. there is a satisfaction in doing the right thing. it benefits the pig, but i think

there is a sense that you are put in this place to do good for people. you should try to do it whether you get dirty or not. warren: the most interesting quality in life almost is love because you cannot get rid of it. the more you give, the more you get back. if you hold onto it, you do not have any. this concept, i do not know what its counterpart would be anyplace else. the people you know that receive love are the ones that are pouring it out all the time. the ones that do not love anybody else are not getting any back. it's kind of irritating in a sense you have all this money, i would like $1 million worth of love, you cannot buy it. you can buy sex, but you can not buy love. terre: you think love is a commodity that has no finite -- warren: the ultimate commodity, the ultimate quality because there is no finite limit.

the more you give, the more you get. terre: love as the ultimate quality, in creating a successful life, that is not a bad place to start. not bad at all. i am terre blair. thank you for watching. ♪

♪ ashlee: if you are having tea with a giant hello kitty doll, then you are almost certainly in japan. ♪ ashlee: this is a place that