EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

EA Forum Team

Audio narrations from the Effective Altruism Forum, including curated posts and posts with 125 karma. If you'd like more episodes, subscribe to the "EA Forum (All audio)" podcast instead.

  1. 1D AGO

    “We’re growing: CEA is increasing its font size” by OllieRodriguez

    “We” in this post refers to CEA leadership, who didn’t write this post. In 2025, we grew engagement with CEA's programs by 20–25% across every tier of engagement. But we recognize that growing the community is about more than engagement or metrics—at its core, growth is about the bigness of things. How can we claim that we’ve grown the community if the words on the page are the same size? To match our ambition off the page, it's time to show ambition on the page. We’re increasing our font size from 15px to 25px across all platforms. You’ll see more from us—clearer text, bigger words, extremely long forum posts. What this means All of our programs will be bigger, in the sense that the documents we write about them will be absolutely huge. The forum will have a larger font than any other sensible website—a bigger font means more impactful ideas. Our events will have larger screens for our ginormous font. This will mean a significant increase in AV costs. We’re encouraging local groups to do the same—we’re recommending a 30% font size increase this year, and we’ll be supporting them to reach 20px font size by the [...] --- First published: April 1st, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EBjcpyfPwhByKeWjM/we-re-growing-cea-is-increasing-its-font-size --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    2 min

  2. 2D AGO

    “Announcing Highly Engaged EAs!” by Sam Anschell

    I’m excited to launch Highly Engaged EAs: a matchmaking and nuptialization service to optimize tax relief, green card accumulation and more! Workstreams I Do(nate) By marrying EAs in different tax brackets, Highly Engaged EAs reduces average tax burden through joint filing to enable greater giving. A Californian AI safety researcher with a million dollar salary could give an extra $53k/year by tying the knot with an unpaid grad student! Til 80,000 Hours do us part The place premium is so high in the US that >1,000 people have bought a million dollar gold card! While some roles don’t sponsor visas, spouses always can[1]. We match those looking to move countries with nationals of their desired destination. Bang for your Buck For full efficiency, Buck Shlegeris and Ajeya Cotra wear multiple hats as the witnesses, officiants and entertainment for weddings we organize. Rationally named children  For those who are interested in having kids, we provide naming guidance based on what really matters: Brevity. Claude BOTECs that each additional syllable to a person's name adds 68 hours to global pronunciation costs. Given that this will disproportionately be time spent by EAs, one-syllable names are a slam dunk. Complementarity: The [...] --- Outline: (00:20) Workstreams (00:23) I Do(nate) (00:56) Til 80,000 Hours do us part (01:17) Bang for your Buck (01:29) Rationally named children --- First published: April 1st, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TLFiwwZGaqgbQhhr7/announcing-highly-engaged-eas --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

    3 min

  3. 2D AGO

    “An unexplained annual spike in false claims on the EA Forum” by Tobias Häberli

    Epistemic status: Very high confidence in the statistical findings. Genuinely confused about the cause. For reasons that will become obvious, I wanted to publish this post on March 31, but unfortunately I could only get it done today. I've been building a classifier to flag potentially misleading content on the EA Forum as part of a side project on epistemics infrastructure. While validating the model, I noticed something I initially assumed was a bug. This is an interim report on that. 
Summary: Every year, on April 1, the rate of posts containing verifiably untrue claims spikes by roughly 2,200% relative to the annual daily average (p 0.0001, 8 years of Forum data).
 1. The effect is enormous On a typical day, approximately 2 to 4% of Forum posts contain claims that are verifiably false. On April 1, this rises to 57–73%, depending on the year. For context, this is an implausibly large effect by normal social-science standards. I have genuinely never seen anything like it. 2. It repeats every year This is not a one-off event. The pattern recurs in every year of the dataset. 3. "It's only one day" is misleading A natural reaction is that [...] --- Outline: (01:00) 1. The effect is enormous (01:38) 2. It repeats every year (01:57) 3. Its only one day is misleading (02:57) 4. The false posts are high effort (03:21) Possible explanations (03:30) Why this matters (04:48) Proposed interventions --- First published: April 1st, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EAokRDmQTjCAWgGdq/an-unexplained-annual-spike-in-false-claims-on-the-ea-forum --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

    6 min

  4. 2D AGO

    “RejectDirectly” by RejectDirectly

    We're thrilled to announce the founding of RejectDirectly, a new EA-adjacent organization dedicated to closing the global rejection gap. For too long, the EA rejection pipeline has been plagued by ineffectiveness. Billions of collective DALYs spend on unsuccessful work trials and interviews. The water waste involved in the mass duplication of Google Docs. The community health is in peril. In comes RejectDirectly. By cutting out the middleman we can deliver high-quality, unconditional rejections straight to applicants — no strings attached, no waiting period. No eight-hour work trials where you pour your Claude extra balance into a strategy memo for an organization that just couldn’t bring themselves to reject your heartfelt cover letter. How it works: You apply. We reject you. That's it. No interviews, no work trials, no need for culture fit chats. Like many orgs in the space, we're happy to forward your application to our partner organizations. Unlike other orgs, they will immediately reject you. We call this our Rejection Cascade™ — one application, up to fifteen guaranteed rejections. Our 2026 roadmap: We're piloting a browser addon that sends you a push notification rejection before you even finish your cover letter. Early users report feeling "liberated" and [...] --- First published: April 1st, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5qZdpKEFcGBrHJxDB/rejectdirectly --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    2 min

  5. 2D AGO

    “300,000 lives, 100 million hens, and a world still to save” by William_MacAskill

    I went on the Sam Harris podcast again recently. If you want the full non-paywalled episode, I’m able to share it here: https://samharris.org/episode/SE6877E700B 30 mins of it is also on youtube, spotify, etc. The occasion for the podcast was the 10-year anniversary edition of Doing Good Better. So, preparing for the podcast, I collected some relevant facts about what EA has achieved over the last decade, and where the movement stands today. I found the numbers both surprising and inspiring, so I thought I should share them here. EAs don't often toot their own horn, and with all that's going on in the world, or on the internet at least, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture. So I think a bit of horn-tooting is at least occasionally warranted, otherwise we’ll only ever focus on the bad and not on the good. And, despite a few subdued years, the EA[1] movement is thriving. I’ll break things down by cause area, before looking at EA's recent return to serious growth. First, global heath. Since 2015, over $2 billion has been raised for the most effective global health charities, with contributions from over 100,000 donors. The [...] --- First published: March 31st, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rSPEisvYw9K49ja2T/300-000-lives-100-million-hens-and-a-world-still-to-save --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    7 min

  6. 3D AGO

    “Giving up on EA after 13 years” by Jackson Wagner

    Donating my shares to Lightcone Infrastructure, the Good Food Institute, and the Long-Term Future Fund, because EA refuses to make Mirror's Edge 3 Leaning into EA disillusionment: Why I no longer believe in EA I bought this EA stock almost thirteen years ago: Leopold Aschenbrenner once said that “people with situational awareness have a lower cost basis in Nvidia than you do”.  I’m not sure if this is exactly what he meant… but close enough, right? Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, EA was a great company pumping out great, interesting games: Mirror's Edge had a striking art style and showcased a whole new style of first-person parkour gameplay. Crysis infamously pushed graphical technology to such extremes that it was like getting a preview of videogame technology 5-10 years in the future. Spore was… weird and bad, but its ambition and uniqueness was inspiring. The Dead Space games (including the almost weirdly good point-and-shoot Wii spinoff) were pretty creative, and the realism of Battlefield 3 felt like a valuable counterpoint to an increasingly-cartoony Call of Duty series.  Both series felt like they were crafted with a lot of care, despite their big-budget action vibes. This was a hidden gem [...] --- Outline: (00:20) Leaning into EA disillusionment: Why I no longer believe in EA (02:24) EA is was three radical ideas I want to protect (03:57) The soul of EA is in trouble (06:10) EA is about maximization, and maximization is perilous (09:22) Dont be bycatch (10:47) EA and the current funding situation (12:20) Abandoning EA, in favor of doing the most good --- First published: March 31st, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZegHZBvEeQanrGhpY/giving-up-on-ea-after-13-years --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

    14 min

  7. 4D AGO

    “80,000 Hours is coming to bookstores in May” by Bella, 80000_Hours

    Summary We’re publishing our book, 80,000 Hours, with Penguin on 26 May. It's an update of the 80,000 Hours career guide, with a full round of edits, new design, and new content discussing the effect of AI on career choice. We think it's now the best single entry point to our advice. We hope publishing it will multiply the impact of our advice. One quick way you could help is to preorder a copy (especially from a traditional retailer). It helps increase the chance we get on bestseller lists, and increases our expected reach. Preorder here.The new book It's called 80,000 Hours: How to Have a Fulfilling Career That Does Good. It covers all of our best advice for having a big, positive impact with your career. It's being published by Penguin Random House on the 26th May in the US, and the 28th May in the UK. Why did we decide to publish this book?According to the EA Survey, 80,000 Hours has been the biggest single entry point into effective altruism, and our online career guide has consistently had an outsized impact compared to our other programmes.[1] We think it's probably the best content we’ve ever published [...] --- Outline: (00:11) Summary (00:52) The new book (01:13) Why did we decide to publish this book? (02:11) Whats new in this edition? (03:47) How you can help (04:45) FAQs (10:48) Thank you --- First published: March 24th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qbAg8fnAbJQE3SLe9/80-000-hours-is-coming-to-bookstores-in-may --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

    12 min

  8. MAR 27

    “The joys of cash benchmarking” by ozymandias

    I. Imagine you run a charity which gives cows to people in the developing world. Your new boyfriend is a statistician and you want to impress him, so you’ve decided to look into this Monitoring and Evaluation thing he keeps going on about. So you give a bunch of people cows and then follow up a year later, and sure enough the people you gave the cows to are richer, healthier, and happier. You proudly tell this to your boyfriend and expect to reap rewards in the form of admiration, cuddles, and a ‘yes’ to your marriage proposal. Your boyfriend, however, isn’t impressed. What if everyone in the country is getting richer, because the country is industrializing? What if the poor people you gave cows to were having an unusually hard time, and then they got back on their feet, and your cows had nothing to do with it? Apparently, in order to get a sample that really says anything about the world, you need to randomly give cows to half the people, and then check whether the people you gave cows to are doing better than the people you didn’t give cows to (a “randomized controlled trial”). This [...] --- First published: March 10th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QsvFCcDR2TfSj32aM/the-joys-of-cash-benchmarking --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    17 min
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Audio narrations from the Effective Altruism Forum, including curated posts and posts with 125 karma. If you'd like more episodes, subscribe to the "EA Forum (All audio)" podcast instead.

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