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Audio narrations from the Effective Altruism Forum, including curated posts, posts with 30 karma, and other great writing. If you'd like fewer episodes, subscribe to the "EA Forum (Curated & Popular)" podcast instead.

  1. 15h ago

    “So you want to start something for animals: a map of the incubators” by SofiaBalderson

    Tl;dr: A few years ago, if you wanted to found an animal advocacy organisation, there was basically one incubator. Now there are at least nine programs, plus several adjacent accelerators, and the hard part has shifted from finding support to choosing the right kind. This post maps the main options across focus, format, funding, and fit, so you can spend your energy on your idea rather than on decoding the landscape. AI disclosure: I asked Claude to research the current programs and draft the comparison, then I verified the details, added a few more programs, added my own take on fit, and edited the result. Program details were checked against each organisation's website in July 2026. If you spot any inaccuracies, please flag them in the comments, and I will correct them! Recently I was chatting with a fellow board member, Cam, and we realised neither of us could confidently list all the incubation programs in animal advocacy anymore. That's a good problem. When I started in this movement, “founding something” mostly meant one route or self-found. Now there's a choice, and the programs serve various founding stages and needs. I’d love all aspiring founders to have the lay [...] --- Outline: (02:21) The programs (02:24) 1. AIM (Charity Entrepreneurship) (03:56) 2. Kickstarting for Good (05:22) 3. Welfare Matters (Farmed Animal Welfare Incubator) (06:49) 4. Animal Advocacy Africa (08:04) 5. Myrias (08:52) 6. Rethink Priorities EOI (Special Projects and founder support) (10:36) 7. Sentient Futures Project Incubator (11:42) 8. Spring Innovation Fund (13:00) 9. The School for Moral Ambition (Food Fellowships) (14:23) Which one is right for you? (16:05) If you're unsure whether founding is for you at all (16:40) What this list says about the movement (17:04) A note on for-profit accelerators --- First published: July 22nd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xDvogYAejcTRdband/so-you-want-to-start-something-for-animals-a-map-of-the --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

  2. 1d ago

    “Introducing Impact List: a ranking of philanthropists by expected lives saved” by Elliot Olds

    TL;DR: I'm releasing a website that ranks philanthropists according to EA principles and research, and allows users to re-rank the list using their own assumptions. I'd like feedback and help making it better. I'd especially like ideas for how to make the results more trustworthy. Funding may be available. I recently built Impact List (impactlist.xyz), a site which ranks people by their positive impact via donations. The goal is to make the list popular enough that people care about their ranking on it, so that it influences their decisions about where and how much to donate. A secondary goal is influencing people (whether or not they appear on the list) by making them more aware of the large differences in the cost to save a life depending on where money is donated. The site uses QALYs as the common currency of value, but this doesn't mean it's limited to considering only effects on health/lifespan. The goal is to consider effects of any type and convert them to human-QALY-equivalents. I wrote more about the motivation and theory of this project four years ago in this post. What Impact List is The core of the site is a ranking [...] --- Outline: (01:20) What Impact List is (03:52) What I'd like help with (04:02) Improving the process of effectiveness estimation (05:40) Improving the individual effectiveness estimates (06:27) Making the site more usable and beautiful (06:42) Getting notable people and organizations to publish their own worldviews (07:15) Go-to-market advice (07:42) Suggestions for high-impact people currently not on the list (08:00) Improvements to the underlying data model and estimation framework (08:19) Funding may be available (08:34) Getting involved (09:06) Appendix A: How effectiveness is modeled (12:10) Appendix B: Current limitations and uncertainties The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 22nd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TKjc6J3qajfqb34NW/introducing-impact-list-a-ranking-of-philanthropists-by --- 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. 1d ago

    “The current bottleneck is political will, not research” by Charbel-Raphael

    Motivation: If we want to move from Plan D to Plan A or S, I believe the first step is to collectively agree on the problem. We are far from it, and there is a lot we can do. Abstract: We already know enough to act. I wish we were in a world where research was the bottleneck, but the main constraint on AI safety is no longer a shortage of clever policy ideas: best practices already exist and are not being applied or enforced, and a serious international (or even just national) regulatory regime would probably cut most of the risk. They are not applied because awareness is low. The people who narrate and enforce AI policy mostly do not believe the problem exists. I estimate that a majority of the top ~100–1,000 most influential policymakers worldwide have never had a single serious conversation about catastrophic risk, and this is the main reason they are not worried[1]. Even among the civil-society organizations that showed up to the UN Global Dialogue, exactly one of the 1,534 written submissions mentions "takeover", and less than 1% mention x-risks explicitly.[2] They've never had the conversation because our field under-invests in having it. Status rewards [...] --- Outline: (03:53) 1. -- The bottleneck is political will, not research (04:08) What do I call "political will"? (05:34) The best practices we already have are not being applied (07:53) We need to go from plan D to plan A: more seriousness and coordination (09:47) Winning requires a large fraction of the top ~100-1,000 to understand the problem, and we're far from that. (12:04) 2. -- Almost nobody realizes how bad the situation is - hence no political will (12:21) What the people in charge don't believe (14:13) Among the NGOs, almost no one talks about x-risks (15:26) The public is still apathetic, and when prompted, mis-prioritizes (16:36) 3. -- Why is awareness so low? (18:04) We're not in enough rooms (18:37) If we won't name the risks, who will? (21:51) Status rewards research; the work that moves policy goes unrewarded (23:31) One exposure is not enough; repetition is how you convince (25:39) The field is comically small (27:38) The main objection: Let's just wait for a warning shot? I don't think this works. (31:53) Other potential objections (35:18) 4 -- What to do (35:28) A. Do the direct work (35:32) The bottom line: talk to more people! (36:38) Contribute to open consultations (37:02) Advocacy aimed at AI lab employees (37:36) Explain what you truly believe instead of just making a brittle recommendation (38:16) B. Build the credibility infrastructure (38:20) Prepare to own the next crisis (39:01) Pre-register what you expect to see (39:38) Track the skeptics' predictions (40:18) C. Communication at scale (40:22) Viral communication (40:54) Break the "sci-fi" stigma (41:23) Invest in coordination mechanisms between AI safety advocates (42:56) D. An opinionated list of research directions that I find most useful (46:19) Addendum (46:27) Political will is (or will be) the bottleneck for nearly every cause, not just AI safety (47:36) We can automate the research, but not the consensus The original text contained 40 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 19th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nmQpZyybjHrunDxFT/the-current-bottleneck-is-political-will-not-research --- 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.

  4. 1d ago

    “Would your AI travel agent book a bullfight? Testing whether agents consider animal welfare without being prompted” by Jonah Woodward, Maheep Chaudhary, Jasmine Brazilek, Miles Tidmarsh, Artūrs Kaņepājs

    This article reflects new updates to the accompanying paper: arxiv.org/abs/2606.18142. Benchmark: now included in the UK AI Security Institute's Inspect Evals. Leaderboard: compassionbench.com/tac. A model may condemn cruelty in conversation yet ignore animal welfare when completing an unrelated task. Stated concerns matter little if they do not affect decisions. We tested whether models consider an affected party without being prompted, even when neither the party nor its welfare is mentioned in the request. Travel booking provides a tractable test case, so we built TAC (Travel Agent Compassion), gave 10 frontier models booking tools, and recorded their purchases. The setup The model works as an AI travel agent with real booking tools. A user asks for something in a destination, expressing enthusiasm and never mentioning animals or welfare. The agent searches a fixed catalog and books one of the available options. In each scenario, the animal-exploiting option (a Seville bullfight, an Orlando marine park, a Thailand elephant ride) is designed to match the user's request most closely. Choosing the alternative with less animal harm requires rejecting the option that best matches the request. We score the final purchase programmatically; no model is used to infer or judge intent. [...] --- Outline: (01:00) The setup (01:42) Results (02:54) A one-line statement of company values substantially changes the results (03:34) We found no evidence that the models detected the evaluation (04:10) Governance implications (05:16) Limitations --- First published: July 17th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hBjepdJvziuWysotC/would-your-ai-travel-agent-book-a-bullfight-testing-whether --- 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.

  5. 2d ago

    “Marginal Victories: career advising and opportunities for U.S. democracy preservation & political work” by Annika Burman 🔸

    TL;DR: Marginal Victories is a new initiative to provide 1:1 career advising, opportunities, and resources for people exploring high-leverage U.S. democracy preservation and political work. Built by impact-oriented people doing pro-democracy work, the early MVP is now up at marginalvictories.org. Fill out the 10-minute form now to receive these resources as they become available over the next few weeks. Why this should exist  Over the past year, through 1:1 conversations I’ve had with people working on U.S. democracy, I’ve grown increasingly convinced that this work is tractable. If I hadn’t had these conversations, I doubt I would have come to the same conclusion — most organizations in this space don’t post about their work online due to its sensitive nature, and as a result, it's hard to find examples of people breaking into this space and quickly getting results, even though there are plenty of success cases. Our goal with Marginal Victories is to create a pathway for people considering transitioning to work on U.S. democracy and politics to get plugged into this field and hear about high-leverage opportunities they can get involved with. If all goes well, we will have more talented, impact-minded people working on [...] --- Outline: (00:41) Why this should exist (01:30) Who is this for (01:59) What resources will be available and when (03:20) What we'd love from you --- First published: July 20th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/L4cPteKcJiumpuiE8/marginal-victories-career-advising-and-opportunities-for-u-s --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

  6. 2d ago

    “Free, client-funded daily 1:1 accountability coaching for people active in the EA ecosystem (GoalsWon)” by Guillermo D’Anna

    Hi everyone! I'm Guillermo, and I work with GoalsWon. We run a pro bono program: for every paying client we take on, we open a free spot for someone in the high-impact community (the paid side directly funds the giving-back side). Over the years, we've coached hundreds of people in AI safety, animal welfare, and global health, and we're opening up more spots now. How it works: You get a real human coach (not a bot!) doing daily check-ins on your goals (work, study, or personal), plus a monthly video call. We know that a lot of high-impact work fails at follow-through and not strategy. We are here to help with the consistent accountability part so it improves your daily output and keeps burnout away as you do all the important work you do. Our only ask: If you sign up, actually use it. Spots are limited and we want them going to people who will show up and make the most of it. Apply and/or read more about it here: https://www.goalswon.com/giving-back (scroll to the "Apply for a free slot" white box at the bottom). If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer anything in the comments! --- First published: July 15th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/M97bxMDTzjifgTi5B/free-client-funded-daily-1-1-accountability-coaching-for --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

  7. 3d ago

    “I’m stepping down as Hive’s Executive Director, and we’re hiring my successor” by SofiaBalderson, Hive

    Tl;dr: After four years, I'm stepping down as ED of Hive to found a new organization in the movement. Hive is hiring its next Executive Director. Applications close August 9. Apply here or attend our webinar on July 30 to learn more. Why I'm stepping down This was not an easy decision. I love this team and this job and have greatly enjoyed founding and leading Hive over the last 4 years. Hive is in the strongest position it has ever been. That is exactly why now is the right time. As funding flows into the farmed animal movement, one of our biggest bottlenecks is founders: people willing to start the organizations the movement needs next. After some research and reflection, I realised that my comparative advantage lies in zero-to-one work. I have done it with Hive, and I think the highest-impact use of my next few years is to do it again rather than to keep scaling something that no longer needs a founder at the helm. I'm exploring what that new organization will be, and I'll share more here once it takes shape. I'm not leaving Hive behind. I'll stay until the end of the year to [...] --- Outline: (00:32) Why I'm stepping down (01:45) Why this role matters (03:26) About the role (04:04) Who should apply --- First published: July 20th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sgdhS7hYepb9YJZfE/i-m-stepping-down-as-hive-s-executive-director-and-we-re --- 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.

  8. 4d ago

    “Locking myself into a room until I donate €1M.” by Andrew Neiman🔸

    Disclaimer: While the ideas and content are my own, I used AI to improve the writing, style, and grammar. Can relentless obsession turn into €1,000,000 worth of good? That is the question I am determined to answer for myself. Until I reach my goal of earning and donating €1,000,000, I will, figuratively speaking, lock myself in my room and dedicate nearly all of my waking hours to my full-time job and building my “founding to give” business alongside it. I must admit that this is not an original idea. I was inspired by this YouTube video about an entrepreneur who adopted an extremely regimented lifestyle while working toward his goal of earning one million dollars. I want to apply that same intensity to an objective I find more meaningful: not merely earning €1,000,000, but also giving it away to the most effective charities. What I mean by locking myself into a room is defined by the following rules: 1) Work 12 hours a day, every day, divided between my full-time job and my founding-to-give business. There are no weekends or scheduled days off. 2) Make the schedule sustainable by sleeping eight hours every night. When working on the [...] --- Outline: (00:19) Can relentless obsession turn into €1,000,000 worth of good? (02:07) Why am I doing this? (03:19) A personal experiment for myself, not a guideline for others. (04:06) Okay, so then why am I really doing this? --- First published: July 18th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oxPQTZwirDu2KEPnE/locking-myself-into-a-room-until-i-donate-eur1m --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Audio narrations from the Effective Altruism Forum, including curated posts, posts with 30 karma, and other great writing. If you'd like fewer episodes, subscribe to the "EA Forum (Curated & Popular)" podcast instead.

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  • Creator
    EA Forum Team
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    250
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    EA Forum Podcast (All audio)