EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

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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.

  1. DEC 16

    “The Further Pledge: Voluntary Simplicity” by GeorgeBridgwater

    Conscious Meaning We share every moment with trillions of other conscious beings. Some are much like us, and others experience the world very differently. Creatures without a language to structure their thoughts, some who see broader spectrums of light or others who might experience the world in comparative slow motion. Each conscious moment immediately slips into the past largely unobserved and forgotten. They fall through time like snow to become frozen in the past. Always to have happened just as they did. Each conscious moment is transient and one small part of a vast whole, so one could see any individual as meaningless and insignificant. But every conscious moment is imbued with meaning. Happiness that need not justify itself and pains that consume any desire but to escape them. As individuals, we are not responsible for the state of the world. You did not choose to create disease, poverty and mental illness. You can’t control nature, and you can’t control the society around you. Many schools of philosophy disagree exactly on what our moral obligations are to others. Given this disagreement, we could default to radical scepticism that all attempts to decide what the right way to [...] --- Outline: (00:11) Conscious Meaning (02:06) Ovarian lottery (03:49) The Good we can do (05:18) Creating Balance (06:13) Voluntary Simplicity (08:12) Setting Salary based on the Worlds average income (10:12) Appendix: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone --- First published: December 11th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wd7XsSwqWCzd2uzhq/the-further-pledge-voluntary-simplicity --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    12 min

  2. DEC 15

    “GWWC’s 2025 evaluations of evaluators” by Aidan Whitfield🔸, Giving What We Can🔸

    The Giving What We Can research team is excited to share the results of our 2025 round of evaluations of charity evaluators and grantmakers! In this round, we completed two evaluations that will inform our donation recommendations for the 2025 giving season. As with our previous rounds, there are substantial limitations to these evaluations, but we nevertheless think that they are a significant improvement to a landscape in which there were previously no independent evaluations of evaluators’ work. In this post, we share the key takeaways from our two 2025 evaluations and link to the full reports. In our conclusion, we explain our plans for future evaluations. Please also see our website for more context on why and how we evaluate evaluators. We look forward to your questions and comments! (Note: we will respond when we return from leave on the 8th of December) Key takeaways from each of our 2025 evaluations The two evaluators included in our 2025 round of evaluating evaluators were: GiveWell (full report) Happier Lives Institute (full report) GiveWell Based on our evaluation, we have decided to continue including GiveWell's Top Charities, Top Charities Fund and All Grants Fund in GWWC's [...] --- Outline: (01:08) Key takeaways from each of our 2025 evaluations (01:25) GiveWell (03:18) Happier Lives Institute (HLI) (06:29) Conclusion and future plans --- First published: December 1st, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sAiHYuuGGT7qvne5P/gwwc-s-2025-evaluations-of-evaluators --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    7 min

  3. DEC 15

    “I Donate because I am Christian” by NickLaing

    And Effective Altruism has put my faith community to shame The Beginning When I became a Christian age 15 my life began to transform, but sadly my first external play was proclaiming no sex before marriage and saying F#$% a bit less (I’ve since resumed). Two years later at premed, Tuesday was my only night with no tutorial so I joined a church group, which was weirdly labelled “Social Justice”. I had zero clue what this was aboutt, maybe preventing bullying at school?. Our leader Jo opened with a question I’ll never forget. “I’m fundraising for World Vision and I told my chain-smoking friend I’ll buy him a pack of cigs if he joins the fundraising effort. Do you guys think that's OK?” As we discussed the conundrum for the next hour my heart jumped a little. Perhaps my time, skills and money could be useful for something more than just a comfortable life in the ‘burbs… Why do I Give?“When you give….” Jesus Christian motivations for giving vary wildly. Some mostly give to keep their church club solvent, others to save face, but most have deeper motivations. Here are mine. [...] --- Outline: (01:06) Why do I Give? (01:24) Gratitude and Joy (02:24) Utilitarian (03:14) More to come? (03:49) Christians aren't great at Giving (04:04) Father of Earning to Give? (05:07) We're not much better (06:08) Effective Altruist Giving Impresses me --- First published: December 10th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QrQ9jwFSNoEdd373f/i-donate-because-i-am-christian --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    7 min

  4. DEC 12

    “3 doubts about veganism” by emre kaplan🔸

    I keep thinking about what kind of identity would be useful for building a powerful animal advocacy movement. Here are 3 features of veganism that I often think about which make me doubt its usefulness. Too maximalist The official definition of veganism by the inventors of the term is the following: “Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose” This basically amounts to "avoid doing bad things as far as possible." The threshold sits right below what is impossible. I think that is way too ambitious. Doing the best possible thing at every circumstance shouldn’t be the criterion for inclusion to a social movement. We don't expect human rights activists to avoid all forms of exploitation and cruelty as far as possible to qualify as human rights activists. Some activists respond "No, veganism is the bare minimum. The 'as far as possible and practicable' part means it's not about being perfect.". But when I ask for examples of gratuitously harmful actions that veganism doesn't forbid, at most I hear about instances of accidental uses [...] --- Outline: (00:22) Too maximalist (03:37) No space for believers to sin (04:29) Too behaviour-focused --- First published: November 26th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BX8hPeye2QRcyftRk/3-doubts-about-veganism --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    6 min

  5. DEC 11

    “The funding conversation we left unfinished” by jenn

    People working in the AI industry are making stupid amounts of money, and word on the street is that Anthropic is going to have some sort of liquidity event soon (for example possibly IPOing sometime next year). A lot of people working in AI are familiar with EA, and are intending to direct donations our way (if they haven't started already). People are starting to discuss what this might mean for their own personal donations and for the ecosystem, and this is encouraging to see. It also has me thinking about 2022. Immediately before the FTX collapse, we were just starting to reckon, as a community, with the pretty significant vibe shift in EA that came from having a lot more money to throw around. CitizenTen, in "The Vultures Are Circling" (April 2022), puts it this way: The message is out. There's easy money to be had. And the vultures are coming. On many internet circles, there's been a worrying tone. “You should apply for [insert EA grant], all I had to do was pretend to care about x, and I got $$!” Or, “I’m not even an EA, but I can pretend, as getting a 10k grant is [...] --- First published: December 10th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vpPee6NgMbPcdsam3/the-funding-conversation-we-left-unfinished --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    5 min

  6. DEC 9

    “Front-Load Giving Because of Anthropic Donors?” by Jeff Kaufman 🔸

    Summary: Anthropic has many employees with an EA-ish outlook, who may soon have a lot of money. If you also have that kind of outlook, money donated sooner will likely be much higher impact. It's December, and I'm trying to figure out how much to donate. This is usually a straightforward question: give 50%. But this year I'm considering dipping into savings. There are many EAs and EA-informed employees at Anthropic, which has been very successful and is reportedly considering an IPO. The Manifold market estimates a median IPO date of June 2027: At a floated $300B valuation and many EAs among their early employees, the amount of additional funding could be in the billions. Efforts I'd most want to support may become less constrained by money than capacity: as I've experienced in running the NAO, scaling programs takes time. This means donations now seem more valuable; ones that help organizations get into a position to productively apply further funding especially so. In retrospect I wish I'd been able to support 80,000 Hours more substantially before Open Philanthropy Coefficient Giving began funding them; this time, with more ability to see what's likely [...] --- First published: December 3rd, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rRBaP7YbXfZibSn3C/front-load-giving-because-of-anthropic-donors --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    2 min

  7. DEC 9

    “Peter Wildeford talks about risks from AI on the Daily Show” by MartinBerlin

    Ronny Chieng strikes again, this time featuring Peter Wildeford and the risks from AI on the Daily Show: --- First published: December 5th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/epuSKFdGD82cxZAGd/peter-wildeford-talks-about-risks-from-ai-on-the-daily-show --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    1 min

  8. DEC 6

    “Caring about Bugs Isn’t Weird” by Bob Fischer

    I’ve spoken with hundreds of entomologists at conferences the world over. While there's clearly some self-selection (not everyone wants to talk to a philosopher), my experience is consistent: most think it's reasonable to care about the welfare of insects. Entomologists don’t regard it as the last stop on the crazy train; they don’t worry they’re getting mugged; they don’t think the idea is just utilitarianism run amok. Instead, they see some concern for welfare as stemming from a common-sense commitment to being humane in our dealings with animals. Let's be clear: they embrace “some concern,” not “bugs have rights.” Entomologists generally believe it's important to do invasive studies on insects, to manage their populations, to kill them to document their diversity. But given the choice between an aversive and a non-aversive way of euthanizing insects, most prefer the latter. Given the choice between killing fewer insects and more, most prefer fewer. They don’t want to end good lives unnecessarily; they don’t want to cause gratuitous suffering. It wasn’t always this way. But the science of sentience is evolving; attitudes are evolving too. These people work with insects every day; they constantly face choices about how to catch insects, how [...] --- First published: November 23rd, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4FncrGhQKcuFthxiR/caring-about-bugs-isn-t-weird --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    5 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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