EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

EA Forum Team

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. 17H AGO

    “Goodmaxxing” by Bentham’s Bulldog, William_MacAskill

    (Crosspost). If you’re young and online, you’re probably maxxing something. Maybe you’re looksmaxxing: trying to maximize your hotness (e.g. by hitting yourself in the face with a hammer). Maybe, like Clavicular, you do it just to mog other people—to look better than they do. But good looks reach diminishing marginal returns. You get a reasonable boost from going to the gym occasionally, but by the time you’re smashing yourself in the face with a hammer nightly, the additional gains might no longer seem worth the grind. One might even suggest that at that point you’re jestermaxxing. Fortunately, there's another, better kind of maxxing: goodmaxxing. Goodmaxxers maximize how much good they do, using reason and evidence to guide their actions. Why should you goodmaxx? Because goodmaxxing mogs looksmaxxing. As long as you stay in the goodmaxxing grindset, you can mog all the moneymaxxers, statusmaxxers and rizzmaxxers by doing hundreds of times more than they will to make the world a better place. Ok, but if you’re goodmaxxing, what exactly is the “good” you’re maxxing? Well, that's ultimately up to you to figure out. But, undeniably (proven beyond five sigma), there's one clear sigma morality, and it's utilitarianism: It's right there [...] --- First published: May 4th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rEXSjkB4fvcnSksaa/goodmaxxing --- 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.

    9 min

  2. 21H AGO

    “AIM’s new charity taxonomy” by Aidan Alexander, Morgan Fairless, Ambitious Impact

    0. I don't work at AIM.. why care about this? This taxonomy is written from AIM's perspective, but it may be helpful more broadly: If you're starting a new charity, incubating others, or doing charity idea research: The taxonomy gives you a structured way to think about which ideas to pursue, what founder profile fits, and what research and support each idea needs. This is the audience the rest of the post is most directly written for. If you're at an established org: You can use the taxonomy two ways: (1) To categorize new programs, interventions or strategic pivots (which can be thought of like new charities) with implications for research, staffing and timelines; (2) To map your existing portfolio of interventions to different parts of the taxonomy, with implications for how to think about and manage each intervention. If you're a funder or grantmaker: The taxonomy may help you think and communicate about how different kinds of organizations will have different journeys to impact (different timelines, milestones and risk profiles), and why holding them to the same standards can sometimes be counterproductive.1. Why a Taxonomy Matters Ambitious Impact (AIM)'s incubated charities works across many fields [...] --- Outline: (00:12) 0. I dont work at AIM.. why care about this? (01:25) 1. Why a Taxonomy Matters (04:29) 2. Target Outcome × Mechanism (04:34) 2.1. The dimensions (04:38) 2.1.1. Target outcome (05:51) 2.1.2. Mechanism (07:18) 2.2. Implications (07:33) 3. The Execute-Persuade Spectrum (07:38) 3.1. The spectrum (09:14) 3.1.1. Detour: Even execution-dominant ideas involve persuasion (10:57) 3.2. Collaborative vs. adversarial persuasion (11:57) 3.3. Implications (16:12) 4. The Explore-Exploit Spectrum (16:17) 4.1. The spectrum (17:43) 4.2. Implications (22:12) 5. Conclusion --- First published: May 4th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/We4tpvNypH5pyhiaD/aim-s-new-charity-taxonomy --- 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.

    23 min

  3. 1D AGO

    “If You Do One Thing for Animals This Year, Do This” by Becca Rogers

    There is a short window to prevent a US bill that would overturn decades of animal welfare progress. This is arguably the most consequential piece of farm animal legislation in U.S. history. Summary  The Farm Bill currently being considered by the U.S. Congress includes the “Save Our Bacon Act”, which would eliminate states' abilities to set standards on how farmed animals are raised and treated¹, and void existing state animal welfare laws. If passed into law, it would undo decades of animal welfare progress, and greatly reduce opportunities for future animal welfare wins. The Farm Bill has passed the House with the Save Our Bacon Act (SOB) included, and it will soon be considered by the Senate. This is the biggest legislative threat to farmed animal welfare in U.S. history, and preventing the Save Our Bacon Act from passing Congress is the highest impact opportunity to help animals that there has been in years. If you do anything to help animals this year, it should be helping with this. Call script, email templates, and more here. What to do Easiest, highest priority action (5 min): Call and email both your senators, and ask them to publicly [...] --- Outline: (00:21) Summary (01:15) What to do (04:55) Higher-effort actions (07:22) Context on the Save Our Bacon (SOB) Act (07:28) What is the Save Our Bacon (SOB) Act? (08:23) What would be this laws effect on animal welfare? (10:08) What is SOBs status in Congress? (10:57) Strategy (11:00) What are the goals? (11:44) Which Senators would be the highest impact to persuade to oppose SOB? (13:04) How to talk about this with different audiences (17:00) Footnotes (17:07) Appendix (17:10) More details on the goals (18:32) Which Senators would be the highest impact to persuade to oppose SOB? --- First published: May 4th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vsYphZaBcXpmtNizp/if-you-do-one-thing-for-animals-this-year-do-this-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    22 min

  4. 2D AGO

    [Linkpost] “Notes on equanimity from the inside” by stefan.torges

    This is a link post. I've always thought of myself as even-keeled and equanimous; that my mind is still. In hindsight, I had no idea what I was talking about. Halfway through my second ten-day meditation retreat, I experienced a depth of equanimity that broke my existing frame of reference. It's hard to convey in words. My reflection afterwards was something like “What the f**k was that?” More poetically: it felt deep and dark, like my entire experience was submerged in a deep sea trench. Two things about this experience seem worth taking seriously. The first is that equanimity, felt from the inside, doesn't sit neatly on the scale I'd previously used to think about good and bad experiences. The second is stranger: from inside the state, certain questions I'd taken for granted about how to act well in the world stopped quite working. Equanimity and axiology The closest thing in the EA-adjacent literature to what I'm describing is probably Lukas Gloor's tranquilism, which notably also is inspired by Buddhist sources. It's a partial axiological theory that roughly says well-being is freedom from cravings. This contrasts with classical hedonism, where experiences fall on an axis from suffering through neutral to [...] --- Outline: (01:05) Equanimity and axiology (03:10) Equanimity and consequentialism (04:44) Equanimity and epistemology --- First published: May 2nd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EsZbFsATZfSSym3Wt/notes-on-equanimity-from-the-inside Linkpost URL:https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MNFEhMHpEsgqxjBa2/notes-on-equanimity-from-the-inside --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    7 min

  5. 2D AGO

    “A new rationalist self-improvement book: the 12 Levers” by spencerg

    I'm publishing a book that I think can fairly be described as a rationalist approach to self-improvement. Whereas many self-help books focus mainly on stories and what worked well for the author, our book takes a very different approach. My co-author, Jeremy Stevenson, and I read over 100 of the most popular self-improvement books of all time and carefully reviewed more than 20 types of therapy in an attempt to answer the question: What are all of the most useful psychological strategies for improving your life? Every time a book or therapy said to do something or provided a method or technique, we extracted it. We then carefully categorized the ~500 techniques. Our conclusion, which surprised us, was that to a reasonable degree of approximation, we were able to subsume all of these numerous approaches within just 12 high-level psychological strategies. We call these "The 12 Levers," which is also the name of our book. We also investigated the evidence behind each of these levers. The book does include stories, but they are not the focus - we choose one or two stories to tell about the history of each Lever or a person who embodies it to [...] --- Outline: (01:41) 1. A lot of techniques are recycled or repackaged (03:20) 2. A lot of self-help techniques dont have as much evidence as youd think (06:30) 3. Some techniques work better than others, but only on average (07:59) 4. At a fundamental level, you control surprisingly few things. (10:32) 5. Hundreds of self-help techniques exist, but they all boil down to just 12 broad psychological strategies for improving your life --- First published: May 2nd, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tqERRa9aJkrkot28C/a-new-rationalist-self-improvement-book-the-12-levers --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    11 min

  6. 4D AGO

    “How to actually give money away” by NickAllardice

    This was originally posted here. It's written for an audience that's not deep in the weeds of EA giving theory/culture, but a few people suggested I post here as there's much that's additive to or divergent from some common EA practices. Feedback / disagreements welcome! Also my first time posting here. Hi! -- Most people who intend to give large amounts of money away never actually do. The money sits. In donor-advised funds, in "someday" plans, in good intentions. This is the default pathway - not an edge case - and if you don't design against it, it will happen to you too. I've watched this from every angle. As CEO of Change.org we processed 5M+ donations. I now run GiveDirectly; 160 thousand people have donated, dozens regularly give 1 million dollars+, and some give 50 million dollars-100 million dollars+ at a time. I've advised two of the biggest philanthropic institutions in the world (Coefficient Giving and GiveWell) on donor engagement and growth, and sat on half a dozen nonprofit boards. I've also been giving away 10-20% of my annual income for 17 years; I grew up low-income, so this started as a very modest amount but has added [...] --- Outline: (01:59) 1. The default pathway is to delay. Fight this. (04:51) 2. Pick a few causes and write them down. (07:33) 3. Build a portfolio across causes and risk/return. (09:48) 4. Use the index funds of giving. (11:55) 5. For the love of god, dont over-staff. (13:58) 6. Make giving a recurring event, not a to-do. (15:36) A few final hot takes --- First published: April 30th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fRLt59FNXxmCaAkYF/how-to-actually-give-money-away --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    20 min

  7. 4D AGO

    “Book Review: All the Lives You Can Change” by Bentham’s Bulldog

    Crosspost. (Reminder: the farm bill which is being voted on imminently would destroy most state level animal protections and be the worst law for farm animal welfare ever passed. Please, please, contact your representatives and tell them to vote no on it—more details here, including a bunch of other activities that are even higher impact. The house votes on this today, so this is the last day you can productively call your representatives.) Effective altruism is a social movement that's about trying to do good as effectively as possible, with charity, career, and life projects broadly. If you go to a random local effective altruism event, most of the people there will be atheists, even in a country that's mostly Christian. But this isn’t because of any deep conflict between Christian ideas and effective altruism. I’m in a Facebook group with a bunch of Christian philosophers, and about half of them are effective altruists in some form. Similarly, Aron Wall who is among the most devout Christians I know, is an effective altruist and gives his money to the most effective charities he can find. My friend who runs the YouTube channel Apologetics Squared is another very religious [...] --- First published: April 30th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CC9jePAMibACapk3i/book-review-all-the-lives-you-can-change --- 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.

    13 min

  8. 5D AGO

    “Celebrating 10 Years of EAGx” by Niki Kesseler

    Today marks the 10-year anniversary of EAGx. On April 30, 2016, the very first EAGx events—EAGxBoston and EAGxBerkeley—were held simultaneously. A decade later, it's incredible to reflect on how much this community has grown, both in scale and in depth. Since then, we’ve hosted 67 EAGx events and 18 EA Summits (a format we introduced in 2024), bringing us to 85 events in total—with our 86th happening this weekend (EAGxDC!). Across these, we’ve welcomed over 24,500 attendees in 20 countries and across six continents. A few milestones that stand out: EAGxAustralasia is our longest-running series (6 editions, rotating across cities) EAGxBerlin has been our most frequently hosted city (5 times) Our largest event, EAGxBoston 2022, brought together 935 attendees The portfolio continues to grow: this year alone, we’re planning 10 EAGx events and at least 22 EA Summits EAGxAustralasia 2019 EAGxBerlin 2025 EAGxNordics 2026 The EA Summit format, in particular, has scaled quickly—from 409 attendees across 3 pilot events in 2024 to over 1,700 across 2025–26 already. It's been exciting to see how this complements the EAGx model and opens up new ways for people to engage. But more than the numbers, EAGx has always been about people [...] --- First published: April 30th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EwbuBhQMiNcmaznHq/celebrating-10-years-of-eagx --- 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 min
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About

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.

Information

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