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. HACE 7 H

    “Epistemic Spot Check: Expected Value of Donating to Alex Bores’s Congressional Campaign” by MichaelDickens

    Political advocacy is an important lever for reducing existential risk. One way to make political change happen is to support candidates for Congress. In October, Eric Neyman wrote Consider donating to Alex Bores, author of the RAISE Act. He created a cost-effectiveness analysis to estimate how donations to Bores's campaign change his probability of winning the election. It's excellent that he did that—it's exactly the sort of thing that we need people to be doing. We also need more people to check other people's cost-effectiveness estimates. To that end, in this post I will check Eric's work. I'm not going to talk about who Alex Bores is, why you might want to donate to his campaign, or who might not want to donate. For that, see Eric's post. Model outline The basic structure of Eric's model: Donations let the campaign spend more money on advertising, which increases how many votes they will get. The election has some probability of being close. If the election is close, then the expected value of votes is approximately linear. If the election is not close, then marginal votes don't matter at all. [...] --- Outline: (01:01) Model outline (04:09) Input parameters (04:13) Campaign spending per vote (05:53) Voter turnout (06:10) Margin of victory (06:59) Probability that your candidate is in the top two (07:18) Probability that your candidate is on the losing side (07:38) Opposition fundraising discount (08:21) Early fundraising multiplier (08:52) Sensitivity analysis (10:06) Cost to shift votes by one percentage point (10:50) The models output isnt what we care about The original text contained 14 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: November 13th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CeoXAaqeEmyDD3eW2/epistemic-spot-check-expected-value-of-donating-to-alex --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    12 min

  2. HACE 13 H

    [Linkpost] “Should you donate through funds?” by Longview Philanthropy, suryanshm, aog, Sim

    This is a link post. For most people, we think there's a strong case for giving through grantmaker-led philanthropic funds rather than donating to specific organizations. Examples of public philanthropic funds include: GiveWell's All Grants Fund (see July 2025 report) EA Funds’ Animal Welfare Fund (see June 2025 report) Longview's Emerging Challenges Fund (see Q4 2025 Report) If you are looking to develop a significant philanthropic portfolio, we’d recommend contributing to private funds instead. We list some more popular funds below. This post is based on Longview's experience directing over $140M of donations through advising dozens of philanthropists and operating funds in AI safety, digital sentience, nuclear weapons policy, and global catastrophic risks. Executive Summary Why give to a fund? By giving to funds, you delegate your decision-making to expert grantmakers, which presents several benefits over donating directly to organizations: Grantmaker-led funds have several advantages over individuals when selecting grants, thanks to their dedicated focus on grantmaking in a given area, their ability to spend time gathering and analyzing information, tracking all the details, proactively sourcing opportunities through active grantmaking, and acting quickly.  Funds can solve donor coordination problems by pooling resources among [...] --- Outline: (01:08) Executive Summary (02:59) 1. Grantmaker-led funds have an edge over individuals when picking grants (05:40) 2. Funds can solve donor coordination (06:49) 3. Funds make giving easy (07:52) 4. Why might this be wrong? When might direct giving be better? (09:22) 5. Next Steps --- First published: November 13th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/s8gS2Lh39usPJgJeL/should-you-donate-through-funds Linkpost URL:https://www.longview.org/should-you-donate-through-funds --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    13 min

  3. HACE 14 H

    “Courses and communities that can increase your impact” by Probably Good

    Through our various services, we’ve found that sharing curated resources is a great way to help people increase their impact. With that in mind, we’re excited to share two new collections: A list of free online courses covering skills like writing, coding, and marketing, plus introductions to various high-priority cause areas.  A list of impactful communities spanning different causes, professions, and affiliations. While most of these will be familiar to people within EA, you may find some you haven’t encountered yet, and the list should serve as a helpful starting point for those new to the space.  Please share these collections with anyone you think could benefit, and let us know if you have feedback or suggestions; we're always on the lookout looking for ways to improve and expand our resources! --- First published: November 11th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JBKfEnZXvjJ3yLxLE/courses-and-communities-that-can-increase-your-impact --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    1 min

  4. HACE 15 H

    “How to start a 501(c)3 nonprofit as quickly as possible” by abrahamrowe

    Cross-posted from Good Structures. This is absolutely not legal advice, and all people considering launching organizations should consult with lawyers. You can launch a 501(c)3 really quickly if you want. If you have a funder lined up, you can go from an idea to having a nonprofit with 501(c)3 status and with staff on payroll within around 40 days. I think this is around the fastest you can consistently do this, though if lucky, you can make it happen a bit faster (I just think you’re significantly less likely to succeed at getting 501(c)3 status in that window). This outcome isn’t guaranteed, and steps in this list can go wrong. In particular, expediting your 501(c)3 application, discussed below, has, in my experience, about a 60% success rate for working within your requested timeline (but has a 95%+ success rate for expediting *to some extent*). So that means that doing this, there is something like a 40% chance it’ll take longer than you expect, because you’ll have to wait longer to get 501(c)3 status. Note that having 501(c)3 status doesn’t hold you up from receiving grants or setting up payroll. The IRS treats organizations that intend to file for 501(c)3 [...] --- Outline: (02:16) What is a 501(c)3? (03:04) The maximum speed path (03:08) 1. Get a donor who only wants to give to you if you're a 501(c)3 (∞ days) (05:14) 2. Incorporate in Delaware or another speedy state (2 days) (07:48) 3. Get an address (1 day) (08:49) What state should the address be in? (10:03) How to find a virtual mailbox provider (10:59) 4. DO NOT pay a third party service to get your EIN. Get it yourself (5 minutes) (12:09) 5. Adopt policies (0 days) (12:44) 6. File Form 1023 with an expedite request (5 days) (15:04) 7. Expedite your 1023 properly (17:21) 8. Get 501(c)3 status (30 days) (18:03) 7. Open a bank account (2 days if American) (19:11) 8. Setup payroll (2 weeks) (20:04) 9. Set up accounting (1 day) (21:14) Things to do next --- First published: November 13th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AKgacG7E5kqm6r6Ac/how-to-start-a-501-c-3-nonprofit-as-quickly-as-possible --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    22 min

  5. HACE 15 H

    “Effective Altruists Should Promote Frugality” by James Brobin

    There are three ways EAs typically do good: Donating to effective charities. Working on high impact cause areas. Getting others to become EAs. All of these require either time and/or money. To donate to effective charities, one needs to have a sufficiently high level of financial security to justify their donation. If someone wants to work in a high impact cause area, they need enough time and money to pursue their desired career. Lastly, if one wants to get others to become EAs, they need enough time to find others who may be interested in the cause. Despite this, I’ve observed almost no references to the importance of saving money or how to save money within the EA forum or sites dedicated to EA outreach such as effectivealtruism.org, 80,000 Hours, and Giving What We Can. As such, I think that frugality, the optimization of one's financial resources to maximize one's time, should be more widely discussed and promoted within the EA community. Pros: Saving even small amounts of money can enable one to donate much more money to effective altruism. For example, by cutting one's own hair rather than getting a professional haircut, one can save [...] --- First published: November 12th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tD6yuY8miHJPpxLeq/effective-altruists-should-promote-frugality --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    4 min

  6. HACE 20 H

    “‘Essays on Longtermism’ Competition Winners” by Toby Tremlett🔹

    The winners of the ‘Essays on Longtermism’ competition are: First place: Aaron Bergman, for Utilitarians Should Accept that Some Suffering Cannot be “Offset” - $1000 prize.Joint second place[1]: Arepo, for Fruit-picking as an existential risk — EA Forum - $500 prize David Goodman, for Information Preservation as a Longtermist Intervention - $500 prize We had 67 entries, many of which are underrated. You can read all of the entries here. SummariesUtilitarians Should Accept that Some Suffering Cannot be “Offset”Read the post Summary: @Aaron Bergman's essay argues against the idea that welfare can be understood as a simple real number scale, where suffering can be traded off with pleasure. The essay argues two points. First, standard utilitarian commitments do not logically require the view that any suffering can be compensated by enough happiness. Second, once that premise is questioned, it becomes plausible that some extreme suffering is morally non-offsetable — no amount of happiness elsewhere can justify creating it. He suggests that near a threshold of extreme suffering, the “compensation curve” may rise without bound, making lexicality a natural limit rather than an arbitrary jump. If so, longtermists should shift from maximizing future happiness to preventing [...] --- Outline: (00:55) Summaries (00:58) Utilitarians Should Accept that Some Suffering Cannot be Offset (02:04) Fruit-picking as an existential risk (03:10) Information Preservation as a Longtermist Intervention (04:00) Gratitude --- First published: November 13th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ne6jw2a8KcgFsoswy/essays-on-longtermism-competition-winners --- 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

  7. HACE 23 H

    “Improving Impact Infrastructure in the Talent Space” by Emil Wasteson Wallén 🔸, Patrick Gruban 🔸

    TL;DR Funding for talent-focused organisations (TFOs) in EA remains highly concentrated, with more than 80% coming from Open Philanthropy and EA Funds. To understand whether clearer impact reporting could unlock new funding for the space, this pre-study interviewed seven funders. While historical impact data isn't the main decision criterion for most funders, an improved impact reporting infrastructure could potentially open up more funding to the talent space. In addition, a shared reporting framework could support funders in making more informed decisions, and provide clearer funder expectations for the TFOs. We suggest three next steps: (1) develop standardised indicators with input from both funders and TFOs, (2) gather TFO perspectives to complement this funder-focused study, and (3) explore the value of an independent evaluation agency for the talent space. Background The 2024 EA Meta Funding Landscape Report found that 80% of funding in the talent field is coming from Open Philanthropy and EA Funds, with the share being even higher when only talent-focused organisations (TFOs) are included. In a memo for the Meta Coordination Forum 2024, Patrick Gruban argues that the lack of legibility in TFO's impact reporting might be a hurdle for new funders to enter the field, and [...] --- Outline: (00:12) TL;DR (01:09) Background (01:59) Methodology (02:54) Findings (02:58) 1. Historical impact data isnt the main decision criterion (03:58) 2. Impact reporting could potentially make the talent space more accessible for new funders (04:41) 3. Additional benefits of a shared impact reporting framework (05:30) 4. Factors important in a framework (06:16) Recommendations (06:37) 1. Standardise indicators (07:44) 2. Better understand the needs of TFOs (08:24) 3. Explore the value of an independent evaluation agency in the talent space --- First published: November 12th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g3ipJbG7qmpgykBh4/improving-impact-infrastructure-in-the-talent-space --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    10 min

  8. HACE 1 DÍA

    “Some hardworking dads in EA” by Julia_Wise🔸

    It's hard to divide anything 50/50. In many families, even if both parents have paid jobs, one parent will lean into parenting more, and the other will lean harder into paid work. In male/female couples it's usually the woman who owns more of the parenting work, and that can feel unfair if the arrangement comes from assumptions rather than a willing choice. I want to highlight some counter-examples from the effective altruism space, to show it's really possible to make an intentional choice about who does what. @Jeff Kaufman and I both travel for work, but he's more fearless than I am about having the kids solo. Once while I was at an EA conference during the annual vacation with his side of the family, he took our four-year-old and two-year-old to the beach, and also took his sister's two-year-old because she was working. Then, during this trip where he was responsible for three preschoolers, he potty-trained our toddler. My friend has pursued jobs focused on impact, while her husband has a normal job he's not pursuing for altruistic impact. He does more of the childcare while she commutes part of the week to another city [...] --- First published: November 13th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/m8B5kYHdiz5BiW9qH/some-hardworking-dads-in-ea --- 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
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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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  • Creador
    EA Forum Team
  • Años de actividad
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodios
    250
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    Apto
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    © 2025 All rights reserved
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    EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

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