EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

The world of private philanthropy may be in for a period of large growth. News of Coefficient Giving increasing their funding for GiveWell to one billion in the near-term, and the general growth of the effective giving community as reported by Giving What We Can, make it difficult for even hardcore sceptics (and I probably count myself among this curmudgeonly crowd) to stick to the view that we are in business as usual.
There are many reasons to believe that this expected growth will happen, and I’d be remiss to not mention Nan Ransohoff's great piece on the matter. This article was a catalyst. Where before board members and execs who were particularly clued into the Bay area may have expected to see this change in the size of the giving market, Nan's piece gave this a name and salience. The third wave of philanthropy materialized slowly, and then all at once.
This possibility of increased funding has now taken the shape of a near certainty in some circles. Besides the perfunctory “it may not happen” at the end of a long pitch, it is not uncommon to sit in conversations that assume the existence of this funding, and [...]
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Outline:
(01:34) No such money
(03:11) Smaller amounts
(04:23) Absorption
(06:24) What next?
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First published:

July 29th, 2026


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xNnafgb8BAkysaHsh/what-if-the-third-wave-is-a-puddle

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR
NOVAH (No Violence At Home) was incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship (now Ambitious Impact) in 2024 to test a promising idea: preventing intimate partner violence through edutainment, in our case a serialised radio drama. Over the past two years we have produced and aired two seasons in Rwanda.
We are currently evaluating our second season through a randomized controlled trial with 2,400 couples in Rwanda in partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). Preliminary results are expected in October 2026. The end-line analysis is run by IPA and our academic partners, not by NOVAH.
Edutainment to prevent intimate partner violence is promising, but it is still young as a field. We do not want to spend donor money scaling it unless the evidence shows it works at least as well as the strongest existing approaches. The RCT is what will tell us that. Therefore, before seeing those results, we want to make our decision rule public:
We will scale our programming only if the RCT finds a statistically significant relative reduction of at least 5% in physical or sexual intimate partner violence prevalence. How quickly we proceed will depend on the size and certainty of the effect.
Our current [...]
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Outline:
(00:14) TL;DR
(02:04) Background on NOVAH's cause area and intervention
(04:03) How we are evaluating our impact
(05:54) Our pre-commitment
(07:10) What happens under each result?
(07:14) Effect below 5%, or not statistically significant: pause and explore
(07:47) Effect of 5%-20%: continue as planned
(08:15) Effect above 20%: accelerate
(08:33) Why did you choose a 5% reduction?
(09:37) Is everything driven by this RCT?
(10:55) Why make this public?
(11:29) How you can hold us to this
(12:00) Should more non-profits do this?
(12:37) Final words
(13:09) Learn more and get in touch
(13:41) Appendix
(13:47) Why do you use IPV-year instead of DALYs in your cost-effectiveness?
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First published:

August 11th, 2026


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Lz42uekYDBmBweq9f/what-would-make-us-scale-or-stop-novah-s-pre-commitment

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

BLUF:
To determine whether AI is ‘improving exponentially’, ‘hitting the wall’, or any other claim which involves a quantity or magnitude (e.g. ‘This model was a big leap/small increment’). We need a good y-axis: an interval scale of AI capability which means +1 unit always represents the same degree of ‘how much better’, in the same way +1 degree Celsius is always the same amount of ‘how much hotter’.
Yet there is no good y-axis for AI capability. All our measures are of something related-to but clearly not identical-with it, thus ‘true’ AI capability can be a funhouse-mirror reflection of whatever was measured. Specifically: Benchmark score: One small step in benchmark score can be a giant leap in capability, or the opposite, or whatever else. (My 6/10 vs. your 4/10 ≠ I’m 50% better at maths than you).
Elo et al: Can give a real y-axis in terms of winning chances, but doesn’t translate outside of beating others. (Going from 50% to 73% to 88% chance to get a higher score than you on a maths test ≠ gaining 0 → 1 → 2 units of maths ability over you)
Epoch Capabilities Index: Analogous to IQ, so [...]

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Outline:
(03:05) Introduction
(04:26) Both a poor reflection and a dark glass
(07:51) Human benchmarking also has a y-axis problem
(12:27) A metrological elegy
(12:49) The base case: benchmarks (cf. exams)
(13:30) Elo et al.
(16:25) (And maybe not quite 'game ability ≡ winning games', after all?)
(18:28) ECI (cf. IQ)
(20:56) Intervals Rarely True
(25:01) Measure endogeneity
(31:12) Forking IRT
(34:45) (Dimensions of being, and beating, a bat)
(39:40) Prediction (cf. chronometry)
(41:58) Time horizons
(44:34) Human "capability" is also exponential in time horizon
(47:38) Intuitive/interpretative prelude
(52:56) Time horizons and ECI share an axis kink
(57:13) Perhaps money, as a measure, stinks the least
(01:01:07) Finale: AI as normal epistemics
(01:06:48) Acknowledgements
The original text contained 33 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:

August 4th, 2026


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CQvdadxjCpd7i7kjA/general-capability-and-capabilities-generally-have-no-good-y

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:
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“Your balls are baked aren’t they, mate”.
He would not have been born
Thanks Lyndon, that describes the situation. Like almost 1 in 10 modern men, my sperm weren’t up to the task - at least not the old fashioned way. So IVF it was - the miracle that now feels almost commonplace.
We landed on the moon and Woodstock changed music forever. But in 1969 a quieter event transformed the world. The first human embryo was fertilised “In vitro”, outside the body. Yet 10 years passed before one was inserted into a womb, and then born. 48 years ago, Louise Joy Brown was the first woman born through IVF. This year about a million babies will be born through IVF.
IVF stands at the frontier of rich-privilege, a norm for the middle class in rich countries. In my home country New Zealand, the government even pays for it! Yet every week I meet women here in Northern Uganda who can’t have kids, and could never afford IVF. Even the human “right” to have a kid can depend on where you are born.

If I was born 25 years ago, or in Uganda, my boy would never have [...]
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Outline:
(00:13) He would not have been born
(01:35) Our Risky Choice
(03:47) He didn't die once - a routine miracle
(05:33) He didn't die twice - Neonatal care
(08:54) I am Grateful
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:

July 28th, 2026


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KMNk8zXLxHQXgN7rK/never-born-then-maybe-died-twice

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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TL;DR
We’re hosting an essay competition to elicit responses to Anthony DiGiovanni's sequence, ‘The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance’—submit your entries by August 14th.
There will be cash prizes for the best essays and the best comments: 7 thousand dollars in total. Additionally, we're offering an outlier prize of up to 50 thousand dollars for a truly exceptional entry: an original solution to cluelessness, or a critique decisive enough to move the debate.

We’re also offering a referral prize of $250 if a winner says you’re responsible for telling them about the competition.
Motivation
When I announced April's Better Futures Highlight Week,[1] I confidently wrote: “To make the future go better, we can either work to avoid near-term catastrophes like human extinction or improve the futures where we survive.”
But what if I was wrong? What if both options are bankrupt, and we have no justified answer as to whether any particular work would make the future better? In his Challenge of Unawareness sequence, Anthony DiGiovanni argues that we are in just this position.
Specifically, he argues that our evidence about the future is so poor that our assessments of impact (explicit expected-value estimates [...]
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Outline:
(00:12) TL;DR
(00:54) Motivation
(02:12) How the competition works
(02:55) What your entry should look like
(03:49) Option 1: Challenge a premise
(05:19) Option 2: Challenge the inference
(05:33) Option 3: Offer a constructive response
(05:54) Prizes
(05:58) Essay competition
(07:43) Comment competition
(08:09) How will the essays and comments be judged?
(08:40) What comes after the competition?
(09:00) Judges
(09:13) Essay competition
(09:33) Comment competition
(09:50) Disclaimer
(10:44) FAQs
(10:48) Can I use AI?
(11:21) Can I co-author a piece?
(11:31) Can I submit a piece I've already published elsewhere?
(12:03) Will I get feedback on my entry?
(12:31) Does style matter?
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First published:

June 19th, 2026


Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2aooibAEDSdreCqrJ/announcing-cluelessness-critiques-competition

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:
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