EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

TL;DR When surveyed, the EA community and leaders think ~18-24% of resources should go towards animal advocacy. The actual figure is about 7%. We as the EA ecosystem are putting less resources (money and time) into animal advocacy than the movement thinks we should when surveyed. This disparity could be because of loss of message fidelity, it's a harder cause area to pitch donors, or the role of large funders, but I'm honestly not too sure. My job at Senterra Funders involves making the case to EA/EA adjacent prospective donors that they can do a tonne of good by donating to animal advocacy charities. As part of this work I’ve noticed a certain level of inconsistency in the EA ecosystem: I encounter a lot more people who want the animal advocacy movement to 'win' than people working in or donating to the space.The numbersIt turns out this intuition is backed up by survey data. Sources (see Appendix for extra details): Meta Coordination Forum (MCF; 2024) / Talent Need Survey on ideal allocation of financial resources EA Community survey data from 2023 on jobs by cause area I obtained in private correspondence with David Moss. Historical EA [...] ---Outline:(01:07) The numbers(02:37) Accounting for the disparity(05:04) Appendix 1. Data Sources --- First published: January 13th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FxZdQJXs45fTFnMEe/is-ea-underfunding-animal-advocacy-according-to-our-own --- 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.

Thank you At EAGx Amsterdam, I shared most of this as a talk. I was afraid I'd run out of time, so I decided to do things backwards and start with the thank you. I did not want to miss the most important thing. Since I might lose you halfway reading this long and personal piece, I decided to keep this order. The EA community creates a space that makes it easier to donate and to live my values—and to be okay with living in this world. It normalizes caring about effectiveness and spreadsheets, provides frameworks and research and feedback. This community makes me feel less alone in trying to navigate the absurdity and burden of existence. My Story, Not Yours I am assuming that anything I do is determined by luck and circumstance, nature and nurture. Therefore, one way to explain why I donate is to show you some of those things. This is personal; my story might not be applicable or relatable to you. I’m not sure there's anything practical you can learn from it. But maybe my experience raises questions that help you in your giving journey. First I’ll tell you about my life [...] ---Outline:(00:10) Thank you(00:53) My Story, Not Yours(01:39) My life(08:01) I donate because it helps others(08:17) It's my responsibility to do something(09:23) I should do good responsibly(10:20) I donate because it helps me(10:30) Retail Therapy Donation Therapy Effective Giving(12:39) Convenience of effective giving(14:06) This is how I can live the lives I wont get to live(15:16) How I Donate --- First published: December 31st, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bRMQB85KXz6uzqXkf/why-i-donate-a-personal-story --- 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.

An all too common reason I’ve seen to “quit EA” is disliking aspects of the community. Maybe “they’re” too focused on the “wrong cause area” or are skeptical of yours. Maybe “they” annoy you. Maybe “they” publicly attacked you. I’m putting quotation marks around “they” to highlight an important thing: EA is composed of individuals. Some EAs may annoy you / focus on the "wrong cause area" / publicly attack you / [insert your reason here]. But you don’t have to hang out with them! Imagine you decided you didn’t like science because you didn’t like some scientists. Or even most scientists! That might affect the frequency you go to science conferences. But that shouldn’t affect your appreciation of science itself. Yes, science is a community, but it's also a practice, a goal, a method, an idea, results. EA is too. Not to mention - you don’t have to interact with most scientists! Or EAs! You can just be picky. I only interact with “most EAs” when I post on the EA Forum or the EA subreddit. Otherwise I’ve found my favorite EAs and hangout with them regularly. I treat them as [...] --- First published: December 28th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QPtimJrGBRyqiYzip/don-t-stop-being-an-ea-because-you-dislike-eas-you-don-t --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Note: I used LLMs to draft different parts of this. I've checked almost everything, but there might be some mistakes remaining. Apologies for posting this on Christmas Eve. I wanted to get this out the door before the end of the year. Questions welcome, and if it's easy to pull metrics to answer them, I will.Summary 80,000 Hours launched a video program in 2025 focused on longform, cinematic, personality-driven content about AI risks. Our first two longform releases were: We're Not Ready for Superintelligence (the "AI 2027" video): 8.9M views, ~1.4M watch hours If you remember one AI disaster, make it this one (the "MechaHitler" video): 2.7M views, ~419K watch hours Both videos significantly outperformed our expectations (we'd anticipated 15-50K views for the first). The cost per engagement hour ($0.11 and $0.39 respectively, including staff time) compares favorably to other 80,000 Hours programs. This post covers: what we spent, what we got, why we think it worked, and what we'd do differently.The numbersCostsCategoryAI 2027MechaHitlerDirect costs~$50K~$64KStaff hours~450 hrs~450 hrs (Note, I’m assuming it's about the same as for AI 2027, I didn't re-ask people how much time they spent.)Total cost (making some assumptions about we should incorporate staff [...] ---Outline:(00:34) Summary(01:33) The numbers(01:36) Costs(02:16) Timing(02:40) Results(03:46) How valuable is a video watch hour?(04:24) Qualitative Feedback(04:28) AI 2027(05:51) MechaHitler(06:12) YouTube commenters like:(06:52) What the comments don't like:(07:17) Qualitative Analysis(07:21) Why we think AI 2027 did well(09:56) Why MechaHitler did less well (but still well)(10:50) Lessons Learned(10:54) Overall what we think matters(11:25) Our guess at what's less important (though we're certainly unsure, maybe if we nailed these, we'd get more success)(12:24) How our production works(12:43) The timeline(13:32) Ideation(14:06) Scripting(14:57) Shooting(15:31) Reshoots / Voiceover(15:45) Editing(16:06) Launch(17:00) What we're still figuring out(17:36) Closing thoughts --- First published: December 24th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RCRaBYSqBaMzHzTjF/untitled-retrospective-and-learnings-from-ai-in-context-s --- 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.

I really enjoyed reading the "why I donate" posts in the past week, so much so that I felt compelled to add my reflections, in case someone finds my reasons as interesting as I found theirs. 1. My money needs to be spent on something, might as well spend it on the most efficient things The core reason I give is something that I think is under-represented in the other posts: the money I have and earn will need to be spent on something, and it feels extremely inefficient and irrational to spend it on my future self when it can provide >100x as much to others. To me, it doesn't seem important whether I'm in the global top 10% or bottom 10%, or whether the money I have is due to my efforts or to the place I was born. If it can provide others 100x as much, it just seems inefficient/irrational to allocate it to myself. Honestly, the post could end here, but there are other secondary reasons/perspectives on why I personally donate that I haven't seen commonly discussed. 2. Spending money is voting on how the global economy allocates its resources In 2017, I read Wealth [...] ---Outline:(00:22) 1. My money needs to be spent on something, might as well spend it on the most efficient things(01:09) 2. Spending money is voting on how the global economy allocates its resources(04:11) 3. I dont think its as bad as some make it out to be(07:35) 4. I donate because Im an atheist (/s) --- First published: December 15th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CSKob9hGmWM7f7yv8/i-give-because-it-s-the-most-rational-way-to-spend-my-money --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.