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A list of EA-related podcasts

by M_Allcock4 min read27th Nov 201931 comments

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Podcasts are a great way to learn about EA. Here’s a list of the EA-related podcasts I’ve come across over the last few years of my podcast obsession.

I’ve split them up into two categories:

  1. Strongly EA-related podcasts: Podcasts run by EA organisations or otherwise explicitly EA-related.
  2. Podcasts featuring EA-related episodes: Podcasts which are usually not EA-related but have some episodes which are about an EA idea or interviewing an EA-aligned guest.

Please add to the comments any podcasts that I have missed. I am always excited to find out about more interesting podcasts!

Strongly EA-related podcasts

  • Doing Good Better Podcast- Five short episodes about EA concepts. Produced by the Centre for Effective Altruism. No new content since 2017.
  • The Life You Can Save Podcast- Episodes from Peter Singer’s organisation that focus on alleviating global poverty. The latest episodes are interviews with EA organisation staff.
  • The Turing Test - The newly restarted EA podcast from the Harvard University EA group. Interviews with EA thinkers including Brian Tomasik on ethics, animal welfare, and a focus on suffering, and Scott Weathers on Charity Science Health.
  • 80,000 Hours Podcast - Robert Wiblin leads long-form interviews (up to 4 hours) with individuals in high impact careers. This podcast really gets into the weeds of the most important cause areas.
  • Global Optimum - An informal podcast by professional psychology researcher, Daniel Gambacorta. Discussing psychology results that can help you become a more effective altruist. There is usually no extra padding in this podcast, it's straight to the point.
  • Future Perfect Podcast - The podcast part of Vox Media’s Future Perfect project. Dylan Matthews leads scripted discussions about interesting and hopefully effective ways to improve the world.
  • Morality is hard - Michael Dello Iacovo interviews guests about topics related to effective animal advocacy.
  • Future of Life Podcast - Interviews with researchers and thought leaders who the Future of Life Institute believe are helping to “safeguard life and build optimistic visions of the future”. They include a series on AI alignment and a recent series on climate change.
  • Wildness - A new podcast of Wild Animal Initiative. Narrative episodes based around a theme relevant to wild animal welfare research, typically including multiple interviews with animal welfare researchers.
  • EARadio - hundreds of audio recordings from EA Global talks. Some episodes are hard to follow due to the missing visual information that is used in presentations.
  • Sentience Institute Podcast - New podcast on effective animal advocacy.

Podcasts featuring EA-related episodes

*Edited to include hyperlinks.

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[-]Pablo2y 24

Thanks for compiling this.

I've created a ListenNotes list with all the "Strongly EA-related podcasts" and a few others here. It displays the most recent episode from each of those podcasts and lets you import them all easily to your favorite podcast app.

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[-]EdoArad7mo 21

Two more podcasts:

Increments by Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani. 

Vaden Masrani, a PhD student in machine learning at UBC and Ben Chugg, a research fellow at Stanford Law School, get into trouble arguing about everything except machine learning and law. Coherence is somewhere on the horizon. Love, bribes, suggestions, and hate-mail all welcome at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Clearer Thinking by Spencer Greenberg of Spark Wave.

Clearer Thinking is the brand-new podcast about ideas that truly matter. If you enjoy learning about powerful, practical concepts and frameworks, or wish you had more deep, intellectual conversations in your life, then we think you'll love this podcast!

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[-]EricHerboso2y 17

Luke Muehlhauser's Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot had an episode interviewing Toby Ord back in January 2011. This is from before the term "effective altruism" was being used to describe the movement. I think it may be the first podcast episode to really discuss what would eventually be called EA, with the second oldest podcast episode being Massimo Pigliucci's interview with Holden Karnofsky on Rationally Speaking in July 2011.

(There was plenty of discussion online about these issues in years prior to this, but as far as I can tell, discussion didn't appear in podcast form until 2011.)

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[-]Pablo7mo 16

New podcast on AI X-risk research: AXRP.

Although this was announced in a separate EA Forum post, I'm adding a comment here so that all EA-related podcasts can be found in the same thread.

Note that I continue to keep this list updated.

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[-]MichaelA1y 11

Fin Moorhouse and a friend started the podcast Hear This Idea. Fin writes about the podcast here, and says:

A few months ago, I started a podcast with a friend at uni interviewing (mostly) academics in the social sciences and philosophy. Since we're both involved with EA, about half of the episodes ended up addressing topics either relevant to or directly concerning effective altruism.

And a few of the interviewees are EAs whose names I recognise. (Some others maybe be EAs who I just happen to not know of.)

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[-]HaydnBelfield2y 9

It would be real great if these were hyperlinks...

Would take some time, but might be useful for people gathering EA resources?

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[-]M_Allcock2y 15

Done. Thanks for the nudge to put a little more time into it.

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[-]Stefan_Schubert2y 5

Yes, agree that it would have been natural to include hyperlinks in this otherwise very helpful post.

Pablo's list does include links.

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[-]MichaelA6mo 8

Two book-length series of rationality-related posts by Eliezer Yudkowsky have been made into podcast versions:

(Not sure if those are the most useful links. Personally I just found the podcasts via searching the Apple Podcasts app.)

I found Rationality: From AI to Zombies very useful and quite interesting, and HPMOR fairly useful and very surprisingly engaging. I've ranked them as the 4th and 30th (respectively) most useful EA-related books I've read so far.

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[-]Aaron Gertler1y 8

Founders Pledge now has a podcast, featuring interviews with their members and researchers: https://founderspledge.com/stories/category/podcasts

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[-]Milan_Griffes2y 6
  • Conversations with Tyler
  • The Portal with Eric Weinstein
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[-]MichaelA6mo 5

Something I'm surprised neither I nor anyone else has mentioned yet: the Slate Star Codex Podcast. This consists almost entirely of audio versions of SSC articles, along with a handful of recordings of SSC meetups (presentations + Q&As). 

(I think this is my second favourite EA-related podcast, with the 80k podcast being first.)

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[-]vanessa161y 4

Sorry for the late comment. I've recently been listening to, and enjoying, The End of the World with Josh Clark. It seems like a really solid and approachable introduction to existential risks. It starts by covering why x-risks might be things that we should be concerned about, and then talks about AI, biosecurity and other possible threats. Includes interviews with Nick Bostrom, Toby Ord, Anders Sandberg, Robin Hanson and others :)

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[-]MichaelA1y 3

Recent addition: Founders Pledge have started a podcast called How I Give.

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[-]MichaelA1y 3

There's also the podcast NonProphets:

NonProphets is a podcast about forecasting by three superforecasters. We earned the right to be called superforecasters by being among the top forecasters in the Good Judgment Project, an experimental forecasting tournament sponsored by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. We now forecast professionally for Good Judgment, Inc.

I came across it because one of the three hosts is Robert de Neufville, who works with the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute.

I've only listened to one episode so far, but several seem fairly EA-related (e.g., one with Shahar Avin from CSER talking about AI), as one might expect given de Neufville's involvement.

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[-]M_Allcock1y 3

Ace! this is the first time I've heard of that podcast. Thanks for sharing.

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[-]EdoArad1y 3

A new podcast transcription of Nate Soares Replacing Guilt - https://anchor.fm/guilt

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[-]M_Allcock2y 3

Sentience Institute released a new podcast on effective animal advocacy just today!

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[-]MichaelA9mo 2

There's also the podcast Utilitarian. Only two episodes so far, but one is with Anders Sandberg, and the podcast's creator posted about that episode on the Forum, so this can probably be considered an EA-related podcast.

(I'm currently halfway through the Anders episode, and enjoying it so far.)

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[-]OlyaBabe1y 2

Very Bad Wizards: The One with Peter Singer (released in April, 2020)

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[-]EdoArad1y 1

I like that podcast a lot! I suggest to skip directly to 31:20, the second part where Singer comes in, unless you are interested in half an hour of discussion about typography :)

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[-]david_reinstein6mo 1

Thanks for this. I've integrated this list as well as @pablo's and a couple I added ('Not Overthinking' and 'Great.com Talks With') into an Airtable

View only

or you can on collaborate this base HERE

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[+][comment deleted]7mo 2
Deleted by MichaelA, 02/06/2021
Reason: EdoArad mentioned the same podcast already.