Arguments for global health and wellbeing are first and foremost about the actual opportunities for what you can do.
I think you can just actually go out and save a tonne of lives. You can change destructive, harmful public policies so that people can flourish more. You can do so in a way that allows you to get feedback along the way, so that you can improve and don’t just have one shot to get it right. And at the end, you can plausibly look back and say, “Look, the world went differently than it would have counterfactually if I didn’t do this.”
I think that is pretty awesome, and pretty compelling.
— Alexander Berger
What does it really take to lift millions out of poverty and prevent needless deaths?
In this special compilation episode, 17 past guests — including economists, nonprofit founders, and policy advisors — share their most powerful and actionable insights from the front lines of global health and development. You’ll hear about the critical need to boost agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa, the staggering impact of lead poisoning on children in low-income countries, and the social forces that contribute to high neonatal mortality rates in India.
What’s so striking is how some of the most effective interventions sound almost too simple to work: banning certain pesticides, replacing thatch roofs, or identifying village “influencers” to spread health information.
You’ll hear from:
Karen Levy on why pushing for “sustainable” programmes isn’t as good as it sounds, and keeping up great relationships with researchers and governments (from episode #124)
Dean Spears on the social forces and gender inequality that contribute to neonatal mortality in Uttar Pradesh (#186)
Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on what we can learn from the massive failure of PlayPumps, and whether more charities should scale back or shut down (#207)
Rachel Glennerster on on solving tough global problems by creating the right incentives for innovation, the value we get from doing the right RCTs well, and whether it’s best to focus on small-scale interventions or systemic reforms (#49 and #189)
Hannah Ritchie on why improving agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa is critical to solving global poverty (#160)
Lucia Coulter on the huge, neglected upsides of reducing lead exposure, and how her organisation rapidly scaled up to 17 countries (#175)
James Tibenderana on whether we should use gene drives to wipe out the species of mosquitoes that cause malaria, and the data gaps that will keep us from harnessing the power of AI to eradicate the disease (#129)
Varsha Venugopal on using village gossip to get kids their critical immunisations (#113)
Alexander Berger on declining returns in global health, and reasons neartermist work makes sense even by longtermist standards (#105)
James Snowden on making funding decisions with tricky moral weights (#37)
Paul Niehaus on why it’s so important to give aid recipients a choice in how they spend their money (#169)
Mushtaq Khan on really drilling down into why “context matters” for development work (#111)
Elie Hassenfeld on contrasting GiveWell’s approach with the subjective wellbeing approach of Happier Lives Institute (#153)
Leah Utyasheva on how a simple intervention reduced suicide in Sri Lanka by 70% (#22)
Shruti Rajagopalan on the key skills to succeed in public policy careers, and seeing economics in everything (#84)
Claire Walsh on her career advice for young people who want to get involved in global health and development (#13)
Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong Content editing: Katy Moore and Milo McGuire Music: CORBIT Coordination, transcriptions, and web: Katy Moore
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