Is This the First Time in Human History That We've Thought About Future People?

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The idea that our fate on earth is really what matters does strike me as fairly new relative to the religious background of countries like the US and UK. The long term future of the material corporeal earth was not super important under a lot of Christian worldviews because this is an earthly limited plane. What I find interesting is the choice to pose the questions and to be open to being wrong about them, but to insist that they're important and worth asking.

A new wave of philanthropists wants to make charity more effective. They’re focused not just on the present day but also thousands of years into the future. Vox’s Dylan Matthews explains how “effective altruism” became a multibillion-dollar philanthropic force.

This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Efim Shapiro, and hosted by Noel King.

Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained

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