

EA Talks
Patrick Brinich-Langlois
Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways you can best help others, whether through your charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Talks features presentations and discussions that can help you find something you're excited about. Lately, we've been focusing a lot on new opportunities in pandemic prevention, charity entrepreneurship, and AI safety. But we also have talks on other important topics like animal welfare, global health, nuclear security, climate change, and cause prioritization research. Most of the content is from EA Global videos, packaged for easy listening on the go. If you have feedback or would like to suggest an episode, please reach out.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Mar 19, 2021 • 18min
Naïve effective altruism and the danger of neglecting psychology | Stefan Schubert
Stefan discusses the importance of considering our own and others’ emotions and psychological limits when practising effective altruism.Stephan Schubert is a researcher at the Social Behaviour and Ethics Lab, University of Oxford, working in the intersection of moral psychology and philosophy. He focuses on psychological questions of relevance to effective altruism, such as why our altruistic actions are often ineffective, and why we don’t invest more in safe-guarding our common future. He was previously a researcher at the Centre for Effective Altruism, and a postdoc in philosophy at the London School of Economics. This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Mar 16, 2021 • 24min
Self-care: balancing sacrifice and renewal | Daniel Kestenholz
Daniel talks about why self-care is challenging yet essential for almost anything you care about, and how you can manage your resources more deliberately.Quote from Daniel’s bio: “In my coaching practice, I help people in the effective altruism community face difficult challenges and make their biggest contribution to the world while taking care of themselves. I love to enter someone’s world and help them do what they’re capable of. It’s one of the most fulfilling things for me. Besides, coaching also pushes me into my own learning zone very consistently. I’ve grown just as much as my clients did throughout 300+ coaching sessions so far. Click here to access my coaching page. As the COO at the Center for Emerging Risk Research (CERR), I work to improve the quality of life of future generations as comprehensively as possible. CERR is a charitable investment fund and grantmaker that promotes research and the implementation of solutions to avoid technological risks. I’m curious about almost everything and love to learn new things. I’m particularly interested in how to have peak energy and focus, get the most out of my time, and struggle more gracefully. I spend my downtime meditating, hiking, and enjoying dark chocolate.This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Mar 12, 2021 • 11min
Artificial Intelligence Career Stories | Evan Hubinger and Caroline Jeanmaire
In this episode, Evan and Caroline share personal stories about their careers surrounding artificial intelligence.Evan Hubinger was an AI safety research intern at OpenAI before joining MIRI. His current work is aimed at solving inner alignment for iterated amplification. Evan was an author on “Risks from Learned Optimization in Advanced Machine Learning Systems,” was previously a MIRI intern, designed the functional programming language Coconut, and has done software engineering work at Google, Yelp, and Ripple. Evan studied math and computer science at Harvey Mudd College.Caroline Jeanmaire leads CHAI’s partnership and external relations strategy, focusing on building a research community around AI safety and relationships with key stakeholders. She also researches models of international coordination to ensure the safety and reliability of AI systems. Before working at CHAI, she was an AI Policy Researcher and Project Manager at The Future Society, a think-tank incubated at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She notably supported the organization of the first and second Global Governance of AI Forums at the World Government Summit in Dubai, with over 200 attendees. In the 2019 edition, she managed the Geopolitics of AI and International Panel on AI research committees. Caroline is experienced in multi-party coordination and negotiation. She was a Youth Delegate to the United Nations for two years with the French delegation. She participated in numerous climate negotiations and technical intersessions (including COP21, COP22, COP23 and COP24). Caroline has a dual master’s degree in International Relations from Peking University and Sciences Po Paris and a bachelor’s degree in political sciences from Sciences Po Paris. She also studied at Tufts University and at the Graduate Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Caroline speaks English, French, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk on the Centre for Effective Altruism YouTube Channel.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Mar 9, 2021 • 27min
How students will lead the alternative protein revolution | Amy Huang
Industrial animal agriculture sits at the intersection of many of the most pressing challenges facing human and non-human animal kind. To alleviate these pressures in the wake of rising global meat demand, we must accelerate the development of alternative proteins that compete with their conventional animal counterparts on the basis of taste, price, and convenience. Students are uniquely positioned to drive this food system transformation by influencing some of the most powerful institutions in our economy—colleges and universities. Join The Good Food Institute’s Amy Huang to learn about how you can turn your university into a powerhouse for alternative protein education, research, and innovation.This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Mar 5, 2021 • 28min
CEA strategy update | Max Dalton & Joan Gass
Max Dalton (Executive Director) and Joan Gass (Managing Director) from the Centre for Effective Altruism provide an update on CEA’s movement building strategy and answer questions from the audience.Centre for Effective Altruism, or CEA, is an organization whose mission is to build a community of students and professionals acting on EA principles, by creating and sustaining high-quality discussion spaces. CEA believes that by connecting students and young professionals with relevant experts, they can help them consider their values and find an effective way to contribute that is a good fit for their skills and inclinations.This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk on the Centre for Effective Altruism YouTube channel.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Mar 2, 2021 • 23min
80,000 Hours: Key Ideas with Ben Todd
80,000 Hours is a non-profit that provides research and support to help people switch into careers that effectively tackle the world’s most pressing problems. Ben discusses the most useful things they’ve learned so far.Ben Todd managed 80,000 Hours while it grew from a lecture, to a student society, to the organisation it is today. Before 80,000 Hours, he was the first undergraduate to intern as an analyst at a top investment fund. He has a 1st from Oxford in Physics and Philosophy, and has published in Climate Physics.This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk on the Centre for Effective Altruism YouTube Channel.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Feb 26, 2021 • 14min
How I think students should orient to AI safety | Buck Shlegeris
Buck argues that students should engage with AI safety by trying to actually assess the arguments and the safety proposals. He claims that this is doable and useful.Buck Shlegeris is a researcher at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Buck works to make the future good for sentient beings; at the moment he believes that working on existential risk from artificial intelligence is my best bet for doing this.This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Feb 23, 2021 • 23min
SCI Foundation: deworming done differently | Katie Fantaguzzi
SCI Foundation has been selected by GiveWell as one of its most effective charities every year since 2009. How does SCI reach and improve the lives of the poorest of the poor? What is unique about this organisation’s approach and outsized impact? Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, and Research Advisor Katie Fantaguzzi discusses SCI’s progress toward its vision to eliminate preventable disease.This talk was taken from EA Global Asia and Pacific 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Feb 19, 2021 • 7min
Global Health and Development Career Stories | Nikita Patel
Nikita co-founded Fortify Health, a wheat flour fortification initiative based in India, with Brendan Eappen in 2017. They launched Fortify Health with a seed grant and support from what was to become Charity Entrepreneurship, and have since received two GiveWell incubation grants to scale up wheat flour fortification in Maharashtra and West Bengal, India. Nikita previously worked in communications at Malaria Consortium, and has also been a Research and Outreach Intern at the Centre for Effective Altruism. She graduated from Oxford University with a BA in French and German, and enjoys cooking, language learning, and cycling.This talk was taken from EA Global Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk on the Centre for Effective Altruism YouTube channel.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.

Feb 16, 2021 • 25min
Getting a career in global development | Tony Senanayake
Are you thinking about how to practically pursue a career with an effective altruism aligned organization but do not come from a traditional background? Tony has lived many lives including as a management consultant, lawyer and now global development practitioner. Tony discusses the role that active experimentation has had in shaping his current world view as an effective altruist.This talk was taken from EA Student Summit 2020. Click here to watch the talk with the PowerPoint presentation.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.


