My job is about helping people get involved in effective altruism, so I pay attention to how this happens.
Iâm not sure Iâve ever seen any piece of content not named âDoing Good Betterâ get as much positive as Sam Harrisâs two podcast episodes with Will MacAskill.
Both episodes seem to have caused a spike in GWWC memberships, and the second may have boosted EA engagement more generally. Some notes on that:
GWWC estimates that over 600 people have taken the pledge in part because of the episodes (with another ~600 signing up for Try Giving). To break this down:
~800 people who finished the sign-up survey mentioned a podcast as one way they found GWWC (the average person chose 1.8 sources).
Of the 123 people who said which podcast it was, 107 said Sam Harris (87%).
Extrapolating a similar rate to the ~700 who didnât say which podcast gives another ~600 referrals on top of the original 107.
The âpodcastâ option was only added to the form in October 2020, before the second episode but after the first; another ~500 people who filled it out before then mentioned Sam somewhere.
Iâd guess that most of these were coming from the first episode with Will, though he may have mentioned his giving in other episodes, and GWWC by extension.
An extremely engaged community builder told me in February 2021: âI feel like most new EAs Iâve met in the last year came in through Sam Harris.â
My subjective impression in the weeks after the second episode came out was that most of the ambient âpositive EA chatterâ I heard on Twitter (people tweeting out random EA endorsements who normally talked about other things) included mentions of the podcast.
Why was this so impactful?
Some factors I think were important:
Sam set an example.
One of the most persuasive ways to promote something is to do it yourself.
One of Samâs explicit goals on the podcast is to get listeners to make ethical decisions, and Iâd imagine that many listeners seek him out for ethical advice. This isnât as much the case for podcasters like Tim Ferriss or Joe Rogan, or other sources of publicity (TED, op-eds, etc.)
From the transcript below: âThe question that underlies all of this, really, is: How can we live a morally beautiful life? That is more and more what I care about, and what the young Will MacAskill is certainly doing.â
Sam made a rare endorsement.
Sam took several minutes to explain why he thinks giving is important, and gives GWWC a strong recommendation. This is a rare thing for him to do; most of his guests arenât selling anything (save maybe a book), and he doesnât advertise on his podcast.
Comparatively, Tim Ferriss (another major podcaster who had Will as a guest) has ~5 minutes of long-form advertising on every episode, and generally recommends lots of things every time a guest comes on. On the writeup of Willâs episode, GWWC was the 23rd item on a bullet list of âselected linksâ.
Timâs podcast referred 8 people to GWWC. This is actually a solid number, given that the âwhere you heard about usâ question wasnât added until more than a year after that episode came out. But I think the true impact of the episode was still much lower than that of the Sam episodes, despite Timâs larger audience.
The conversation is really good.
I listened to the second episode soon after it came out, before I knew anything about its impact, and was almost immediately struck by how good Willâs pitch was. It was clear heâd built up a huge amount of experience in the 5+ years since Doing Good Better came out, and it helped to have a friendly interviewer who was quite familiar with EAâs basic ideas.
Some things I liked about the conversation:
The expansive definition of EA (given by Sam):
âThis does connect to deeper and broader questions like âHow should we think about doing good in the world in general?â, âWhat would it mean to do as much good as possible?â, and âHow do those questions connect to questions around what sort of person I should be, or what it means to live a truly good life?ââ
It seems really good to be clear that EA isnât just about âdoing good for othersâ, but also âliving a truly good lifeâ for oneâs own sake.
The connection of EA to topical questions
Sam brings up the question at one point of whether people living on the streets in San Francisco could be said to be as badly-off as the worldâs poorest people in other countries. Will gives a âyes, andâ response to this â not just dismissing the idea that U.S. homelessness could matter as an issue, but acknowledging that it is important while noting that it probably isnât tractable (without using those exact words).
Itâs also nice that Will takes the chance to share his âcurrent favorite climate change charityâ, which shakes off a few more out-of-date stereotypes about EA as a movement.
The âlessonâ-based structure of the conversation
My understanding (though I could be wrong) is that this discussion was set up to be broken into a series of mini-lessons for users of the Waking Up app. The conversation feels that way â lots of different topics, but with clear transitions between them.
Transcript
I published the transcript separately so the post wouldnât be too long. I highly recommend reading or listening to absorb what makes this content so good.
The most successful EA podcast of all time: Sam Harris and Will MacAskill (2020)
Context
My job is about helping people get involved in effective altruism, so I pay attention to how this happens.
Iâm not sure Iâve ever seen any piece of content not named âDoing Good Betterâ get as much positive as Sam Harrisâs two podcast episodes with Will MacAskill.
After the first episode, Sam was deeply affected, and pledged to donate $3500/âmonth in podcast proceeds to the Against Malaria Foundation.
After the second episode, Sam joined Giving What We Can and pledged 10% of profits from his Waking Up app (well over $3500/âmonth) to effective charities.
Impact
Both episodes seem to have caused a spike in GWWC memberships, and the second may have boosted EA engagement more generally. Some notes on that:
GWWC estimates that over 600 people have taken the pledge in part because of the episodes (with another ~600 signing up for Try Giving). To break this down:
~800 people who finished the sign-up survey mentioned a podcast as one way they found GWWC (the average person chose 1.8 sources).
Of the 123 people who said which podcast it was, 107 said Sam Harris (87%).
Extrapolating a similar rate to the ~700 who didnât say which podcast gives another ~600 referrals on top of the original 107.
The âpodcastâ option was only added to the form in October 2020, before the second episode but after the first; another ~500 people who filled it out before then mentioned Sam somewhere.
Iâd guess that most of these were coming from the first episode with Will, though he may have mentioned his giving in other episodes, and GWWC by extension.
An extremely engaged community builder told me in February 2021: âI feel like most new EAs Iâve met in the last year came in through Sam Harris.â
My subjective impression in the weeks after the second episode came out was that most of the ambient âpositive EA chatterâ I heard on Twitter (people tweeting out random EA endorsements who normally talked about other things) included mentions of the podcast.
Why was this so impactful?
Some factors I think were important:
Sam set an example.
One of the most persuasive ways to promote something is to do it yourself.
One of Samâs explicit goals on the podcast is to get listeners to make ethical decisions, and Iâd imagine that many listeners seek him out for ethical advice. This isnât as much the case for podcasters like Tim Ferriss or Joe Rogan, or other sources of publicity (TED, op-eds, etc.)
From the transcript below: âThe question that underlies all of this, really, is: How can we live a morally beautiful life? That is more and more what I care about, and what the young Will MacAskill is certainly doing.â
Sam made a rare endorsement.
Sam took several minutes to explain why he thinks giving is important, and gives GWWC a strong recommendation. This is a rare thing for him to do; most of his guests arenât selling anything (save maybe a book), and he doesnât advertise on his podcast.
Comparatively, Tim Ferriss (another major podcaster who had Will as a guest) has ~5 minutes of long-form advertising on every episode, and generally recommends lots of things every time a guest comes on. On the writeup of Willâs episode, GWWC was the 23rd item on a bullet list of âselected linksâ.
Timâs podcast referred 8 people to GWWC. This is actually a solid number, given that the âwhere you heard about usâ question wasnât added until more than a year after that episode came out. But I think the true impact of the episode was still much lower than that of the Sam episodes, despite Timâs larger audience.
The conversation is really good.
I listened to the second episode soon after it came out, before I knew anything about its impact, and was almost immediately struck by how good Willâs pitch was. It was clear heâd built up a huge amount of experience in the 5+ years since Doing Good Better came out, and it helped to have a friendly interviewer who was quite familiar with EAâs basic ideas.
Some things I liked about the conversation:
The expansive definition of EA (given by Sam):
âThis does connect to deeper and broader questions like âHow should we think about doing good in the world in general?â, âWhat would it mean to do as much good as possible?â, and âHow do those questions connect to questions around what sort of person I should be, or what it means to live a truly good life?ââ
It seems really good to be clear that EA isnât just about âdoing good for othersâ, but also âliving a truly good lifeâ for oneâs own sake.
The connection of EA to topical questions
Sam brings up the question at one point of whether people living on the streets in San Francisco could be said to be as badly-off as the worldâs poorest people in other countries. Will gives a âyes, andâ response to this â not just dismissing the idea that U.S. homelessness could matter as an issue, but acknowledging that it is important while noting that it probably isnât tractable (without using those exact words).
Itâs also nice that Will takes the chance to share his âcurrent favorite climate change charityâ, which shakes off a few more out-of-date stereotypes about EA as a movement.
The âlessonâ-based structure of the conversation
My understanding (though I could be wrong) is that this discussion was set up to be broken into a series of mini-lessons for users of the Waking Up app. The conversation feels that way â lots of different topics, but with clear transitions between them.
Transcript
I published the transcript separately so the post wouldnât be too long. I highly recommend reading or listening to absorb what makes this content so good.