I’m creating a deep dive podcast episode about the original Leverage Research—would you like to take part?
Hi all! I’m creating a deep dive podcast episode about (the original) Leverage Research (for my podcast, Clearer Thinking). If you worked at (or currently work at) Leverage, or you have had experiences connected to Leverage, and you would like to either potentially:
(1) do an interview for the podcast
(2) talk to me totally off the record about your experiences (i.e., with your privacy totally protected)
Please reach out privately by using my contact form here. Or you can email our podcast (but multiple team members who work on the podcast will see it) here:
I have known many people involved in Leverage over the years (from its founding to the present day), and so I have heard a great deal of information about it from others. But I’ve never been a member of it, and there are still many things I don’t know about it.
The podcast episode aims to provide a deep exploration (that’s as unbiased as we can achieve) into (i) what Leverage was, (ii) what sorts of activities, occurrences, findings, and developments happened there, and (iii) why it ended up falling apart.
Note that Leverage still exists in a modified form, but the focus of the podcast will be on “Leverage 1.0.”
Note also that while there are some interviews that I will be able to conduct right away, I will have to wait a while before conducting others (if yours falls into that camp, I will let you know).
Of course, I won’t necessarily end up interviewing everyone who reaches out, but I’d be interested to hear from you regardless.
Depending on your goals, I feel like a podcast might not be the most appropriate format for this deep dive on a sensitive topic. One reason is that I would expect many of the most informed people might prefer to only share information anonymously.
This is not necessarily an insurmountable obstacle. If someone wants to make a statement anonymously on a podcast they can write it out and have someone else write it.
Thanks for your comment. Please note that I am conducting a lot of “background” interviews that are unrecorded and where I discuss with the interviewee at the beginning how I can/can’t use what they say. I agree that one can’t understand this topic without conducting non-recorded interviews, which is why I’m doing both.
Looking forward to this! I hope there will also be some “lessons learned”—it seems like Leverage included many EA-oriented people who prided themselves on their altruistic tendencies, rational thinking, willingness to question/subert certain social norms, and so on. I’d be curious to hear involved parties’ reflections on how similarly well-motivated people can avoid inadvertently veering off the rails in their pursuit of ambitious/weird projects.
I agree, I hopefully will include some “lessons learned” in the episode
How can I get an email notification for this if it comes out? It probably won’t be in your regular email newsletter so I’ll probably miss it, but I’d like to see it.
My “one helpful idea” newsletter that comes out weekly will have a link to it when it’s released. The signup form is on the main page here where it says “subscribe”:
https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/