The 80,000 Hours Podcast

About the show

The 80,000 Hours Podcast features unusually in-depth conversations about the world’s most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them.

We invite guests pursuing a wide range of career paths – from academics and activists to entrepreneurs and policymakers — to analyse the case for and against working on different issues and figure out which approaches are best for solving them.

The show is produced and edited by Keiran Harris. Get in touch with feedback or guest suggestions by emailing keiran@80000hours.org.

OpenAI’s mas­sive push to make su­per­in­tel­li­gence safe in 4 years or less (Jan Leike on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

Why it makes sense to be op­ti­mistic about the en­vi­ron­ment (Han­nah Ritchie on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

On whether AI will soon cause job loss, lower in­comes, and higher in­equal­ity — or the op­po­site (Michael Webb on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

Get­ting Wash­ing­ton and Sili­con Valley to tame AI (Mustafa Suley­man on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

The per­ils of max­imis­ing the good that you do (Toby Ord on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

Cults that want to kill ev­ery­one, stealth vs wild­fire pan­demics, and how he felt in­vent­ing gene drives (Kevin Esvelt on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

War in space, whether civ­i­liza­tions age, and the best things pos­si­ble in our uni­verse (An­ders Sand­berg on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

What he’s learned as an AI policy in­sider (Tan­tum Col­lins on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#167 - The re­search gaps hold­ing back al­ter­na­tive pro­teins from mass adop­tion (Seren Kell on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#168 – Whether deep his­tory says we’re head­ing for an in­tel­li­gence ex­plo­sion (Ian Mor­ris on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#169 – On whether cash trans­fers cause eco­nomic growth, and keep­ing theft to ac­cept­able lev­els (Paul Nie­haus on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#170 – How air pol­lu­tion is re­spon­si­ble for ~12% of global deaths — and how to get that num­ber down (San­tosh Har­ish on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#171 – How top labs have jeop­ar­dised pub­lic health with re­peated biosafety failures (Ali­son Young on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#172 – Why you should stop read­ing the news (Bryan Ca­plan on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#173 – Digi­tal minds, and how to avoid sleep­walk­ing into a ma­jor moral catas­tro­phe (Jeff Sebo on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#174 – Neu­rotech­nol­ogy already be­ing used to con­vict crim­i­nals and ma­nipu­late work­ers (Nita Fara­hany on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#175 – Prevent­ing lead poi­son­ing for $1.66 per child (Lu­cia Coulter on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#176 – The fi­nal push for AGI, un­der­stand­ing OpenAI’s lead­er­ship drama, and red-team­ing fron­tier mod­els (Nathan Labenz on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#177 – Re­cent AI break­throughs and nav­i­gat­ing the grow­ing rift be­tween AI safety and ac­cel­er­a­tionist camps (Nathan Labenz on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#178 – What the ev­i­dence ac­tu­ally says about preg­nancy and par­ent­ing (Emily Oster on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#179 – Why evolu­tion left us so vuln­er­a­ble to de­pres­sion and anx­iety (Randy Nesser on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#180 – Why gullibil­ity and mis­in­for­ma­tion are over­rated (Hugo Mercier on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#181 – The sci­ence that could keep us healthy in our 80s and be­yond (Laura Dem­ing on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#182 – Com­par­ing the welfare of hu­mans, chick­ens, pigs, oc­to­puses, bees, and more (Bob Fischer on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#183 – Cau­sa­tion with­out cor­re­la­tion, money and hap­piness, light­gassing, hype vs value, and more (Spencer Green­berg on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#184 – Sleep­ing on sleeper agents, and the biggest AI up­dates since ChatGPT (Zvi Mow­show­itz on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#185 – The 7 most promis­ing ways to end fac­tory farm­ing, and whether AI is go­ing to be good or bad for an­i­mals (Lewis Bol­lard on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#186 – Why ba­bies are born small in Ut­tar Pradesh, and how to save their lives (Dean Spears on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#187 – How re­search­ing his book turned him from a space op­ti­mist into a “space bas­tard” (Zach Wein­er­smith on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#188 – On whether sci­ence is good (Matt Clancy on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#189 – How “mar­ket shap­ing” could help solve cli­mate change, pan­demics, and other global prob­lems (Rachel Glen­ner­ster on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#190 – On whether the US is con­scious (Eric Sch­witzgebel on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#191 (Part 1) – The econ­omy and na­tional se­cu­rity af­ter AGI (Carl Shul­man on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#191 (Part 2) – Govern­ment and so­ciety af­ter AGI (Carl Shul­man on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#192 – What would hap­pen if North Korea launched a nu­clear weapon at the US (An­nie Ja­cob­sen on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#193 – The risk that US–China AI com­pe­ti­tion leads to war (Sihao Huang on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#194 – Defen­sive ac­cel­er­a­tion and how to reg­u­late AI when you fear gov­ern­ment (Vi­talik Bu­terin on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#195 – Who’s try­ing to steal fron­tier AI mod­els, and what they could do with them (Sella Nevo on the 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#196 – The edge cases of sen­tience and why they mat­ter (Jonathan Birch on The 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#197 – On whether An­thropic’s AI safety policy is up to the task (Nick Joseph on The 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#198 – Challeng­ing our as­sump­tions about in­sects (Meghan Bar­rett on The 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#199 – Cal­ifor­nia’s AI bill SB 1047 and its po­ten­tial to shape US AI policy (Nathan Calvin on The 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#200 – What su­perfore­cast­ers and ex­perts think about ex­is­ten­tial risks (Ezra Karger on The 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#201 – Why your robot but­ler isn’t here yet (Ken Gold­berg on The 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#202 – The cut­ting edge of anti-age­ing sci­ence (Venki Ra­makr­ish­nan on on The 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

#203 – In­terfer­ing with wild na­ture, ac­cept­ing death, and the ori­gin of com­plex civil­i­sa­tion (Peter God­frey-Smith on The 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)