All Episodes
80k After Hours — 109 episodes
Highlights: #218 – Hugh White on why Trump is abandoning US hegemony – and that’s probably good
Highlights: #217 – Beth Barnes on the most important graph in AI right now — and the 7-month rule that governs its progress
Highlights: #216 – Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and elsewhere can’t get anything done – and how to fix it
Highlights: #215 – Tom Davidson on how AI-enabled coups could allow a tiny group to seize power
Highlights: #214 – Buck Shlegeris on controlling AI that wants to take over – so we can use it anyway
Off the Clock #8: Leaving Las London with Matt Reardon
Highlights: #213 – Will MacAskill on AI causing a “century in a decade” — and how we’re completely unprepared
Highlights: #212 – Allan Dafoe on why technology is unstoppable & how to shape AI development anyway
Off the Clock #7: Getting on the Crazy Train with Chi Nguyen
Highlights: #211 – Sam Bowman on why housing still isn’t fixed and what would actually work
Highlights: #210 – Cameron Meyer Shorb on dismantling the myth that we can’t do anything to help wild animals
Highlights: #209 – Rose Chan Loui on OpenAI’s gambit to ditch its nonprofit
Highlights: #208 – Elizabeth Cox on the case that TV shows, movies, and novels can improve the world
Highlights: #207 – Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on why she shut down her charity, and why more founders should follow her lead
Highlights: #206 – Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness
Highlights: #205 – Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do
Highlights: #204 – Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism
Highlights: Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame
Highlights: #203 – Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex civilisation
Off the Clock #6: Starting Small with Conor Barnes
Highlights: #202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science
Highlights: #201 – Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet
Highlights: #200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks
Highlights: #199 – Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy
Highlights: #198 – Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects
Highlights: #197 – Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic’s AI safety policy is up to the task
Highlights: #196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter
Highlights: #195 – Sella Nevo on who's trying to steal frontier AI models, and what they could do with them
Highlights: #194 – Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government
Highlights: #193 – Sihao Huang on the risk that US–China AI competition leads to war
Highlights: #192 – Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US
Off the Clock #5: Leaving 80k with Maria Gutierrez Rojas
Highlights: #191 (Part 2) – Carl Shulman on government and society after AGI
Highlights: #191 (Part 1) – Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI
Highlights: #190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious
Highlights: #189 – Rachel Glennerster on how “market shaping” could help solve climate change, pandemics, and other global problems
Highlights: #188 – Matt Clancy on whether science is good
Off the Clock #4 (fka Actually After Hours): One Boxing with Julian Hazell
Highlights: #187 – Zach Weinersmith on how researching his book turned him from a space optimist into a “space bastard”
Highlights: #186 – Dean Spears on why babies are born small in Uttar Pradesh, and how to save their lives
Highlights: #185 – Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals
Highlights: #184 – Zvi Mowshowitz on sleeping on sleeper agents, and the biggest AI updates since ChatGPT
Actually After Hours #3: Finding the Tail with Dwarkesh Patel
Robert Wright & Rob Wiblin on the truth about effective altruism
Highlights: #183 – Spencer Greenberg on causation without correlation, money and happiness, lightgassing, hype vs value, and more
Highlights: #182 – Bob Fischer on comparing the welfare of humans, chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and more
Christian Ruhl on why we're entering a new nuclear age — and how to reduce the risks
Highlights: #181 – Laura Deming on the science that could keep us healthy in our 80s and beyond
Actually After Hours #2: Coming to America with Joel Becker
Highlights: #180 – Hugo Mercier on why gullibility and misinformation are overrated
Highlights: #179 – Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety
Actually After Hours #1: Bean Counting with Chana Messinger
Highlights: #178 – Emily Oster on what the evidence actually says about pregnancy and parenting
Highlights: #177 – Nathan Labenz on recent AI breakthroughs and navigating the growing rift between AI safety and accelerationist camps
Highlights: #146 – Robert Long on why large language models like GPT (probably) aren’t conscious
Highlights: #176 – Nathan Labenz on the final push for AGI, understanding OpenAI’s leadership drama, and red-teaming frontier models
Highlights: #175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child
Highlights: #174 – Nita Farahany on the neurotechnology already being used to convict criminals and manipulate workers
Highlights: #173 – Jeff Sebo on digital minds, and how to avoid sleepwalking into a major moral catastrophe
Career review: AI safety technical research
Highlights: #147 – Spencer Greenberg on stopping valueless papers from getting into top journals
Benjamin Todd on the history of 80,000 Hours
Highlights: #172 – Bryan Caplan on why you should stop reading the news
Highlights: #148 – Johannes Ackva on unfashionable climate interventions that work, and fashionable ones that don’t
Highlights: #171 – Alison Young on how top labs have jeopardised public health with repeated biosafety failures
Highlights: #170 – Santosh Harish on how air pollution is responsible for ~12% of global deaths — and how to get that number down
Highlights: #169 – Paul Niehaus on whether cash transfers cause economic growth, and keeping theft to acceptable levels
Highlights: #168 – Ian Morris on whether deep history says we’re heading for an intelligence explosion
Highlights: #167 – Seren Kell on the research gaps holding back alternative proteins from mass adoption
Highlights: #166 – Tantum Collins on what he’s learned as an AI policy insider at the White House, DeepMind and elsewhere
Highlights: #165 – Anders Sandberg on war in space, whether civilisations age, and the best things possible in our universe
Highlights: #164 – Kevin Esvelt on cults that want to kill everyone, stealth vs wildfire pandemics, and how he felt inventing gene drives
Highlights: #163 – Toby Ord on the perils of maximising the good that you do
Highlights: #162 – Mustafa Suleyman on getting Washington and Silicon Valley to tame AI
Highlights: #161 – Michael Webb on whether AI will soon cause job loss, lower incomes, and higher inequality — or the opposite
Highlights: #160 – Hannah Ritchie on why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment
Highlights: #159 – Jan Leike on OpenAI’s massive push to make superintelligence safe in 4 years or less
Highlights: #158 – Holden Karnofsky on how AIs might take over even if they’re no smarter than humans, and his four-part playbook for AI risk
Highlights: #157 – Ezra Klein on existential risk from AI and what DC could do about it
Highlights: #156 – Markus Anderljung on how to regulate cutting-edge AI models
Highlights: #155 – Lennart Heim on the compute governance era and what has to come after
Highlights: #154 – Rohin Shah on DeepMind and trying to fairly hear out both AI doomers and doubters
Alex Lawsen on avoiding 10 mistakes people make when pursuing a high-impact career
Highlights: #153 – Elie Hassenfeld on two big picture critiques of GiveWell’s approach, and six lessons from their recent work
Highlights: #152 – Joe Carlsmith on navigating serious philosophical confusion
Highlights: #151 – Ajeya Cotra on accidentally teaching AI models to deceive us
Highlights: #150 – Tom Davidson on how quickly AI could transform the world
Hannah Boettcher on the mental health challenges that come with trying to have a big impact
Highlights: #149 – Tim LeBon on how altruistic perfectionism is self-defeating
Operations management in high-impact organisations (Article)
What is social impact? A definition (Article)
How to make tough career decisions (Article)
Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame
Career review: Journalism (Article)
Luisa and Robert Long on how to make independent research more fun
China-related AI safety and governance paths (Article)
Anonymous advice: If you want to reduce AI risk, should you take roles that advance AI capabilities? (Article)
Is climate change the greatest threat facing humanity today? (Article)
Marcus Davis on Rethink Priorities
Preventing catastrophic pandemics (Article)
Kuhan Jeyapragasan on effective altruism university groups
Career review: Founder of new projects tackling top problems (Article)
Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla on the Shrimp Welfare Project
Space governance (Article)
Clay Graubard and Robert de Neufville on forecasting the war in Ukraine
Michelle and Habiba on what they’d tell their younger selves, and the impact of the 1-1 team
Alex Lawsen on his advice for students
Rob and Keiran on the philosophy of The 80,000 Hours Podcast
Introducing 80k After Hours