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"Communication careers" by Luisa Rodriguez & Benjamin Todd
---
client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: mds
narrator_time: 2h30m
qa_time: 0h30m
---
Many of the highest-impact people in history have been communicators and advocates of one kind or another.
Take Rosa Parks, who in 1955 refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus, sparking a protest which led to a Supreme Court ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional. Parks was a seamstress in her day job, but in her spare time she was involved with the civil rights movement. After she was arrested, she and the NAACP used widely distributed fliers to launch a total boycott of buses in a city with 40,000 African Americans, while simultaneously pushing forward with legal action. This led to major progress for civil rights.
Communication can be aimed at a broad audience (like in Parks’s case) or a narrow influential group. This means there are also many examples of important communicators you’ve never heard of, like Viktor Zhdanov.
In the 20th century, smallpox killed around 400 million people — far more than died in all the century’s wars and political famines.
Although credit for the elimination of smallpox often goes to D.A. Henderson (who directly oversaw the programme), it was Viktor Zhdanov who lobbied the World Health Organization to start the elimination campaign in the first place — while facing significant opposition from the members of the World Health Assembly (the proposal passed by just two votes). Without his involvement, smallpox’s elimination probably would not have happened until much later, costing millions of lives, and possibly not at all.
So why has communicating important ideas sometimes been so effective?
Original article:
https://80000hours.org/articles/communication/
Narrated for 80,000 Hours by TYPE III AUDIO.
Share feedback on this narration.
View all episodes
By TYPE III AUDIO---
client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: mds
narrator_time: 2h30m
qa_time: 0h30m
---
Many of the highest-impact people in history have been communicators and advocates of one kind or another.
Take Rosa Parks, who in 1955 refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus, sparking a protest which led to a Supreme Court ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional. Parks was a seamstress in her day job, but in her spare time she was involved with the civil rights movement. After she was arrested, she and the NAACP used widely distributed fliers to launch a total boycott of buses in a city with 40,000 African Americans, while simultaneously pushing forward with legal action. This led to major progress for civil rights.
Communication can be aimed at a broad audience (like in Parks’s case) or a narrow influential group. This means there are also many examples of important communicators you’ve never heard of, like Viktor Zhdanov.
In the 20th century, smallpox killed around 400 million people — far more than died in all the century’s wars and political famines.
Although credit for the elimination of smallpox often goes to D.A. Henderson (who directly oversaw the programme), it was Viktor Zhdanov who lobbied the World Health Organization to start the elimination campaign in the first place — while facing significant opposition from the members of the World Health Assembly (the proposal passed by just two votes). Without his involvement, smallpox’s elimination probably would not have happened until much later, costing millions of lives, and possibly not at all.
So why has communicating important ideas sometimes been so effective?
Original article:
https://80000hours.org/articles/communication/
Narrated for 80,000 Hours by TYPE III AUDIO.
Share feedback on this narration.