EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

The School for Moral Ambition (SMA) describes itself as a movement of idealists taking on the world's most pressing problems. Their proposed campaign to 'abolish the tobacco industry altogether' is one of their more ambitious proposals. This would require governments to override the consumption choices of the roughly one in five adults globally who use tobacco.

SMA quickly dismisses the idea that these billions of adults are making free choices about what to put into their bodies, stating

The problem with this “free choice” argument is that, for most smokers, it's not: more than two-thirds say they want to quit and over half have made a serious attempt to quit. The comparison often made with alcohol consumption also doesn’t wash for this reason: only 3 to 4 percent of people who drink alcohol are addicted, and many consider it an enjoyable part of their lives.

But if regretted choices are treated as non-choices, the implication is extremely broad: many of us regret our social media use, diet, screen time, or sleep habits. We generally do not conclude from this that the state should control those behaviors. It is also ironic SMA chooses alcohol as an example of a more [...]

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First published:

December 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Wg8DXzeJ9rkmqrcze/epistemic-humility-vs-tobacco-abolition

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

We, the AIM Board and outgoing CEO Joey Savoie, are delighted to announce that Samantha Kagel has been selected as AIM's new CEO, effective December 1, 2025.

Over the last few months, we have been engaged in a highly important activity: finding AIM's next CEO. This was not an easy position to fill, as we sought someone who could lead the organization to high growth and impact while retaining the core elements that have made AIM unique.

We were committed to conducting a thorough search and put out a public call for candidates, considering over 100 applicants from both public applications and referrals. We evaluated external candidates, internal team members, and past charity graduates, and ultimately identified Samantha as the candidate whom we believe will best execute the next stages of AIM's development.

About Samantha

Samantha has served on AIM's executive team as Chief Programs Officer for the past 1.5 years, leading the strategy and delivery of our Charity Entrepreneurship function. In this role, she has demonstrated exceptional capability across multiple dimensions: building collaborative teams, driving strategic execution, and maintaining unwavering focus on impact.

Before joining the executive team, Samantha successfully filled nearly every role across our organization [...]

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Outline:

(01:00) About Samantha

(02:13) A note from our incoming CEO, Samantha Kagel

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First published:

December 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/r8GSGnay6scK7Jmb5/announcing-the-new-aim-ceo

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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TL;DR

• We are live: The Karoteno effective giving platform is now operational at karoteno.org.
• The Goal: A "normie-friendly" donation experience for Spanish speakers who find traditional EA analysis alienating.
• Action: Share this with your non-EA friends! We are also running a donation-matching campaign this December—please reach out if you’d like to help fund the matching pool.

Introduction

Hi everyone,

A few months ago, I posted here about a project aiming to bridge the gap between effective giving and the general public in Spain.

I’m happy to share that the technical and legal infrastructure is complete, and Karoteno is live.

While this project is rooted in EA principles, our target audience is not the existing EA community. Instead, we are optimizing for "everyday" donors—people who want to do good but are often alienated by the heavy data analysis, jargon, or philosophical density found in our circles.

Below, I outline the reasoning behind our approach, our current operational status, and details on how you can support our upcoming matching experiment.

The Context: Why another platform?

Those familiar with the Spanish effective giving landscape know that Ayuda Efectiva is already doing incredible work. So, why build Karoteno?

The answer lies in broadening the funnel.

[...]

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Outline:

(00:12) TL;DR

(00:44) Introduction

(01:41) The Context: Why another platform?

(02:30) Our Model: Emotion-fueled, Reason-driven

(03:50) Current Status

(04:16) The December Experiment: A Matching Campaign

(05:04) How you can help

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First published:

November 29th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/q32CxHTjKbvEKHkud/helping-our-non-ea-friends-give-effectively-update-on

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The Giving What We Can research team is excited to share the results of our 2025 round of evaluations of charity evaluators and grantmakers!

In this round, we completed two evaluations that will inform our donation recommendations for the 2025 giving season. As with our previous rounds, there are substantial limitations to these evaluations, but we nevertheless think that they are a significant improvement to a landscape in which there were previously no independent evaluations of evaluators’ work.

In this post, we share the key takeaways from our two 2025 evaluations and link to the full reports. In our conclusion, we explain our plans for future evaluations.

Please also see our website for more context on why and how we evaluate evaluators.

We look forward to your questions and comments! (Note: we will respond when we return from leave on the 8th of December)

Key takeaways from each of our 2025 evaluations

The two evaluators included in our 2025 round of evaluating evaluators were:

• GiveWell (full report)
• Happier Lives Institute (full report)

GiveWell

Based on our evaluation, we have decided to continue including GiveWell's Top Charities, Top Charities Fund and All Grants Fund in GWWC's [...]

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Outline:

(01:08) Key takeaways from each of our 2025 evaluations

(01:25) GiveWell

(03:18) Happier Lives Institute (HLI)

(06:29) Conclusion and future plans

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First published:

December 1st, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sAiHYuuGGT7qvne5P/gwwc-s-2025-evaluations-of-evaluators

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Here's a list of my donations so far this year (put together as part of thinking through whether I and others should participate in an OpenAI equity donation round). I originally posted them to LessWrong as a shortform, but since donations are a more central topic on the EA forum I decided to make it a top-level post here.

They are roughly in chronological order (though it's possible I missed one or two). I include some thoughts on what I've learned and what I'm now doing differently at the bottom.

1. $100k to Lightcone
   1. This grant was largely motivated by my respect for Oliver Habryka's quality of thinking and personal judgment.
   2. This ended up being matched by the Survival and Flourishing Fund (though I didn't know it would be when I made it). Note that they'll continue matching donations to Lightcone until the end of March 2026.
2. $50k to the Alignment of Complex Systems (ACS) research group
   1. This grant was largely motivated by my respect for Jan Kulveit's philosophical and technical thinking.
3. $20k to Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel for support with running agent foundations conferences.
4. ~$25k to Inference Magazine to host a public debate on the plausibility of [...]

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First published:

November 29th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CMxrGfRiL3vYsWxxW/my-2025-donations-so-far

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Executive Summary

The EANZ Summit 2025 brought together 70 participants at the University of Otago Christchurch Medical School for our inaugural national conference. The summit featured five speakers, cause area meetups, and ample networking time through a serial content format with dedicated breakout spaces. At its core it was a one-day event, but Friday and Sunday satellite events made it a 3-day extravaganza for many of us.

The summit attracted a healthy mix of newcomers and established community members. Had an average recommendation score of 8.3/10. The 1-floor-only nature of the venue encouraged intermingling, the energy was high throughout the day, and the mix of experience levels fostered valuable connections.

Short term outcomes:

• Attendees surpassed a $20k matching donation goal for global health charities (regular donors ineligible)
• Sparked the launch of the Christchurch AI Risk and Ethics Community
• One attendee reported they intended to take a GWWC trial pledge following the Summit
• The EA Auckland group started back up with a couple new events (after being dormant for over a year)
• Ruben got a job offer and is now gainfully employed at EquiStamp

1. Facts and Figures

The EANZ Summit was held on the 7th floor at [...]

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Outline:

(00:12) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ Large group of people wearing name badges seated on tiered lecture hall benches.

(00:23) Executive Summary

(01:50) 1. Facts and Figures

(02:14) Career stage

(02:39) Prior EA experience

(03:19) Demographics

(03:59) Where did they hear about the summit?

(04:27) Cause areas

(05:20) 2. Programme

(07:40) 3. Core team and Volunteers

(09:13) 4. Budget and Finances

(11:51) 5. What went well and notes for next time

(12:05) Good:

(13:46) Short term Outcomes

(14:47) Uncertain

(15:16) Notes for next time:

(18:07) 6. Post-Summit Feedback

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First published:

November 26th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/t4eiLrAAcLAdY6FFK/eanz-summit-2025-retrospective

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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A note from Naomi Nederlof, Community Building Grants Program Manager:

I asked Andy, the lead organizer of EA DC, to write this playbook based on the approaches that have made his group one of the most successful city groups in our program. We initiated this project because we think many new organizers can benefit from concrete and experience-based guidance. I would be excited about more city and national group organisers adopting this advice!

Intro

I’ve been organizing the Effective Altruism DC group since 2021. I talk to a lot of new EA city, national, and career group organizers about the first things they should aim to do with their groups, and I often find myself repeating the same advice. I’m writing this as a short playbook for a new organizer, with concrete actionable advice I would give to make the first few months of starting an EA professional network go well.

This is my model of a successful EA city group. Every EA group organizer should aim for their group to achieve this in their first two months

1) It is very easy for anyone in the area to onboard to the group

Your online presence

• Maintain an [...]

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Outline:

(00:38) Intro

(01:07) This is my model of a successful EA city group. Every EA group organizer should aim for their group to achieve this in their first two months

(01:17) 1) It is very easy for anyone in the area to onboard to the group

(01:24) Your online presence

(02:54) Making individual members feel seen

(03:17) 2) The group promotes a high-fidelity understanding of EA

(03:23) Structured onboarding curriculum

(04:13) Reinforcing core concepts

(05:22) 3) The group makes the local and global EA network of ideas, people, and career and donation opportunities legible and accessible

(05:33) Connecting people

(06:09) Highlighting opportunities

(07:28) 4) The organizers have taken significant time to learn about EA

(08:39) 5) The organizers themselves are welcoming, professional, knowledgeable, upbeat, and provide generous authority

(11:49) 6) The group has clear public expectations for community health that make the space feel welcoming.

(11:56) Establishing norms

(13:04) Defining the groups purpose

(14:15) An EA group should also aim to have each of these resources within the first two months. Many of these exist as templates you can copy from CEA

(15:37) These are some general vibes I think the best EA groups consistently give off

(16:27) Core activities I think most EA groups should run

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First published:

November 28th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qLDrntnGpwgMj5wLD/a-playbook-for-new-ea-groups

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

As long as we are not in the year 2100, we will not know exactly what path humanity will have taken when it comes to climate change in this century. But we can at least make educated guesses about the trajectory we are on. Given this, it seems that a good amount of climate science is aimed at hopeful temperature ranges below 2°C, which we will likely miss. The focus on below 2°C stems from the aspirational climate targets that humanity has set itself. We have less research on the currently most probable looking temperatures far above 2°C and even less on low probability, but high impact tail risk warming. By tail risk, I mean both the chance of unexpectedly high emissions and the chance of unexpectedly high temperatures from a given level of emissions. This post aims to give an overview of why I think that climate science is at least partly looking in the wrong direction to understand such risks.

Reasons for pathways above 2°C

First, let's explore why it seems to have gotten more likely again that we will end up in a more than 2°C world. While there has been some [...]

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Outline:

(01:07) Reasons for pathways above 2°C

(01:36) Green backlash

(03:14) Impact of climate policies

(04:26) Advocacy against climate action from populist right wing parties

(05:47) Political consequences of the green backlash

(06:35) Summing it up

(07:00) Path dependence

(09:07) Hot 2020s

(10:52) Do we actually know what might happen in more extreme warming?

(10:57) Temperature focus

(12:31) Scenario focus

(14:37) Exploring tail risk is a good idea actually

(17:44) Conclusion

(18:59) How to cite

(19:14) Endnotes

(19:56) References

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First published:

November 26th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cAepBNzxzSyw3a5i8/does-climate-science-focus-on-the-right-temperature-range

Linkpost URL:
https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/does-climate-science-focus-on-the

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Note: Voting opens an hour after the publication of this post.

This is a thread for explaining your vote, discussing it, and maybe changing your mind. It'll be pinned on the frontpage throughout the Donation Election.

Some comments on this thread are cross-posted from a text box which appears when you reach the end of the voting process, but everyone is welcome to post here whenever.

You can read about all the candidates here, and donate to the donation election fund here.

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First published:

November 24th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/prnkA8BksF7Bbobfc/donation-election-discussion-thread-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Executive Summary

Welcome to ALLFED's 2025 Highlights, our annual look back at how Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters has advanced its mission to help build resilience to global catastrophic food system failure.

Within These 2025 Highlights:

• Another prolific year in research (sixteen papers released), strengthening the field of food resilience research for global catastrophic risks, with more in progress.
• Continued growth in our policy work, expanding global engagement, and influence.
• Strong contributions from our broader ALLFED team, including communications and operations, working to grow our visibility, strengthen partnerships, and keep our high-impact organization running through a year of major transition.

ALLFED's research and pilots in 2025 have advanced global understanding of how to strengthen the food system against catastrophic shocks. Our team has produced a set of flagship studies—from the agenda-setting Global Catastrophic Food Failures paper and analyses of food-trade disruption and abrupt infrastructure loss, through to work on seaweed cultivation, power-to-food pathways, and urban water vulnerability—which have already been informing discussions at EGU General Assembly 2025, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), and national climate-security and disaster-risk-reduction forums. We have also delivered research and policy work on strengthening the resilience of low-and middle-income [...]

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Outline:

(00:13) Executive Summary

(00:28) Within These 2025 Highlights:

(04:40) Research

(07:56) Our Published, Peer-Reviewed Research

(11:29) Research Pending Peer Review

(21:17) Policy

(24:22) Sharing ALLFED's Work More Widely

(25:20) Media Highlights

(25:26) Mapping Resilient Food Solutions

(26:10) More 2025 Event Highlights

(27:25) EA Events

(29:04) Governance

(29:07) Strengthening Governance

(29:23) New Board Members

(30:58) Our Team

(31:20) Key Team Changes

(34:14) Your Giving

(36:01) Our Thanks

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First published:

November 27th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bZ6kQAhRWPN7zDpav/allfed-s-2025-highlights-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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