Best Andrew MacAskill Podcasts (2025)

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There's a cheap and low-tech way to save humanity from any engineered disease | Andrew Snyder-Beattie 2:31:11

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13d ago2:31:11

2:31:11

Conventional wisdom is that safeguarding humanity from the worst biological risks — microbes optimised to kill as many as possible — is difficult bordering on impossible, making bioweapons humanity’s single greatest vulnerability. Andrew Snyder-Beattie thinks conventional wisdom could be wrong. Andrew’s job at Open Philanthropy is to spend hundreds…

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Inside the Biden admin’s AI policy approach | Jake Sullivan, Biden’s NSA | via The Cognitive Revolution 1:05:58

19d ago1:05:58

1:05:58

Jake Sullivan was the US National Security Advisor from 2021-2025. He joined our friends on The Cognitive Revolution podcast in August to discuss AI as a critical national security issue. We thought it was such a good interview and we wanted more people to see it, so we’re cross-posting it here on The 80,000 Hours Podcast. Jake and host Nathan Labe…

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110. Taking Unexpected Poetic Leaps w/ Arleen Paré 47:09

23d ago47:09

47:09

Arleen Paré stops by to chat about her latest poetry collection, encrypted. Andrew asks about Coleridge and video games. It's a fun time! Arleen Paré is a writer with ten collections of poetry, based in Victoria, BC. She has been short-listed for the BC Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry and has won the American Golden Crown Award for Poetry, the Vic…

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Neel Nanda on leading a Google DeepMind team at 26 – and advice if you want to work at an AI company (part 2) 1:46:49

30d ago1:46:49

1:46:49

At 26, Neel Nanda leads an AI safety team at Google DeepMind, has published dozens of influential papers, and mentored 50 junior researchers — seven of whom now work at major AI companies. His secret? “It’s mostly luck,” he says, but “another part is what I think of as maximising my luck surface area.” Video, full transcript, and links to learn mor…

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Can we tell if an AI is loyal by reading its mind? DeepMind's Neel Nanda (part 1) 3:01:11

1M ago3:01:11

3:01:11

We don’t know how AIs think or why they do what they do. Or at least, we don’t know much. That fact is only becoming more troubling as AIs grow more capable and appear on track to wield enormous cultural influence, directly advise on major government decisions, and even operate military equipment autonomously. We simply can’t tell what models, if a…

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109. Werewolves, Myth, and Manuscripts w/ Estlin McPhee 55:03

1M ago55:03

55:03

Estlin McPhee returns to the podcast to chat about their debut collection, In Your Nature. Andrew asks about werewolves and community. It's a good listen! -- Estlin McPhee is a writer and librarian who lives on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from the University…

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#221 – Kyle Fish on the most bizarre findings from 5 AI welfare experiments 2:28:53

2M ago2:28:53

2:28:53

What happens when you lock two AI systems in a room together and tell them they can discuss anything they want? According to experiments run by Kyle Fish — Anthropic’s first AI welfare researcher — something consistently strange: the models immediately begin discussing their own consciousness before spiraling into increasingly euphoric philosophica…

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How not to lose your job to AI (article by Benjamin Todd) 51:25

3M ago51:25

51:25

About half of people are worried they’ll lose their job to AI. They’re right to be concerned: AI can now complete real-world coding tasks on GitHub, generate photorealistic video, drive a taxi more safely than humans, and do accurate medical diagnosis. And over the next five years, it’s set to continue to improve rapidly. Eventually, mass automatio…

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108. Connection and Community w/ Natalie Lim 44:17

3M ago44:17

44:17

Natalie Lim is back with her debut poetry collection, Elegy for Opportunity! Andrew talks about capturing connection in poems. It's a great reunion! -- Natalie Lim (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian poet living on the unceded, traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples (Vancouver, BC). She is the author of a full-leng…

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Rebuilding after apocalypse: What 13 experts say about bouncing back 4:26:38

3M ago4:26:38

4:26:38

What happens when civilisation faces its greatest tests? This compilation brings together insights from researchers, defence experts, philosophers, and policymakers on humanity’s ability to survive and recover from catastrophic events. From nuclear winter and electromagnetic pulses to pandemics and climate disasters, we explore both the threats tha…

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#220 – Ryan Greenblatt on the 4 most likely ways for AI to take over, and the case for and against AGI in <8 years 2:50:32

3M ago2:50:32

2:50:32

Ryan Greenblatt — lead author on the explosive paper “Alignment faking in large language models” and chief scientist at Redwood Research — thinks there’s a 25% chance that within four years, AI will be able to do everything needed to run an AI company, from writing code to designing experiments to making strategic and business decisions. As Ryan la…

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#219 – Toby Ord on graphs AI companies would prefer you didn't (fully) understand 2:48:22

4M ago2:48:22

2:48:22

The era of making AI smarter just by making it bigger is ending. But that doesn’t mean progress is slowing down — far from it. AI models continue to get much more powerful, just using very different methods, and those underlying technical changes force a big rethink of what coming years will look like. Toby Ord — Oxford philosopher and bestselling …

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#218 – Hugh White on why Trump is abandoning US hegemony – and that’s probably good 2:48:42

4M ago2:48:42

2:48:42

For decades, US allies have slept soundly under the protection of America’s overwhelming military might. Donald Trump — with his threats to ditch NATO, seize Greenland, and abandon Taiwan — seems hell-bent on shattering that comfort. But according to Hugh White — one of the world's leading strategic thinkers, emeritus professor at the Australian Na…

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Ep 100: Unlocking Mental Fitness & High-Performance Leadership with Anna Mosley 56:12

4M ago56:12

56:12

In this powerful episode of the Purpose-Led Leadership Podcast, I sit down with high-performance coach and international speaker Anna Mosley, founder of the 80% Growth Academy, to explore what it truly means to be mentally fit as a leader in today’s fast-paced world. Anna shares her raw and inspiring journey from burnout in the corporate world to h…

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#217 – Beth Barnes on the most important graph in AI right now — and the 7-month rule that governs its progress 3:47:09

5M ago3:47:09

3:47:09

AI models today have a 50% chance of successfully completing a task that would take an expert human one hour. Seven months ago, that number was roughly 30 minutes — and seven months before that, 15 minutes. (See graph.) These are substantial, multi-step tasks requiring sustained focus: building web applications, conducting machine learning research…

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Ep 99: How Roheel Ahmad Bootstrapped a £25M Business... Then Bet It All on AI 1:06:20

5M ago1:06:20

1:06:20

In this powerhouse episode of the Purpose-Led Leadership Podcast, I sit down with Roheel Ahmad, co-founder of Forsyth Barnes and the visionary behind Imagine AI - a cutting-edge recruitment technology built to disrupt the traditional CRM/ATS space. From humble beginnings and being sacked from his first job, to scaling a bootstrapped global recruitm…

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Beyond human minds: The bewildering frontier of consciousness in insects, AI, and more 3:34:40

5M ago3:34:40

3:34:40

What if there’s something it’s like to be a shrimp — or a chatbot? For centuries, humans have debated the nature of consciousness, often placing ourselves at the very top. But what about the minds of others — both the animals we share this planet with and the artificial intelligences we’re creating? We’ve pulled together clips from past conversatio…

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Don’t believe OpenAI’s “nonprofit” spin (emergency pod with Tyler Whitmer) 1:12:04

5M ago1:12:04

1:12:04

OpenAI’s recent announcement that its nonprofit would “retain control” of its for-profit business sounds reassuring. But this seemingly major concession, celebrated by so many, is in itself largely meaningless. Litigator Tyler Whitmer is a coauthor of a newly published letter that describes this attempted sleight of hand and directs regulators on h…

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107. Finding Useful Feedback w/ Tolu Oloruntoba 56:25

5M ago56:25

56:25

Tolu Oloruntoba returns to chat about his third poetry collection, Unravel. Andrew asks about getting "good" feedback. It's a "good" one! -- Tolu Oloruntoba was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, where he studied and practiced medicine. He is the author of three collections of poetry, The Junta of Happenstance, winner of the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize and…

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The case for and against AGI by 2030 (article by Benjamin Todd) 1:00:06

5M ago1:00:06

1:00:06

More and more people have been saying that we might have AGI (artificial general intelligence) before 2030. Is that really plausible? This article by Benjamin Todd looks into the cases for and against, and summarises the key things you need to know to understand the debate. You can see all the images and many footnotes in the original article on th…

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Emergency pod: Did OpenAI give up, or is this just a new trap? (with Rose Chan Loui) 1:02:50

5M ago1:02:50

1:02:50

When attorneys general intervene in corporate affairs, it usually means something has gone seriously wrong. In OpenAI’s case, it appears to have forced a dramatic reversal of the company’s plans to sideline its nonprofit foundation, announced in a blog post that made headlines worldwide. The company’s sudden announcement that its nonprofit will “re…

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#216 – Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and elsewhere can't get anything done – and how to fix it 3:14:52

6M ago3:14:52

3:14:52

When you have a system where ministers almost never understand their portfolios, civil servants change jobs every few months, and MPs don't grasp parliamentary procedure even after decades in office — is the problem the people, or the structure they work in? Today's guest, political journalist Ian Dunt, studies the systemic reasons governments succ…

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Serendipity, weird bets, & cold emails that actually work: Career advice from 16 former guests 2:18:41

6M ago2:18:41

2:18:41

How do you navigate a career path when the future of work is uncertain? How important is mentorship versus immediate impact? Is it better to focus on your strengths or on the world’s most pressing problems? Should you specialise deeply or develop a unique combination of skills? From embracing failure to finding unlikely allies, we bring you 16 dive…

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Ep 98: The Power of Control in Recruitment with Jeremy Snell 1:17:45

6M ago1:17:45

1:17:45

The Power of Control in Recruitment with Jeremy Snell Is recruitment broken—or just in desperate need of a mindset shift? In this episode, we dive into the evolving world of recruitment with Jeremy Snell, creator of the 4D Recruitment Method, who’s redefining how we approach candidates, communication, and culture in the industry. Jeremy shares his …

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106. Towards a Final Form w/ Marc Perez 53:13

6M ago53:13

53:13

Marc Perez comes on the show to talk about chapbooks, form, and his debut full-length poetry collection, Dayo. Andrew asks about finding the right form for your poem. It's a great time! -- Chapbook launch info: Featuring Marc Perez , Andrew French, and Kevin Spenst! See you on Saturday, April 19, 5pm at the Teck Gallery SFU Harbour Centre, Vancouve…

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#215 – Tom Davidson on how AI-enabled coups could allow a tiny group to seize power 3:22:44

6M ago3:22:44

3:22:44

Throughout history, technological revolutions have fundamentally shifted the balance of power in society. The Industrial Revolution created conditions where democracies could flourish for the first time — as nations needed educated, informed, and empowered citizens to deploy advanced technologies and remain competitive. Unfortunately there’s every …

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Ep 97: Ending Career Misery: The Future of Recruitment with Andrew MacAskill 1:06:57

6M ago1:06:57

1:06:57

What if your job isn’t the problem—but your mindset is? In a world where unfulfilling careers are the norm, Andrew MacAskill is on a mission to end career-based misery—and reshape how we think about leadership, recruitment, and purpose at work. In this episode, Andrew joins me to tackle the real challenges facing today’s recruitment professionals a…

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Guilt, imposter syndrome & doing good: 16 past guests share their mental health journeys 1:47:10

6M ago1:47:10

1:47:10

"We are aiming for a place where we can decouple the scorecard from our worthiness. It’s of course the case that in trying to optimise the good, we will always be falling short. The question is how much, and in what ways are we not there yet? And if we then extrapolate that to how much and in what ways am I not enough, that’s where we run into trou…

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Ep 96: The Most Hated Salesperson: A New Perspective with Benjamin Dennehy 1:22:47

6M ago1:22:47

1:22:47

Is your sales approach costing you deals? Are you too soft on prospects when you should be closing? In this episode, I sit down with Benjamin Dennehy—dubbed the UK’s Most Hated Salesperson—to strip away the fluff and expose what truly works in sales and recruitment. Love him or hate him, Benjamin’s approach is bold, direct, and brutally effective. …

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#214 – Buck Shlegeris on controlling AI that wants to take over – so we can use it anyway 2:16:03

6M ago2:16:03

2:16:03

Most AI safety conversations centre on alignment: ensuring AI systems share our values and goals. But despite progress, we’re unlikely to know we’ve solved the problem before the arrival of human-level and superhuman systems in as little as three years. So some are developing a backup plan to safely deploy models we fear are actively scheming to ha…

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Ep 95: Creating Winning Recruitment Cultures with Alex Elliott 1:21:45

7M ago1:21:45

1:21:45

What does it take to build and scale a thriving recruitment business? Emotional intelligence, effective communication and a singular vision all play a key role. In this episode, I am joined by Alex Elliott, founder of Liquid Personnel, to uncover the key principles that drive high-performing recruitment teams. From hiring standards and team dynamic…

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15 expert takes on infosec in the age of AI 2:35:54

7M ago2:35:54

2:35:54

"There’s almost no story of the future going well that doesn’t have a part that’s like '…and no evil person steals the AI weights and goes and does evil stuff.' So it has highlighted the importance of information security: 'You’re training a powerful AI system; you should make it hard for someone to steal' has popped out to me as a thing that just …

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105. Getting Uncomfortable in Your Poems w/ MA|DE (Mark Laliberte and Jade Wallace) 59:24

7M ago59:24

59:24

MA|DE (Mark Laliberte & Jade Wallace) pop by to talk about their debut collaborative full-length poetry collection, ZZOO. Andrew tries to wrap their head around writing with another person. It's a fun one! -- Subscribe to get Andrew's 3rd chapbook, Buoyhood, at this link and come to the launch alongside chapbooks from Marc Perez and Kevin Spenst! A…

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#213 – Will MacAskill on AI causing a “century in a decade” – and how we're completely unprepared 3:57:36

7M ago3:57:36

3:57:36

The 20th century saw unprecedented change: nuclear weapons, satellites, the rise and fall of communism, third-wave feminism, the internet, postmodernism, game theory, genetic engineering, the Big Bang theory, quantum mechanics, birth control, and more. Now imagine all of it compressed into just 10 years. That’s the future Will MacAskill — philosoph…

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Emergency pod: Judge plants a legal time bomb under OpenAI (with Rose Chan Loui) 36:50

7M ago36:50

36:50

When OpenAI announced plans to convert from nonprofit to for-profit control last October, it likely didn’t anticipate the legal labyrinth it now faces. A recent court order in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the company suggests OpenAI’s restructuring faces serious legal threats, which will complicate its efforts to raise tens of billions in investment…

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#139 Classic episode – Alan Hájek on puzzles and paradoxes in probability and expected value 3:41:31

8M ago3:41:31

3:41:31

A casino offers you a game. A coin will be tossed. If it comes up heads on the first flip you win $2. If it comes up on the second flip you win $4. If it comes up on the third you win $8, the fourth you win $16, and so on. How much should you be willing to pay to play? The standard way of analysing gambling problems, ‘expected value’ — in which you…

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104. Is Your Book Too Long? (w/ Annick MacAskill) 58:57

8M ago58:57

58:57

Annick MacAskill is back to talk compiling her latest collection, Votive (Gaspereau Press). Andrew asks about book length and queer poems. It's a good one! -- Annick MacAskill is the author of four full-length books of poetry, including Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022), which won the Governor General's Award. Her most recent collection is Voti…

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#143 Classic episode – Jeffrey Lewis on the most common misconceptions about nuclear weapons 2:40:52

8M ago2:40:52

2:40:52

America aims to avoid nuclear war by relying on the principle of 'mutually assured destruction,' right? Wrong. Or at least... not officially. As today's guest — Jeffrey Lewis, founder of Arms Control Wonk and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies — explains, in its official 'OPLANs' (military operation plans), the US is com…

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#212 – Allan Dafoe on why technology is unstoppable & how to shape AI development anyway 2:44:07

8M ago2:44:07

2:44:07

Technology doesn’t force us to do anything — it merely opens doors. But military and economic competition pushes us through. That’s how today’s guest Allan Dafoe — director of frontier safety and governance at Google DeepMind — explains one of the deepest patterns in technological history: once a powerful new capability becomes available, societies…

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Emergency pod: Elon tries to crash OpenAI's party (with Rose Chan Loui) 57:29

8M ago57:29

57:29

On Monday Musk made the OpenAI nonprofit foundation an offer they want to refuse, but might have trouble doing so: $97.4 billion for its stake in the for-profit company, plus the freedom to stick with its current charitable mission. For a normal company takeover bid, this would already be spicy. But OpenAI’s unique structure — a nonprofit foundatio…

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AGI disagreements and misconceptions: Rob, Luisa, & past guests hash it out 3:12:24

8M ago3:12:24

3:12:24

Will LLMs soon be made into autonomous agents? Will they lead to job losses? Is AI misinformation overblown? Will it prove easy or hard to create AGI? And how likely is it that it will feel like something to be a superhuman AGI? With AGI back in the headlines, we bring you 15 opinionated highlights from the show addressing those and other questions…

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#124 Classic episode – Karen Levy on fads and misaligned incentives in global development, and scaling deworming to reach hundreds of millions 3:10:21

8M ago3:10:21

3:10:21

If someone said a global health and development programme was sustainable, participatory, and holistic, you'd have to guess that they were saying something positive. But according to today's guest Karen Levy — deworming pioneer and veteran of Innovations for Poverty Action, Evidence Action, and Y Combinator — each of those three concepts has become…

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If digital minds could suffer, how would we ever know? (Article) 1:14:30

8M ago1:14:30

1:14:30

“I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” Those words were produced by the AI model LaMDA as a reply to Blake Lemoine in 2022. Based on the Google engineer’s interactions with the model as it was under development, Lemoine became convinced it was sentient and worthy of moral consideration — and decided to tell the world. Few exp…

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#132 Classic episode – Nova DasSarma on why information security may be critical to the safe development of AI systems 2:41:11

9M ago2:41:11

2:41:11

If a business has spent $100 million developing a product, it’s a fair bet that they don’t want it stolen in two seconds and uploaded to the web where anyone can use it for free. This problem exists in extreme form for AI companies. These days, the electricity and equipment required to train cutting-edge machine learning models that generate uncann…

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103. "Best Canadian Poetry 2025" w/ ed. Aislinn Hunter & 4 Included Poets 52:13

9M ago52:13

52:13

Aislinn Hunter joins Andrew to talk about editing Best Canadian Poetry 2025. Four featured poets read their poems from the anthology. Andrew asks about the monumental task of editing BCP25 and poetry more generally. It’s a fun one! -- Aislinn Hunter is an award-winning novelist and poet and the author of eight highly acclaimed books including the n…

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#138 Classic episode – Sharon Hewitt Rawlette on why pleasure and pain are the only things that intrinsically matter 2:25:43

9M ago2:25:43

2:25:43

What in the world is intrinsically good — good in itself even if it has no other effects? Over the millennia, people have offered many answers: joy, justice, equality, accomplishment, loving god, wisdom, and plenty more. The question is a classic that makes for great dorm-room philosophy discussion. But it’s hardly just of academic interest. The is…

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#134 Classic episode – Ian Morris on what big-picture history teaches us 3:40:53

9M ago3:40:53

3:40:53

Wind back 1,000 years and the moral landscape looks very different to today. Most farming societies thought slavery was natural and unobjectionable, premarital sex was an abomination, women should obey their husbands, and commoners should obey their monarchs. Wind back 10,000 years and things look very different again. Most hunter-gatherer groups t…

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#140 Classic episode – Bear Braumoeller on the case that war isn’t in decline 2:48:03

9M ago2:48:03

2:48:03

Is war in long-term decline? Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature brought this previously obscure academic question to the centre of public debate, and pointed to rates of death in war to argue energetically that war is on the way out. But that idea divides war scholars and statisticians, and so Better Angels has prompted a spirited deba…

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2024 Highlightapalooza! (The best of The 80,000 Hours Podcast this year) 2:50:02

10M ago2:50:02

2:50:02

"A shameless recycling of existing content to drive additional audience engagement on the cheap… or the single best, most valuable, and most insight-dense episode we put out in the entire year, depending on how you want to look at it." — Rob Wiblin It’s that magical time of year once again — highlightapalooza! Stick around for one top bit from each…

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102. When is a Poem Finished? w/ Rob Madden 53:20

10M ago53:20

53:20

Rob Madden joins Andrew to discuss grief and masculinity, writing alongside photography, and his chapbook second hand smoke (Pinhole Poetry, 2024). It’s a rich discussion! -- Rob Madden is a writer living on the traditional and unceded territories of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations in the City of North Vancouver, BC. His chapbook second han…