2023 Mega-highlights Extravaganza

80,000 Hours Podcast

Happy new year! We've got a different kind of holiday release for you today. Rather than a 'classic episode,' we've put together one of our favourite highlights from each episode of the show that came out in 2023.

That's 32 of our favourite ideas packed into one episode that's so bursting with substance it might be more than the human mind can safely handle.

There's something for everyone here:

• Ezra Klein on punctuated equilibrium
• Tom Davidson on why AI takeoff might be shockingly fast
• Johannes Ackva on political action versus lifestyle changes
• Hannah Ritchie on how buying environmentally friendly technology helps low-income countries
• Bryan Caplan on rational irrationality on the part of voters
• Jan Leike on whether the release of ChatGPT increased or reduced AI extinction risks
• Athena Aktipis on why elephants get deadly cancers less often than humans
• Anders Sandberg on the lifespan of civilisations
• Nita Farahany on hacking neural interfaces

...plus another 23 such gems.

And they're in an order that our audio engineer Simon Monsour described as having an "eight-dimensional-tetris-like rationale."

I don't know what the hell that means either, but I'm curious to find out.

And remember: if you like these highlights, note that we release 20-minute highlights reels for every new episode over on our sister feed, which is called 80k After Hours. So even if you're struggling to make time to listen to every single one, you can always get some of the best bits of our episodes.

We hope for all the best things to happen for you in 2024, and we'll be back with a traditional classic episode soon.

This Mega-highlights Extravaganza was brought to you by Ben Cordell, Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic Armstrong