Sarah Eustis-Guthrie: Why Malaria Giving Makes Sense #22

Global Poverty
Written By JD Bauman

Can rigorous research be an act of love? JD explores this theme with Sarah Eustis-Guthrie, a program officer GiveWell, the world's leading charity evaluator, where she helps direct over $150 million a year towards the most cost-effective malaria interventions. A University of Chicago graduate who came to Christian faith through a church choir, Sarah previously co-founded Maternal Health Initiative, a family planning non-profit working in Ghana.

Note: This episode was filmed in early 2025; the USAID/PEPFAR situation has evolved since then. Also, Sarah is now a Program Officer for Malaria. She speaks here in her personal capacity, not on behalf of GiveWell or its affiliates.

Articles, Scripture, organisations, and other media discussed in this episode

Mentioned Scripture

Episode Highlights:

We Know How to Stop Malaria—But Don’t

“But the thing about malaria is that we know how to stop kids from dying from malaria. We know how to diagnose malaria. We know how to prevent malaria. And we know how to treat malaria. It's not a mystery. The reason why all these kids are dying of malaria is because the global community has decided not to invest the resources in saving those lives.”

Moral Thinking & Technology

“You know, back in the time of Jesus, it wouldn't have been possible for someone to click a button on a website and donate money that would have gone to help save someone's life who was thousands of miles away. And so I think, you know, I think actually one of the reasons our society struggles with this so much, I think one of the reasons that our world is so inequitable is I don't think our like moral thinking has totally caught up to these technological changes.”

Dealing with Discouragement

“And I remember one thing someone told me when I was feeling really bummed about the org not working out. And they said, you're just on the unlucky side of an expected value bet. So you make a bet that says, this might not work out, but if it does, it's great. And what happens when you bet is that you lose some of the time, right? And I think we have to find ways of being OK with that.”

“So I remember one thought I had that was really reassuring when I was struggling with the charity not working out was thinking about the fact that many people had actually started thinking about founding our charity and then had instead decided to start other really impactful charities, charities that have saved a lot of lives, a lot of human lives, a of animal lives that have reduced suffering. ”

Can Everyday Choices Save Lives?

“And I think that it's, it's just true that there's really easy trade-offs that folks who are well off can make, where you save a lot of money that could genuinely save people's lives.  And I think there's something a bit grotesque about our culture that we don't reckon with this more. I don't think about it all the time, because that would drive me crazy.  I think for me, it's something I think about.”

Resume from here

Love Drives the Numbers

“Yeah, I think people often get really hung up on this alleged ruthlessness, right? I think people often have the sense of as soon as you're breaking out the numbers that that means that you're not thinking about other things, whether it be equity or whether it be love and care. I guess I'd say that my own quantification focus like really springs out of love and care. And I think for me, as I'm practicing it, I feel that it continues to be deeply shaped by that love and care.

You know, I think at the end of the day, the reason I do this work is because there's kids out there, you know, who are dying of terrible diseases, where they're, you know, in pain, they're suffering, they die and their loved ones have to grieve them. And that's just this horrible tragedy.”

Global Development Needs More Talent

“I think honestly, one of my biggest surprises from the last couple of years of working in development  is how talent constrained so many organizations are. So I can think of five different organizations off the top of my head where they did a hiring round, they couldn't find the right person for that job. And that ultimately meant that one person had to keep doing multiple responsibilities or they couldn't expand a certain program.  I think...

From the applicant perspective, it doesn't always feel like this  because I certainly had this experience of applying to tons of jobs and getting rejected from them.”

Be Willing to Change Your Mind

“One of the most important ones is being open-minded and willing to update on new evidence.  I think a lot of people, especially who've been in development for a while,  have a very set idea of what works and what doesn't, and they're not willing to update based on new evidence. So being willing to come in with a take and then change that take appropriately based on evidence is really important.”

  • 00:00

    Sarah, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me. Thrilled to be here. So we were talking a moment ago about malaria. Build for me the case, the strongest case you can, for why listeners should quit everything they're doing, just stop everything,  and devote themselves, their time, their money, their careers towards tackling malaria. 

    00:28

    Absolutely. So malaria is one of the biggest killers of kids globally every year. So over 500,000 people die every year from malaria, most of them kids under five. But the thing about malaria is that we know how to stop kids from dying from malaria. We know how to diagnose malaria. We know how to prevent malaria. And we know how to treat malaria. It's not a mystery. The reason why all these kids are dying of malaria is because the global community has decided not to invest the resources in saving those lives. And so we live in a world right now where fewer kids of dying of malaria today

    00:58

    than they were 20 years ago. And that is entirely due to the fact that more folks have started investing money, investing resources in things like bed net campaigns, in things like rapid diagnostic tests for malaria. But there's still so much room to go. And the reason we're not getting there is because this money isn't being invested. And so we live in this crazy moment where you can stop a kid from dying of malaria for about $5,000. That's crazy. That's the best deal you could get.

    01:27

    But there's still a lot of impact left on the table because not enough folks are working in the space and not enough folks are giving money to that space. So I'm sure a lot of listeners will have heard about this thought experiment, right? You're walking by a shallow pond and there's nobody around and you look over in the pond, you see some splashing and you look and you notice it's a kid. There's a kid drowning in the pond and you're wearing a nice suit.

    01:52

    coming back from a business trip, your suit might cost $1,000 or $2,000. You have no time. You have to jump in and save the kid, but you'll ruin your suit.  And the moral of this story is,  wouldn't you jump in and save the child?  And ≈of course you would, right?  But every day we have children dying of things like malaria, and it costs about a couple thousand dollars to save them.  And yet many of us don't do that, right?

    02:20

    Do you think that this thought experiment is relevant to the malaria case?  One counter example I hear is like, well,  the person drowning in the pond is right in front of you. But the people that would die from malaria, one, they're not all kids.  Maybe that shouldn't make a huge difference.  But you didn't give them malaria.  They're also in very difficult countries where if it isn't malaria, it might be something else that they'll get hurt from.

    02:50

    And it's maybe not your responsibility to save every person drowning in every pond around the world, right? So these are just some of the objections that I hear.  What do you usually say to objections like that?  It's funny because as you were telling this story,  it's reminding me of another story that many people listening to this podcast  may be very familiar with, the story of the Good Samaritan from the Bible.  And we have sort of a similar story where there's someone who sees someone who's suffering.

    03:20

    And it's not someone they know, it's not someone they have a personal connection with.  And we hear that there's a lot of people who go by and they don't do anything. And I think that that's an analogy that fits with the fact that there's folks suffering globally.  Most of us, most of the time don't decide to help. We're kind of walking by, we're not helping that person.  But in that story, there is someone who stops and helps this person. They don't know them, they don't have a connection to them, but they help them in this really generous way.  And in that story,

    03:49

    You know, the moral of the story is that we should try to be like that Good Samaritan. We should try to be the one who helps a stranger who's in need. And I think both from a Christian perspective and just from a broader ethical perspective, I think it's a really persuasive argument to say that we should treat everyone equally. We should see folks as having equal dignity,  as  having an equal right to our help, regardless of whether there's someone who's right next to us or if there's someone who's really far away. Nice. So.

    04:18

    Let's take the Good Samaritan parable, right? So this does seem kind of like the drowning child thought experiment, but in some ways it doesn't seem like the children dying of malaria. Idon't want, know, just, just, just to be clear, I'm arguing.  I'm curious.  Right. So, so there is this like in-person interaction between these two people. You might think there's like something holy and sacred about them being in each other's path, right? That maybe isn't the case about someone.

    04:46

    dying of malaria or potentially at risk of malaria, thousands, tens of thousands of kilometers away.  And  so what do you think about that?  And another objection that I often hear is this Ordo Amoris objection, which has come up rather recently in very unfortunate circumstances. This idea that we have duties towards specific people that we have sacred relationships to, maybe first and foremost towards

    05:14

    our parents, our children, our families, our local communities. And then we have a duty towards the rest of the world if there's something left over. So those are just two objections that I often hear raised at this point. So do you have thoughts on this? I think they're important things to think about. So first of all, one thing I'll say is that one challenge I find in interpreting the Bible and living by the Bible is the fact that the Bible is talking about a world that's very different from our own. So this might sound obvious to put it like this, but

    05:43

    You know, back in the time of Jesus, it wouldn't have been possible for someone to click a button on a website and donate money that would have gone to help save someone's life who was thousands of miles away. And so I think, you know, I think actually one of the reasons our society struggles with this so much, I think one of the reasons that our world is so inequitable is I don't think our like moral thinking has totally caught up to these technological changes. The fact that you don't have necessarily a super direct analogy to this in the Good Samaritan n, I think that says less that like,

    06:12

    the Bible disagrees with it and more about what was possible at the time.  I think to your second point, which I think is an important point, I'd say that we genuinely do in my mind have stronger obligations to the people who we are in existing relationship with. So if you can imagine a mother and her child, you know, I think I would say that mother has a particular obligation to help her child, right? I think I'm less convinced by these arguments that we have.

    06:39

    a really, really strong obligation to help other people in our community vis-a-vis people who are really far away.  Or I'd even argue that even if you assume you have a greater obligation to people who are closer to you  geographically, you can just help people who are far away so much more effectively that I think that that might kind of split the difference, right? You know, I've spent some time in countries like Sierra Leone,  in countries like Ghana, and you really get this felt sense.

    07:08

    of how people are living on stuff like a dollar a day, $2 a day, and it might cost, you know, $2 or $3 to purchase a bed net or a couple of dollars to purchase malaria treatment. And that's how you end up with these radical facts that you can save a life for something like $5,000 in a region like Sub-Saharan Africa. Whereas I've never run this calculation, but if I had to guess, my guess is that in the United States, it's often more like hundreds of thousands of dollars to save a life. So I think

    07:38

    I might even buy the argument that maybe you should help people who are closer to you more than people who are far further away. But if you could either save 20 lives that are far away or one life that's closer, I do think that we just if we're treating folks like equal  and as having equal worth, equal dignity, then we have a responsibility to take seriously helping those 20 folks instead of just one person who's closer. Yeah,  I like the counterexample to the drowning.

    08:07

    child experiment  or maybe variation or riff off it where you imagine there's a local library that's like burning down, right? And you can either save the child in the pond or run and like extinguish the flames in the local library.  And really that would be more of a case like, you know, you can save the local library or save like, you know, a hundred children in the drowning pond given the massive cost differential, right? And then it seems obvious what you should do. Right. Yeah. Nice. so

    08:36

    listeners have heard maybe a little bit about your background in the intro, but why don't you share a little bit more about your story and how you went from like caring about this to  dedicating your career towards this, right? Because I don't recall what you studied in undergrad, but it wasn't like a  straight line to exactly what you're now. Yeah, absolutely. It was like a bit of a curving line, but I think we ended up in a good place. Absolutely.

    09:00

    So  I first discovered Effective Altruism, works by Peter Singer, back when I was in high school,  actually in our philosophy class and our philosophy club.  I read some of these, I found them very compelling, but it took me a bit to find the right place for me to help out  because I read  these philosophical articles and then I started reading on the internet, going to in-person groups.  And I think it...

    09:27

    it wasn't really clear to me where I could be most useful to help people out. I felt very bought into the ideas.  But people would talk about these different career paths and none of them really resonated with me. I think also what were some of the career paths that people talked about? Yeah, people would talk about and I say people and also resources like 80,000 hours would talk about this idea of you could do research.

    09:54

    on maybe global pressing problems.  Maybe you could work in an organization working on these problems.  Maybe even found an organization like that.  But the idea of just doing research, it seemed very overly academic to me, maybe not super engaging. And then some of the job paths that sounded more fun to me.

    10:15

    It felt like there was a big emphasis on you have to be really special and exceptional to be a fit for these paths.  And I thought like, well, statistically, it's unlikely that I fit any of those things. What were those paths that people talked about? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a while ago at this point. But I think that idea of being more a founder or a leader of an org, really charting a new path, that sounded exciting, but also something probably out of my area of expertise.  So I ended up

    10:44

    going to college.  I initially was planning to study philosophy, but found that the philosophy department was kind of less interested in the real world applications than I was. And I actually ended up taking a lot of classes in religious studies and at the Divinity School.  And I hadn't grown up religious at all.  But I started  taking classes about Christianity. I was actually singing  in a church choir.

    11:14

    not because I was part of the church, but just because it was the best choir and I wanted to be in a good choir. And I think what I loved is that a lot of folks at the Divinity School had a really practical orientation towards these questions of ethics. They're thinking about, in a year, I'm going to be sitting with a parishioner who is losing a loved one. How can I talk to them about this? Or how can I really spread love in my community?  And that really appealed to me, I think. Did you think about becoming a minister yourself or?

    11:43

    Was that ever on the cards? Honestly was kind of tempted by that idea.  It seems like a really hard job.  One that's really emotionally taxing.  I think for me also,  I felt this kind of restless sense of I just want to help as many people as I possibly can. And I kept sort of like looking around for for one of these ways that I can help the most people.  But at that same time, I was actually also sort of coming to faith.

    12:11

    It's a process that I find tough to explain. But I had the sense of feeling called to God. I had the sense of when I was going to church, when I was reading the Bible, I just felt better. I felt like my life was more connected. I think when I'd heard about people going to church, I'd always imagined that it was kind of this obligation, like, oh, I have to go to church again. And you're kind of sitting there. You're like, when is this going to be over? But I found.

    12:39

    through attending these church services, just through singing in the choir, I found actually I felt a lot better afterwards. I felt lighter. And I also just loved having this moment every week when I could kind of pause and sit with these beautiful texts, sit with these moral messages, kind of check in, like, am I living the life I want to lead? And so I sort of came to faith and started identifying.

    13:07

    as a Christian at that time, which for me was just sort of like a powerful shift in my life, think. That's so good. Yeah. And what you didn't become a pastor, but you graduated, Chicago, and then you, do you share entrepreneurship right away? what was your? No, no. So I don't think I was very good at applying to jobs. So it turns out that applying to jobs is a skill.

    13:33

    And there's a difference between being a good fit for a job and being good at showing that on your application. So when I graduated college, I applied to a bunch of jobs I thought could be impactful. I actually applied for a job at GiveWell and was rejected, applied to some other research jobs, jobs working at organizations. And I was rejected from all of these sort of very impact-focused jobs.

    13:58

    But I ended up getting a job in the state of California where I'd moved to to be with my partner  in the Department of Social Services.  So I was writing regulations related to healthcare.  And it felt like a particularly useful time to be in that space because this was during the COVID pandemic.  This was at a time when a lot was changing fast. So actually when I had just started my job, one of my first things was trying to help coordinating getting the

    14:28

    COVID vaccine to home care aides, so folks who work with elderly people.  So even though this wasn't a job that was EA in any means explicitly,  I had sort of chosen it because I thought, okay, public health, that's where you want to be trying to reduce deaths, save lives.  This could be pretty useful. So I stayed in that job for about a year and a half. And I think, yeah, I think at the time I felt it was more impactful than I felt later on.

    14:58

    But to be honest, I think a lot of why I took that role is I just couldn't really get any other jobs. And I figured, hey, I'm just out of college. I'll build some skills. I'll keep moving my career as I go along. Yeah. I mean, we talk to people all the time who feel like a lot of pressure to do something really impactful, right, as soon as they graduate. Right. Right. And oftentimes we have to encourage them, like, no, it's actually OK if you just get a normal, interesting job that you can really work hard at and a lot of skills in.

    15:25

    know, you're like 23, you know, like it's okay. you don't have to save the world immediately. Maybe eventually, but not immediately. But yeah, at the time, I kept thinking about this question of like, where is my best fit? Because I definitely didn't feel like I'd sort of cracked the answer to where is my best fit. And sort of I was I was keeping doing the things I've been doing for a while, you being vegetarian, trying to be vegan some of the time, I was donating.

    15:53

    donating some of my money because I'd taken the 10% pledge back in high school. But I kept looking. And so I would spend time browsing the EA forum, the Effective Altruism forum.  And I just happened to see this post by someone who is talking about this program called Charity Entrepreneurship. And what Charity Entrepreneurship does is it does research on what charities should exist in the world. So where are there areas where there's an intervention that's really impactful?

    16:20

    but maybe it's not being implemented very broadly right now.  Some examples of charity entrepreneurship. So they do a lot of health work and also a lot of animal welfare work.  So for example, in the health area, they realized that there were a lot of countries that still have lead paint and that this was actually like relatively straightforward to address. You just need to introduce laws banning lead paint.  And so they helped start this charity, LEEP.

    16:46

    which has already helped change regulations in a number of countries. I think now they're working in something like 25. It's been phenomenally successful.  But this is an area where there wasn't really an org doing that kind of work. And just by sitting down and doing this research, they helped identify an area where it'd be really useful. Yeah, charity entrepreneurship doesn't just do that research. What they also do is they recruit folks who would be interested in starting a charity,  but don't feel like they have the skills right the second to do it.

    17:15

    They put them through this training program and then they help connect them with founders and then with funds so that they can go off and start that charity. you did this, you applied, you got in,  you came in knowing exactly what you wanted to found or was that more of like a soul searching process? Yeah, it's funny. It's kind of like there's this idea in pastoral ministry or I guess in religion more broadly, a discernment process.  So sort of figuring out what your

    17:43

    we were best suited for. And I think there's kind of funny overlap throughout the program as you're training in how to run a charity, how to start a charity.  You're also doing some discernment about who else from the program you'd like to work with to start that charity  and also which of the ideas you'd like to found.  Because often people come in, I at least came in thinking, yeah, they did this research, I trust the research, I think a lot of these programs could be great.  And then as I went through the program, I ended up deciding which organization I wanted to start.

    18:13

    Yeah. So as listeners are aware from the intro to the episode, you founded a maternal health initiative and we're off to a good start, but eventually closed down the charity. So  why, why, why did you close it? Why didn't you just like keep trying, keep working? Uh, and, um, yeah, what are like some of the, what are some of the biggest things you learned from that experience?

    18:38

    Obviously, one would love the world in which all interventions were useful, all charities were successful.  But I think a lot of my thinking about development boils down to the fact that, look, most interventions just aren't that successful at saving and improving lives maximally cost-effectively.  Where I work now, GiveWell, we've done a ton of research to try and identify the most cost-effective interventions. And one of the things is that it's like,

    19:06

    a relatively small group of interventions, and you want to have a lot of evidence that something is a really compelling fit. And what that means is sometimes interventions just don't work out. And so that's what happened in our case.  So we were doing a program called postpartum family planning, where we were training providers so that when women were getting care after a birth, they were also getting information and access about family planning.

    19:35

    And this is hopefully a great intervention because there's a lot of gaps in access to family planning and women are particularly vulnerable when they've just given birth. But as we were running the intervention, as we were gathering data and also as we were learning about the intervention, we realized that it's just not as cost-effective as we thought initially. And there's a lot of reasons for that.  We have a longer article we did in Asterisk if folks are interested. I think that the very short case for this

    20:05

    is that these kinds of programs actually lead to a much smaller decrease in unintended pregnancies than most folks model. And so what that means is it's just not very cost effective as a way of increasing people's access to family planning or a way of decreasing maternal and child mortality. And so I think there's definitely cases where you try something and it doesn't work out and you should try something that's like adjacent or slightly different. But in this case, we just felt like the fundamental case for the intervention.

    20:35

    was much weaker than we'd originally believed. Did that feel, right? Because you were like, here you were, you left a stable job to do this thing.  You're looking at your peers, your peers maybe are working at stable jobs at impressive charities or earning money in the private sector.  And you're earning no money in a very unstable job at a charity that you found that you try to sell everybody on,  presumably. And then a year and a half later, you've been in and out of Ghana.

    21:04

    been through this program, looking at all your other peers are like, yeah, I don't want to make it sound like awful, like, you're a year and half in, right? And you're like, oh, shoot, we should maybe shut down. How did that feel? Yeah, I mean, it felt pretty terrible.  It definitely felt in a way that I think was being unfair to myself, but it felt like a substantial personal failure.  You know, I felt kind of ashamed that things weren't going well. I think, you know, when you start something, you feel a lot of ownership over it.

    21:34

    Um, and sort of rightly or wrongly, you feel like its results are, are, uh, related to what you put in, right? Um, and in this case, in retro effect, I can say, you know, it wasn't our fault. And I think that we'd taken really reasonable steps. Um, but at the time it felt pretty terrible, you know, working long hours, having something not work out.  Um, but I think the truth of the matter is that it would have felt worse to keep going, um, when it was not going well, you know, to use this,

    22:03

    very precious donor money that could otherwise be saving folks lives to use it in a less than optimal way. So it felt pretty terrible, but it also felt like a relief and like we were making the right call to shut things down. Were you like, cause I feel that sometimes, you know, we run a tight ship. I think we have like a, maybe to some people it sounds like a lot, but we have like a $200,000 budget, I still think like our $200,000 budget.

    22:32

    is coming from donors who give extremely well. So actually, like a lot of them, if they weren't giving to us, would be giving to your fund and giving to provide malaria nets for children dying of malaria. Like, there are definitely days when I'm like, I was not good enough for the kids dying of malaria today. You know?  Did you have a lot of those days? Yeah, that's really tough.

    23:00

    I did have a lot of those days. I actually, I have a friend who works in similar sort of hits based work and he had an impact spreadsheet where he would say like, how many lives have I saved through my donations or through my work? And we were talking one day, cause we were both kind of having a tough time. And he was like, yeah, my impact spreadsheet says that currently I have like negative impact because my organization isn't yet.

    23:29

    producing those really cost-effective benefits. I had this moment. Like no impact, like negative impact. Yeah. I don't want to say it, but it's like, am I kind of effectively killing people? Am I doing the opposite of what I'm setting out to do? And I had this just moment of clarity where I was like, wait a minute. I think we've gone too far, Because I think the nature of the impact landscape is that it's not actually the optimal thing.

    23:57

    for everyone to stop doing everything else and only donate to like the most highly evidence-based interventions, right? I think the way that we get to a healthy ecosystem. Or like the most like, I don't know, well-researched because like some of them are just new, right? Like some of them are experiments. Absolutely.  So when we think about impact, I think there's often instances where there's something that has a lower likelihood of success, but maybe it could lead to bigger impact.

    24:25

    And so you say, from an expected value point of view, that's the right thing  to do.  And I remember one thing someone told me when I was feeling really bummed about the org not working out. And they said, you're just on the unlucky side of an expected value bet. So you make a bet that says, this might not work out, but if it does, it's great. And what happens when you bet is that you lose some of the time, right? And I think we have to find ways of being OK with that.

    24:53

    because otherwise you wouldn't do anything and you just sit at home and cry because you were too worried about going out and doing anything. So like, I think we do need to be willing to take risks because that's how we save the most lives. Yeah. No, I think this makes sense. I think for, I think for a lot of us who go into the global health poverty space, we, part of the reason we're drawn to it is because there's the sense of like, this is definitely a good

    25:22

    thing I could do with my time.  I think some of us are rather risk averse,  right? Like I know Colin Aitken talked about this in our podcast.  And especially for a lot of us who are coming from like jobs or industries where it felt like we weren't sure how we were making a difference or it felt like we might not be making any difference. Suddenly you hear that like, oh, there are definitely kids dying of malaria.  And I can definitely be a part of that, stopping that, right?

    25:50

    and give to a charity that almost certainly is going to stop some of that  to then be a part of an organization where you might actually have no impact. It might actually be negatively impactful because you're siphoning resources off. I think some entrepreneurs are like, risk on, give  me that challenge, let's roll the dice.  But I think others of us are just like, that's not exactly why I got into this, is to take those big risks.  Were you like a...

    26:17

    really risk seeking person when you start?  Yeah, I mean, so first of all, I'll say I think it's really important to know yourself and to know what level of risk tolerance you have.  Because look, there's a variety of levels of risky endeavors that are all worthwhile, right? And so if you just say, I want to work, for example, doing something where I'm going to make money, and I'm going to donate it to the Against Malaria Foundation to buy bed nets.

    26:46

    and I want to feel really confident in it, like, that's great. Or if you want to go, I don't know, start a biotech firm to try and develop some new vaccine, that's a big bet, like, that's also great. You know, you don't try to force yourself into a mold of someone who you aren't really in order to be impactful. I would say for myself, I am more risk taking than the average person, but less risk taking than almost anyone else in the charity entrepreneurship space. So,

    27:16

    When I did the program, I honestly felt this really lovely feeling of, I've found my people. Here are people who are also really slightly crazily ambitious, who have this sense of, I just want to help the most people.  I want to start something. I want to take ownership. And that was so awesome.  But I also learned that I'm not exactly like that group of people. And that I think was particularly hard on myself when things didn't work out. And I sort of.

    27:44

    felt particularly bummed by being on the wrong side of that expected value bet. And I think that's part of why in my job right now, I'm not leading a new speculative charity. I realized that I wanted to be somewhere that was slightly less of a bet because yeah, it's just painful to take bets. Yeah, it is painful. People don't want to take them, right? And so there's often a premium in financial.

    28:08

    terms to like, be willing to take on that risk to start the business, right? If you're willing to take on more risk, your expected return is usually higher, but you might end up with nothing. I wonder, you think as Christians, I thought about this before, I don't really know where I fall, but do you think Christians ought to have like a different risk profile? Because we're guaranteed, we're guaranteed God's love. And like, in some sense, it is like, it is a given that you will be okay, because like you are in God's arms and like,

    28:36

    no matter how far you think you fall in, that you are not beyond grace and God's love, right? Sometimes I think that should unlock a certain kind of  willingness to do crazy hard things  for the good of the world. One dimension is I'll be okay, right?  It's not like my dignity or my security or my success rides on like...

    29:03

    how well my project goes. Like I am like secure and found at God's arms, right?  And like,  even if I fail, like I don't, like I'm not falling, right? And then, but the other is the sense in which like, and this is sometimes a critique of Christianity that the end outcome  is sure in that like we're promised in scripture that like God works all things for the good of those who love him. And that like, even in every amount of like suffering or every like,

    29:33

    worst case scenario, there is some redemptive upside and that God works through everything for the good and in ways that like don't make sense to us now or like we can't even comprehend. And that that can like unlock a certain kind of boldness to like stare straight into like the darkest suffering of this world and like not be faced, right? To like tackle like the greatest risks and like go to the darkest places and not fear evil, right? There's that Psalm, I think Psalm 23 like

    30:02

    walking through the valley of the shadow of death, right, and fearing no evil. I think there's something deeply faithful about having that kind of bravery. And it's also very rational, too, right? It's by no means reckless if you do have credence in that kind of a God. Right. I think that's a really lovely sentiment. Thank you for sharing it. I think that's something I'll think back to when I have a moment of difficulty. I think the truth of the matter is that it's

    30:30

    sort of can be differently challenging for different people at different moments to access that sense of confidence, that sense of surety.  I would also say, I think the tension as a Christian is this tension between the fact that  things may all turn out all right in the end, but also the suffering that's going on right now does matter, right?  To me, my work is motivated by the fact

    30:58

    My work is motivated by the fact that when kids are suffering from malaria, when they're dying of malaria, that's a tragedy.  And if we can avert that, we need to do whatever we can to avert that. And so even if you have the sense of, things are going to turn out well in the end,  it still matters and it's still horrible when people are suffering. And so, yeah, if I feel like I've made a bad decision and that means that more people are going to die, that's still something that's tragic and horrible.

    31:27

    and upsetting. So I think it's just a matter of managing that. How do you find that right balance? Right? Cause like, you know, you could be almost like way too laissez faire about this. Like it's okay. It's all up to God. And I think that's often just like an excuse for apathy. There's like a mask of being apathetic. Then, then the other is the sense of like, I can save the world, right? Like I am going to like, and if I don't, then the world is, the world is screwed. Right. And like,

    31:57

    And I think there's this like deep sense of existential loss, even in our own souls, like we have failed, we have.  And  I'm guessing, I don't know what it felt like when your charity didn't work out, but I'm guessing like late at night, some of those, if it was me, like I would imagine some of those feelings would creep in, even when like, no, you like, you did your best, right? You were like where you were supposed to be where God wanted you.  And you know, you can't expect to win all hands. So. Absolutely.

    32:26

    I mean, I think this is something I think about a lot and I struggle with a lot.  I think where I land is something along the lines of really taking seriously my responsibility while acknowledging that I don't have sort of  sole responsibility as the savior of everyone, that's someone else's job,  but that I'm sort of part of this broader community that's trying to do this work to help people.

    32:54

    So I remember one thought I had that was really reassuring when I was struggling with the charity not working out was thinking about the fact that many people had actually started thinking about founding our charity and then had instead decided to start other really impactful charities, charities that have saved a lot of lives, a lot of human lives, a of animal lives that have reduced suffering. And in a sense, sort of we're all

    33:21

    I don't know, different arms of the same organism or something, you know? Or like hands and feet of the same. Yeah, exactly.  Thinking again of another biblical  analogy about this.  But sort of we're part of the same project, right? And so it's not just that when I try and fail, that I'm trying and failing on my own. It's that like I'm taking some bets that allows other people to make bets.  So maybe going back to you worrying about whether you're using your budget appropriately.

    33:50

    thinking about the fact that you taking these bets allows other people to take different bets. Or we're all part of an ecosystem where there's some folks that are working at organizations that are well established and well evidenced and we feel pretty confident that they're gonna work out. And that allows other people to take those riskier bets. We're all sort of part of this community, a part of this project together. And I think that means it's less just on you alone to fix everything.

    34:19

    Um, and I think I've learned, um, through, difficult trial and error,  that it's just not sustainable as a person to spend all your time thinking about the people you aren't saving or the people you couldn't be saving. think it's really important that you think about that some of the time, because it has massive implications for what kind of career you choose or how you spend your money, you know, like these sorts of thoughts, they shape honestly, most aspects of my life, but that doesn't mean I'm thinking about them all the time.

    34:47

    It means that I sort of set out a plan for how can I live in a way that aligns with my values. I try to live the plan. And then occasionally I check in and say, okay, for real, you know, am I living a selfless enough life? Yeah. Yeah. So you've taken the 10% Giving What We Can Pledge to give 10% or more of your lifetime income to the most effective charities. Uh, we talked with Colin on another episode about

    35:13

    some of his struggles, he really likes bread and he used to like buy this like $7 Whole Foods bread. It's like the best has got all the grains and all the nuts and stuff. My German wife would be proud but, you know, when he starts thinking of like, you know, every every dollar is like a few days of life from somebody who would otherwise die of malaria, then, you know, he like,  he feels really bad for every like slice of $7 bread when he could be buying like one or $2 bread, right?

    35:42

    And he feels it every time he buys the bread, he thinks about it. I mean, I'm kind of curious, like, do you think about those things on a day to day? Like, are you thinking like, you know, every coffee is a bed net. And like, in some sense, those things are really, really good if you've never thought about them before. Yeah. And or you're like, lapsing into a state of just like comfort or apathy. And I think it's like really spiritually good to be challenging ourselves. But then there's like

    36:11

    a lot of doubt that can creep in. Yeah, I get very affirming vibes from you. So I don't know if you're counting each slice of bread, but where do you fall on that? Yeah. I'm outwardly affirming and inwardly very hard on myself. So I actually read an article about this on this blog called Giving Gladly, I think, by Julia Wise. I think this article might even be from 10 or 15 years ago.

    36:38

    But she was talking about how some people had this idea of like bed net adjusted dollars, or it's like, oh, I'm going to buy this thing. Like how many bed nets could it buy?  And she was like, I cannot live like this. Like I cannot, you know, cannot weep every time I buy groceries.  And I think for me, the way I experience it, because I will agree, I genuinely think it has some truth to it. Like I think in this, in the context of the fact that, you know,

    37:07

    you and I by virtue of being, you know, living in the United States, being decently well off, you know, we're probably in the 5% richest folks in the world.  That's an immense privilege.  And I think  I am, to be honest, somewhat horrified by the fact that we as a society don't reckon with this fact more.  You know, we're living in this time of immense

    37:37

    immense inequality.  And I think that it's, it's just true that there's really easy trade-offs that folks who are well off can make, where you save a lot of money that could genuinely save people's lives.  And I think there's something a bit grotesque about our culture that we don't reckon with this more. I don't think about it all the time, because that would drive me crazy.  I think for me, it's something I think about.

    38:05

    a lot when I'm sort of checking in on am I doing right with my life? And then I think it's just something that my brain kind of brings up organically at various times.  Like this question of like, oh, how nice of an office chair should I get?  And I'm just thinking like,  oh, just, it feels so wrong to me to spend a lot of money on myself. And like, I definitely do sometimes.  I'm not a moral saint. I think especially compared to folks worldwide, I spend a lot of money on myself.

    38:35

    But I think for me, it's just this visceral gut sense that keeps reminding me of like, you can't forget the things that you've seen and the things that you know to be true and how much you could help. so I- It's just the fact of the world, right? Yeah, it's a fact of the world. You can't unsee it once you understand the world. Yeah, can't unsee it, although I'm also simultaneously amazed at the fact that I'm able to like, stop paying attention to it for a bit. Like I think human brains are really good at that kind of-

    39:04

    denial, like that's how we've survived through so many, so many things is that we kind of, uh, yeah, we can unsee it for a little bit and then it always comes back for me.  Um, but, but I think it's, all about sort of checking with yourself and trying to be honest about like, do I think that I'm too attuned to that fact? Or I do it, do I think that I'm not attuned enough to that fact? Right. Yeah.  Do you think, what do you think about the church and the degree to which the church ought to be attuned to that fact? Right. And you and I have the guilty pleasure of

    39:34

    of attending wealthy parishes where choral music is the norm and the organs might cost upwards of a million dollars and the spires of cathedrals cost the comparative of many hundreds of lives to replace, right? Is the wealth of the church, including the liturgical traditions, is that ever a barrier for you?

    40:01

    when you're thinking in these terms, or do you kind of like hide it when you go to church? Like the church is like a sacred thing from God, you know?  Or, you know, when you walk in the Notre Dame, do you think this is like 50,000 or more lives that could have been saved with this reconstruction, right?  Yeah, yeah, that's a tough question. It's one I think about a lot. One sort of like cheating initial response to this is for my honeymoon.

    40:27

    My husband and I went to Rome and we went to Vatican City.  And because we both love churches, we were going to lots of churches. And then we were just amazed at the density of incredibly beautiful churches. And when we were on our 12th church in four days, we were like, what is the marginal value of one additional gorgeous church here? Come on.  Because I do think like...

    40:53

    I love beauty.  So  I found that many of my most moving spiritual experiences were in places with beautiful architecture, with beautiful music.  And I feel a little,  like maybe a little embarrassed about that fact. Like there's part of me that thinks like maybe in an old New England tradition or something, like it should just be like you and God and you don't need any accoutrements to make that happen.  But I think that like, you know, God made us to love beauty.

    41:22

    and that beauty often can facilitate connections with God. I'm glad that some people invest a lot of resources in beauty. I think- God made us to love very ineffective things.  Yes, yes. Why? Why?  I don't know. I can't answer that. But I think the real way to think about it is to think about kind of the marginal trade-offs.  Because sometimes people will criticize  effective altruism and saying like,

    41:50

    Oh, you don't want to fund art. Does that mean that you think that the arts aren't important?  And my response is like, I think the arts are very important.  But I think that as a society, we spend relatively too much money. Okay, maybe not too much money on the arts, but in terms of  the money that we can control marginally, I think it's better to spend that on helping people.  So it's like, I am glad that we live in a world with beautiful cathedrals. I think it would be a real loss  if we stopped having beautiful cathedrals.  But on the

    42:20

    On the margin, should we be spending our money,  especially money that we have collectively set aside for God? I don't know. I'm trying to imagine, and  some people might imagine this as sacrilegious, but if you imagine talking to Jesus about this and being like, hey, Jesus, should we invest this money in building a really beautiful church, or should we invest this money in helping people? I think the Jesus that I imagine

    42:49

    generally puts helping people first, you know? And I think that ultimately,  I think that for me ends up being the guide. Like have a world with beauty, absolutely. But like on the margins, like help people as much as they can because I think someone who can be alive rather than dying of a preventable disease and can glorify God in their life can lead a beautiful life.

    43:15

    in a way, think that person's life is like orders of magnitude more beautiful than any cathedral could be. by virtue of just being alive,  Yeah. And suffering and all the other virtues that might grow out of that. I think that's one of the, like, sometimes I hear this criticism, maybe we can talk a little bit about your day job now.  Yeah, Sometimes I hear this criticism about saving lives and the emphasis, like the focus, the obsession on saving lives, right? Like you effective altruists are just like so like

    43:43

    monomaniacal about this, and I think like, well, like, if your life was at risk, like, wouldn't you be kind of obsessed about like, not dying? Right? Like, like, if somebody was pointing a gun at your head, like, wouldn't like, every virtue, every goal in your life, like, like aspire to go against not dying. And it's not that you think that like, if you're dead, it's full stop the end, right?  As Christians, we have hope. But

    44:10

    at the same time. Come on, let's be honest. Life is just trivially connected to all these other things we care about. And so if you care about anything, you should care about saving lives, which  I think is a nice segue to what GiveWell does. You find a range of outstanding opportunities for giving,  finding the most good per dollar.  How would you frame what GiveWell does and what makes it unique?

    44:39

    Yeah, absolutely. So GiveWell conducts research in order to identify the most cost-effective ways, not just to save lives, but also to improve lives per dollar spent. And we've spent  over a decade,  tens of thousands of research hours really digging into the existing evidence on what kinds of global health and development interventions actually lead to impact.

    45:09

    So  not just what programs work, but how well do they work?  So I work specifically on our malaria team, and my team supports  bed net campaigns. And so what we do is we look at the evidence base. We look at studies where they looked at when they conducted a bed net campaign, how much did that reduce malaria? And then we look at specific opportunities.

    45:34

    for having more campaigns and we build models, big spreadsheet models that say, you know, if we invest X amount of money in this campaign, how many lives will that save based on how many folks  have malaria in that area,  based on how long we think the nets will last, based on how much other funders will contribute. And what we're really trying to do is identify the opportunities where you can save the most lives for every dollar that you're contributing. And I work on malaria.

    46:04

    So I'm going to have a malaria bias here or anti-malaria bias, I suppose.  But we also have teams that work on all sorts of areas like nutrition, vaccines,  and we even have a growing livelihoods portfolio that looks at interventions that not just save and improve lives,  but that also give people more money and more access to financial resources. Yeah. So that's amazing. And some fast points here, right? Like I think charity evaluation

    46:34

    might be seen as like this armchair exercise, like, it's nice, you kind of like pick charities, like, you know, a food critic might pick out restaurants, right. But like, unlike with restaurants, where like most plates are palatable wherever you go, with charities, you have some that are just like,  really, really quite broken.  And  I learned about this with famous examples, like, like, well,

    47:00

    in When Helping Hurts, which many Christians have read, and we've had Brian Fickert on the podcast. read about Tom shoes in Haiti, right? like how, and in all defense to Tom shoes, I've heard they got a lot better than a lot of good things since then, but flooded the shoe market in Haiti in a way that when they like left, it made things actually much worse off. Or there's the play pump, which was actually like praised by many of the world's most powerful people.

    47:27

    I received tens of millions of dollars of funding  and it was this incredibly innovative concept which  had  kids pump water out of the ground instead of like our normal hand pumps. But it was a disaster, know, WaterAid criticized it in a Guardian article  and it ended up with like old ladies demeaningly like pushing this pump for like 23 hours a day just to get the water that they need out of it or something  similar to that. And tons, dozens, hundreds of examples  of

    47:56

    of development programs. And when we think are actually doing good, they actually hurt.  So  what GiveWell, I think what's incredible is like, not only are you looking at like, transparency from these organizations, and like, can they tell you how they're spending their money, what they're doing with their programs? Not only are you like looking for really robust evidence, not just any hearsay or correlative evidence, but like, really rigorous research, and especially RCTs, randomized controlled trials.

    48:26

    And not only are you looking for like, yeah, you're looking for those things, but you're looking for like the best of the best. You're looking for like, where can you maximize the good? And where's not only like all that good happening in the past, but where can it happen in the future? Where's the room for more funding? Because like, don't just want to like, we don't just want to like fund the allied war effort, right? Like you want to fund something that can do good on the margin, right? Yeah. I mean, a lot of folks have probably heard of organizations like Charity Navigator that are looking at things like

    48:55

    Hey, are they spending all the money on the CEO's salary?  And that's, you know, something important to at least understand a little, you know, are they just doing fraud all the time? Seems bad. But organizations like that CEO, Michael, is a very nice guy.  Yes. But actually, they just started a fund, is like saving lives most cost-effectively. And they put your recommendations right at the top there. So they're EA informed and very sympathetic. I think that's great.  But I think-

    49:21

    any sort of evaluation that's just looking at the basics of sort of is this charity doing fraud or not  is just radically insufficient.  I would say I don't know of any evaluators that are evaluating  opportunities at the level of scale that we are. I can tell you that there's other EA, EA adjacent  organizations like Founders Pledge or the Life You Can Save that are looking at opportunities, evaluating opportunities.  But I think GiveWell is in a unique  place and I think it's

    49:51

    uniquely well suited for this work  because of the large sort of staff that we have, the experience that we have.  Because I think that one of my takeaways from working in the development space has been that it is hard to get things right.  So if you think about the charity that I previously ran, Maternal Health Initiative, we started that charity because there were a number of randomized control tiles, which is the gold standard in evidence,  saying that this was a good impactful intervention.

    50:19

    We started it because we made these intensive spreadsheets  that indicated that it was a really cost-effective intervention. And we were wrong.  We were wrong  because it's a really complicated, nuanced area  because of some of the existing academics get it wrong.  But we're not the only organization that's like that. There's times where GiveWell has funded programs and then those programs turn out to be less cost-effective.  Another thing I'll add is it's not just whether an intervention is cost-effective full stop.

    50:49

    but whether it's maximally impactful in the location where it's working. So bed net distributions  can be some of most cost-effective ways to save lives in certain countries. But then if you're working in a country that has lower malaria burden, that has more funding for other malaria interventions, it might not be very cost-effective at all.  And so I think I've come to have a sort of  respect for the fact that it can take a lot of research, a lot of talking to experts.

    51:17

    to get  these things right.  And I think sometimes I at least have this instinct of like, oh, I want to like pick the specific organization where I donate to, like, I want to make my individual judgment call. But I think I've increasingly moved towards sometimes it can be just useful to defer to an evaluator like GiveWell when they have someone whose job it is  to think full time about how to most cost effectively deploy these funds. This is great.

    51:43

    So this sounds like really cold and calculating, right? Like this is like super ruthless. And like as Christians, we're actually told like, you know, even if we give our body over to be burned or like we serve others, but we do it without love. It's like a clanging symbol or a noisy gong, I think Paul says. And is it 1 Corinthians 13? The one they always read at the weddings, right? the weddings one. The weddings one, yeah. So like, yeah, what's it like as a Christian to give well and like...

    52:12

    How does your faith fit in with this ruthless, maximizing altruism? Yeah, I think people often get really hung up on this alleged ruthlessness, right? I think people often have the sense of as soon as you're breaking out the numbers that that means that you're not thinking about other things, whether it be equity or whether it be love and care. I guess I'd say that my own  quantification focus

    52:41

    like really springs out of love and care. And I think for me, as I'm practicing it, I feel that it continues to be deeply shaped by that love and care. You know, I think at the end of the day, the reason I do this work  is because there's kids out there, you know, who are dying of  terrible diseases,  where they're, you know, in pain, they're suffering,  they die and their loved ones  have to grieve them. And that's just this

    53:10

    this horrible tragedy.  And I, my one human soul cannot sort of bear the thinking about all the human elements of that tragedy all the time. But that is fundamentally what motivates me to do this work. You know, when I'm spending my day looking at spreadsheets  and looking at the numbers, even though I usually don't get to see it, that's ultimately going to translate into folks, sometimes millions of folks.

    53:37

    getting stuff that will help protect them from these terrible diseases.  So for me, it's the love that motivates the math.  And I think the reason I do it is because that math hopefully cashes out  into saving people's lives.  And I  think people sometimes think that something is  Christian when it sort of has a Christian label associated with it.  Someone might say something like,

    54:04

    Oh, well, distributing bed nets isn't Christian work if it's not a Christian organization. A John 3.16 sticker on right, right. Exactly.  But I would say, and this  is me talking, this is not a give well take,  but I would say that any work that is helping to heal the sick,  comfort the afflicted, that is deeply Christian work. I mean, what could be more Christian than that?  When I read the Bible and I look at what Jesus is doing,

    54:32

    Jesus is going around and he's spreading the word of God,  but he's also healing people. He's healing sick people. He's laying their hands on them.  And you know, I don't have the capacity to lay my hands on someone and heal them,  but I can, you know, give them a bed net or give them a medicine.  And so to me,  this work is deeply Christian, in fact.  And I think it doesn't have to have that little Scripture verse on it for it to be Christian work. Yeah.

    55:02

    You know, there's a lot there. Thanks for that. And I'm reminded of Matthew 25 in this example where you have people claiming they knew Jesus as Lord, right, but didn't provide for the least of these. So you do have this example of the opposite, which is just the words, but not the deeds of caring for the Lord. And that being decisively declared as not Christian, right? Right. We don't have it. to both. Yeah, you need to have both. And I think it's interesting. We don't have examples of...

    55:30

    at least from Jesus's words of people providing for the poor, the vulnerable, the sick, and not doing it in like an explicitly Christian way and being condemned for it, right? It's kind of interesting that that's, that from some camps, this is like a criticism of give well even that like  a Christian might not give to, and this is not of course where I come from, or I think many in the podcast come from, but there are definitely some Christians who wouldn't give to GiveWell because

    55:58

    These aren't explicitly Christian charities, right? Like there are no John 3.16 stickers. And one thing that's challenging there, and there's a couple of challenges there, it's like, why aren't there more explicitly Christian charities? I mean, because GiveWell in principle isn't against evaluating religious charities. And I know you've began evaluation processes or conversations in the past with some.I know actually the Episcopal Relief, I think it's like...

    56:25

    Oh, man, they're gonna hate that I will they mind? I don't know if they'll mind. It's like the Episcopal Relief Services, right? The outreach arm of the Episcopal Church has done military distribution, Nets for Life is what they called it. Oh, that's great. Yeah, but I think they tapped out of like the investigations back like a decade ago and haven't resurfaced. Yeah. But yeah, it just actually isn't the case that like explicitly Christian charities.

    56:52

    are in GiveWell's top four recommended. You know, so like, does that mean that a Christian who wants to do the most good for  global health just is going to like, have to give to explicitly non-Christian charities? Is that what it means? I think given my current understanding of the space and the options,  I think from my perspective, this feels like one of those moments to

    57:21

    if you're trying to optimize for two different values, maybe, to see  two different paths of doing that. So maybe, for example, you give your sort of  global health money to an organization that's among the most effective ones, even if it's not explicitly Christian in name,  even though, know, per our earlier discussion of it, it's still doing Christian work in the sense of it's helping people, right?  And then maybe separately, if you wanted to sort of...

    57:48

    live out a value that was important to you of being involved with things that were more explicitly Christian. Maybe that's something you could do with a smaller amount of your money or something that you could do in terms of your in-person participation and sort of Christian activities. But I just think it's really limiting to come at it from that mindset. I think it just like limits to see one is Christian and the other is not Christian, right? Right, be like, oh, because it doesn't have the John 3.16, it's not Christian. Yeah, because it doesn't have that in the name, that means it's not Christian. And I think I just...

    58:18

    see the world very differently from that. I think I keep thinking back to this line from Mark where someone asked Jesus, like, there's all these commandments, like, what are the most important commandments, right, if you have to prioritize?  And he says, you know, the first one is to love the Lord your God.  And the second one is to love your neighbor as yourself.  And I think people throw around that line, you know, loving your neighbor as yourself. And I think it can often become a little

    58:46

    little bit defanged. So it's something like, oh, someone's sick. Let me bring them a casserole or something. And that's very nice. But I don't think that actually qualifies as loving your neighbor as yourself. Like, I think the way that I love myself is, you know, when I'm hungry, I buy myself food.  When I want to go on vacation, I go to a nice place or something. And if I'm, you know, walking down the street and I see someone who's hungry and I'm not helping them, you know, I'm not loving my neighbor as myself. You know, I'm loving my neighbor as

    59:16

    as lesser than myself. And I think if you really take that love your neighbor as yourself radically, that is what takes you back to that place of buying the cheaper loaf of bread. Because you think like, if my neighbor has no bread and I have the really nice bread, I'm not loving my neighbor as myself. I have to buy the cheaper bread. But man doesn't live on bread alone, right? And so you have deep spiritual needs as well. I think there's a healthy criticism of

    59:45

    being like all like everybody being only all in on saving lives. And think that's where and you know, the question of marginality is really important here. You might ask like what you know, what on the margin has the greater need and the greater opportunity for like effective funding?  And so I think there's a really important value judgment that listeners have to make about like,  you know, you know, when it costs a thousand dollars to fund a church planter in rural Asia,  you know, who can start a couple churches and lead to like

    01:00:15

    I don't know, a half dozen baptisms. to me, to me, is that more good and more love loving to others than like allowing somebody six more years of not dying from malaria, right? Cause that's, that's roughly the trade off different risk levels, I suppose you could say, but, um, but yeah, it's a tough, it's a tough trade off. I think people have to make their, individual trade-offs. Um, but I think one thing I think about is just when, and you alluded to this earlier.

    01:00:45

    But sort of when you prevent someone from dying, that allows that person to pursue all of the values in their life. So if that person is a minister, they can minister to others. If that person is a brother, they can be a good sibling to their family. And so for me, when I maximize for saving lives, that's not just because I think not dying is the most important thing in life. I think all these other values are so important. But when you prevent people from dying, you sort of

    01:01:14

    Put the the agency in their hands to live their lives as they see fit and to pursue all sorts of other values. Hmm Nice. Okay back to the rapid fire I have like I have like 10 or 15 questions that I don't want to keep you up all night and yeah, so I want to get through some of these. What are the top charities that GiveWell recommends and like what do they do? Definitely.  So right now we have four top charities. The one I'm most involved with is the Against Malaria Foundation

    01:01:43

    which purchases and helps distribute bed nets for campaigns that help reduce malaria incidence and mortality. We have another malaria-focused charity, the Malaria Consortium,  and they  purchase and distribute these anti-malarial drugs  that help  reduce deaths among kids  during peak malaria season. We have New Incentives, which is a

    01:02:13

    sort of younger charity doing this really exciting work where they give cash incentives  to families if they bring their children in for immunizations in Northern Nigeria.  And that helps  reduce deaths from all sorts of  vaccine  preventable diseases while also bringing money into the local community.  And then we also support the Helen Keller Foundation's, sorry, we also support the Helen Keller Initiative. International? We also support, yeah.

    01:02:43

    We also support Helen Keller International's distribution of vitamin A supplements  because they can distribute these supplements very cheaply, less than a dollar, and they help reduce child mortality from all sorts of causes.  So those are our four top charities.  About half of our funds go there. And if you want to donate to those directly, you can.  But we also do a whole load of other work in sort of newer areas. Yeah. The newer areas are like more hits based.

    01:03:11

    opportunities, right? They're like maybe lower evidence bar or like at least riskier, like newer, not as much research, but a bigger chance for big impact. Maybe we're like, yeah, that's how we, that's how we generally characterize it. Sometimes it might just be something that's really well evidenced, but there's sort of less room for funding. So we don't think that it can  be a top charity, but it's something we understand really well. And we think is a really great use of money. Sometimes it's more hit space where it might be something

    01:03:39

    that's newer, more innovative, we think could be exciting, but we want to generate more evidence before we're giving tens of millions  of dollars a year. Nice. Okay. So why haven't Malaria Nets caught on, right? It's like been a meme, right?  But here we are like 10 years later, we still have these massive funding gaps for Malaria. Like I think your team spent like, I don't know, 150 million in Malaria this year is the expected amount or something crazy like that. And like, well, one, seems like, you know,

    01:04:07

    you would expect the entire global development community to have just like, filled the funding gap for malaria. And two, there's still malaria. So like on the face of it, it seems like a problem if this is so effective. What do you say to that? Yeah. So first of all, I would say it's somewhat a question wrongly asked.  Although I'll give you a pass because it's a question that a lot of people have.  So  in the early 2000s,  there was very little investment in malaria net campaigns.  And there also wasn't very much investment in malaria at all.

    01:04:36

    And then around 2005, 2007, people started waking up to, wow, we can do so much good by putting funds in anti-malarial activities. And for the record, we don't think that nets and seasonal malaria chemoforensia are the only useful things in malaria. Part of it is just that other actors fund this. But starting around that time, they started massively increasing investment in malaria. So from something like a billion dollar.

    01:05:03

    per years to more like $5 billion per year. And so they started running these big net campaigns.  And this is largely funded by multilaterals that get money from the US, from other countries. It's called the Global Fund, and they do work on malaria, TB, and AIDS. And they've started doing these massive campaigns. But malaria is such a huge problem. Remember, it's the biggest killer of under-5s  in a number of countries.  And so...

    01:05:30

    there's just a lot of room to absorb funding so fewer people are dying of malaria today than they were 20 years ago because of those BedNap campaigns, but there is still room for more funding. Okay, but they're like a lot of billionaires on the planet. I don't know if the number is like probably 1500, 2000 or whatever. it would take would be like, I don't know. I don't know what the funding gaps for malaria are this year. I'm guessing it's like maybe a couple hundred million, but like, wouldn't it just take one billionaire funder to be like,

    01:05:59

    I'm going to, of the thousands, right? And be like, I'm going to liquidate 10% of my assets and just knock out malaria this year. But it seems like that hasn't happened, right? Like, is that, is that a failure of the, of like the GiveWell, you know, cost effectiveness model that it hasn't like permeated those spaces where wealth is for, those problems to be solved? Or is it just like billionaires really are that greedy? Eradicating malaria would not be a question or even just tackling the most cost effective gaps would not be a

    01:06:29

    question of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. It would be more a question of billions of dollars, maybe tens of billions of dollars. This is a big killer of kids. And even at something that's as cost effective of $5,000 per life saved, you do that math out, it's still a lot of money. And so in general, at least in terms of making a serious dent in the problem, first of all, if Elon on the margin, right? So if you want to stop him-

    01:06:58

    I don't know, 500,000 deaths from malaria. That's not like 500,000 times 5,000. It's not 250 million. It's like probably closer to a billion or multiple. I might have missed a zero there. Yeah. But I mean, if you just wanted to tackle the most cost-effective gaps, like if someone were to, if some billionaire is listening to this podcast and they say like, hey, what would happen if I gave GiveWell $500 million? It's like we could save a lot of lives.

    01:07:26

    And so I do think the primary reason why malaria is still killing kids is because we are willing to live in these systems where some people can accrue a lot of money and not give back. And because the people who have that money as a general rule have decided not to give that money to help save people's lives. That's the bluntest possible articulation of it. And I would say- But you get those Bill Gates types, right? Yeah.

    01:07:55

    accredited with saving like millions of millions of absolutely. And I think the thing is that like, will say like, man, what have EA's ever done for the world? You know, like they have this annoying online discourse, they're a little holier than now, you know, what have they really done? And like the fact of the matter is, and we can never be confident in these estimates, right? Like, we need to have epistemic humility. But my best guess is that sort of EA aligned giving focused on cost effectiveness.

    01:08:23

    So GiveWell, for example, has directed over $2 billion since we started, that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. But this is not a matter of like, you know, there was a particular group of 200,000 people that were like, like the city of Orlando. Yeah, wasn't like there was a big, there was going to be a big hurricane and we predicted it and evacuated all of them and those specific people, I can say like, yes, I saved this one particular guy's life. Like this is across

    01:08:51

    low and middle income countries. It's a kid who would have died and otherwise they're not dying. they don't even realize that they didn't it's like a 65 year old who like, I don't know, didn't get sick from malaria and get paralyzed or something. it's a mix of all of those things across millions of people over decades, right? And so you can't like see that really easily. And so I think it's really easy for people, especially if I may, people who like don't want to have to deal with the fact of their moral responsibility to say like,

    01:09:21

    what have you guys ever done? Right? And I just think  the evidence suggests that we've done a lot of good, but there's still so much more good that could be done. Are you like for,  I don't know, people becoming billionaires so they can give away lots of money to give well, or give all type projects like my sense is the Gates Foundation is like quite similar to GiveWell in terms of how they think about impact and saving lives and saving lives really is their lone star is my sense.  But

    01:09:51

    Like, do you guys talk with them a lot too? Yeah, there's like three questions in there, but no, okay. I'll start with the final final question. So first of all,  especially in the past couple of years, I think GiveWell has moved towards what we call a heads up approach, which is an approach where we're engaging with other funders.  We're collaborating more, sometimes we're co funding opportunities.  So for example, you know, my boss will talk to folks from the Gates Foundation on their malaria team so we can coordinate activities.

    01:10:19

    We'll talk to people from other foundations. I have two calls with the Global Fund next week.  And so we're coordinating with them.  Gates is doing awesome, phenomenal work. I don't always agree with the specific things, but in general, it's been phenomenal for the world. I think if someone  thought that there was a real possibility of them becoming very wealthy, and then they were committed to giving that money to good,  and they were giving that money in an ethical way  that didn't have  bad effects, like,

    01:10:48

    I would endorse that. And the organization Ambitious Impact that runs Charity Entrepreneurship  recently ran their first founding to give round where they encouraged folks to start for profits  with the hope of maybe it'll become wildly successful.  Yeah, I kind of wish that our community had done more of this, but also there's very clear examples of this going very poorly.  So it has to be done very, very carefully. We have a guide.

    01:11:18

    maybe I can plug it in the podcast description about it's an earned to give guide to be generous like Jesus. Don't lose your soul while you're trying to earn lots of money to save the world.  So,  absolutely.  Yeah. Very good. Very good. Um, so what's with like Warren Buffett backing out of the giving pledge with Bill Gates, like  in that sense,  it seems like, I mean, I don't know the exact numbers, but it feels like that's like hundreds of thousands or millions of lives lost in expectation.

    01:11:48

    And I think it's framed in the news as like, oh yeah, this is just like a philanthropic preference that he's bequeathed decision-making power over his billions to his children. When in reality, it seems like he's averted billions of dollars that would have partnered with Bill Gates towards the global poor and saving lives to now whatever pet US interests Buffett's kids have.  It seems pretty awful to me.

    01:12:16

    Yeah, I think it's a real tragedy. look at the end of the day, we  are living in a kind of economic system where we just sort of leave it at people's decision, you know, what they do with that money, except their tax dollars.  And those tax dollars, I will say, like the US through USAID, through its contributions to the Global Fund has done a lot of good. And right now,

    01:12:44

    the last six months or so,  the development world has been in absolute chaos  because of the unconscionable cuts  led by Musk and the Doge folks.  Speaking of things that are going to kill millions of lives in expectation, development funding comes mostly from either billionaire philanthropists or from  development agencies. And unfortunately,  the US

    01:13:13

    started this trend earlier this year, but a number of other countries are massively reducing their contributions. sort of like those collective pools of resources are like have been historically  one of our best tools in the fight against kids dying from preventable causes.  so, yeah, kind of bad news on all fronts. There's hundreds of billions not going to the poor. And, you know, I'm not, I don't know your thoughts on this. My sense is like not every dollar was like

    01:13:42

    super impactful, but like that was never had my quibbles with USAID for sure. yeah. To me, this sounds kind of akin to like defunding the police because you had like a few cases of  misuse of funds in force, right? But which is like obviously a terrible thing in each instance, but like you don't defund a very, very important like public institution infrastructure. And if you do, like many innocent, many more innocent people will die.

    01:14:11

    Yeah. it's immensely frustrating because there was work going on at USAID to make things more cost effective. So they had the Office of the Chief Economist where they were running cost-effective analysis. And that was one of the departments that they caught. He did not get a phone call. Yeah. You cannot look me in the eyes and tell me, Elon Musk cannot look me in the eyes and tell me that those cuts were motivated by trying to help people. The world's richest man.

    01:14:41

    took a bunch of money away from the world's poorest people. And that is nothing in the most irresponsible possible ways. The stories I heard in my work were horrible and horrifying clinics that can't give out life-saving medication. And I think  there's no justification for that. Yeah, so I was talking to a friend who's

    01:15:05

    doctor on the ground in rural Uganda and planted 50 rural health clinics. Nick Lang, he's a legend. And he thinks that GiveWell is like the leading authority for understanding a post-US aid world and like the impact of the USAID cuts on global development. So a lot of pressure on you right now, but like, how would you summarize your current understanding of what like the medium to long term impacts of this might be?

    01:15:34

    Yeah, absolutely. mean, so this is something that GiveWell has been investing a lot of resources in over the last six months.  Because the news headlines are like also a bit sensational, right? They're not really doing the kind of like number crunching that you guys do every year, 60,000 plus hours, right? So yeah, yeah, absolutely.  And so I think our response to the aid cuts has been partly  in terms of these like short term gap filling.  So there's been cases where USAID

    01:16:03

    terminated a contract and then we then picked it up. So if I recall correctly, for example, there was one where there was a  randomized control trial  related to these techniques to help prevent or reduce deaths from cholera. And there was like this time sensitive need of like, might mess up this trial, this trial could be really useful.  So we picked up the tap for that, for example. And I think basically every team at GiveWell has been looking at some of these gap filling opportunities. And then there has been

    01:16:29

    some teams and especially some of our leadership looking at this sort of, as you say, how does this affect the medium and the long-term outlook?  I will say that I think we should have a clearer sense of this in about six months or so,  because right now there's still a lot of confusion and uncertainty over what the new USAID is going to look like and also what the US and other countries' contributions to the Global Fund are going to look like, because the Global Fund is

    01:16:58

    one of the world's best tools for reducing preventable deaths. And it's something that, you know, historically the US I think has given a disproportionate part of, I think about a third. And I think it's great that the US has been generous,  but I also think that other countries need to do more to step up to the plate.  And we're talking about billions of dollars per year.  And unfortunately, a lot of countries are kind of signaling that they're going to reduce those contributions.

    01:17:27

    Maybe even significantly, I think we got some super forecasters together. They said the US contribution might go down about 50%, which would just be like huge after we reach some equilibrium, it'll still be like 50 % reduction. Yeah. And I mean, of course,  things can change with every administration, But is like an immediate case. You can have... Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, absolutely.

    01:17:52

    And then there's also still a lot of- Is there a place where people can read about that? Like, is there some kind of public document where those forecasts are put there? Yeah, we published all of those forecasts.  I can maybe send you a link. don't know if you can put it in the description or something.  I think it's super fascinating. And you guys talk about it on the GiveWell podcast, right? Yes. Yes. Plug for the GiveWell podcast. It's great. Would recommend. There's much more senior people than me on it. Very, very interesting. And so I think over the next couple of months, we'll see how this is going to play out. I think that this is-

    01:18:21

    a moment where it is  more valuable than ever for folks to call their representatives, to call their congressmen, to say, this is one of the best things that the US does.  And that's if you're American. I think if you live in other countries also, like other countries are kind of using this as an excuse to step back.  And this is the moment to say, like, hey, guys, there are millions of lives on the line. Like, this is the moment to step up.

    01:18:49

    Especially PEPFAR, right? Because when you talking earlier, think your low confidence back of the envelope calculation was like, PEPFAR is probably 30 times as impactful per dollar than the rest of USA. Even that $6 billion sliver, if we could keep that out. Right. Absolutely. And I will say  not just PEPFAR,  but also the sort TB and malaria programming Yeah, plugging John Green. John, if you're listening  to this podcast, please come and speak at our conference. We'd love to have you.

    01:19:19

    Yeah, big Nerdfighter, big John Green fan.  But to circle back to your... Yeah, actually another plug for John Green. We actually would unironically like that.  Sarah's team gives away 150 million a year for targeted, effective malaria programs.  And our community  loves your messaging. And we would love to partner with you to encourage Christians to have the greatest possible impact, especially for the poor. So yeah. Okay, continue. Yeah.  Absolutely.

    01:19:48

    I just wanted to circle back to your original question,  which is what does the medium and long-term landscape look like?  I think  it looks pretty likely that the US is going to  decrease its development aid footprint  significantly right now,  especially, unfortunately, in a lot of the most cost-effective areas,  because in malaria right now, it's looking like maybe something like 50 % cuts. But in other areas,

    01:20:18

    family planning, also areas like maternal and child health or malnutrition. They are just 100 % cutting some of these programs, which I just do not understand at all. Like who is  against- left-coded, like some of the- I suppose  you could make that argument definitely for something like family planning or abortion care.  But like, is anyone anti-maternal health care? Like is anyone pro-children starving to death? I think just some of these choices are insane.

    01:20:48

    but it's looking like there's going to be cuts. And what that's going to mean is that more people are going to die and that there's going to be more gaps, right? And I think we're going to have to see over the next couple of years whether that means that more people are going to step up. So I think it's really wonderful that you've seen, for example, Gates stepping up and saying, I'm going to give away more of my money. I'm going to give away it faster.  I think that's phenomenal.  I think we're going to have to wait and see whether other big philanthropists or even not current philanthropists will step up. And then I think the big question is going to be,

    01:21:17

    How are other countries going to respond? And also what's going to happen in future administrations? Because unfortunately, I think you often see a lot of status quo bias. So I can imagine a world in which, and I think it's maybe even the most likely world, this is just me, that's not a GiveWell take, in which a couple years, at whatever point in which there's a democratic administration again,  there's just not much attention given to something like USAID.

    01:21:43

    I think you saw this happen with the postmaster general where Trump had this terrible postmaster general. A lot of people were mad about it. And then Biden came in, kept the same guy.  But I think given that the people who are benefiting are often far away, they can't vote, they can't donate to political candidates. I unfortunately think the most likely thing  is that we do not restore  development aid to the levels it was pre these cuts.  And I think that's just a tremendous.

    01:22:11

    moral tragedy. I think folks in the development sphere are just going to have to do what they can to pick up the pieces. Because this is just, it's a real bloodbath. There's lots of experts who are leaving the space, who don't want to have to deal with this unpredictability, who wouldn't trust taking a job at USAID again. And it's a real tragedy. Awesome. So we're going to transition to the final part of the episode, which is career advice. And this is going to be like the most rapid of rapid fire questions.

    01:22:39

    What is the USAID cuts mean for Christians who want to work in development and help the global poor? That's a great question. Should they not go into this area anymore? Or should they work in the private sector, build skills first, build up a stockpile, maybe earn money to give away? Obviously, it's a lot harder time to work at a place like USAID.  I guess now impossible if USAID is gone, but you can still work in government development. That's a lot tougher. I don't think I'd recommend that as a first step.

    01:23:07

    I think if you're interested in working in development or global health, this is still a great time to get involved, especially if you're focused on effectiveness oriented organizations, because they're still going strong. Like are there still jobs or there's still like roles that they can fill, right? And it seems like pretty competitive at that. Yeah, absolutely. I have been really surprised in the last couple of years. I think honestly, one of my biggest surprises

    01:23:37

    from the last couple of years of working in development  is how  talent constrained  so many organizations are.  So I can think of five different organizations off the top of my head where they did a hiring round, they couldn't find the right person for that job. And that ultimately meant that one person had to keep doing multiple responsibilities  or they couldn't  expand a certain program.  I think...

    01:24:04

    From the applicant perspective, it doesn't always feel like this  because I certainly had this experience of applying to tons of jobs and getting rejected from them. Fun fact, I suppose, is that  I was rejected from almost every other job besides GiveWell.  And so I think getting rejected from one job doesn't mean that you're going to get rejected from every other job. But I think it's a numbers game of thinking seriously about your competitive advantage, trying to build networks.

    01:24:31

    and then just being willing to put out a lot of applications because there's still so many places that are bottlenecked by having the right talent. That's really good advice.  So are there any kinds of roles you think  are especially needed in the development sector, including especially among the top charities that you talk to or work with, like communication skills or quantitative skills, like any kind of skills that are especially needed? Yeah.

    01:24:58

    This might be an unhelpful answer, but I will say often it's about having folks who are mid-career or people who do have experience in other areas, experience managing folks  rather than just  folks who are right out of college.  Because don't get me wrong, I think folks who are right out of college can be phenomenally impactful.  But I think in impact-focused organizations, they often have a lot of  generalists right out of college.

    01:25:22

    and there might be specific roles. Like right now GiveWell is hiring for multiple communications roles where they'd love to have someone who has years of experience in that. And I think that honestly applies for most specialized roles. Yeah. You helped GiveWell give away about $150 million a year to stop malaria. You're a grant maker, program advisor. What are some of the most useful skills that help you do what you do now? Definitely.

    01:25:48

    One of the most important ones is being open-minded and willing to update on new evidence.  I think a lot of people, especially who've been in development for a while,  have a very set idea of what works and what doesn't, and they're not willing to update based on new evidence. So being willing to come in with a take and then change that take appropriately based on evidence  is really important. I'd also say my job is tough because it's a mix of

    01:26:15

    kind of quantitative skills, looking at spreadsheets, updating based on evidence. And then also the more people focused skills of  working with grantees, collaborating, having the appropriate amount of skepticism. And I think often people sort of specialize in one or the other.  It is shocking to me that I have a job where I do a lot of math  because I think back in high school,  I wouldn't have said that that's one of my strengths.

    01:26:40

    Um, but let it be known that being good at calculus is being, different than being good at a spreadsheet.  Nice. Nice. Who should earn to give versus work directly at a charity? Right. If you  give like a bar where it's like, if you can earn to give like $200,000 a year or more in a year, then you should do that over like an entry level role at give well, like  help me think through whether I should earn to give or work directly. I think for many years.

    01:27:09

    the EA community who is overly obsessed with definitively answering the question of  is earning to give better than direct work?  And I think that my genuine answer to this is that both of them can be phenomenal.  And often the fact of the matter is that some of the people who are  most equipped to be great at  direct work jobs might also have the skill set where they could make a lot of money, right?

    01:27:38

    I think that it's a sort of discernment process and a process of not just thinking abstractly about options, but concretely comparing specific options. I will say, if you  are very competent in a quantitative way, but also have people skills, you could take a $300,000 a year job at a hedge fund. Probably you also have skills that could be invaluable for a direct work organization.

    01:28:05

    I think I, in those cases, I would lean more towards the direct work or at least having a frank conversation with folks who work at that organization and say, how useful can I be for you? I remember when I got the job offer for GiveWell and I was deciding whether to take it, I was really pushing the hiring manager on how useful would I be on the margin? And getting that sense of pretty useful,  I think that makes a big difference. So here's a strategy.

    01:28:34

    when you get a job at a charity, ask that charity, how much would you be willing to pay for someone of my level of skill? Not that I'm asking you to pay me that, like at what level of donation without me, but with the next best candidate, would you, would you prefer to have me over the next best candidate and X amount of money? Like what is that X, right? And do you think like that's a like logically meaningful way to go about comparing your, your like advantage at the role?

    01:29:02

    Yeah, I think  that's a really good way of thinking about it. I think it would also give people permission to consider other factors.  Have you ever done that? What a charity actually.  I mean,  so at Charity Entrepreneurship, they're really into these things called weighted factor models.  You can Google weighted factor model charity entrepreneurship and they'll have stuff on their website.  Let me ask actually, what are weighted factor models and how does it help you make a career decision? Definitely.

    01:29:30

    So what this is, is when you set up a spreadsheet and you try to decide, like, what are the factors that matter for my decision?  So maybe for a job, it's like, what kind of work am I doing?  How much money am I making?  How much impact does it have or something? Just to oversimplify. And then you'll say, like, I'm going to make a, I'm going to rate each of these from one to five, right?  So maybe this job pays a lot, but it's not very impactful. And then for each factor, you decide how much does that factor matter to you?

    01:29:59

    And then what you do is you sort of like math out the numbers. So you say like, this matter is 50 % and I'm giving it like a five. And so that math's out to a 2.5. And so I know you're thinking right now, wow, this sounds too ruthless and mathy. And what I'm saying is don't take the answers literally. Like don't put every decision in a weighted factor model and then act that way. But I think the process of really forcing yourself  to think about like, how much does this matter to me? Like, can I really be happy?

    01:30:28

    living in, I don't know, rural Sierra Leone to do this job, or can I be happy if I'm making  $30,000 a year? I think that process is really invaluable. And I think you don't want to make decisions that are too like vibes based because sometimes you like think about the wrong vibes or something. So we have a weighted factor model in our Christian Career Guide. You can download that for free at the website, christiansforimpact.org.  And yeah, our weighted factor model follows my preferences as default.

    01:30:56

    and helps and it's also informed by biblical teachings to care for your family and for your friends and for your partner, your spouse. I  think there's a Christian, like Christian emphases or  like nuances to some weighted factor models.  But yeah, the numbers you'll have to tweak based on what you feel God's called you to. So, awesome.

    01:31:23

    then yeah, any general career advice that you'd give for motivated Christians who want to change the world? think you can give yourself permission to be wildly ambitious. Like I think often our brains have a very status quo bias. say, oh, I don't know if I'm good enough to do this thing or oh, that sounds hard.  I think especially earlier in your career and depending on your specific circumstance, give yourself permission to like try out some really ambitious stuff. Like I never...

    01:31:52

    would have thought that I was competent enough to run an organization or to work at GiveWell. I never thought that I was good enough to do those things, but I was. And I think the world in which I never tried is a much  sadder world. And that doesn't mean that you should quit your job and move to London and try to start a charity,  although that has worked out well for some people. I think what that means is sometimes it can look like you continue in your current job, but I don't know, you reach out to really impactful organization and ask if you could do an internship.

    01:32:22

    I think I had really underestimated the importance of these networks when I had started out,  where now that I've spent time doing the charity entrepreneurship program,  meeting people who are into  EA in my local area, that's really tapped me into a lot of networks  where I think my naive take had been like, if I want to get a job, I should like go on LinkedIn and go to the job postings. But the factor, the matter is that a huge chunk of job postings like never get posted publicly because they're done through internal networks.

    01:32:51

    No one ever told me that. That's really good. actually talk about that right now. What is effective altruism and how is the effective altruism network helped you get the impactful job you're in right now? Yeah. So I mean, effective altruism is the community of people who are  focused on  thinking through how to help the most people, the most cost effectively. So how can we save and improve lives the most per dollar, maybe not just  current human lives, also animal lives, future people's lives.

    01:33:20

    And it's a really thriving community of folks. There's sort of online ways to engage through stuff like the EA Forum.  There's sort of like reading groups that you can do online. There's conferences. I sort of initially started going to just sort of local meetups for EA.  But I think sort of my connection with EA was really turbocharged by doing the charity entrepreneurship program and by starting talking to people.  Because once I was in that network, then people would say like, hey,

    01:33:50

    You've done this thing that credibly shows that you're competent. And so now when I'm hiring for this role, like, I'll keep you in mind. So, you know, sometimes I get emails from folks saying like, we're trying to hire for this role. Would you be interested?  Or can you direct us to people who you know who are competent? So sometimes it's just a matter of like someone doing one thing that's legible. So it might be something like you write a post on the EA forum that's saying like, I think GiveWell is doing this thing wrong and they should do this other intervention, right?

    01:34:18

    And sometimes people do these posts and they're really great. And we learn a lot from it. And it helps someone show like when they're applying to a future job. Like I, this is crazy, but I was literally once invited to apply to a job because someone was like, I saw this post you wrote on the EA forum and I liked it. Like that has happened to me multiple times. And I think if I had just been sort of like lurking and never getting my stuff out there, that never would have happened. Nice. Awesome. Yeah, Sarah, it's been such an honor to have you on and thank you for the work you're doing.

    01:34:47

    Yeah. Anything else that you would love to talk about or plug while that you're here? Two hour podcast, two minute plug.  Yes. Yes, absolutely.  No, I think that I've covered most of it.  I just  encourage people to think, to spend some time thinking about  how Jesus is sort of leading them to help others sort of the way that they can give back.

    01:35:13

    Because, know, we've given all this advice about some of most useful ways to help out.  But there's this process of sort of individual discernment of thinking of how can I contribute? How do I want to contribute?  How can I help make the world a better place? And I think that's something that people should do because it's the right thing to do. But I also think that it can lead you to a really beautiful and fulfilling life. So it's not always the straight off of like, I have to be this martyr. I have to make all these sacrifices. It can also be this matter of

    01:35:42

    You know, I'm guided down this path. It's leading me in a really fulfilling direction, a direction in which I can help people in a way that's guided by these trade-offs, that's guided by this math, but that's ultimately motivated by love and care for other human beings. And  if you're listening to this podcast, there are so many ways that you can help people. You can donate your money, you can take a job.  But we're at this moment in the world in which we have the technology, we have the knowledge to help.

    01:36:12

    help lots of people. Like when I was a kid, people would say like,  oh, like, you know, maybe you want to grow up and like cure cancer or something. Um, and I think it's great that people are working on this, but we're also in a world where hundreds of thousands of kids are dying every year for reasons that like, we have the tools to save those lives. It's just a matter of directing the resources, the money, the capacity.  Um, so if you're listening, I encourage you to become part of that.

    01:36:37

    solution because it's wonderful and a lot of fun. Awesome. Yeah. Well, this is the time to challenge everybody listening if you haven't yet to prayerfully consider making a giving pledge, pledge 10% of your lifetime income towards the world's most effective charities. I give especially to GiveWell charities. And I do that through the Christian Campaign for Effective Charities. So you could give directly to GiveWell's top or Max Impact Fund. I think the name has changed.  But

    01:37:03

    You can also give through our Christian Fund, giving Christ glory for your gifts.  And we forward everything along to  those charities.  And  yeah, it's really however you feel best called to give.  We've raised almost a million dollars, $600,000 to that so far. But a drop in the bucket compares to the needs of the world, but your giving will make a massive difference. So really would encourage that. And thank you, Sarah, so much for  leading the charge. And thanks for coming on.

    01:37:33

    Thanks for having me.

 

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