Rob Wiblin on plastic straws, nicotine, doping, & whether changing the long-term is really possible

80,000 Hours Podcast

• Episode: Rob Wiblin on plastic straws, nicotine, doping, & whether changing the long-term is really possible
• Website: 80,000 Hours Podcast
• Feed URL: https://feeds.feedburner.com/80000HoursPodcast
• Duration: 03:14:33
• Published: 2019-09-26 01:23

Today's episode is a compilation of interviews I recently recorded for two other shows, Love Your Work and The Neoliberal Podcast. 

If you've listened to absolutely everything on this podcast feed, you'll have heard four interviews with me already, but fortunately I don't think these two include much repetition, and I've gotten a decent amount of positive feedback on both. 

First up, I speak with David Kadavy on his show, Love Your Work. 

This is a particularly personal and relaxed interview. We talk about all sorts of things, including nicotine gum, plastic straw bans, whether recycling is important, how many lives a doctor saves, why interviews should go for at least 2 hours, how athletes doping could be good for the world, and many other fun topics. 

• Our annual impact survey is about to close — I'd really appreciate if you could take 3–10 minutes to fill it out now. 
• The blog post about this episode.

At some points we even actually discuss effective altruism and 80,000 Hours, but you can easily skip through those bits if they feel too familiar. 

The second interview is with Jeremiah Johnson on the Neoliberal Podcast. It starts 2 hours and 15 minutes into this recording. 

Neoliberalism in the sense used by this show is not the free market fundamentalism you might associate with the term. Rather it's a centrist or even centre-left view that supports things like social liberalism, multilateral international institutions, trade, high rates of migration, racial justice, inclusive institutions, financial redistribution, prioritising the global poor, market urbanism, and environmental sustainability. 

This is the more demanding of the two conversations, as listeners to that show have already heard of effective altruism, so we were able to get the best arguments Jeremiah could offer against focusing on improving the long term future of the world. 

Jeremiah is more of a fan of donating to evidence-backed global health charities recommended by GiveWell, and does so himself. 

I appreciate him having done his homework and forcing me to do my best to explain how well my views can stand up to counterarguments. It was a challenge for me to paint the whole picture in the half an hour we spent on longterm and I expect there's answers in there which will be fresh even for regular listeners. 

I hope you enjoy both conversations! Feel free to email me with any feedback.

The 80,000 Hours Podcast is produced by Keiran Harris.