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Read the full guide →
Introduction
Your most important decision
Summary
Foundations
A definition of impact
Future generations & their moral significance
Effective altruism
Global priorities
Why problem selection is crucial
The case for reducing existential risks
This could be the most important century
Our current list of pressing problems
Contribution
Which careers let you contribute most?
Some solutions are far more effective than others
Our list of high-impact careers
Personal fit
Fit is more important than you think
Strategy
What is career capital?
How much to explore?
Coordination and impact
Balancing impact and doing what you love
Aim higher: a rational case for dreaming big
Three career stages
Conclusion
How much do careers differ in impact?
Read the full guide →
Go to problems hub →
Top areas to work on
Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
Catastrophic pandemics
Building effective altruism
Global priorities research
Nuclear war
Epistemics and institutional decision making
Climate change
Great power conflict
Other promising areas
Promoting positive values
Space governance
See more →
Go to problems hub →
See all our career reviews →
Key categories of impactful careers
Government and policy
Organisation-building at effective nonprofits
Research
Applying an unusual strength to a needed niche
Communication
Earning to give
List of top-recommended career paths
AI safety technical research
Long-term AI policy
Founder of new projects
Helping build the effective altruism community
Grantmaker
Operations management in high-impact organisations
Research into global priorities
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
China-related AI safety and governance
Forecasting research and implementation
Sometimes-recommended paths
High-impact but especially competitive
Promising but under-researched
Impactful if you're an especially good fit
Recommended career capital
Steps to build your skills and network
Making the most of your current job
Doing good in any career
How to invest in yourself
See all our career reviews →
See all planning resources →
Create a high-impact career plan
8-week career planning course
Summary
Career plan template
Annual career check-up
Make good career decisions
Make an immediate decision
Improve your decision-making skills
See all planning resources →
Selected topics
Moral philosophy
Career capital
Job satisfaction
Anonymous advice
Unconventional advice
Advice for undergraduates
Advocacy
Existential risk
Top-recommended careers
See all topics →
Top articles from outside our guides
What makes for a dream job?
Best charities to donate to
Misconceptions about effective altruism
High-impact research questions
What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
How many lives does a doctor save?
What's the impact of voting?
Advice for undergraduates
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Topic archive: Academic Research

Filter by content type:
All86
Podcasts58
Blog posts20
Career reviews5
Key articles2
Podcasts (80k After Hours)1

Remove the "podcasts" filter to see all 86 items on this topic.

All podcasts tagged "Academic Research"

2023

January

#144 – Athena Aktipis on cancer, cooperation, and the apocalypse
Podcast

2022

December

#143 – Jeffrey Lewis on the most common misconceptions about nuclear weapons
Podcast

November

#140 – Bear Braumoeller on the case that war isn’t in decline
Podcast

October

#139 – Alan Hájek on puzzles and paradoxes in probability and expected value
Podcast

September

#137 – Andreas Mogensen on whether effective altruism is just for consequentialists
Podcast

August

#136 – Will MacAskill on what we owe the future
Podcast

July

#134 – Ian Morris on what big picture history teaches us
Podcast

June

#131 – Lewis Dartnell on getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
Podcast

May

#130 – Will MacAskill on balancing frugality with ambition, whether you need longtermism, and mental health under pressure
Podcast
#129 – James Tibenderana on the state of the art in malaria control and elimination
Podcast

April

#128 – Chris Blattman on the five reasons wars happen
Podcast

2021

November

#117 – David Denkenberger on using paper mills and seaweed to feed everyone in a catastrophe, ft Sahil Shah
Podcast
#116 – Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all
Podcast
#115 – David Wallace on the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics and its implications
Podcast

September

#111 – Mushtaq Khan on using institutional economics to predict effective government reforms
Podcast

July

#106 – Cal Newport on an industrial revolution for office work
Podcast

June

#104 – Pardis Sabeti on the Sentinel system for detecting and stopping pandemics
Podcast
#103 – Max Roser on building the world’s first great source of COVID-19 data at Our World in Data
Podcast
#102 – Tom Moynihan on why prior generations missed some of the biggest priorities of all
Podcast

May

#98 – Christian Tarsney on future bias and a possible solution to moral fanaticism
Podcast

March

#95 – Kelly Wanser on whether to deliberately intervene in the climate
Podcast

2020

December

#89 – Owen Cotton-Barratt on epistemic systems & layers of defence against potential global catastrophes
Podcast

November

#87 – Russ Roberts on whether it’s more effective to help strangers, or people you know
Podcast

October

#86 – Hilary Greaves on Pascal’s mugging, strong longtermism, and whether existing can be good for us
Podcast

August

#84 – What India did to stop COVID-19 and how well it worked
Podcast

July

#83 – Jennifer Doleac on ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons
Podcast
#82 – James Forman Jr on reducing the cruelty of the US criminal legal system
Podcast

May

#77 – Top epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch on whether we’re winning or losing against COVID-19
Podcast

April

#74 – Dr Greg Lewis on COVID-19 and reducing global catastrophic biological risks
Podcast

March

#72 – Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity’s potential futures
Podcast

February

#70 – Dr Cassidy Nelson on the twelve best ways to stop the next pandemic (and limit COVID-19)
Podcast

January

#68 – Will MacAskill on the moral case against ever leaving the house, whether now is the hinge of history, and the culture of effective altruism
Podcast

2019

December

#67 – David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness
Podcast
#66 – Peter Singer on being provocative, EA, how his moral views have changed, & rescuing children drowning in ponds
Podcast

October

#64 – Bruce Schneier on how insecure electronic voting could break the United States — and surveillance without tyranny
Podcast

September

#63 – Vitalik Buterin on effective altruism, better ways to fund public goods, the blockchain’s problems so far, and how it could yet change the world
Podcast

April

#56 – Animals in the wild often suffer a great deal. What, if anything, should we do about that?
Podcast

2018

December

#50 – We could feed all eight billion people through a nuclear winter. Dr David Denkenberger is working to make it practical.
Podcast
#49 – A year’s worth of education for under a dollar and other ‘best buys’ in development, from the UK aid agency’s Chief Economist
Podcast

October

#46 – Philosopher Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics, probability within a multiverse, & harnessing the brainpower of academia to tackle the most important research questions
Podcast
#45 – Economics Prof Tyler Cowen says our overwhelming priorities should be maximising economic growth and making civilisation more stable. Is he right?
Podcast

September

#42 – Tackling the ethics of infinity, being clueless about the effects of our actions, and having moral empathy for intellectual adversaries, with philosopher Dr Amanda Askell
Podcast

August

#41 – If the US put fewer people in prison, would crime go up? Not at all, according to Open Philanthropy’s renowned researcher David Roodman.
Podcast

July

#38 – Prof Yew-Kwang Ng on ethics and how to create a much happier world
Podcast
#36 – Tanya Singh on ending the operations management bottleneck in effective altruism
Podcast

May

#33 – Oxford University’s Dr Anders Sandberg on if dictators could live forever, the annual risk of nuclear war, solar flares, and more.
Podcast
#32 – Economist Bryan Caplan thinks education is mostly pointless showing off. We test the strength of his case.
Podcast
#30 – Dr Eva Vivalt’s research suggests social science findings don’t generalize. So evidence-based development – what is it good for?
Podcast
#29 – Where are the aliens? Three new resolutions to the Fermi Paradox. And how we could easily colonise the whole universe.
Podcast

April

#28 – Dr Owen Cotton-Barratt on why daring scientists should have to get liability insurance
Podcast
#26 – How exactly clean meat is created & the advances needed to get it into every supermarket, according to food scientist Marie Gibbons
Podcast

March

#25 – Why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do, according to Prof Robin Hanson
Podcast

February

#20 – Bruce Friedrich makes the case that inventing outstanding meat replacements is the most effective way to help animals
Podcast

January

#17 – Our descendants will probably see us as moral monsters. What should we do about that?
Podcast

2017

December

#16 – Michelle hopes to shape the world by shaping the ideas of intellectuals. Will global priorities research succeed?
Podcast

November

#15 – Prof Tetlock on predicting catastrophes, why keep your politics secret, and when experts know more than you
Podcast

October

#13 – We can use science to end poverty faster. But how much do governments listen to it?
Podcast

June

#2 – Prof David Spiegelhalter on risk, statistics and improving the public understanding of science
Podcast

Filter by content type:
All86
Podcasts58
Blog posts20
Career reviews5
Key articles2
Podcasts (80k After Hours)1

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80,000 Hours is a project of the Effective Ventures Foundation (England and Wales registered charity number 1149828 and registered company number 07962181) with a registered 501(c)(3) Exempt Organization in the USA (Centre for Effective Altruism USA Inc., EIN 47-1988398).

Please contact us to suggest ideas, improvements, or corrections.

We do our best to provide useful information, but how you use the information is up to you. We don’t take responsibility for any loss that results from the use of information on the site. Please consult our full legal disclaimer and privacy policy.

© 2023 – all rights reserved. Please contact us if you wish to redistribute, translate, or adapt this work.