"Second Wind"
"Second Wind"
Ah, the occupational pivot. Maybe I'm kidding myself, but I feel like even with my limited access to significant brainpower, I could help solve the world's most pressing problems (with some guidance)
Welp, just to be able to get SOMETHING out this week, I thought I’d present to you this audio snippet introducing a podcast proposal of mine called Better Do-Gooder.
It’s a component to the application I mentioned last week that I’d been trying to put together (for months!!) for 80,000 Hours, a nonprofit that’s an extension of the Centre (they’re British) for Effective Altruism.
Here’s the pitch:
In the interest of aiming high (per 80kH’s helpful encouragement!), I’m just going to illustrate my interest in EA with a pitch to provide a companion podcast to Rob’s show that targets non-academics. Here’s a sample snippet from (working title) “Better Do-Gooder.”
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rh9h2x40lt8l8ws/Better%20Do-Gooder.m4a
The idea here is that there are only so many academics and intellectuals to recruit into the EA family. Without going too low-brow, “Better Do-Gooder”’s mission will be to draw in compassionate people who want to contribute to solving the world’s most pressing problems, but don’t know how—and, unfortunately, don’t have the patience or bandwidth to spend three hours absorbing the science behind the movement.
It could run perfectly parallel to “The 80,000 Hours Podcast,” synthesizing (i.e. dumbing down) the info from each episode into bite-sized morsels most folks can understand and feel more immediately excited and motivated by. Or it could exist entirely independently, breaking down the essential concepts behind EA, conducting more straightforward, practical analysis of 80kH’s priority global problems, and presenting pointed but non-intimidating calls to action. Or both!
And here’s the script for the sample intro if you don’t care to click through to the audio:
Welcome to the very first episode of Better Do-Gooder, where we do do-gooder better by getting the biggest bang for your buck when donating your cash, time, and/or energy to a worthy cause.
I’m your host, Dean Moore. Today we’re gonna talk a LITTLE bit about the organization who funds the program and the movement they founded a decade ago that devotes itself, in the very simplest terms, to do the best for the most.
Now, a lot of the folks who established the so-called “effective altruism” movement are, in fact, nerds—but that’s OK, this show is totally cool with nerds, nerds are cool, or at least not uncool. It’s the dweebs, of course, that we have to worry about, this is definitely a no-dweebs production but nerds are welcome. I myself am something of a nerd, which I’m sure we’ll get into.
But what we’re going to focus on TODAY is what we mean by being a better do-gooder, and what we intend to help you do in order to do a little better than just give a little cash to a seemingly worthy cause, and feel good about having given something, to somebody, but having that be the end of it. We want that feeling to last because you’re consistently doing a little bit of really effective giving, or a little bit of really high-impact good—so we’re talking donating money or just sharing a cause’s blog post on Instagram or recommending this program to a friend—we’d like to help you feel those good vibes a lot of the time, because you do little things like that a lot of the time. You’ve baked doing good into your life.
Because if you’re like me—and I hope you’re NOT in any other meaningful way than the way I’m about to describe—but if you’re like me in this way, you feel like there’s so much gross gunk going on in this crazy mixed-up world we live in that you want to offset it all by doing good. And, depending ON your cash situation, your time situation, your energy situation, you’d like to know that what you’re donating really matters.
So one of Better Do-Gooder’s missions will be to…
And, scene.
Unfortunately, if you’ve ever heard of “effective altruism” before, it’s probably because of the movement’s connection to disgraced crypto figurehead Sam Bankman-Fried. But I’ve always thought of EA as having the same foundational modus operandi that CeeGees has: let’s find ways to do the best for the most.
So I’m still learning about the EA scene. I’m definitely not referring to myself as “an EA”—that sounds a little Scientology-ey to me. But one of 80kHrs’ goals is to help people pivot toward occupations that help solve the world’s most pressing problems. And I’m in the market for a pivot like that. So until further notice I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Anyways, happy fraggin’ Friday!!!
Yours,
~Dean
P.S. Below please enjoy a pic of me cracking open a Boddington’s (very British) that I’ve had in the fridge for a looooong time, sitting at the ready to celebrate sending this application for one-on-one consulting with 80kHrs. (Gotta celebrate small wins, everybody!!)
P.P.S. You can’t tell but I’m standing in the middle of a crazy windstorm that took down power for most of Nashville today.
P.P.P.S. And feast your eyes on my new glasses that hopefully make me look roughly 35% to 50% smarter. (Yes I actually do need them to see good.)
