Update on Upcoming EA Podcast: Format Choices

I've been thinking about the sort of EA podcast I want to produce. Firstly, it might include recording the EA newsletter, but I hope for it to be more in-depth. That is, if reading the newsletter is like watching the local evening news, the podcast I have in mind is like a segment on 60 minutes. It wouldn't be like an audio equivalent of investigative journalism. I don't intend to use the podcast to broadcast original research inspired by the podcast.

I myself sometimes write blog posts on the EA Forum. So, other work I myself do in EA wouldn't be mentioned on the podcast unless the community deems newsworthy. I'd infer this from a project receiving something like a couple dozen votes on the EA Forum, or being shared in the EA Newsletter, or somesuch.

Secondly, the intended audience of the podcast is for people who are already familiar with effective altruism. Unlike Peter Singer's TED talk, TEDx or other talks by EA community leaders on YouTube, or the sort of radio interviews Will MacAskill has done in the past, this podcast will assume you've spent some time engaging with the foundations of effective altruism. The objective of the podcast will be to inform people of what's going on as the scope of activity under the umbrella of effective altruism expands.

I want to get started without having to learn how to do much editing. That would take a while, and I don't want to wait before I get started and after everyone loses excitement for the project. So, I'm going to write scripts for the episodes on EA policy work I'm doing. Being able to rehearse and read from scripts should reduce how much I stutter or pause during the podcast. I've heard this can be a problem in podcasts. I hope to start tomorrow.

My original idea was to record a podcast summarizing the policy work being done in and around the EA community. I thought something like this might take around an hour to listen to. However, I underestimated the amount of EA policy work being done. I think there is content on this topic alone for a couple hours worth of podcast. That's a bit long to start off with, so I'll be breaking down my summary coverage of EA policy work into multiple episodes. I'm breaking it down by the policy work done on respective object-level causes (e.g., poverty alleviation, animal welfare, etc.).

I imagine each of those episodes will be around 20 minutes in length. I don't imagine an episode will be less than 10 minutes or more than 40 minutes, for this first series of episodes.