Amplify grantees

Amplify creative grants was a small grants program for supporting podcasts and other creative media projects that spread ideas to help humanity navigate this century. We’re happy to announce our grantees!

We’re really excited by all these projects. In particular, we’re glad to have found a number of grantees looking to reach relatively neglected audiences, including through non-English language content in Spanish, French, and Hindi.

Thanks to Drew Spartz from Nonlinear for helping connect us with funding, and handling much of the logistics.^[1]

The grantees

Laura González Salmerón, Pablo Stafforini and Pablo Melchor

Laura, Pablo, and Pablo started a new podcast called La bisagra de la historia (“The hinge of history”); a podcast interviewing Spanish-speaking researchers and entrepreneurs working on some of this century’s most pressing problems. Here’s the announcement post.

[W]e talk in depth with experts in diverse fields: artificial intelligence, law, economics, ethics, politics […] about what are the great challenges of our time, and what can we do to confront them.

James Ozden and Amy Odene

James Ozden and Amy Odene started a podcast called How I Learned to Love Shrimp; focused on effective animal advocacy. We hope that the show will further promote effective, evidence-based methods in animal advocacy, as well as directly advocate for important changes. You can see all episodes here.

Leah Pierson and Sophie Gibert

Leah Pierson and Sophie Gibert are PhD students in global health and philosophy respectively. They started a podcast called Bio(un)ethical, where they interview bioethicists about standards, rules, and norms in medicine and public health.

On each episode, we interview an expert on an important and controversial issue in bioethics. For instance, in our first few episodes, we consider the following questions: Should there be risk limits on research involving consenting participants? Does the IRB system do more harm than good? Should patients with intractable mental illness have access to medical aid in dying? What is the point of teaching ethics to professional school students?

Jérémy Perret

Jérémy Perret is creating audio, text and visual content to help people from France and French-speaking countries navigate the field of AI safety. He’ll be working to accelerate the existing effort to field-build in France.

Akash Wasil

Akash Wasil is starting a podcast to interview researchers in AI strategy and governance. We hope that this will get new researchers up to speed faster, and help bolster internal communication between the organisations and thinkers working on this crucial problem.

Ben Yeoh

Ben Yeoh (@benyeohben) hosts the long-form interview podcast Ben Yeoh Chats; discussing effective altruism, sustainability, creativity, and more. Our grant will pay for studio time, helping Ben continue to grow his podcast.

Varun Agrawal

Varun Agrawal is starting an interview podcast in Hinglish (mostly Hindi, but with terms like “Artificial Intelligence” dotted in), aimed at sharing an impact-focused approach to career planning with an Indian audience.

Trevor Martin

Trevor Martin will produce a video introduction to forecasting, aimed at becoming a comprehensive overview of forecasting principles and tools to help newcomers get up to speed quickly. Trevor has consistently ranked in the top 5 users by points on Metaculus.

Nathan Barnard

Nathan Barnard is starting a social science podcast from a centre-left perspective, discussing ideas relevant to effective altruism. Our grant will pay for his mic and software, for Nathan to get his podcast off the ground.

Madeleine Chang

Madeleine Chang runs the entertaining longtermist space governance blog t3telemetry.com Our grant will help her spend more time on new posts, making important ideas legible, and exploring ways to get complex content out to more readers, through cartoons, and perhaps, videos.

Pablo Rosado

Pablo Rosado runs a Spanish-language blog and YouTube channel called AltruFísica, presenting concepts in the overlap between science and effective altruism in an engaging way. Our funding will help him spend more time on the project, and reach a wider audience.

All grantees have access to a joint Slack for access to mutual support and mentorship. We’re so excited to see (and hear) what everyone creates!