Village gossip, pesticide bans, and gene drives: 17 experts on the future of global health

By 80000_Hours @ 2026-04-07T16:46 (+30)

By The 80,000 Hours podcast team |  Watch on Youtube | Listen on Spotify |  Read transcript

Arguments for global health and wellbeing are first and foremost about the actual opportunities for what you can do.

I think you can just actually go out and save a tonne of lives. You can change destructive, harmful public policies so that people can flourish more. You can do so in a way that allows you to get feedback along the way, so that you can improve and don’t just have one shot to get it right. And at the end, you can plausibly look back and say, “Look, the world went differently than it would have counterfactually if I didn’t do this.”

I think that is pretty awesome, and pretty compelling.

— Alexander Berger

What does it really take to lift millions out of poverty and prevent needless deaths?

In this special compilation episode, 17 past guests — including economists, nonprofit founders, and policy advisors — share their most powerful and actionable insights from the front lines of global health and development. You’ll hear about the critical need to boost agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa, the staggering impact of lead poisoning on children in low-income countries, and the social forces that contribute to high neonatal mortality rates in India.

What’s so striking is how some of the most effective interventions sound almost too simple to work: banning certain pesticides, replacing thatch roofs, or identifying village “influencers” to spread health information.

You’ll hear from:

Other 80,000 Hours resources:

Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Content editing: Katy Moore and Milo McGuire
Music: CORBIT
Coordination, transcriptions, and web: Katy Moore