One of effective altruism’s biggest givers, crypto-bro Sam Bankman-Fried (often referred to as SBF), may have built his billion-dollar empire on lies and under the cover of goodwill bought by his extreme giving.
Ross Douthat of the New York Times referred to Bankman-Fried’s actions as “playing Robin Hood using proceeds from an over-leveraged Ponzi Scheme.” And he did so from his penthouse of pills and polyamory in the Bahamas. At least he had fun, but now the entire Effective Altruism (EA) movement is under fire.
Just look at these headlines written after SBF’s fall:
Effective Altruism Committed the Sin It Was Supposed to Correct
Effective altruism solved all the…
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I don’t mean to brag, but my son Griffin has flushed more toilets on Ball State University’s campus than any other person in history. And he’s only eleven.
Most Fridays after I pick him up from school, we head to campus and choose a building or three to explore. We start at the first floor and work our way up and down the floors and halls. We check the floor plans, which sometimes show toilets, sometimes not.
We’ve visited the bowels of museums and auditoriums. New buildings with fancy efficient toilets, and old porcelain dinosaurs that flush with the ferocity of a T-Rex roar.
It’s not completely stress-free. He wants the bathroom to himself. He narrates his…
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Today is election day in Kenya. Presidential elections are sometimes violent and chaotic in Kenya (in the United States, now, too). I was in Kenya for the 2017 elections and thought I’d share an excerpt from my book Where Am I Giving? about what that was like.
***
Mom thought we were being abducted. But it was worse than that.
Her flight landed in Nairobi at the absolute worst time of the last 10 years. After days of contention in the presidential race, the election commission had declared incumbent, Joseph Kenyatta the winner. Nairobi had essentially been closed since the election—stores were boarded up and the streets of a city with 3 million people were empty. The few times I had ventured out it felt…
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Where is Bernie wearing?
Bernie’s coat is from Burton, a snowboard apparel company in Vermont. Of course, it wasn’t made in Vermont. As someone who has traveled around the world to ask where my clothing came from, I took a few minutes to look at Bernie’s jacket. Some thoughts:
1) It’s sold out because Bernie is a fashion icon.
2) The Burton site simply states that the coat was Imported. Sometimes that’s because an item is made in several countries. Nothing necessarily nefarious, but I like to see companies acknowledge where their products actually come from.
3) The Burton CEO visited 5 of the factories from which they source in 2017. That’s good to see.
4) The company has the addresses…
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Pam Mandel left suburbia for a lifetime of travel when she was only 17. She writes about her early travel days in her new memoir THE SAME RIVER TWICE.
Pam joined Kelsey and Jay to chat about hitchhiking, travel, questioning intentions while doing good, the time she went to the airport to help a refugee, founding a nonprofit, and, of course, jamming in a ukelele rock band.
Buy Pam’s book
Pam’s Uke FAQ
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Seren Fryatt didn’t want to tape ankles the rest of her life. She quit her job to volunteer internationally with Mercy Ships. In Liberia she was recruited to play professional soccer. She saw what the sport meant to the women on her team and its potential to be a force of positive change. Eventually she founded L.A.C.E.S., an NGO that works to create a sustainable, replicable model of community development using sports as a tool to reach at-risk youth and empower their local communities.
Seren joined Jay and I to chat about her path and the struggles of international NGOs during the global pandemic.
Eric Henry’s T-shirt business and North Carolina community were turned upside down by NAFTA. Ever since, he’s focused on the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. Eric is a champion for his community, cooperatives, chickens, electric cars, local economies, farmers, and now he’s seeking to represent all of these interests in the North Carolina House of Representatives.
Show notes and links:
Eric’s campaign
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In the summer of 2019, a violinist stood up at a city council meeting in Muncie, Indiana, and expressed concern over a factory that was coming to town. A local reporter wrote a story about the meeting. That story was passed around to concerned citizens who started asking questions. A few weeks later more than 1,000 people showed up at the courthouse protesting the Waelz Sustainable Products factory. A factory that would likely be the #1 polluter of airborne Mercury in the nation. Ultimately the billion-dollar corporation left town.
Kelsey talks with Josh Arthur, a local pastor, and Bryan Preston, a county employee, who were both in early on the action.
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What does an economy of living within the means of our planet look like? Welp, according to economist Kate Raworth it looks like a doghnut. Kelsey and Jay are joined by John Motlotch and Scott Truex of the Sustainable Communities Institute for a discussion on Raworth’s TED Talk.
Topics we discussed and relevant links:
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For kids “The System” doesn’t work in the best of times. And during a time of global pandemic, there are even fewer supports. Psychologist Janay Sander joins Kelsey and Jay to discuss how best to support kids facing traumatic circumstances.
Show Notes:
If you or a child you know in the United States is in a volatile situation or are subjected to domestic violence, please reach out to the following resources:
National…
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