Grand Theft Automated: How to Save a Trillion Lives
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A radical thought experiment transforms the lives of a new breed of philanthropists, as they follow the logic of altruism to extraordinary lengths. The most famous convert to the Effective Altruism movement, Sam Bankman-Fried, is either a humanitarian hero, a con artist at an astonishing scale, or most bafflingly, both.
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin. |
| 0:08.8 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
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| 0:26.7 | Call 844-844-I-Hart. |
| 0:29.3 | Douglas Adams, the genius behind the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist |
| 0:35.0 | who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. |
| 0:39.6 | Douglas Adams, the ends of the earth, |
| 0:41.7 | explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age |
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| 0:56.2 | Get Douglas Adams the ends of the earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. |
| 1:04.4 | The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. |
| 1:09.7 | Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, |
| 1:12.8 | showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. |
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| 1:24.5 | you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. |
| 1:29.6 | Listen to Medal of Honor on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. |
| 1:39.3 | In a penthouse apartment in the Bahamas, a billionaire is hosting a meeting. |
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