Before today's episode, I have a message for our listeners. If you're listening to this podcast,

you probably care about reason and evidence. If you also care about helping the world,

I recommend checking out give well.org. They do rigorous research on which charities are actually

effective. So they're not just looking at what does this charity say they do or what's this charity's

budget, they're looking at, okay, can we be confident that this charity's work is improving

people's health or bringing them out of poverty and by how much?

If you're curious, you can read their explanations of how they reach their conclusions at

give well.org.

Or if you just want a few recommended charities to give to that you can be confident

to actually work, give well's got your back. Check them out at give well.org.

Welcome. Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I'm your host, Julia Galef, and with me is today's guest, Dylan Matthews.

Dylan is a senior correspondent for Vox.com, where he writes about politics, economics, culture, and a bunch of other interesting things. I've been a fan of

Dylan's writing for years, but the impetus for inviting him on the show today was actually

kind of unusual. This will be like a bit of an unusual episode in that it's not about a body

of work per se, but rather about a personal choice that Dylan made last year, which is that he

decided to donate one of his kidneys to a stranger. And I'm interested in talking about this

choice as kind of a case study in, first of all, how we should be thinking about our ethical obligations to people who are outside of our immediate inner circle of friends and family.

And then also a case study in how we should think about risks and benefits of medical procedures given the imperfectness of research and evidence. So, Dylan, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. What was the impetus for you for deciding to donate? And this was last fall, right?

Yeah, so the surgery was August 22nd, so sort of end of summer, beginning of fall.

And I'd been planning to do it for a while, and I'd been in the process of getting evaluated for about a year.

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