80,000 Hours Podcast
If you genuinely believe that humanity could be wiped out by AI or a pandemic, what is the appropriate amount of fear to feel?
“As much as possible” can seem like the only reasonable answer. If the world is on fire, surely feeling calm just means you haven’t internalised the situation. When you’re trying to prevent human extinction or end factory farming, taking a weekend off can feel morally indefensible.
But fear is an alarm designed to provoke short bursts of drastic action, not a state humans can productively inhabit for months or years. Guilt turns out not to be such a great engine for productivity, either. So what is the best way to sustain motivation to work on the world’s most pressing problems in the long term?
Host Luisa Rodriguez and guest Spencer Greenberg tackle this question from many angles — talking to therapists, running a survey of people working on existential risks, and pulling relevant lessons from Spencer’s new book, The 12 Levers: The Complete Psychological Toolkit for Improving Your Life. Drawing on all these sources, they put together a plan for how to make an impact without grinding yourself to a pulp.
Check out Spencer's new book: https://80k.info/12-levers
Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/sg26
This episode was recorded on June 12 and 15, 2026.
Chapters:
Our production team includes:
Music: CORBIT