Person
Every book William MacAskill recommended on podcasts
Across 3 podcasts. Every show William MacAskill appears on, in one place — not just one.
William MacAskill’s most recommended books
- The Precipice by Toby Ord
- The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich
- The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Patrick Henrich
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Animal Liberation by Peter Singer
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
William David MacAskill is a Scottish philosopher and author, as well as one of the originators of the effective altruism movement. He was a Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford, co-founded Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours, and is the author of Doing Good Better (2015) and What We Owe the Future (2022), and the co-author of Moral Uncertainty (2020). On podcasts such as The Tim Ferriss Show and Modern Wisdom, MacAskill recommended Toby Ord's The Precipice on the topic of existential risks, noting it as a frequent gift and essential reading. He also recommended Joseph Henrich's The Secret of Our Success and The WEIRDest People in the World, stating that Henrich's books had a major impact on his thinking and his understanding of human psychology and societies. Additionally, he discussed George Orwell's 1984 while talking about the risks of value lock-in and a single world government.
Books recommended by William MacAskill
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The Precipice
The Precipice by Toby Ord is an influential examination of existential risks and the long-term future of humanity written by a researcher at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute.
Discussed“uh where number one among those which Toby talks about at length and where you know you can see the precipice and what we owe the future”
Where to get it
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The Secret of Our Success
The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich explores how human cultural learning, cooperation, and cumulative knowledge have driven evolutionary success far beyond raw intelligence alone.
Recommended“uh so I have like another kind of set of books which are quite different but they've had some of the biggest impact on just the background of my thinking over the last few years in very subtle ways and that's Joe heinrich's books secret of our success and the EST people in the world”
Where to get it
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The WEIRDest People in the World
The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Patrick Henrich, Joseph Henrich, and Korey Jackson is an exploration of how psychology, anthropology, and culture intersect to shape distinct societal structures.
Recommended“uh so I have like another kind of set of books which are quite different but they've had some of the biggest impact on just the background of my thinking over the last few years in very subtle ways and that's Joe heinrich's books secret of our success and the EST people in the world”
Where to get it
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1984
1984 by George Orwell is a classic dystopian novel exploring totalitarianism, surveillance, political tribalism, and the systematic control of information.
Discussed“depending on what that ideology is like could be very bad indeed you know some something like what you got in 1984 George Orwell with the handmaid's tale Mark outward”
Where to get it
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Animal Liberation
Animal Liberation by Peter Singer is a foundational philosophy text that galvanized the modern animal rights movement by arguing against the moral permissibility of animal exploitation.
Discussed“going back to Peter Singo where um you said the animal Liberation which was the name of his book which was kind of text you know founding text for what became the animal rights movement”
Where to get it
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Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a psychological masterpiece that explores the crushing guilt, moral torment, and eventual redemption of a destitute former student who commits a brutal murder in St.
Discussed“well I think one of the things I liked about Crime and Punishment and Do's work in particular is that it kind of it at least is wrestling with existentialism”
Where to get it
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The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel "The Handmaid's Tale" imagines a totalitarian society where individual liberties are stripped away and women's bodies are heavily controlled.
Discussed“depending on what that ideology is like could be very bad indeed you know some something like what you got in 1984 George Orwell with the handmaid's tale Mark outward”
Where to get it
Books William MacAskill wrote
Appearances
Other mentions (9: passing, ad reads, own books)
“That's my second book, but it's for academics, so it's never going to get read quite as widely as Doing Good Better.”
“now perhaps you know in my book i argue there's enormous amounts of value at stake when we consider the long term”
“so the first is if you think that it's good to have more happy flourishing people um and i think like if people have sufficiently good lives then i think that's true i argue for it in what we are the future then by far and by overwhelming amounts”
“um in this book what we are the future is doing that an awful lot of people are going to promote cultural change around attitudes to non-human animals”
“that's kind of a follow-up to doing good better that is um really explaining kind of what is the effect of altruism community”
“because in the book in what we are the future I talk about the analogy between the present world and humanity”
“so in the what we are the future I give a story of ancient China so during this period that's known as the hund schools of thought the zuu dynasty had fallen”
“you know I've tried to pack as much as I can into a book but I think is yeah there's a lot to engage with”
“I use it very heavily to like Orient myself for the book”