It's holiday season [music] and in the

holiday season here at New York Times

Opinion, Nick Kristoff many years ago

kicked off [music] a tradition which I

love. It's one of my favorite parts

about being here where different

columnists and parts of the organization

[music]

offer up their recommendations for

giving trying to make people aware of

charities, philanthropies they might

want to support where money that they

can spare [music] might do a tremendous

amount of good. In my personal giving,

every year I give [music]

some of the money I'm giving to a local

charity, but then I give a lot of it to

give [music] well of every organization

I know of. I have the most [music] trust

in them to vet, to run the experiments,

to read the research, to really figure

out where my money [music] will go the

furthest in helping other people. Give

all has not been around that long, but

in the time they've been around, they've

become a [music] pretty big channeler of

givers funds for this exact reason

because a lot of people trust the work

they do because it is so transparent

because it is so rigorous. Billions of

dollars have ended up [music] being

given through them. And so I am

recommending that if you have money to

spare, you consider giving some of it

[music] through Give Well, which you can

do at givewell.org.

But I thought as a way to talk about

this, rather than writing a column, I

would [music] have Ellie Hassenfeld,

Gwell's CEO and one of its founders on

the show to talk about how Give Well

started, how it does its work, how it

makes some [music] of its very arguable

and very difficult decisions in terms of

what to recommend and what not to

recommend, and how givers [music]

themselves should think about donating

money, to whom, to where, and under what

conditions. [music]

as we all sort of wrestle with how we

can do a little bit more good in a world

that needs a [music] lot more good done.

As always, my email, Ezra Kleinshowny

Times.com.

[music]

Ellie Housefeld, welcome to the show.

Great to be here. So, I want to start a

little bit before your work at Gwell.

When I was looking into this show, you

studied religion at college, which is

not what I would expect necessarily from

somebody who goes on to work at a hedge

fund and then become an apostle of

costbenefit analysis and randomized

controlled trials. So, religion, why?

>> I think in an alternative life, I'm not

doing what I'm doing here at Gwell and

instead I'm a academic studying the

Talmud. It was something that at the

time I was incredibly interested in. And

in college, I spent a lot of time in

Talmud courses, studying other religious

texts and Judaism and otherwise. And I

just found it incredibly fulfilling and

interesting to think about how people

had tried to answer questions about

their lives.

>> What is the Talmud for people who don't

know? And what did you learn from

studying it? It's a huge compendium of

Jewish ideas and thought from roughly

the 500s of the common era. And I think

the thing it taught me most is how

challenging it is to know anything. uh I

spent about a year just studying Talmud

and in that year after high school it

was the it was the first time that I

think I had a really challenging

intellectual experience where I wasn't

able to understand the the text and the

content that I was trying to and uh but

nevertheless found myself drawn to

understand it and to deal with the

layers of challenge that the the text

presented and spent a year doing that.

And then when I was in college, I would

say that this was my main

extracurricular activity outside of

school was spending several hours a day

uh studying studying Tolmood and

thinking about whether that is something

I would do as a career and ultimately

realized it wasn't the right fit for me.

>> And what you move on to is Bridgewater,

a very unusual hedge fund. How what is

that movement for you?

You know, sometime I as I moved through

college, I was thinking about what my

career would be and had the opportunity

to have internships in many different

places. So, my parents are both lawyers.

I got to work at a law firm. That

convinced me not to go to law school

because I didn't think that would be

that would be right for me. I was able

to get a job in finance at a small

company and they were they were

essentially selling research to the big

banks and just trying to figure out how

to ac succeed as an organization. And

because of that, they were willing to

give me, a 21-year-old college kid, a

lot of leeway to try to do things and

help the company grow. That experience

of being in a place where I was needed

and able to do something interesting and

challenging motivated me to look for

jobs in in finance coming out of school.

And so I went to, you know, I was able

to get a job at Bridgewwater Associates,

which in 2004 when I graduated college

was not wellknown at all. Uh, everyone I

talked to said, "Don't don't go work

there. You know, go work at a well-known

investment bank. that'll be better for

your career. But when I interviewed

there, they they asked me about my

senior thesis, which I was a religion

major, so it was about martyrdom in

medieval Islam, Judaism, and

Christianity. And we talked about that

for an hour, and I got a call back. And

it was one of the few places that that

called me back as a you might not be

surprised to hear that religion majors

don't often do so well interviewing for

finance jobs. And because of that, I

thought that this place, Bridgewwater,

was just uh one of the more interesting

places to go work. and I was grateful to

be able to work there.

>> So it later becomes fairly wellnown

because it's Ray Dallio's hedge fund and

Dalia of course is a a sort of I know

public finance intellectual now but had

a very strange and famous management

style. What was working at Bridgewater

like for somebody who doesn't know much

about it? What is unusual about working

at Bridgewwater in that time?

>> So so what Bridgewater is known for is

its culture of [snorts]

radical transparency. just saying what

you think, sharing that with other with

your colleagues, not worrying too much

about how you say it, but just saying

what you believe. And then over time,

>> more about how they'll feel about it

>> or how they'll feel about it. And over

time, Rey developed these principles

that were passed out inside the

organization. The way I described it to

my friends at the time is it felt to me

like working in almost an academic

environment. People didn't wear fancy

clothes. They argued a lot about ideas.

uh you know sure there were ways in

which um I think the culture wasn't

ideal for many you know it was a place

where it was more about getting things

right and then worry about people's

feelings later and if that wasn't the

right fit for you then people moved on

but for me it was an extremely valuable

experience and and the thing that I

appreciated certainly as a young person

in my early 20s is I would go to my boss

sometimes and he was one of the heads of

the company and say hey I think you're

wrong about this and he would listen to

me and not you know sometimes I was

wrong Sometimes I was right, but just to

be taken seriously early in your career

was uh so valuable. It's something I'm

really grateful for them for providing

me.

>> What did you actually do there?

>> I worked in the research department for

a year. So that meant thinking about uh

investment decisions and then move to

the trading or the execution department

where the job was to try to put trades

into the market in a way that didn't

push the market too far in the direction

that we were going. I I think this is

relevant to what you end up doing

because when hedge funds, investment

banks, you are trying to understand a

company, a sector,

uh quirk in the market

at a level where you can make a trade

other people will not make and you'll

lose a lot of money if you're wrong. So,

how does a religion major coming out of

college, what is the pathway to having

something of any value to say when

you're, you know, whatever it is?

>> I think the core the core idea that was

true then and I think has carried

through in give well and in my life

today was, you know, first in order to

make decisions about what to do in the

world, we have to understand the world

accurately. And for a hedge fund,

understanding reality is really key. If

you're right, you make money. Or you

can. If you're wrong, you tend to lose

money. And so the stakes of getting to

the quote unquote truth are very high.

Part of that is you have to be careful

not to fool yourself. So one of the

things that investors do is they have an

idea about what might perform well in

the market. And then you can say, well,

how well did this idea perform

historically? And you can back test the

idea. And when you do that, you have to

be really careful not to fool yourself

and fit your idea to the past. Instead,

you have to ask this question.

>> Wait, can you describe what that would

mean?

>> So, you might say uh like a simple rule

like let's say when I'm going to make

something up uh that's entirely

fictitious, but you know, let's say if

oil stock if oil prices go up, then

train stocks go down because an input

into railroad costs is the price of gas.

And so when you know the input cost goes

up, the performance will be poor. And

you could try to look at this

historically and say, let's say we

tested this going back. Would this have

been a successful strategy in the

market? The challenge is it's very easy

to convince yourself that you should

tweak your rule in one way or another to

enable the idea that you have to perform

uh on the back test, but you don't want

to do that cuz you only want to bet

money on this idea if it really will

work. So you're working at Bridgewwater,

a hedge fund, I would say one of the

more inquisitive industries that exist.

Where does the interest for you, where

does the the glimmers

of giving as a pursuit and giving

differently come from?

I've been there for a couple of years.

Uh my friend had a friend there, Holden

Carnowski, and and he and I just started

realizing, you know, we have we're

young. We don't have high expenses.

we're saving some money. Let's try to

use some of this money to to help

people. And so back in the summer of

2006, he and I and a few others got

together and said, "Let's just work on

figuring out where where we'll give by

the end of the year." You know, few a

few thousand dollars. [snorts]

And it was in that process with that

group of people that we learned a few

things. You know, first we learned it's

really hard to get answers about what

charitable organizations do and how well

it works. Uh number two, I just found

myself,

you know, somewhat obsessed by this

question of where should we give? You

know, at the time I knew very little

about what the lives of people around

the world were like. It's not something

I'd studied. It's not something I knew

much about, but learning about the

challenges accessing water or disease,

it was just a very motivating motivating

topic to work on. I I remember this

night in probably December of 2006. I

was up at 2 or 3 in the morning reading

academic papers about diarrhea in

Africa. If you find yourself reading

about diarrhea at 3:00 in the morning,

you know you found something that is

you're really drawn to. And so after

working on this essentially part-time,

Holden, my co-founder and I left

Bridgewater and started Give as a

full-time project back in the summer of

2007. Two things in there. One is the

impulse to start looking for

the effectiveness data on the charities

you might support. Not to just say we're

going to, you know, give the money to

Doctors Without Borders. We're going to

give it to UNICEF, right? There there

are big charities out there. We've all

heard of them. There was Charity

Navigator, which is something that I

used when I was younger.

And and also what happened, what you saw

when you began looking.

We just started asking some really basic

questions and the answers we got back uh

were shocking. So we we each researched

a different cause. I decided to research

the cause of water in Africa. I'd call

up first we looked at Charity Navigator

and at the time Charity Navigator

essentially just reported financial

metrics. So it said this is the amount

of money that's spent on overhead versus

programs and fundraising. And while this

measure can tell you that a charity is a

scam or not, it's it's not going to tell

you whether the program is actually

working. Let's say the charity spends

all its money digging wells, but those

wells disappear a year later. They fall

into disrepair. Well, that's not a very

effective use of funds, even if all of

it was spent on programs. And so we we

knew that Charity Navigator wasn't

giving us the answers. I called the

organizations up and asked them, "Well,

so so what do you do? What do I get if I

give you money?" And they said, I

remember this $20 provides a child water

for life.

Great. That's amazing. I would love to

give to that. Uh what do you mean? Like

how how does that work exactly? What

does it pay for? And how do you know?

And at that point, it's like the

conversation fell flat. They they just

didn't have answers. What what they

actually said was, "We don't get

questions like these from our

million-dollar donors." And it it was

this light bulb like this light bulb

went off that you know almost no one was

asking these questions.

>> Were they annoyed by you?

>> Uh some of them were annoyed by us. One

organization

accused Holden of being a spy for a

rival organization. He had asked how

much money do you spend in each country?

And that question would they could only

imagine it would be asked if he had some

nefarious purpose. And so I I think they

were annoyed. I mean, we were what, 25

at the time, so I'm sure we were

annoying, but we really saw how

neglected this area was. And it really

motivated us to start Give Well.

>> What's striking to me about the way you

approached it is that

you even had the intuition

that maybe you would give to a charity.

And what you were doing was making a bet

in the same way that when you're

trading, when you're trading, the bet is

supposed to make you money. When you're

giving to a charity, it's supposed to

improve lives.

>> In some ways, this basic question of

what is true, how can we know that it's

true? How can we assess the empirical

[clears throat]

data and evidence that we have to make

the best decisions? I mean, that's

exactly what Give Well does in a very

different way, in a very different

context, but it's bringing that same uh

commitment to rigor and truth seeeking

to bear on trying to answer questions

about what we should do in the world.

What are the things that in your view

most commonly stand in the way of

organizations? Organizations that care

deeply about their mission or have

financial or otherwise skin in the game

from finding truthful answers.

Organizations or for that matter

individuals.

I mean I think there's two big things

that happen and there's many more that

are downstream. First is as an

individual running an organization, you

have an incentive for your organization

to succeed and [snorts] it's very

difficult to look for information that

would mean your organization is not

succeeding or shouldn't receive money.

uh it it's just it's it's it's not I

think it's not realistic to expect

someone who say is running an

organization that you know delivers food

in a way that is very cost inefficient

to determine that they should shut that

program down and move on to something

else. That's just not how human beings

operate. And I think that's completely

completely understandable. And then I

think the second challenge

um is that in order to make good

decisions about where to put money, it's

very helpful to have a a broad

perspective. If you're focused on, let's

just say, an inefficient delivery of

food aid, you're not going to be

thinking about the role that a malaria

vaccine could now have and whether you

should be in fact delivering malaria

vaccines instead of delivering food aid.

And so I just think the place that most

people sit in the let's call it the

nonprofit economy makes it implausible

that they would take this kind of

perspective. I think that when I was

younger and giving to charity, I didn't

really think at all about the idea that

the money could fail.

And I mean these are good people.

They're trying to do something hard. You

know, they're out there working on the

ground. The idea that you might just

give money to some of them and that

money would be useless, I actually think

until later on didn't really occur to me

deeply.

What was the intuition that led you to

treat money given to charity as money

that could fail? I don't I don't know

what, you know, led us to have that

realization. And what I remember is it

was at a time when, you know, you would

go to CNET on the internet for ratings

of printers if you wanted to know which

printer to buy. And it it almost seemed

intuitive that you should be able to get

the same kind of information about any

way that you would spend money,

including about charitable

organizations. And in many ways that was

the initial vision for give well which

you know we've evolved far from today

but the initial vision was a place that

donors could go and just get information

that is as good about where they'll give

as they could get at the time about

which computer to purchase or which

printer to buy. And it just seemed

it was it was offensive in some ways

that that didn't exist for charitable

organizations. You know, I think a lot

of the focus that people bring to

charity is is on the donor. It's saying

to, you know, donor, you should be

generous. And then when you're generous,

that's that's success. And of course,

what that misses is that the person who

you should ultimately be focused on is

is helping someone in need. That that's

the goal. Uh, you know, I think that

what, you know, what what really is

important to remember is is both the

fact that you can fail to help the

person in need and and that happens all

the time, but also that charitable

giving isn't just a nice thing that a

donor can do. It's a very practical way

to make the world a better place that

you can give and save lives. And and

this has been, you know, it's clear and

demonstrable that supporting public

health programs has this kind of impact.

That point about the focus being on the

donor is interesting. So in the

tradition you and I share, the Jewish

tradition, there's this idea of Saddaka.

And I remember being in Hebrew school

when I was young, going around with a

little Saddaka box and collecting, you

know, coins. And I think it went to at

that time UNICEF.

And and being taught that there were,

you know, different levels of saddaka.

And the highest level was when nobody

knew you gave and you did not know who

you gave to because that level was

selfless in both directions. you you

were not expecting gratitude. You were

not expecting prestige. Uh I do wonder

if some of it comes from the history of

of of charity and generosity as among

other things a spiritual practice.

You're trying to [sighs]

uh develop a certain facility

inside yourself as a virtuous and

spiritually alive person. The idea that

you'd be coming behind that money and

checking up on it, I think would be seen

in some ways as intention

with the attributes you were trying to

cultivate. When the focus of charitable

giving is on the generosity of the

donor, then those sorts of that

framework makes sense. And then there's

this alternative way of seeing the

world, which I think is more intuitive

to us in modern times than perhaps it

was 3,000 years ago, which says we we

know that we can make the world a better

place. The world is a much better place

in my opinion today than it was 3,000

years ago. We we do that via improved

technology. We argue about the best

political systems and what policies we

should have. And now I want the argument

that I'd like to bring forward is that

charitable giving is one more way that

each of us can take action and make the

world better. and and when you see it

from that perspective, it's critical to

think about the effects that the

programs have where you can get as much

uh impact as possible and also how to

avoid failure. So you and Holden split

off from Bridgewater, you create give

well. You begin trying to gather this

data,

begin trying to figure out even how you

would make recommendations. How do you

start? The idea we had is that when we

were individuals giving a few thousand

dollars, it was hard to get information,

but with some of the funds that we were

we put together to start Give Well

full-time heavily [snorts] from our

former co-workers at Bridgewwater. We

could incentivize organizations to share

data. We started by offering small

grants that organizations applied for.

Uh I think at the time we offered

several $25,000 grants. Organizations

would send us data. And what we learned

in that first year after we we

recommended our first round of

organizations is that while we needed

some data from organizations, what was

really critical in pushing us to make

recommendations was this huge trove of

academic information about what works to

help people overseas. So these are often

rigorous randomized control trials of

health programs uh like distributing

mosquito nets or provision of needed

vaccines.

Who are these academics doing this work?

Because on some level, it's weird work

to do to say to yourself, well, I'm

going to see if giving a family a cow

really does help them in 5 years.

Where where is this early

evidence coming from and what kinds of

weirdos are collecting it? Well, I mean,

there's there's different fields that

you know whose information we rely on.

One is the the public health field. So

people asking questions like how

effective are mosquito nets or how uh

what impact will we get from vitamin A

supplements delivered to young children.

This is coming out of of public health.

And I remember actually speaking to one

of these malaria researchers who told me

at one point early in his career he had

sat on the beach in Tanzania and just

let mosquitoes bite him because they had

to count how many bites he would get in

in some amount of time sitting on the

beach. So certainly people who were

themselves willing to go to great

lengths and risk personal harm to create

the information we rely on. And then

separately, there's a movement in

development economics around randomized

control trials where people are trying

to not just assess the health effects of

programs which are often more

measurable, more easily measurable, but

the economic effects of programs like

micro finance or provision of livestock

or even just giving people cash to let

them spend how they want. And this this

movement in the 90s and early 2000s in

in many ways I think of as uh being an

intellectual forebearer to give well and

you know I think we're in in our debt to

all the work they did because they

really helped generate many of the ideas

that we've taken forward.

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speed test intelligence data 125. How do

you think about freeing yourself from

the very natural human tendency to think

along with your group? I do find people

in finance or venture capital tend to be

trained to look for places where the

consensus might be wrong. I I mean at

the hedge fund level what everyone else

thinks on some of you if you only think

what they think you're not going to make

money. But I think there's also this

dimension, and I feel like this is

important to the work you all end up

doing at Give Well, where there are

things that that are comfortable to

think um stories we like to tell

ourselves or are moved by and the way in

which we can get wrapped up in

those sort of more emotionally driven

approaches or socially driven

approaches, right? You know, everybody

like you supports this kind of charity.

everybody like you knows that you know

the economy is going to be bad next

year. I

>> I mean [clears throat] the the ask that

I would make of most people is is not to

try to break away from the norm in an

extreme way but instead

you know there's this idea that that you

know that I have that many have this

traditional idea of giving 10% of your

income to charity. It doesn't ask you to

give

>> very old religious idea.

>> Old religious idea tithing.

>> And so it's it's not giving 90% or even

50%. It's it's 10%. And I think in the

same way, you know, if you're if someone

is supporting local causes, if they're

supporting programs that are meaningful

to them, one one step to take is just

move away by 10%. and move towards, you

know, if if you want the causes that we

focus on helping some of the poorest

people in the world, uh, with with 10%

of your focus and energy. And I think

that that 10% move is one that is

available to many people.

>> So, you're you're pointing towards a

very particular intuition people have,

which is that we all get wrapped up in

local causes. And I want to say for my

giving, I sort of give in a couple of

different buckets. And one is very

local, right? that I believe I have a

particular responsibility to the

community I am part of. Uh but there's a

tendency for the stories that you know

and are near you and people who know you

tell you to overwhelm the sort of

diffuse questions of global malaria or

vitamin deficiency. How did you travel

that path? Because my understanding of

when you began in this you began locally

as well. Uh when when we started, we

were based in New York. Now we're based

in the Bay Area, but we were looking

both at causes focused on New York and

causes focused overseas. Um I think the

first donation I ever gave was to a New

York-based organization called the

Harlem Children's Zone, you know,

well-known local organization helping

disadvantaged children in the New York

City area. And what we learned after

that first year of work at Give Well,

was just how far a dollar can go

overseas. And then I I think there's a

little bit of a in some we know this,

but it's a little bit of a a figment of

our imagination that the people who we

see every day are are really closer to

us in some way. Uh last summer, uh I

traveled to Malawi and this was just to

[snorts] see the the types of programs

we support, to speak with people who are

there, and they're they're far away.

It's true. But with 36 hours of flying,

I I can sit as close to them as I'm

sitting to you and ask them about their

lives, what they're struggling with,

what they're dealing with. And then in

the same way that in at home, I can see

someone who's in need in in sitting

across from someone in Malawi, I hear

about their struggle to have food the

days they went without eating, the the

mother who tried to bring her child to

the local clinic, but uh she had to

carry her child for an hour on her back

and then the clinic didn't even have the

drugs in stock. And I can also talk to

the parents who in a maybe a way that's

very familiar to to me, maybe to you,

are struggling with a new second grade

math book because they're teaching

arithmetic in a different way now in

Malawian schools than they did when she

grew up. And so she doesn't know how to

help her child with the math because

it's different than what she did. And so

being there, you know, on one hand,

there's the analytical argument that a

dollar goes further, and then I think

there's just the reality that uh people

in Africa aren't as far away as we

sometimes think. They're really there.

you can go and talk to them.

>> I think it is profoundly difficult as a

human being to live as if other people's

lives are as real and as valuable as

your own. [gasps]

There is a vividness to us and the

people right around us. I don't mean

necessarily in our community. I mean our

family, our friends, people whose

stories interweave with our own. and to

really treat people further from that.

You know, somebody fleeing from gang

violence in Honduras or just somebody

struggling at subsistence level labor in

another country to to treat their life

as if it is as real as yours to really

believe that not just say it. In some

ways, I don't think human beings are

wired for that. But but it does strike

me as a a a a genuine like emotional and

spiritual challenge.

>> And I'm not sure that that's what we

should be really aiming for because I

don't think it's possible. If if if we

felt like other people's lives were as

important as our own, we wouldn't be

talking about giving 10%. We'd be giving

far more. In the same way, I don't think

it's reasonable to ask expect to even

want parents to treat their children

equally to all other children in the

Would we want a society where all

parents thought of their their own child

exactly the same way as as every other?

I don't think that's a realistic

expectation.

>> No, that'd be inhuman.

>> And so, well, quite literally. And so, I

think this and so I think sometimes, you

know, the ideas of that that come from

people who say, you know, you can give

more and there are needs overseas. It

sounds like someone is saying you you

must or you're bad if you don't or you

should give everything away because look

at the great need. And in some way we

must accept that's true to some extent.

But more more practically I I don't

think that's the right target to shoot

for. And in in my experience people who

try to aim at the target which is

treating others exactly like yourself or

giving everything away to bring yourself

down to the global median income. I mean

that maybe succeeds in the short term

but certainly is not a long-term path to

helping others as much as possible. I'm

always struck by how few charities

actually make it into your top charities

and and it's pretty it has been fairly

stable year to year now for some years.

So, walk me through what they are and

what makes you confident in them.

>> Yeah, let me um let me first, if it's

okay, like frame up how the top

charities fit into our overall work. And

so, in 2025, we've directed funds to 70

organizations. uh four of them are our

top charities and then you know there's

more than 60 others that have received a

lot of money. You know perhaps they're

newer or our knowledge of the program is

newer or the evidence is slightly more

complicated and you know there's higher

risk that the program doesn't fail but

the program fails but if it works it'll

be incredibly successful. And so we

direct a lot of funds to those those

types of programs too. And so what what

these top charities represent uh to

maybe use the finance analogy is is

something like the blue chip programs,

the the ones that um have the strongest

combination of evidence and track record

and data uh behind them so that we can

say to anyone, you know, if you're if

you're trying to help people overseas,

these are really great places to give

to. So our our top charities, one is the

against malaria foundation which funds

malariaet distributions globally. The

second one also works on malaria

prevention and that's malaria consortium

in its seasonal malaria

chemoroprevention program. This program

provides seasonal antimmalarial

medication to children during the

malaria high season to prevent cases of

malaria and resulting deaths. uh one uh

Helen Keller International focuses on

provision of vitamin A supplements twice

a year to children between the ages of 6

month and 5 years. Uh and then the

fourth is called new incentives and they

deliver cash incentives to caregivers to

encourage them to come to clinics to

receive necessary childhood

immunizations. And you know those four

are not the I wouldn't call them the the

best. There's, you know, other programs

we've recommended uh outside of that for

water and uh malnutrition prevention and

uh the malaria vaccine, which, you know,

it's it's relatively new. It's not going

to get on our top charities list yet. Uh

but there's just this wide array of

programs that help people around the

world.

>> And this gets to there are multiple ways

to donate through Give Well. Walk me

through those and how they relate to the

this sort of division you're making

here.

>> Yeah. And so the Well, I mean, first

just, you know, anyone can use our our

research for free. Someone can come to

our website, read it, and you can donate

to any of the organizations that you see

on our top charities list directly

without ever telling give well that

you've done it. I mean, we hope you do

because that helps us understand our

impact. Um, but for you know, the the

primary options we offer people are

first to give to our top charities fund.

And so that is uh you know that those

are donations that we'll only give to

those four organizations based on the

needs they have at the time we received

the funds. We we push those money, you

know, out the door. We commit those

funds to organizations relatively

quickly. The next option for donors is

to support the all grants fund. And you

know that just gives us the flexibility

to give to either top charities or any

of the organizations or programs that we

might support including giving money to

help organizations or programs get off

the ground or funding the type of

research that we need to make our

decisions. And then finally, there are

donors who give unrestricted. And you

know that is the in some sense the

highest level of trust in give well

because you're allowing us to decide how

much we need to allocate to our own

operating expenses versus allocating

funds to the programs we support. Uh

we've we've been fortunate enough in the

last few years that we've raised more

unrestricted funds than we need for our

own operations and we've then designated

that money for granting and you know

sent it out the door to get it to people

who need it around the world. The most

common critique I hear of give well, one

I even somewhat believe is that it's

there's a limit to what can be measured

and it's possible to measure the effects

of vitamin A supplementation in a way

that measuring the effects of funding

for political change or fortifying

public health infrastructure is very

very hard. You know, it's very hard to

measure the effect of giving on climate

change. How do you think about that that

question of

what you can and cannot measure knowing

that much that cannot be measured is

going to be important in you know human

flourishing? [sighs and gasps]

>> Yeah, it's a great question. And I mean

I think uh to start I think it's really

important to have humility in this work

that we can be wrong and we know we can

be wrong and there are times when we've

supported programs that seemed like they

would clearly be effective. And then at

the same time we also funded a rigorous

randomized control trial to go along

with that program. There's an

organization called No Lean Season or a

program that we helped start and you can

read all about it on our website if

you're interested. That program provided

small cash incentives to encourage

people to migrate from the rural areas

of Bangladesh during the lean season to

the cities so that they could earn more

money and send money back home. There

was a series of randomized control

trials that preceded our support of it

that showed that it was having this

effect. People were earning more money.

They were even more likely to migrate in

future years. And then we provided

funding to start up this program with an

RCT randomized control trial alongside

it. and at scale it didn't have the

effects that we expected. Uh there's an

interesting I mean I have some theories

about

>> why do you think that is? So I think in

this case there there's just this big

challenge of going from a 2,000 person

research study to a 100,000 person

program that's existing in the world.

And I think what may have happened in

this case and this is what I heard from

the uh the lead the researcher of that

program Mushik Mubarak a great academic

that when they decided to deliver these

cash incentives they did it via micro

finance institutions uh essentially

banks that were there in in Bangladesh

and the loan officers who were

delivering these incentives which were

small loans at the time their personal

incentive was to find the people who

were already likely to migrate because

that made their job of finding

people to take these incentives much

easier. You know, I think an interesting

question about that program is we

decided to no longer continue supporting

it. Evidence Action, the organization

that implemented it shut it down. Uh

that was a joint decision at the time.

And I'm not even sure that decision was

right because it's possible that with

more time we would have been able to

solve this implementation challenge. But

I I think this this story just

illustrates the how critical measurement

is. measurement is is certainly

limiting, but I I think when you're

trying to help people living 10,000

miles away, it's just necessary to find

some mechanism for getting feedback. So,

be be part of a a feedback loop that

tells you if what you you know, if your

bets are right, you know, to use the

>> I think there's some way in which I feel

just hearing that story the danger of

being a donor because if I had donated

to that, which probably I did because

I've been donating through Give Well for

a long time. if I had donated to that

and what I had heard is there's great

evidence that giving people grants to to

migrate in the you know during during

key seasons will will help them out and

look now we're giving all these people

grants. would never occur to me to think

maybe it's not working

and

it makes you wonder how much money is

out there being wasted

or and I think this would be the other

question

if there's something wrong with the

studies right the

subjecting every project to the rigor of

you know expensive randomized control

trials which you can't do that many of

them. Like, do you have concerns that

you might be discarding things that

actually work or that work in ways that

you're not measuring or that you're not

measuring for long enough,

etc.

What we try to do is just find ways to

build in a feedback loop so we learn

something and we can update from our you

know update our our predictions about

the future based on the reality of what

occurs. Sometimes that's a randomized

control trial. It's a great way to do

it. Other times we supported a program

that and we still do that uh helped

countries around the world transition

from

a a single HIV test and syphilis test

two individual products that were given

to women who came into antiatal

appointments to [snorts] a dual test and

the idea was if we can transition from

having to apply two tests and two

products to one we can reach more

people. I think this program has been

very effective, very coste effective. We

don't know that from randomized control

trial data. Instead, we know that from

more uh more programmatic follow-up

about monitoring the data that comes

from people who are going to antiatal

visits from seeing the stock levels in

countries of these tests. I think that

ultimately

I sort of wish it were the case that you

could have a randomized control trial

for everything and we could push in the

direction of of greater certainty. And I

think it's it's clear that there are

that there are so many uh so many

programs that could be so valuable that

just can't be subjected to that level of

scrutiny. We can see today, you know,

programs like uh, you know, people who

scaled up HIV treatment in Africa in the

early 2000s, whether that was advocacy

to the US government or the

philanthropic work that supported uh,

t-fold reduction in drug prices, maybe

even 100fold reduction in drug prices

from some original levels. I mean, those

are incredibly

impactful programs. You know, with with

hindsight, we can look back and say

those programs saved a lot of lives per

dollar. And I think that is uh you know

a challenge that

I feel like I'm always trying to make to

researchers internally at give well that

we see as a challenge to ourselves which

is you know when are we inappropriately

prioritizing certainty and measurability

over expected impact.

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What are the areas or the charities that

you think have either the highest

expected impact or maybe more relevant

for this, the highest possible impact,

but you just can't measure it? And I'm

thinking here in the present, not, you

know, doing long- termism and trying to

save society, you know, 10 billion years

from now.

What are the things that feel to you

like they are the riskiest in terms of

may not pay off but man maybe they do

pay off and and it's worth it for that

reason.

>> Yeah. Uh let me give a couple different

kinds of examples because I think the

the spectrum of potential impact but

also risk is very wide. So one one

example is a program we've recommended

for a long time which is treating

children for parasitic infections. Often

this goes by the name deworming. And the

reason there's so much uncertainty is

that we have a single randomized control

trial from about 30 years ago in one

area of Kenya where they treated kids

who had very high worm infections

followed them for many years. They're

still following them today. It's really

an incredible study and see that the

kids who were treated in as part of that

experiment have much higher earnings

today than they did than than the

control group. This is one very strong

piece of evidence. There's also evidence

of uh improved weight gain from pooling

multiple randomized trials and some

evidence from the American South when

hookworm was eradicated here in the

early 20th century. But at the same

time, I don't think any of us would see

that as clear knockdown evidence of

significant effect. The the public

health community says, you know, these

trials don't meet our standards uh for

rigor. the uh you know we're we're not

convinced by these results and

the worm levels today in 2025 are very

different than they were at times in the

past when these studies were

implemented. At the same time, it's so

cheap to treat a child for parasitic

infections. We know that these parasitic

infections are bad. And so this is one

example of a program that you know may

have an absolutely massive impact. But

I'm asking you to answer in terms of

something bigger than that because you

went to something again where there's

inc there's an incredibly clear specific

causal mechanism. And the the reason I'm

fairly comfortable with deworming is the

medicine works, right? You know what

you're finding there. There are a lot of

other kinds of interventions, democracy

promotion, right? Um that we don't

really know if they work, but if they

work, they're transformative. What do

you think about where you think we can't

measure it, but you know, maybe there's

a case for it? Uh

not in the way that you know you're just

trying to figure out the the magnitude

of the impact of deworming. So where you

can't figure out the magnitude of the

impact and you know you can't. So uh a

couple years ago we made a grant to

support our world in data. They're a

website that provides amazing

information on problems facing the

world. Uh as as someone who about 20

years ago tried to find good data on

problems in global health and

development, uh I wish that a site like

our world in data had existed then

because I know how hard it is to

download multiple spreadsheets and match

them up. And so we made this we I talked

to their their head Max Max Roser and he

was telling me that they were facing uh

you know a challenge in raising

operational funding. I have so so we

made we made a grant to them out of our

all grants fund. We can't measure what

effect that had but you know that's a

site that I think in aggreate has so

much impact. Um another another example

is a grant that we made this past year

in response to the US aid cuts. So we

supported

uh essentially consulting units in at at

two organizations, one called CHI and

one called PATH that would work closely

with governments to plan their response

to the aid cuts to uh understand where

they had gaps that needed to be filled.

Um even to articulate the funding needs

that that they had so they could

potentially raise money from other

donors. But that sort of uh support to

government decision-m is something that

clearly could be incredibly impactful on

uh helping people in in those countries.

But we won't be able we don't have a a

quantitative estimate of what's

accomplished because of that.

>> You all don't just subject charities to

the binary question of does it work or

does it not work. You have a certain

measure of cost effectiveness. it has to

clear. So working is not enough. It has

to to be cost effective compared to

other interventions. Tell me about your

measure of cost effectiveness.

>> Yeah, I'm I I think I'll just use the

cost per death averted as a simplified

way of putting this. I mean we we do try

to look at the effects that come from

improved health uh increased income uh

to some extent increased well-being and

and put it all into one measure that

that we can use to compare across

programs. Uh we can talk about that. Of

course, that is incredibly subjective.

Uh but nevertheless, as we're trying to

look across programs, we have it. But

what we aim to do to to go back to the

simplified version is say if you could

use

$60,000 and avert the deaths of 10

children, that's a much better decision

than using that same amount of money to

avert the death of only one child. It's

it's better to use the resources you

have to help people to a greater extent.

How do you weigh things against each

other that are not the same thing? And

and I mean this on two levels. So one,

there's a question of lives saved versus

income versus what's the value of, you

know, not suffering from an illness that

doesn't kill you. What's the value of an

education?

And then there's also

the way in which different people just

weight different moral questions

differently.

I I know you all have put a ton of work

into this. So, so how do you try to do

that? How do you both try to standardize

the the first set of questions and then

how do you try to create space for the

different ways you know different donors

might think about what is important?

>> Yeah. So the starting point for us is

that you know in many cases donors come

to us and they essentially say we want

you give well to decide where and how to

allocate our funds. And so because of

that we're responsible for making these

decisions about how to weigh up

different kinds of good against each

other. You know to do that we're we're

trying as as we often do to collect the

information we can and then just make

the best judgments that we're able to

with that information. And so for us, we

do a variety of uh [snorts] looking at

academic research. So for example, in

trying to weigh things like income

against health, there's academic studies

that look at the value of a statistical

life and and we're trying to use that

data to the extent we can. Uh we also

try to survey our donor community and

understand the preferences that they

have collectively. And we've also tried

and and have funded some studies in

Africa where we just ask people how they

would make these same choices and

trade-offs. Uh all of this is very

challenging. I would not claim that it

is in any way getting us closer to

truth, but it's it's the mechanism that

we use to try to make these decisions.

And then I think importantly

we're certainly not I'm certainly not

trying to say that our answer is

correct. Instead, you know, we give

Well, Phil is an important part of in

the donation ecosystem where, you know,

we're trying to be almost like the

economist's approach to giving overseas

and we're just trying to do that as well

as we can. And of course, there are many

other ways and many other approaches

that people could take.

>> You know, very controversially, a few

years ago, give directly, which is a

program where, you know, you give them

money and they give the money to other

people and the idea is that people know

best how to spend the money in their own

lives. you stopped recommending them.

Um, that's a group I still support. I

I'm a believer in their work. And that

was very controversial because your

argument was not that it's not doing

what it says it's doing or even that

it's not good for people to get money.

So, so what is the the line for you? And

how do you think about some of the

things that that that fall beneath it

because they are not primarily it seems

to me often about saving lives but

about, you know, changing incomes or

changing health or or improving lives.

>> Yeah. And I should say I'm also a huge

fan of Give Directly. I'm still

personally a donor to give directly. Um

I think the work that they do is is

amazing and wonderful. The reason that

Give Well doesn't recommend funds to

give directly now is that roughly

speaking, we think the organizations

we're supporting are able to do three

times as much good per dollar as give

directly does as a dollar to give

directly right now. And so because of

that, we feel like we're faced with the

question um you know with limited

resources, where should we give?

especially now when resources are lower

than they've been in many years uh

because of cuts in US foreign

assistance. We just think it's all the

more important to just to try and

allocate resources where they'll do the

most. Uh and and that doesn't mean that

the organizations we're not supporting

aren't doing good work uh or in some

ways they're failing. It just means with

the limited resources we have, we'd like

to see them go as far as they can.

Something we've circled a bit here is

that Give Well has an unusual

relationship to transparency

to being pretty open about mistakes. If

you go to the Give Well website, you can

click on a tab that says mistakes and

read a ton about things you've gotten

wrong and what has happened and places

where you've aired.

In almost everything you do, there's a

section on doubts and uncertainties.

Tell me a bit about that approach. And

maybe the best way to do it is for me to

ask you just what have been your biggest

mistakes.

[sighs and gasps]

We've made a lot of mistakes over the

years uh both in terms of specific

organizations we've recommended with

method methodological approaches. You

know for a long time just one example we

were relying primarily on one data

source to estimate mortality from

diseases and countries. And when we more

recently went and collected more data

sources, we saw how different they could

be and the effect that those different

sources of data about the causes of

mortality could have on our ultimate

recommendations. And so that's just a I

don't know pretty significant mistake

that we corrected in the last few years.

To me, I I think transparency is so

important because charitable giving

isn't like solving a math problem where

you can just say, you know, I I know the

right answer. Uh I've proven it.

therefore you should listen to me.

Instead, there are huge amounts of

judgment and values that go into the

decisions that we're making. And so,

first, we think it's important for the

people using our work to be in a

position to understand it and judge it

for themselves to know that uh others

have evaluated our work and looked at it

critically.

>> [snorts]

>> I also think it plays an important role

in in holding us accountable internally

because every single decision that we

make about how to spend money is is

ultimately subjected to or can be

subjected to public scrutiny.

>> So, you know, Trump took office not even

a year ago. It's been a been a long

year. [snorts] Very soon after uh his

administration decapitated US ID, cut

foreign aid in a number of other domains

and directions.

almost a year later, how much less

foreign aid is United States as a

government giving and how has the

composition of what we're giving

changed?

So, there's still a lot that we don't

know. Uh, you know, the US government

previously was giving about 12 billion a

year to global health programs and we

think there might end up being about a

50% cut in total US government giving.

So that would be a whole of $6 billion

going to global health programs. This is

a large portion of aid going to health

around the world because it's a US

government was accounting for about 20%

of total global health aid. And so you

know $6 billion or 10% of what was going

to support these programs uh maybe

disappearing. We've seen plenty of great

programs that that needed money that

weren't getting them. So these are

programs that provide basic health

services, malnutrition treatment, and

malaria control where, you know, we were

in a position to step in and we directed

about $40 million in response to the

cuts this year. Um, just as another

example, when I was in Malawi this past

summer, we talked to clinicians and

hospital administrators about their

experience responding to aid cuts. And

for them, some of the biggest cuts that

they felt immediately were in HIV

because the US government has such a

large HIV program. And so there one

hospital administrator told me the story

that you know the day of the cuts it was

9:00 a.m. they had all come to work

there were patients lining up outside to

get their AIDS treatment that they had

come for they were called into a staff

meeting the facility staff and just told

to go home immediately. And so you had

these patients lining up and no staff to

give them their medicine. Many people

travel from miles and miles away because

they'd rather pick up their HIV

treatment further from home because of

the stigma of having HIV. They don't

want to be seen close to home getting

their drugs. And so then the hospital

had to bring in some of their limited

staff from other departments and get

them in place to try and deliver the the

age treatment. I mean people the way he

told me the story is they they were they

were like looking at the pill boxes that

a patient brought in and trying to match

them to what was on the shelf just to

keep delivering the what they had. Um

similarly I visited a small clinic in a

in a more rural area and uh an important

part of HIV treatment is viral load

testing. So this is testing people to

ensure that the the treatment that

they're undertaking is preventing them

from progressing to full-blown disease.

And viral load testing, you know, really

stopped in early 2025. I was able to see

this because we just pulled up the data

on their computer screen and we could

see how they went from uh testing

hundreds of people in a month to almost

none in you know following the cuts.

>> Are there significant areas where

money's been restored?

>> We've seen a lot of money come through

in malaria. So one of the um you know

one of the one of the programs we

supported earlier this year was planning

for these seasonal anti-mal malarial

medication campaigns. Basically in

certain parts of the world [snorts]

malaria has a high season and if we can

provide children with antimmalarial

medication during the high season we

reduce about 80% of the cases during

that time of year and those campaigns I

I believe were happening starting in

June and the planning had to happen in

March, April and May. And so this was

right after the cuts and organizations

didn't know if they were going to have

money to conduct planning and so you

know we went to them and said uh if the

money doesn't come through you know

we'll cover it and if it does then you

know we won't have to but you can go

ahead knowing that you'll have funding

to cover what you need and ultimately

many of those programs the funding came

back and we didn't have to spend a

dollar to enable them to move ahead.

when you've looked at what has happened

and I'm not trying to get to be

political. Has have you seen a theory of

foreign aid or simply a hostility to

foreign aid?

We haven't seen a lot of interest in

trying to answer the question, what

would great foreign aid look like? You

know, I think that uh you know, if you

go back to January 15th, there are

plenty of people on both sides of the

aisle saying USAD should be a lot

better. there are a lot of ways that we

can improve foreign aid. And I think

there were some people that I remember

talking to before uh the the the cuts

occurred

where they were excited about the

possibility of a focus on efficiency in

delivering outstanding cost-effective

foreign aid. And I just don't think

that's what we've seen.

>> If somebody did come to you and and

said, "Listen, we want we're going to

restore USAD funding, but we want it to

be better. We want our money to go as

far as it possibly can. What does that

theory of reform look like to you?

>> I think two big pillars would be first

focusing on the public health programs

that we know how to deliver at scale

that we can deliver cost effectively at

scale that have significant impact. And

so these are similar to the programs

we've been discussing HIV treatment and

prevention, malaria treatment and

prevention and more. And then I also

think there's a big place for just

delivering cash directly to people who

need it. You know, I think at at at Give

Wells Margin, I think that we're

spending funds more cost- effectively,

but at large scale, I think cash is one

of the most uh cost-effective ways to

just let people

make their own decisions about how to

improve their lives.

>> And how about data? One thing that I've

heard a lot of people worry about and

seems to me like a particular problem

for Gival given how data oriented you

try to be is that these cuts ravaged a

lot of the surveys and data collection

and studies that create the

possibilities of this evidence and these

feedback loops and being able to know

next year what would be better than what

we did this year. What what has happened

in that space? What seems to be being

done about it? One of the most important

tools that we and others rely on is

something called the demographic and

health surveys or or DHS that USAD has

funded for years. And these are large

nationally representative surveys that

inform

people in positions like us allocating

money to low-income countries, but also

country governments themselves. You

know, when they're trying to answer the

question, how many students are going to

be in each district? So therefore, how

many schools and teachers do we need?

They're often relying on this kind of

data. And you know this is one of the

data sets that is you know has gone away

under this uh under the cuts that we

observed. Uh you know these surveys are

are so critical that in one way or

another I believe that some some form of

them will be preserved. It's something

that I know other funders have looked

at. We ourselves are considering um but

it's just so critical that this this

data continues to exist. But it's

undoubtedly been a big part of the

challenge in understanding what has

happened. You know, a question that you

asked that I get a lot is well, you

know, what what have the effects of the

cuts been and where has money gone and

not gone and where is it flowing and not

and what has been the humanitarian

impact and I think the true answer is we

don't know and you know some of that not

knowing is a function of the data that

we rely on is less available than it was

before and that makes the situation even

more challenging. You talked a bit about

how you've sort of directed 40ome

million dollars around trying to fill

some of these holes. What has happened

in the rest of the philanthropic space?

I mean, you have huge foundations much

bigger than than give well like the

Gates Foundation. You have other

countries, European countries. What has

the landscape of players who could have

possibly filled holes, you know, how has

the the I calling it an industry but the

sector responded?

>> Yeah. So I we've seen you know similar

action from philanthropies you know

trying to give

[snorts] uh what are large amounts of

money in in level terms but certainly

small relative to what governments were

giving allocate more in response. I I

think the big challenge that everyone

recognizes is philanthropy is just very

small compared to the level of giving

that the US government was providing.

And then at the same time many countries

around the world are also giving less.

And so in aggregate uh it seems like we

are entering a period where uh global

foreign assistance especially for health

will be lower than it has been in the

recent past. And so what um you know

what what I what I hope that means is

that individual donors will step up and

give more. Uh I [snorts] also hope and

we've seen some evidence of this that it

means there'll be a higher priority

focused on using the limited resources

we have as well as we possibly can. I

think that um for a long time we felt

like ideas of cost effectiveness were

were not taken perhaps as seriously as

you might expect in the world of global

health and development. But I think with

more limited resources, there's much

more of a focus on on taking what we

have and trying to cause it to go as far

as we can. Uh and so that might mean,

you know, allocating more funds towards

Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of

Congo for malaria because they account

for 40% of the global malaria burden and

I think we've seen a lot more interest

and uh you know behind those kinds of

ideas.

>> So then has this pullback in public

health funding has it changed looking

forward what you think will be the most

effective opportunities for giving?

>> It it certainly might and and here's

why. You know what we're trying to do is

deliver funds where they'll be most cost

effective at the present margin. And

really what these cuts mean is that the

the margin has shifted. So one area that

we never really looked at before was

HIV. HIV was extremely well funded. Uh

another area that uh we we made a grant

to support an organization called AL

Lima and this grant was uh primarily

focused on just enabling them to deliver

primary health care services and

malnutrition treatment in a very

challenging area of Cameroon. And that's

another kind of work that had been

previously more supported by government

donors. And so as as we look forward, we

know that, you know, the the changing

level of funding just means that there

going to be all sorts of programs that

we didn't consider before that we're

going to have to look at because this

underlying situation has changed.

>> Is lobbying on foreign aid, particularly

paying Trump associated lobbyists, maybe

an effective use of charitable funding?

No,

>> no, we've we've worked with uh you know,

an organization that's just trying to

inform people on the hill about the the

facts of what can be achieved. And I you

know I guess you know much more than I

do about what would be effective

lobbying. But you know I hope that uh

what I think we can bring to the table

is just providing

accurate information about what can be

accomplished and hoping that decision

makers will will take that on board when

they decide what to do. So I see one of

the challenges for for give well for

this kind of giving as being that giving

often relies

on an emotional hook for people. There's

you know charismatic megapana in the

philanth in the philanthropic space and

and then there's this more you know

conversation about cost effectiveness

and deworming and what are the spillover

benefits of deworming.

I can watch you trying to be objective

about what you're funding and and and

watch the requirement that that imposes

on you to be serious about trade-offs in

ways that are probably emotionally kind

of hard. And on the other hand, giving

is an emotional project that people

give. They give emotionally.

You know, we could talk about uh

randomized control trials all day and

all night, but most people don't get out

of bed because they read an RCT. So, so

how do you reconnect those

impulses

running an organization that is so much

about

trying to correct for the biases our

emotional drives might create for us?

Yeah. I mean, first off, I I think

sometimes this argument can go too far.

You know, we all know that that most

people are giving uh based on a personal

attachment. And when we were thinking

about starting Give Well, I just

remember everyone told us donors don't

give this way. This is never going to

work. What are you even trying? And now

more than, you know, 18 years later, we

have 100,000 plus donors who've used our

research. We've directed more than $2

billion. So there's certainly a lot of

donors and a lot of people who are

excited to give this way. And then when

I think about, you know, how this all

works, you know, I'd say that

the the motivation to do this work, it

it comes from the emotional place. And

and you know, for me, sometimes that's

people that I meet when I've traveled to

to Africa. Um, you know, an experience I

always have is I go to the pharmacy and

I pick up a moxicillin for my cat and it

has an ear infection and it cost me 50

cents. It it literally takes me 5

minutes. And I always think it's so wild

that I can just go to the store and pick

up this amoxicylin like it's nothing.

And I remember that there was time when

Give well supported an organization to

deliver amoxicylin to Tanzania because

they were running low on amoxicylin

stock and they weren't going to have a

moxicylin in all the clinics around the

world. And so it's sure you know we

spent all our time talking about the

data because it's the data that helps us

make the right decisions. But for me and

and I think for for everyone that I work

with, it's it's just this knowledge that

uh you know we're we're in such a

fortunate position and there are so many

people who aren't in that position and

yeah sometimes we have to key on

individuals to focus our work but

ultimately what we want to do is just

bring those benefits to as many people

as we can.

>> And then always our final question, what

are three books you'd recommend to the

audience? uh one is factfulness by the

late Hans Rosling. Uh this is a book

that just brings global health data to

to to the world. It's say the core

argument of the book is something like

in order to prioritize correctly we need

to understand the world accurately. And

then for me uh Hans Rosling's site gap

minder was one of the things that got me

very excited about this work back in

2006. Uh second book poor economics by

Esther Duffel and Abig Banerjee. They're

two of the founding members of this

randomized control trial movement in

development economics. And this book

gives an overview of of their work and

the ideas behind this work. And this

work that's no not just them but people

like Michael Kramer, Rachel Glennister,

Dean Carlin, Ted Miguel. It really was

just part of the animating values of of

what has led to give well in our work.

And then finally a book called Behind

the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Buu.

uh she spent years in uh in Anawadi.

It's an informal urban settlement

sometimes known as a slum near the

Mumbai airport and it just paints a very

vivid picture of what life is like in

poverty. I

>> think Behind the Beautiful Forevers

might be it's definitely in my top five

pieces of non-fiction ever. If people

have not read that, they really should.

Ellie Henfeld, thank you very much.

>> Thank you.

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Hey,

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