The year is 2100 and factory farming either does not exist anymore or is extremely rare. What happened?

I think getting attention would increase the impact of this project a lot and is probably pretty doable if you are able to find an institutional home for it. I agree with Yanni's sentiment that it is probably better to improve on this project than to wait for another one that is more optimized for public attention to come along (though am curious why you think the latter is better).

What do you consider the purpose or theory of change of this project? I assumed it was to put pressure on the AI labs to improve along these criteria, which presumably requires some level of public attention. Do you see it more as a way for AI safety people to keep tabs on the status of these labs?

If you had to place the different kinds of work within farmed animal welfare (e.g. corporate pressure campaigns, alternative proteins, persuading people to be vegan, etc) into different tiers based on how optimistic you are about them (e.g. 'very optimistic', 'moderately optimistic', etc) what would they look like?

I agree that it's surprising this doesn't receive more attention in EA. I imagine a big part of it is it would get a lot of pushback from the more rationalist EAs who feel like it's too 'woo'/new age-y and find the stigma/connotations/vibes around it offputting. It does get a fair bit of attention on Twitter/X though- you might be interested in the discussion around this post.

I do think there would be some appetite in the community to fund research related to this, but am not sure it would appeal to the usual 'big funders'.

I like the idea of having a more casual and lighthearted version of the podcast but I agree with Jamie's comment that it's worth thinking more explicitly about what the value add is for people listening. Like you said, most of the people listening to these episodes will probably already be very involved in EA (much more so than for the main 80k podcast), and to me the first two episodes felt a bit like listening in on a random conversation at an EA party—I didn't feel like I got much out of it, and more importantly, I couldn't tell what you intended for me get out of it. In contrast, the most recent episode was much better and had a lot more directly useful insights. I know the podcast is still in its infancy and you're still 'finding your voice', so it's great to see such a big improvement only three episodes in.

As for names, I would call it something like: 'After Hours in the Office', 'After Hours with the Staff', or '80k Off The Clock'.

Exactly

Even if your current best guess is that it's not causal, if having a PhD meaningfully increases your chances of getting hired conditional on having applied, that information would help candidates get a better sense of their probability of getting hired

[edited to specify that I meant conditional on applying]

Right, but there is definitely a way you can communicate this information without being misleading. You could say, "in previous rounds, >50% of successful applicants had a PhD, but we do not assign weight to PhDs and do not believe there is a direct causal relationship between having a PhD and receiving an offer".

I think employers could just disclose that- "We do not assign any weight to having a PhD, but in previous application rounds, >50% of successful applicants had a PhD".