Both gravitons and pions are described by non-linear and non-renormalizable actions at low energies. These are most usefully treated by effective field theory, which is a full quantum field theoretic approach that relies only on the low energy degrees of freedom and their interactions. The gravitational case is particularly clean because of the masslessness of the graviton and the wide separation of scales. This essay provides an overview of this approach.

8 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in a special topical issue of the European Journal of Phyiscs A, "The tower of effective (field) theories and the emergence of nuclear phenomena"