Peter Singer (on moral philosophy)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert.

[1] I'm Dan Rather, and I'm joined by the Queen of London.

[2] Oh, no, we can't say that.

[3] We're not going to say that.

[4] Well, if you're the Duchess of Duluth, I don't know, do they know your, do they know royalty is in town?

[5] No. Well, I'm really low -key royalty.

[6] Like, I like to be cash.

[7] That could be the name of your romantic comedy, low -key royalty.

[8] Oh, it also.

[9] rhymes.

[10] That's why I thought it might be a good title.

[11] Yeah, I noticed it had rhymed and thought, oh, that's a good rom -com.

[12] Wow.

[13] Today we have someone who's regarded pretty universally as the greatest living philosopher.

[14] Peter Singer, he's a philosopher and a practical ethicist.

[15] He is currently a professor at Princeton University, and he's written several books, one that really changed the landscape of the animal rights movement called Animal Liberation that he wrote.

[16] I think in 75, to say it was the year of my birth.

[17] Ding, ding, ding.

[18] And he has a new version of it called Animal Liberation Now.

[19] Yes, here we go.

[20] His updated version of his 1975 best -selling book illustrates the biggest challenges of our time and all the intimately connected to our treatment of animals.

[21] Peter is very, very bright, extremely bright.

[22] You better really wake up early and take your vitamins if you're going to try to dance with him.

[23] And I had not done that apparently.

[24] No, you did, but you felt like you didn't.

[25] I'm not going to make you have to say that.

[26] So anyways, it was such an honor to get to have Peter come to the attic and talk to us today.

[27] One of those Mount Rushmorey -type academics, which is so flattering.

[28] It really is so cool.

[29] Lucky us.

[30] Lucky us.

[31] The low -key royalty.

[32] Please enjoy Peter's Singer.

[33] Wondry plus subscribers can listen to Armchair expert early and ad -free right now.

[34] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[35] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[36] As you and I were just discussing off mic, which is, I think, relevant, you have to fly away and you have to speak tonight.

[37] That's right.

[38] For me, knowing when I have to speak publicly, that's its own static level of anxiety, and then knowing that I have to catch a flight and if I miss that one, I'll have missed my speaking engagement.

[39] This is a double whammy.

[40] It's the second of those that really worries me. I've done a lot of speaking, and I don't normally get nervous if I know that I have no problems getting to the menu and all that's going to go fine.

[41] I'm okay with the speaking, but yeah, the flying complicates it.

[42] What time do you go on?

[43] Because you always have at your disposal, last ditch, just start driving north.

[44] I don't know.

[45] 7 p .m., the event starts.

[46] They want me to do a sound check before the door's open, so 5 .30.

[47] I could skip the sign check, I guess, and just rush you in.

[48] Get you on the back of one of my motorcycles, so we can get you up there.

[49] in four hours, I guess.

[50] Really?

[51] Yeah.

[52] You're an adventurer, right?

[53] You're a surfer.

[54] You still serve?

[55] I do still surf.

[56] And you started late, huh?

[57] This is encouraging to me, because I often daydream of it.

[58] You should definitely do it.

[59] And if you want a instructor and can get yourself to Byron Bay in Australia, which is an absolutely beautiful spot, I know the perfect person for you.

[60] He taught me. She's taught a lot of people of my age.

[61] She's taught a lot of famous people, Elle Macpherson, the model.

[62] Uh -huh.

[63] He taught her.

[64] Well, he's good enough for El McPherson.

[65] Definitely good enough for me. So now you've been doing it for at least 20 years, I guess.

[66] Yeah, it's amazing.

[67] I never thought I would have 20 years of surfing when I started.

[68] Yeah, I'm curious as you age, what element of it becomes more challenging?

[69] Or is it a perfect sport for growing older?

[70] No, it does get harder.

[71] There's two things.

[72] One is my sessions get shorter because I just get more tired, you know, the effort of paddling out, particularly, also paddling into the wave.

[73] That gets harder, and the standing up is not as fluid and flexible as I would like it to be anymore.

[74] And that's a pity.

[75] And how about the falling and getting churned in the waves?

[76] I don't feel it then, but I feel it later in the evening.

[77] I feel some stiffness in a muscle that I obviously twisted in some unusual way, and I'm more prone to that than I used to me. And you've been married for quite some time.

[78] Does your wife worry as you paddle out?

[79] No, she's never really been a worrier about me. Maybe this would trouble me, but whether I'm surfing, whatever it is I'm doing, she doesn't really wait up at night, anxiously thinking, am I going to get back?

[80] Yeah, that's lucky.

[81] I race motorcycles, and I've been very great.

[82] grateful that my wife seems to just not think about that.

[83] Right.

[84] Now, how do you teach at Princeton and live in Melbourne?

[85] Because I'm only half time at Princeton now.

[86] I just teach the fall semester.

[87] Okay, so then you're there in what New Jersey where's Princeton?

[88] Yeah, Princeton is in New Jersey, about an hour and a half south of New York City.

[89] Okay, and do you enjoy your time there?

[90] I do.

[91] It's very stimulating university.

[92] That's the great thing about it.

[93] There's a lot of very good colleagues.

[94] There's some really exceptional students, graduate students particularly, but among the undergraduates, there's some amazing students as well.

[95] And there's a steady stream of visitors because Princeton has money, obviously, as the elite universities do here.

[96] And so it can bring in visiting fellows and bring in other visitors for individual seminars and talks.

[97] It's a great place to be.

[98] And working broadly off of stereotypes, I'm imagining New Jersey's much greener and more wet than where you're at in Melbourne.

[99] Yes, it's even greener than Melbourne, which I would have to say is greener than Los Angeles.

[100] Oh, okay.

[101] On the continuum.

[102] There are parts of Los Angeles that are green, you know, around here.

[103] A lot of Los Angeles is pretty dry.

[104] I went for a walk -up, Runyon Canyon, which was not too far from where I was staying.

[105] I was surprised how really dry and dusty that was, and the vegetation was pretty scraggly, too.

[106] Just now?

[107] Yeah, just two days ago.

[108] Okay, because, you know, we're coming off of the most amount of rain.

[109] Yeah, it's probably ever had.

[110] The greenest it's ever been.

[111] So you're seeing actual apex and abnormal green.

[112] Didn't show up there, I have to say.

[113] Okay, now you've kind of triangulated the globe in your studies.

[114] you started in Melbourne at college, and then you ended up at Oxford.

[115] What was that transition like?

[116] Oxford was wonderful, because in Melbourne, certainly then, when I was an undergraduate in the 60s, you got very, very few visitors because it was a long and expensive plane trip.

[117] So suddenly I was in the midst of the professors whose books I had been reading.

[118] And there they were in person, even in a relatively small seminar room, you could talk to them and discuss their views with them.

[119] And that was something that you never had in Australia at that time.

[120] And while you were there, if I time traveled and I found you there and I said, you know, in the near future, you'll be regarded as one of the most premier philosophers on the planet.

[121] Would that have seemed like a preposterous notion to you?

[122] Or did you feel like you had landed in the thing you were going to be great at?

[123] I didn't really know at the time, I think.

[124] I was hopeful that I could have some impact in the field.

[125] I'd been awarded a prestigious scholarship to go to Oxford.

[126] So that was good.

[127] It was a good sign.

[128] But no, I really did not see what was ahead.

[129] Yeah, so what were you originally aiming at and how did it change directions or did it stay the same focus?

[130] So one thing that did stay somewhat the same was that I was eager to do philosophy that mattered in the real world.

[131] It was applied philosophy or practical ethics.

[132] There was just an opportunity to do that in 1969 when I went to Oxford, which hadn't existed, say, 10 years earlier, when English language philosophy was really about the meanings of language analyzing term.

[133] so in ethics you would talk about what does it mean to say one ought to do something or that it's good or right or wrong.

[134] Is that making an objective statement or is it just expressing your feelings or emotions?

[135] But in terms of the content of actually trying to think about, well, what is right or wrong?

[136] Philosophers went doing that.

[137] In fact, to some extent they poohed it.

[138] A .J. Air, who was a famous philosopher at the time, said, that's the job of the politician or the preacher.

[139] And that was an odd thing for him to say because he was an atheist, so why would he think that the preacher can do it better?

[140] Yeah.

[141] And politicians were not famous.

[142] for really getting questions about what we ought to do, how we ought to live, correct.

[143] But it was just saying it's not the business of philosophy, pushing it aside.

[144] But the reason that it became possible to think about that in 1969 was the student movement and the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.

[145] And students here in the United States, I think, first, but then also in England and Australia, saying we would like our courses to be relevant to these issues that we're so concerned about.

[146] And don't philosophers discuss what's a just war?

[147] And there is a just war tradition that goes back to medieval times discussing when it's legitimate to go to war.

[148] And of course, they're a pacifist philosophers as well.

[149] So, you know, can't we talk about that?

[150] Can't we talk about equality among humans since the civil rights movement is on?

[151] And discussion about race and discrimination was starting.

[152] And some philosophers, including some at Oxford, were responsive to that.

[153] So I was hoping that that movement would grow and become established rather than be on the fringe.

[154] And that has definitely happened.

[155] And I'm really pleased to have contributed to it to some extent.

[156] Interestingly, even though it's separated by a good gap of time.

[157] I graduated 23 years ago with an anthropology degree.

[158] And 23 years ago in anthropology, this similar wall seemed to exist, which is we can study humans in different populations and cultures.

[159] But we won't ever have a recommendation at the end of that, right?

[160] Right.

[161] We'll stay morally relative.

[162] We will avoid casting any kind of verdict, which has some great underpinnings.

[163] But ultimately, I got frustrated with, well, okay, now that we kind of understand some of this stuff.

[164] How are we going to apply and make the world better, any given situation better?

[165] Yeah.

[166] I read some anthropology too, and I remember, at least in my period, there was a lot of that moral relativism.

[167] People like Ruth Benedict was writing about different cultures and suggesting that you can't really comment about a different culture.

[168] You can only make moral statements relative to your own culture.

[169] It's good that anthropology got away from that and enabled people with that background to make some recommendations.

[170] I'm always most interested when we talk to our experts about why they think they were drawn to that.

[171] So let me just tell you what interests me in philosophy.

[172] In particular, we love going through the Jonathan Haidt kind of hypothetical moral conundrums.

[173] I think they're so fun.

[174] I'm a bit of a provocateur.

[175] I don't necessarily agree with rules when they're given to me. Do you have a bit of punk rockness in you that wanted to test the durability of all these different thoughts?

[176] Certainly.

[177] I like that.

[178] And I like some of Jonathan Heights work.

[179] In fact, one of the things I talked to in my practical ethics class with my undergraduates is their reaction to the story about the brother and sister who decided to have sex, right?

[180] We talk about that all the time on here.

[181] It's probably come up on here a hundred times.

[182] Yeah, good.

[183] It's fascinating.

[184] Yeah, the reactions are really interesting and it's difficult for students and it's difficult for me to some extent to get away from my intuitive response of thinking there's something wrong with this.

[185] Yes.

[186] But I've thought about it a long time now and I've been doing ethics for a long time so yeah my view is that under the circumstances that are described there's nothing wrong with it yes yeah yeah yeah that's a brave stance to take i'm with you and also feel the repugnant feeling of that because i have siblings so it's absolutely disgusting to me and yeah yeah i guess if somehow both people like that then what would be the damage maybe we should remind people just oh yeah okay so a brother and a sister go on vacation to europe they decide to have sex.

[187] There's no possibility of pregnancy.

[188] No one's married.

[189] There's no cheating.

[190] It's going to be this one -time thing they do all abroad and they're going to return home and that'll be that.

[191] Is that morally incorrect?

[192] Maybe I've left out a detail.

[193] I think the detail you've left out is that the story actually specifies that it doesn't disturb their relationship as siblings, maybe even brings them closer, but they don't want to do it again.

[194] That's an important fact because otherwise you would say in the real world this may very well disturb your relationship or siblings.

[195] It would be damaging, yes.

[196] So there's absolutely zero negative fallout from it.

[197] Yeah, and that's what the story specifies.

[198] And that's why people's intuitions, they don't know where to go with them.

[199] They don't know what to do with them because they don't seem to work the things that they say when they try to give reasons to justify their intuitions.

[200] They're ruled out already by the story, but they still have them and they're uncomfortable with them.

[201] So to me, the point of doing this early in my course is to say, you need to be prepared to challenge your moral intuitions.

[202] In this course, we're going to try and think about things in a way that tries to ground our judgments.

[203] tries to bring reasons into making our judgments, and we shouldn't just be satisfied with our intuitions.

[204] Some of them are clearly wrong, and some of the ones people have had historically, we recognize it's clearly wrong.

[205] This is another example where maybe we don't recognize it, and of course, it's not an important case, really, because the circumstances described and are not likely to arise from those things.

[206] But it can lead them on to think about some other cases where their intuitions might be challenged.

[207] There's also this great book Behave that I recently read.

[208] It's interesting the different things that are also triggered in us biochemically, like disgust is a very specific and almost physiological response to some things that are ultimately moral issues or what we would think of as moral.

[209] Is philosophy singularly about reason?

[210] Is it about being rational?

[211] So I think the activity of doing philosophy is about being rational, but that doesn't mean that you might not decide that our emotions are really important and we should not suppress them.

[212] So you might decide that sometimes we need to go with our emotions rather than to try to think our way through a specific situation.

[213] But that in itself is a rational judgment that you're saying, perhaps the emotions are going to lead us to better outcomes.

[214] If we try to reason through it, it's too difficult.

[215] Our biases and our own interests will distort the result.

[216] So let's try and go with our feelings if we're recommending things to others.

[217] Let's encourage them to have empathy with the people who are affected, rather than simply try to a sort of, if you like, a more coolly rational approach to the situation which doesn't allow their emotions to play a role.

[218] Yet my fear or my pushback is that much of your life is just your emotional existence.

[219] It is, certainly.

[220] I mean, that's what we are.

[221] We are evolved beings who have evolved to have a lot of emotional responses, which in the circumstances in which our ancestors lived, no doubt were conducive to our survival and to the survival of our offspring, and that's why they're there.

[222] And very often, you know, those circumstances still apply, and it's fine for us to continue to be influenced by them.

[223] But I think with some qualifications, let me give you an example.

[224] Clearly, we have a natural inclination to love our children.

[225] Not everybody has at the same extent, but most people do.

[226] And that's a really important thing in our lives, to care for our children, to love them, to want the best for them, to fear for them if they're in danger.

[227] That's good and that's right and that works in our society.

[228] Does that mean that we should be doing everything for them?

[229] That, for example, even if we have achieved a reasonable level of wealth and comfort and financial security for the future too, we should still be leaving everything that we have to our children.

[230] That seems to me to be a mistake.

[231] That's where our emotions might lead us astray.

[232] Yes, it's our children we care about most, but we don't think about, firstly, is this really going to be good for them?

[233] to have so much maybe that in some cases they wouldn't really need to think about earning our own income themselves.

[234] And also what about the rest of the world?

[235] And this is clearly a difference between our situation and our ancestors.

[236] We are able to help people who are far away from us.

[237] We are able to know about their needs and what we can do to assist them.

[238] So I think we have to limit our love for our children and say at some points, look, you're going to be okay.

[239] We're not neglecting you.

[240] we're not leaving you with that support.

[241] But I want to also help people who are much less fortunate than you are, even though they're strangers to me and I don't have the same feelings to them as individuals.

[242] Perhaps I even never know who the individuals I'm helping are.

[243] I might be giving away to an organisation that's providing bed nets against malaria.

[244] Well, I'll never know who exactly the bed nets that I funded are going to and I'll never know which children's lives they saved.

[245] But if I give enough, I can be reasonably confident that it liked you to have saved some children's lives.

[246] So I think that's where we have to say we should certainly love our children and care for them and provide for them, but within limits given the circumstances that we're in in the world.

[247] My wife would love hearing your point of view.

[248] I very much want to leave them a lot of money.

[249] And I'll tell you why.

[250] I grew up dead broke, so everything was an improvement.

[251] Right, but does that mean you think that they really need a lot of money rather than sort of a sufficiency to be able to do some things?

[252] Well, what I think is that I grew up in its very, specific situation whereby leaving me nothing was no big deal because it would have been status quo and I could only make things better.

[253] I think it is a precarious situation to raise kids in comfort and security and then introduce them to the opposite world you have not trained them for.

[254] You haven't given them any experience moving through and then all of a sudden you pull the rug out.

[255] There's also some weird issue there for me. Well, first, I'm not really pulling the rug out.

[256] I'm not really suggesting that, but I'm suggesting that you make them aware that there are other people in the world in much greater need than they are.

[257] And secondly, I think it's a pity if they only become aware of this at some later stage when you're telling them how much they're going to have after you move on.

[258] I would say it's rather better to get them used to the idea early on that the family as a whole is going to help people who are much poorer in other parts of the world.

[259] When your kids have that exposure.

[260] That's already happening, yes, yes.

[261] A ton of money is going in a direction.

[262] I left to my own devices would not be going in that direction.

[263] But I've partnered up with someone who's very philanthropic.

[264] That's really good.

[265] They're exactly that.

[266] They know they'll be taken care of that they're not going to be kicked out or anything.

[267] But they also probably know that they're not getting every penny.

[268] They probably haven't even thought about it.

[269] I just think I've shown them a world where you get to travel and see the world and you see new things and you meet new people and you eat food that's healthy and delicious and none of them are living on Medicare or Medicaid and that reality I just think on some level if I was really going to make them destined for that I should have raised them that way which I haven't and I'm not going to right I'm not think you should have raised them as if they yeah on Medicare as if they needed public welfare that seems to be going a little far okay you describe yourself as a consequentialist yes that's right how does that differ from a utilitarian?

[270] Consequentialism is the genus and utilitarianism is the species.

[271] There's a family of theories that are consequentialist.

[272] That means that you think whether an action is right or wrong depends on its consequences.

[273] Utilitarians say all of that, but they say the consequences that I think matter are those to maximize happiness and to minimize misery.

[274] For the greatest number of people possible as well.

[275] Taking into account the intensity of well -being or the suffering, there's this famous tag which actually Bentham himself, the founder of utilitarianism, did use, but later regretted, the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

[276] But that implies that if you can make 51 % a little bit happier and make 49 % really miserable, you should do it.

[277] Bentham didn't really mean to say that.

[278] In fact, even if you make 99 % a little bit happier, but you create absolute agony for 1%, that would clearly be wrong too.

[279] So it's taking into account the significance, the intensity of where everybody is, averaging that.

[280] So that's the utilitarian answer to what are the consequences that matter.

[281] But there are other consequentialists who say, well, yes, happiness and suffering matter, of course.

[282] But justice, freedom, knowledge, whatever else it might be, they matter, and they don't matter simply because they lead to a happier society or to happier people.

[283] They matter intrinsically.

[284] Yes.

[285] So you have to take them into account too.

[286] These are very hard to nail down, no?

[287] They are very hard to nail down, and they're also very hard to compare with each other, right?

[288] So let's say if you do have this pluralism of values, many different values that you all think are really intrinsic values, and then you face a choice where you have to choose between, let's say, reducing the suffering of some, but you can only do it by doing something that is unjust.

[289] How do you weigh those things together?

[290] How do you consider the importance of the injustice that you would have to commit as against the importance of relieving the suffering of some people?

[291] Yeah, I look at even the individual.

[292] level, I think of Danny Kahneman in pointing out that the experiential self, that's basically utilitarianism.

[293] Am I currently suffering or am I currently flourishing?

[294] Am I happy or am I sad currently?

[295] That only being one part of our self, the other one being the narrative self, that is writing the story of our life.

[296] I have often in life picked the story of my life over my immediate happiness, right?

[297] Yes.

[298] They're certainly distinct, but it's not clear that having the narrative that you want to have will not in the long run conduce to a better experiential self as well because you'll be able to look back and say, you know, my life followed this path that is what I wanted to follow and I'm happy that it did.

[299] So when you think about that, when you're actually reflecting about that, that's your experiential self.

[300] It says now I'm happy because I accomplished this.

[301] This is who I am.

[302] That's right.

[303] Even if at the time you might have had various choices in which you favored the narrative, although you could have been happier at that particular moment.

[304] And so the experiential self would have been happier in that moment.

[305] You'd always be happier eating an ice cream than working.

[306] Yes, that's a good example.

[307] You would, but if you always followed the rule, I will choose an ice cream now rather than work.

[308] Firstly, then there would be an experiential moment when you look down at your bulging stomach.

[309] You've lost sight of your genitals at some point.

[310] And you would not be happy in that moment.

[311] And then you would also think, well, I haven't really achieved anything.

[312] maybe I frittered away my life just having all of those great ice creams and I'm unhappy about that.

[313] I agree with you and I do think that the enjoying the narrative self is an experiential moment but if we try to quantify that it may on paper be 89 % showing up working accomplishing things being industrious and 11 % experiential enjoying that so when we're making our decisions and we're attempting to quantify it or measure it or weigh it and evaluate it, it's not even going to be clear cut because you still might pick 11 % happiness, 89 % work and toil.

[314] I agree, it's not clear cut.

[315] Undoubtedly, one of the problems with any form of consequentialism is how do you add up the consequences, balance them against each other, and quantify them.

[316] But I don't think there's any theory that doesn't have some inherent difficulties.

[317] Yes, or we would have all embraced it unilaterally.

[318] I didn't realize, though, that consequentially.

[319] was older than utilitarian.

[320] The term is not older, but the idea...

[321] Okay, because I was going to say it seems newer.

[322] The term is a 20th century term.

[323] It wasn't used before, whereas utilitarianism was developed by Bentham in the late 18th century.

[324] But you could then look back and say, oh, there are these philosophers from earlier who were, in fact, consequentialists without the name.

[325] Okay, so your interest in philosophy has led you in many thrilling directions.

[326] We could definitely do nine hours on you.

[327] You've written, co -authored, edited, or co -edited more than 50 books in 25 languages.

[328] There's a large range of topics within there.

[329] I think maybe first we should talk about animal liberation.

[330] That's commonly regarded as the beginning of the animal rights movement.

[331] I think there's some truth to that because a lot of people who became leaders of the animal rights movement in the 1970s have attributed that to reading animal liberation.

[332] I suppose the most prominent is Ingrid Newkirk, who found.

[333] people for the ethical treatment of animals, the largest animal rights group, I think still in the world in terms of the numbers of people who support it.

[334] And, you know, there are many others.

[335] I've been traveling around the country now, presenting animal liberation now, the new, fully updated version of it.

[336] And just last night here in L .A., for example, people came forward and said, yeah, it was reading animal liberation that got me involved in this movement 20, 30, 40 years ago, different people with different backgrounds and different ages.

[337] Obviously, it did have that effect, And I'm really proud of them.

[338] I hope you are.

[339] And you wrote it in 1975, the year of my birth.

[340] Oh, right.

[341] Perfectly parallel.

[342] And can we get an origin story of how that came about?

[343] So it goes back five years earlier to 1970.

[344] I was a graduate student in philosophy at Oxford.

[345] I happened to start chatting after a class with a Canadian student called Richard Keschin.

[346] And to continue the conversations, he invited me back to his college for lunch.

[347] And when we walked into the college dining hall, you were offered.

[348] either a hot dish or a salad plate.

[349] And the hot dish was spaghetti with some nondescript brand sauce on it.

[350] Mystery sauce?

[351] Yeah, well, you know, this is England in the 1970s and a college institutional dining.

[352] It wasn't her cuisine.

[353] Yeah.

[354] Richard asked, is there meat in the sauce?

[355] And he was told there was, and then he took the salad plate.

[356] The salad wasn't going to be enough for me, so I took the spaghetti, but after we'd finished the conversation that we started after the class, I said to him, why did you ask that question about the spaghetti sauce?

[357] Do you have a problem with meat?

[358] And this is 1970, you know, I was 24 years.

[359] years old.

[360] I don't think I'd ever really met or discussed vegetarianism with a vegetarian.

[361] I imagine you met people culturally.

[362] I had been in India.

[363] So yes, there were people there who was vegetarian.

[364] But that wasn't really going to interest me as a basis for becoming a vegetarian.

[365] Yeah, you would have to think, oh my God, you'd have to be religious or something.

[366] Something like that.

[367] That's right.

[368] And I'd read about people who were pacifists and who thought that killing is always wrong and who extended that to animals.

[369] I was not a pacifist, so that in itself was not going to attract me. But Richard said something much simpler.

[370] He said, I don't think it's right to treat animals in the way they are treated to be turned into meat.

[371] And I was a little surprised because my image of how the animals that I had been eating for all these years were being treated was that they had pretty good lives, that they were outside in the fields, grazing.

[372] And in fact, you know, you can still look at children's books about farmyard animals and they're all roaming around.

[373] There's only like two of each species.

[374] It's very much the arc. Right.

[375] And by 24, I should have realized that that image might not be right.

[376] But I didn't know that a lot of the animals I was eating had never been outside, that they had been crowded into sheds, particularly chickens and pigs and also the hens who lay the eggs I was eating.

[377] They were in small wire cages.

[378] They couldn't even stretch their wings.

[379] And there was no real concern for their welfare unless it made an impact on the profitability of the enterprise.

[380] And unfortunately, often it didn't really make that impact.

[381] You could crowd animals more in the sheds to the point where more of them would die, let's say if we're talking about chickens, because they were so crowded.

[382] But still, the fact that you had more chickens in your shed and therefore got more chickens out at the end when they were the right weight to slaughter outweighed the fact that some of them had died along the way.

[383] So you can push animals very hard.

[384] And this is unfortunately still the case.

[385] And I cite examples in animal liberation now of quite recent studies by agricultural economists advising people how much they can crowd the animals together and still make more money or how if cattle have shade in the summers, they will go to it.

[386] And occasionally, you know, you get hot spells and then some of them will die without shade.

[387] But still, the cost of providing the shade can outweigh the savings in the fact that more of your cattle survive.

[388] So it was that kind of thing anyway, to go back to 1970 that I really had no idea about it.

[389] And when Richard said that to me, I asked him how he knew that.

[390] He mentioned a book by Ruth Harrison, which was the only book about factory farming available at that time and And it was published by Galance, a pretty small publisher, hadn't really been much discussed around.

[391] But I found it and read it, and I found it very convincing.

[392] And that's what started me down the track that led me to write animal liberation.

[393] Because I thought that, yes, more people need to know about the way we treating animals, but also it needs to be put in an ethical framework.

[394] And that was what I started working on during those five years when I was working on it, developing that ethical framework and making sure that that stood up to objections, as well as doing research into the way in which the animals were being treated, which showed that could not be defended by any reasonable ethical view.

[395] Do you have a sliding scale of which animals you would apply this to?

[396] I would apply it to any animals who can feel pain or suffer.

[397] That's my criterion.

[398] So the sliding scale is actually the degree of confidence that I have that particular animals can suffer.

[399] And I'm highly confident now about all vertebrate.

[400] There was, in the earlier version, that I was somewhat less confident that I am now about fish.

[401] There was some discussion about whether fish's brains being different from ours, whether they felt pain.

[402] There's more recent research that resolves that question, and I'm convinced that fish are capable of suffering and of feeling pain.

[403] When you get to invertebrates, there's less certainty.

[404] Yeah, there's a lot of insect propositions.

[405] Yes, there's a lot of insects.

[406] That's right.

[407] I'm not certain that insects don't feel pain, but I think it's quite likely that if they're do, it's of a different order.

[408] They have far fewer neurons, so the kind of suffering that we and other vertebrates can experience, I think is unlikely in insects.

[409] I'm not campaigning against raising insects for food.

[410] But with vertebrates, with fish, and I do extend to some invertebrates, it's interesting that the United Kingdom Parliament recently passed a law about animals being sentient beings.

[411] That was a law that they had to pass because they left the European Union.

[412] In the European Union, there is a general law that applies to all the European Union countries that animals have a status that is not that of just property.

[413] They have a status of sentient beings.

[414] They can still be property legally.

[415] But when the United Kingdom left, then people concerned for animals said, hey, wait a minute, animals will no longer have the status of sentient beings if we vote for your referendum to leave the EU.

[416] And so the Boris Johnson government said, don't worry, we'll bring in this statute, we'll re -legislate it, which they did.

[417] And not only did they re -legislated, there was a report.

[418] that had recently come out by scientists and philosophers on cephalopods, which is the family that includes octopus and squid, and also on what are called decapod crustaceans.

[419] So these are lobsters and crabs mainly.

[420] And the report convinced the parliament that they should also be included in the bill.

[421] So we do have some invertebrates that in law in the United Kingdom and in some other countries are recognized as being capable of suffering, and so I would certainly extend my concern to them as well.

[422] Is the premise that ethically it's abhorrent to make them suffer, that's clear to me. How about just killing animals to eat them, period?

[423] Do you think that's a moral proposition?

[424] If they're raised properly, you mean?

[425] This is where I go to.

[426] I'm watching this incredible docu -series, Chimp Empire, and I studied primates in college, and I'm obsessed with them, and I'm obsessed with us as a primate.

[427] You know, those chimps love killing other monkeys.

[428] They just can't get enough it.

[429] They don't need to.

[430] They have plenty of fruit to live on, but they prize the monkey meat, the protein.

[431] and they do it.

[432] Obviously, we wouldn't look at that and say, well, that's amoral of them.

[433] No, I don't think the chimpanzees are really reflecting on their choices, you know, intelligent as they are in many ways.

[434] I don't think any chimpanzees debate about, well, is it really okay to kill monkeys?

[435] We're causing them pain when we rip them apart.

[436] Oh, then they do rip them apart.

[437] Yeah, they do, I know.

[438] Jane Goodell, who's certainly one of my heroes, was actually very distressed when she discovered that because she'd been observing chimpanzees for quite a while and hadn't seen them doing that.

[439] Then when they did, I think it was upsetting.

[440] But here's my...

[441] fear of the position held by animal liberation and the people who then went on to start pita and whatnot is the premise that we should really just not eat animals because i'm curious why we would leave the animal kingdom why we would be separate if most of the argument is pushing us more and more to recognize no we're just animals like all the other animals here why are we separating ourselves and saying no this animal shouldn't feed on other animals well we do have choices that other animals probably can't really reflect on.

[442] And secondly, we can know what is going to give us the nutrients that we need to thrive and be healthy.

[443] And that does include protein, but the protein doesn't have to be animal protein.

[444] We have lots of other plant -based proteins and we may eventually develop cellular meat, which would be okay too.

[445] You'd be good with that.

[446] I'd be good with that, sure.

[447] Headless chicken growing in a...

[448] Well, I mean, we can go to that extreme.

[449] We could go to that extreme.

[450] At the moment, the work that is going on in this country and others is not to produce headless chickens, but to produce chicken breasts, scaffolds that produce meat at cellular level is meat and has the texture and flavor.

[451] So I would be fine with that.

[452] I don't particularly need it for myself.

[453] I've been perfectly happy for over 50 years as a vegetarian and then more recently is predominantly vegan.

[454] So to go back to your question, why are we leaving the animal kingdom?

[455] I don't think we are.

[456] We're obviously still animals.

[457] But we have capacities and technologies and choices that other animals simply don't have.

[458] Armchair expert, if you dare.

[459] What's up, guys?

[460] This your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[461] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[462] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[463] And I don't mean just friends.

[464] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[465] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[466] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcast.

[467] We've all been there, turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[468] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[469] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[470] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[471] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[472] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[473] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[474] Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music.

[475] Yeah, it weirdly brings me back to the Jonathan Hike question, which is like you can mount a rational argument for or against it, there's this intangible, in my opinion, that seems to be being ignored a little bit, which is just the reality, animals eat other animals.

[476] We're one of the animals that eats other animals.

[477] And it's being suggested that maybe we'll stop that tradition, which has always existed in our species.

[478] Just because we can?

[479] No, not just because we can.

[480] There are many things that we can do that we ought not to do, but because we see that it's harmful to those animals.

[481] But also now I think because we see that a lot of it is producing greenhouse gases, which we need to stop producing if we're to have a stable climate ever again.

[482] And certainly the way we're producing animals increases pandemic risk as virus develop.

[483] But you were actually making a somewhat separate point about, as Monica said, animals who are raised in a different way.

[484] And I think that does make a difference because you started this line of a thought by asking me about killing itself.

[485] Yeah.

[486] So I would say killing animals who can have good lives normally is a bad thing because it would be better that they go on living their good lives.

[487] But there is an argument specifically with someone who's called conscientious omnivorism that says these animals, let's say they're cows and they're out in the fields and they're having really good lives.

[488] They wouldn't exist if we weren't going to kill them and then sell their flesh because why would I bother to raise them?

[489] Yeah, take on the expense of feeding a cow in taking care of its health care.

[490] That's right.

[491] So this is, I think, an argument that philosophically goes quite deep and that I have thought about quite a lot.

[492] In the very first edition of animal liberation, I rejected it, but I then discussed it with other philosophers, and I think my rejection was a little hasty.

[493] Because the same question, if we're asked, by the way, not just about animals, but about having children ourselves.

[494] Sure.

[495] So if we have the capacity to have children and to bring them up, give them a good start in life, and we're living in a country where most people do have worthwhile, enjoyable lives.

[496] Should the fact that we could create a being, a child in this case, who would have a happy life, should that be a reason for doing it?

[497] Philosophers have different views on this.

[498] They can also show that if you say, no, that's not a reason for doing it, you can get into some rather weird claims about the future and say go back to climate change, whether it would be fine if we all got ourselves sterilized and then released as many greenhouse gases as we like because there's not going to be anyone else on the planet after we all die, right?

[499] These are very Sam Harris hypotheticals, yes.

[500] But Sam's not the only one.

[501] Derek Parfit really was the philosopher who made this issue.

[502] You'll hear these questions, like, what if we could euthanize everyone on planet Earth in the middle of the night?

[503] So there's zero suffering.

[504] It's like, well, sure.

[505] Yeah.

[506] There's a hypothetical.

[507] No, but I think that would be wrong if we think that people generally have positive lives or even if we think today people don't have positive lives, but they're going to in the future, which some people might say, because they're optimistic about where technology will take us.

[508] then it would clearly be wrong to euthanize everybody in the middle of the night.

[509] Yeah, but the question of having children, let's say, is it a good thing to have children or is it a good thing to have more children if you can and if you can have reasonable expectation that your children will have happy lives?

[510] Is that a good thing?

[511] That seems to me to be not a crazy hypothetical like euthanizing everywhere in the night, but a real question that couples who have sufficient means should think about.

[512] Yes, because you're evaluating, well, now I can add five beans that will flourish.

[513] If this whole thing's a scale between suffering and flourishing, and I add five flourishing humans to the side of the scale, I could see where someone would convince themselves of that argument.

[514] Let me just ask you this.

[515] Where does then the conscientious omnivore argument break down for you?

[516] Now that you've entertained it in the book and you've followed it down its path, and you do think it's more substantial and defendable maybe than originally, at some point it clearly breaks down for you and it doesn't sway you.

[517] Where does that happen?

[518] Well, that's not quite right.

[519] I'm not saying the argument does break down.

[520] I'm saying that I'm not interested in eating meat and I would rather keep away from what might be dubious areas.

[521] To be a truly conscientious omnivore, I think it takes a lot of work to get animal products where you can really be confident that the animals have had good lives and that that outweighs any suffering that they or others might have.

[522] So, for example, take pasture raised eggs.

[523] I think you could convince yourself if you know a egg producer and you see the hens that really add on.

[524] on grass, not just on a small barren dirt run.

[525] They're out there, they're chasing the butterflies, whatever.

[526] You could say, this is how hens ought to live.

[527] They're having a good life.

[528] They're protected from predators at night, and they don't really mind that their eggs are removed.

[529] But you then also need to think about the fact that the males of this laying breed are no commercial use, that they get killed immediately, maybe painfully.

[530] So that's a problem.

[531] It's a problem, incidentally, that can be overcome by technology sexing the embryos in the eggs, that's on the way.

[532] And even a technology that would eliminate male conceptions in these hens is coming perhaps.

[533] Then the other factor is the hens are still going to be killed when their rate of laying eggs drops off.

[534] That might be painful.

[535] So there are other factors.

[536] But I'm not saying that that is wrong because it still, it is the case that these hens are having good lives.

[537] And maybe that outweighs the things that I just talked about.

[538] What I am saying is you really need to check up on how the farms are producing these animals.

[539] And I think there's very, very few of them that are doing that in a way that a truly conscientious omnivore would accept.

[540] But I'm not prepared to say that there is zero of them because I think there are some.

[541] And I'm not prepared to say that it's wrong.

[542] All I'm prepared to say is there are other views on this issue.

[543] And I can't say that this view that bringing more animals into existence to have good lives and then killing them is justified, but that philosophical debate is in the balance and it's a difficult one.

[544] And I'm not going to categorically say that it's wrong and that the conscientious omnivores position does break down.

[545] like that you're not.

[546] It's good to say I don't know yet or I don't know at all.

[547] Yeah, I think philosophy is a matter of inquiry and to think I've nailed down the answer to every question.

[548] Yeah.

[549] Would just clearly be false.

[550] But we need you to.

[551] We need to wrap that up and give us the rule book.

[552] Well, and it gets very complicated because we had on Will McCaskill he must know.

[553] I know Will, yes.

[554] And he's pointing out some of these along the line of effective altruism, which we'll also talk to you about, a lot of kind of misconceptions where people think they're doing good, but perhaps they're not one of them being grass -fed beef.

[555] He said that's worse than corn -fed because they're taking up more of the land.

[556] And ultimately, it's causing more damage to other species.

[557] And so then you have someone like him come along and say, well, no, grass -fed is worse because, of course, the only thing being evaluated at that point is probably the environment and its impact on other species.

[558] And climate change.

[559] Grass -fed beef emits more greenhouse gases, more methane than feedlot beef, just because the animals take longer to reach market weight.

[560] And so they're digesting for more time.

[561] And so for each pound of beef you get, there's been more methane produced.

[562] Yeah.

[563] Cholorically, the grass is much lower than the corn.

[564] And methane also needs to be pointed out, warms the atmosphere at like 22x the rate of carbon?

[565] I think actually that's an underestimate.

[566] That's over a century.

[567] And the reason that methane is only, say, 22 times is because after, to 20 years or so, it's broken down and there's much less of it, whereas carbon dioxide stays up there much longer.

[568] But how long do we have to stop warming the planet?

[569] I think we maybe only have about 20 years.

[570] So if you take the potency of methane as compared with carbon dioxide in warming the planet on a 20 -year period, you get a figure that's more like 82, not 22.

[571] I see when you correct for everything.

[572] I love how you say methane.

[573] Sorry.

[574] It's so amusing to me. I know I love it.

[575] I don't know how to broach this.

[576] It's too big, but I got to try to say it.

[577] So the conversation about should we reproduce.

[578] And then you have a conversation, should we eat other animals?

[579] And to me, at some point, it's the difference between what's rational and reasonable versus what's instinctual and real, which is, no, no, species reproduce.

[580] All animals are here to reproduce.

[581] But this current environment is new.

[582] This current environment is new.

[583] The climate issue is new.

[584] Yes.

[585] But you track and project where.

[586] population is going.

[587] It's going down.

[588] Actually, I disagree.

[589] You do.

[590] Oh, good.

[591] I think that's an optimistic prediction.

[592] It is at the moment still increasing.

[593] It's going to increase through this century, and the population of sub -Saharan Africa is still increasing quite rapidly.

[594] I don't think we can be confident that global population is going to decline within this century, and I don't think we can really foresee in future centuries.

[595] Maybe it will decline in the 22nd century, but that's a long way ahead.

[596] Okay, but many, many people think as all standard of living rises around every single corner of the globe, the fecundity rate falls.

[597] That's just a very known...

[598] That's true, but I'm not confident that levels of prosperity will continue to rise globally given climate change.

[599] Okay.

[600] It's going to be harder for them to rise in parts of the world that are already very hot.

[601] I'm not biblical.

[602] I don't think we're supposed to live a certain way as ordained by God, but what I do think is we have thought our way into some very peculiar places.

[603] We're designed to live with 100 humans, and they're supposed to be family and extended kin.

[604] And we have, through innovation, figured out how to live individually.

[605] There's one human being on planet earth.

[606] They can be done.

[607] As soon as you leave your house, if you get the right job, you could live solitary for the rest of your life.

[608] And there's an appeal to that even.

[609] And then you look at how miserable everyone is, and you have to acknowledge that every time we extract ourselves so dramatically from how we were designed to live, it doesn't seem like it ups the overall emotional experience on planet Earth.

[610] So I think you look at, okay, we don't live in groups anymore.

[611] We are the most social primate out of all of them, but we live as the most solitary primate.

[612] I don't actually accept that.

[613] Most humans I know have active social lives.

[614] They don't live permanently in a single group, but they have wide networks of friends whom they see and visit.

[615] I agree with that, but it's not for their need.

[616] There's no vulnerability required.

[617] You don't even have to exchange any kind of service or favor or anything.

[618] It's just social.

[619] That's nice.

[620] Yeah, to have friends.

[621] But I think the interdependence that we don't have on one another is pretty obvious and observable.

[622] We're still dependent.

[623] You know, we're dependent on somebody to make sure that water comes out of the tap or that electricity flows.

[624] We're still part of a very large society, a much larger one than those original ones.

[625] And that creates, I think, some problems.

[626] Yeah.

[627] I guess I just think if I look at that we're this social primate, and we've now evolved ourselves to being a solitary one, where it's also evolving to one that doesn't reproduce and we're evolving to one that doesn't eat meat, do you see where I'm going with this?

[628] We've thought ourselves into this very bizarre...

[629] I see where we're going, but I don't agree that we're evolving into one that doesn't reproduce.

[630] I think we are reproducing.

[631] We may reproduce at a rate that makes population stable at some point.

[632] I think that would be a positive thing, probably.

[633] but if we actually then develop the technology to colonize other planets, then population would grow to numbers that are vast compared to what we have now.

[634] And I know, you know, Will McCaskill would have talked to you about that.

[635] Others think about that as well.

[636] So I don't think that we're actually moving away to a species that won't reproduce.

[637] I think we might move to a species that doesn't eat meat, but that's fine.

[638] I think that's just an incidental.

[639] Then we would see that as a stage that we pass through in order to flourish and survive, and we just don't need it anymore.

[640] Yes.

[641] Now, I just also want to say, because I've been pushing back so much, I agree that it's abhorrent.

[642] When I drive up the five to go north in California, it's as far as the eye can see.

[643] There's no movement.

[644] They have to water them because birds will live on them.

[645] They can't even move.

[646] It's definitely horrific.

[647] And if you could see inside the chicken sheds and the pig sheds, they're actually worse than the cars are outside you're seeing.

[648] Well, I've seen the factory, and there's a show how it's made, which shows you how industrial things are made, baseball, bats, golf clubs, floor mats, you name it.

[649] And one was chickens.

[650] I was like, oh my god, yeah.

[651] And they come down conveyor belts and they hatch and they get sorted electronically.

[652] And you're like, oh yeah, they could never come into contact with either an older chicken or a human or anything.

[653] They're kind of born in a mechanized world and die in one.

[654] That's right.

[655] But there's still things you don't see.

[656] Like you don't see the fact that they've been bred to eat so much and to grow so fast that they're in pain just standing up on their immature leg bones because they're so fat and so young.

[657] They're only six weeks old when they're killed.

[658] They grow them that big in six weeks?

[659] That's right.

[660] They do.

[661] This is selective breeding.

[662] And here's another thing that you may not even think about.

[663] What about their parents, right?

[664] They have parents with the same genetics.

[665] So there's parents also want to eat a lot and grow very obese.

[666] But they wouldn't be sexually mature.

[667] They wouldn't be able to reproduce at six weeks.

[668] They have to be some months old to reproduce.

[669] So how do you stop them getting so obese that they can't walk or fall over or die or can't mate?

[670] You only feed them every second day.

[671] that's pretty standard for the breeding birds.

[672] You breed birds that are very hungry all the time and then you starve them.

[673] It's noted even in the farming journals that they're so hungry when they don't have food, they try to drink a lot of water and that can be harmful to them.

[674] So I quote a farming journal in Animal Liberation Now that says, turn the water off as well once they've had some of it because otherwise they can harm themselves.

[675] With water.

[676] Just with water because they're taking so much because they're so hungry.

[677] Okay, can we talk about effect of altruism for a second?

[678] Yes, absolutely.

[679] Okay, wonderful.

[680] I'm being mindful.

[681] Don't worry, we're going to get you on the airplane.

[682] I watched your TED talk, and I really, really enjoyed it, as have a few million other people.

[683] It's incredible.

[684] How did you find your way to that cause?

[685] This also goes back to when I was a graduate student.

[686] In 1971, there was a crisis in what was then called East Pakistan, but is now Bangladesh.

[687] East Pakistan wanted autonomy from West Pakistan, which is now just Pakistan.

[688] And the Pakistani army repressed that autonomy movement.

[689] so brutally that nine million people fled across the border into India, which was much poorer nation than than it is today.

[690] And India called for help to feed, has, provide sanitation for this vast mass of people, but not very much was forthcoming.

[691] And I started thinking about, I'm reasonably comfortable off.

[692] I was on a graduate student scholarship, but I had enough.

[693] Should I be donating to organizations like Oxfam that were helping people in India?

[694] And I decided that I should, and that led me to write about it.

[695] I wrote an article called Famine, Affluence and Morality.

[696] It was published in 1972 that has this little story about imagining that you're walking across a park and there's a shallow pond in the park.

[697] You know that it's shallow.

[698] But you see a small child who's fallen in and it's not shallow enough for the child to be able to stand or get out.

[699] And for some reason that you don't understand, there's no babysitter or parent running down to haul the child out of the pond.

[700] So should you do it?

[701] The child's not your responsibility.

[702] You have nothing to do with the child being in danger.

[703] And there's some cost to you because you're wearing really.

[704] expensive clothes and shoes because you're going somewhere important.

[705] A big job interview.

[706] Yeah, let's say that.

[707] Is it okay to just say that child is not my responsibility?

[708] So I'm going to ignore the fact that there's a child probably drowning in the pond there.

[709] Everybody, I asked that to, says, no, you can't do that.

[710] Child's life outweighs your shoes.

[711] You'd be a monstrous person if you just walk past it.

[712] And I used that example because I wanted to say, well, what do we think of ourselves if there's an organization that could take a donation from us and could use that to save a child's life?

[713] And we don't donate, although we have the capacity to do so.

[714] So that little anecdote about the child has become a kind of little meme, yeah.

[715] More than Jonathan Heights's sibling sex romp.

[716] Maybe you even love of that, that's right.

[717] But it was a hypothetical for decades, and then you start your TED talk with virtually that scenario playing out from security cam footage of a little girl getting hit by a truck, run over, laying in the street, and people just walk.

[718] No. Yeah, so she's obviously a child who's got away from where her mother is.

[719] She's hit.

[720] by something.

[721] And then there's these other people who walk down the street, either walking or on a bicycle.

[722] And they're clearly seeing her, but they're looking away and walking past her.

[723] I think 17 people sort of walked past it before.

[724] A street cleaner saw her and picked her up and sounded the alarm.

[725] She even got run over a second time.

[726] Oh my gosh.

[727] It's really pretty grim footage.

[728] What's happening in our brains?

[729] Because I can't just assume all those people are like evil.

[730] My guess is they're going someone else's problem.

[731] Somebody else is going to do it.

[732] Someone else's problem.

[733] someone else will have.

[734] I don't want to get involved.

[735] It's pretty bad.

[736] And I show it to my students because I know that they will react negatively as you did and they will say this is bad.

[737] And then again, you can make this point.

[738] Aren't we in a somewhat similar situation?

[739] Not identical, of course, because the emotions are aroused when we see that child lying there helplessly.

[740] But in terms of the impact that we're having or not having, our failure to act costs children their lives.

[741] So first, that's the premise.

[742] And I'm in lockstep.

[743] That is a wonderful way to look at it.

[744] Yeah, how does the child in the pond and Central Park differ from the child that needs a malaria in that.

[745] Make that case for me why those are two different values, which you can't.

[746] Yeah, I can't.

[747] Yeah, no one can't.

[748] I mean, people could, but it would fall apart.

[749] But you go beyond that, which I appreciate, because my issue as a cynic, skeptic, someone who doesn't trust people is, well, who do you give the money to?

[750] That becomes the next biggest thing.

[751] And I'm grateful that you have actually spent so much time on this side of that?

[752] That's right.

[753] I wrote a book called The Life You Can Save, which talked about organizations that are really effective and that it can be independently assessed as the ones you should give your money to because you know you will get great value.

[754] You know that the money will go to help the people you need, that it won't be misallocated to projects that don't have an impact, and it won't be siphoned off in administration or further fundraising expenses.

[755] But because that changes, obviously, which societies can get that independent assessment and can pass those tests.

[756] I also set up a website that people can go to called the life you can save .org and you can click on best charities and you can find a relatively short list it's just a 23 I think at the moment of independently vetted charities that have been assessed as really being highly cost effective and you can donate directly to those charities on the website if you want to you can read a bit more about each one you click on a link 100 % of your don't donation goes to those charities.

[757] The life you can save doesn't take anything.

[758] Although, you know, if people want to donate to us to enable us to spread news about our website and continue to research our list, we're happy to take that.

[759] I got to point out, 23 good ones is a little stark.

[760] Well, we're not saying that all the others are no good.

[761] We're just saying we can't really assess them.

[762] We've actually just expanded the list to include a couple of charities working in education in low -income countries.

[763] Because other organizations, there's Givewell, for example, it also assesses charities.

[764] I was going to say that one had three.

[765] Their assessment is even tighter.

[766] And if you really want to have a high degree of confidence, the highest possible, sure, go to the three give well charities, which we also incidentally recommend we agree with them.

[767] But the education of girls in particular in low -income countries is really of critical importance.

[768] It's been shown to have significant benefits.

[769] The ultimate upriver solution.

[770] Yeah, I think that's right.

[771] And we looked at a range of things.

[772] So we've got two educational charities on the website now too.

[773] Okay, so I love it.

[774] Will was so moving when we spoke with him, McCaskill, that we ended up donating a bunch of money.

[775] He kind of bamboozled us and we, and it worked.

[776] Yeah, you had to donate, like, the price of a motorcycle.

[777] The price of a motorcycle and I had to donate the price of my shirt times three.

[778] He really got us.

[779] He got us.

[780] I'm wondering how you work through the math of being a consequentialist, being an effective altruist.

[781] It seems to have a bit of a triage approach, right, which is let's go to, what's the vast majority of children dying.

[782] There is another aspect of effective altruism.

[783] It's not only the scale of the problem, but there's also two other issues we talk about.

[784] One is, is the problem neglected?

[785] Certainly if you're talking about rather rare diseases that people are not studying, then they may be very neglected, and you may have the opportunity to make a breakthrough because you try some line of research that the few people doing research in this area have not thought of.

[786] If you go into heart disease or cancer, there's so many people working on this, the chance that you will actually have at real impact are probably lower.

[787] I see.

[788] It doesn't mean you have to go for the scale.

[789] You can go for is it neglected.

[790] You can also go for what's called how tractable is it?

[791] What are the chances that we can reduce it or even eliminate it?

[792] You need to think about those things as well.

[793] So there is space for us to worry about things that are less numerous?

[794] Yes, there certainly is that space as long as it is something that is significant and where you then have a prospect of making an impact on her.

[795] Going back to the girl who got hit, I think, and this sort of speaks to what you said about us getting a little more isolated as time has progressed.

[796] I think that's true because I think there's a new flaw in our thinking where we just believe none of that's my business.

[797] I mean, I'll just give an example.

[798] So I was leaving a restaurant the other day.

[799] We were in Beverly Hills, and it was very nice.

[800] It didn't feel scary or anything.

[801] But I was walking to my car, middle of the table.

[802] day and there was a kid sitting by himself and he looked young outside of a store and I thought this looks kind of weird and this kid is by himself and I kind of peeked into the store to see and I was like, okay, I think that's probably his mom but I don't know.

[803] And then I just left.

[804] And then I thought about it in the car.

[805] I thought this was probably bad.

[806] I probably should have at least checked in and said, this is someone's kid?

[807] But then I thought if I did that, then they might be mad at me because they'd think.

[808] Or free range parents, like, come on.

[809] Well, they'd be like, I'm not neglecting my kid or my kid was just having a, I don't know.

[810] But then I felt so guilty after.

[811] Why didn't I just check or even check with the kid?

[812] But there's this sort of like, that's none of my business.

[813] And in fact, it would be worse to ask.

[814] Yeah.

[815] It's weird.

[816] I understand that feeling.

[817] And there've been occasions where I've regretted that I didn't check up on something that's nothing.

[818] bad was going on.

[819] So I know the feeling.

[820] You may say to yourself, I'm just too busy, right?

[821] That might be an other example.

[822] Yeah, that's right.

[823] There's this famous example of research that was actually done at Princeton about theology students who were told to give a lecture on the Good Samaritan and they were told you have to give the lecture in another building.

[824] And on the path between the two buildings, they had put a stooge who was acting as if he was having a heart attack and was in trouble.

[825] This is great.

[826] This is great.

[827] This is evil.

[828] This is evil.

[829] So the question was, Of course, would the theology students who were about to give a lecture on the Good Samaritan stop to help the stranger who seemed to be having a heart attack or some trouble?

[830] Some of them did and some of them didn't.

[831] But it turned out that a crucial factor was if you said to the students, you're running a little bit late, I think you better leave right now.

[832] They were significantly less likely to stop to help the stranger than if you just said, you might as well go, I know, you've got plenty of time.

[833] Someone else out here is probably killing a half hour before class they can deal with it.

[834] They have the time.

[835] I'm busy.

[836] And actually, I have to admit, not with somebody who I think was dying.

[837] but in the kind of situation that you were talking about with the child, if I'm in a hurry, I think, yeah, somebody else will look after.

[838] I've really got something important to do.

[839] And then later I think, ah, look, you know, it wouldn't have mattered if I took a couple of minutes to check out.

[840] Yeah.

[841] It's just a weird hiccup that I think we have that we have to get over, I guess.

[842] I think you're juggling that exact thing, which is I remember watching a very heartbreaking segment on 60 minutes about the border.

[843] And you have these Border Patrol guys in an SUV driving down a road approaching the border.

[844] passing a couple families that need help and they can't there's too many they can't stop and do it they won't get to their ultimate mission which is to go help the one that's already called like there are certain pressure cooker realities where everything's so terrible that you're forced to step over a lot of dead bodies and weirdly living in a city of 12 million people like la yeah there's 60 ,000 people living on the street if you were to actually stop and help all them you actually would never get anywhere.

[845] So now you're acknowledging the reality that I don't have the capacity to stop and help everyone I see.

[846] So once you've decided that, well, I'm not going to help all of them.

[847] Which ones am I going to help?

[848] Now I'm already on a road to, I've already decided I'm not going to help a lot of people.

[849] That's true.

[850] And I've noticed that on this visit, actually, it's a few years since I've been in L .A. And there seem to be a lot more of these tents and encampments of homeless people, and it's really distressing.

[851] My last question to you is, I think from the outside when I learn about you, you're kind of zigzagging through many of the political borders.

[852] So you write this book, Animal Liberation, and now the updated one, Animal Liberation Now, which everyone should check out.

[853] That puts you on the very far left.

[854] Then you write, or I don't know if that's the actual order, but practical ethics, in that book, you make a very kind of bold assessment of perhaps giving parents the right to euthanize a child with severe disabilities.

[855] That's its own shitstorm for a while.

[856] Right.

[857] That kind of throws you deeply on the right in some weird or I don't even know that that puts you on the right or the left.

[858] Your peer -reviewed journal you started, which is called The Journal of Controversial Ideas?

[859] The Journal of Controversial Ideas, yes.

[860] And I read the topics in there.

[861] I'm so drawn to that.

[862] Like, that's a bullseye for me. You've thrown a perfect pitch.

[863] I love that type of commitment to free speech.

[864] As you've weaved all over, I imagine you find that you have enemies everywhere.

[865] It seems like the hardest road.

[866] in that you could have just stayed on the left, and sure, half the people would have hated you, but half would love you.

[867] But then you dance over here and you dance over there, and do you find that you've just had enemies on all sides and lovers on all sides?

[868] And what's that been like?

[869] Yeah, it's been a bit like that.

[870] You know, I don't think any of these issues are really just one political side.

[871] Even the animal issue, which you said is on the left.

[872] There are conservatives who are certainly opposed to factory farming.

[873] Matthew Scully, who was a speech writer for George W. Bush, wrote a book called Dominion in which he was strongly opposed to what we're doing to animals.

[874] You have Schwarzenegger.

[875] There's some people, yeah, but just broadly speaking, I suppose.

[876] I'd like to see, though, more conservatives coming to the cause of animals.

[877] You've got to hit them with the defense of our country strategy, that global warming will create great civil unrest and jeopardize the safety of Americans.

[878] But, you know, I mean, they can be Christians and they can follow what Jesus said about helping the poor.

[879] No, they came more that Jesus said no gays.

[880] That's much more important.

[881] Right.

[882] They're focused on that.

[883] And then that's such a distortion of any fair reading of his message.

[884] But, yeah, the Journal of Controversial Ideas certainly does seem to some people to put me siding with the right.

[885] But I think you have to take a broader view of free speech.

[886] And it used to be the left whose speech was denied, especially in this country, you know, academics were fired from universities.

[887] I was presented by the University of Pennsylvania with, I think it was called the Scott Nearing Award, because he had been a professor at Penn. And because he was a socialist opposing capitalism, this was about, I think, 1910 or 1920, he was dismissed.

[888] And then McCarthyism, of course.

[889] I think it's a really short -sided mistake of people on the left to be not standing up for freedom of expression because eventually they will be on the wrong end of it.

[890] And I think we make progress through challenging ideas.

[891] I don't support all of the things that are said in the journal of controversial ideas.

[892] I just support their right to have a place to publish, which is being denied to them.

[893] And we see that some of the authors that are put in little notes, footnotes, or thank us saying this article would have been accepted by this journal, but it was sort of vetoed on political grounds.

[894] after the reviewers had said it was a well -argued piece.

[895] It's a very cool premise for a journal in that it's peer -reviewed, yet you can also publish anonymously.

[896] That's right, yes, if you don't want to be on the receiving end of all of that abuse and the problems that people have been in when they've said controversial things.

[897] About a third of our authors have taken advantage of that opportunity to publish anonymously, but I also welcome those who said, no, I'll put my name to it and I'll stand up to whatever.

[898] I read an interesting New Yorker interview with you, and the interviewer seemed to have all kinds of concerns about the journal of controversial ideas and didn't like that anonymous aspect.

[899] And I like that you said, well, look, they will be denied the glory of being celebrated if it's a resounding hit, the idea and argument.

[900] They will give up that because the risk is so high to be canceled or your position at your university taken from you.

[901] That's right.

[902] Although, you know, if they eventually feel that the climate of freedom of expression has improved enough, that they don't mind their name being put to it, we will change that, right?

[903] We're open to saying, okay, you were anonymous during this period, but now you've requested that your name be ascribed to the article.

[904] We're happy to do it.

[905] Oh, it can happen retroactively.

[906] It can.

[907] This is interesting, though, and I totally agree.

[908] I'm on everyone's same page with free speech, but it can cycle back to our original conversation of suffering, because if what is being put out there causes a great deal of suffering, should that be allowed?

[909] I still think that freedom of expression is really important.

[910] If someone were to ask us to publish a recipe for creating a new virus that would kill lots of people, we would say no to that.

[911] It has some limits, clearly.

[912] But today I think very often being offended by something is equivalent or regarded as equivalent to suffering greatly from it.

[913] Yes, that's what has to be rejected.

[914] I think, yes, because the value of freedom of thought and expression is really important.

[915] And if you said, well, you can never write anything that offends somebody that would be the end of freedom of thought and expression i even come at it from another way where i say give me your five moral pillars what are the things you believe in currently politically and i can most certainly take you to a place in time where that opinion would absolutely land you in jail you wouldn't be allowed to say it so you have to remember that everything you hold at one time was completely offensive and would be argued to have harmed people any position on gay marriage.

[916] Yes, certainly.

[917] Or even on just on gay sexual relationships.

[918] Yes, in the early 1900s, that would be something that would create great harm.

[919] That would be the argument to suggest that people could live this way would be creating harm.

[920] Right.

[921] So all the things you believe in, you have to first have the humility to admit they were offensive at some point.

[922] Well, not all of it is what you believe in.

[923] Part of it is your identity.

[924] I don't think there's anything in there about this.

[925] But if there's like a whole declaration that Muslims are bad after, 9 -11.

[926] That's not just offensive.

[927] That can cause harm.

[928] Sure.

[929] That wouldn't get through our peer review.

[930] Right.

[931] Exactly.

[932] I'm taking it away from that because that wouldn't be in there.

[933] Even that, I think the most important thing to remember is that silencing that argument doesn't make the argument go away.

[934] It just keeps it out of those pages.

[935] Whereas bringing bad arguments into the light is exactly how we defeat and move off of hard arguments.

[936] Like it's almost a null.

[937] There's no point in that position because bad ideas have to be defeated by better ideas.

[938] That's right, yes.

[939] And as I say, we do publish articles that we disagree with, but we invite people to respond to them.

[940] And we hope that we will get more people responding to articles they disagree with because that's the appropriate response to saying, I think this is wrong.

[941] And even though I think it's harmful is to say, okay, so show why it's wrong.

[942] Yeah, beat me. I've had my position changed numerous times.

[943] It's a great experience.

[944] I've lost some death penalty debates and thought all my reasons it was good aren't really holding up.

[945] It's time for me to reevaluate.

[946] Yeah.

[947] Mr. Singer, Peter Singer, it's been such a pleasure talking to you.

[948] You've covered so much ground in your career.

[949] I urge everyone to check out your many, many books, practical ethics being one, the life you can say, which you had mentioned.

[950] But most importantly, Animal Liberation Now, which has been brought fully into the 21st century and has all the same wonderful things that made it survive the test of time.

[951] And it's only gotten better.

[952] So I urge everyone to listen to that.

[953] And I'm also envious of everyone that gets to see you speak tonight in Sanford.

[954] Francisco.

[955] Thank you.

[956] I really appreciate the chance to speak with you and with Monica and to reach that wide audience that you have as well.

[957] All right.

[958] Our pleasure.

[959] Also, everyone watch Peter's TED Talk, the why and how of effective altruism.

[960] And then maybe, you know, donate a handbag or whatever it was, an outfit, free X, or if you can like me, a motorcycle.

[961] Yeah.

[962] And go to the life you can save .org and check out the best charities.

[963] And actually, you can download a absolutely free digital or audio copy of the book, The Life You Can Save from that website.

[964] Oh, my goodness.

[965] Yes.

[966] Wow.

[967] Do that.

[968] Get something free, but then it's going to cost you.

[969] Somebody did say to me that's the most expensive book I've ever had.

[970] Well, be well.

[971] Thank you so much for sitting with us.

[972] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[973] Next off is the fact.

[974] I don't even care about facts.

[975] I just want to get in their pants.

[976] Hello.

[977] Are you?

[978] You should put on a different dress.

[979] I should.

[980] I have a really fancy dress.

[981] You do?

[982] But I don't know when I want to wear it yet.

[983] Well, not black tie.

[984] Not gala.

[985] Let me see.

[986] Show it to me. Okay, hold on.

[987] Help!

[988] Help.

[989] Oh, wow.

[990] Do you love it?

[991] Yes, beautiful.

[992] I love that.

[993] That's kind of a mustard.

[994] It is, and it has yellow polka dots.

[995] Oh, my God.

[996] Oh, the polka dots are.

[997] Yellow.

[998] From here they appear to be white, but they're just lighter yellow.

[999] Yeah, they're white.

[1000] Oh, okay.

[1001] I was going to say, that's crazy.

[1002] They're popping that much yellow on yellow.

[1003] No, they're white.

[1004] It's a nice dress.

[1005] I have to decide when I want to wear it.

[1006] Do you think you'll go back to Lena's stores and wear it?

[1007] Or you have some bigger event.

[1008] No, because Lizzie Kaplan doesn't like it there.

[1009] She really tainted the well for you.

[1010] She yucked your yum.

[1011] She kind of did, but I respect it.

[1012] That's her charm.

[1013] It totally is.

[1014] Well, she's just a truth teller.

[1015] You trust her.

[1016] She's a very trusted brand.

[1017] If she's in something I know, she'll be good.

[1018] Yeah.

[1019] Can't say the project will.

[1020] Who knows?

[1021] That's in God's hands.

[1022] But she'll be spectacular in it.

[1023] That is right.

[1024] Do you want to see another thing I have?

[1025] I want to see everything.

[1026] Wait, did you buy that dress there or did you bring it?

[1027] I brought that, but I bought something fun.

[1028] Uh -oh.

[1029] Oh, it's in a garment bag.

[1030] I didn't even know.

[1031] Oh, you get what you pay for.

[1032] I wish I had a mic stand for.

[1033] I know.

[1034] You need a third arm.

[1035] Oh, oh.

[1036] Start for the P. ends with an A. Pimavera.

[1037] Yeah, it's a pasta.

[1038] It's a primaverla.

[1039] Is Prada Italian?

[1040] Oh, wait.

[1041] Prada overalls?

[1042] Wait, miniskirt?

[1043] Yeah, it's a Prada.

[1044] Denim, like, overall, but skirt.

[1045] Oh, my.

[1046] Like what we wore when we were kids, like my age kids, but Prada.

[1047] I know.

[1048] Where are you going to wear that?

[1049] God only knows.

[1050] So that was exciting.

[1051] Yes.

[1052] Now, again, you've heard me complain about this in the past, and I might be ill -informed, but I don't really understand shopping in the age of being able to order everything from the designer.

[1053] Could you have gotten that at home?

[1054] I think so.

[1055] I mean, definitely, if I had searched.

[1056] But I haven't seen that.

[1057] Like, I am very aware of what's out there.

[1058] Yes, you keep your eyes peeled.

[1059] Yeah.

[1060] I do.

[1061] And I, like, I'm always searching Netaporte.

[1062] And I'm, like, aware, okay?

[1063] Yeah.

[1064] And I've never seen that.

[1065] Right.

[1066] It's not what I expected.

[1067] I could find it, but it's not everywhere in a way that some of the other things are.

[1068] Oh, and I got a little sweater that I have.

[1069] had been wanting for a really long time, really long.

[1070] And I keeps looking at it and then not getting it.

[1071] And then when I was in the store, they had a different color that I liked even more.

[1072] I'd never seen.

[1073] Oh, thank goodness that you waited.

[1074] Thank goodness.

[1075] Oh, my gosh.

[1076] I know.

[1077] So those were my shopping excursions.

[1078] Don't you, do you have that with cars?

[1079] Like, you'd want to see it and feel or no. Of course.

[1080] I'd prefer that.

[1081] You froze on me, though.

[1082] I don't like that that I can't see you.

[1083] Hold on.

[1084] Should I call you right back?

[1085] Yeah, call me back.

[1086] You're back, you're back.

[1087] Oh, phew.

[1088] Oh, my gosh.

[1089] I got terrified.

[1090] I didn't know if a murderer was obscuring your internet so I couldn't see you get murdered and not call for help.

[1091] You never know.

[1092] You never know.

[1093] There was a guy that came in here earlier.

[1094] He was so nice.

[1095] It was so nice.

[1096] But so nice that I was like, you might murder me. Came into your room?

[1097] Yeah.

[1098] Okay.

[1099] So when you met at dinner?

[1100] No. A guy who works at the hotel.

[1101] Server?

[1102] I think he was bringing me my candle.

[1103] Oh.

[1104] That I ordered.

[1105] From the restaurant downstairs.

[1106] Yeah, from the front desk or whatever.

[1107] But he was very nice, so nice.

[1108] And then he was helping me with my internet because I didn't have internet for a bit.

[1109] And then he picked up my sunglasses had fallen.

[1110] Oh, my goodness.

[1111] Let me pick those up before you step on them and get.

[1112] It's so angry.

[1113] Oh, how long was he in your room?

[1114] Like, some minutes.

[1115] I don't know.

[1116] But I did think he's in here for long enough to get ideas, you know.

[1117] Did you see the Prada skirt?

[1118] No, that was all zipped up.

[1119] Don't worry.

[1120] Okay.

[1121] Good.

[1122] But he was really nice.

[1123] It's just a fine line.

[1124] English, gentlemen?

[1125] No. Okay.

[1126] This is another thing.

[1127] I feel, for some reason, I've encountered so few British people.

[1128] It's like everyone has an accent, but they don't sound British.

[1129] Uh -huh.

[1130] Uh -huh.

[1131] Other Europeans?

[1132] Yes.

[1133] It's weird.

[1134] Yeah, people like to get up there to see London when the weather's nice, I think.

[1135] Oh, yeah.

[1136] It's one of the great cities, right?

[1137] One of the five great cities.

[1138] It is.

[1139] What does the Shoke do when you're shopping, lose his mind?

[1140] Oh, my God.

[1141] this is okay okay because i get exhausted when i'm with women who shop i get like immediately exhausted when i walk in the store he kind of does he doesn't look at anything like he's not looking at any men's stuff or anything he's just following us yep and then at one point we're in the intimates oh unmentionables yeah oh my god and i did think what is why is he just standing here like But he kind of has to, because where else is he going to go?

[1142] He doesn't want to get lost either.

[1143] You guys are in another foreign city.

[1144] I know.

[1145] And we were in Selfridges, which is an amazing department store.

[1146] But it is huge.

[1147] So you would get lost.

[1148] So he would have to stay close.

[1149] But he did end up stepping away and kind of just standing by the elevator.

[1150] Did you buy some unmentionables in front of them?

[1151] Yeah.

[1152] Oh, my goodness.

[1153] I know.

[1154] But I wanted, I didn't, I didn't like him being near.

[1155] while I was looking at some of those things.

[1156] No, you're holding it up to your...

[1157] Like checking the size of this stuff.

[1158] Yeah, yeah.

[1159] Yeah, yeah.

[1160] But he, I didn't like it.

[1161] He didn't like it.

[1162] He went to the elevator.

[1163] Okay, he's good.

[1164] He got out of there.

[1165] He got out.

[1166] Does he complain at all?

[1167] No. He never.

[1168] Whoa, you know, that's a hard one for me. You've seen it.

[1169] I'm like, I'll meet you guys somewhere, but I can't walk from store to store and go in and out of the room.

[1170] Yeah, I totally get that.

[1171] Like, that's how I feel about them going sightseeing.

[1172] Right.

[1173] I hope they get pictures with the guards, though, in front of Buckingham Palace.

[1174] You want them to have them?

[1175] Yes, in fact, I want them to get that, and then I hope they send it to me. Okay.

[1176] Well, you tell them if they get that photo to send it to me?

[1177] Yeah.

[1178] Okay.

[1179] Yeah, so, but he's a trooper when it comes to shopping, but I make sure stuff's worth his while.

[1180] You know, we went to a really cute wine bar that I love.

[1181] He liked that a lot.

[1182] Oh, good.

[1183] He had some wine or some beer?

[1184] He had wine.

[1185] He had beer.

[1186] Okay.

[1187] He had beer at lunch.

[1188] He had a beer.

[1189] And then we had wine later in the day.

[1190] And then he said, I said, well, Dad, they have beer here if you want it.

[1191] And he said, no, I like mixing them.

[1192] Oh, interesting.

[1193] Like the opposite of what you're supposed to be doing.

[1194] It's like, no, I'm going to, I have beer.

[1195] I'm going to have wine now and I'm going to have beer later.

[1196] Yeah.

[1197] His saying is liquor and beer and you're in the clear.

[1198] Yeah.

[1199] And I was thinking, because you.

[1200] talk a lot about people's constitutions.

[1201] Uh -huh.

[1202] Sure.

[1203] My father has the most steel constitution.

[1204] Yeah.

[1205] It's crazy.

[1206] And not, like, not just drinking, but he never gets, like, sick.

[1207] He never, he, he, it's crazy.

[1208] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1209] Well, he's a man. He's a man. That's what a man's supposed to do.

[1210] Man's supposed to get hit in the hell with an anvil and just keep walking.

[1211] well also we have some family nearby in London yeah outside of London and they had recommended that we go to someplace like outside of London and I was looking it up and I said ugh it's like six hours away I don't really want to do that and my dad was like yeah he was like well I guess if we had planned well I would have run at a car and I said you can't drive here he could what are you talking about and he was like like, it's not that different.

[1212] And I said, yes, it is.

[1213] It's like, you're turning and all of this stuff.

[1214] And he was like, no, no, no. And then we got in an Uber later.

[1215] And we were four seconds and he said, you're right, Monica.

[1216] I would be dead in two seconds.

[1217] So at least he admitted that.

[1218] I've done it.

[1219] I loved it.

[1220] My dad and I went to Ireland.

[1221] We rented a car and drove all over the place.

[1222] And I loved it.

[1223] I would trust you.

[1224] Well, thank you.

[1225] I like the challenge.

[1226] Like, what are we, we're doing this backwards now?

[1227] Oh, okay, great.

[1228] We're doing this inside out?

[1229] Oh, also New Zealand.

[1230] I had a rental car for three months and without a paddle, which I had an incident in my parking garage.

[1231] There are very few people I would trust to get in a car with on this type of road.

[1232] When we were in Spain last year with Cali and Max, they had a car.

[1233] And at first, I was like, I am not riding in that car.

[1234] Did you hear that?

[1235] Yeah.

[1236] Is that the thunder?

[1237] In the lightning.

[1238] Wow.

[1239] In the tonda.

[1240] It's getting sexy.

[1241] Oh my God.

[1242] Yeah, it's feeling very dramatic.

[1243] The whole house just shook.

[1244] That's so fun.

[1245] Are you guys going to like play games while it's thundering?

[1246] Play the, yeah, thunder game.

[1247] I brought it in the bus.

[1248] Fun.

[1249] It's so fun to play cards when it's thundering.

[1250] Yes.

[1251] Oh, and last time we were here, we trained a, guy to play spades.

[1252] So I might even be able to cobble together a spades game.

[1253] Oh, my God.

[1254] Did Mark Rober's son come?

[1255] They're not here yet, but I can't wait for them to arrive.

[1256] You know, I've had the bracelet on so long.

[1257] It's completely colorless now.

[1258] Like all every, no, it's just a white, it's white bracelet.

[1259] Oh, this one's going to be really happy.

[1260] You still have it.

[1261] Get ready.

[1262] Hold on.

[1263] Because that lightning bolt was close.

[1264] Oh.

[1265] What if I got?

[1266] I got zapped right in front of you.

[1267] No, you're in the Big Brown.

[1268] No, I'm not in Big Brown.

[1269] I'm in the cabin.

[1270] Oh, yeah.

[1271] Could you hear that?

[1272] It's shaking the floor.

[1273] Yeah, is it wood?

[1274] Yeah, everything's wood.

[1275] Oh, God.

[1276] That is bad.

[1277] Is it?

[1278] Yeah, for lightning.

[1279] You're not supposed to be on wood?

[1280] No, yeah, that's what it strikes.

[1281] What are you supposed to be?

[1282] I think lightning knows that wood is made from trees and so it does that So get you in your inside your hotel room.

[1283] Exactly.

[1284] Anywho, okay, well, wait what were I saying?

[1285] Your dad he's a good boy during shopping trips.

[1286] He handles his wine and beer mixed beautifully.

[1287] But he doesn't know how to drive.

[1288] Oh yeah, I wouldn't trust very many people.

[1289] So when we were in Spain I thought I am not riding in a car and I think I have, it's not anything against Max at all.

[1290] It was just like, I don't trust, I need proof that that person can really do that, drive on the opposite side of the road.

[1291] But in Spain, it ended up being normal.

[1292] That's right.

[1293] We're fine in Spain.

[1294] We're welcome in Spain.

[1295] So then it was fine.

[1296] And I did ride with him and it was great.

[1297] Good.

[1298] All right.

[1299] Well, let's get into some facts for Peter Singer.

[1300] Oh, I do want to say this.

[1301] Oh, okay.

[1302] You don't, you're not going to like that I say this, but I feel, I feel ethically that I need.

[1303] need to acknowledge when I'm not good.

[1304] I really think people need to know.

[1305] I know when I'm not on, I'm not sharp.

[1306] And I got to say this interview in particular with Peter, I was not at my best and it should have been a lot better.

[1307] There should have been, the dancing should have been, I sucked that day.

[1308] I have deep regret about how offline my brain was that day.

[1309] Okay.

[1310] All right.

[1311] Well, I just wanted to say that.

[1312] I disagree.

[1313] Okay.

[1314] I disagree.

[1315] But I respect your.

[1316] Do you respectfully disagree or do you disrespectfully disagree i disrespectfully disagree i found him very interesting and what he had to say very interesting i did a very poor job with my side of what i was trying to well if you're saying you didn't push back a ton and you wish you had that's true well i think because i sucked so bad at laying out why i think it's weird we've attached morals to one animal on planet earth about eating other animals.

[1317] There is a way for me to craft that argument that maybe is at least worth listening to and I did not do it on this day.

[1318] I see.

[1319] Yeah.

[1320] I guess...

[1321] I get that.

[1322] It's kind of the Muvall Harari thing in Sapiens when he really points out like how everything's a story.

[1323] Even human rights is a story.

[1324] Mm -hmm.

[1325] Like there's no such thing.

[1326] Everyone's as an animal on the planet.

[1327] There's no such thing as human rights.

[1328] But it's a story we all agree with.

[1329] I agree with it.

[1330] So I don't know.

[1331] It's just, I don't know.

[1332] I'm not going to be able to do it here either.

[1333] One day I'll spend the energy to figure out exactly what's in my mind that I know is worth listening to.

[1334] I think sometimes we choose to be really hard on ourselves for no reason.

[1335] Like, you know, like we've removed ourselves from the other animals and we're like all animals eat other animals, but we're going to hate ourselves for doing that.

[1336] But we know that suffering is real because we've all experienced it.

[1337] Like we know what pain is.

[1338] and we have the evolution to understand and remember that.

[1339] Yeah.

[1340] So then to know you're inflicting it is different.

[1341] It is different than other animals.

[1342] Well, sure, we understand it.

[1343] But let's say that we get to a point where we find out also all the vegetation where eating does have some kind of nervous system and they're suffering too.

[1344] You can see some people committing suicide over this.

[1345] Like I guess that's my point is I think we're born with this, the original sin.

[1346] The reason the original sin makes sense is we all walk.

[1347] around this a little bit of original sin we feel guilty and bad all the time for some unknown reason this is a baseline and it's like you can talk yourself into not reproducing like it'd be unethical to reproduce it'd be unethical to live it'd be unethical you know and i just think we're getting a little carried away with our stories when we say it's unethical for us to eat other animals when in fact that's what we're designed to do and it's not unethical for other animals too the the thing is we've also proven to be able to exist without it.

[1348] And so, I mean, I think you're right.

[1349] Like, that's a new conversation if we start learning about other things.

[1350] But I think you just have to take it, you have to move forward with the information that we know.

[1351] And so if, and by the way, I'm obviously, I'm just painting this, but I eat meat.

[1352] So this isn't me saying you shouldn't because I do.

[1353] But I understand it's just hard to unknow stuff when we have evolved brains that retain memories and knowledge and feeling and emotion, to know what it feels like to be on the bad end of sadness or pain or death.

[1354] Like, we know what that is like.

[1355] But I don't think there's any suffering and dying, just personally.

[1356] I think it's, you suffer when you lose people you love, but for you to die, there's no suffering.

[1357] Well, no, I mean, if you're tortured.

[1358] Well, if you're tortured, yes, but I don't think we need a torture to eat them.

[1359] I do see what you mean, but I just think we, We've evolved to a point that animals haven't.

[1360] So what they're killing and stuff is different because they don't have the compass to care.

[1361] Well, also the whole system evolved for them to eat other animals.

[1362] Like, that's what they're here to do.

[1363] Yeah.

[1364] And there can't be anything morally wrong with how Mother Nature has designed everything.

[1365] There's a better way for me to say it.

[1366] This notion that we're like removing ourselves from this whole system and that Mother Nature designed something that was implicit.

[1367] immoral, I think, is wrong.

[1368] Like animals eat other animals.

[1369] That's the evolution of it.

[1370] That's the natural order on the planet.

[1371] Well, it was, but I think that's not taking to account the actual evolution.

[1372] Like, we are evolved to a place where those animals aren't.

[1373] So, yes, like, cavemen, we can't have the same expectations of cavemen that we do of us now.

[1374] and maybe in 7 ,000 years the same.

[1375] Who knows what those people will be?

[1376] And maybe that's a completely different expectation than we have.

[1377] I don't know.

[1378] Yeah.

[1379] I don't either.

[1380] But I do see people getting a little too fundamentalist.

[1381] And I don't think they're really chasing down what they actually feel guilty about.

[1382] I don't know.

[1383] That's true.

[1384] I just, I think it's okay to feel guilt about causing pain.

[1385] Oh, for sure.

[1386] I agree.

[1387] The way the factory farming work, of course, that's deplorable.

[1388] And I disagree with it.

[1389] I'm just, I'm asking a bigger question, is it amoral to?

[1390] eat animals.

[1391] Yeah.

[1392] And I don't know.

[1393] I don't think you can call something that Mother Nature designed as amoral personally.

[1394] Like you've really abstracted everything to get yourself to a point where you think the thing you were evolved to do, you would be a bad person for doing.

[1395] Yeah, but that's kind of interesting, right?

[1396] Because that's sort of the, I mean, this isn't a great analogy, but in some ways it's kind of like the constitutionalists who are like, well, that's what.

[1397] but it was designed to be, and that's exactly right.

[1398] And no, and we all should have guns.

[1399] And it's like, well, but they didn't.

[1400] Right.

[1401] You're denying, you're denying the technology that exists and denying everything that's happened.

[1402] Like, we've changed.

[1403] Yeah.

[1404] That's a good point.

[1405] I've done just as good in this version of it as I did with Peter.

[1406] I understand what you're saying.

[1407] And I don't think it's not valid.

[1408] I just, I just, I think I have a different opinion.

[1409] Yeah, I like your opinion.

[1410] Do you ever have that sense like people, meat aside, forget me, they can become arrested where it's like there's so many things they can't do, so many things are bad, so many things, they just become completely kind of paralyzed with that.

[1411] And I don't know.

[1412] That seems like something to be avoided or question.

[1413] I agree.

[1414] I think it depends on who you are, though, and what you'll sit with if you do engage.

[1415] Like if you're avoiding all these things and from our side or outside, it's like, ugh, like, kind of life is that.

[1416] Maybe to them it's preferred over a life of, I don't feel good about that.

[1417] I don't feel good about that.

[1418] I don't feel good about that.

[1419] Yeah.

[1420] I just, I guess that's what I'm saying.

[1421] If everything in the world makes you feel bad, there might be something else going on that's not about the world.

[1422] Yeah, could be.

[1423] I guess that's what I'm getting at.

[1424] For sure.

[1425] Yeah.

[1426] That leads to a fact about fish pain.

[1427] Okay.

[1428] Do they feel pain?

[1429] Some fish don't even feel cold.

[1430] Remember we had an expert that explaining that cold is something humans feel, but a lot of animals don't even have any of the stuff to feel cold.

[1431] Yeah, that's crazy.

[1432] That is crazy.

[1433] You would think cold is an intrinsic animal sensation.

[1434] Yeah.

[1435] But no, some animals don't have that.

[1436] Yeah.

[1437] But they have no susceptors, which are pain receptors.

[1438] They are pain receptors.

[1439] And they know that because, let's see, fish demonstrate pain -related changes in physiology and behavior that are reduced by painkillers, and they show higher brain activity when painfully stimulated.

[1440] Okay.

[1441] So, but everyone still is saying it's not the same as humans.

[1442] It's not the same thing.

[1443] Yeah.

[1444] But, yeah, that there's, like, growing evidence that they have these nosusceptors or non -susceptors, whatever.

[1445] Anyway, is PETA still the largest animal rights organization in the world?

[1446] Yes.

[1447] Going strong.

[1448] This is a ding, ding, ding, because you're in rain.

[1449] We were kind of exaggerating and we said it's the most amount of rain that's ever been in Los Angeles.

[1450] Yes.

[1451] I believe that, though.

[1452] Like when 2023s come out at the end of the year and they do the annual rainfall for 2023, I bet it's going to be way higher than...

[1453] It might be actually.

[1454] that's a good call because right now it's 2000 well this is in the last 20 years 2004 to 2005 is the highest but this year is high like I'm looking at this chart okay basically and this year's graph is high not near 2004 2005 but you're right we're only halfway through so maybe it will surpass it's the second in the last 20 years after that one Oh, 20 years.

[1455] Oh, never mind.

[1456] Because 95 was huge.

[1457] That was the year I moved to California and I woke up in the morning and someone was driving a boat down Bath Street, the street I moved on to in Santa Barbara.

[1458] A boat.

[1459] A boat.

[1460] Oh, my God.

[1461] Yeah, a proper fishing boat was driving down the street.

[1462] Oh, my God.

[1463] Okay.

[1464] The 1883 to 1884 season had 38 .1818 inches.

[1465] And what are we at right now?

[1466] monthly rainfall.

[1467] January 2023, measured for the month, 8 .95 inches?

[1468] Okay.

[1469] February 5 .95, March 7 .71.

[1470] Okay, so what?

[1471] April.

[1472] So, bring me those again?

[1473] I'm going to add them up.

[1474] Okay.

[1475] Buckle up for this fast math.

[1476] Right?

[1477] Because there's points in there.

[1478] Okay.

[1479] Start in January.

[1480] 8 .95.

[1481] Okay.

[1482] February 5 .95.

[1483] 13, 1490, 1490 go.

[1484] Okay, 7 .71.

[1485] 1497, 21.

[1486] We're going to call it 22 inches.

[1487] We're going to just round it to 20.

[1488] Okay, great.

[1489] So what was 30 was the record, though, for that year, the whole year?

[1490] Or 37 or 8 or something.

[1491] Yeah, for the whole year.

[1492] Yeah, for the whole year.

[1493] And we're at 20 -something for the first three months.

[1494] So all we got to do is pick up another 10 inches before.

[1495] No. I really don't want to, though.

[1496] 10 inches, that's it.

[1497] I really don't want to.

[1498] I hate it.

[1499] I don't want to train any more ever again.

[1500] I don't care what happens.

[1501] I don't care if we all burn up.

[1502] I don't want to.

[1503] I want to burn.

[1504] I want to die on the face of the sun.

[1505] Any update on your cholesterol?

[1506] No. I've decided not to care.

[1507] Oh, perfect.

[1508] I totally agree with this.

[1509] Did your doctor say he wanted?

[1510] Did you get the red yeast?

[1511] Rice.

[1512] Not yet because when I found out, you know, I left.

[1513] So I'll order it.

[1514] But listen, I will.

[1515] You know, no, I'm going to bring you a bottle when I see you next.

[1516] I have an extra.

[1517] No. Because.

[1518] Yeah, I should take it.

[1519] You listen, it'll be like, it's so simple.

[1520] And then it'll be down 80 points or something like mine.

[1521] Yeah.

[1522] Yeah, I will.

[1523] But also, the reason I'm not worried, I also told my parents, even though I wasn't going to, but I did.

[1524] Right.

[1525] Well, they want to know about these things.

[1526] Your parents.

[1527] Yeah.

[1528] They want to know about my cholesterol.

[1529] But then they were really happy to know about my blood sugar because it's really good.

[1530] Oh, that's the thing they were worried about for some reason.

[1531] But is anyone diabetic?

[1532] Yeah, my grandpa.

[1533] Hmm.

[1534] And now my dad is on a thing.

[1535] He has high blood sugar.

[1536] He's on Ozempic?

[1537] He's not.

[1538] Well, you better tell everyone if he's looking hot in the photos you post.

[1539] I know.

[1540] I'm on it.

[1541] I would definitely tell everyone.

[1542] I would expose him, but he's not on it.

[1543] But yeah, and then my ratio is good and my HDL is good.

[1544] And my triglycerides are good.

[1545] Thank God, after all of that.

[1546] It's so funny because I listen to that fact check on the drive up and the bus.

[1547] And it's just really funny because now we know.

[1548] But you're like, oh, my God, yeah.

[1549] And I'm like, this test is, listen, you don't have this.

[1550] I mean, I knew that was crazy.

[1551] And I think I said, like, I know this is.

[1552] Yeah, and the guy said you should get retested.

[1553] Like there was just so much, so many clues within that.

[1554] Yeah, there was.

[1555] But it.

[1556] But you are not hearing it.

[1557] You are not, you're not hearing it.

[1558] I understand.

[1559] I understand being scared.

[1560] I mean, I can't not take it seriously.

[1561] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1562] But I am going to just keep doing what I do.

[1563] Yeah, wine and hamburgers.

[1564] Let's see where I. No, I eat well.

[1565] I know you do.

[1566] I'm not going to eat well.

[1567] I am eating well I do eat well And I move Which I think So that's My mom said HDL Is really shows How much movement you have Like how much you exercise And that kind of thing And mine's high Mine should be through the roof But But I'm on tea Yours is probably high No mine's low My HDL's low Your HDL is Yeah yeah Which I told you on that Same fact check Testosterone lowers your HDL Oh yeah yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1568] Well, then that's why.

[1569] It's funny, though, because I take the testosterone so I can work out a lot and then working I'm supposed to make it go up.

[1570] This is...

[1571] It's a catch -22.

[1572] Something doesn't add up with that equation.

[1573] It's one of life's big mysteries.

[1574] It is.

[1575] Was that all for Peter's Singer?

[1576] No. I was going to say.

[1577] No, it's not.

[1578] Okay, so methane, it warms the atmosphere.

[1579] You said you thought at 22 times the rate of carbon.

[1580] And he said, I think it's much more than that.

[1581] It's 84.

[1582] Oh, my Lord.

[1583] In a 20 -year time frame.

[1584] Well, I guess that's part of it, yeah, because the half -life's a lot, longer.

[1585] Yep.

[1586] Yep, yep, yep, yep.

[1587] So we already kind of did this fact because it was part of Lee and Nathan's fact -check also about population.

[1588] Yeah, he disagreed with Lee and Nate.

[1589] I agree with Lee and Nathan.

[1590] He disagreed, but remember when we fact -checked the Lee and Nate, there were, there were countries that are predicted to increase pretty rapidly.

[1591] Yep.

[1592] But there's an episode, oh, my God.

[1593] There's a article from Scientific American Very Trusted Brand.

[1594] The most.

[1595] About population decline.

[1596] Mm -hmm.

[1597] And that was in May. And so I'm just, I'm not going to read it, but people should read it if they're interested in that.

[1598] And it's called Population Decline Will Change the World for the Better.

[1599] So this is saying kind of what we were saying that developed countries and the more developed are going to have less and less people.

[1600] But this is saying it's not bad.

[1601] It's tricky, though.

[1602] There's obvious reasons it's going to be great.

[1603] It's going to be less of a suck on our resources, on the ocean being overfished, on all this stuff, global warming.

[1604] All that's going to be good.

[1605] But every country's economic model is based on the notion the economy is going to grow at a given percent, right?

[1606] And so they're borrowing against that.

[1607] lending against that.

[1608] The whole economic system is based on this 3 % growth thing, you know, or 2 to 4.

[1609] When you have less people, you have less consumers, you have less production.

[1610] Like, we're going to, instead of having a 3 % growth, we're going to have like a 6 % deficit every year and the whole model's based on the future having growth.

[1611] So there's also going to be some insanely tricky economic issues to navigate, which then economic issues equal violence issues yeah we'll have to see i mean then a i'll be doing everything at that point anyways i guess well i've already transitioned into 100 % unemployment so maybe it won't matter did you have you seen i mean this is so old news for everyone by the time this is coming out but have you seen the trailer for the apple goggles i watched one and i wasn't that blown away other i just saw the guy like interacting with his son but really he was working which made me want to puke.

[1612] Oh, wait, I didn't, I don't, I don't remember that.

[1613] He's like, all right, buddy, he's talking to his kid, but you can see on his screen.

[1614] He's also watching three different things.

[1615] Oh, I didn't see that.

[1616] But yeah, you use your eyes to move through the apps, and I hate it.

[1617] I don't like it.

[1618] I really don't like it.

[1619] I am not going to get peer pressured, like Lizzie Kaplan peer pressured me about Lena stores.

[1620] I am not going to get peer pressured into the goggles.

[1621] No, I'm going on the other.

[1622] way, I was ruminating for an hour the other day about maybe getting rid of my cell phone entirely.

[1623] Mm -hmm.

[1624] Back to flip phones.

[1625] Well, I got to go back to just, I don't even think to look at that thing.

[1626] I don't know.

[1627] I don't care where it's at.

[1628] Like this whole, and I think I built it up and do you need it so much?

[1629] And then I just, I'm like, I don't, do you need this thing to be alive on playing?

[1630] I can get around.

[1631] I know how to fucking find places.

[1632] Yeah, that's the problem.

[1633] I do need it for maps.

[1634] Yeah.

[1635] You know, there's, and of ordering food, what would I do?

[1636] Yeah, oh, God, yeah.

[1637] I guess, I guess we could go back to MapQuest and you print out the thing.

[1638] Yeah, I like that.

[1639] But no, because, like, I'm here in London and I'm at the hotel and I'm like, I want to go to the wine bar and I just put it in and I don't even, I just walk there.

[1640] And it tells me where to turn.

[1641] You almost just teleport there because your brain's off.

[1642] You just kind of wake up.

[1643] You're there.

[1644] It is.

[1645] That's a nice way of looking at it.

[1646] We do in some ways have teleport.

[1647] You just turn your brain off, and then you wake up and you're at Lena Stores.

[1648] If you could teleport, but you were going to die 10 years early, but you don't know that date, would you do it?

[1649] No. Would I trade 10 years in my life for the ability to teleport?

[1650] No. I guess you could make an argument that you would be saving yourself all this travel time, that it might work out to 10 years.

[1651] But again, we all know it's not about the destination.

[1652] It's about the journey.

[1653] Teleporting won't make us happier.

[1654] None of this shit makes us happier.

[1655] It all makes us less fucking happy.

[1656] I was just read, what was I reading?

[1657] Oh, I started one of the books that Megan Phelps Roper sent.

[1658] Oh.

[1659] And, yeah, it's just about the first two chapters are about how prevalent it was in the 17 and 1800s where white people would be kidnapped by Native Americans.

[1660] Americans and live among them, you know, the women and children regularly.

[1661] Some men were allowed to live.

[1662] And many of them, this really high rate of them, once, quote, rescued, they returned.

[1663] But there's not a single case of a Native American getting held captive by the white people release where they wanted to stay with us.

[1664] And he's like, that's a huge clue.

[1665] Interesting.

[1666] Yes.

[1667] And it was talking about how different life will.

[1668] for a woman back then particularly like how much autonomy you had how galitarian it was how you were free to do sexually you could do whatever you wanted you know yeah so you know we've probably gotten less happy well that's what the data says is that through all these improvements and increased standard of living mental health rates get worse and worse suicide rate gets worse and worse so what the fuck's broken yeah no it's really true i think that's that's what it was i I was reading that book.

[1669] That's exactly what I decided that maybe I want to get rid of my phone.

[1670] Yeah.

[1671] It's hard out there.

[1672] Yeah.

[1673] I think that might be it.

[1674] Well, we're lucky we got to talk to him.

[1675] He's an older gentleman.

[1676] And he's the world's most revered philosopher.

[1677] And we got a chance to talk to him and in person, no less.

[1678] It is crazy.

[1679] It is crazy.

[1680] Yeah.

[1681] Another one of those people that it's shocking you get to sort of sit in front of.

[1682] They come to you.

[1683] Yeah.

[1684] It's impossible.

[1685] Nuts.

[1686] It's not possible.

[1687] The Sim is good.

[1688] I was thinking about this, about the Sim on the ride up.

[1689] Do you ever think about this aspect of the Sim that you take for granted that your full history has happened?

[1690] Like yesterday really happened, the day before it really happened.

[1691] But you could have literally woke up today.

[1692] Today could have been day one in your Sim and you have all these memories of talking about the Sim and everything.

[1693] But today could be day one.

[1694] There's no way for you to prove you were here yesterday.

[1695] Because do you mean the memories were implanted?

[1696] Yeah, like you're just, you zoom in and I'm me. I have all these memories and all these ideas, but really it started this morning.

[1697] Oh, God.

[1698] That is so weird.

[1699] Hold on one second.

[1700] Someone's knocking at the door.

[1701] Oh, okay.

[1702] You know what I thought for a second?

[1703] What?

[1704] I know that there's going to be someone on your trip that's very exciting.

[1705] I thought maybe it was her.

[1706] Wouldn't that be something?

[1707] something.

[1708] That would be.

[1709] That would be really something.

[1710] And this was just left on and she had no idea.

[1711] Well, no, I thought she was going to come in to say hi.

[1712] Ah, no, there's people wanting to change the betting on something, but I'm in the wrong room.

[1713] Like, we checked into this room, it turns out we're supposed to be in a different one.

[1714] So I think people are waiting to get into it, but I'm recording.

[1715] So I had to tell them, like, hey, I'm in the middle of recording.

[1716] Can I, can you come back in tent?

[1717] Okay, well, that is all.

[1718] All right.

[1719] Well, I love you.

[1720] safe travels home, okay?

[1721] You as well.

[1722] Okay.

[1723] I'll pilot the bus safely, I promise.

[1724] Okay, and don't catch any more bugs.

[1725] I will try my hardest not to.

[1726] All right.

[1727] Bye.

[1728] All right, bye.

[1729] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1730] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and add free.

[1731] right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[1732] Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.