 we need to have a broader, more global, more impartial, less species ethical approach. And then if we use our intelligence and our technologies and our abilities, I think we can get to a better world that isn't imperiled like the one we're living on now is. Professor Peter Singer is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by Innovators Magazine and 1.5 Media. Peter was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1946 and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. After teaching in England, the United States and Australia, he has since 1999 been IRWD camp professor of bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He first became well known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation in 1975. In 2011, Time included Animal Liberation on its all time list of the 100 best nonfiction books published in English since the magazine began in 1923. He has written co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 50 books which have been translated into more than 30 languages. His books include practical ethics and the expanding circle. How are we to live, rethinking life and death, ethics in the real world, why vegan? And most recently, he has edited a new edition of what may be the world's earliest surviving novel, The Golden Ass by Apuleus. And I might be saying that wrong. Am I saying that wrong, Peter? Apuleus. Apuleus. You went far out. Okay. Peter's book, The Life You Can Save, first published in 2009 led him to found a nonprofit organization of the same name which has raised more than 35 million US dollars for the most effective charities assisting people in extreme poverty. In 2012, he was made a companion of the Order of Australia, the nation's highest civic honor. Since 2021, he has been a co-editor of the Journal of the Controversial Ideas, which enables authors to publish well argued controversial essays and a peer reviewed journal under a pseudonym. He also has a wonderful course, a massively open online course titled Effective Altruism, which he teaches for free, it's offered for free as far as I still recall, and is a wonderful course. Welcome to the show, Peter. I'm so glad that you can make it. It's late in the evening in Australia and I'm glad you could take the time to spend and talk with us. I'm glad I could too, Mac. So good to get a chance to chat with you and indirectly to all your viewers and listeners. So with your long bio, the amount of books you've read as a professor, the teachings you've done in ethics and many other what could be controversial things, we've just experienced the craziest time. We're still kind of at the tail end of a crazy time of pandemic, Black Lives Matters, Asian racism, California burning, Australia burning. I could go on and on floods, droughts, issues around climate change going around the world. And this 45 years or more that you've been working and writing and talking and thinking about ways and models to live a better life, to treat other species better, to what's the purpose and kind of where are we going on this wonderful journey? One, I genuinely want to know how have you weathered this crazy time? Did you make it through the pandemic? Are you okay? And second, has there been any kind of learning wisdoms, aha, moments that have come out and say, wow, all this work and this what I've been discussing and teaching has really proven to be a better, more resilient model for life to get you through the hard times to know where to go or how to help others put you in a unique place. And so I kind of want to see both sides, one, how are you and your wife and how we weathered and secondly, are there were there some learning lessons? Are there some learning lessons in all of this craziness for a better life? Yes, sure. So firstly, my wife and I and other immediate family children and grandchildren have all come through this okay. We've spent this time in Australia, which has had very strict lockdown policies. In fact, we're under lockdown here in Melbourne, right now. That means for the last two weeks and for at least another week or two, we're not supposed to go more than five kilometers from our home. We're not supposed to have any visitors in our home, only go out for an hour a day exercise or shopping for essential food. It's pretty restricted. But that has kept the virus down. We hope it will continue to but you know, we can't really be confident that we are at the end of this yet because there's new variants are possible and some of them might eventually evade the vaccines, which so far have done a very good job, I think, but it's not over. But perhaps the more interesting question is, you know, what are the lessons? Has it shown that anything that I've said has been relevant to trying to get out of this situation or better still not get into them in future? And the answer that is yes. In fact, you know, a few years ago, and something that I wrote about about food, I did point out that factory farming is a way of producing viruses. You take 20,000 chickens, for example, you crowd them into a single shed. They're stressed from the overcrowding. And of course, if viruses get into one of those birds, they'll get into all of them. And they will mutate as they go through the flock. And so they may change and they may become more transferable to humans. And then you have human handlers coming in to basically pick them up and throw them into crates or something to be trucked off for slaughter. So they can easily pick up the viruses. And viruses have arisen in this way. The swine flu pandemic of 2009 came out of a factory farm. I'm not saying that the coronavirus that we're experiencing at the moment did. But certainly it seems to have come from animals. And the more contact we have with animals in terms of rearing them for food, capturing wild animals, removing the habitat, the biodiversity, so that animals are closer to us and come to invade our properties more. All of those things create risks. And we would do better if we produce less meat or ideally no meat, and didn't have the same risk, you know, we have a much reduced risk of pandemics. I totally agree. And they're, they're just as you mentioned, there were definitely some learning lessons during this time. So Tyson's Cargill and some other meat producers in the United States had had some real issues here in Germany, where I'm at, had some major issues around meat production and chicken and beef production were huge issues for a lot of people who were the workers and the conditions were getting sick because of the working conditions, but also because just the extreme stress and way that the food is produced was creating some pretty big issues. And there was many times not only because of panic where the shelves, products were emptied in the grocery store, but that there were empty grocery store shelves because the products needed to be recalled because of issues in the slaughter and the production and the processing of those of those products that something went wrong, or some issues came in there. So yeah, I totally see that. Yeah, that happens quite frequently. And the conditions of workers in these places are really bad as well. I think it's just an awful system. And I haven't even started talking about the animals, which I'm sure we will get on to, or the impact on climate change. But it's really something that needs to change and needs to change as fast as it can. I guess we really want to start first with some of the teasings of what you're you are working nonstop ceaselessly and really doing a lot a lot of things out there. But you've been an influence for such a long time. Matter of fact, to have a new book cookbook from Jane Goodall eat meat less here. And she she kind of worked on this together with her Jane Goodall Institute as well. But wrote the forward book, but she says she read your book 45 years ago, and it changed her life. And she's been vegan since and doesn't regret it. And when she's asked kind of how did that come about? She said, it was really about the way you presented it in the stories and her work with animals, not just as an animal lover, but in the things that she saw in her work that is so true how we're experimenting on animals. And since I've met dozens of people who have read your books and said, I really changed my view on food and on animal agriculture and how we experiment on animals. And it's it's had a profound impact on my life. And so it's truly an honor to have you here on the show to have just a real discussion with you. My question is, is there's now this emergence of some new options? Or we hear the buzzwords about lab grown meat and new types of plant based alternatives for meat? How do you feel about just right out of the chute ask you the hard question? How do you feel about lab based meat cellular agriculture? Do you think that's another kind of Frankenstein or is that an option that could be a hope for humanity and animals? I think it's an option. I think it's a good option. It's good that it be available for people who want meat. I don't imagine that I'm going to be wanting to eat much of it. But you know, I have been on a plant based diet for such a long time now. But the point is that that there are some people who just haven't made the shift. In fact, the majority of people obviously have still not made the shift. And yet, we need them to make the shift because it's as we were saying, it's it's bad for the planet. It's bad for the animals are bad for us in terms of our health, both individual health from what we're eating and the greater risk of pandemics. So the sooner it changes, the better. And if there are people who just, you know, like the taste and feel in their mouth of a burger or a steak or whatever else it might be a piece of chicken. And we can produce that in the lab, or let's say in a factory, it's not going to be in a lab for long, obviously. But if we can do that, and if we can sell it to them at a price that they'll accept it's competitive with meat product, it's going to be a huge benefit for the planet and for animals. So yeah, I'm all in favor of that. I don't think you're going to see it on the supermarket shelves with a label lab grown meat. I think they'll come up with something, you know, maybe cultured meat. Like we have cultured dairy products. That might be a possibility. Various labels, people are talking about clean meat because it's not infected by bacteria in the way that meat from animals often is, but you know, they'll find a label. But yes, it will be meat that was originally, I guess, designed in a lab. But then, once they got the basic idea of how to do it, they're growing it on a large scale in factories. Yeah, let's hope we can keep that within our planetary boundaries in a sustainable way with not a lot of extra preservatives and aromas and flavors and high processing so that that's still a good product. And I'm glad to know that because I've seen a big shift in vegetarians and vegans as well, where they're very accepting of a new option. I've also run into the simple fact of what you just mentioned is that those people have been vegan for a long time who have tried, for example, the impossible burger. They said, oh, that tastes too much like meat. I don't like that taste. That's an enzyme or a taste bud that I guess I no longer have a desire for. And it's interesting how our taste buds and what we crave actually changes over time. I myself have gone through that numerous times in my life and where it's like, that might as well eat cardboard it doesn't taste like anything to me. You know, I enjoy the rich flavor of plants and other things. So I've got your other two books here, Animal Liberation. This is the UK version and Why Vegan is also the UK version. You have the American copies there in front of you. Yeah, that's right. Show our guests. Good. So this is the edition of Animal Liberation that if you're in the United States or Canada, you're most likely to pick up. It's a Harper perennial classic edition. And Why Vegan was published, the edition you've got is a Penguin one. In the US, it's published by Norton. And it looks quite different. In fact, it's a small hardback at the moment, but it will be coming out in paperback. But yeah, the content is is pretty much the same. Actually, one nice thing about your UK edition of Animal Liberation is it has a forward by Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens. And sorry, Americans, you're not getting that with this edition. Yeah, I really love Yuval and his work and his writings, and he really gave you a nice view of the reason why we are putting up these books to tell that there, there's a couple reasons. One so that wherever you're in the world, you can know what issue to get to read in English. There are available in other languages as well as well from from other outlets and sources. You have done over 50 different books. But I mean, obviously, there's some that are more well known to others. But there's another reason. So recently with the Brexit and some issues with the European Union, publishing houses are a little bit different. And so if you're like me in American living in Germany, trying to get English books, you either get them from the United States or the United Kingdom. But now because of Brexit and the EU restrictions, there's a new importing tax. And so it's a whole craziness to get books nowadays. That's why I love that your books are always on audible. To get that way as well, you can get them in ebook versions. And there are some other new things the way our world is kind of becoming more nationalistic and more divided, not as global as we were in some respects can be good and bad and even in education in some respects. And so there's some things to take into account. The why vegan is a little bit newer. And has a lot of similar content to this. But I want to I want to go through a couple of things. One, why vegan kind of give us a synopsis of why this came out as just an easier read keep that capture the audience who's kind of on the elevator pitch, the Ted talks the short version, the nitty gritty of things. Why did you come out with this one? And, and as addressing a whole nother market? Yeah, it is really I mean, the suggestion for that did come from Penguin because they were the original publisher. And if you look at the back of that copy that you've got, it's part of this great ideas series. Yeah, that's right. So people can see they're right at the top. So it's they've published a series of books of great ideas. Starting off with Aristotle, I think on that one, and certainly go right back to the Greeks. And a lot of people really interesting thinkers. And they asked me if I wanted to be the end of it. I think I'm the only thinker on that list that is who is still alive. A distinction I hope to retain for a while. But so I was I was honored to be part of it. And I thought, yes, this is a good way to get some more exposure to my ideas to people are going to pick up this, you know, small, not very expensive book. I think yeah, I can read that in an hour or two. I'll pick up the gist of what singer is talking about with regard to animals and food. And that was the idea to get some of this stuff out. As you say, there's overlap with animal liberation. There's an extract from animal liberation in it from the preface. But there's a lot of newer stuff as well, that people would not have seen otherwise. So it was just that sort of marketing opportunity. And then when Penguin were doing it and Penguin didn't actually wasn't planning to publish the whole series in the US. So Norton then said, okay, we'll be happy to pick that up as a as a single volume in the US. That's beautiful. And going back to animal liberation, we've seen a few additions come out. But you've peased me and let me know that it's really time for another revision of animal liberation. And even though I thought with you've all know a Harare's kind of four word or our preface in this that it was amazing, it couldn't get any better. Over the years, you have made some little bit of fine tuning and kind of added some things that maybe we're missing. Can you tease a little bit what we have to look forward to? And and then I really want to also get into the gist of your style, because you have a very distinct style that with the way you talk about ethics and liberation and species and how we use certain terminology and words like animals. Sure, let me tell you firstly a little bit about the addition. So you know what you've got there and this one that I held up here are updated, you know, it's actually this says updated addition. But but but the updating is not really a complete overhaul. There were some facts and figures improved, updated. There was a new preface that I wrote as well as you Val Harare's forward. And there was a little bit of extra material at the end. But the basic text of this book really was written in 1990. They were you know, the first edition was 1975. I did do a very thorough revision in 1990. But these subsequent additions were not as thorough as that one. So there's a lot of things that just aren't in it. For example, I don't talk about climate change. And if you're talking about becoming vegetarian or vegan nowadays, even even though this is a book about animal liberation, it's still important to point out that, you know, yes, we really need to do this to save the whole planet as well. Then another thing you just mentioned, in fact, the cellular agriculture is not talked about in this book. And that's that's another option. But even more important, perhaps, you know, if people read said there's a chapter on the use of animals and experiments in scientific research. And people could could read that book and say, Well, look, all of these experiments are getting pretty dated now. You know, you won't find in that edition you've got or in this one, an experiment from the 1990s, let alone from the 21st century. And so people might say, Oh, you know, singer's writing about the bad old days. And since then, we know that there've been improvements. Well, I actually thought when I began writing this book that they're where a lot of significant improvements. And that I wouldn't be able to find really nasty experiments of the sort that I had found without any trouble, unfortunately, both for the 75 edition and for the 1990 edition. But as I've been doing the research, it turns out that's not the case. Unfortunately, there's still quite a lot of really, really cruel and painful experiments done on animals. And they're not experiments that I, you know, going to provide cures for cancer or coronavirus or things like that. They're really very far away from that. And, you know, one of the things that I quote is quite often people try to produce these animal models of depression, for example, or of PTSD by and to do that, they have to cause, you know, misery to animals to make them depressed artificially or to make them suffer post traumatic stress syndrome. And, and then they admit after doing this for many animals for a few years, they say, Oh, well, this model isn't quite right. You know, it doesn't produce the right something that parallels human beings. So we need to change it and do something different. And that's that's just gone on, you know, I can I can now when I produce this new edition in a year or two, I'll be able to say, this has been going on for 60 or 70 years, some of these lines of research, trying to produce these models of depression, something that was something called learned helplessness that was produced by giving animals inescapable electric shock. That was supposed to model depression. It goes back to that to the 1950s and 1960s. So it's, it's, it's not a pleasant story. But I needed to bring that story up to date so that people didn't think, Yeah, you know, that happened then, but it doesn't happen now. I myself have been talking about food for quite some time. I'm 51 this year in October. But I see food as our basic energy source. So a caloric unit as a measurement of energy, I don't want anybody to count calories, please don't misinterpret me. But it's, it's a measurement of energy. And it's, if you believe in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you believe in regulating your body temperature, breathing food and water are are the ways that we regulate our body temperature and give ourselves energy. And it's through food. And I feel that food is the tie, not only to the basic physiological needs of humanity, but it's also the tie of poverty and suffering and malnutrition and hunger and all the things that you also address and, and some of the other books that we'll touch upon as, as, as well and other your other writings, but that it's not only the biggest effect on human suffering and human health. But it's also the biggest effect on global warming and climate change and environmental destruction, ecological destruction, biodiversity loss on and on. But on the flip side, if we get it right, if we can figure out how to get food right, it's also the biggest opportunity that we ever have to not only do something that's enjoyable and wonderful to do three times a day with our family friends, but also to, to fix the planet, fix our environment to, to be part of this symbiotic earth. And so I've been reading and studying about it a lot. This is one of Voklov's smells books. Have you ever heard of smell? Yes, I know his word. Absolutely. Yes. Should we eat meat? And which is kind of unique because Voklov Smil writes about energy and grand transformations. And he, he, when, when I read his book on growth or civilization and energy, I was so surprised that more than half of the book, which isn't biblical in proportion and size, was all about agriculture. It was all about food. And I'm like, this is a book about energy and civilization. Why is it so much about food? And so when I first read Animal Liberation and I've read your other writings, I was like, a no brainer that is so much tied to a lot of the solutions, a lot of the problems to our woes as humanity are tied to, to food and how we interact and produce food and make food. And I just, when you were mentioning that, I just wanted to kind of bring that up how you, for many of us, I believe, are connecting the dots on, on why we do things, how we should do things, what are the ethics behind things, and what's the direction we're taking here is that's kind of what I get out of your readings in your teachings as well, that, that there is two sides to the coin. There's two sides to how we can do it right. Or as a symbiotic planet and not. And so I guess that you continually update and give us, you know, the newest information in your books and make sure we have the right data that we're talking about climate change and how the, how these things impact for many years, humanity, but also myself, I was led to believe that the oil, coal and gas, the fossil fuel industry, the automotive industry, the telco industry was the biggest cause of human suffering and greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. And that's absolutely not true. They're on the list. They're like maybe eight, nine or 10 on the list of the top 10. But food is right there up at the top in multiple sectors on the biggest contributors to human suffering, health, malnutrition, poverty, etc. and environmental and ecological destruction. And so that you bring that now into your new, to the new updated version that you're revising and going to come out with animal liberation is, is a no brainer for me. But you said earlier that you write a lot about food. Why, why is that and how have you started to make these connections and to let people know that there's a big connection? Well, I think you've, you've put it well. And, you know, you, you held up the book by Valkov Smil and in one of his earlier books, I think he said something like to, for the whole planet, for the whole population of the world to read as much meat as we eat in Western countries, you would need three planets, not one. So, you know, we're clearly perpetuating a system that in its nature is, is unequal because the rest of the world couldn't possibly eat as much meat as we could. The world couldn't produce it and couldn't survive. None of nature would survive. The oceans wouldn't survive if we were to try to do that. So there's a, if you like a basic unfairness, but there's also all of those other ramifications. I came to food initially with animal liberation through my concern for animals and the suffering of animals I wanted to contribute to preventing. And that's why I became a vegetarian back in 1970. I've just passed 50, 50 years of being a vegetarian now at a time when it was pretty strange still, you know, we were living in England at the time and the best vegetarian restaurant in London was called Cranks. And I think that was sort of self mocking, but that was that was how people thought of vegetarian. Oh, you're Cranks. So, you know, things, things have changed a lot over then. They're far more vegetarians. It's far more accepted. You don't have to go to specialist vegetarian restaurants in order to get a vegetarian meal like you used to. So there's a huge amount of change. But with that have come all of these other reasons that you mentioned, the fact that, you know, agriculture and particularly animal agriculture is is devastating the planet is polluting local environments is polluting rivers. We're growing huge quantities of grain just in order to feed them to animals which waste something like 70 to 80 percent of the food value of the grain that we're putting into the animals. So if we if we cut out the meat, we could eat much more lightly on the on the planet because we wouldn't need to grow all that grain and feed it to animals and waste most of it. And and there's the climate change factors and we've already mentioned the the virus related factors which is only one of the health aspects actually what we haven't mentioned is the fact that animals are routinely fed antibiotics factory farm animals and that that means that the bacteria become resistant to antibiotics and we're having increasing problems with multiply resistant bacterias that lead to very serious illness and sometimes death because we've lost the antibiotics that used to kill these bacteria. So there's a whole range of problems and you know I certainly would like to say to people and Jane Goodall would as well I know you held up her book that you know you can really live a great life you can enjoy eating you can feel fit and healthy you can be long-lived and vigorous as Jane is and as I hope to go on being for you know a terrific life without eating eating without eating meat at all. But even if people just sort of cut down their meat and you know we added something they eat once or twice a week rather than seven days a week that would already make a huge difference to the planet. So so yeah I like the way you presented the sort of the double sided nature of it there's a lot of really bad things we're doing to the planet to ourselves to animals but it's an opportunity it's it's one of the easiest ways in a way in which we could take 15% out of the greenhouse gas emissions that are going into the atmosphere right now without sacrificing anything without really with benefiting ourselves which is you know much better than some of the things we think about how are we going to cope with that flying or how are we going to cope with that air conditioning and keep some energy but but this is one that's that's really a win-win for everyone. So I've debated long and hard preparing for our conversation kind of how I would try to take the flow through I have some some questions or some things that not even necessarily questions some things I'd like to discuss that came up in animal liberation that I'd like to go deeper in or maybe uncover if that's okay and so I was thinking we would we would go through animal liberation on a couple of those those those thoughts or those questions that arise for me first and then when we're done with that we'll probably head down a couple rabbit holes and get into a lot deeper conversation then I want to kind of circle back around to some of the books that I I touched upon in your biography and when I introduce you and go into those because those are open up a whole nother world of things that I want to touch in as we kind of close out our discussion today. When when I was younger a matter of fact I believe I was in junior high school I read the book The Jungle and horrific yeah horrific thing and there are other books like that and like animal liberation done in a little bit different way that are also historical books I guess out there on eating meat or on not just on liberation but on how we treat our workers how we treat children how we treat other animals and species that were an animal in and of itself and that just started to at a young age for me which is unheard of because I studied in the United States and I think it's probably one of the worst education systems in our world and education needs to be improved but that I even was came across that book and had had a good teacher that that got us to to start thinking in that way another book is and I don't know if you've heard of it is The Bloodless Revolution from Tristram Stuart yeah Tristram Stuart The Bloodless Revolution and it kind of talks about the history of vegetarian and veganism without without meat and he's a big proponent as well on that kind of giving us the long history of that but no matter whether it's you've all know a Harari whether it's you or that this long history of humans with food has a big impact on on how our climate on how human health how suffering how civilization collapse can occur depending on how well we get the our infrastructure of food right so my my real question is was there something that inspired you before you read Animal Liberation a historical book like that or was it through big history learning where you're like saying food and and this ties into it or was it a little bit of a different journey and no it wasn't any particular well there wasn't actually an influential book but it was not a famous book but but before that there was a really important meeting for me I was I was a graduate student at Oxford in 1970 I'd gone there from Australia to do my graduate studies it was like the centre of the philosophical universe so it seemed to me at the time coming from Australia and I happened to meet at a class a Canadian graduate student who I'd never met before but he you know he liked one of the questions I asked and he wanted to talk about it so he went for lunch at his college just talking about the the philosophy thing which had nothing to do with animals or food but when we came into lunch there was a choice of just two things you could you could eat for lunch at the college there was a hot dish which was spaghetti with a sauce on top of it or there was a cold salad plate so I automatically took the spaghetti because I wanted the more substantial hot meal rather than just salad but Richard my companion asked whether there was meat in the sauce and when there was told he what when he was told that there was meat in the sauce he took the salad plate so I noticed that at the time because that was really unusual you just didn't meet vegetarians you know why what was his problem about meat I thought he didn't seem to be a Hindu he was a Canadian not of you know Indian background or anything why else would he be you know avoiding meat so you know when we'd finished our conversation about free will and determinism or whatever it was I asked him what his problem with meat was and I expected some sort of I think I expected like you know either some kind of mystical views about the oneness of everything or perhaps a kind of absolute pacifism that killing is always wrong including even if you are fighting Hitler's Germany which I would not have believed but he didn't come out with anything like that he came out with something much simpler which was I don't think it's right to treat the animals the way that the animal that was on your plate or his flesh was on your plate was treated and that surprised me because I thought animals had good lives before they were killed you know I thought they were all out in the fields and you know of course I knew that they got killed and driving on country roads inevitably you see a truck full of animals on their way to slaughter they don't look very happy but I thought that was all there was to it but you know Richard said no you know increasingly they're being brought inside in sort of sheds and they're very crowded and their lives are pretty miserable all the way along and I said really is that true and he said yeah there's a book you can read about it and the book was one called Animal Machines by Ruth Harrison which was not a book that I'd heard of not a book that many people had heard of it it had been published a few years earlier but it hadn't had a lot of publicity or big sales or anything but it did describe quite factually and often with quotes from farming trade journals the way in which animals were being reared and she had one line that really struck she said cruelty is acknowledged only where profitability ceases so in other words farmers will do anything to an animal that remains profitable and only if the animal starts getting so badly treated that it dies let's say and you can't sell it then will the fact that they're overcrowded start to be thought about and that's a really very low standard because in fact with some kinds of animal rearing if most of them are doing okay and putting on weight the fact that some of them die or more of them die because they're so crowded you might still make more money than you would if you gave them a bit more space so I looked into that and I decided I couldn't really justify it I couldn't defend treating animals that way you know I knew that they suffered and why should you inflict suffering on them just so that we can get meat or eggs a bit cheaper so that's when I started looking more deeply into that whole topic and became a vegetarian so yes you know there was a book but it was not a it was not a famous book it was really a person and and his example the fact that he'd become a vegetarian some years earlier for similar reasons that had this effect on me and then I've been able to affect Joan Goodall and many others so it's a chain that goes on yeah and I really appreciate that you have taken that stance and not only as a human professor you've taught many people in many areas to look at the world a little bit differently and think about ethics and ask certain questions there and you you can obviously tell that I'm a book lover and a book hound I don't know if you've ever heard of Hannah aren't no yes I've read Hannah Aaron when I was an undergraduate actually yeah the human condition and then yeah the Eichmann trials this is her book yeah Eichmann trials well this has recently crossed my path and it's brought up kind of a question that's tickled upon in your book that a lot of us inflict this cruelty to other animals we ourselves being an animal although that's not a term that we usually call ourselves animals but you also discuss that in the book but there's this thing about hierarchies that like if we work for a car gill or Monsanto or we work for you know a big food or animal processing pig slaughter house we might just be the line worker our job is just to to trim the beak off the chicken or our job is just to de feather that one part of the animal for eight to 12 hours a day but the true decision the hierarchy decision comes from the CEO comes from the manager the boss of the shift of that and we've even gotten into this in a few other ways like I don't know if in Australia they have the county fairs and the four H clubs and these were children from the farm bring their animals and their sheep and their pigs and their pigeons and that and to prepare to prepare their animal to be sold for slaughter or to be who has the fattest pig who has the biggest turkey things like that and and there I don't know whether we want we want to call it the human condition or why do we have the human condition to even hurt another species another human being let alone in the Eichmann trials which is you know obviously in the Nazis in which you you discuss there what happened mentioned that as well but how can we do it to other animals in such a process is it because we've gotten into these wrong life models business models these hierarchy models I mean if you even if you look back at big history early antiquity early Mesopotamia Incas Aztecs Mayas the ancient Greeks they all had this hierarchy structure where the laborers and the slaves were at the bottom the ones who were doing all the killing and the hard work and all the farming but the true decisions were really and the true force of the what I almost would call evil is occurring way higher up in the chain and so whether it's the human condition or humanist cruelty or however I want to get your thoughts and fillings on that and do you think there is some influence on how we've gotten into these horrific type of models of mass animal farming mass factory farming and and stuff that it's so disconnected from us it's like I don't even know that occurs that's some some some worker doing that Yeah, but I don't entirely agree with your analysis I do think that the fact that we've got these huge companies you know like Tyson's and Cargill and so on that are producing these products does mechanize it and vastly increases the scale so that you know we we have you know Tyson's I think slaughter is more than 40 million chickens a week so you know you just think of the scale at which that is that is happening and that's going on in other countries around the world we're talking about tens of billions of chickens and farm animals slaughtered each year worldwide so so the industrialization and the hierarchy has created that scale but I think it's the applying of technology to the idea that animals are just things and that animals don't really can't but they're not part of us they're not part of this sphere of ethics and that idea unfortunately goes back a long way further I describe it in animal liberation as speciesism and I used that term to make the parallel with racism and sexism which I'm sure most of your listeners and viewers would you know say look I'm not a racist I'm not a sexist but they need to ask themselves am I a speciesist and do I just think that because I'm a human I have a moral status that is above that of all non-human animals and I therefore have the right to use them as essentially as property you know they are legally property not wild animals but all domestic animals are legally property they're owned by somebody and if I can make more profit from them by doing something to them can I do that and that's essentially what the factory farming is and what it does and you know the reason well one reason anyway I think it goes back a long way further than this modern industrial age I can provide evidence for from a recent book that I edited that I think it's a good time to mention it's this book it's called The Golden Ass right you mentioned it in the introduction by Apple Laos so this is a book that was actually written in the second century of the common era so in the under the Roman Empire in the reign of emperors like Marcus Aurelius on Hadrian at the beginning of his life and I think Marcus Aurelius at the end it's fiction it's a novel and a lot of people think you know the earliest novel is I don't know Robinson Crusoe or The Tale of Genji or Don Quixote or something this is you know a thousand years earlier than any of those pretty much and it's fascinates me both I mean it's funny you know it's a great read it's funny and it's you know got sexy bits in it that are entertaining bawdy kind of tale but it's its story about a man who dabbles in magic and things go wrong and he gets turned into a donkey that's what The Golden Ass is this young man who gets turned into a donkey and then he tells the story in a first person narrative of what happens to him and sure some of the scenes some of the bad things that happen to him are already hierarchy and domination for example he gets sold to a miller a flower miller and he is harnessed to turn a stone to turn the mill the millstones you know the heavy millstones and he's harnessed to that and he has to do that for hours and hours a day just walk around in a circle and if he doesn't he gets beaten and there are slaves who the miller also has who you know helped to make him work and carry things around and so on so so yes it's a hierarchy with slaves and with animals and in a sense that's also like an early industrialization of animals and the miller is the boss but there are other scenes in this too where for example there's a there's a boy who uses him to go and gather firewood on the hillside and the boy just doesn't just you know load him up with firewood and take him back home the boy is cruel to him the boy plays tricks on him I mean he beats him for one thing quite unnecessarily he beats him so much that he has an open sore we're bleeding on the spot where he's beaten but also he ties thorns to his tail so that when he tries to brush the flies away the thorns prick him and in the end he passes a fire and and the donkey's carrying some straw and he throws a hot coal into the donkey's straw and the donkey would have been burnt to death except that there happened to be some water that he could throw himself into so you know there's there's randomized acts of cruelty as well as sort of industrialized cruelty going on and this is nearly 2000 years ago so I think we have to accept that there is a not in all of us but you know there is a cruel streak in some humans and they take it out on those who are inferior to them who they have power over you you could certainly say it's still a kind of domination but the point is you know the big bosses of the big companies they dominate the workers who they employ but the workers and others can get to dominate the animals too and and they do and they take out their feelings their anger maybe their sense that they're not the boss of everything on the animals so I think we have to accept that that's a part of human nature of many people's nature that we have to try and create the environment and the circumstances in which it doesn't really emerge and in fact the the more benevolent and good-hearted forms of nature and the kindness that many people do want to feel towards animals that you can see every day looking online at videos of dogs and cats for example we have to create the circumstances where that's what's going to affect not just the dogs and cats that we love but all of the animals including those we eat I think that's perfect and not only to talk about the golden ass and how that came out but it really ties back again to animal liberation and to this whole discussion because I think we can go a tick deeper into this as well and you know if I'm out of line if I'm going too deep or even maybe kind of reaching for straws please let me know and I'm glad that you said you're not sure you 100% agree on this hierarchy on the way that Hannah aren't kind of lays it out there and kind of ties to history but it ties so nicely to this book and now the way I want to go deeper is you know and Hannah aren't calls it the human condition whether we call it that or we call it species or humanists or however we look at it it's more I've even heard say that you know are we closer to the bonobos or to the chimpanzees that's maybe that aggressive trait that comes out in humans that makes us a little bit more aggressive or cruel to one another or to other species I believe that it was much later it was much after your novel The Golden Ass that with Darwinism and Huxley mainly where there was this kind of a shift that went from evolution to neoliberalism to neo-Darwinism where I want to define it how I understand it and maybe you have a different definition neoliberalism neo-Darwinism means natural selection only the strong survive severe competition competition and you know the games and the fight and the Roman gladiators and really it's one will survive and the other won't and it's a different type of games that we see a different type of living that is something that just like the fossil fuel industry just like many other things about food that we've been led to believe that that's the way our world works natural selection only the strong survive severe competition and that's kind of the muster but then came along Carl Sagan's first wife Lynn Margolis one of the ladies who turned the scientific community on its head and she said no that's not really how it works neoliberalism neo-Narwinism doesn't exist that's not how our world functions it's a symbogenesis symbogenesis a symbiotic earth a symbiotic planet that everything in our world works in harmony together in cooperation in collaboration one microorganisms waste is another one's food and that we have this symbiotic relationship with everything in our world and really the birth of our earth really starts out with bacteria or this primordial soup and if you realize what occurred in 2015 we discovered a whole new branch on the bacteria tree of life and that whole new branch that we discovered lives inside our body it's in our guts and they're saying our gut is our second brain it's these microorganisms and these cells and bacteria and even viruses are living in us at every time and that through this symbiotic relationship we have more in common with an oak tree or a pig or a squirrel than we do with other homo sapiens with other homogeneous relations and so we're on going to and I mean here's I told you I'm a big fan of books but here's Lynn Margolis's books Symbiotic Planet and Microcosmos where she talks about it she also wrote many books and it's about this relationship with other species that we actually have a lot more in common than we think and when our biome of our soil and these microorganisms and our relationship with other animals and species is in a type of harmony or a type of some symbiosis that it's also a better model and one that is total opposite of hierarchy total opposite of neoliberalism or neo Darwinism and there's before I let you speak and kind of maybe speak to that the last thing I would say there's this old Sanskrit word and it's called seva and it means in service to life and or regeneration in service to life and it has a lot to do with this symbiotic earth where we see this hierarchy where man is at the top and woman's over here and all the other species and it's kind of very ego driven and then we see this ecological circle of the world where man and woman are in the center with other species and that's kind of more in the ecological world but then we see this next evolution that's more like a heart it's a seva where man and woman humans are equal with one another and all the species are kind of in regeneration to service to life and that that's a better model not only for our food systems but a better model for life to kind of get out of the things that Hannah aren't talked about to get out of the things that we're seeing in our food systems and in our world and so I would like to know kind of how do you view that how do you see that kind of distinction that maybe we just think we need to be cruel we just think that you know we're bonobos or chimpanzees but really our world doesn't work like that never has well let me go right back to the start as you started with with Darwin and then went on to Neo-Darwinists and Neo-Liberals so this is not Darwin himself right Darwin does not say that always the stronger and more ruthless win Darwin does talk about those who are the fittest but that's a very broad term and Darwin himself was aware that that might come through cooperating with other members of your group that maybe not only in human society but in other social animals social mammals as well in fact you become fitter by being able to cooperate within your group and work together and so there's nothing in Darwinism properly understood that says you should be ruthlessly competitive rather than that you should be cooperative and take advantage of opportunities for mutual benefit not just for your own narrowly selfish benefit so I think that's that's an important point to understand that works against the Neo-Darwinists who have that opposite interpretation of it but you know there was a point I guess where you went on where I'm not going to again I'm not going to really go along with you fully I think we you know there are certainly you know I'm not disagreeing with my goal is that yes of course you know everything is interwoven and there are bacteria that are going to benefit from our bodies and and go off in other ways and we have connections through that way with microorganisms and through that with plants and so on but but there clearly is a hierarchy in the sense that only our species has transformed the climate of the planet within a couple of hundred years in the way that we have and only our species has built weapons which if all exploded could end life on the planet and only our species really has the intelligence and foresight to think about the future and to think about preventing these things that our own intelligence but perhaps lack of foresight have led us to construct so you know there is this you know while in one sense we're all interwoven there's this other important sense in which a lot of things really are up to us and we have to change the direction that we're going in and that's not going to be simply accepting our equality with all microorganisms it is going to say look we're going to have to continue to feed this population that we have and the growing population is another issue of course which we may need to think about fortunately not growing as fast as it was growing in the 60s and 70s but maybe you know still an environmental question so we have to think about feeding that population we can do that as we said by cutting out or reducing the amount of animal products we consume we should also I think and this is another area that I've worked on for many years we should we in the rich nation should be doing a lot more to help people in extreme poverty to help them to live but also to live better lives and to educate their children because educating children especially girls is the best way to slow population growth so that girls can control their fertility and don't have to have lots of children because their husbands think that that makes them look like big men if they have lots of children so there are there are many things that we're going to have to do and I don't think we can do them with that technology we need that so it's a question of looking at the right ways of doing that but also and here I again will go back and agree with you it also adopting a new ethical approach that is a more a more universal approach an approach that is global in the sense of thinking about people in poverty everywhere in the world that is non-speciesist in thinking about other sentient beings on our planet not just about members of our species and it is also you could say impartial towards the future we tend to take a short-term perspective we focus very much on the present and near future and that's one of the reasons why we haven't done nearly enough about climate change but you know now we're starting to see the effects of climate change on ourselves if we've been concerned about the well-being of our grandchildren we would have taken much more drastic action 20 or 30 years ago when we first knew about what was happening so you know those are all ways in which we need to have a broader more global more impartial less speciesist ethical approach and then if we use our intelligence and our technologies and our abilities I think we can get to a a better world that isn't imperiled like the one we're living on now is Yeah we're definitely are imperiled last week the IPCC report came out and I guess we're at alert red and we've really got to act and quit debating and discussing the last thing I want to touch upon in animal liberation before we go on to the life you can save and some other things which also tie very nicely into this is really and you may touch upon it in your next revision that will come out or you may not but I want to get your thoughts and feelings on this and I'm going to I'm going to pick on Australia if you don't mind I could actually pick on Brazil or I could pick on China but I'm going to pick a little bit on Australia and I want to talk about the true cost or the total environmental cost as percentage of EBITDA of food and I want to do it in a way to see about your thoughts and feelings on on how this works Australia produces a lot of animal agriculture for mainly other countries I think the total percentage of meat produced in Australia is almost over 90% for other countries not even Australia No, you could be right I don't know the figures we're certainly a big media exporter and even if it was even if it was less or a more balanced thing the point I want to get at is that meat whether it's going to China whether it's going to Europe whether it's going to Africa wherever that meat is going has that product has been almost turned into commodity because not the true cost and definitely not the total environmental cost of that meat that's being shipped somewhere else is being paid and we're seeing it in climate change so what's happening is an excuse my language basically is saying to other countries who are purchasing this animal product from Australia please come use our resources let those animals shit and waste on our land and create methane and emissions and damage our waterways damage our soils and that because not all of this animal agriculture is holistic management from Alan Savry or something that's regenerating the land or giving back in a positive way a balanced return so to say it's actually at a bigger cost than what it's being sold to and then it's being shipped with carbon emissions greenhouse gas emissions somewhere across the world and being sold a fraction of what the true cost in the total environmental cost is but those problems that environmental cost is then left in Australia the brush fires the methane the waterway pollution on and on is there but also then we're wasting it because the true cost of labor water packaging shipping that's not factored in to that meat that's being sold somewhere else and so I want to get your views on that how any country and it happens actually more in Brazil and Argentina than it does in Australia where they're deforesting land and they're letting others basically shit on their land and now their Australia's has to bear the brunt of that environmental cost because then the warming goes up they're stronger brush fires there's a ripple effect of climate change that happens because of those poor decisions that we make in an animal agriculture brought in food in general all over the world and so I want to see how you can tie that in because just a week ago I heard one of the I don't know if they call them a PM or one of the the politicians of Australia was came out pretty strong against the United Nations Food Systems Summit which is a big summit for the last two years about global food system reform thinking more about the climate thinking more about health and on to make a change which is a kind of a step in the right direction but there is also this big push on less meat less consumption of meat moving away from meat and he's also a lobbyist or representing somehow the ranchers of Australia and he was pretty upset and he was letting us know he was pretty upset and so I think there's a whole other side of the story that's not being told or that's never been addressed and it's not just meat it's in general the true cost and total environmental cost of food has really never been addressed until just recently a couple years ago we've started to really talk about the imbalance of it and so I would like to get your views and your thoughts and how how can we formulate that in our mind to deal with it better yeah well you're absolutely right the true cost of food is still not really being paid and you're right that when we produce meat here in Australia we do suffer the environmental cost of it including the bushfires that we have but of course we're not the only ones actually you know the fires that are going on in the western united states and have gone on in Canada unprecedented temperatures in Canada for example you know Australia's meat production contributes to that just as Australia's coal export for that matter contributes to it as well but certainly you know and Brazil's meat production and meat production all around the world is contributing to that but our government is a conservative government that is supported by a predominantly rural party called the national party the national party essentially represents the we call them graziers rather than ranchers here but you know the people who are raising cattle and sheep and exporting them and so that's why they're sort of pushing back against this idea that we need to reduce meat just as coal miners have been pushing against back against the idea that we need to cut coal burning you know we're starting to move a bit more on that but for political reasons I would say the Australian government or this present Australian government is not likely to you know be sympathetic to ideas to call for a cutback on the meat industry because that's where a lot of the seats in parliament come from so you know for the moment we're we're stuck with that I think things will eventually change more of the population is already in the urban and suburban areas and that'll no doubt increase but but we're going to need to see some reaction from the markets as well ultimately you know we need to we need to to get the markets to change and that's where this idea of the true cost of food can really come in I was just reading recently about something that's happening in the Netherlands where a supermarket has actually opened up in Amsterdam that displays the true cost of the products so you know you can you can buy this product if it's if it's meat for let's say I don't know five dollars a pound or a kilo or whatever but then you see an extra thing that says and the amount of damage that is done to the environment in terms of contributing to climate change or the in some cases it might be the violation of the rights of the workers the exploitation of the workers or it might be the denial of indigenous people from access to their land these we estimate of course it has to be an estimate at so many dollars so the real cost is this many more dollars or euros I guess it's going to be in Amsterdam and then they invite people to pay that real cost and if people do pay the real cost the supermarket will contribute those elements to organizations that are fighting for reduction of climate change for exploited workers for indigenous people and so on and at least you know I mean really not every supermarket is going to do that and not everybody is going to pay that but at least it's a way of educating people about the true cost of food and I've been talking to some people who are developing a small shopping center here in Melbourne and and they're interested in the idea of having a shop doing that so I I hope that that idea spreads around the world that people can really see what the true cost of these foods are and then they'll see that meat in particular has a much higher true cost than it would have you know just the supermarket cost whereas you know other things like plant-based foods grains and beans and vegetables and so on will not have a significantly higher true cost than the cost that they're paying My thoughts and feelings have always been if you turn food into a commodity or if you keep in food you're basically cheapening life it's the basic of all our needs and there the reason I really appreciate you going into that but there was a pinnacle book that just came out I only have it in digital version otherwise I would hold it up but it's called the true cost accounting for food balancing the scale just came out not even two months ago from Earthscan from Rutledge Rutledge Studies and Food Society and Environment and it's pinnacle it's a very big read it's probably biblical in proportion it's kind of a workbook but you know the there's many greats who write in there but it's something that we've tickled upon before in reports but now we have a pinnacle scientific book and report out our big work out on that so I would recommend that to the listeners but I also believe it's in full alignment to what you just said on true cost you also said earlier in our discussion that if the amount of meat that we produce a year we would need something like three or four planets worth of resources in order to do that which is just obviously not sustainable but that thinking of three or four planets worth of resources in order to produce meat or to have enough resources to sustain human life that actually is something that's much older comes from the global hectare which is the ecological footprint you know how many if we all live like Americans we'd need five planets worth of resources well we don't have five planets or like Germans we'd need three planets worth of resources which is that that way of thinking is not only true cost accounting but it's this planetary boundaries living it's this global hectare ecological footprint living whereas earth overshoot day was July 29th this year that's the day that we went beyond the finite resources of our planet we're kind of operating in a deficit I live in Germany overshoot day was Cinco de Mayo so May 5th four months and five days into the year in Germany it already shot past its resources to sustain itself and was operating in a deficit I just got a contribution to my book menu B from the green shake and he said that in his contribution that Saudi Arabia contribute or purchases 90% of all its agriculture and food outside of Saudi Arabia to ship it in they can't even produce it to themselves so I believe their ecological footprint is even less and that's why I think it's important that we start living within the safe operating spaces of our planetary boundaries we understand that the reason we have this earth overshoot day means that we have because it was July 29th just a little bit ago means that we have 1.6 global hectares per person which is replicable which means that if we had good stewardship over that if we each had our 1.6 global hectares and we were good stewards of that that we could live a ripe old age to 80 90 100 years of age because that would provide us with enough water food resources security and shelter to sustain that life but per person for at an overshoot we're using 2.98 global hectares per person and that's why we're in that deficit that's why we're in that earth overshoot and so everything that I talk about as food everything that you know you're talking about ethics and food and animal liberation but there's so so many ties if we can have that knowledge to understand that if we can connect the dots I almost think it empowers us to to shift the model of how we live on how we choose do we choose to go into a hierarchy structure of how we live our life or do we try to work more in harmony with life and that and you can see I'm wearing the sustainable development goal pin here I'm an advocate for the UN I do a lot around food you have this book the life you can save and the organization and what you've done but that has a lot to do with eliminating poverty stopping hunger and really changing the way charities work how we think about the models of our life and what we can truly do and the ripple effect that it can have to save and change the world and so I think this is a good as time of any to really touch upon that and I will put the links and tell people as well how they can download these books for free even get the audio version for free or listen to them on podcast but I would like to hear a little bit more how you moved in that direction you've been doing it for a while now you've given as a charity as philanthropy this out to raise awareness on what we can do tell us a little bit more about that and how that can shift your perspective so this is also something that goes back a very long way with me in fact to that same period when I was a graduate student at Oxford and then I became a junior lecturer I stayed at Oxford to teach for a couple of years so in 1971 Pakistan consisted of two separate pieces of land one in the west where Pakistan is now and the other in the east which is now Bangladesh and the people of what was then east Pakistan wanted more autonomy they voted for a political party in a democratic election that would give them more autonomy the Pakistani army wouldn't tolerate that they crushed it and as a result nine million people fled across the border into what was into then India into Indian part of Bengal so that was a huge crisis India was a much poorer nation than it is today and it suddenly had to feed and house and provide sanitation for nine million extra people and it asked for help but not enough help was forthcoming and that led me to think well here am I I certainly wasn't wealthy then I was living on a very modest salary I think I just started being a junior lecturer and my wife was a high school teacher but we had enough we were reasonably comfortable and we could afford to go across the channel to travel in Europe and have summer holidays and so on and meanwhile though these nine million people in danger of starving in tents across the border from where their homes were so we thought well maybe we should be doing something about this and how much should we be doing and how can we argue that people in our situation really shouldn't just be throwing a few coins in a tin when it's rattled under their nose but they should make some serious pledge maybe we started off with the idea maybe if everybody were to give 10% of their income we could really not only solve this immediate problem but we could solve some of the longer term problems about poverty so I published an article called Famine Affluence and Morality which you know was really evoked quite an echo in the time got taught in a lot of college courses it was reprinted in many anthologies and a lot of people talked about it and so I you know followed up that in various other ways and eventually in 2009 a long time after I wrote a book called The Life You Can Save this is actually not that book this is the second edition of the book which was like the 10th anniversary edition came out just the end of 2019 and in that I make the case for saying if you really want to think of yourself as an ethical person and if you're middle class in an affluent country you know whether here where I am in Australia where you are in Germany in the United States then you really ought to be doing something significant to help the you know then it was over a billion now it's actually fallen a bit but it's still something like maybe 800 million or 850 because of the pandemic you know to help those people who are in extreme poverty which means they're below the world bank's extreme poverty line which roughly is two US dollars a day and that's all they've got to live on so you know if you're spending hundreds of dollars or even thousands of dollars on a vacation think about how much difference you can make to the lives of people who have only a few hundred dollars each year to live on and to feed themselves and you know so I did that and then around a dozen years ago maybe a younger group of people also starting in Oxford as it happened started thinking about well which are the really the most effective ways to give do we know enough you know they accepted some of my argument but they said but you know Singer hasn't really done the research to say which of the most effective charities we should give to and so they started out getting interested in that a couple of former hedge fund guys in the United States started researching that set up an organization called Givewell and now we have a whole movement called effective altruism that talks about how to be the most effective altruist how to not only give away some of your money and do some good but really make sure you're getting the best value for everything that you give and that kind of idea applied to global poverty is in the life you can save it recommends some of these charities talks about them and it directs you to the website thelifeyoucansave.org where you can get the latest updated recommendations of you know what is the research showing now as to where are the most effective charities plus you don't have to pay for this as you mentioned originally it was published by Random House but the charity that I founded The Life You Can Save I gave the rights back to them or I gave it to them bought them back from Random House and so you can download the e-book absolutely free from thelifeyoucansave.org if you prefer audio books I asked some of my friends who are sympathetic and some celebrities to read chapters so Kristen Bell from the table show The Good Place as well as Mike Shure who's a producer of it they read chapters Steven Fry people who like the BBC and listen in to England will know Steven Fry well and my favorite ever singer-songwriter Paul Simon also read a chapter which is terrific plus I read a chapter you hear an African accent you hear Shabani Azmi who's an Indian reading so there's a great range of English accents so I hope people will do that and then we don't unfortunately have time to go into the full details of how we can best help people in extreme poverty but it's all there in the book and the best thing about it I think is so many people have told me that they actually feel better doing it it's a little bit like what we're talking about with food you eat the right diet best for the planet best for animals and it so happens that it's best for you but also with giving you know yes you have a little bit less money but that makes much less difference to your life than the fact that you know that you're doing something really good that you know that you're helping people who through just bad luck so much worse off than you and you know that the money is really going effectively to the people who need it there I mean we really could talk for days because you are involved in so much you've been doing this so long there's one more thing that I kind of know about that you're gonna have a book and you started these dialogues with the Buddhist female monastic discussing her approach to ethics and things and I'd like to know a little bit more about that if you could kind of tease us and tell us what that is and what we can expect and so that we can be watching for it as well absolutely yes it's been an interesting experience for me and this actually started through my connection with animals because I was invited to a conference in Taiwan about treatment of animals and I met her then she was the founder of an animal organization but when you know we then travel to another part of Taiwan on the train and we were sitting next to each other and we talked about many things and I found her a fascinating person with a different perspective from mine but one that in many respects harmonized because she was also a vegetarian concerned about animals also concerned about poverty as a woman she was a feminist as well you know the the Buddhist rules for female monastics suggested that they had to be subservient to the male to the monks so when the Dalai Lama came to visit Taiwan she and a few of her supporters wrote out on large piece of paper these rules that suggest the females must be subordinate to the males they walked up on the stage with the Dalai Lama and in front of him they tore them up so she's a person who's you know prepared to to be fairly dramatic not usually what you expect from you know we think of female monastics as nuns as very quiet people but some of them are real fighters so we we had a fascinating dialogue then and she invited me back to Taiwan to record a dialogue and then we've been writing and elaborating for about five years but I hope that maybe next year it'll be out we're tentatively calling it a meeting of minds but we don't know whether that title is going to stick but I think for people interested in different perspectives east and west, Buddhist and secular utilitarian kind of ethic it should be a fascinating volume well I'm excited to see that I have four last big questions for you three or four my listeners to kind of give them a sustainable takeaway things that they can use and apply in their lives there's been a plethora here already but the the next two are really for you and a bigger view of kind of how you see the world first and foremost during this crazy last two years there's been a lot of nationalism and division of humanity one from another I've always from I'm originally from America I live in Germany my mother's German I have family all over the world I've kind of am this global citizen from birth on and always have been traveled a lot but also have a lot of diversity and and and my family and and those I associate with and do business do you feel like you're a global citizen and how would you feel about the removal of all borders walls and divisions limitations of humanity one from another but even more so the divisions that we build up with other species and other animals as well I would love all of those divisions to disappear but I am a realist I don't see that happening anytime in my lifetime you're younger than I am but I doubt it will happen and yours either I'm sorry to tell you you know we are still we have these deep nationalist strains we we saw them obviously in their worst form in in in Germany in the 30s and early 40s but we've seen them again in the United States under Donald Trump it doesn't take very much to stir them up there and you know I don't see a government it's going to be able it's going to be willing to take down its borders even Angela Merkel who I thought did a fantastic job in assimilating the refugees from Syria really you know had to eventually sort of say we can't just keep taking everybody so you know and as for the barriers between species that's something that I've argued about so say the last 50 years or so I I want to reduce those barriers I I would be amazed if they disappeared all together in in the foreseeable future but a kind of spirit towards animals is certainly within our within our the bounds of possibility and I think we're starting to see some signs of that but there's still a long way to go this is probably the hardest question I have for you today and I usually I usually say it's the burning question WTF and most people think it's the swear word but it's not it's what's the futures but for you I want to phrase it a little bit different I would like to know in your view in your opinion and your plethora of knowledge what does a world that works for everyone look like for you it's a world with much less inequality in which people share a lot more and in which most importantly their concern extends to all sentient beings so they're not just thinking about how can how they can get an advantage nor even how their small group can get an advantage or perhaps even how their larger group can get an advantage but they're thinking they're taking into account the interests of all of those beings who have interests who are affected by their actions if there was one message you could depart to my listeners as a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change your life what would it be your message and even if it is two messages what would it be yeah well Socrates said in ancient Athens the unexamined life is not worth living but few people really pause to examine their life so I would ask your listeners to think about your life think about your real ultimate goals think about what you would like to be remembered for or what impact you would like to have made on the world as your life comes to an end does it eventually will and I hope that in that examination of your life you'll be inclined to want to contribute to making the world a better place to do as much good as you can while you're here I love that that's beautiful what should young innovators authors writers great thinkers of our time and in your field they're doing what you have done over the years be thinking about when they're looking for ways to make a real impact a big impact on our world well I would like people in my field and other academic fields to really think about the impact that they're making on their students and on the world obviously helping their students to think clearly and to understand how to assess arguments and evidence so that they don't go down these crazy rabbit holes of conspiracy theories from which they never emerge so that's a really important thing for people in my field to do but also to try to keep relevant to the concerns of the world while doing that and I think that's really important and the last one is really what have you experienced or learned and this long journey so far that you would love to have known from the beginning from the start I would have loved to have known that it is possible to make a difference to have the confidence that you can make a difference to the world there's so many people who I've seen who have done things that really matter that really make a positive difference and some of them from you know basically coming from nowhere without a lot of wealth or education or background but through hard work and commitment they've changed the world Peter thank you so much for letting us all inside of your ideas and opening your world and your work and your what you teach to all of us and to really putting up with me and letting me go a little bit deeper trying to get a little bit more insight because it has been a treasure trove you have really opened up to us all and given us a lot and I really thank you for that thank you so much for your time and have a wonderful day thank you thank you Mark it's been a pleasure talking to you you've really taught me talking about a lot of different things and I've enjoyed that and so thanks for getting my views across to all of your listeners we'll put all the links and descriptions in the show notes and descriptions and all the social media so that everybody will know where to go to find all the things that we talked about as well thank you so much and you have a wonderful evening and get some good rest there Peter bye bye thanks Mike bye