Episode #209 ... Improving our world through applied ethics. (Peter Singer, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek)

Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is Philosophize This. If you value the show as an educational resource for the rest of the world, consider supporting it on Patreon. Patreon.com/philosophize this. With that said, I hope you love the podcast today. So So the other day, I got a chance to interview a couple legends in the world of philosophy. I got to talk to Peter Singer and Katerina de Lazzari Radek, which, by the way, at the beginning of the conversation, she said I could call her Kasha instead of Katerina. I felt so special in the moment. You you guys have no idea how much respect I have for these thinkers doing this job for so long. I felt so so heard and seen in that moment. Anyway, the two of them are pretty open to talk about anything in this conversation. So knowing that neither of them are anti capitalist, I thought it'd be a good opportunity to continue getting philosophers opinions on the state of the world and what they think might make that world into a better place from within the current set of tools we have. But I knew in order to do that, to get those kind of answers, I had to start the interview coming at these two as though I was one of these passionate anti capitalist. So I turned my hat around backwards. I threw on my, I would prefer not to T shirt, and I decided to go in hot. The first question I asked Peter Singer was this. Peter Singer, you've dedicated a a career to writing these books that spread awareness about the moral issues of our time, animal rights, global poverty, and you've done this while also making it easier for people to contribute to these issues via charity, should that be something they ever wanna do. But a common critique you've no doubt heard all throughout your career is a sort of anti capitalist attitude. And the critique is this, that as well intentioned as you may be, what you really are, good sir, is someone who's just plugging holes on a sinking ship. That liberal democratic capitalism has proven itself to be a failed system. That these issues you're trying to raise awareness of, animal rights for instance, the exploitation of animals is not a flaw in the system that needs to be fixed. No. It's a feature of the capitalist system that is what allows for it to function at all. You need exploitation. You're never gonna get rid of it altogether and still have something we recognize as capitalism. And with every mind you change with one of your books, Peter Singer, you're not only just alleviating the symptoms of a broken system, hiding things and allowing people to keep it at the back of their mind while all this keeps going. Not only that, but what you're also doing is you're indoctrinating an entirely new generation of young adults that if …