We therefore have mixed feelings about reaching the fifth anniversary of the launch of the journal. On the one hand, we are pleased to continue to give the authors an opportunity to share arguments and ideas that would have been difficult, and in some cases impossible, to publish elsewhere. On the other hand, we were hoping that five years would be enough for freedom of thought and discussion to return to its central role in academia, or, even better, to become its guiding principle.

We are not there yet.

In March 2026, over 2000 people, including students and academics, signed a petition to the University of Ghent urging it not to hire Nathan Cofnas. At least 45 philosophers from the philosophy department at the same university signed a similar petition. The petitions were unsuccessful: Cofnas was hired. But he had previously been the target of an attempt to have him dismissed from his position at the University of Cambridge, and had endured the withdrawal of his fellowship at Emmanuel College.

Why does Cofnas elicit such unwelcoming reactions whenever he moves to a new university? His new colleagues at Ghent argued that Cofnas’s beliefs about demographic differences in average IQ levels are a form of racism, that research on IQ differences is “pseudoscience”, and that the scientific community agrees that this whole area of research is “rubbish”.

This topic is considered taboo, we believe, for the pernicious effects it could have. If some groups have, on average, higher IQ than others, then individual members of groups with a lower average IQ could be discriminated against. This is a genuine concern, and we do not underestimate its importance. But we need to ask ourselves whether, if we are concerned about potential discrimination, trying to prevent research on this topic is the best course of action.

This is the core question of “The Equality Paradox,” the lead paper in the May 2026 issue of the JCI. It is a regrettable sign of the times that the author has felt the need to use a pseudonym, but given the problems that Cofnas has had to face, that is an understandable choice.

The second paper in this issue, by Alan Sokal, asks when we have epistemic and methodological reasons to deny someone an academic platform. Sokal discusses when an area of research can be dismissed as “pseudoscience” or “rubbish”. According to Sokal, when we use a sociological, rather than an epistemic, criterion to address the legitimacy of a researcher, or of a whole area of research, we lack a solid basis for dismissing it.

The point is not that every controversial claim is true, or that every controversial speaker deserves a platform in every setting. The point is that serious claims should be assessed by argument, evidence, and reasoning, not by petitions, reputational pressure, or the desire to make certain questions untouchable.

This problem is not confined to academia.

For my podcast Lives Well Lived, I spoke with Meg Smaker, the documentary filmmaker behind The UnRedacted, formerly known as Jihad Rehab. Her film follows former members of Al Qaeda who had been captured by the US and imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay because of their roles in the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, undergoing rehabilitation in Saudi Arabia. It asks viewers to consider men we have heard much about, but rarely heard from directly.

After the film premiered at Sundance, it became the target of intense backlash and cancellation attempts. There are legitimate questions to ask about any documentary, especially one dealing with terrorism, Islam, detention, rehabilitation, and representation. But asking hard questions about a film is not the same as ensuring that audiences cannot see it and judge it for themselves.

Meg’s case raises the same issue that led us to found the Journal of Controversial Ideas: are we still willing to allow difficult subjects to be examined openly, or do we increasingly prefer to make them untouchable?

I have some personal experience of this. Over the years, some of my own views have led to protests and attempts to prevent me from speaking. That has made me more aware of how easily opposition to a view can slide from legitimate criticism into an attempt to make that view, or the person who holds it, inadmissible.

The fact that some forms of speech may cause offense is not, by itself, sufficient reason to censor them.

We should be especially cautious when our first impulse is to condemn. Before rejecting an argument, we should understand it; before denouncing a film, we should see it; before excluding a speaker or scholar, we should ask whether their claims deserve to be stated openly and then answered by evidence and reason.

Freedom of speech matters most when we are confronted with ideas we find disturbing, offensive, or wrong.

This post includes portions of an editorial co-authored by Francesca Minerva, Jeff McMahan and myself for the May 2026 issue of the Journal of Controversial Ideas: https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/volumes_issues/6/1

Listen to our conversation with Meg Smaker on Lives Well Lived:

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We are at a critical moment for global health.

The Life You Can Save has just released its new Health Sector Report 2026–2028: Strategic Priorities for High-Impact Giving. It is a detailed report of more than 60 pages, now available to download from The Life You Can Save website. It sets out where donors can do the most good in global health over the next three years.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, global health aid reached $80.3 billion. It is now projected to fall to $36.2 billion by 2030. The United States, historically the largest bilateral donor to global health, cut its health aid by an estimated 67% in 2025. Major European donors have moved in a similar direction: the United Kingdom reduced disbursements by 39%, while France and Germany have also made substantial cuts.

The disruption in global health funding has exposed the fragility of systems dependent on government aid. When major government donors withdraw suddenly, the consequences can be severe. Clinics lose resources. Supply chains weaken. Community health workers may go unsupported. Programs that have been saving lives are interrupted.

Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest concentration of multidimensional poverty and the greatest dependence on external health financing, has already seen a 25% drop in external health assistance in a single year.

The report projects that cuts to maternal and child health aid could contribute to an additional 4.5 million deaths among children under five by 2030, reversing the downward trend that we have seen for the past 20 years.

That is a moral emergency. But it is also a reason to act.

The Life You Can Save’s mission is to help lift people out of poverty by changing the way people think about and donate to charity. Since 2013, it has helped direct more than $140 million to research-backed, high-impact charities.

This new report establishes The Life You Can Save’s strategic direction for health sector recommendations from 2026 to 2028. It is the first in a new series of strategic reviews. Similar reports will follow on Education, Livelihoods, and Women and Girls.

The report is guided by The Life You Can Save’s evaluation framework: scale, neglectedness, and solvability. In plain terms, that means asking three questions. How large is the problem? Is it being neglected by other funders? And do we know of interventions that can make real progress?

That is the right way to think about giving. We should want our donations to help as many people as possible.

A key strength of this report is that it looks not only at mortality — how many people die — but also at how many people are living with illness, disability, or chronic conditions, and how severe those conditions are. Looking at both gives us a fuller picture of the real burden of disease.

The report identifies several urgent priorities. In low-income countries, more than half of all health loss is driven by communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases. Neonatal disorders, respiratory infections, malaria, neglected tropical diseases, tuberculosis, and maternal and child health remain areas where more funding can do a great deal of good.

We already know interventions that work: malaria prevention, routine immunization, nutritional supplements, community health workers, family planning, kangaroo mother care, and basic primary healthcare. These are proven ways of saving and improving lives.

Community health worker programs, when properly integrated into national health systems, can reduce under-five mortality by up to 27% and infant mortality by 33%. Malaria interventions such as long-lasting insecticidal nets and seasonal chemoprevention can reach tens of millions of children at very low cost.

At the same time, the report makes clear that we cannot think only in terms of individual diseases. Health systems themselves need strengthening. A child cannot receive malaria treatment if the local clinic has no medicine. A mother cannot receive proper care if there is no trained health worker nearby. A vaccination program cannot succeed if supply chains break down.

That is why the report emphasizes community health workers, medicine supply chains, primary healthcare, and technical assistance to governments. These may sound less dramatic than a single lifesaving intervention, but they are often what make lifesaving interventions possible.

The Life You Can Save’s Maximize Your Impact Fund has been designed to allow donations to move toward the highest-impact opportunities as they emerge.

In a time when major donors are pulling back, flexible and evidence-based funding matters. It can support the workforce that delivers care, the supply chains that keep medicines available, and the primary health systems that make prevention and treatment possible at scale.

The moral point is simple.

When we know that suffering and death are preventable, and when we have evidence about how to prevent them, and the capacity to do so without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we should act.

The full Health Sector Report 2026–2028 is available now on The Life You Can Save website. I encourage you to read it.

And I invite you to donate to The Life You Can Save today — especially through the Maximize Your Impact Fund — so your gift can go where evidence suggests it can do the most good.

Read the full Health Sector Report

Donate to The Life You Can Save

Will MacAskill is a philosopher and one of the leading figures behind effective altruism, a movement that asks how we can use evidence and reason to do the most good. His work spans questions of global poverty, existential risk, and how individuals can align their lives with their values in a complex and uncertain world.

In the latest episode of Lives Well Lived, the podcast I co-host with Kasia de Lazari-Radek, we discuss how Will’s thinking developed from an early interest in moral philosophy into a practical framework for action. We explore what it means to take ethical ideas seriously in one’s own life, how to think about giving and career choice, and why some causes may matter far more than others.

In our conversation, we also consider the moral importance of future generations, the risks posed by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, and how to act under conditions of deep moral uncertainty. Throughout, Will reflects on the challenge of living in accordance with one’s values while maintaining a sense of balance and humanity.

Below are some extracts from our discussion, organised thematically and lightly edited for clarity.

From moral belief to action

PETER SINGER: You’ve said that you were convinced that we have a moral obligation to donate much more than we typically do, but that you weren’t yet acting on those beliefs. What changed for you?

WILL MACASKILL: I had been very convinced, even as a teenager, that we have a moral obligation to donate much more than we typically do, but I hadn’t yet found the moral motivation. It was only once I started volunteering that it really started to weigh on me that I wasn’t acting in accordance with my values. I had this sense that I was not doing what I ought to be doing. And it was meeting people who were willing to really put their money where their mouth was, living on 9,000 pounds per year, and had pledged to give all of their income above a baseline, that had a big effect on me.

Living on less, giving more

PETER SINGER: You’ve structured your life in a way that allows you to give away a large proportion of your income. How do you think about that in practical terms?

WILL MACASKILL: I still live on what is the equivalent of 20,000 pounds, and then donate the rest above that. I would consider that I live quite a luxurious life within these bounds. I’ve deliberately tried to cultivate dispositions and interests that are cheaper to fulfil. That’s been an important part of making this sustainable over the long term. If I can save time, then that’s the place where I really do try and spend money. Most of the time, I’m not feeling like I’m sacrificing things that I really value.

The importance of effectiveness

PETER SINGER: One of the central ideas in effective altruism is that some ways of helping are much more effective than others. How large are those differences?

WILL MACASKILL: Donating to a highly effective organisation can do hundreds or even thousands of times as much good as donating to an average organization. You can either save a child’s life for $5,000 or give someone in a rich country maybe one extra month of life. That’s why there’s such a radical difference in how much impact you can have. And that’s something that people often underestimate.

Rethinking career choice

PETER SINGER: People often think about careers in terms of what they are most passionate about. You’ve suggested a different approach.

WILL MACASKILL: People want to look inside themselves and ask what they most want to do. Whereas we encourage people to look at the world and ask what the world needs, what sorts of person and aptitudes are most needed. That can lead to quite different conclusions. Then you can think about where you might fit into that. And in some cases, rather than working directly on a problem, you might pursue some career where you are able to earn more and donate.

Present needs and future risks

PETER SINGER: A lot of your recent work has focused on long-term risks. How do you balance concern for present problems with concern for future generations?

WILL MACASKILL: We have enough problems in the present, and I would say we should be working on those. But that doesn’t mean that problems that impact future generations don’t also exist. There are the sorts of things that could result in the end of civilisation or even the complete extinction of the human race. And that would be extremely bad, by completely curtailing the future, by there being no future at all.

Artificial intelligence and loss of control

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK: Can you tell us something about the risks of AI and how you think about them?

WILL MACASKILL: I’ve gotten more and more concerned over time. I now think it’s more likely than not that we will see really enormous amounts of change from AI, even within a short period of time, in the next five or ten years. I think it’s more likely than not that we have AI that automates the process of research and development, where you have AI scientists ultimately wholly replacing people.

What follows from that is an enormous number of challenges. One category is the way that we might lose control to AI systems themselves, where humanity is no longer actually in charge in the future, and instead it is some other system with quite alien preferences.

The thing I’m most worried about at the moment is intense concentration of power. At the point where AI can generally substitute for humans, you could have radically greater concentration of power than we have ever seen.

Moral uncertainty

PETER SINGER: You’ve also written about moral uncertainty. How confident are you in any particular moral theory?

WILL MACASKILL: If I have to pick, I would go for something like classical utilitarianism. But my credence in that is very low. I’m very sceptical about our ability to know the correct moral theory. I have quite a lot of credence in nihilism. And I think it’s very likely that we haven’t yet figured out the correct moral view.

Living well

PETER SINGER: Given all of this, do you think you are living a good life?

WILL MACASKILL: I think I’m living a life in accordance with my own values. There’s always the thought that one could have done more. I do feel that tension. But I also think it’s important to maintain my overall humanity. And to have a huge positive impact without sacrificing other dimensions of life.

Zoe has spent decades working at the intersection of education, ethics, and systems change. She argues that solving problems is not enough. We must become “solutionaries”: people who address unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane systems in ways that do the most good and the least harm for people, animals, and the environment.

In our conversation, we discuss what distinguishes a solutionary from a problem solver, why education may be the root system underlying other societal systems, how facts and emotion interact in moral change, and what it means to live a well-lived life.

Below is an edited and condensed version of our discussion, organised thematically for clarity.

What Is a “Solutionary”?

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: You are the author of The Solutionary Way. “Solutionary” is a word you did not coin, but have embraced. What does it mean?

ZOE WEIL: A solutionary is not just a problem solver. A solutionary has an ethical foundation to problem solving. It is somebody who identifies unjust, unsustainable, inhumane systems and transforms them in ways that do the most good and the least harm for everybody — people, animals, and the environment.

Somebody can solve the problem of blowing up a mountaintop for coal removal. They are a problem solver, but not a solutionary. A solutionary looks at root and systemic problems and addresses them at the causal level.

Becoming a Solutionary

PETER SINGER: How did you become a solutionary?

ZOE WEIL: I identify as a solutionary, but I feel a little trepidation even in using the word for myself because it’s so aspirational. It requires rejecting binary thinking, which is difficult in our culture. For me, being a solutionary has always meant trying to make a difference strategically and in ways that do the most good and the least harm.

I believe that education is the root system underlying all other societal systems. But very few people are really trying to change the systems that perpetuate suffering and harm. Even when people learn about atrocities in which they play a part, most don’t want to change their behaviours. So I’m more focused on systems.

I did not grow up in an activist family. I was expected to become a doctor, lawyer, or business person. I studied pre-med, then English, then briefly law, then divinity school. I stumbled into humane education while looking for a summer job. I taught middle school students about animal issues after reading Animal Liberation. The course was unexpectedly popular.

One week I taught about product testing on animals. A student went home, hand-wrote leaflets, and came back the next day to hand them out on the street. He just turned into an activist overnight. Years later, when I introduced him at an event, he interrupted me and said, “That course changed my life.” It changed my life too. That was when I realised there was a field called humane education where I could work on these issues.

A humane educator teaches about interconnected issues of human rights, environmental sustainability, and animal protection. A solutionary addresses root and systemic causes.

Facts, Emotion, and Change

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: People say you don’t change minds with facts alone, but by making people feel differently. What is your experience?

ZOE WEIL: They can go together. You can show undercover footage that contains both facts and emotional content. I used to show high school students videos of animal experimentation, and I always told them they could close their eyes.

The emotional content without facts is manipulation, and the facts without any emotional content ignore what those facts are about. The first time I saw undercover footage, I was devastated. I had read about these issues, but seeing them was galvanising. It was both rational and emotional.

Most people who are willing to learn and change already love animals. I have not found that people respond based on justice alone, but on their hearts. But what about you, Peter? I know that you say that you didn’t come to this issue because you love animals.

PETER SINGER: That’s true, I don’t consider myself an animal lover. But when I see suffering, I can relate to it. I know what pain feels like. That creates an emotional response. For me, it’s not about loving animals; it’s about responding to suffering.

Action as an Antidote to Despair

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: You write that becoming a solutionary enriches one’s life. How?

ZOE WEIL: Most people discover that doing good feels good. The solutionary process requires collaboration and rejects binary thinking. It invites deep curiosity. As soon as you make a difference, it feeds your sense of meaning and agency.

Joan Baez said that action is the antidote to despair. For many people who care deeply about the world’s problems, the only way through despair is to act.

PETER SINGER: There is an alternative: ignore the problems and have fun.

ZOE WEIL: Yes. That is why most people are not activists or solutionaries. But it is getting harder to close one’s eyes. The impacts of global problems rebound on all of us. If one cares and does not look away, this is the path forward.

Identity and the Well-Lived Life

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: What motivates you more - hope or despair?

ZOE WEIL: Living a well-lived life motivates me more than either. A few years ago, I discovered through a DNA test that my beloved father was not my biological father and that I had dozens of half siblings. My mother had died five days earlier. It was like a freight train hit me.

A half sibling told me three things about myself: that I was good at backgammon, ping pong, and puzzles. They were trivial but true. It made me think about identity. When I align my actions with my values, that becomes my identity.

PETER SINGER: You also say that when you look in the mirror, you can respect the person you’re looking at.

ZOE WEIL: Hope is an emotion. It comes and goes. I have been less hopeful recently. But we cannot sink into despair. Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. If I roll up my sleeves and work, hope may return. If it doesn’t, there is still work to be done. Meaning is a powerful motivator.

Choosing Causes

PETER SINGER: Are there better and worse causes?

ZOE WEIL: I have my priorities, education and food systems feel fundamental, but I don’t tell others what they should care about. I invite people to ask: what problems concern me? What am I good at? What do I love to do? Where those answers intersect, that is a powerful place to act.

There is also a four-phase process: identify a problem, investigate it, innovate solutions, and implement them.

PETER SINGER: What about small causes, affecting few people or animals, versus large ones, affecting many?

ZOE WEIL: I focus on systems. But I don’t feel it is my place to tell someone what issue to work on. What fascinates me is how many people work to reduce euthanasia in shelters while continuing to eat animals. I have been vegan for years. Today, there is no sacrifice in it at all.

Living Fully

PETER SINGER: What, finally, constitutes a well-lived life for you?

ZOE WEIL: Two things. First, ethical alignment. How well am I embodying kindness, compassion, integrity, courage, generosity, perseverance in a most good, least harm way, given the global impacts of my choices?

Second, how fully do I live? I wake up and think, “One day closer to death.” It sounds morbid, but it reminds me to ask what I am going to do today that makes today worth living.

I work hard, but I also go outside in the rain to watch amphibian migrations. I stand under meteor showers. I am the first one who gets up to dance. I don’t believe in an afterlife. This is it. How fully can you live it?

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: I love that.

PETER SINGER: Thank you. That adds to what you said about living meaningfully.

ZOE WEIL: I can only do any of this because I am privileged. I am safe. I have enough to eat. That makes living a well-lived life that does the most good and the least harm even more of a responsibility.

Rebecca’s work has long explored the intersection of science, ethics, and the human search for meaning. Trained first in physics and later in philosophy, she brings to moral questions a sensibility shaped by the second law of thermodynamics, Spinoza’s naturalism, and decades of reflection on what it means to justify one’s life to oneself. Her recent book centres on what she calls “the mattering instinct” - the deeply human need not merely to survive, but to feel that one’s life counts.

In our conversation, we begin with entropy and end with her own candid reflections on whether she has lived well. Along the way, we discuss why knowledge and kindness can be understood as counter-entropic, why human beings are “matter longing to matter,” how different people seek to secure their sense of worth, and how the search for mattering can go wrong, personally, socially, and politically.

Below is an edited and condensed version of our discussion, organised thematically for clarity.

Life as Resistance to Entropy

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: In The Mattering Instinct, you write that a life well lived “joins forces with life in its resistance to entropy.” Could you explain what you mean?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: I came into philosophy from physics, and I’ve long been fascinated with the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy is nature’s scorecard for disorder. In closed systems, entropy increases. Disorder grows, and eventually the system breaks down.

Living systems are different. They are not closed. They take in free energy, in the form of food or sunlight, and use it to resist entropy. So long as we live, we are counter-entropic. We put up a good fight, though eventually entropy wins.

What does this have to do with a life well lived? It’s a leap, but I think we intuitively recognise that some things are better because they move in the direction of order rather than disorder. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Clarity is better than confusion. Kindness is better than cruelty. These are counter-entropic.

I don’t mean that we can derive morality from physics. We can’t derive an “ought” from an “is.” But entropy offers a way of capturing something about flourishing. It doesn’t undermine our ethical intuitions. It gives them metaphorical support.

PETER SINGER: So this is a broad metaphor, not a strict scientific law about how we ought to live?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: Yes, of course. It’s metaphorical. It’s a way of getting a grasp on what is better. The meaning of life is another phrase that I could never quite get hold of. But thinking of life as resistance, as being on the side of flourishing, helps me think about it.

“Matter Longing to Matter”

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Where does mattering come in?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: I define mattering as deserving of attention. We talk about what matters and who matters. It’s a normative concept.

What we are, I would say, is matter longing to matter. That captures something unusual about our species. We can ask: do I matter? We are wired to pay attention to ourselves. That’s built into us. But we can also step outside ourselves and ask whether we deserve all that attention.

From that capacity for self-reflection, we become justificatory creatures. We seek values that can justify our lives to ourselves.

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Is there a basis for believing that we matter, beyond the fact that we think we do?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: The question arises because of self-reflection. We question our own self-mattering. I’ve spent a lot of time studying depression, and one characteristic statement is, “I don’t matter.” It matters to the depressed person that they don’t matter.

In the United States, the suicide hotline address is “youmatter.com.” That shows how fundamental this need is. Some people seek social mattering. Others seek it through work, through achievement, through religion. I’ve spoken to people about this for over forty years. The diversity of responses fascinates me.

PETER SINGER: And how do you strive to matter?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: I don’t know that I matter at all. But I strive to matter through trying to understand how everything hangs together. Wilfrid Sellars defined philosophy as trying to see how things, in the broadest sense, hang together. That is the mattering project for philosophers.

The Mattering Map

PETER SINGER: You describe four major “continents” on what you call the mattering map. Could you outline them?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: It’s an empirical hypothesis, based on decades of talking to people and reading biographies. There are four major strategies: transcendence, socialising, heroic striving, and competition.

Transcenders ground their mattering in something beyond the empirical world. It might be God or a spiritual order. I was raised Orthodox Jewish. For the first thirteen years of my life, I never doubted how much I mattered. God was watching. Every aspect of life was governed by law. It was constraining, but it was powerful.

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: How did you lose your faith?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: It didn’t make moral sense to me. Suffering didn’t make sense. My family in Hungary was destroyed by the Nazis. When I was thirteen, I read Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian. He dissected the arguments for God’s existence. That had a profound effect on me.

PETER SINGER: And the other continents?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: Socialisers understand mattering as mattering to others. That might mean family and friends. But it can also mean strangers. Fame is a form of mattering to strangers. Many young people say they would give up relationships for fame. Fame can feel like evidence that you deserve attention.

I once heard of a Nobel laureate who was happy for fifteen minutes after receiving the prize. Then he remembered that others had won it too. The happiness ended there.

Heroic strivers pursue standards of excellence that allow them to reconcile themselves with themselves. It might be intellectual, artistic, athletic. It doesn’t have to be grand. It just has to be something that gets you out of bed in the morning.

Wittgenstein is an example. He was often unhappy, but his reported last words were, “Tell them I’ve lived a wonderful life.” In his notebook he wrote, “I don’t know why we’re here, but I know it’s not to be happy.”

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: But would we want such a life for our children?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: Perhaps not. But I’m struck by the diversity among us. Some people are outliers. They pursue projects we might not choose. Given Wittgenstein’s temperament, perhaps he had no real choice.

The fourth group are competitors. For them, mattering is a zero-sum game. If others matter more, they matter less. This can be individual or group-based. Some people feel their mattering is being taken away by social progress. I sought out a former neo-Nazi to understand this psychology. His sense of mattering was grounded in resentment.

Competitiveness can be destructive, but not all competition is noxious. Psychologists distinguish different forms. Some competitors achieve remarkable things.

Mattering and Happiness

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: How does feeling that you matter differ from feeling happy?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: We need to distinguish episodic pleasure from life satisfaction. Life satisfaction involves stepping back and judging your life as a whole. It’s a reflective judgment: I am living the way I ought to be living.

Animals experience pleasure. But this reflective assessment seems uniquely human. It has everything to do with the mattering instinct. It’s about justifying your life to yourself.

Have You Lived Well?

PETER SINGER: We always end by asking our guests to reflect on their own lives. Do you feel you have lived well?

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: No, I don’t think I have lived well. I think I’ve made progress toward living better.

I became an atheist at thirteen. Soon after, I became a utilitarian. I decided that I could continue living according to Orthodox Jewish law because breaking away would cause my family pain. I made a vow to wait until my parents had died. I didn’t believe, but I lived as if I did. It was at a tremendous cost to my integrity.

I later realised the toll this took on my sense of autonomy. I was very unhappy. I’ve since heard from many people in similar situations, asking what to do. I don’t advise them to do what I did.

I’m also conflict-averse. After I published my first novel, there was a negative reaction within philosophy. I withdrew from the philosophical community. That was painful and contributed to my sense of not having lived well.

PETER SINGER: And yet that novel contained the germ of your mattering project. It must be hard to regret publishing it.

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: I don’t know. It led me away from the philosophical path I thought I would follow. But it also led to this project. Perhaps there is a happy ending. I don’t know.

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Why not? There might be.

REBECCA GOLDSTEIN: I don’t know.

In the latest episode of Lives Well Lived, the podcast I co-host with Kasia de Lazari-Radek, we speak with journalist and author Jennifer Wallace about her new book: Mattering: The Secret to Life of Deep Connection and Purpose.

Jennifer’s work focuses on a question that sits beneath many contemporary anxieties: what it means to feel that one’s life counts. In our conversation, she argues that what many people lack today is not success, praise, or validation, but the sense that they matter to others and in the world more broadly.

We talk about how mattering can be formed and lost across the life course, from achievement culture- the subject of her 2023 bestseller, Never Enough – to parenting and work. When we discuss how mattering can be gendered, Jennifer reflects on her own experiences, including stepping away from a successful career, and on the research that has shaped her thinking about unconditional worth, contribution, and balance. We explore how mattering differs from self-esteem, how it relates to impact and moral value, and why she believes mattering has become an urgent concern in a time of social fragmentation and rapid change.

Below is an edited version of our conversation, organised thematically and condensed for clarity.

When achievement stopped being enough

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK:
Was there a moment in your own life when you realised that mattering, not success, was what was really at stake?

JENNIFER WALLACE:
I’ve been reflecting a lot while writing this book on moments when I felt like I mattered and moments when I didn’t. One moment that keeps coming up was when I was a junior in college at Harvard.

Up until that point, my life was a lot of achievement, a lot of feeling that my worth rested on my accomplishments. Then I had an extraordinary experience. Harvard students run the only student-run homeless shelter in the country, and I was matched with an extraordinary woman named Sue.

For the first time, I realised I was not achieving for my résumé. I was achieving so that I could be better for others. That was my first real experience of mattering, and it made me realise that the whole point of achievement and success is to be better for others.

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK:
That’s a wonderful story. I imagine it felt good.

JENNIFER WALLACE:
It felt really good. And here’s something I’ve never told anybody. At the time, Harvard students and their families had access to subsidised housing. Sue became my “Aunt Sue”, and we found her a Harvard studio apartment.

It wasn’t just that I helped her through the shelter or with her résumé. Had I not been going to that school, she wouldn’t have had access to the kind of apartment she could actually afford. That was the most meaningful experience of my young adult life.

Losing a sense of mattering

PETER SINGER:
Did that sense of mattering stay with you as your career developed, especially when you stepped away from 60 Minutes?

JENNIFER WALLACE:
I stepped away from 60 Minutes when my husband and I moved to London for his work. I freelanced while I was there, but that moment really rattled my sense of mattering.

Up until then, I knew who valued me and how I added value. Almost overnight, that collapsed. I moved to London, I knew nobody, and I wasn’t getting much work. I felt intense loneliness and purposelessness.

I wish I had what I now call the “mattering lens”. Had I known that what I was experiencing was a mattering crisis, I wouldn’t have personalised it so much. I would have put it into context and found a faster way forward.

PETER SINGER:
Is that what you’re trying to offer others now?

JENNIFER WALLACE:
Yes. Life transitions can shake our sense of mattering, even transitions we choose. Changing jobs, becoming a parent, experiencing loss or divorce, all of these can disrupt it.

But we can rebuild it. I’ve come to believe that we have a responsibility to matter in this world, and that we have agency. Mattering isn’t something that just happens to us.

Practical ways to rebuild mattering

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK:
How can people actually do that?

JENNIFER WALLACE:
One approach is what researchers call “me-search”. When something is personal to you, study it. Seek out role models. Read, listen, learn. Don’t be so hard on yourself, we tend to personalise instead of contextualise.

Another piece is invitation. We often underestimate how being vulnerable draws people in. Researchers call this the “Beautiful Mess Effect”. We think our lives need to be shiny and perfect to invite others in, but that’s not true.

And if no one is inviting you, you still have agency. I interviewed a woman going through a difficult divorce whose therapist said, “Then you start hosting dinner parties in your kitchen.” You can create mattering in your relationships.

I also think about finding a need and meeting it with your time, talent, and treasure. I saw this with a grandmother who hosted weekly breakfasts for her grandson and his friends. She created community, and everyone involved felt that sense of mattering.

Is mattering gendered?

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK:
Much of the work of making others feel they matter is often feminised. Does gender shape who gets to matter?

JENNIFER WALLACE:
On average, yes. Women are often socialised to matter through relationships. When those relationships rupture, it can hit their sense of worth deeply.

For men, a lot of mattering comes from work. When they lose a job, their sense of mattering can collapse overnight. In a study of suicidal men, the two words most often used to describe their suffering were “useless” and “worthless”.

If we want boys to know they matter across domains, they need to see men mattering in relationships too. Otherwise, relational work remains coded as women’s work.

Mattering beyond one’s immediate community

PETER SINGER:
Can we matter by helping people beyond our own communities, especially those in much greater need?

JENNIFER WALLACE:
Absolutely. I’m on the board of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York, largely because of my college experience. Helping people through painful transitions like homelessness is one of the most meaningful ways to matter.

But I struggle with how to convince people living in extreme poverty of their unconditional worth in a society where their needs go unmet. I firmly believe mattering is unconditional, but capitalism increasingly tells us that worth is tied to contribution.

Mattering, impact, and equality

PETER SINGER:
If some people save millions of lives and others don’t, do some people matter more?

JENNIFER WALLACE:
My worldview is that I am not better than anyone else, and no one is better than me. Impact can be greater, but that doesn’t mean someone matters more.

Bill Gates’s impact may have a bigger ripple, but I wouldn’t say he matters more than a community organiser who keeps her neighbourhood safe. Impact and mattering are not the same thing.

Achievement, values, and children

PETER SINGER:
When does achievement become toxic?

JENNIFER WALLACE:
Achievement becomes toxic when a child’s developing sense of self is so tangled up in performance that they only feel they matter when they achieve, when they have a high GPA [Grade Point Average, a measure of academic achievement], the right number of likes, the right status, or a certain body type. That’s the point where achievement stops being healthy.

Not all achievement is toxic. We started this conversation with the idea of not being better than others, but better for others. Achievement that contributes to society, that alleviates suffering, that adds meaningful value, that’s different. The real issue is values.

Researchers like Tim Kasser have shown that, across cultures, we tend to hold two broad kinds of values. Extrinsic values include status, image, popularity, and appearance. Intrinsic values include growth, contribution, and being pro-social.

Values operate like a zero-sum game. The more time and energy you spend pursuing extrinsic values, the less room you have for intrinsic ones. Extrinsic values are consistently linked with anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Intrinsic values are linked with the wellbeing we want for ourselves and our children.

In my research, kids who were doing well under pressure, who were achieving at high levels and sustaining it, felt valued for who they were and were relied on to add value at home, at school, and in the wider world. The kids who struggled most felt their worth was contingent on performance.

If we want to raise healthy strivers for life, my money would be on raising kids who believe they are unconditionally worthy. Those kids are not afraid to reach for high goals, because reaching for high goals involves failure and setbacks. When worth is tied to achievement, people eventually stop reaching.

I felt unconditional worth in my own family, and that made me unafraid to try, fail, and try again. Parents play a unique role here, because kids are growing up in a culture that constantly tells them, “I am what I have, I am what I do, I am what people say and think about me.” Parents can counter that by showing their children they matter outside a system that tells them they always have to prove it.

I love achievement. I love that my work has reached people. I want my children to experience that joy too. But I want them to have that joy for life, not burn out. I think of mattering as a kind of clean fuel. Linking self-worth to achievement is more like dirty fuel. It might get you a short-term win, but eventually it clogs the engine.

On happiness and living well

PETER SINGER:
With that understanding of what it is to live well, are you living well?

JENNIFER WALLACE:
I would say I am living very well. I have rich relationships that make me feel valued. I have the opportunity to fill a need that I think is desperately needed in this world, an awareness of mattering. I feel honoured to bring decades of resilience research into the hands of people who can use it. That feels deeply meaningful to me.

PETER SINGER:
Would you like to leave our listeners with one question or practice to take away?

JENNIFER WALLACE:
I’ve adopted a challenge for myself, and I don’t meet it all the time, but I aspire to it. I try to picture everyone I meet, strangers, family, friends, wearing an invisible sign that says, “Tell me: do I matter?”

We can answer that with warmth, eye contact, and civility. With compassion instead of judgment. What I’ve found is that the fastest way to feel like you matter is to remind someone else why they do.

Marion Nestle became a public figure late in life, but her influence on how we think about food, health, and power has been wide-reaching. In this conversation, we discuss what it means to eat well in a food system designed to encourage overconsumption, and how a life shaped by difficulty can still unfold in unexpected ways.

Nestle is Professor Emerita of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, and the author of Food Politics, What to Eat, What to Eat Now, and several other books on food, as well as her memoir, Slow Cooked. Our conversation ranges from ultra-processed foods and weight-loss drugs to personal responsibility, public policy, and her own reflections on whether she has lived well.

Below are highlights from our conversation, lightly edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

Does eating well matter over a lifetime?

PETER SINGER:
Do you think that taking your own advice about what to eat has contributed to your long and productive life?

MARION NESTLE:
I suppose it has. I certainly didn’t inherit very good genetics. My father died of a heart attack at forty-seven. I’ve had reasonably healthy personal habits. I never smoked. I don’t drink very much. I get plenty of sleep. And I follow my own dietary advice because that’s the way I like to eat. That’s very lucky.

What does that advice amount to?

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK:
So what do you actually eat?

MARION NESTLE:
I eat according to advice that’s so simple that Michael Pollan can do it in seven words: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. And I took seven hundred pages to say basically the same thing. I don’t eat a lot of junk food, or what’s now called ultra-processed food. I never have. I don’t like it very much. One of my food rules is never eat anything artificial. I’m also fortunate in not having a weight problem, and that probably has something to do with genetics.

What counts as ultra-processed food?

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK:
What do you mean by artificial food?

MARION NESTLE:
Artificial sweeteners, foods constructed with extracted ingredients rather than whole foods. Ultra-processed foods are industrially produced and formulated to be irresistibly delicious. Their purpose is profit for stockholders, not public health. You can’t make them in your home kitchen.

There’s now a great deal of research showing that people who eat a lot of their calories from ultra-processed foods have poorer health outcomes. They gain weight, are more likely to have type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions. These are observational studies, so they can’t prove causation, but there are now well-controlled clinical trials showing that people eating diets based on ultra-processed foods consume hundreds more calories a day without realising it. That alone is reason enough to suggest eating less of these things

Why does processing itself matter?

PETER SINGER:
What is it about being ultra-processed that causes harm?

MARION NESTLE:
The leading hypothesis is the destruction of what’s called the food matrix. The simplest example is an orange. You have to peel it, chew it, swallow it, and the sugars are absorbed slowly, along with fibre and nutrients. If you drink orange juice, you’re drinking the equivalent of several oranges at once, and the sugar is absorbed much more quickly.

That applies to plant-based meats as well. These products are made from isolated ingredients, starting with pea protein. Pea protein is different from peas. It’s probably healthier to eat peas than pea protein. The explanation isn’t fully established yet, but that’s the best one we have.

Should we be eating less meat?

PETER SINGER:
Is there a tension between criticising processed foods and encouraging people to eat less meat?

MARION NESTLE:
Eating less meat is a strong recommendation of the Eat-Lancet Commission, especially in industrialised countries. Meat isn’t essential. If you don’t want to eat meat, you don’t have to. From my standpoint, you don’t need an ultra-processed substitute for it. If you don’t want meat, just don’t eat it.

These are difficult questions where health authorities are reluctant, for political reasons, to recommend reducing meat consumption at all. We’ll see what the forthcoming US dietary guidelines eventually say.

Do we need animal protein to thrive?

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK:
Do we need animal-based protein in order to flourish?

MARION NESTLE:
No. The only nutrient you really need to pay attention to is vitamin B12, and you can get that from eggs, dairy, fish, or supplements. Whole civilisations have flourished on plant-based diets. In countries like Australia or the United States, not eating meat is nutritionally a non-issue. There are special circumstances, such as desperately poor populations, where meat can be beneficial, but those are exceptions.

What about the obsession with protein?

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK:
Do people need more protein as they get older?

MARION NESTLE:
This is nutritionally odd. If you’re eating enough calories and a reasonable variety of foods, it’s almost impossible not to get enough protein. Most Americans get about twice as much protein as they need. The idea that protein needs to be added to everything, even beer, is a marketing phenomenon.

Some of this has to do with weight-loss drugs, because people lose muscle along with weight. That’s led to the idea that people need even more protein, even though there’s very little evidence that eating more than you already do helps. It’s something food companies can sell, and they’re very good at selling it.

How are weight-loss drugs changing eating habits?

PETER SINGER:
Are drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy changing the food system?

MARION NESTLE:
There’s no question about it. People lose weight because they eat less. Eating less is very bad for business. People on these drugs are spending less on food, particularly ultra-processed foods. They’re eating fewer snacks and soft drinks and looking for more nutrient-dense foods.

What fascinates me is that people say the “food noise” stops. They stop obsessing about food. They don’t want junk food anymore. The drugs make it difficult to eat large amounts, and people who’ve never been able to lose weight are often willing to tolerate unpleasant side effects because the benefits are so significant. What happens in the long term, we don’t yet know.

How much responsibility can individuals really carry?

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK:
What role does personal responsibility play in eating well?

MARION NESTLE:
If you’re trying to eat healthfully today, you’re up against an entire food system on your own, and that system is worth trillions of dollars. Supermarkets are designed to get you to buy more. Food companies promote consumption in ways that go far beyond advertising, through store design, social media, schools, and marketing to children.

Even a well-informed individual has to work very hard to resist this. If we want people to eat better, we have to make it easier for them.

Looking back on a life

PETER SINGER:
When you look back over your life, do you feel that you’ve lived well?

MARION NESTLE:
You have the life you’re born into, and you don’t have much choice about that. The life I was born into was quite difficult for me. But I’m stunned by what’s happening now. I’m eighty-nine, and the invitations are pouring in. I travel, I lecture, I meet extraordinary people doing extraordinary things. I worked very hard to get to this point, and it feels miraculous that it’s paying off. I’m having a really good time now.

Are there still simple pleasures?

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK:
Are there still everyday pleasures that matter to you?

MARION NESTLE:
Oh yes. Food is still a great pleasure. I grow some of my own vegetables on my terrace in Manhattan. Not enough to live on, but enough to enjoy. It takes no time at all to pick something and make a salad. That still matters to me.

In this episode of “Lives Well Lived”, Kasia de Lazari-Radek and I speak with Paul Simon about the moments and mysteries behind some of the most enduring songs of the last sixty years. We begin with The Sound of Silence, which he wrote at twenty-one and still describes as a song whose meaning has shifted over time—from a rabbi singing it in Hebrew, to a Native American playing it on a wooden flute, to a girl performing it in a small Amazon village.

Paul reflects on the feeling of inspiration “like taking dictation”, why that sensation shaped Graceland and Seven Psalms, and how his work has changed as craft, age, and experience became more central to songwriting. He also speaks about The Capeman, the harsh criticism that followed, and Steven Sondheim’s insight that the musical failed because “there was a fault in the story.”

We discuss accusations of cultural appropriation, the spiritual thread running through Seven Psalms, and the moment he began to lose his hearing while writing it. Later, Paul talks about supporting E.O. Wilson’s Half-Earth Foundation, giving to mobile medical units for children, and why he still thinks he “should have given more.”

And toward the end, he reflects on the simplest measure of a life: “Are you happy?” and answers that question.

Below are highlights from our conversation. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

The mystery of writing The Sound of Silence

PETER SINGER: Paul, you wrote The Sound of Silence, the breakthrough hit for Simon and Garfunkel when you were 21 years old. The opening words are “hello, darkness, my old friend.” Is the darkness still your friend?

PAUL SIMON: Oh, that’s a good question. Well, not in a metaphorical sense. Do I like darkness? Yeah, I do. I don’t seek darkness over light or something like that. What I feel about The Sound of Silence, which I was 21 or 22 years old when I wrote it, was I have no idea how I wrote that at that point in my life.

Both the words and the melody… of all the songs I wrote, and that’s a pretty early one, of all the songs I wrote, I have a feeling that if any of them are to last for a hundred years, that would be the one. And the reason I think that is that recently somebody sent me a YouTube video of a rabbi singing The Sound of Silence in Hebrew. I saw a YouTube of a Native American sitting out somewhere in the West… dressed in traditional Indian garb, playing a flute. And he was playing The Sound of Silence. And I thought, if that melody has reached this guy, and he bothered to learn it on his wooden flute, there’s something powerful about it.

There’s another story… we stopped in a village on the Amazon, a really small one, maybe 15 structures. A girl was sitting in one of the huts playing the guitar… and she said, “I know an American song,” and she played The Sound of Silence. I’m in the Amazon. I’m not going to say I wrote that song… but how did it get there?

So there’s something about The Sound of Silence that’s beyond my explanation, including the tone of it and the language and what it was about. Still seems like I wouldn’t really have any idea about what I wrote. And the fact that when I do a show, I always close with The Sound of Silence, just me and guitar. I understand the power of the song. And it seems to have changed its meaning over the years… it seems appropriate to sing that song. There’s some element of—let’s call it—mystery to that.

How fleeting moments of inspiration shaped his greatest songs

PETER SINGER: Okay, though you certainly spanned more than one generation in your songwriting…

PAUL SIMON: It was unusual that I went from the sixties all the way through the mid-eighties writing hits. It was Graceland that extended that and really opened up a whole way of thinking to me about music and cultures and how they interact.

By the time I was writing Graceland, when those moments would occur where something—some powerful line—came into a song, I would stop and I would recognise: well, something… this is that feeling when you’re just taking dictation. You’re just… it’s just coming, and you’re writing it down. And to a great degree, that’s what happened with Seven Psalms.

When those moments occur, you realise: something inexplicable is happening. And I write something, and it’s really good. And later on I could recognise: that’s that feeling. That’s the moment when it’s not craft, it’s something else.

How broader cultural change shaped his career across decades

PETER SINGER: You got accused of cultural appropriation, and I wonder what you think of that accusation. Is that a real thing—to appropriate somebody’s culture?

PAUL SIMON: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s possible. How do you do that—appropriate somebody’s culture? If I write a song in the style of Soweto township jive, does township jive go away for everybody else? Do those sounds leave that culture and just become part of mine? No, they don’t.

And of course the reverse is true. If somebody from Poland decides that they want to make a rock and roll album… they haven’t taken anything away from American culture. So I don’t believe that’s a valid criticism.

The emotional cost of failure: The Capeman

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK: May I ask you how you cope with criticism and failure of that kind—how a musician of your sort copes with that? Are the wounds deep?

PAUL SIMON: Yes, because they were… quite personal. You withdraw and lick your wounds, and then you wait to see what to do next.

The Capeman was a very interesting failure. It had its flaws—there’s no doubt about it—but it was very interesting in what it was trying to achieve. It gave me the opportunity to write songs in the genre of fifties urban music, and also in Latin grooves because the boy was Puerto Rican. I thought that was an interesting combination of sounds.

But… the reviews were just terrible. It was doomed. And I understood later what Steven Sondheim told me: the most important element in a Broadway musical is the book. It’s not the music. You can write great music, but if you don’t have a story, your musical won’t work. And what we had was… half a story. There was a fault in the story.

Seven Psalms, spirituality, and writing from dreams

PETER SINGER: Your most recent album seems to have a more spiritual component. Is that something you’ve become more interested in?

PAUL SIMON: Yes, I think it is a more spiritual endeavour. But the way it came to me was different. It came in dreams. I would wake up at three and five in the morning three or four times a week, and there would be words just coming. I would write them down. If I started editing, everything stopped. So I said: whatever this is, it’s happening without my working at it.

As the lyrics came from my subconscious—or from wherever—they seemed to have that spiritual element. I thought: I’m just very grateful to be alive and to be on this planet… If the explanation for this creation is that it was made by a creator, then I say: great job. I love your work. And if the answer is something else, then I’m no less grateful.

I prefer the God answer because it’s a really great story… and once I let myself go into that, then I didn’t quite feel as awkward when I was writing Seven Psalms.

Losing his hearing and how it reshaped his work

PAUL SIMON: Then what happened was I started to lose my hearing. And this really made me angry. I thought: just when I’m writing and it’s all coming so easily, this happens. And then I said: maybe this is a valuable piece of information that should be examined. It opened up another room to investigate when I was writing.

When I perform Seven Psalms, I tell audiences it’s an uninterrupted 33-minute piece. Most people have never heard it. There’s no radio now, and there’s no place to hear it unless someone tells you about it. And I wouldn’t allow them to pick one song out of the 33 minutes on Spotify. You have to play the whole piece or not.

I find that people are rapt. It has some kind of effect.

Philanthropy, The Half-Earth Foundation, and The Life You Can Save

PETER SINGER: I’m wondering as you get older whether you’ve thought about what you want your philanthropic legacy to be.

PAUL SIMON: E.O. Wilson contacted me about The Half-Earth Foundation and I said, “I’m about to do a small tour. I’ll give you all the money from the tour for your foundation.” So I was able to really get his foundation going. It was maybe three million dollars.

I just gave the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss half a million dollars. Your book was inspirational—the most effective places to give your money… made me think about that. I hardly gave away the amount I should have. I will endeavour to give more.

Asking whether he has lived a good life

PETER SINGER: Are there things you would like to say about how well you’ve lived?

PAUL SIMON: It’s not an easy question. It seems to me the most basic question, as you look back over your life, is: are you happy? And I am.

I think of myself as a selfish person, but I try to be as generous as I can. I’m proud of what I achieved. If your family loves you, if you’ve been generous… that value system… I wouldn’t disagree with what Jesus had to say.

Whether he will ever write again

PETER SINGER: Are there more gifts coming from you that we are going to get?

PAUL SIMON: People ask me all the time: are you writing? Are you still writing? And I’m not. There’s actually nothing that I want to say.

Since the hearing loss, the guitar doesn’t really sound that good to me. Either I will or I won’t. It would be great to have that feeling of making something that totally surprised you… but it doesn’t feel like it’s imminent.

In this episode of “Lives Well Lived”, Kasia de Lazari-Radek and I speak with Tim Minchin about the ideas and experiences that have shaped his work, from the slow, unexpected rise of White Wine in the Sun to the harder questions he has tackled in songs like Come Home, Cardinal Pell. We begin with the Christmas song that Australians know well.

Our conversation moves from there to his sense of how he has changed between nineteen, thirty-one, and fifty, and why becoming a parent marked the point at which he felt he had to grow up. We also explore what led him to write his most activist song, the frustration he felt with the privilege of church authority, and what happened when that song unexpectedly entered the mainstream.

Tim speaks about Storm and the empirical worldview that underpins much of his work, why he sees himself as someone who stays open to changing his mind, and why the poem still stands for him. He also explains what he means by a “reality romantic” worldview: the idea that looking directly at the truth of the universe, including our impermanence, can make it more rather than less beautiful.

We go on to discuss determinism, luck, and why he thinks the stories we tell ourselves about achievement can obscure how much of it begins outside our control. And toward the end of the conversation, Tim reflects on whether he has lived well, why he is happier at fifty than he has ever been, and how he has learned to let go of the idea that he can fix everything.

Below are highlights from our conversation. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

White Wine in the Sun and the Universality of a Secular Christmas

PETER SINGER:
Tim, of all your songs, the two most memorable are both distinctly Australian. I’ll start with White Wine in the Sun about Christmas in Australia, which, of course, means Christmas in summer, and northern hemisphere types find that very strange. But for Australians like you and me, it’s normal.

You make the point that you can enjoy Christmas without being religious at all. And that’s also my situation and that of most of the people I know. I found that Australia is much less religious than the US is. But still, Australians all celebrate Christmas. And your lyrics point more to the importance of family. For most of us, that’s what Christmas is: a time for the family to be together.

I asked various friends and family which of your songs was their favourite, and this one came out clearly on top. So, I hope you feel proud of having written an iconic Australian song.

TIM MINCHIN:
Yeah, I do. And particularly love that song because of the very slow growth. It’s 19 years old, and for the first few years, no one knew it at all because I didn’t have a record label. It’s like a meme that just spread, and now it’s very well known. So I love that it succeeded on its own merits just by being passed around. I wrote it when my daughter was three weeks old and she turns 19 in November, so I always know how old the song is. We always go back to Perth for Christmas. And what’s interesting about it is it is a very personal song and a very specific worldview.

Well, it’s, as you said, quite a universal worldview in Australia ‘cause we’re a very secular country. But it’s also about craving summer when you are in a northern hemisphere winter and you’ve had a baby and you want to take her home. But lots of English people and Americans love the song too, and some people read a sort of supernatural element into it — the waiting for you in the sun sort of thing.

And of course, it gets weird for me because people in the song keep dropping dead. My grandmother initially, and my mother much more recently. And so I have to sing it from the point of view of 19-years-ago me, which I could bang on about for ages, because there’s something beautiful about putting yourself back in time when you perform. But yeah, I’m shocked by its universality.

Who Tim Was at 31, and 50

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK:
You’ve said something about a 19-year-ago you and I just couldn’t resist asking: Is there a big difference between you then and you now?

TIM MINCHIN:
I think there are big differences. I feel quite continuous — 31-year-old me and 50-year-old me. But I think the version of me I now identify as began about then. I think maybe when you have a kid, that’s when you suddenly have to grow up.

The person I was when I was 19 feels pretty different, but the person I was when I was 31 feels like the beginning of the current me.

Come Home, Cardinal Pell — Why Tim Wrote His Most Activist Song

PETER SINGER:
You’ve described this as the most activist song you’ve written. Given that most of our listeners are not Australian, they may not know who Cardinal Pell was or anything about the context in which you wrote it. So would you like to spell that out for them?

TIM MINCHIN:
George Pell was the most powerful member of the Catholic Church in Australia… he oversaw a pretty bleak era in Australian Church history… And then he went to the Vatican, and when he was asked to return to give evidence to a Royal Commission into institutional child abuse in Australia, he chucked a sickie…said he was too sick to return home.

I got asked by some activists to help them raise money to send survivors of abuse to Rome. And I said, all right, well, I’ll write a song and I’ll donate all the money… The song hit in a way that nothing I have done before or since has hit… We raised a lot of money and a lot of survivors got to go… And I’m very proud of it.

The Ethics of Calling Out Power and Privilege

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK:
Was there any special reason for you to get involved in that kind of topic?

TIM MINCHIN:
It’s a really good question because I have no personal history of abuse. But the fact that we are still in the 21st century and are meant to revere people and elevate their opinions on matters of morality and ethics because they believe in a particular set of supernatural beliefs… it just struck me as so bizarre, that privilege of the church, that the rest of us are meant to treat them differently.

And that particularly grates when there are such extraordinary rates of institutional misbehaviour and abuse.

Pell — again, I know people have different sets of beliefs — Pell was a sexist, by my estimation… He was a homophobe, by my estimation… He was a conservative. A Catholic conservative. And so at every juncture of ethical interest, he and I were not simpatico. So when he chucked a sickie, I was just like: this is absolute nonsense. And then someone basically offered on a plate the opportunity to say my feelings. And at that time, I had realised that I have a certain ability with words and comedy and the intersection of that with logic and politics. So I just went: hold my beer motherfuckers, you know? It was a bit of a flex. But what happened is that it got played on mainstream radio, and the Catholic Church threatened radio stations with legal action. And someone tried to get me done for hate speech, and, you know, it had an impact.

When Pell was himself charged with abuse, his legal team was still pointing to my song as a reason why he didn’t get a fair trial years later… which I feel no pride or smugness or shame about. I could have a big conversation about whether Pell’s reputational problem was the fault of my song or whether my song was a result of Pell’s reputational problem. I think that’s pretty clear to me. But they had to use whatever defence they could find.

Storm: Satire, Evidence, and Why He Built a Straw Person

PETER SINGER:
You do have this beat poem Storm. I’m not sure when exactly you wrote that, but it’s certainly satirical. You portray a dinner party with a guest who’s called Storm, who really gets under your skin by saying things like, there’s no such thing as knowledge, there’s just opinion, and by praising alternative medicine, to which you say, well, alternative medicine by definition either doesn’t work or isn’t proven to work, because if it did, it would just be called medicine.

And your wife, who, you say, knows what happens next, sends you a warning glance. So you try to restrain yourself, but after a while, it all gets too much when she goes on. And, to adapt your own words, you ‘get shitty with a good-looking hippie with a fairy tattooed on her spine and butterflies on her titties.’ It’s a great poem and I tend to agree with the sentiments expressed, but I’m wondering: do you still get invited to dinner parties whose guests have not been screened for their views?

TIM MINCHIN:
Storm is an incredible straw person. She was an amalgam of… I built her out of straw and burnt her in a classic Socratic sort of style. I like that poem.

It was interesting that the thing that’s changed about how that poem is perceived is that it never crossed my mind, studying feminist literature in the nineties, that making my straw person a woman would later feel sexist. But even for me, I’ve gone: oh, that feels quite like a man hectoring. At the time, I was just equal opportunity bad ideas. It never crossed my mind that I shouldn’t make my interlocutor a woman.

But I’m quite proud of it. I consider myself someone who — as I say in the poem — you show me any piece of evidence and I’ll change my mind. I’ll turn on a fucking dime. I’ll carve the words “fancy that” on the side of my cock, I think I say. So, my whole worldview is empirical. I believe in staying open to the changes in the evidence.

What’s interesting is that I haven’t changed many of my ideas in the poem because I wasn’t asserting facts. I was asserting a way of examining the facts. So it stands up for me. Certainly it’s good beat poetry. There’s not a lot of beat poetry in the world, so it’s a contribution to that rare form.

Reality Romanticism — Making Science Beautiful

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK:
Please tell us what the “reality romantic” worldview is.

TIM MINCHIN:
Well, I’m just playing with alliteration, but across the different genres in which I work, perhaps the thing I have tried to do most as an artist is bust the myth that reality or science is in opposition to art, that to understand photons, to understand how the sun functions is to ruin the sunset, to unweave the rainbow. What my job as an artist has turned out to be is to point, as brutally as possible, at the reality of the universe and, nevertheless, make it beautiful. The more you look at the truth, the more beautiful it is. The more you try to blind yourself to the truth, the more you limit your capacity for beauty.

Believing in the afterlife, for me, is a sad idea, because the most profound way to engage in life is to engage in it as a temporary state… an incredibly unlikely temporary state. So many of my songs land where Storm lands: Isn’t this enough? Just this world? Reality romantic is: we are gonna die. It’s beautiful.

Determinism, Luck, and Why He Thinks “I Didn’t Do It”

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK:
In the third lesson of your book Nine Lessons, you say: “Remember it’s all luck.” But is it really?

TIM MINCHIN:
I’m a pretty hard determinist… I am a reasonable songwriter for the same reason a child murderer is a child murderer… it’s all emergent and all we have is influence and genes… It is very important that we congratulate each other for the work we do in feeding positive stuff into the determinist system.

“Happiness Is Like an Orgasm”

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK:
You said happiness is like an orgasm – if you think about it, it goes away. Is your experience different?

TIM MINCHIN:
I’m trying to disabuse people of the mythology that happiness is best found by sitting around doing long weekend courses with some guru. At some point you just gotta go: “My happiness is not the work of my life. The work of my life is to be a good plumber.” And then you’ll suddenly find you’re happier because you’re concentrating on something else.

Did He Live Well?

PETER SINGER:
How are you going to rate your life overall?

TIM MINCHIN:
I think I’ve been privileged… I think I’m happier at 50 than I’ve ever been … I’m approaching a place where I’m satisfied with my altruistic contributions… mostly I’ve been lucky… I get to talk to some of the smartest people in the world quite often, which is the thing that makes me happiest.

In this episode of Lives Well Lived, Kasia de Lazari-Radek and I speak with Shermin Kruse, author of Stoic Empathy and the semi-autobiographical novel Butterfly Stitching, about the moment in her childhood that shaped her idea of tactical empathy. At nine years old, she stood in a marketplace in Iran facing a morality guard with an assault rifle and watched her mother defuse the situation through calm, perceptive understanding rather than fear or anger. That helped her to become a partner in a major US law firm, handling high-stakes negotiations with Fortune 100 companies.

Our conversation moves from that early experience to the changing realities in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, the distinction between emotional and cognitive empathy, and why empathy can shift power even in situations of danger. Shermin also explains how stoicism fits with empathy, how the immigrant experience shaped her life, why she cannot return to Iran today, and discusses exercises, outlined in Stoic Empathy, to help us overcome our anxieties and other psychological problems.

Below are highlights from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

Tactical Empathy in a Life-Threatening Encounter

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK: Do you remember what your mother said to the Iranian morality guard who threatened to arrest you and your mother because you were not wearing a headscarf?

SHERMIN KRUSE: The timeframe was significant because this was shortly after the Iranian revolution, at the height of the Iran-Iraq war. There were up to six missile attacks a day, energy shortages, long bread lines, and hardship for everyone, including the morality police. My mom empathised with these aspects of the guard’s life. She said something like: “You must be very frustrated, because it is hot, because there are missile attacks, and because you are endlessly just telling people over and over again to cover their hair.” That immediately diffused tension. She then explained that I had just come of age, that we were in a rush, and said she would not do it again. The most important thing she did was provide a reason for the guard to move on. As she empathised with the guard’s emotions, you could see the guard’s body language relaxing, the finger loosening on the trigger. She also helped the guard understand how it must be for us, without going into moral aspects, because that would not have helped in that moment.

The Reality After Mahsa Amini and How Empathy Works Under Repression

PETER SINGER: You said the temperature on the streets has lowered and your mother could go up to a morality guard without a headscarf. But there was the terrible incident with the death of Mahsa Amini. How did that happen if the temperature had relaxed?

SHERMIN KRUSE: Mahsa Amini was essentially beaten to death for her headscarf not being on properly. It gave rise to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement and massive demonstrations. The regime targeted demonstrators with rubber bullets, often aiming for the eyes. A lot of horrible things happened. I did not mean to imply the situation had resolved itself. The tolerance level for headscarf infractions has changed, and more women get away without wearing a headscarf, but it is still incredibly risky and could have gotten my mother killed. I told her she was crazy to do it. These stories are to demonstrate that empathy does not equal weakness. In situations where power imbalance, anger, and hostility are extreme, empathy can give rise to your power. These were two examples of my mother behaving differently at very different times, both showing how empathic awareness can increase power even when it feels non-existent.

Leaving Iran: What Her Parents Sacrificed

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK: You were 11 when your family left Iran. Why did your parents decide to leave, and how difficult was it for them?

SHERMIN KRUSE: They left for us, completely for us. They sacrificed a lot, but I don’t think they struggled with the decision. They left brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, their language, their soil, their way of being. My dad had 200 people working for him in Iran. In Canada, he became an air conditioning repair person. It’s honest work requiring intelligence and problem-solving, but it’s different in terms of power, control, pride, and use of his degree. They believed we would have greater control over our bodies, political choices, personal decisions, academic and professional opportunities. They may have overestimated how much control we would have, but they were not mistaken that it would be far greater.

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK: And do you remember how you felt?

SHERMIN KRUSE: I felt how the daughter in Butterfly Stitching feels. As a child, I thought everything in Canada was going to be perfect. Streets paved with gold, butterflies giving rides to school. Then you arrive poor, kids bully you, nobody understands what you are saying, nobody knows you’re smart. Middle school is horrible everywhere. But it is different. It is fundamentally different. Being able to pursue any profession without a husband’s permission, or being able to leave a marriage without automatically losing your children, is different. I raise my children with a golden passport. Neither I nor they did anything to deserve that. It was luck. I had nothing to do with my migration. I was the beneficiary.

Being Blacklisted From Iran

PETER SINGER: Do you go back and see your relatives in Iran? Can you do that?

SHERMIN KRUSE: I am blacklisted. Not on the official blacklist, but the unofficial one. My uncle checked for me. For years my relatives asked why I didn’t visit, so finally I said I would come. He told me, don’t come. I’ve done enough writing and speaking against the regime. One of my sisters used to go back often but her UN position makes it challenging now. My parents go back and forth. The government does not recognise my American citizenship. As far as it’s concerned, I have no rights. If I’m there, I am theirs to do with as they wish. That’s why they target dual nationals. We are outspoken, and if we are there, they have complete control.

Emotional and Cognitive Empathy

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK: You write about empathy grounded in cognition rather than emotion. How do you distinguish cognitive empathy from emotional empathy in your daily life?

SHERMIN KRUSE: Psychology distinguishes between emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy is your pain in my heart. You watch something happen to a fictional character, and your body reacts. When it is your child or your best friend, you can feel their pain or joy in your body. Cognitive empathy doesn’t require emotional connection. It is not walking a mile in your shoes, but next to you. Setting your rhythm to theirs, sensing what they sense, while keeping emotional distance. You do this when someone is hostile or when someone is dependent on you. It’s a spectrum, not a duality. You can shift between emotional and cognitive empathy depending on trust, responsibility, or the conversation. They occur in different parts of the brain but are both forms of empathy.

Empathising With Those Who Have Done Harm

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK: Can we be empathic toward everyone, even people who have done really bad things to us or our family?

SHERMIN KRUSE: It’s not an obligation. But if someone like a criminologist can empathise with a wrongdoer, that understanding can help not just in apprehending them but in preventing future wrongdoing. There is good that can come from understanding. If done correctly, the likelihood of harm to you is minimal and the likelihood of you gaining strength, power, and control in a situation is increased. I have had people do horrible things to me as a child. My empathy training didn’t teach forgiveness. It taught me how this happens, how societies accept evils, how humanity submits. If you want to prevent it, you need to understand it. Emotional connection must be handled carefully, but cognitive understanding can be useful.

Stoicism and Empathy Together

PETER SINGER: Many people think stoicism means shutting off emotion, while empathy requires openness to others. How can stoicism be combined with empathy?

SHERMIN KRUSE: Stoicism is misunderstood as emotionless resilience. Ancient stoicism is deeply about emotional regulation, cognitive behavioural approaches, and fairness. Stoicism expands the space between impulse and response so that you can insert as much of yourself as possible. You can allow emotion to be information rather than something that controls you. Letting go of what is outside your control is similar to mindfulness and Buddhism. Stoicism doesn’t tell you not to love or care. It teaches how to approach situations with control, so that you leave as much in control of yourself as possible. This makes room for empathic stoicism and even stoic vulnerability. You cannot control others or outcomes, but you can control your responses. That is where stoic empathy fits: understanding the world and yourself, influencing what you can, and controlling yourself.

The “Arrow in the Air” and the Limits of Control

PETER SINGER: You’ve said we can change our world through choice, but surely there are limits, especially in places like Iran. What are the boundaries of what we can actually control?

SHERMIN KRUSE: The truth is complex. Stoicism recognises the dichotomy of control. Viktor Frankl wrote about having nothing except his own thoughts in a concentration camp. That is what you can always rely on. The Greeks used the example of archery. You practise, prepare your arrows, aim, breathe, release. Once the arrow is in the air, there is nothing you can do to change where it lands. You can prepare the next shot, but you cannot change what is done. I have students write out the circle of things they care about, the smaller circle of things they can control, and then the non-controllables. You can influence some things, but you cannot control them. Recognising the limits of control and focusing on what is within the smaller circle is powerful.

Empathy in Negotiation and Leadership

PETER SINGER: You were a successful lawyer working with major companies. How did the skills you’ve been discussing help you in that work?

SHERMIN KRUSE: As an attorney for Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies, these skills were essential. In international trade disputes or mediations between CEOs of subsidiaries, empathy and stoicism were excellent skills to have. I left law because, as I gained economic power, I could make different decisions. I had large debts coming out of law school and obligations I had to meet. Later, I could afford to teach and write and still support my family. Throughout those 20 years I dedicated myself to giving back through NGOs, especially international peace and dialogue organisations and civil liberties work.

Exercises for Building Empathic and Stoic Capacity

KASIA DE LAZARI-RADEK: Can you give an example of an exercise we can all practise every day?

SHERMIN KRUSE: The book contains meditations and neuroscience on how these practices build resilience. One common exercise is ice immersion. Studies from the 1960s had people submerge their hands in ice water to gauge pain tolerance, and through focusing on breathing or distraction, increase their ability to withstand the cold. Another exercise is low-stakes negotiating. Ask for a free bag at the grocery store, or a free pump of vanilla at a café. If they say no, you pay. It’s safe and low stakes. A friend’s child with selective mutism was told to say hello to one person a day, then two, then gradually to teachers and peers. Through practice she eventually weaned herself off anti-anxiety medication. Adults can identify what they cannot tolerate, where they lose control, and then create exercises around habituation or discomfort embracing. People with chronic pain often use meditation to embrace the pain, observe it, and conquer it. The book is full of these tools and applies them to parenting, negotiation, healing, and leadership.

Our guests in the latest episode of Lives Well Lived are Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, whose work on dogs, chimpanzees and bonobos has changed how we understand our closest animal companions, our closest nonhuman relatives, and ourselves.

In our conversation, Brian sets out the central idea of Survival of the Friendliest: that friendliness wins on planet earth, and that a new kind of attraction and cooperation, rather than aggression or dominance, enabled humans to thrive. He describes his visit to Siberia and the foxes that first made him realise that just with a change where fear is lost and replaced with attraction, you can have a new form of cooperation, a moment he calls an epiphany.

Vanessa talks about how ideas from evolutionary anthropology shape the world, from genocides to eugenics to corporate restructuring, and why she and Brian felt compelled to challenge the long-standing appeal of survival of the fittest, where fittest is understood in terms of strength, dominance and aggression. She also discusses the contrast between chimpanzees and bonobos, and the fact that the most high-ranking bonobo male, who is much friendlier, is more successful reproductively, which she sees as a vivid example of survival of the friendliest.

Together we explore what they call the paradox at the centre of human social life: our capacity to be simultaneously the kindest and the cruellest species on earth. Brian explains how the same cognitive mechanisms that enable empathy can also take away that attribution and allow us to morally disregard others when we feel our group is threatened. Vanessa explains why attempts to use reason often fail to break cycles of hostility — and why the only thing that really works is friendship.

We also turn to dogs. Brian describes how dogs have hijacked our system of care, and why interacting with them produces the same oxytocin response seen between human parents and infants. Vanessa speaks about the puppy kindergarten she directs at Duke University, and what it has taught her about the power of friendliness to completely change the day of someone and bring people together.

Below are highlights from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

Brian’s scientific epiphany

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: What first made you suspect that kindness might be an evolutionary advantage rather than a moral luxury?

BRIAN HARE: The story is always the same story. A new type of attraction evolves, a new type of social interaction occurs that leads to more cooperation. I travelled to Siberia and met a very special population of foxes that for decades had been selected to lose their fear and have it be replaced by an attraction to humans. That attraction overwrote fear and allowed them to interact with humans and solve problems in a way that we are familiar with when we interact with our dogs. Just with a change where fear is lost and replaced with attraction, you can have a new form of cooperation and communication evolve. That was the epiphany for me.

PETER SINGER: Had you ever read Peter Kropotkin’s book Mutual Aid, published in 1902?

BRIAN HARE: I listened to his book after several people said “survival of the friendliest” is Kropotkin’s idea. I had never read it or heard about it. I listened to the book and I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.

Bonobos vs chimpanzees — a revealing contrast

PETER SINGER: If we are friendly, does that mean that we are maybe closer to bonobos than chimpanzees?

VANESSA WOODS: Chimpanzees are a male-dominated society. They kill each other and beat their females and kill their infants. In bonobos the most dominant individual is always a female. It’s not that they don’t have any violence, but unlike chimpanzees who use violence to establish dominance and maintain control, bonobos use it to maintain the peace. If a male bonobo wakes up one day and decides that he wants to start acting like a male chimpanzee and starts aggressing towards a female, she and her closest five friends will beat the living daylights out of him. That is what our Congolese friends call being corrected.

The most high-ranking bonobo male, who is much friendlier than the highest-ranking chimpanzee male, is more successful reproductively. That is a beautiful example of survival of the friendliest.

BRIAN HARE: I try every day to be a better bonobo male. In terms of who our species is like, it depends on the trait. Bonobos have non-conceptive sex; chimpanzees don’t. We have lethal aggression; bonobos don’t. Bonobos do not make tools in the wild, chimpanzees do. It’s a mosaic. Bonobos have solved the problem of lethal aggression in a way that both chimpanzees and humans have not.

The paradox: the same mechanisms that make us kind also make us cruel

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Can openness or trust, the very traits that once helped us survive, now make us vulnerable?

BRIAN HARE: Humans have this new form of friendliness, an attraction to strangers who we recognise as sharing an identity. That means we can expand our social networks and learn more from a larger body of innovators. But our world is not conflict-free. We are the friendliest species of human to ever evolve, yet look around at all the cruelty in the world. The same mechanism in our mind that allows us to have empathy and compassionate responses allows us to take away that attribution. We can dis-attribute a mind to others. When we feel our group is threatened, we no longer recognise the other group as fully human, and we can morally disregard them and potentially do horrific things.

VANESSA WOODS: Hormones like testosterone, serotonin and oxytocin have left imprints in our skeletons. Oxytocin is called the hug hormone, but we call it the mama bear hormone. When is a mother bear most adoring? When she is with her cubs. When is she most dangerous? At that same moment. When you administer oxytocin, people can become more willing to harm out-group members. The thing that makes us kindest is also what makes us cruel. We can be simultaneously the kindest and the cruellest species on earth.

Why reasoning often fails — and why friendship works

PETER SINGER: Do you think that reason has been a force for expanding our circles of moral concern?

VANESSA WOODS: Trying to use reason and logic has mixed results. Education training or implicit bias training doesn’t always work. The only thing that really works is friendship. If two people from opposite groups can have a relationship, preferably a friendship, it can short-circuit the dehumanising cycle. When these two people form this friendship, they can take it back to their groups and dilute any antipathy. Programs like Israeli and Palestinian kids playing soccer together, or white Southern servicemen serving with Black servicemen post–World War II — all examples of contact theory. During the pandemic you could tell people all the facts using perfect reasoning and it was not going to help.

Dogs and the evolution of care

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Is it similar with other animals? Do other animals help each other and get rewarded with pleasure?

BRIAN HARE: Dogs are exhibit A of survival of the friendliest. They have been selected to lose their fear and replace it with an attraction to us. Dogs prefer humans to dogs. They find their interactions with us incredibly rewarding. When they make eye contact with us it releases oxytocin that causes bonding. Dogs have evolved a muscle that lets them reveal more of the white of their eyes, enhancing this effect. It is very rewarding to interact with a dog and they have evolved to elicit that reward.

Service dogs have higher circulating oxytocin and make more eye contact. Millions of people could benefit from them, but they take two years and fifty thousand dollars to raise, and half of them fail.

VANESSA WOODS: We have had 101 puppies through the puppy kindergarten. Fifty were raised on Duke’s campus to see if an overwhelming flood of friendliness would help them become successful as service dogs. Cognitively it did not do much, but it made them more confident.

A friendship that changed Vanessa’s understanding of America

PETER SINGER: We’ve talked about lives well lived for various non-human species. Having studied our closest relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos, and also our closest companion animals, what does this tell you about living well in general, not just for humans, and is there something translatable to humans?

VANESSA WOODS: I would just say that friendliness is a really powerful strategy. Not only for a life lived well, but in every area. It leads to success in all types of areas. If I had a weakness, if there was a group I would be more chimpanzee to than bonobo, it would probably have been rural Republicans in Western North Carolina. I did not have very warm and fuzzy feelings towards them.

We got a cabin in the mountains and started to get to know our neighbours. We became friends with people who had horse farms and trap ponds, and we have real deep emotional connections now. Becoming friends with them allowed us to have much more frank conversations and to understand where they were coming from. We had a terrible hurricane called Helene and Brian drove up there with water and food supplies. It has been transformative. I am not part of that anger anymore.

Closing reflection

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Do you think that you’ve lived your lives well so far?

VANESSA WOODS: The puppy kindergarten has taught me how possible it is to completely change the day of someone just by being friendly. They are rainbows at the end of a leash. It can be easy to forget that you can be the bright corner where you live. I try to be more like a puppy every day — accept people for who they are, be in the moment, disconnect from the phone. It may not change everything, but it can be a small light.

Stephen’s path to philosophy was anything but typical. At sixteen he was a runaway, working long shifts in a warehouse after leaving foster care and high school behind. With no teachers, mentors, or peers to turn to, he typed one question into Google: Who is the wisest person in history? The search led him to Plato’s Gorgias — and to a lifelong fascination with ideas that could help make sense of his experience.

In our conversation, Stephen tells us how philosophy became both a refuge and a discipline. We talk about why people are drawn to philosophy in moments of suffering, and what it means to translate abstract ideas into a better life. Stephen reflects on how his reading of thinkers from Socrates to Nietzsche shaped his understanding of wisdom, justice, and meaning — and why, after years of therapy, meditation, and study, he believes that living itself teaches us more than any book.

He also turns the tables and asks us a few questions of his own — including what values make a relationship last, and whether wisdom comes more from reading or experience. Later, our discussion turns to AI and consciousness, amor fati, and the paradox of happiness: why it’s best found when we stop pursuing it directly.

Below are highlights from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

From Foster Care to Philosophy

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Stephen, you had a rough start to life. At the age of nine you were in foster care. Later you were homeless and you never completed high school, and just a dozen years ago, you were working in a warehouse doing physical labour. Now you have put out more than 500 episodes of your podcast, Philosophize This!, and you have a large audience that enables you to earn an income that is more than adequate to support yourself and your family. That’s an amazing story. How did it happen? [Note: the figure of 500 episodes was my mistake. It’s closer to 250.]

STEPHEN WEST: When I was nine, I got taken away from my parents. Me and my two sisters were taken by Child Protection Services and placed into different homes. I ran away when I was sixteen because of bad stuff happening there. I had to drop out of high school because I was working in a warehouse. I started bagging groceries, then worked two jobs, eight hours in the morning and eight hours in the afternoon. I knew that I was traumatised but I didn’t really know where to turn. I didn’t have a father figure, I didn’t have friends, I didn’t have any academic community… so I literally Googled, “Who’s the wisest person in the history of the world?” and one of Plato’s dialogues, Gorgias, came up. I read it at the time, thought I understood it, and it really stuck with me, so I started listening to more philosophy… and it turned out the warehouse was a perfect place to do this, because I could just listen to stuff all day long.

PETER SINGER: Do you think it was an alternative for getting wisdom from your parents?

STEPHEN WEST: Definitely. If we want to psychoanalyse it, Socrates is my father in some sense.

The Limits of Reading vs. Living

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Do you believe that you get wiser through reading, or more through perhaps experiencing things yourself?

STEPHEN WEST: I think it’s a fantastic question and it encapsulates how I think I’ve wasted a lot of my life… I’ve meditated for over a thousand hours, done talk therapy, CBT, DBT, EMDR, SSRIs, gratitude affirmations. And it’s not that I think it’s all been a waste, but what has really made me less anxious is just living life and smacking up against reality… going on the date, being rejected, going to the farmer’s market and meeting someone who becomes a lifelong friend. Reality’s like that — not ideal, not horrible. I just think I’ve spent too many hours thinking about these things and not acting on them.

Knowing the Moral Answer vs. Living It

PETER SINGER: You’ve read an immense amount of philosophy. How does that fit into giving you a picture of how to live in the world?

STEPHEN WEST: I’ve wasted tons of time reading too much philosophy and not going out and acting on it. I know all the answers to the test — I’ve thought about morality — but when I’m actually in the moment, like standing in line behind an old woman talking to the cashier, I get frustrated. I know it may be the only interaction she has all month, and I know what the right response is, but I still stew in my head. I feel like I’ve wasted hours theorising about morality and not recognising how embodied it is in actually doing stuff in the world.

What Makes a Relationship Endure

STEPHEN WEST: What are the values that young people should build a relationship around if they want it to endure as long as it can?

PETER SINGER: I think there are some core values that are important. My wife and I are similar in some ways and have similar values. Neither of us is religious. I’m philosophically a secular utilitarian; she’s also secular and has broadly utilitarian tendencies. We value similar things and respect each other for pursuing our own visions, but we allow each other to go in different ways and do different things. I think with those core values, we’ve stayed together all these years.

From Anxiety to Meaning

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: And when do you enjoy life?

STEPHEN WEST: All the time. Enjoyment isn’t really what I’m aiming for. I have a lot of contentment and joy, but that’s not the point. I remember a time when I thought about happiness as the main thing. I realised I only think about happiness when I’m unhappy. Now I connect things to meaning more than enjoyment… I have deeply meaningful things to do with almost every second of my day — the podcast, my kids. It’s not about happiness or pleasure; it’s about meaning.

Amor Fati – Learning to Love Fate

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: You have talked a lot about amor fati, loving your fate. Do you really try to love it?

STEPHEN WEST: I try not to spend too much time ruminating and turning knobs, trying to change things too much. I just started living more. I live my life like my friend Dave does his finances — once a quarter, he checks in and then lets it ride. That’s how I do my moral approach: I periodically think what’s going well and what’s not, make a plan, and then stop overthinking. I just try to be immersed in whatever’s going on. In that sense, I am trying to love my fate, because I don’t want to question it too much. I want to be in it.

What Philosophy Gave Him

PETER SINGER: When you read these different philosophers, do you think some are closer to the truth than others?

STEPHEN WEST: The process of reading philosophy for me is like self-emptying. I try to remove my bias and take on a different way of viewing things. Philosophy has been a humbling exercise — like a spiritual practice without God. It holds me to an ideal greater than myself. It’s disruptive, but it makes me better.

Peter’s Final Challenge

STEPHEN WEST: What would you do if you were me — if you were 37 and in my position, writing as I am — what would you do differently?

PETER SINGER: I’m fundamentally involved in trying to change the world for the better. Getting people to think about philosophy is part of that, but I’d want to be more actively involved in bringing about change — thinking about how we can reduce the large-scale suffering of animals in factory farms or the 700 million people living in extreme poverty. I’d be asking: what are the best tools for actually making change?

We speak with Canadian sisters Mercedes and Anastasia Korngut, 17 and 15 years old respectively, but already the founders of Small Bits of Happiness, a company and podcast devoted to helping people of all ages find more joy in daily life.

We begin by discussing a statistic from the World Happiness Report that surprised me: among people under 30, Canada ranks 58th in the world for happiness, and the United States 62^nd, far below most European countries, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and several in Latin America. I asked Mercedes and Anastasia why they think their generation is struggling so much with unhappiness.

They speak about growing up through COVID, and about the impact on teenage wellbeing of social media and constant bad news. But more positively, they tell us how, despite the “culture of comparison” that they’re living in, they’ve learned to protect their peace of mind. They also reflect on how focusing on small, good moments helped them through lockdowns, and how that insight led them to found Small Bits of Happiness as a means of helping their classmates and teens with similar problems everywhere.

Our conversation moves from science to philosophy, exploring what happiness really means and what the research says about it. Mercedes and Anastasia share lessons from psychologists they’ve interviewed, including Sonja Lyubomirsky and Ethan Kross, and explain why social connection and simple daily habits matter more than most people realise.

We also talk about pressure and perfectionism. Both sisters speak candidly about competition, comparison, and what it means to do your best without measuring yourself against others. As Anastasia put it, “A rose doesn’t take away from the beauty of a daisy. You can both be beautiful. You can both be successful at the same time.”

Finally, they reflect on their values, what they’ve learned from philosophy classes, and the importance of courage — including the courage to start something new when others might judge you for it. “Be open to change,” Mercedes says. “Be open to adaption and evolution — it’s the best way to grow, by doing and learning.”

Below are some highlights from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

Why are young people in rich countries so unhappy?

PETER SINGER: On your website, Small Bits of Happiness, you cite a statistic from the 2024 World Happiness Report in Canada. People under 30 rated 58th in the world for happiness. That level seems very low, especially for a high-income country like Canada... Are you puzzled that the happiness of your own group under thirties seems to be so low in Canada and in the US?

MERCEDES KORNGUT: Yeah, I think it’s sad and I think that’s what a lot of our work focuses around... we’re just trying to help people of our age group, older, younger age groups find more happiness in the small good things that happen in every day...

ANASTASIA KORNGUT: Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like what we really try to share is that we have so much more power over our own happiness than we might even know.

Social media and the burden of awareness

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: The World Happiness Report states that since 2019 in high-income countries, life satisfaction has declined for those aged 10 to 15, particularly for girls... Do your own observations of your friends around the same age support what the report suggests?

MERCEDES KORNGUT: From what I’ve noticed within my peers... it’s a struggle. Social media has definitely played a part that didn’t exist prior to our generation growing up, in terms of comparison and wanting to have a certain lifestyle but not really knowing how to achieve it...
We have so much access to information... a lot of that information can be all the different issues going on in the world... I think maybe we’re more aware of that at a younger age than we would’ve been in the past... that also perpetuates that feeling of hopelessness.

ANASTASIA KORNGUT: Yeah, I would have to agree... it’s that double-edged sword. It’s a really nice way to connect with other people, but at the same time, there can be a lot of that negativity or even creating comparisons between each other that you probably wouldn’t have thought of before.

The origins of Small Bits of Happiness

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: I wanted to ask you about the beginnings of Small Bits of Happiness. How did you realise that there is need or that you can help your friends and other teenagers?

MERCEDES KORNGUT: Yeah, so I was 13 when COVID started, and Anastasia was 11... as we were both on the early teenage years... attending school online and not knowing what’s happening in the world or not feeling like the future might be like how our whole lives have been... what I started to notice was that focusing on the small and the good things that happen every day... brought us happiness...
And so we wanted to share that with our peers because we were not the only ones struggling.

What the science of happiness reveals

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Now I’m interested in what you really found surprising from the research you’ve read. What was something that made you go, wow — I didn’t know that?

MERCEDES KORNGUT: We spoke with a happiness psychologist from the University of California Riverside, Sonja Lyubomirsky — and she shared with us that social connection is really the key to happiness. That’s also why COVID was so challenging, because social connection is so important. Even introverted people, we still need connection with others. It’s a fundamental part.

Competition, comparison, and the pressure to succeed

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: It seems that a lot of struggle among young people is the feeling of competition, the need for achievement, striving, struggling for this achievement. How do you balance that with joy?

MERCEDES KORNGUT: Comparing your best to other people’s best is something that we do a lot... I really struggled when I took math last year... I did everything I could and I did good in the class, but not as good as some of my friends who got A-pluses because they just love math.
But in my philosophy class I’ve been doing really well because I love it. It’s okay if I’m not the same as another person — I’m going to hone in on my strengths while they hone in on theirs.

ANASTASIA KORNGUT: Another person’s success doesn’t take away from your own. A rose doesn’t take away from the beauty of a daisy. You can both be beautiful. You can both be successful at the same time.

Advice to other teenagers

PETER SINGER: I wonder if you have advice to other teenagers who might be thinking of trying to do something like you are doing.

MERCEDES KORNGUT: If someone were comparing themselves to me, I would say don’t, because all of our work has come through so much effort and intention. It’s okay if you don’t have it all figured out yet. Be open to change, be open to adaption and evolution — it’s the best way to grow, by doing and learning.

ANASTASIA KORNGUT: When we first started, we worried about what our friends at school would think. But people are going to think something whether you do something or not.
If you’re doing what makes you happy and pursuing something that excites you every day, then it’s worth it.

In the latest episode of Lives Well Lived, the podcast I co-host with Kasia de Lazari-Radek, we speak with Harvard professor of psychology and bestselling author Daniel Gilbert, whose book Stumbling on Happiness transformed our understanding of why we often don’t choose wisely when it comes to our own happiness.

In our conversation, we explore why people are remarkably poor at predicting what will make them happy, and whether decades of new research have changed that. Daniel explains the limits of imagination, why the best way to forecast our own satisfaction is to learn from others’ experiences, and how technology and online reviews have made us better at this in some areas of life but not in others.

We also discuss why too much choice can make us miserable, what it really means to live in the present, and how happiness relates to meaning and love. Daniel shares what psychology tells us about friendship, parenting, and luck, and why he believes that good relationships and a sense of gratitude are at the heart of a happy life.

Below are some highlights from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

Why we’re so bad at predicting happiness

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: So in Stumbling on Happiness, you show that people are remarkably poor at predicting what will make them happy. But the book, as you said, was published long ago, and you have continued to talk and think about happiness. Can we actually get better at predicting what will make us happy? In other words, have we learned anything?

DANIEL GILBERT: The short answer is no. But that’s not nearly as interesting as the longer answer, which, at the time I wrote the book, didn’t have research to back it up, but now it does. So, my colleague Tim Wilson and I spent 30 years conducting studies showing that people are very poor at predicting their future affective or hedonic states, what most humans would call happiness.

And after dozens and dozens of experiments showing people doing something poorly, scientists start to ask: Well, can we fix them? Is there anything we can do?
Many people tried many things, and the answer is either that the things they tried failed, or they had very, very limited domain-specific effects... So we don’t learn much from our own experience.

The surprising way to predict your future happiness

PETER SINGER: Okay, so as you’ve said that there is this better way, I think we have to ask you to reveal this important secret now.

DANIEL GILBERT: Well, it’s called surrogation. That means using other human beings as surrogates for yourself. In any future situation you’re imagining, and you’re tempted to use your imagination and simulate yourself in it, surely other human beings have already experienced it. Their real experience with any event is a better guide to your experience than your imagination.

Here’s a very simple experiment. We brought people into a laboratory, all young single women. They were told they were going to have a speed date with a young man in another room, and their job was to predict how much they were going to like it.
Half of them were allowed to use their imaginations; they saw his photo, his interests, everything, and predicted how much they’d enjoy it.
The other half learned only one thing: on a scale of one to ten, how did the last woman who talked to him rate her experience?
The latter group was much more accurate. The group that used imagination made all the classic errors.

What online reviews reveal about happiness

PETER SINGER: That suggests to me that we should have got better at predicting what we’re going to like, because now we very often go online, we want to rent an Airbnb, or go to a restaurant, and we look at the reviews. That should have made us better at predicting when we’ll be happier.

DANIEL GILBERT: I totally agree, but only in particular domains. I think we’re much better at picking movies and restaurants than we would be without all those online reviews. Isn’t it curious that in those cases we flock to the reviews, but when it comes to getting married or divorced, or having children or taking a job in Cincinnati, we have this sense that we are unique individuals, quite different from others. Other people’s experiences may be mildly educational, but they can’t really tell us what we want to know.

Why too much choice makes us miserable

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: Does it mean that the world as it is now, at least the Western world with such an amazing amount of choices, is making us unhappy?

DANIEL GILBERT: Let’s distinguish between the number of items you have to choose from and your ability to change your mind once you’ve made that choice. Those are two entirely separate issues.
The research of Barry Schwartz and Sheena Iyengar suggests that too many choices do make people unhappy, leaving them feeling paralysed by the number they have to wrestle with.

There’s a wonderful study showing that if you give people three investment options for their retirement, they usually make a good choice. If you give them thirty, they puzzle about it so long they never decide and their money goes to the default fund, which turns out to be a poor choice.
Economists don’t believe that’s possible. Psychologists know it is.

Living in the present vs. planning for the future

PETER SINGER: You mention Ram Dass’s Be Here Now. Why isn’t trying to live in an eternal present a good response to the difficulty of predicting what will make us happy in the future?

DANIEL GILBERT: Be Here Now changed the course of my life when I read it at fifteen, but it’s obvious we shouldn’t live only in the present. There are people like that on Earth, they’re called two-year-olds.
Of course, we ought not. If we’re living all the time in the future, we miss the fun of what we’re doing, but if we live only in the present, we wouldn’t floss our teeth or save for retirement.
There’s got to be some healthy balance. It’s good to live many of your moments in the present, but to rise above the present once in a while to think about tomorrow and the past, and then come back down to live it.

What happiness really is

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: You seem to think that emotional happiness is pleasure. Are you a hedonist?

DANIEL GILBERT: Oh yes. Epicurus is my favourite philosopher. Happiness isn’t a kind of experience, it’s a property of experiences.
Every conscious moment lies somewhere on the feeling-good to feeling-bad continuum. Happiness is simply the label we give to that dimension.
There aren’t different kinds of happiness. Seeing your grandchild smile and eating chocolate are different experiences, but one simply has more happiness in it than the other.

The two biggest findings about happiness

DANIEL GILBERT: There are two real surprises in all the literature on what brings humans happiness.
First, social relationships are much more important than almost any other variable. If you could choose between good health and good friends, you should choose good friends, people can adapt to poor health, but they almost never adapt to having few social relationships.

The second surprise is about children. We love our kids and assume they make us happy. But when researchers measure moment-to-moment happiness, it’s actually lower when people are with their children.
Children make us happy when we think about them, not always when we’re with them.

On luck, love, and stumbling well

KASIA DE LAZARI RADEK: So, the question we always end with: what do you think of your own life — do you think you’ve lived it well so far?

DANIEL GILBERT: My life has turned out superbly, but I don’t want to say I’ve lived it well. It’s almost resisted my efforts to completely screw it up.
Everything good happened almost in spite of my intentions rather than due to them.
There’s not a day I don’t get up and look over at my wife and think, how am I the man lucky enough to be lying here in this bed with you?
If you have those two things, love and work, you’ve got a whole lot of the happiness part licked.

In the latest episode of Lives Well Lived, the podcast I co-host with Kasia de Lazari-Radek, we speak with Bishop Mariann Budde, the first woman to serve as Episcopalian Bishop of Washington D.C. and of the Washington National Cathedral.

We begin with a clip from the sermon she delivered the day after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, in which she stood before the newly elected president and pleaded for mercy toward the people he had targeted: especially LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants. It was an act of courage that set the tone for our conversation about bravery, love, moral conviction, and religious faith

We discuss her new book We Can Be Brave, and why she believes courage is something we learn through life’s decisive moments. She tells the story of her sister’s quiet daily bravery caring for her dying husband and reflects on how true courage must be aligned with love.

We also talk about the place of faith, and about doubting one’s faith, the limits of love, voluntary assisted dying, and what it means to keep hope alive when the world feels dark. Bishop Budde speaks about standing firm in conviction while still kneeling before the humanity of others — and how she assesses a meaningful life.

Below are some highlights from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

Speaking Truth to Power

Peter Singer: You gave a sermon the day after Donald Trump’s second inauguration… You began by calling for unity, after a polarizing election, and then said something that must have been even less welcome to the powerful figures you were addressing. I want our listeners to hear what you said.

Bishop Mariann Budde (excerpt from a recording): Let me make one final plea. Mr President, millions have put their trust in you… I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families. Some who fear for their lives… the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings… they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals… may God grant us the strength and courage to honour the dignity of every human being, speak the truth to one another in love, and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people.

Kasia de Lazari-Radek: Defending the very people who the newly inaugurated president had targeted was a brave thing to do. What do you see as your role now?

Bishop Mariann Budde: You’re absolutely accurate that the actions of this government could not be defined with words such as mercy and compassion. The opposite would be the case. I feel a responsibility to continually present an alternative worldview — one in which mercy, justice, kindness, and dignity matter. Part of our work now is to respectfully and with courage present a different narrative, to speak of the ethical teachings of Jesus, and to help protect as much as we can the people and institutions under attack.

Learning to Be Brave

Kasia de Lazari-Radek: You have released a new book called We Can Be Brave. How did you learn to be brave?

Bishop Mariann Budde: I had originally written the book for adults… the entire book is based on the thesis that we learn to be brave, that it is part of the human experience starting when we’re very young. Life presents us with moments when we know that we are facing something unknown, something that has risk or cost for us, and often for those around us. It is in those moments, and what happens to us, that the learning process unfolds over the course of our lives.

Courage Rooted in Love

Peter Singer: If you only had to pick one story to illustrate what you’re trying to say, when you need to be brave, how you can be brave, is there one story you would choose?

Bishop Mariann Budde: The story that came to my mind right as you said that is the story of my sister. When her husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she chose, time and time again, through the last year of his life, to walk beside him and completely rearrange her life in order to care for him. She wasn’t making headlines, but it was of such courage and rooted in love, day after day after day, she chose love. It was the daily-ness of it — the small, steadfast choices that no one saw, yet which revealed the depth of her strength.

Aligning Courage with Love

Kasia de Lazari-Radek: What is of core importance in bravery? Why is it important to act upon it?

Bishop Mariann Budde: One can be brave for all sorts of motivations. Courage is neutral in terms of its outcome, it can go toward the good or it can go toward great harm. As I think about what constitutes a meaningful life, I believe that love is the most powerful, transformative force in the world. If we can align our courage in service of love, we are participating in the goodness of the world and in the healing of others.

Love as Practice, more than Feeling

Kasia de Lazari-Radek: Do you understand love more as an emotion or as a certain practice?

Bishop Mariann Budde: I think it’s both, but if we relied on our feelings alone, we would act lovingly only when we felt like it, and that would not be consistent. Emotions come and go. Mature love evolves to a practice, a commitment to be a loving person regardless of the circumstance, regardless of how one is treated, or how one feels on a given day. That’s the call of both the spiritual life and the brave life: further and further extensions of ourselves, in love for wider expressions of humankind.

Faith and Doubt

Kasia de Lazari-Radek: Have you ever lost faith?

Bishop Mariann Budde: Yes, in the sense that I have had my moments of deep and profound doubt and of despair. I have more confidence in God than I do in my faith in God. There’s a passage in the Gospel of Mark where a man says, “I believe; help my unbelief.” That’s the human experience. There is a poem that I was told was written on the wall of a Nazi concentration camp: “I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when I don’t feel it. And I believe in God even when God is silent.”

Hope Without Certainty

Peter Singer: In the epilogue you write about hope. Can atheists also have hope in difficult times?

Bishop Mariann Budde: Hope is not wishful thinking that things will get better, but a resolve to commit oneself to the good regardless of what happens. We don’t know if the human species will survive, or if we will rise to this moment — but I’m going to live on the side of doing what I can, because I don’t want to give up just because it doesn’t seem hopeful.

A Life Well Lived?

Peter Singer: We always ask our guests to reflect at the end of this conversation about their own life and how well they’ve lived.

Bishop Mariann Budde: I don’t know that I would say I’ve lived a good life, but I have been blessed with a very meaningful life. I don’t take credit for many of the good things I’ve been blessed with, and I’m grateful to have endured some of the things that I didn’t know that I could survive. I give thanks for that.

In the latest episode of Lives Well Lived, the podcast I co-host with Kasia de Lazari-Radek, we speak with Julia van Boven and Sjir Hoeijmakers: two people using their careers and resources to make the world a better place.

Sjir tells us how watching my 2015 TED Talk on effective altruism set him on the path to founding Effective Altruism Netherlands and later leading Giving What We Can, a global community whose members pledge to donate at least ten percent of their income to the most effective charities.

Julia describes her unusual journey from studying ethics and lobbying for NGOs to working inside one of the Netherlands’ largest banks, where she founded the Sustainable Finance Desk and later helped create a Future Generations Board to embed long-term ethical thinking in business decisions. Then Julia co-founded the School for Moral Ambition, helping people align their talents and careers with meaningful impact. Our conversation ranges from how to motivate giving to what makes change sustainable, to the personal side of living ethically while striving to live well.

Below are some highlights from our discussion, edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

How it all began: the influence of Peter’s TED Talk

Kasia: You are both in senior positions in organisations that are trying to make the world a better place. At what point did you decide to have a career that involved making a positive difference?

Sjir: After my studies I saw your TED talk on effective altruism in 2015, and that’s when I really accelerated my doing good and made something serious out of it. It led to me founding Effective Altruism Netherlands, where I first met you, Peter. You’ve had a pretty big influence on my career.

What Giving What We Can really is

Kasia: Can we explain to our listeners what Giving What We Can is?

Sjir: Our main thing is a 10% pledge - you commit 10% of your lifetime income to wherever you think it can do the most good. It’s personal and it’s about reflection. We now have over 10,000 people who’ve taken this pledge, and our ambition is to grow from 10,000 to a million.

Julia’s turning point - from philosophy to banking, and then…

Peter: I know you worked for seven years at ABN Amro, one of the major Dutch banks. What led you to work for a big bank?

Julia: I had studied applied ethics and thought I’d work in lobbying for human rights organisations. But I became impatient — progress was slow, and there was never any money. After some failed attempts, I sat in a Buddhist monastery and realised, if I’m not good at anything yet, I can just as well think what I really want. I knew I wanted to help solve climate change. I thought: no one would listen to a 25-year-old philosopher, but everyone listens to the source of their money — the bank. So I applied to a traineeship and wrote, ‘You’ve probably never received a letter from an ethicist, but I really think you could use one.’ And they did hire me.

Changing the system from within

Peter: You’d only been there three months when you challenged senior management. What happened?

Julia: They were presenting a new five-year strategy saying they’d become a sustainable bank while still growing in oil and gas. I thought, now’s my time to step up. I stood in front of 500 people and asked why they’d do this. That’s where the ball started to roll — they invited me to think along, and later we started the Sustainable Finance Desk.

Looking to the future - ethics inside the bank

Kasia: How did you keep fighting for change within the bank?

Julia: I started teaching ethics again, translating the rights of future generations into the bank’s decisions. We created a Future Generations Board to look ahead 50 or 100 years. But I saw how much courage it required. People chose comfort and certainty. I don’t think I was able to really change the bank.

The idea of moral ambition

Peter: So after seven years at the bank, you chose to leave. How did you become involved in the School for Moral Ambition?

Julia: I read an article by the Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman about a school recruiting the biggest talents, not to start businesses, but to start the most effective nonprofits. I thought, I really want to get into that school. I didn’t get in, but it planted a seed. Later, on a dance floor in Amsterdam, I met his co-founder. Three days later we had coffee — and that’s where the ball started to roll.

The power of individuals

Kasia: How are your ideas developing within the charity you work at?

Sjir: I discovered early on that we’re all much more powerful than we think. If you earn more than $35,000 after tax in the US, you’re in the top 5% globally. So if not you, then who? With just $5,000 you can save a life, on average. It’s strange that we easily spend $50,000 to extend a life by one year in wealthy countries, yet $5,000 can save a child’s life from malaria, and maybe extend the child’s life by 50 years or more.

Motivation and meaning

Kasia: What motivates people to give and get involved?

Julia: We want to look ourselves in the mirror and be proud of what we’ve done. I’ve met countless people who built great businesses, made lots of profits, went on endless holidays — and still it doesn’t feel enough. It’s much more fulfilling to help others. Maybe we also do good for selfish reasons, but why not? That’s evolution.

How change happens — the importance of asking

Peter: Sjir, you’ve personally encouraged friends to take the 10% pledge. Haven’t you lost friends doing that?

Sjir: My experience has been positive. The key is asking in a non-judgmental way. I once asked my friends to give me, as a birthday present, 30 minutes to talk about effective giving — not to pledge, just to talk. I asked what they thought and whether they’d ever considered it for themselves. Six people ended up pledging. I’ve learned people just need information and to be asked — kindly. That can change the world.

The personal side — work and leisure, ideals and relationships

Julia and Sjir discuss how, even though they know their work is so important that putting in an extra hour could save a life, they do ensure that they have some leisure in their lives, and time for relationships too.

In our conversation, Christine reflects on her early experiences in the Namib Desert with a baboon named Bear, encounters that challenged scientific assumptions about the kind of thoughts that monkeys are capable of. She also talks about her path into primatology, from reading Darwin in high school to her time working in a Columbia University lab, where she struggled with the ethics of keeping monkeys inside a building, in solitary confinement.

We discuss her book The Arrogant Ape and the deeply ingrained belief in human exceptionalism, exploring whether humans are truly as different from other animals as we assume. Christine also shares what her research has taught her about intelligence, culture in chimpanzees and bonobos, empathy, and what it means to live well in closer connection with the more-than-human world.

Below are some highlights from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

The Baboon “Apology”

Kasia: At the beginning of your book The Arrogant Ape, you describe an encounter in a desert in Namibia with a baboon. This encounter changed your entire view of animals and what they are capable of. Tell us about it and why it was so significant for you.

Christine Webb: Sure. So this baboon’s name is Bear, and at the time he was a juvenile baboon. Like many young males, he was causing difficulties in his group and with us, the researchers. He would climb up our legs, try to steal our backpacks, and never showed any signs of remorse.

One day he instigated a mobbing event. All of these other baboons surrounded my colleague and began hitting her, slapping her legs, barking. She was terrified, and so was I. It was so intense we considered stopping the field season altogether. The next day, keeping my distance, I saw Bear marching over the ridge with six or seven baboons behind him. They were heading straight towards us. My heart was racing, but when he got close, he put his arm between my boots and bared his teeth into an awkward grimace.

As a primatologist, I knew this gesture as an appeasement behaviour, something baboons do after conflict. In that moment, Bear was trying to make amends for what had happened the day before. He turned my scientific training upside down. I had been taught that monkeys lack theory of mind — the ability to infer the mental states of others. But Bear not only showed theory of mind, he showed it across species.

Children and Human Exceptionalism

Peter: There’s a video of a Brazilian toddler, Louise Antonio, who refuses to eat octopus when he realises the animal was killed. Some people say this just shows children haven’t yet understood that we are very different from animals. How would you respond?

Christine Webb: Children don’t come into the world reasoning from an anthropocentric vantage point. They actually value the lives of other animals as much as the lives of humans. Developmental studies support what those videos show — that children start without prioritising humans over animals. The tendency to prioritise humans emerges with exposure to the many ways animals are exploited in our society, such as the casual consumption of other forms of life.

Working in a Lab with Monkeys

Peter: I’m curious what you thought of working in a Columbia University primate cognition lab, where monkeys were housed alone in cages and never got to go outside. Did you think we were learning something sufficiently important from this research to justify those conditions?

Christine Webb: No, at the time I knew something was very wrong. We were using touch screens to study numerical cognition, and I came to realise that these questions could be studied in the wild. The deprived conditions were compromising the science.

I dreaded going to work. It was painful. There was a monkey called MacDuff who would press his body against the mesh of the cage, inviting me to groom him. I would spend twenty or thirty minutes doing that, and those were some of the most meaningful moments. It felt like a true interaction, but the sadness was that the only contact he had was through that wire mesh. Looking back, I see how contradictory it was to tell myself this was necessary, but at the time I thought it was the only way to move forward in science.

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What Counts as Intelligence

Peter: You say we’ve internalised exceptionalism so thoroughly we regard it as fact, yet you refer to our “supposedly superior intellect.” Do you really deny that our intellect is superior to that of any other species?

Christine Webb: I don’t deny that humans are unique in some ways. But it depends what we mean by intelligence. There are so many different forms — emotional intelligence, visual-spatial intelligence, creativity. Sure, there is a particular kind of intelligence we might call human intelligence, but I don’t think it is categorically more advanced than other forms of intelligence that other animals display, which may be advanced and unique in their own right.

I often ask my students, who is more intelligent: the Dalai Lama or Stephen Hawking? Immediately they respond, it depends what kind of intelligence we are talking about. It’s the same when we talk about the rest of the living world.

Culture in Chimpanzees and Bonobos

Peter: Are the behavioural differences between chimpanzees and bonobos biological or cultural? I’m asking because we often think that we are the only ones who have culture.

Christine Webb: On average there are species differences, but the variation within species is greater than we long assumed. Some chimpanzee groups look more bonobo-like, more tolerant, less aggressive. Some bonobo groups look more chimpanzee-like. Even the stereotype that bonobos resolve conflict through sex is more complicated — male chimpanzees engage in socio-sexual behaviour far more frequently than was believed.

I think the most straightforward explanation is that these are cultural differences. We used to focus on material culture like tool use. But social culture — group differences in norms and behaviours — is now becoming more of a topic of study, and it’s something I’m really interested in.

Unlearning Human Exceptionalism

Peter: Do you think we will gain if we unlearn the bias of human exceptionalism? Not only in how we treat animals, but also for our own survival and wellbeing?

Christine Webb: A paper I cite says arrogance is a vice because it prevents true friendships and deprives us of self-knowledge (Valerie Tiberius and John Walker, “Arrogance,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 35 (1998). If we extend that to the more-than-human world, arrogance prevents us from forming friendships with other beings. Those friendships can enrich our lives and also act as a mirror onto our own souls.

There is so much to gain by unlearning the myth of human exceptionalism: richer relationships with other forms of life, deeper self-knowledge, and perhaps a chance to stop destroying the planet we all share.

We were both fortunate to know Jane in different ways, and she changed each of us.

Peter Singer

I first encountered Jane’s work through In the Shadow of Man, which I read soon after it came out in 1971. It broke new ground, showing chimpanzees as individuals with personalities, capable of thought, problem-solving, and planning. At the time, I had just become a vegetarian and was beginning to think about the ethics of how we treat animals. Jane’s work was thrilling, and it influenced me deeply. I refer to it in Animal Liberation, using it to rebut the argument that because animals cannot use language to tell us what they are feeling, we can’t really know what they are feeling. She showed, through her close observation of chimpanzees, that the basic signals we use to express such feelings as pain, fear, love, anger, joy and surprise are not specific to our own species, so we have little difficulty in recognizing these emotions in some species.

I subsequently met Jane at an event for animals, and was very pleased when she told me that Animal Liberation had helped persuade her to become vegetarian. When Animal Liberation Now, the 2023 updated edition was approaching publication, she was kind enough to endorse the book, writing: “I became a vegetarian when I read Animal Liberation back in the 1970s. Then and there I stopped eating meat. If I’d read this revised Animal Liberation Now, I’d have become a vegan much sooner.”

The last time I met Jane was in May 2024, at her home in Bournemouth, a large Victorian brick building with an overgrown garden, where she lived with her sister, her niece, and a rescued greyhound. I visited her there with Kasia, with whom I co-host the podcast Lives Well Lived. Usually we do our interviews online, but Jane had requested an in-person interview. She had just turned 90, yet she told us that we needed to fit the interview in before she departed for another world tour, this time to visit all 25 Jane Goodall Institutes around the globe during that year. That determination - to encourage her supporters working to mitigate climate change, and to protect wilderness and all the animals living in it - summed up who she was.

Suzi Jamil

From the beginning of my career, my mission has been to bring intellectual giants to the stage, people whose ideas could shape society and remind us that making change and leaving impact are not optional, but necessary. Among all the extraordinary thinkers I worked with, Jane Goodall stood apart. She was the perfect embodiment of that mission: uncompromising, authentic, and able to move audiences not just with knowledge, but with the weight of her presence.

When I brought her to Australia and New Zealand in 2017 and 2019, I watched entire theatres rise to their feet in tears, not out of sadness, but because they had glimpsed, through Jane, a different way of seeing our place in the world. Her words carried the weight of decades in the field, yet what struck me most was how unpretentious she was. For someone so widely admired, she never carried herself with the burden of fame. She was content with simplicity: whiskey sipped straight from a mug, a quiet refusal to drink from plastic, a soft spot for dark chocolate with raspberry and blueberry. She teased me about my heels, urging me to kick them off and just be myself. Jane was, in every way, exactly what you imagined her to be: genuine, grounded, and fiercely strong.

Her tours were acts of generosity, never performance. She insisted that proceeds go to the Jane Goodall Institute rather than to herself, because the mission always came first. She toured relentlessly, year after year, and when she told me we would see each other again in three years, I believed it. Then the pandemic arrived, and that moment never came. It feels poignant now that she left this world while still doing what she loved most, standing before audiences, reminding us of our duty to the planet and to one another.

One of the most powerful moments on tour came when we played the video of Wounda, a chimpanzee who had been rehabilitated and was finally released back into the wild. Just before running into the forest, Wounda turned and wrapped Jane in a long, emotional embrace. Even now, I still cry watching that video. So did our audiences -- city after city, people were moved to silence and tears. It captured everything about Jane’s life’s work: not just science or advocacy, but love, and the belief that compassion can reach across species.

Touring Jane was one of the greatest privileges of my life. She changed my trajectory by showing me, with her life as much as her words, what it means to be a woman who leaves a mark, who pushes for change, and who does not compromise on what matters most.

Together

Jane Goodall showed us how to look at animals differently, how to live with courage, and how to dedicate a life to something larger than oneself. Her legacy is in the forests she fought to protect, the animals whose lives she changed, and in all of us who were touched by her example.

Perhaps no single image captures that legacy better than the moment with Wounda, the chimp who turned back from freedom to embrace Jane. It symbolises the compassion, trust, and love that defined her work, and it will continue to inspire generations.

It feels right to honour her together, because although we knew her in different ways, her life led us both to the same conviction: that change is possible, and necessary.

If you have a memory of Jane, please share it with us. Her legacy lives on in every life she touched, human and nonhuman alike.

Thank you, Jane.

In the latest episode of Lives Well Lived, the podcast I co-host with Kasia de Lazari-Radek, we speak with Barry Jones, often described as Australia’s “national treasure”: quiz show champion, politician, Minister for Science, and lifelong public intellectual.

In our conversation, Barry reflects on the experiences that shaped his remarkable life - from witnessing the Depression as a child, to campaigning against the death penalty, to standing up for integrity in politics. He discusses his prescient book Sleepers Wake on the shift from manufacturing to the information age, his decades-long warnings about climate change, and his concern over the decline of political institutions.

Below are some highlights from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

Early influences and building extraordinary knowledge

Peter Singer: So how did you develop this absolutely extraordinary general knowledge?

Barry Jones: I was very conscious of the Great Depression… I saw knowledge as being constructed around a kind of sculptor’s armature, where everything was connected… When Bertrand Russell came out in 1950, he said there were three things that guided him in life: the search for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. Those three ideas have really driven me to say: I’ve got to find out more and more about the world, make sense of it, and see how I can help to create a better one.

Campaigning against the death penalty

Kasia de Lazari-Radek: In 1967, Ronald Ryan was hanged for murdering a prison guard while attempting to escape from prison, and there were protests against the execution in which you played a prominent part… Why did you think this was such an important issue to take up?

Barry Jones: From a very early age I was determined that if I could do anything, it would be to work towards the abolition of the death penalty… If I had to pick any single issue that’s given me more emotional satisfaction than anything, I’d say it was the abolition of the death penalty.

Integrity in politics and standing up to his electorate

Kasia de Lazari-Radek: So you are our first politician on our podcast. And I wonder, in terms of a good life, how can a politician live well?

Barry Jones: As a politician, I’ve tried to be absolutely frank with my electorate… For example, on abortion I said: no, I’m going to vote to retain abortion as part of the national health scheme. And if you don’t like what I’m doing, vote me out. At the next election I actually had an extraordinary swing in my favour.

Climate change as his greatest legacy

Peter Singer: What are the things that you’ve done post-parliament that you would regard as most fulfilling and rewarding?

Barry Jones: The most rewarding thing, both before and after Parliament, was climate change. I was certainly the first Australian politician to raise the issue and to keep on and on about it… I always thought it was going to be the great issue of our time, of profound moral significance.

Sleepers Wake and the shift from manufacturing to the information age

Peter Singer: Okay, so let’s talk about the times that I’m sure must have been more exciting for you, when we had a Labor government in power… And you became the Minister of Science during that period. Tell us about what you felt you were able to achieve during that government.

Barry Jones: …because I’d published this book called Sleepers Wake… I argued that manufacturing would steadily decline and never recover. We would move into other areas instead. It’s been quite gratifying that, in later years, many of my contemporaries have admitted that in the early 1980s I was right and they were wrong.

The decline of political institutions and the dangers of outsourcing democracy

Kasia de Lazari-Radek: Coming back to my question about politics now, would you have any advice on how we could lead our political system or discussion back to reason rather than emotion?

Barry Jones: Our institutions are in very bad shape. Government funding for science, and for the Australian public television and radio service, has fallen drastically. For a long time, decisions were outsourced to private consultants, who made a tremendous amount of money from it all. If you want to improve the situation, you can’t look at Parliament in isolation. It has to be seen in the context of its institutions.