Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's

out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

Hello.

On tonight's program, the most popular philosopher in the world.

Yet his appointment at Princeton University was greeted by major demonstrations and he has been chased from speaking platforms by opponents

who claim he's willing to consider the infanticide of babies with disabilities.

He's an architect of the animal liberation movement and demands that the

affluent should give away much of their wealth, yet Slavot-Jijek, whom we had on the programme a couple

of weeks ago, has spoken of my guest tonight Peter Singer as one of the philosophers of global

capitalism. Peter Singer was born in Australia to Jewish parents who'd left Austria

in 1938. He came to Britain to study in the late 60s and in 1971 published a seminal

essay, famine, affluence, morality, which helped to shift Anglo-American philosophy in the direction

of applied ethics. Here is its heart.

If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought morally to do it.

If I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wait in and pull the child out.

This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant,

while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing.

Peter Singer reading his own words from 1971.

And these words are the basis of his view that the affluent ought to give a good portion of their income and wealth to the poorest of the earth.

45 years later, it's been published with a forward by Bill and Melinda Gates,

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