Hello and welcome to Unfiltered. My name's Ollie Dugmore and my guest today was a politician.

His CV reads like the diary of an eccentric colonial administrator.

Tutor to Princes William and Harry,

Governor of a province in Iraq during the war.

He walked across Asia, specifically Afghanistan,

delivering viral speeches about hedgehogs in the House of Commons. And once upon a time Brad Pitt owned the rights to his life story.

But after being purged from the Conservative Party by Boris Johnson, he had no political home and instead returned back to charity work and

podcasting, granting him more influence and wealth than ever before.

My guest today is Rory Stewart.

Rory, how are you?

Very well, thank you for coming.

That's okay, it's a pleasure.

It's nice to talk to you, good to see you again.

What have you been up to?

We're back in London.

Well, so the last time we met was almost my last day in this house, so it was just on the beginning of COVID,

and then this is almost my first day back in the house.

So I've been in the states teaching at Yale University and I've been living in Jordan and

working as well with the charity Give Directly. Exactly which mostly works

mostly in Africa not only in Africa we also work a little bit in the Middle Eastern Asia,

and it's quite a radical idea.

We give direct unconditional cash support to the extreme poor.

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