Oh, hey, it's that guy, the coffee shop overthinking his milk choice. Allie Ward,

this is ologies. This is not one you saw coming, is it? Unless you're either a Harvard and

Princeton trained philosopher and academic. But my guest is a Harvard and Princeton

trained philosopher and academic. He's a member of the Center for Brain Science and a professor

of psychology at Harvard. He's dedicated his life and career to the

psychology and the neuroscience of how the brain forms complex ideas and makes choices and uses

real, real philosophical humdingers in his analyses. And one of the courses he teaches is titled

Evolving Morality from Primordial Soup to Super Intelligent Machines. And one of the courses he teaches is titled, Evolving Morality, from primordial

soup to super intelligent machines. And he wrote the book Moral Tribes, Emotion, Reason,

and the Gap Between Us and Them. Now, during this interview, we chatted via a video call,

and I had to ask the guest a few times to make sure that the collar of his shirt

wasn't rubbing on his mic and the best solution was to undo a couple of shirt buttons

and like splay his collar out like he was going to saunter onto a dance floor in Miami and he seemed

genuinely mortified by it but I like to think that it made for a super casual vibe. This is such a

fun conversation. Never did you think gruesome philosophy could be this engaging and friendly. But the

moral thought experiment that's now known as the trolley problem, it originated with this English

philosopher, Philippa Futt, who wrote on virtue ethics, like if a streetcar or a trolley is careening on a track that

splits, is diverting it to kill fewer people ethical?

Philosopher Judith Jarvis Thompson used that example in 1976 after Philippa did and coined

it the trolley problem.

So we're off to these like streetcar races.

And the trolley problem examines morals're off to these like streetcar races. And the trolley problem

...