They just would eat colossal amounts. His weight ballooned and it caused eventually by the mid 60s Severe Health issues so that he had diabetes. Eventually going blind and then he lost his kidneys said he would be on dialysis she and quite frequently for a long period of time where he would have people come and read the new yorker, the economist, the New York Times to him. So its a tough story from the 1950s on. There was a rumor that he did it for an election debt that there was a bet the weekend before that chaplain would win so much of a in Bourbon County coming to hedge his bet he wanted to help himself out so thats why 200 ballots in a statewide election might make a difference. Then there are others who say prichard had not paid his dues and begging you to show that he was still one of the local courthouse gang that washington had not made into much of an elitist, that he still understood the ways of local politics, and that it was something very common richardson. His father had done it a lot of people in Bourbon County knew thats how politics work, and to help pay his dues maybe thats what he did it. He never really explained it. Later in 1976 he admitted that he did it and set it was a moral blind spot that he had no explanation for. And never tried to come up with an excuse for it but that it was simply something that he regretted for the rest of his life. I wish people would see that political biographies are fascinating but theyre not just fascinating about people who are elected or when Office Sometimes people who run for nothing or maybe losing office can have an impact in ways that you cant imagine. Robert caro should this about robert moses who was unsuccessful in electoral politics but now knew how to work the system in new york to create something behind the scenes. And also to see that American History is rife with tragic figures whose lives we can celebrate and also just shake our heads at the same time because thats who we are thats the human condition. And like i said when i started, historical research, you never know once you ask that first question where youre going to be taken. And prichards life to me on come it was like a river i was swept up in and i just, i couldnt believe that i was that lucky to have a chance to write about a figure that was so complex, so dynamic, so flawed and so gifted. For more more information on booktvs was a visit to lexington and the many other cities visited by our local content vehicles to to cspan. Org localcontent. Princeton universitys peter singer argues we are in an age when being successful will be based more on altruism than financial success. Thats next on booktv. High, after. Alights blindly. Energy. Peter, first of all, thanks for having me do this because i have known peter a long time and it must be kind of glowing to some of your more theoretical desires be implemented. In a broadway. We were talking backstage slouches ask this question from the audience. Wideout . What has happened . Is a to this generation of young people cares more . What are the elements that have made it possible for this to be a burgeoning movement when it was an . Its a really interesting question and it is generation of millennials, people have come of age since 2000 who are really interested in this. Im not sure why. One thing could be that they feel reasonably economically secure but they want something more in their life and that. Of course, theres a number of people who made quite a lot of money quite young because of the digital revolution, and when they do that they certainly think well what now . Now that ive made my 50 million or 100 million, even billions by the time youre 25, what do you do with rest of your life . What of course not everybody is in a situation because they cant be tough issues. I do think the internet has played a different role, that is a lot of people have come up to me and said i never heard the term effective altruism before i now realize being effective altruism since i was a teenager, perhaps a child. So the internet makes it easier to discover effective altruism. People connector instead of feeling that must be something strange about me because i really think that i should share more of my good fortune of people in poverty, they cannot see that lots of people out there who think that. Something thats been a factor as well. Theres probably more to it than you know. Since you mentioned morality that was an important document for a lot of people but it was also there wasnt a lot of give. You basically i believe its fair to say argued that we should give the things they avoid until we are with those people for the poorest among us. Im sensing from you and reading the book that you dont quite feel that way right now. I dont quite feel that way. Let me qualify. It is a footnote in the article which is look, if need of a decent business suit in order to earn a good living and by giving away your suits he would not be able to earn as much and therefore, not give us much then, of course, you ought to keep the seat. Theres a little concession but its modest, i agree. Theres a sense in which i still think that what you ought to be doing is maximizing the amount you can give unless you do get to the point where you would be doing as much damage to yourself as you do good to the person youre helping. But i also think now that that stance is to dementing to attract people to that way of life. So to some extent you could say ive become more pragmatic in what im suggesting that people do. Im welcoming the fact that people start more or less at any point any fingers at all significant in terms of contributing to the affected charities. And im saying start somewhere and youre comfortable with then maybe do a little bit more next year, see where you go. I dont think im not on any particular kind of caught offline now. Im just saying make this a significant part of your life and see where you go from there. One of the interesting things that you brought up in the book was this idea that if you want to really be good for other people, maybe for some people the best thing to do is go to Business School and make hundreds of millions of dollars and then give it away. Some people have done that and some people have purposefully without the hundreds of millions but theyre purposefully decided im going to be a successful as possible because in that way i will be more useful. Do you see a danger in that sort of thing . I dont think its for everyone. There certainly could be dangerous for particular people to go into that because obviously youre then going to be working with people who are really interested in making lots of money, but unlike you they are interested so they can keep lots of money and buy themselves the porsches or 10,000 or whatever else it may be that go with it. So you are then perhaps going to start feeling i do need these things, too. I cant really enjoy life with alabama. But i also think there are other people who have a Strong Enough commitment that perhaps no their own character well enough to say im not going to be seduced into that. Im going to be firm in my intimate and tell him i think im going to be firm and that commitment and im going to keep those friends who have those values and that will help keep me up to the mark. So i think it can be a very useful thing to do. I think its an understanding that sometimes your ability to earn money as a great asset and particular skills that you might have that would lead you to being an aid worker a whatever useful profession there might be be. For a lot of people are trying to decide what kind of career to have and what to pursue that means the most to them in their life how much do you think they should sit down and care about these issues when selecting a career . Or should they just do what you love and hopefully they will be successful and be able to give . I think they should think about these issues. Its true that if you hate the work youre doing youre probably not going to be successful. If you think you would hate life as an investment banker or whatever then dont do it. Youre not going to be good at it anyway. But if you think it does have some interesting challenges and i wouldnt mind mixing with those kinds of people, theres a certain kind of status in that has affected some, the fact you can get that job and hold down another big seller. So i would be recently happy doing that and i could then give away a lot. I think thats fine you should think about that. There are other careers like the person i talk about in the beginning of the book max, who couldve had an academic career was a very good philosophy student and was offered a place at oxford for graduate school. I think he did think about whether he would do more good in the one than the other. Sometimes your passion might be a career in which youre not really going to make much difference to the world, you might enjoy it but i think thats a reasonable consideration. What am i going to be doing for this world if i follow this passion. Lets talk a bit about kidneys because you write about kidneys. You write about Organ Donation and one of the things you say this you can live with one kidney and the risk of dying or having harsh consequences in getting a kidney up i think is oneone of 4000, im sure its very small. Wouldnt it be better if those people who are giving their kidneys away did one of two things, one, this is a country where when you die in a car accident it is assumed you dont want to donate your organs. Whereas many other countries is the opposite. So first if we reversed that it would be a remarkable thing. The second sort of scientific thinking is not crazy to think about growing functioning kidneys no. This doesnt take away from the. Its just how do you determine when to do Something Like give a kidney . And the other thing i will ask is, is it okay to sell your organs . Not necessarily for profit but to make money. I do think it would be better to have opting in rather than. Com opting out rather than opting in. Reverse the present situation. We would get more kidneys but the evidence is that with all the problem of shortage of kidneys. If you look at the european nations that have done that they still problems with katie and of kidneys despite that the ironically things like making motorcyclist wear crash helmets actually reduce the availability of organs even if you have that kind of system. Thats the first thing. You have three questions. The third one was about selling kidneys. What was the second one . It was just about to you pursue sort of a Research Solution speak with sure. Yes, absolutely. I dont think we can grow a functioning kidney yet by the people of techniques for doing that, absolutely. That would solve the problem. Its not like i wanted to be a shortage of kidneys. Im not into promoting moral virtue. Im into promoting moral virtues because of the consequences that flow from it. Thirdly, should you sell your kidney . Its illegal to do so and the united states. You can get prosecuted so my answer to that is no. But should that be the law i think theres a good argument is saying at least we should experiment with some instances. Ive signed, theres a letter going around, i think you can find it online suggesting that the u. S. Government have Pilot Project in providing some incentives, which is currently illegal or at best a gray. Rather than pay cash which have certain problems i guess we could have payments into peoples iras that they can collect later. We could have pay for the Health Insurance for the rest of their lives. We could have sort of things that would be longterm lasting benefits for people who were prepared to give up a kidney to someone. I think that would be worth doing in order to see essential how it works. You reminded me of a weird thing. I lived in rome. Some who came to visit with a brain surgeon and the people is and why are they not wearing helmets ask this would be the greatest place in the world to be a brain surgeon. You try to do the metrics of giving in a way to maximize the good. Thats always what you been up. Other people would argue bill gates. Bill and melinda are like that. Theres a growing number of people like that. You talk about a theoretical thousand dollars donation. Would you give that to africans or americans . A lot of people would say there are poor in this country, why do we do with that . Obviously, very obvious but thousand dollars would go very much further in another place than it would you cant even that is absolutely true that our people in desperate straits. Its also i think true that people are clannish and tribal to some degree and they want to help the ones they know who are new than. I think this sort of extended family of maybe a country. That seems to me to be a theoretical problem. Youre right, i think people probably do feel like that and some of those closer circles i think extreme it difficult and i would really want to try to say to people look you should be impartial between your kids and kids of strangers i think. You couldnt expect anyone to do that. If i say to me shouldnt automatically give priority to your fellow americans over people globally. I dont think, is that some biological default nature this is geographical boundary a around your entry care more about people within that boundary and to give people outside it. You obviously have never met a tea party member. Thats a new phase of evolution that has happened very quickly. Very interesting yes. So i think it is possible to get people to redress that balance to some extent. When you see the things you can do so just to spell out the recent event, the poverty line for familyfor a family of four here is about 23,000. To give him 1000 you have to make very much difference. Youve given them roughly what they would get every two weeks anyway. The world bank is maybe about 1. 78 five or something. They are people, a billion people in the world that on Something Like 600 significantly less than 1000 a year. You have given them a whole years of salary. The charity im delighted green light is sharing some of its returns with give directly actually does exactly that. It gives 1000 so theres no dependence coming from it to families, some the poorest families in africa. It follows up with a do with the. They do things like buying a tin roof replaced the late the fact they have on the house. So now when it rains they can keep try and keep their possessions dry. Their food is less likely to spoil. And also they say and also they say the expense of retouching that each year which cost them 20, 30 but its a savings. Is a good longterm investment but because they are on five, six, 700 a year they could never save the hundreds of dollars they would need, alcohol thousand but maybe three or 400. It makes a huge difference to the lives for many years to come. Thats why think we ought to be able to overcome this by our fellow country people. Let me say if youre going to ask peter a question, i think the given index cards begin to write your question and in a few minutes and look at them and i will ask him some of the questions. Do you think some of the shifting to a more worldly view is the internet, the ability to communicate or steal other people live in a way they never have before . I think its a number of the things that connect us more closely. The internet certainly is another stage of it. It was offered happening in other ways clearly in the news we were bringing us closer to the rest of the world. At the internet does more of it. I mentioned max a moment ago. One of the things he and facebook is trying to promote is making the internet accessible to whatever it is half the world that doesnt have access to at the moment. And i think that would be something that would really increase this but if people could really be more in contact with people throughout out extreme poverty or have a great connection with him, participate in an other ways. I think this would help even more and we would advance further. Can ask maybe come i think a lot of people are confused about how to get them what to give, to whom to get bigger so may different options as you can click on so many Different Things and people talked about overhead and they can be very daunting i think for people who are not used to contributing resources. Right. Who do you have some advice speak with i do. Its another reason why effective altruism has taken off, since the founding of give well in 2010 with better information about which charities are truly effective than we had before. Before we only had this information about how much goes to administration and fundraising and how much goes to programs. A lot of people still choose which organizations to give to on that basis. Its really not a useful guide to because imagine an organization that is trying to do well people will give to organizations that spend little on administration so lets fire half of our staff at our decision will be down below 10 , the threshold people get too. Now they only have half half the staff to how to define which programs to get to . Its going to be much more scanty information that they have the ability to analyze. Out of the followup with the programs they funded are working or not . Again they may not have the staff to do it. It may be you get much better value for your dollar giving to the organization that is twice the Administrative Expenses and didnt have it staff in that way way. And give well which was founded by couple of young Hedge Fund Guys who wanted to give to charity but couldnt really get good information about which a charity to give give it really does analysis of the result of the programs and its rigorous in what it does. So thats one source. The life you can which is an organization that is spun off my previous book went to global poverty also makes recommendations. Partly drawing on give well partly being a little bit broader. If youre interested in one more thing i want to say im delighted green light giving away part of the proceeds. Im also donating the royalties on burning to the book to effective charities. But dont ask me which ones because you or the public are going to decide, at least decide within a list. If you go to the website for the book, the most good you can do. Com and click on a movement you get another link. A giving game is going to be you get presented with a list of 16 charities with some information about them. You will be able to vote for the charities that you want my royalties to go to and they will be divided up proportionally to your votes. I think its an educational exercise to get people to think about how they choose their charities. The hope is that by doing this than in future they will also think about those questions in the same way. Some of these things seem may be more simple than that are. You mention in the book norman who is a researcher