Michael: I’m going to throw a number at you, Kevin. $45 million. What would you do with it? Kevin: Oh, easy. Buy a private island, build a fortress of solitude, and never answer an email again. A very, very comfortable fortress. Michael: Fair. Now, what if I told you that same $45 million could restore sight to 900,000 people with cataracts? Kevin: Wow. Okay, my fortress of solitude suddenly feels very, very selfish. That’s a staggering trade-off. Where does that number even come from? Michael: It comes from a real-world example, and that exact kind of ethical gut-punch is at the heart of the book we’re diving into today: The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer. Kevin: Ah, Peter Singer. The philosopher who makes everyone feel a little bit guilty about their life choices. I know his work is highly acclaimed, but also pretty polarizing for readers. It’s the kind of book that gets five stars from people who say it changed their life, and one star from people who find the moral demands just too intense. Michael: Exactly. He's a giant in the world of ethics, a professor at Princeton, and really one of the key figures behind the whole "effective altruism" movement. This book, published back in 2009, is his attempt to take a very powerful philosophical argument he first made in an essay in the 70s and turn it into a practical, and challenging, guide for the rest of us. Kevin: So he’s been wrestling with this idea for a long time. It’s not just a passing thought. Michael: For decades. And it all starts with a deceptively simple, and frankly, gut-wrenching scenario he puts to the reader.

Michael: He asks you to imagine you're walking to work, dressed nicely. You pass a shallow pond and you see a small child has fallen in and is thrashing about, clearly drowning. You're the only one there. You can easily wade in and save the child, but if you do, you'll ruin your brand-new, expensive shoes and get your suit muddy. Kevin: Right, no-brainer. You save the kid. The shoes are completely irrelevant. Anyone who would hesitate is a monster. Michael: Precisely. No one struggles with that. But here's where Singer lands the first blow. He argues that we are in that exact situation every single day. Kevin: What do you mean? I don't see any drowning children on my way to the studio. Michael: He means that there are children all over the world dying from preventable, poverty-related causes—like measles, malaria, or diarrhea. A small amount of money from us, the cost of a pair of shoes, or even just a fancy coffee, could provide a life-saving vaccine or a mosquito net. The distance and the fact that we can't see their faces doesn't change the moral calculation. We can save a life at a trivial cost to ourselves. By choosing to buy the shoes, or the coffee, we are, in a sense, letting the child drown. Kevin: Oof. Okay, that is an uncomfortable thought. When you put it like that, it’s hard to argue with the logic. But it also feels… huge. Overwhelming. Michael: It is. And he knows our intuitions get fuzzy when the stakes get higher. So he presents another, more extreme thought experiment. It’s the story of Bob and his Bugatti. Kevin: A Bugatti. Now we're talking. Michael: Bob is near retirement. He has no pension, but he's invested all his life savings into one thing: a rare, vintage Bugatti. It's his pride and joy, but more importantly, it's his financial security. He can't insure it. One day, he parks it near a railway siding and goes for a walk. He sees a runaway train hurtling down the track. Further down, a child is playing on that same track, completely unaware. Kevin: Oh no. I see where this is going. Michael: Bob is standing near a switch. He can throw the switch and divert the train onto the siding. The child will be saved. But the train will smash directly into his Bugatti, destroying it and his entire life savings. Kevin: And what does Bob do? Michael: Bob decides not to throw the switch. He chooses to save his car, his financial future, and lets the child die. Singer then asks: what do we think of Bob? Kevin: We think Bob is a monster! A life is infinitely more valuable than a car, even a really, really expensive one. Michael: But then Singer turns the mirror back on us. He asks, how is Bob’s choice any different from us choosing to spend thousands of dollars on luxuries—a kitchen renovation, a fancy vacation, a new car—when that same money could be sent to an effective aid agency and save the lives of several children? Kevin: Okay, hold on. A Bugatti is his life savings, his retirement. That's a huge sacrifice, way more than a pair of shoes. Is Singer really saying we have to give up our financial security? That we should live at the edge of poverty ourselves just to help others? Michael: That’s the radical implication, and it’s what makes his argument so controversial. He’s not necessarily saying we must become destitute. He's using the extremity of the example to force us to confront the logic. If we condemn Bob, but we ourselves spend money on non-essentials while others die, what does that say about our own moral consistency? He wants to expose the line we draw between "minor inconvenience" and "major sacrifice" and ask if that line is ethically defensible. Kevin: It’s a brilliant and deeply unsettling argument. It feels like a logical trap you can't escape. Michael: And it's not just hypothetical. He contrasts these thought experiments with the real-life story of Wesley Autry, the construction worker in New York who became known as the "Subway Hero." Kevin: I remember that story. It was all over the news. Michael: A man had a seizure and fell onto the subway tracks as a train was approaching. Wesley Autry, a total stranger, jumped down without hesitation. He couldn't lift the man out in time, so he pushed him into the narrow drainage trench between the rails and lay on top of him as the train passed over them. Five cars rolled inches above their heads. Kevin: That's just incredible bravery. Chilling to even think about. Michael: Both men were unharmed. And when Autry was hailed as a hero, he said something profound. He said, "I don’t feel like I did something spectacular. I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I felt was right." He didn't weigh the cost. He saw a life in danger and acted. Singer uses this to show that this instinct to help is real. The problem is, it doesn't seem to fire when the person in need is thousands of miles away. Kevin: Okay, the logic is uncomfortably sound. But let's be honest, most of us don't act like Wesley Autry. We hear about global poverty and... we just don't feel that same urgency. Why is that? Why is our moral compass so strong for the person right in front of us, but so weak for the person we can't see?

Michael: That's the next brilliant part of the book. Singer moves from philosophy to psychology. He asks that exact question: if the argument is so clear, why don't we act on it? And the answer is that our brains are riddled with psychological biases that get in the way. Kevin: Our brains are wired to fail this moral test. That's comforting. Michael: In a way, yes. It's not just that we're bad people; it's that our evolutionary wiring isn't built for a globalized world. The biggest factor he discusses is called the "Identifiable Victim Effect." Kevin: What’s that? Michael: It’s our tendency to be far more moved by the story of a single, identifiable person in need than by abstract statistics about thousands or millions of people. He cites a fascinating experiment to prove this. Kevin: Lay it on me. Michael: Researchers gave participants some money and the opportunity to donate it to the charity Save the Children. They divided them into groups. The first group just got some statistics about the millions of children suffering from poverty and hunger in Africa. The second group got no statistics at all. Instead, they were shown a photo of a single seven-year-old girl from Malawi named Rokia and told her personal story of desperate poverty. Kevin: So, stats versus a story. I have a feeling I know which group gave more. Michael: The group that heard about Rokia gave, on average, more than double what the group that heard the statistics gave. But here’s the truly mind-bending part. They had a third group that was given both the story of Rokia and the statistics. Kevin: You’d think that would be the most powerful combination, right? The emotional hook of the story backed up by the logical scale of the problem. Michael: You would think so. But that group gave less than the group that only heard Rokia's story. The cold, hard statistics actually dampened their emotional, generous response. Thinking about the sheer scale of the problem made them feel like their contribution was just a drop in the ocean. It triggered a sense of futility. Kevin: That's fascinating! It's the 'rule of rescue.' We'll spend a million dollars to save one trapped miner, or 'Baby Jessica' who fell down a well, because we know their name and see their face. But we won't spend that same money to save thousands from malaria with bed nets, because they're just a 'statistical life.' Michael: Precisely. Mother Teresa famously said, "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." She understood this psychology perfectly. And it’s not the only bias at play. There’s also "diffusion of responsibility." Kevin: The idea that if a lot of people are around, everyone assumes someone else will handle it? Michael: Exactly. The classic example is the tragic murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in the 1960s, where dozens of people reportedly heard her screams but nobody called the police, each assuming someone else would. When it comes to global poverty, we know that billions of other affluent people could help, so we feel less personal responsibility to act ourselves. Kevin: It’s the ultimate bystander effect. We’re all standing around the drowning child, but the pond is the size of the planet, so we all just look at each other. Michael: And that ties into another block: our sense of fairness. We think, "I'm willing to do my fair share, but I'm not going to do it if others aren't chipping in. It's not fair that I should have to sacrifice more because others are selfish." The problem, of course, is that while we're all waiting for everyone else to be fair, children are still dying. Kevin: This is all a bit depressing, Michael. You've convinced me I'm a moral failure and my brain is broken. Is there any good news here? What's the solution? How do we get past these mental blocks?

Michael: This is where Singer gets really pragmatic. He knows that just hitting people over the head with a demanding moral argument and telling them their brains are flawed is a losing strategy. The final part of the book is about moving from guilt to effective action. He proposes creating a "culture of giving." Kevin: What does that mean? Like, making charity trendy? Michael: Sort of. It’s about changing social norms. Right now, in most Western cultures, talking about how much money you donate is considered tacky or boastful. We keep it private. Singer argues this is a huge mistake. When giving is invisible, the norm becomes not giving. But if we make it public, we create a new standard. Kevin: So it's about peer pressure, but for good? Michael: Exactly. He tells the incredible story of a group called the "50% League." It was started by a man who inherited a lot of money and felt conflicted. He started giving away a third of his income but felt isolated. Then, at a philanthropy conference, he met others who felt the same way. They formed a group where they all publicly pledged to give away at least 50% of their income. Kevin: Fifty percent! That is a serious commitment. Michael: It is. But the amazing thing was, being in a group that normalized such a high level of giving made it easier. They supported each other, shared strategies, and it encouraged them to give even more than they would have alone. They created a new "normal" for themselves. Kevin: So it's about making giving... normal? Even cool? Michael: Yes, and even expected in some contexts. He points to the investment bank Bear Stearns, which, before it collapsed, used to require its senior managing directors to donate a minimum of 4 percent of their salary and bonus to charity every year. They had to submit their tax returns to prove it. Kevin: Wow, mandatory giving. I can't imagine that going over well in most companies today. Michael: But the people there said it just became part of the culture. It fostered conversations about what causes people cared about. It created a positive feedback loop. This is what leads Singer to his big, practical proposal. He says we need to establish a clear, public standard for giving. Kevin: Okay, so what's the number? What does he actually want me, an average person, to do? Michael: He suggests a progressive, sliding scale. For people who are financially comfortable, he proposes starting with a pledge to give 5% of their annual income. For the very rich, that percentage should be much, much higher—a quarter, a third, or even more. He bases this on what people can afford without sacrificing anything essential. Kevin: Five percent. That’s a concrete number. It’s significant, but for many people, it’s not life-ruining. It’s the cost of a car payment or a couple of nice dinners out a month. Michael: Exactly. It's designed to be a realistic, achievable standard that, if widely adopted, would raise an astronomical amount of money—more than enough to meet the UN's goals for ending extreme poverty. And here's the kicker, the final twist in the book that turns the whole argument on its head. Kevin: Go on. Michael: Giving this money away isn't just a sacrifice. Numerous psychological studies have shown a powerful, direct correlation between charitable giving and happiness. Kevin: So you're saying helping others actually makes us feel better? It's not pure altruism, it's also a form of... happy self-interest? Michael: That's what the data suggests! A huge survey found that people who gave to charity were 43 percent more likely to say they were "very happy" with their lives. Giving provides a sense of purpose and meaning that just consuming products can't. He tells a wonderful story about a fundraiser who had to ask a gruff, wealthy man to donate land for a new clinic. The man was reluctant, but when she asked, his eyes filled with tears and he said he'd been waiting his whole life for someone to ask him to do something of real value. He ended up giving millions and said it was the best thing he ever did.

Kevin: So, the journey is from this gut-punch of a moral obligation—the drowning child we can't ignore—through understanding the frustrating psychological traps that stop us, and finally arriving at a realistic, and even joyful, way of acting on it. Michael: Exactly. Singer isn't trying to make us feel guilty. He's showing us a life that's available to us—one where we can save the lives of others without sacrificing anything truly important, like our health, our family's well-being, or our basic security. He's just asking us to re-evaluate what counts as a "necessity" versus a "luxury." Kevin: It’s a powerful challenge. It reframes every dollar I spend. This latte, this shirt, this subscription service... what else could it have been? Michael: And he suggests a simple first step for anyone feeling overwhelmed by that. Don't start by pledging 5%. Just start with awareness. He suggests you calculate 1% of your annual income. Just see what that number is. Then go to a site like The Life You Can Save—the organization he founded—which vets charities for their effectiveness. Find one that resonates with you, and start there. Kevin: One percent. That feels manageable. It’s a starting point. It takes it out of the realm of abstract guilt and into the realm of a concrete action. Michael: That’s the whole point. It’s not about being a perfect saint. It's about being a little more conscious, a little more effective, and a little more connected to the rest of humanity. It's about choosing to save the child, even if it costs you your shoes. Kevin: It’s a profound and life-altering idea. We'd love to hear what you all think. Does this argument convince you? Does it change how you think about your next purchase? Find us on our socials and let us know. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.