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- [00:00]
Commercial Narrator
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- [00:31]
Julian Baggini
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- [00:58]
Mia Sorrenti
Learn more@duo.com welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. In today's episode, we're returning for part two of our recent live event with philosopher and author Julian Bogini, recorded live at Conway Hall. Bogini joined broadcaster Richela Shah to explore what philosophy can teach us about politics, polarization and how to think more clearly in a turbulent world. If you haven't heard part one, we recommend jumping back an episode to catch up. But now let's return to the conversation live at Conway hall in London.
- [01:35]
Richela Shah
Okay, so that's what's happening across the Atlantic, and I think there's a lot more to say about that. But we won't necessarily have time to do that this evening. But when we think about what's happening here in the uk, we're always. You mentioned Thatcher. People talk about Thatcherism. And I think you and I could, many people in this room could probably articulate what that meant. Even Blairism. People could probably argue about what that meant. And you could probably. Do you think this current government has a political philosophy? Does Keir Starmer have a clear what you would call a political philosophy?
- [02:09]
Julian Baggini
This is an interesting question, which I'm going to answer in a slightly roundabout way. First of all, I think I'm kind of not very keen on isms in general. Right. I think the thing about isms is that they're terms which sort of gather together a lot of often disparate things and we sometimes have to have these shorthands. Yeah. It's not their meaningless terms, but when you talk about an ism, you're always somewhat Simplifying what is going on. Right.
- [02:39]
Richela Shah
It's a broad brush stroke.
- [02:40]
Julian Baggini
It's a broad brush thing. Exactly. I think the more important thing to ask of the political leaders is what are their values? That's what I'm interested. What are their values? I think actually that is often why we vote for people. So, again, a lot of people who voted for Trump, they voted for him because they felt his values of a strong America, independence, et cetera, resonated with them more than they thought. The alternative, similarly, the Brexit. By the way, I was a remainer, very predictably from my kind of social class.
- [03:13]
Richela Shah
Maybe you surprising.
- [03:15]
Julian Baggini
It's very surprising. But a lot of people, people thought that people who voted for Leave again, they were stupid because they were believing nonsense, more money. No, it was a values thing for them to take back control. Thing was about. It's not about whether or not actually it would make them richer or not. They felt had a sort of a value idea that they. They wanted our country to become more autonomous again, et cetera, et cetera. So. And I think it's right that values do largely determine what we do. Now the question is, what are the values of this government? And I think it's quite interesting because if you actually listen to what various people say, they seem to be. They're actually very clear. Their values are supposed to be about fairness, justice, et cetera. It doesn't seem to be washing with people because they look at a lot of policy decisions and they don't seem to fit that around, like, you know, child benefit caps and all this kind of thing. But I do, if I'm going to be honest about this, I think that. I think that Starmer, I'll tell you why I think he's principles. I think he does have the right sort of values and he's approaching it as a pragmatist. Now, pragmatism is often seen as a dirty word in politics. Right. And I actually think it should be the exact opposite. You've got to be a pragmatist. If you're in politics, you want to achieve the best possible outcome. Right. And you cannot afford to be a purist. Right? Right. Purists, basically, they don't get elected, they get chucked out quickly. It doesn't work. So I give benefit of the doubt on this and I'll tell you why in a minute. I think Keir Starmer genuinely wants a world of greater fairness and human rights, et cetera. He's making his decisions because he thinks pragmatically, this is as close as he can get to them. And I'm not saying those decisions are necessarily all correct by the way. I think he probably has misjudged a heck of a lot, but I think the intent is there. Now why do I believe this? Well, partly it's kind of personal. Right. So I used to play football with Keir Starmer, right. Believe it or not, many years ago I was living in a bedsit in North London and the person whose bedsit it was was a barrister who used to work in the same chambers as Keir Starmer, Doughty Street Chambers. Now Doughty Street Chambers is well known. It's the most kind of like progressive barrack barrister chambers in the country. They do loads of pro bono work for all sorts of like progressive courses. People remember Keir Starmer, you know, represented in the McDonald, the McLibel trial and all that kind of thing, right. And you know that that's serious stuff. He was committed to that. Now that my landlord had actually moved away from that chambers to go into a more lucrative area of law in. It wasn't a disreputable one, but it wasn't the high minded Doughty Street Chambers. And I remember right after one day in the pub after football he was basically trying to sound out cause he wasn't playing football as much as Starmer played every week. My landlord didn't all the time he wanted to poach him for his practice. And I eavesdropped on this conversation and Keir Starmer, who has like a barrister voice and he has a football voice in his football voice was saying, or I call this guy James. I don't know James, I'm very committed, I'm very committed. And to which my landlord said, yeah, yeah, Kia. So was I. And the so was I. You know, so my landlord was. He saw himself as a very, very progressive radical. He thought he was a radical left guy. Actually he left down his street chambers he owned about three properties, you know, had a champagne socialist lifestyle. Keir Starmer, no, he never made that change. He stuck with Doughty Street Chambers. And I think that the one thing I don't doubt about Starmer is fundamentally the things he wants for a society, whether he's doing the right things to achieve them is highly questionable. But I think when people doubt his values and integrity about that, I give him the benefit of the doubt on that.
- [07:38]
Richela Shah
Politics is a communications game.
- [07:41]
Julian Baggini
His communications aren't great. He wasn't designed to be a politician. It's an accident he got there. I agree he's Bad communications, but. But also management as well. I mean, I don't know the ins and outs. You probably know more about this than me, but I'm not sure the team's being managed. Well. Talking earlier about dissent, I've read various commentators suggest that there's not enough. You know, there's not enough internal debate around Kia, that he's not allowing enough kind of. That kind of thing going on. So he may be making lots and lots and lots of mistakes. I'm not saying he isn't, but I think. I think in terms of what the political philosophy is, I think he has values around a fairer, more equal society, human rights and everything. He thinks that the way to achieve that, to get as close to that as possible. You can't be a purist. You can be pragmatic. And he's making his pragmatic choices, many of which probably are poor. I'm not sticking up for the whole record.
- [08:34]
Richela Shah
Okay, well, there's plenty for there for you to go out if you'd like to later. Okay, so then let's turn to the party that no one can stop talking about, it seems, which is Nigel Farage and reform. They fit into this pattern of populism that we're seeing all over the world. And actually, populism is about. It's in a way, the opposite of what we've been talking about. It isn't about slow thinking. It's about easy answers. It's about the sugar rush, isn't it?
- [09:02]
Julian Baggini
Yeah, I think it is. I mean, some people object to the term populist because they think it isn't rigorous. In fact, social scientists and political scientists have got it very, very well defined. I mean, populism is generally understood to an idea that there is a kind of a will of the people which is fairly transparent and knowable, and that the job of the populist party is to express this will of the people. And that will is frustrated by political elites who are too wedded to their own power and so forth. And there are so many things that I find problematic with that. But as you say, the main problem is that populism generally offers fairly simplistic solutions. It suggests that it's not actually that complicated, that all you've got to do is get the vested interests and these meddling ideological elites out the way, and everything will be super duper. So I don't agree with the populist agenda, but I think that what's sort of interesting and also disturbing is that a lot of the people who are not onside with the populace have not found the right way to, to deal with it. There was, I think it was Cass, not Cassandra, another. There's a very famous, very well known guy who studies these things who put it down to like, there's this snog, marry, avoid strategy when it comes to populism, right? So, you know, the avoid thing is like the cordon sanitaire. You just sort of like ignore them, you keep them out of the way and you don't deal with them, you know, and the marry thing is that you get them close and then you kind of like, you know, get them on the inside and then you keep them tame. And the snog is kind of, you flirt with their ideas, you kind of like, you know, you play lip service, et cetera. And all these strategies seem to be problematic, you know, and in different countries in Europe they've worked or not worked. I think one of the challenges is, and I don't know the answer to this, I sometimes think surely it should be possible to, because one of the problems is this perception of dishonesty. And I still think that a lot of the progressive parties haven't managed to do this. They haven't managed to find a way of being open and honest with people. They end up still wanting to kind of give those overly simplistic messages. Because the orthodoxy around political communication is you need simple messages. The most effective campaigns are ones which are based around two words or one word, change, take back control, take back control, hope, et cetera. So everyone's been sucked into this idea. The only way to win in politics is to keep it simple and to keep it straightforward. And actually, although we say, oh, you know, treat the electorate as grown ups, be honest with them, it actually doesn't work because that means saying things are complicated and people just think you're obfuscating. So I don't know that when I'm feeling painful, pessimistic, I think that's true and that unfortunately, people who say they want a more grown up politics are actually naive and that grown up politics isn't possible. You've got to compete on messaging. On my better days, I think someone should try this.
- [12:20]
Richela Shah
But so rounding up some of what you've been talking about, sort of thinking more carefully the way in which we're perhaps not as polarized as we think, but there are at the edges you've got these very loud, shouty, irreconcilable voices. Where then does someone like Zach Polanski and the Green Party fit in? Is that an answer?
- [12:39]
Audience Member
From the left.
- [12:39]
Richela Shah
Is that a kind of. Or is it another, just another form of, I don't know, green populism, Eco populism?
- [12:47]
Julian Baggini
I don't know. It's early days, isn't it? I don't like to, I wouldn't say I'm a crystal ball gazer or particularly good predictor of political trends. I think the. I don't know, I think that the sort of secret sort of formula we're looking for is for people to speak with great clarity and simplicity, if you like, about the core values and what we really want to achieve, while at the same time when people do dig into detail, they being open and honest about the complexities of getting there. So it's like a dual thing. I do think that you do need to have the top level. Messaging in politics does have to be fairly simple, but beneath it we need complexity. I don't know. It's too early to say whether the Green Party is going to bring the.
- [13:44]
Richela Shah
Okay, a few sort of big broad thoughts before we open it up. So we've talked about trying to connect the, the philosophical with the political, but how then do you think we as individuals can use philosophy to understand our world better? Is it as simple as thinking more slowly, unpacking things, not rushing to conclusions.
- [14:07]
Julian Baggini
And various other things like that? Yeah, I mean, basically, I think the. I don't think the way to use philosophy in our daily life is to sort of like necessarily, you know, scrub up on sort of like the theories of the greatest philosophers and then try to apply them. I think it's about, you know, looking at how philosophers think. I think is more important than the. What they have thought and try to sort of think more in those ways. Now, the slow way, there are no shortcuts, but there are also longer routes. The really long route is to spend your whole life doing philosophy like I've done. The other thing is to, you know, try and. I mean, the purpose of writing that book was to try and distill because the thing about the book was I'd done lots of interviews with philosophers as well. I mean, over the years and I've always found that really interesting because when you interview philosophers, you sometimes get a different take on how they think than if you just read their writings. So it's a combination of me thinking myself, the interviews I've done with philosophers, and, and of course reading philosophy. So I thought that there were these general sort of things which I thought were useful. But I think fundamentally I am going to go back and say it's There are different levels of this, right? You can get as sophisticated as you like as things go by, but I think you have to start by having those right attitudes in. It's about taking your thinking seriously, about being genuinely humble about what you can and can't know, about really paying attention, about listening to others, questioning, questioning in the right way. All these things you do have to. If I put them in headline terms, they may seem obvious. Each of these things. To do it well, you have to think more carefully about what exactly it means to do it. So questioning is a good example. I mean, if you've ever had sort of like a teenager or maybe this teenage me who gets into philosophy the first time, they realize that questioning is great, and they just go off and they just think it's really smart to question everything. And so that's the end of the story. So it becomes kind of blanket. Well, how do you know that? Well, how do you know that? That's tedious. That's not very helpful. To be a good questioner, you've got to think about what to question and how far to question it, where does it stop, et cetera. But nonetheless, that habit of, like, stopping and asking is. Is really, really important. So I do think it's about attitudes. And again, I want to underline this. That means that ultimately it's a question of character. Actually, it's a question of character. A good thinker is a person of intellectual integrity and moral honesty who is serious about what they're thinking about. And I think that goes a heck of a long way. I've spoken to a few schools about this, and I quite like this as a message to schools. Because if you go into a school to say, look, some of us have got quicker brains than others, some of us remember more information than others, some of us have got higher iq, if you believe that kind of thing, right? There are all these different mental capacities we have. But actually, I think still the most important thing which determines whether you arrive at the truth or not is whether you have the character of a good thinker. And character is not like personality. Character is something that you can develop through practice and training. So it's working on your character as a thinker is the fundamental thing. And I think what's interesting about that is that you probably. That's not something that's been said very clearly, certainly in Western philosophy in the last hundred years at least. It's something, though, that you would find in, I think, classical Indian philosophy, classical Chinese philosophy, and even ancient Greek philosophy too.
- [18:04]
Richela Shah
People in news in big news organizations are worrying about the fact that in significant numbers people are just switching off. They're finding it all a bit too much. And I keep meeting people who say, I don't watch the news anymore, I don't listen to the radio anymore. But actually, is pessimism perhaps quite a useful way to consider the world to start from a slightly pessimistic place?
- [18:29]
Julian Baggini
Yeah, I like that question. I co wrote an article with my wife about this, about pessimism, the uses of pessimism. I'm a great believer in a certain kind of mitigated pessimism, if you like. Yeah, I don't think that. I think it's reasonable and rational to have fairly low expectations of what is possible in the way the world can be. But that mustn't become a kind of a fatalism. Right. So this was the. In the piece we talked about, you know, people talk about is it better to be optimistic or pessimistic. Actually, that doesn't matter. What is bad is to be fatalistic. And you can be a fatalistic optimistic or fatalistic pessimist, fatalistic optimist, basically believe everything's going to be fine. Right. And that's not good. So they don't bother looking after their health, they don't bother saving for their retirement, they don't bother looking at the road when they're driving, whatever it might be. Right. So that kind of optimism where you're faithful, that's not good. And similarly, a lot of pessimists end up becoming fatalistic. There's no point, etc. Etc. Whereas I think the healthy attitude, the sane attitude in a world which is full of grim things is to accept the fact that, you know what, things aren't great and a lot of things aren't going to work out for the best. But you can't be fatalistic. You've got to kind of like always strive to do the best you can. So actually, going back to what you're saying earlier, you know, you accept the fact that you can never find the truth, you can't be purely objective. Nothing is really certain. That doesn't mean that you have to then give up on trying to live as truthfully as possible in the same kind of way. Yeah. One can be pessimistic about what's going to happen, but recognize the fact that to get the best outcome possible requires you to want it and try it and believe that at least something is better. Yeah.
- [20:23]
Richela Shah
Eeyore rules.
- [20:24]
Julian Baggini
Sorry?
- [20:25]
Richela Shah
Eeyore rules. All right, well, look, I think this Is the moment where I can open up to you because I can keep talking. Julian and I can keep talking. There is a roving mic that is going to be roam around the room. We're going to bring the house lights up so that I can see you. I'm going to come to the front and work my way back. Thank you.
- [20:44]
Audience Member
Thank you very much for your talk. I was interested in particular in one thing you said, which was that one needs to develop character, one needs to develop one's judgment, one needs to perhaps develop virtues. Well, this is exactly what I've been reading in the ethics of Aristotle recently. Now, I also noticed that you didn't really mention any of the great philosophers by name. Perhaps that was deliberate. But my view is that none of us is really a great thinker and we need to go back and we need to reread and we need to draw nourishment from these great thinkers. And to my mind, the best version of ethics that we have is actually to be found in the writings of Aristotle. And that goes back over 2,300 years.
- [21:38]
Julian Baggini
Yeah.
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Audience Member
And nobody has bettered that to this day. Do you agree?
- [21:43]
Julian Baggini
Yeah, actually you're right. I haven't name checked anyone, I don't think, but you. But yes, Aristotle is one of my absolute heroes and I think what he says about character is exactly right. One thing I really admire and by the way, interesting if there are quite a lot of parallels between Aristotle and Kongzi or Confucius as it is known as well, they both talked a lot about character and again, quite a lot. The text in the classical Indian tradition do as well. What I like about Aristotle and also actually David Hume later, is that I think they're great examples of people who, unlike other philosophers, always accepted that on a lot of issues you're never going to be absolutely certain, but you can still, you should strive to be as precise as you can. So there's a quote from Amistotl. I end up quoting it almost. I'm doing it again. If you heard me speak before, I probably said this one, which is, you know, it is the mark of the trained mind only to expect as much precision as the subject matter allows. In other words, recognizing the fact that in maths you can be 100% precise. In other things you cannot be that precise, but you should be as precise as you can. So I think, yeah, Aristotle is great because of his emphasis on character. Although of course what he believed to be the ideal character is very much wrapped up in the ideals of the aristocratic Greece. So we have to update it. You don't just follow it. But yes, also the idea that in a world in which it's often impossible to. To nail things precisely, we can still strive to be as exact as we can and know more.
- [23:23]
Richela Shah
So, yeah, there are things to learn. There were some hands up in the middle. So do you want to. I'm going to go into the middle of that row, and then I will come to you guys on this side in a moment.
- [23:34]
Audience Member
Thank you. I'm wondering how we should respond to conspiracy theories. I'm thinking that we tend to think that conspiracy theories are dangerous and to be avoided at all costs. And I tend to feel that way. But we also know that conspiracies do happen. So, for example, we know that undercover police have actually gone as far as having children with women as part of an investigation. So conspiracies can happen. So how do we respond to this world where we get mad? Conspiracy, conspic. We just want to dismiss them all. But one of them might be right.
- [24:15]
Julian Baggini
Yeah, yeah, no, you're totally right, of course. I mean, there are conspiracies. There have been conspiracies. So when we use the word conspiracy theory pejoratively, you know, we're basically saying, oh, the theory is about conspiracies which are made up rather. Right. Okay, how do we do that? Well, again, you know, this follows on nicely from the Aristotle thing. You can't expect there to be a neat little algorithm for distinguishing the conspiracy theories which are, as you put it, mad or crazy and those that are not. But generally speaking, developing good critical thinking skills enables us to distinguish one or the other. And one of the key things about conspiracy theories is there's this principle of. This principle of abduction. What is the most reasonable explanation for something being the case? Now, what happens is a lot of these things we dismiss as conspiracy theories. The facts are, if you thought carefully about them, they are not the most parsimonious or straightforward explanations of what is happening. The alternatives are more plausible. Now, to make the case one by one for each conspiracy theory will take time. But I think one of the problems is conspiracy theories are attractive to people who believe that the conspiracy theory actually is the simplest and most straightforward explanation of what. What's happened. But that's because they're not thinking clearly enough about it. And the simplicity is masking complexity. So if you think about the twin tower thing, for example, you know, the idea that actually it was a controlled explosion by the US Government, on the one hand, seems to be a simpler theory than the one that requires you to understand the physics of the metal buckling and all that kind of thing. Right. But if you look at it in the round, that conspiracy theory requires so many people to have been in on a plot and also, you know, the Al Qaeda was claiming to do something he didn't do, et cetera, et cetera, if you look at it properly, you can see that was a far less plausible explanation overall. So I'm afraid the point is there is no shortcut to this. It's case by by case. And the worst thing we can do is simply decide that we don't like conspiracy theories and therefore reject any theory of a conspiracy before we've looked into it. Because then we will miss the genuine conspiracies. Absolutely. And there are, there are, there are, there are a lot, there are a.
- [26:52]
Richela Shah
Lot, you know, and sometimes we just have to admit we were wrong in dismissing it in the first place.
- [26:56]
Julian Baggini
Right? Yes. And sometimes we're wrong. Absolutely. Yeah. If you've shopped online, chances are you've bought from a business powered by Shopify. You know that purple shop pay button you see at checkout? The one that makes buying so incredibly easy? That's Shopify. And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it. Because Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all e commerce in the US. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com prom go to shopify.com promo.
- [27:38]
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Julian Baggini
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Julian Baggini
You know, one of the perks about.
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- [29:42]
Richela Shah
There was a gentleman just next to you I think.
- [29:44]
Julian Baggini
Yeah, right. I will ask the obvious send topical one about artificial intelligence and what are the threats and opportunities of that and I think in relation to what you were saying about objectivity and character, could you ever see artificial intelligence acting as a philosopher and I guess anything else in that area, please? Yeah, okay, thanks. Well, I'm going to have to give you sort of like I won't be able to show all the working for this. It'd be too complicated, as it were. But I think that first of all, there were two points. In principle, in principle, I don't see why we should rule out the possibility of genuine artificial intelligence, of creating something capable of thinking for itself. Being a philosopher, I don't think we should rule that out. But I do think that if you're looking at what is called artificial intelligence, the, the moment, in a way, we've got it. We've got the wrong nomenclature actually, you know, what we've got at the moment is not artificial intelligence. There are tools for the simulation of intelligence and for the production of things which superficially look intelligent. People understand this better than me. But if you look at the way the large language models work, for example, things like claws, board and chat GPT, it's very evident that the way they are working has nothing to do with intelligence. It's just crunching data in a very sort of crude way. The way the human mind works is, is clearly totally different. It doesn't do that at all. So a lot of what we're calling artificial intelligence is very different from intelligence as we understand it in a human sense. So I think we're Kind of like fooled a bit by the terminology. The dangers of AI at the moment are more to do with what people could do with it, because what we're calling AI, it's all about, say, I don't think it's genuine intelligence, but it's powerful stuff. Right. So my worries is people using these things to, for example, create a chemical weapon or bring down the whole global Internet, et cetera, et cetera. That wouldn't be because these systems are intelligent, but it'd be because they're very, very powerful. So I want to distinguish between those two things. So, yeah, so AI at the moment is a threat because. Not because it's intelligent, but because it's potentially powerful and could be misused. But there may be other ways of generating artificial intelligence which may supersede as I don't see anyone can rule that out. We don't understand enough about where intelligence comes from in the human mind, how the human mind produces intelligence, to rule out it being brought about by artificial means.
- [32:38]
Richela Shah
I'm going to look this way because I feel like I turned my back on you all.
- [32:42]
Julian Baggini
What would you say to the fact that the people who most need to think in the way that you're talking about are the least receptive to hearing about it? Yeah, yeah, no good for fair questions. Fair cop, you call me bang to right scuff. No, it's true. But this is a problem with so many things is that, you know, the people who most need X are the people who are least likely to be receptive to it. I think that's just an unfortunate truth. So this is where the pessimism aspect comes in. You've got to be, you know, it's like people have written about, you know, virtue and character. You know, we're all capable of improving our character. But the point is that unless you have that kind of, unless you're already sufficiently motivated to improve your character, it's not going to happen. And if you're not the kind of person motivated to do it, then, then, then what can you do? So, so that, that, that is, that is a huge, a huge limitation on this. But I think that there were two, two reasons why it's still worth doing. First of all, from a personal point of view, if you do care about being a person of integrity and getting things right, you want to do the best you can yourself. There's a second thing though, around emulation. This is something that Kongzi wrote about a lot. The idea, and again, a lot of non Western traditions is the importance of example. So the idea here is that we are social creatures and we are influenced by what we see and where we see people modeling good ways of doing things we recognize as good. It encourages us to be like that. Okay, so you say there are some people who just don't care about thinking better. That's true. But there are some people this is irredeemable for others. You know, this is partly a reaction to what they see around them. Yeah, they don't see people thinking well. They don't see thinking well as being rewarding. They don't see it as being praised, whatever it might be. But the more that more they see that, then the more they would be likely to want to do it themselves. So there is that kind of modeling that I think living by example, which has a capacity to change. But some people will never want to.
- [35:02]
Richela Shah
We're going to have to wrap up there. I'd like to thank Julian first of all for for a fantastic conversation. To all of you for some great questions. Really, really good to hear from you. And thanks again to Intelligence Squared for hosting us tonight and have a great evening and see you all again, I hope. Good night.
- [35:17]
Julian Baggini
Thank you.
- [35:22]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Margarita Volpatto and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future live events, just head over to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [35:58]
Julian Baggini
Foreign.
- [36:06]
Commercial Narrator
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