In short
A BBC History Hour “Witness History” collection spanning (1) the Osmothèque, the world’s first perfume archive opened in Versailles in 1990; (2) how the 1973–74 oil crisis led the Dutch government to ban private cars on Sundays; (3) the Windhoek Declaration and World Press Freedom Day; (4) Peter Singer’s “drowning child” thought experiment and the rise of effective altruism; and (5) the 2014 Obama-Castro thaw in US-Cuba relations.
Guests (named)
Jen Dale (reporter/host for the perfume and press-freedom segments); Jean-Claude Hélénard (perfumery archive founder/creator at Osmothèque); Dr Will Tullett (history lecturer, author of Sniff: A History of Smells); Gwen Lister (Namibian editor behind the Windhoek Declaration); Surya Alango (reporter on Dutch oil crisis segment); Wim Meyer (Dutch State Secretary quoted); Wim Baia (Dutch minister in the 1970s); Ben Henderson (philosopher segment interviewer); Peter Singer (philosopher behind “Famine, Affluence and Morality”); Anushka Matanda-Dawati (reporter on US-Cuba segment); Ben Rhodes (Obama speechwriter, insider on negotiations).
Key claims + examples
Osmothèque preserves vanished formulas (e.g., Crêpe de Chine, a 14th-century Hungarian queen eau de toilette, Napoleon’s 1815 scent) using opaque bottles at 12°C and argon gas; Dutch “Car-Free Sundays” began 4 Nov 1973 after OAPEC’s oil embargo; Windhoek Declaration (1991) helped establish World Press Freedom Day (3 May); Singer’s drowning-child scenario argues distance isn’t a moral excuse; effective altruism uses “value for money” charity spreadsheets; Obama-Castro normalization followed secret talks, a Mandela memorial handshake, and a Pope-mediated prisoner/Alan Gross swap.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOWorld Press Freedom Day and US-Cuban Relations
2:42 to 3:40
Discussion on the Vintook Declaration and US-Cuban relations under Obama.
“This week's collection from Witness History, the past brought to life by those who were there.”
Introduction to Perfume History
3:40 to 3:53
Exploring the significance of scent in history and introducing the perfume archive.
“We had to ask to lower the use of energy products.”
The Story of the World's First Perfume Archive
3:53 to 11:41
Jean-Claude shares his journey and the creation of the Osmotech perfume archive.
“Jean-Claude Eleonard is a perfumer, but as a young boy, he didn't aspire to be one.”
The Global History of Scent
11:41 to 14:01
Dr. Will Tullett discusses the evolution of scent and its cultural significance.
“Dr Will Tullett is a senior lecturer in history at the University of York and author of Sniff, A History of Smells, which is out in September of this year.”
The Global History of Perfume
14:01 to 17:00
Explore the evolution and cultural significance of perfume across the world.
“But the use and value of scent is truly global and does go back a long way.”
Press Freedom in Africa: A Historical Perspective
17:01 to 24:44
Learn about the fight for press freedom in Africa and the significance of the Windhoek Declaration.
“Will Tullett from the University of York.”
The Dutch Response to the 1973 Oil Crisis
24:45 to 28:00
Understand how the Netherlands reacted to the oil embargo and the impact on society.
“Later that year, UNESCO's General Conference endorses the declaration and then in 1993 the United Nations General Assembly proclaims the 3rd of May as World Press Freedom Day.”
The Dutch Oil Crisis and Political Response
28:00 to 35:41
Explore the impact of the 1973 oil crisis on the Netherlands and the government's strategies to cope with scarcity.
“The delivering of gasoline will stop in a couple of weeks.”
Drowning Child Thought Experiment and Its Implications
35:41 to 40:06
Learn about Peter Singer's thought experiment and its influence on moral philosophy and global charity.
“Next, a philosophical thought experiment by an Oxford academic contemplating the suffering of people thousands of kilometres away.”
Effective Altruism Movement Emergence
40:06 to 42:00
Discover how the effective altruism movement was inspired by philosophical ideas and its focus on impactful charity.
“then parents, in consultation with a doctor, should have the option of euthanising the child.”
Show all 15 chapters
The Rise of Effective Altruism
42:00 to 43:39
Learn about the origins and impact of the effective altruism movement.
“So that was incredibly impressive, I thought, that one person could prevent a whole big football stadium of people going blind.”
US-Cuban Relations: A Thaw in Hostility
43:40 to 52:55
Explore the pivotal moment in US-Cuban relations during Obama's presidency.
“Peter Singer was talking to Ben Henderson.”
Calciopoli: The Italian Football Scandal
52:56 to 56:00
Discover the details of the Calciopoli scandal that rocked Italian football.
“This week's Sporting Witness next, we delve into the murky world of Italian football match-fixing.”
The Rise and Fall of Paolo Rossi and Calciopoli
56:00 to 59:08
Learn about Paolo Rossi's impactful role in the 1982 World Cup and the subsequent Calciopoli scandal.
“He almost missed out in the 1982 World Cup.”
Impact of Calciopoli on Italian Football
59:08 to 1:01:46
Explore how the Calciopoli scandal affected Italian football and the national sentiment during the 2006 World Cup.
“But the celebrations were short-lived and just days later, the Calciopoli verdict was in.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
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1:42From the brilliant and bizarre... It was really surreal. It was a surreal kind of atmosphere there. You couldn't really see anybody. ...to the shocking and unexpected... I'm just wondering, what are we going to do now? This was really my worst fear. He found 100 % horse meat that was labelled as beef. Witness the stories that have shaped our world, told by the people he were there. When he went to the factory, the poodle went in front of him, so the work was only all of the bosses here. Many people had many things to lose by our victory. The future was not so bright. Witness history. We had a designer.
2:18he brought in a fully storyboarded idea about how the Queen would arrive by jumping out of a helicopter. And we all said, that's brilliant, but it's never going to happen. Witness History at bbcworldservice.com slash witness history or wherever you get your podcasts.
2:41Hello and welcome to the History Hour from the BBC World Service with me, Max Pearson. This week's collection from Witness History, the past brought to life by those who were there. This week, the African journalists who provided the catalyst for World Press Freedom Day with the Vintook Declaration. We the participants declare that the establishment, maintenance and fostering of an independent, pluralistic and free press is essential. Also, we take a look at the brief thaw in US-Cuban relations under Barack Obama. We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests.
3:22And instead, we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries. Plus the moral basis for charity. And when faced with an oil crisis in the 1970s, how the Dutch government banned cars on Sundays and asked every citizen to play their part. And that's why we've called on you to be economical with heating and lighting. We had to ask to lower the use of energy products. But before that, we sniff the air as we examine part of the history of scent. In 1990, the world's first perfume archive opened in Versailles, France, as Jen Dale now tells us. Jean-Claude Eleonard is a perfumer, but as a young boy, he didn't aspire to be one.
4:07That's despite growing up in grass, a town in the hills above Cannes on the French Riviera. Scent pervades the atmosphere of this medieval town. Its natural aromatic plants, such as jasmine, lavender and rose, means this place has been a centre of perfume in Europe since the 18th century. There was a bad student at school. Because I lived in grass, and it's a city dedicated to perfumery, I went into it at the age of 16 as a worker. That means filling and unloading the distillation apparatus, cleaning, sweeping, etc. I really enjoyed working in perfumery until there was an announcement that Givaudon, a large perfume company, was looking for students.
4:51So I applied and I was the first student to be accepted. So at 21, he heads to Geneva, then later New York, before returning to France a few years later. And that's when he gets an interesting phone call.
5:11And it was in Paris that I made contact with Jean Carleo. It was Jean Carleo who called me to come and work at Osmotec. In the late 1970s, Jean Carleo is the president of the French Society of Perfumers and wants to create something unique, a place dedicated to preserving the memory of scents. So he assembles a small, enthusiastic team to help realise his vision. It was easy to convince me, because before doing the Osmotech, there was a small group of perfumers who smelled all the perfumes on the market. And in fact, we were trying to classify them. They were making a record of what family the perfumes being sold belonged to, such as floral, citrus or aromatic, based on their dominant characteristics.
6:03I was interested because I believe that if you want to become a creator, it's important to know the past. There's just a few hurdles to overcome. To start with, how do you go about making perfumes that no longer exist? And where do you get the list of ingredients from? So, if the perfume no longer exists, the challenge is to find a formula. So, as we worked in companies, we had contacts to find all formulas that had completely disappeared. But the great difficulty is to find the raw materials, the chemical and natural substances that were used. When it was not possible, we managed to redo a 95 % formula.
6:48But from time to time, we couldn't redo them because the materials no longer existed. Today, we have standardized the products. We have reduced the range of materials that we can use for economic reasons and because of allergies, which means that our palate today is reduced compared to what it was in 1910. We knew in advance the difficulties we were going to encounter, so we had to accept them. And it isn't simple, even when you think you have the right ingredients. For instance, with jasmine, the absolute jasmine that we use today is not exactly the same as in the 1920s. Finding companies that were capable of reproducing jasmine for us like it was back then was the difficulty.
7:38You need to understand that it is the same flower, but the way it was made was different. Previously, the first jasmine concentrated oils were made using animal fats, but by the early 20th century, a chemical solvent is used, and it's a different process again now. It's painstaking work for Jean-Claude and the team. The problem with very old formulas is that quantities are often written using a little, a lot, a pinch, and rarely with weights. Some perfumes take weeks, months, or even a year to create. It's true. Perfumes could have several hundred ingredients. I have seen formulas with 400 ingredients.
8:22So, with a very long, very complex formula like that, the first thing you have to do is bring together all the materials. then weigh each substance one by one. Sometimes it's one milligram, sometimes 25 grams. So it's a very delicate approach. It's done with a scale, pipettes, and that's all. You need to have a lot of patience to do this kind of job because it's slow, very slow. But in the end, the result is magnificent. As this report on Osmotech from the Agence France-Presse shows. Other keynote scents include the famous Crêpe de Chine from 1925, and other samples again are straight from the history books.
9:07This Hungarian queen eau de toilette dates from the 14th century, and this cologne was used by Napoleon on Santa Elena in 1815. The formula for that Napoleon scent was recorded in black quilling on paper made from rags. The team is given premises in Versailles on the grounds of a perfumery school to store their collection. It looked like a wine cellar with shelves in which bottles were placed, each labelled with both the name and the date the perfume was made. Perfumes are fragile, and they don't like heat, and they don't like light. The perfume's fragility means they're kept in opaque bottles and at a constant temperature of 12 degrees Celsius.
9:54They're also injected with a protective layer of inert argon gas to stop them evaporating. Being part of the creation of the Osmotech means Jean-Claude can envelop himself in fragrances he hasn't come across before, such as formulas by the fashion designer Paul Poiré from the early 1900s. It was very interesting because there were extraordinary innovations in it. He was not afraid to use large quantities of certain products that when you are a young perfumer, you are very afraid to use because they smell very strong. These were audacious things that I would not have dared to do myself. So there was an appeal in seeing the old formulas, the old perfumes.
10:42After a decade or so of hard work, the Osmotech opens on the 26th of April 1990 with 400 perfumes. For Jean-Claude, it's been an opportunity not only to preserve history, but to make himself a better perfumer. Perfumes reflect their time. They belong to their time. It was really curiosity that motivated me, that guided me. I was looking for a style that is a way to design perfume in my own way. Through what I did there, it was a part of feeding myself. When we want to be creative, we must nourish ourselves. You need to feed your imagination. The perfumer Jean-Claude Hélénard was talking to Gendale about the Osmotech collection of scents, a collection which today includes more than 6 ,000 perfumes.
11:41So let's talk smells. Dr Will Tullett is a senior lecturer in history at the University of York and author of Sniff, A History of Smells, which is out in September of this year. So when did humans start first using scent to disguise their natural whiff? Well, I think there's always been a desire to either cover up the smells of our bodies or the smells of the spaces that we inhabit with nice and slightly fragrant ones. But I think in some ways the Osmothek as a museum of perfume really represents the history of perfume since the late 19th century because that's the kind of moment when the modern global perfume industry as we know it today really comes from, thanks to a few things.
12:21One is the rise of a chemical industry producing synthetic materials for use in perfume and that makes perfume cheaper. But also in the late 19th century we also see the development of the atomizer so kind of spritzing and spraying that we're familiar with today but before then perfume had kind of looked quite different so in the 19th century perfume had been all about scenting handkerchiefs or using scented soaps in the 18th century it had been all about hair powders for powdering wigs which were very fashionable the rage and in the 16th and 17th century it had been about perfume gloves so gloves made from leather kind of stank and so you had to cover up the smell So people kind of came up with perfumed pastes that they would lather on them to give them a more fragrant scent.
13:05And that fashion really came from Spain, but then goes kind of across Europe and to a certain extent the wider world. The longer history as well takes us into very different types of perfumes from the ones that we kind of are familiar with today, which is the original kind of sense of what constitutes perfume, which comes from the Latin perfume. So it's a scent by smoking. And that's really what many of the earliest perfumes were about. So, you know, we might think about incense in medieval Catholic churches or, for example, in Japan in the 11th and 12th centuries, fumigations, kind of incenses that you would use to scent fans or clothing were really popular.
13:41And in fact, there were even things like incense competitions where people would compete to produce the kind of the nicest scents. So these appear in things like the Japanese epic, The Tale of Genji, for example. So there's this kind of much longer history of scenting things using kind of various forms of fumigation and incense that goes far further back in time. It's interesting that you say that because, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the French like to see themselves as the creme de la creme of the perfume world, if you like. But the use and value of scent is truly global and does go back a long way.
14:12yeah absolutely and indeed today a lot of the kind of fashions in perfumery that are coming to us are ones that were established earlier on in other parts of the globe so for example you know in the last 10-20 years oud has become very popular which of course comes from the practice of bakor found on the arabian provincia in north africa and and their clothing has long been fumigated with burnt scents before wearing for example so there are all these other kinds of perfume traditions there's a really kind of rich global history of perfume here's a thought our natural body odors are there for an evolutionary reason i mean they contain pheromones and things like that is there a danger that we are with scent masking something which might be quite important to us as as animals i think that's possibly true i think that a lot of the stuff around pheromones particularly in humans have has been kind of slightly uh overdone there's there's not necessarily all that much um scientific proof of some of the suggestions that are made by companies about pheromones but i there is a kind of a long history of covering our own bodily odors with indeed the odors of other animals for example so uh the the civic cat for example which is a cat that's found in in africa and parts of asia uh there's a long history of extracting a substance which is called civet from its perineal gland and then using that in perfume and that has a kind of quite a funky fragrance but it's been really popular in perfume it's it's there in the 16th century for perfume in gloves it's in chanel number five in the 1920s um so often it's not just covering up our bodily smells but using other smells of other bodies to do so and then there must be something in it if you've just got to look at the extraordinary value of the industry it's worth billions of dollars each year absolutely and i think the value of that industry has only increased and also kind of gone in new directions so you know since the 1970s 1980s there's been a return of things like scented candles for example which have become increasingly popular for scenting one's one's home right so you can kind of like give your home the kind of same scented personality that you might convey to your body using using a perfume and i think the industry's also been been changing a lot as well and kind of often for the better so you know since the 1920s there's been this whole family of perfumes called orientals now today we wouldn't want to use that term to describe perfumery it's vaguely offensive and thanks to campaigners from within the industry like yosh han and dana el nasri for example there's been a lot of work to kind of transform the perfume industry in ways that perhaps is less problematic than the kind of advertisements and descriptions we might have seen in the 19th century, for example.
17:00That's Dr. Will Tullett from the University of York. He's the author of Sniff the History of Smells. Press freedom next, and the pressures on journalists trying to tell the truth. It's an ancient story and a modern one. But over the course of recent history, which has seen repeated curbs on what can be written and said in various parts of the world, there have been moments when society has tried to take a stand. We now have a World Press Freedom Day, for example. But that only came about because of some determined work on the African continent. Jen Dale has been hearing from a key figure in that movement.
17:37I think it kind of affirmed that we were on the right path, that we'd done the right thing. There were many journalists who were jailed, lost their lives, lost their livelihoods on the continent, those standing up for free and independent press. And so I think it was definitely something of a vindication. It's April the 29th, 1991, and it's a bright sunny day in Vinthoek, the capital of Namibia, which had gained autonomy from South Africa and its apartheid regime only the year before. Newspaper editor Gwen Lister is walking down the city's main street, on her way to a conference room in a local hotel.
18:17She's chairing a five-day-long seminar discussing freedom of the press in Africa, but it's come at a stressful time. At independence, the donor funding for the newspaper dried up, and so we were engaged in a huge battle for financial viability. And I remember at the time feeling almost traumatised that I had to chair this important seminar at the same time as which I was trying to find money for salaries to pay the staff. So it was quite a crazy time. The seminar's been organised by UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, after a similar meeting of journalists from Eastern and Western Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
18:59Strings have had to be pulled to get some attendees out of jail in their home countries so they can come along, because in the early 1990s, 1990s, life is hard for many journalists around the world. Thousands of journalists are still censored. Dozens are in jail. Others can't get visas to travel. Nowhere is it more difficult for a journalist to survive than in Yugoslavia. 35 have been killed there in a year. Countries like China, Vietnam and Burma, they imprison their outspoken writers and journalists for as long as they can. At this time, South Africa is still under the apartheid regime, which legalises racial segregation and discrimination, and many other African countries are authoritarian one-party states.
19:42Media is tightly controlled by those in power. So it's in this climate that 63 people from 38 African countries come together to talk about promoting independent free press. Apartheid had closed the entire subcontinent, really, and many of the journalists working in the various countries in the region had never met each other, had never travelled, And so I think there was a palpable sense of excitement. The journalists are excited, the Namibian government less so. I think there was still quite a lot of suspicion about what were all these independent-minded journalists doing here together and what were they trying to achieve.
20:22So we couldn't get the president himself to come and attend and or address the seminar, but eventually we got the then prime minister, who was Hager Geingob, who did come for the opening ceremony. certainly UNESCO being a governmental organization there was a good deal of pressure I think for government especially given the fact that Namibia had been chosen to host this seminar given its good record in terms of a very positive progressive constitution regarding press freedom and so I think government eventually were forced to at least make their presence felt at the conference even though they may have been initially reluctant to do so.
21:05The journalists sit at long rectangular tables with floral arrangements placed periodically on the plain tablecloths. There were sessions looking at the importance of independence media on the continent. There was a lot of discussion about the things that government could do to sort of help media not only to survive but thrive in terms of, you know, the import of equipment and computers and so on. The seminar is also a forum for independent journalists who are critical of their governments to tell their tales of repression. Pius and Javez story, much imprisoned. He was the editor of Le Messager in Cameroon.
21:46His was one of the standout stories. There was also Kenneth Best from Liberia, a newspaper man who'd been much imprisoned and his premises bombed. There were so many stories that were incredibly poignant. But Gwen is no stranger to these tales from when South Africa ruled Namibia in the 1980s. For weeks now, the authorities in South Africa have been threatening to take action against the country's small and less established newspapers, the so-called alternative press. We also did a lot to expose what was happening in Namibia under the jackboot of apartheid, the atrocities that were happening at the hands of the South African security forces.
22:28And of course, that quickly got the ire of the authorities. She was once arrested under the Official Secrets Act, only being released after international outcry. She was also detained without trial whilst four months pregnant for writing about new police powers. In that jail cell, I do remember thinking, well, really, this is something of a watershed moment for me. I had to think very seriously of what I was doing. Now it wasn't just about me or my safety and security. It was about my daughter and my kids. I had a son already and actually firming up in my convictions that I was doing the right thing.
23:06Even after Namibian independence in 1990, the office of her newspaper came under attack. The place was firebombed on a number of occasions. Phosphorus grenades were thrown in through the windows, things thrown into our air conditioning, bullets were fired at the windows. Eventually we had to get bulletproof windows at considerable cost and they were badly scarred. Many of the independent journalists at the seminar have suffered considerable personal cost for just doing their job. And as the week-long conference continues, they're more determined to officially call for free press across the continent.
23:44But government press agencies are less enthusiastic. There were quite a few fairly volatile sessions. It took a while to convince, and we didn't always manage to do that, compatriots from government media to actually join in this demand. But when discussions come to an end on the 3rd of May 1991, a statement of free press principles, known as the Declaration of Vindhook, is laid down. We the participants declare that the establishment, maintenance and fostering of an independent, pluralistic and free press is essential to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation and for economic development.
24:32When we finally adopted the declaration, I think it was with a sense that we felt great. We've achieved our purpose and there's agreement about certainly the basic principles and I don't think we all anticipated that the Windhoek Declaration would end up being quite as significant as it eventually was. Later that year, UNESCO's General Conference endorses the declaration and then in 1993 the United Nations General Assembly proclaims the 3rd of May as World Press Freedom Day. In Africa it meant it became more acceptable to have private and independent newspapers and in later years radio and television stations.
25:13Governments on the continent who didn't like the idea of press freedom, let's face it, had to come to terms with the idea. Slowly but surely, more and more newspapers began to emerge on the continent that were independent-minded and not in the thrall of government. It led to similar declarations being made in countries across the world, from Kazakhstan to Yemen. I think the Vintuk Declaration was a landmark. I think it really is true to say that it came from the hearts of especially those independent journalists who participated in drawing it up. World Press Freedom Day continues to be marked around the world every year and reminds governments to uphold freedom of expression.
25:57It's a struggle. It's a battle that is never fully won. There is no democracy without press freedom. It's simply not possible. Gwen Lister, one of the driving forces behind the 1991 Vintook Declaration on Press Freedom. She was talking to Jen Dale. Still to come, the brief thaw in US-Cuban relations under Barack Obama and the philosopher who changed the world's thinking on charity I certainly think you can say that it's in the billions of dollars that the effective altruism movement has generated and the number of people saved I think there's no doubt that millions of people have benefited But before that, an item from the past which certainly resonates today Whenever there are spikes in energy costs driven by high oil prices, the world tries to react to soften the blow.
26:49That was the case in 1973, when the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, known as AWPEC, put an embargo on all oil sales to the Netherlands. Surya Alango has been hearing how the Dutch responded. Tonight, I am addressing you to say as clearly as possible what problems our people are now facing. We're listening to Dutch Prime Minister Joop Denaal giving a rare televised speech to the people of the Netherlands on the 1st of December 1973. And that's why we've called on you to be economical with heating and lighting. We had to ask to lower the use of energy products. Stick to the maximum 100 kilometres on the road, turn the heat down a bit and turn it off earlier.
27:40Our country is in a particular position. I remember it was on a Saturday evening, 8 o 'clock. It started with a 10-minute speech of the Prime Minister. Very short, very clear, very direct. This is Wim Meyer. He's the State Secretary for Culture, Recreation and Social Work. The delivering of gasoline will stop in a couple of weeks. That's the message and that makes it very difficult. For the first time since the war, a young generation will be introduced to distribution and scarcity. And then he said, listen, dear citizens, the world from before the oil crisis is not returning. In that sentence, everybody in the country remembered that.
28:29That was very important for the acceptance for all the activities that came later on. and for political dialogue of our future. I was at home with my wife and children, and they were asking many questions, and this was a sign that this is a historical speech. So how did the Netherlands find themselves in this situation, with a shortage of oil? Well, in the Middle East in October 1973, a regional war broke out between Israel, Egypt and Syria. And it's a war with many names. the Yom Kippur War, the Ramadan War and the October War. It would change the wider world in wholly unexpected ways. Most oil-producing countries in the Middle East decided to reduce production.
29:19At the end of October, a special boycott against the Netherlands was announced. The Netherlands was the only Western European country to be confronted with a full embargo from the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, OAPEC. It was something the world had never seen before. Israel was in great need at that time, but the Dutch government supported by delivering of weapons and allowed the United States to come to our airports with transport for Israel, also weapons and other military equipment. This meant it was widely believed by the Arab world that the Netherlands was supporting Israel.
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30:01And in return, some of the oil-delivering Arab countries in the Middle East decided to start a boycott to oil delivering to the Netherlands. In the southwest of the Netherlands on the North Sea coast, the port of Rotterdam was the entry point for a quarter of OAPEX oil, bound for northwestern Europe. When the boycott started, it was clear to the public what was going to happen. Then ships on the way to the Netherlands had changed the route towards other countries. And it was a dramatic situation. And Wim was at the heart of the situation in the Dutch Parliament. Well, a lot of people were scared.
30:44The fear was, what is the influence on my daily life? Can I pay next month the energy bill? Can I have in the future a car? This situation concerns the people. So it was a very important political decision. But above all, it is important that we are willing to face the new problems together. We had no time for preparations, for policymaking. Our prime minister asked all the ministers and the state secretaries to come up with plans, with ideas that could help us by limiting the use of energy. And they came up with a bunch of those. Lowering of the temperatures in the public buildings. We started also with gasoline coupons.
31:37The coupons were meant to be part of a national fuel rationing plan. But rolling it out wasn't simple. The Dutch government had to dig out an old emergency law from 1939, a relic of wartime. And getting that up and running would take time. So they needed another solution, fast. Of course, there are other ways of coping with the fuel crisis. And that's when they came up with an idea called Car-Free Sundays. On the morning of the 4th of November at 3am, all private cars were banned from driving on public roads for its first car-free Sunday. In time, other countries followed suit, including West Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium and Denmark.
32:16In Belgium and Holland, except for medical and other essential services, they've had their first no-motoring Sunday. The high roads were empty. Sunday Without Deaths on the Road ran the headline of Monday's Harked Courant newspaper. Motorists had observed the Sunday ban in exemplary fashion, reported to TaylorCraft. It's as if we were all on a time machine suddenly returning to the past. The Netherlands Railway Journal remarked that the passenger total was 30 % up on a normal Sunday. And it was reported that in front of every church stood masses of bicycles and mopeds. Sunday church attendance scarcely suffered.
32:58Back to the time when the horse was the only means of getting about town. The road from one day to another had a different character. It was allowed to do all the things you normally not can do in transport and using the infrastructure. Just south of Amsterdam, in Umpstilveen, on a four-lane stretch of motorway, that would normally roar with traffic. Forty or so young men and women wandered out with picnic blankets, a stove, teapots, potatoes to peel, and even two flautists with their music stands. Children were roller skates. People used their bikes to go on the highway. Remarkable moments. There was criticism too.
33:41The newspaper Het Parole argued car-free Sundays dented the economy. The columns in the NRC Hundelsblatt accused the government of badly underestimating the gravity of the situation. But it had been fun for some, and Prime Minister Joep Deneau appreciated the good-natured way people responded. I am grateful for the voluntary cooperation that has been given so far on such a surprisingly large scale. This cooperation is also necessary if we can't drive tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, to get along with each other in full buses, trams and trains. But if we are willing to do that, it won't be a cold winter, even if it's still freezing so hard.
34:27By early 1974, the coupons were ready. And the 6th of January was the last car freeze Sunday. The Netherlands kept the policy longer than any other country in Europe. Looking back 50 years ago, in the Netherlands, this was a huge change of the position of energy. this was the begin of governance policy, orientated on sustainability. So this was the begin of a new agenda on almost every part of governance policy. Not only the energy sector, but also in the way we build houses. Almost everything changed since that time. The oil crisis ensured a new awareness that the Western oil-consuming countries were vulnerable.
35:13In the years after, attempts were also made by the Dutch government to improve relations with the Arab world. In all, the embargo against the Netherlands had lasted more than eight months. It was decided at the OAPEC meeting on the 10th of July 1974 that the restrictions would be lifted. Surya Elango was talking to Wim Baia, a minister in the Dutch government in the 1970s. Next, a philosophical thought experiment by an Oxford academic contemplating the suffering of people thousands of kilometres away. Ben Henderson has been talking to that academic. We'll start with something a little different today.
35:55Imagine you're walking to work, and on your way, you pass a small pond. As you draw near the pond, you see a young child flailing about in the water. The child will probably drown unless he wade in and save her. there's just one problem. You're wearing a brand new pair of shoes. If you go in the water, you'll ruin them. So what do you do? You save the drowning child, of course. But, if that's so obvious, why do you let thousands of children die around the world from preventable causes every day, when at least one of them could be saved by a small donation to charity? Less than the price of, say, a pair of shoes.
36:33Morally, you might say the two cases are identical. Only the distance between you and the child has changed. And in our world of lightning-fast communication, is distance really an excuse? That scenario you've just heard, known as the Drowning Child Thought Experiment, is one of the most influential ideas in the history of modern moral philosophy. It was thought up in 1971 by a young Australian lecturer at the University of Oxford named Peter Singer. One of my favorite places to go for lunch, and I would often buy a sandwich or a roll or something, is at Worcester College. And there is a beautiful pond with some very attractive old trees around it, some lilies, I think, growing in the water.
37:15I think the idea of the drowning child in the shallow pond came from the thought of, well, suppose a child fell into this pond and I was walking past it. and I realised that I could rescue it, that there would be a minor cost to me, but there was no danger to me, wouldn't I have an obligation to rescue this child? I think the answer is obviously, you know, yes, it would be wrong if I didn't rescue that child. At the time, the country now known as Bangladesh was fighting for independence from Pakistan. This part of India into which the refugees are flooding is one of the poorest and most grotesquely overpopulated corners of the world.
37:56And of course the reason why I wanted an example like this was that people would say about Bangladesh, it's the Pakistani army that caused this problem, right? I didn't cause it. So why am I responsible? Why do I have to help people? And I wanted to show that even if you're not responsible for somebody being in great need, it's still wrong not to help them if you can help them with no significant sacrifice on your part. I wanted to then say, all right, well, tell me why, if you were to jump in and save the child, it's not the case that you were to donate to Oxfam so that they can save some of the refugees in India.
38:37Peter laid out the drowning child experiment in an essay titled Famine, Affluence and Morality. It was published in a journal called Philosophy and Public Affairs in March 1972. Obviously, I was very pleased to see it in the journal, and the editors were pleased to receive it. They really liked it. So that was great. And did you get much early pushback against the article? Yes, there were certainly objections to it. In a way, the most common attitude was simply, this conclusion can't be right, because if it is, then we're all acting wrongly, we're all acting unethically. And if it is, then morality is much more demanding than any of us believed it to be.
39:16So that can't be the case. So therefore there must be something wrong with the argument. Actually, what was wrong with the argument, people didn't tend to say anything very convincing of. Peter's essay and the Drowning Child Thought Experiment gradually became a staple of university courses, but it didn't register with the wider public at first. At the heart of his argument was the philosophy of utilitarianism, which is based on the idea that morality should be guided by outcomes, providing the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. In 1975, Peter turned that utilitarian approach to other species.
39:53His book, Animal Liberation, is regarded as a foundational text in the animal rights movement. Some of his utilitarian views have been highly controversial. He's argued that if a newborn child has a severe disability which would lead to a life of suffering that's not worth living then parents, in consultation with a doctor, should have the option of euthanising the child. From his perspective, this is morally equivalent to aborting a severely disabled foetus or removing life support from severely disabled newborns, both of which are common in many countries. But this argument provoked furious protests.
40:28Singer's been accused of underestimating how rich the lives of severely disabled people can be. Disability rights campaigner Kath Duncan confronted him on ABC News in 2016. You advocate infanticide, don't you? No, that's not correct. When did you change your views? I haven't changed my mind. What I've advocated always is that parents should have the choice of making decisions about their severely disabled infants. Effectively, that's what you're saying. No. At the turn of the millennium, Singer became a professor at Princeton University in the US and turned his attention back to global poverty.
41:02He updated his original essay in two New York Times articles that spread his argument to a huge audience. I was invited to visit Oxford in, I think, 2007 to give some talks. And I got an email from Toby Ord, who I had never heard of at that time, saying that he was a graduate student at Christchurch in Oxford and had read Famine, Affluence and Morality and agreed with the argument. and he'd come up with this idea of calculating how much he would be able to give away over his lifetime, expecting to be an academic and have an academic salary until retirement age. And then he started looking around for where it could do the most good.
41:45And he discovered to his surprise that he could give enough to prevent 80 ,000 people from going blind by treating trachoma, which is the most common form of preventable blindness and is relatively easily treated. So that was incredibly impressive, I thought, that one person could prevent a whole big football stadium of people going blind. Anyway, he was writing to say he was thinking of forming a group about this. So when I was in Oxford, Toby arranged for me to speak in a small room in Christchurch College. Maybe there were 20, 30 people in the room, not more of them. I think Will McCaskill was one of them, and that was my first introduction to this emerging effective altruism movement.
42:29Back then, research on the value for money of individual charities was limited compared with today. The effective altruism movement began as a network of organisations that identified the most effective charities and encouraged donations to them, the greatest good for the greatest number, regardless of geographical proximity. The movement was driven by Toby Ord and Will McCaskill, who were inspired by Peter's drowning child thought experiment. After their meeting in Oxford, Peter became the movement's intellectual spearhead. The effective altruist's spreadsheet approach to charity makes some uncomfortable, and the jailed cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Free damaged the movement's reputation.
43:07He was one of its most famous supporters, and he tried to justify taking enormous risks with investors' money by claiming he did so to make the world a better place. but the movement has won legions of followers who often give away at least 10 percent of their income something peter has done for decades i certainly think you can say that it's in the billions of dollars that the effective altruism movement has has generated and you know the number of people saved i think there's no doubt that millions of people have benefited and that's continuing it's probably getting into the tens of millions it certainly will in time the philosopher Peter Singer was talking to Ben Henderson.
43:47One of the most potentially dangerous thorns in international relations for much of the 20th and into the 21st century has been the bitterness and mistrust between the US and Cuba. But in 2014, it appeared that a thaw might set in when Barack Obama and Raul Castro announced a normalisation in relations between the two countries. Anushka Matanda-Dawati has uncovered the inside story of how that came about. Today I'm taking you back to the 17th of December 2014. It's 12.01pm Eastern Standard Time and two world leaders are about to appear on TV. They're 2 ,444.81 kilometres apart, but they're about to make the exact same announcement.
44:31One of them is the President of the United States, Barack Obama. Good afternoon. And the other is the President of Cuba, Raul Castro. Today, the United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba. In the most significant changes in our policy in more than 50 years, we will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests. And instead, we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries. This unprecedented announcement shocked everyone. Well, everyone except a few trusted aides who had spent the last 18 months taking secret meetings with the Cuban government.
45:13One of them was Obama's former speechwriter, Ben Rhodes. The week that I became full-time on the Obama campaign, he was in a debate where he was asked whether he would engage in diplomacy with the leaders of Iran and Cuba and adversaries. And he said... I would. The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration is ridiculous. Now, Ronald Reagan... Basically, all of his opponents jumped on that as if it was some big mistake. Well, it might not have been a mistake, but it was certainly quite the statement.
45:49Cuban-American relations had been hostile ever since the 1959 revolution. Essentially, Castro comes to power... ...by overthrowing the US-backed dictator, Folgencia Batista, establishing a socialist state and then allying with the Soviet Union. Anyone suspected of sympathy for the Batista regime came in for a rough time. The US tries to remove him through the Bay of Pigs invasion under John Kennedy. That's the CIA-funded attempted invasion by 1 ,400 Cuban exiles. To combat the communists. Which fails catastrophically. Just a year later, in 1962, the US discovered that Castro was allowing Russia to install nuclear missiles on the island.
46:24Soviet military build-up on the island of Cuba. Then the US tries repeatedly to assassinate Fidel Castro. And so we put an embargo on Cuba to basically try to put the maximum amount of sanctions and pressure on the Cuban government. In the 80s, Reagan declared Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism for alleged ties to international terrorism and support for terrorist groups. This is terrorism that is part of a pattern. In 1992, five Cuban spies were arrested on U.S. soil. Cuba said they were infiltrating Cuban exile groups. The U.S. felt they were spying on the American government. They become known as the Cuban Five.
46:58And in 2009, Alan Gross, a US contractor who travelled to Cuba to bring internet to the Jewish population, was jailed for acts against the integrity of the state. So it's safe to say, relations were pretty rocky. I remember being a little nervous. This began in the spring of 2013 with a meeting in Ottawa. In the room was Ben and the US Cuba expert Ricardo Ziniga, and they were waiting for Raul Castro's son. I remember I walk into this very idyllic location and Alondra Castro emerges into the room. He's a giant personality, very gregarious. We greet each other and the Cuban side kind of went into their list of grievances.
47:40I'd been warned that the Cubans liked to talk and the meetings with them could go long. Once it started, I realized why that was the case. I mean, frankly, the only backstop to the meeting was our flight. Like, you know, the first meeting with the Cubans went eight hours. And it started with the Bay of Pigs and, you know, they brought in all their history. I remember saying, I respect that that history is really important to you. Frankly, I said, I think I probably would agree with you about a bunch of the things that you said. And they kind of were struck by that approach that at least I was showing them some respect.
48:15You know, I wasn't dismissing their narrative. And I remember we broke for lunch and just casually eating sandwiches and started talking about fishing off the coast of Cuba. And then I started talking about baseball and Cuban baseball players. And I remember Alejandro stopped and noted that. He said, it's interesting. You can just sit here and eat sandwiches and talk like people. And you realize that that just almost never happened. You know, Cuban and American officials just talking to each other as human beings. But sandwiches aside, there were some key demands that needed to be met on each side.
48:43For the U.S., it was getting Alan Gross out of jail. and for Cuba, it was the release of the remaining members of the Cuban Five. But before making these big demands, it was all about earning trust by any means necessary. You know, one thing the Cubans wanted was for one of these people that was in prison to be able through artificial insemination to have a child with his wife. And so then we could show them like, hey, look, we're not ready to like release these guys. We have a lot left to negotiate here, but we'll keep our agreement and we'll get this done to show you that we can be trusted. One key turning point came in December 2013.
49:18Which was Nelson Mandela's memorial service in South Africa. I happened to be the speechwriter for Obama's eulogy of Nelson Mandela, and so I was on that trip with him. And I remember saying to him, well, Raul Castro is going to be at this memorial service, and whatever interaction you have with him is going to be closely scrutinized. And he said, well, he has more of a right to be there than I do. And what he was referring to was Cuba's role in the anti-apartheid movement set against the U.S. support for the apartheid regime. And then we go to the memorial service and Obama shakes Castro's hand.
49:49It becomes a huge deal. But the next negotiating session with the Cubans was shortly after that. And the Cubans opened the meeting by saying how well-received that had been. And I said what Obama told me. And the Cubans were emotional about that. They later told me that this kind of gesture confirmed for them that at least Obama could be trusted. And that trust helped turn lengthy negotiations into a set of real commitments. Starting around the early part of 2014, we started to circle around this agreement where there'd be a spy swap and then the release of Alan Gross. Now all they needed was a trustworthy third party to oversee the agreement.
50:31And Obama thought the Pope might fit the bill. So he went to secure the papal backing while Alejandro, Ricardo and Ben laid out the agreement. Cuba was getting the release of the remaining Cuban Five, tourism opening back up and more access to the internet. And the US was getting the release of Alan Gross, and Castro had committed to releasing 54 more political prisoners. Now, they just needed to tell the Vatican.
50:57The Vatican doesn't do any business over email. Because of that, they had no idea where we were in this negotiation. And so I think the Vatican just thought they were hosting a meeting. And so I remember the way it was set up was that the Cubans met with the Vatican first and was the secretary of state of the Vatican, Cardinal Peroline, who hosted meetings. And then we walked in second. And when we walked in, the cardinal looked kind of dumbstruck. And he said, my understanding from the Cubans is you've not only agreed to exchange prisoners, but you're going to reestablish diplomatic relations.
51:26You're going to try to normalize relations. They're going to release a bunch of political prisoners. You guys are going to lack some sanctions. They're going to allow for some Internet. And I said, yeah, that's right. And I remember he looked at me and he said, who are you? He said, does John Kerry know about this as Secretary of State? And then we kind of sat in a room with the Vatican team and we read aloud these commitments. And I remember the Vatican officials became quite emotional. There was one who lived in Cuba and he was literally tearing up. And Alejandro and I both kind of delivered these speeches about our children and the kind of world we want for them.
51:59And then I remember walking out into the streets of Rome and thinking, this is done, but nobody knows about it. But we'd now told the Pope, right? So we were on the hook for it. But it wasn't long before the whole world was paying attention, as Obama and Castro announced that the US and Cuba was bringing to an end 54 years of hostility. These changes, once controversial, now seem obvious. Cuban Americans have been reunited with their families. But that change was short-lived, as in 2017, Donald Trump began reversing many of the changes made in 2014. The U.S. government had made a liar at him. I'd given my own word, I'd kept my word, and then some people came in after me and tore it up.
52:40If I talked to them, I would say, I'm very sorry about all this played out. I still believe in what we were doing, though, and I still think it provides the template for a different kind of relationship that the U.S. and Cuba have. Ben Rhodes, one-time speechwriter for Barack Obama, was speaking to Anushka Matanda Daugherty and remembering what turned out to be a temporary thaw in US-Cuban relations. This week's Sporting Witness next, we delve into the murky world of Italian football match-fixing. The so-called Calciopoli scandal of 2006 resulted in top-flight teams being relegated and docked points.
53:14It caused outrage and soul-searching throughout the soccer-mad nation, and it came just after Italy had won the World Cup. Here's Matt Pintus. It's April 2006 and journalist Paddy Agnew is in London promoting his new book about the history of Italian football. The book includes descriptions of central figures in the Italian game like the mysterious Luciano Moggi. In one part of the book I talked about, this guy Luciano Moggi controls everything in Italian football. Luciano Muggia at that time was the general director of Juventus, who were the strongest club. And you say, well, what's the proof?
53:52And people say, don't worry about the proof. He has a huge network of helpers in Italian football. He gets onto the referees himself. He intimidates them. Any time a referee gives a penalty against him, he rings him up afterwards and bowls him out. He's organising refereeing appointments. Paddy's book is full of revelations like this. He's been the go-to expert on Italian football based in Rome for over two decades. But as life has it, the biggest story in generations has just broken in Italy. And Paddy is over 800 miles away in London. The office of the Italian Football Federation in Rome has been raided by police.
54:32Yesterday, the entire board of top club Juventus resigned after it emerged that a club official had been recorded on tape trying to influence which referees are chosen for its matches. a prominent referee and several other clubs are now being investigated. It was a huge story in Italy at the time, in the sense that we just had a new government. The government was not paying any attention to that. The first seven or eight pages of all the mainstream dailies were obsessed with Calciopoli. Irish journalist Paddy Agnew first moved to Italy in 1986. He decided to move there for one reason, and one reason only.
55:11Maradona, Maradona, Maradona. He won the World Cup in 86 and then the year after that he won Nafri's first ever Serie A Scudetto. He was an unending source of stories but he was also, to me, easily the most remarkable footballer I've ever seen in the flesh. At a time where hooliganism was rife at home, Italy offered real glamour and escapism for Paddy. Its league was the envy of the world. I used to call it the Hollywood of football. I mean, it was then what the premiership is now. If you were a freelance journalist, as I was, and this was the pre-internet era and pre-satellite TV, you were the source of a lot of information.
55:53But with the glamour came corruption. Italy had a history of match-fixing. Do you remember the match-fixing scandal of Paolo Rossi? He almost missed out in the 1982 World Cup. Enzo Bertolt took a big chance of bringing Rossi into the squad, But even though he was at the time serving out his match-fixing ban, he got fit pretty quickly and he became pretty useful. Very useful, in fact. Paolo Rossi, the player who had been at the centre of an infamous 1980 betting scandal, became one of the most celebrated Italian footballers, scoring six times as Italy won the 1982 World Cup. But 24 years later, in 2006, a much bigger scandal was about to eclipse anything that had happened before.
56:41Calciopoli. This was police arriving at the Italian Football Federation this morning. They'd come unannounced and within hours had put their hands on several boxes of key documents. Prosecutors are investigating widespread allegations of match fixing here. This week newspapers published transcripts of recorded telephone conversations between this man, the general director of Juventus, Luciano Moggi, and this man, the head of the Italian Referees Association, Pierluigi Peretto. Recorded by prosecutors in Turin last season, the transcripts showed that Mr Moggi had been trying to influence the selection of referees.
57:20The name Calciopoli, which roughly translates to football gate, had echoes of a huge political scandal. The scandal was called Calciopoli because of the early 90s tangentopoly political scandal in which the mainstream parties of the day, the Socialist Party and the Christian Democrat Party, were accused by Milan investigators of having taken bribes for the awarding of favours and public contracts. And it was a huge scandal. It signalled the end of the Christian Democrat Party. It basically turned Italian politics upside down. So Calciopoli, the very name says how serious it was in the Italian mind.
58:03The Calciopoli scandal broke just weeks before Italy were due to play in the 2006 World Cup. Four of the country's biggest clubs were implicated in it, as well as Juventus, AC Milan, Lazio and Fiorentina, all found themselves under the microscope for establishing a similar system of influencing referees. With the World Cup just days away Paddy remembers one particularly frosty press conference With the AC Milan and Italian defender Alessandro Nesta The mood from amongst the non-Italian press Was pretty hostile And one, I think it was a German newspaper Who had referred to Italy as Parasite I remember Nesta said, what did you say?
58:49Do you call us Parasite? And he said, look, we have trouble We've got problems at home, I realise we've got that, but at the moment we're thinking about the World Cup and we'll get on with winning that and then we'll deal with Calciopoli. And remarkably, despite all the turmoil at home, Italy did win the World Cup, as Nesta had predicted, beating France in the final. But the celebrations were short-lived and just days later, the Calciopoli verdict was in. Last week the fans were on a high. The national side were world champions, but today the party's over and Italian football will never be the same again.
59:28At a hotel in Rome, one of the country's most senior judges reads out a verdict into Italy's worst match-fixing scandal. Juventus have been relegated to the second division, where they'll start next season with a 30-point penalty. Fiorentina are also demoted with a 12-point deduction, as are Lazio of Rome, who'll start on minus 7 points. AC Milan stay in Serie A, but they'll begin the season with minus 15 points. Fiori and Tina and Lazio managed to overturn their relegations on appeal, but Juventus weren't so lucky. They were relegated to the Italian second division, Serie B, and they were also stripped of their 2004-2005 title.
1:00:10The man at the centre of the scandal, Luciano Moggi, was banned from football for five years and was later barred from Italian football for life. He has always denied any wrongdoing. But there was some hope. World Cup winners including Alessandro Del Piero and Gianluigi Buffon decided to stick with the fallen champions. They took Serie B very, very seriously because it was a very exciting thing for lots of Serie B clubs that would never get a chance to play Juventus, would never have Juventus in town. They would have them in town and it was great. Every game against Juventus for those clubs was the game of the century.
1:00:49And it meant that the Serie B year was very, very likely, even though Juventus obviously won it by the length of the straight and they were back up very quickly. So as a reporter who'd worked in Italy for decades, were you surprised by the scandal? I was surprised by the resilience of Italian football because Italy is a country where there is a deal of corruption in public life and, as far as I can see, always has been. There was a sense among some people of national shame that this was happening in Italy, but it was happening at exactly the same moment that Italy were playing some marvellous football to win the 2006 World Cup.
1:01:27And a lot of people would say, well, do you want to win the World Cup or lose it? We've won the World Cup, so, you know, we've won four of them now. Who wouldn't put their hand up and say, God, you know, I'd also win the World Cup? The sports journalist Paddy Agnew is speaking to Matt Pintus in 2023 and putting the 2006 Italian football match-fixing scandal into some sort of context. And that's it for this edition of the History Hour. We'll be uncovering more gems from the past for you next week, so make a date for that. In the meantime, this is Max Pearson from all of us here. Thanks for listening.
1:01:59Goodbye. Sporting Witness takes you to the events that have shaped the sports world through the eyes of the people who were there. We weren't going to ask mission. We were just going to do it. It was such an amazing feeling. It was incredible. He started to write a story about how he came up with the idea for the red and yellow cars. I got to go. We cried a bit. We laughed a bit. It was wonderful. There's a magic during those moments that carries your soul. We were truly blessed to be a part of history. Sporting Witness. Subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
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From the publisher
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. This week, we hear from a perfumer who in 1990 helped create the world’s first perfume archive in Versailles France. Our guest is Dr William Tullett, a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of York and author of Sniff, History of Smells.
Then, we hear how in 1991 African journalists created the Windhoek declaration - a set of free press principles. It led to World Press Freedom Day marked annually on 3 May.
Next, the global oil crisis of 1973. A former Dutch politician tells us how the Netherlands became the first country in Europe to introduce car-free Sundays.
Plus, the philosopher on how his 1972 essay on the Drowning Child thought experiment inspired the Effective Altruism movement.
And President Obama’s speech writer on how secret negotiations in 2014 improved relations between the US and Cuba.
Finally, a Sporting Witness on the Juventus match-fixing scandal in 2006.
Contributors:
Jean Claude Ellena - perfumer
Dr Will Tullett - Senior Lecturer in History at the University of York and author of Sniff, History of Smells
Wim Meijer - State Secretary for Culture, Recreation and Social Work in the Den Uyl Labour Government
Peter Singer - philosopher
Ben Rhodes - Barack Obama’s speech writer
Paddy Agnew - journalist
(Photo: Perfume bottles. Credit: Walter Zerla via Getty Images)
