peter singer, welcome to hardtalk. thank you, stephen. it s good to be with you again. it s great to be here and have you here with me, and partly the reason is because you ve written an updated, rewritten version of that book you almost five decades ago, animal liberation. it s called animal liberation now. is the publication of this update recognition that your call, your demand for a new relationship between humanity and all the other creatures on this planet, that that call failed? well, it failed to achieve what i had hoped it would achieve and what i believe ethically it needs to achieve, that s true. it didn t totally fail because there is now an animal rights movement which is a powerfulforce in many of the countries in the world and many people kindly credit my book as having triggered or inspired that movement. and that movement has had some achievements in some countries, i wouldn t deny that, but if we look at it globally, there are more animals in factory farms t
this is bbc news. we ll have the headlines and all the main news storie for at the top of the hour straight after hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i m stephen sackur. when we talk about people with the power to change the world, we re usually thinking of political leaders or maybe corporate titans but today, my guest is a philosopher who s harnessed the power of ideas to influence collective behaviour. australian peter singer has spent a lifetime wrestling with ethical choices in the real world, most notably in the field of animal rights. five decades after first publishing his manifesto calling for animal liberation, has the movement he inspired become unstoppable?