The Philosopher's Arms

Jana Bakunina, a former investment banker who reflects on long hours as 'self-inflicted exploitation.' Alex Voorhoeve, a philosopher who maps exploitation to Marx, Locke and libertarian views. They probe bargaining power, desperation versus commodification, whether wealthy people can be exploited, and a live experiment about pay fairness. Short, sharp philosophical debate with real-world banking stories.

Anne Barron, an IP expert at LSE, and Roger Crisp, an Oxford moral philosopher, explore free-riding through puzzles and real cases. They debate doughnut honesty boxes, recycling and public goods. They weigh patents, medicines, music sharing, utilitarian trade-offs, and whether shirking can ever challenge unjust systems.

Welcome to the Philosopher's Arms - a place where philosophical ideas, logical dilemmas and the real world meet for a chat and a drink. Each week presenter Matthew Sweet takes a puzzle with philosophical pedigree and asks why it matters in the everyday world. En route we'll learn about the thinking of such luminaries as Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, John Stuart Mill and Wittgenstein. All recorded in a pub with an audience, who'll have their own contributions to make - but whose assumptions and intuitions will be challenged and, perhaps, undermined. Propping up the bar this year will be philosophers such as Julian Baggini and Nigel Warburton, and academic experts on memory, the law, art and computers. We'll be meeting bald men, a woman who used to be a man, and a woman who can't remember being a girl. Plus music from The Drifters - a far more philosophical group than you'd ever imagine. This programme is a repeat The producer was David Edmonds.