About this episode
In this episode of Crossing Channels, Anna Alexandrova and Léo Fitouchi talk to Richard Westcott about the limits of markets and what happens when economic reasoning meets moral values. They explore why some things – such as dignity, fairness and trust – sit uneasily with prices, and how attempts to measure wellbeing can reshape what societies consider valuable. The conversation also examines how monetary incentives sometimes crowd out moral motivations, why people react strongly to the idea that certain goods should be for sale, and what this means for policymakers trying to design fair and legitimate institutions in a world where not everything that matters can be priced.Season 5 Episode 5 transcript:For more information about the Crossing Channels podcast series and the work of the Bennett School of Public Policy and IAST visit our websites at https://www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/ and https://www.iast.fr/.With thanks to:Audio production by Alice WhaleyAssociate production by Burcu Sevde SelviVisuals by Tiffany Naylor and Pauline AlvesMore information about our host and guests:Podcast hostRichard Westcott is an award-winning journalist who spent 27 years at the BBC as a correspondent/producer/presenter covering global stories for the flagship Six and Ten o’clock TV news as well as the Today programme. His last role was as a science correspondent covering the covid outbreak, but prior to that he was the transport correspondent reporting on new technologies such as driverless cars, major accidents and large infrastructure projects including HS2 and the expansion of Heathrow. Over the decades he also reported on the Iraq War and 9/11 as well as numerous UK general elections. Last year, Richard left the corporation and he is now the communications director for Cambridge University Health Partners and the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, both organisations that are working to support life sciences and healthcare across the city.Anna Alexandrova is a Professor in Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College Cambridge. She researches how formal tools such as models and indicators enable scientists to navigate complex phenomena tinged with ethical and political dimensions. Her book A Philosophy for the Science of Wellbeing came out with Oxford University Press in 2017 and won the 2022 Gittler Book Prize of the American Philosophical Association. Léo Fitouchi is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST) and Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences of the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE). His research investigates the evolved mechanisms of moral cognition and how they shape the cultural evolution of moral norms, religious traditions, and puni
