The metaverse has become a buzzword in recent months, but its implications when applied to healthcare are profound. Who owns the data if you use Facebook's platform for a doctor's appointment? And what would happen if Facebook tried to play such a role in an already-concentrated American healthcare market?

In this episode, we talk to the very insightful Dr Darshan Kulkarni, a trained pharmacist and lawyer focusing on the health and life sciences industry in the US. Hope you enjoy it!

Music by Joystock - https://www.joystock.org

Being fired is bad enough, but how can we ensure that algorithms used in management, which could have such power, are fair and respect workers' rights? This week, we are really excited to be joined by Aislynn Kelly-Lyth, a researcher at the University of Oxford, to discuss the EU's attempts to grapple with both this problem and the gig economy.

Music by Joystock - https://www.joystock.org

With applications from healthcare to policing, how do we apply facial recognition software and other biometric technology to society without damaging either democracy or the social solidarity that underpins healthcare? And how can we make sure that companies are using biometric data in ways which respect individual agency. In this episode, we talk to Ada Lovelace Researcher Harry Farmer about his own work and fears surrounding biometric technology, and how we as a society can work to mitigate those concerns.

Music by Joystock - https://www.joystock.org

When we express our concerns about Big Tech's control of our data, it is usually in terms of a right to privacy and our data which clashes with our supposed choice to surrender it. But how can alternative ethical systems help to reframe this problem? In this episode, Middle Eastern Political Economy Professor Mehmet Asutay argues that rights-based understandings are at the root of our destructive global economy. We discuss how debates about climate change, privacy, and social credit systems look instead from an Islamic ethics perspective, and what, if anything, we should learn from it.

"Sometimes you have to stand up and say: is this leading us where we want to go?"

Facebook's recent attempt at cosmetics popularized a concept that had been bouncing around Silicon Valley for a while. But what does it actually mean for us as people to live parts of our lives in the Metaverse? How does it differ in that regard from the virtual world of social media that already exists? And, most crucially, would such lives be genuinely meaningful?

Our guest this week is the insightful and entertaining Dr Vittorio Buffachi, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at University College Cork. Stay tuned for our debates and musings on this hot topic.