Is it possible to have judgement without blame? And what does it mean to say - as Socrates did - that it's better to suffer evil at the hands of others than to be an evildoer oneself? This week we're talking with one of Australia's pre-eminent moral philosophers on questions of judgement, evil, remorse... and why he became a philosopher in the first place.

We routinely refer to "the unconscious" in a way that suggests we all agree on what it means - but in fact, the unconscious is a highly contested domain. For some, it's a subterranean layer of emotions and desires that operate deep below the rational mind, and that drive our behaviour in unpredictable ways. For others, the unconscious barely exists at all, and only as a metaphor or linguistic device. There's certainly no science of the unconscious, no empirical evidence that might show us what it is or how it works. This week we're diving deep into (or perhaps just skating across the surface of) the unconscious, with the great early 20th century psychonauts Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sigmund Freud as our guides.

Buddhism in the West is often thought of as an ethical or philosophical system first and foremost, based on principles of non-self and impermanence, and universalist in its outlook. So it can come as a surprise to find that in countries like Sri Lanka, there exists a strain of Buddhist nationalism that has fierce pride, religious chauvinism and even violence in its history.

Analytic philosophy has often understood itself as being in some sense "above" history - using reason and logic to explore problems that are timeless and apolitical. But this week we're talking with the author of a new book that places analytic philosophy firmly in its social/historical context.

Medical diagnosis these days is not as straightforward as it seems. Doctors still diagnose, but so do a great many people who previously didn't - wellness influencers, misinformation peddlers, users of the many kinds of medical tests available to the public - and then there's the advent of AI and machine learning diagnostics. So what exactly does diagnosis mean today? And what implications do emerging technologies have for the kind of authority traditionally seen as exclusive to the medical profession?

Nationalism is often associated with rightwing politics and anti-immigration sentiment - but is that a necessary connection? This week we're looking at various forms of nationalism, and asking if there's something about the structure of the nation-state itself that fosters an exclusionary attitude to outsiders.

Speech acts - utterances that have the power to make things happen in the world - are increasingly being created by AI, especially in certain workplaces where it's not uncommon to receive orders and instructions from an algorithm. The power of a speech act is often understood as emanating from the intention of its author - but if AI lacks the capacity for intention, how much authority do AI-generated workplace commands really have?

The traditional philosophical view of belief is that it's a rational cognitive affair, evidence based and directed toward truth. According to this account, things like delusion and religious belief are "edge cases", exceptions that prove the rule. But this week we're considering not only that belief may be closely tied to emotion, but that it may actually be a form of emotion itself.

"Workism" is defined as the tendency to put work at the centre of one's identity and life meaning - and according to many recent commentators, it's a bad thing. Workism is said to throw life out of balance, and to expose workists to the risk of deep existential trauma if they lose their job. But according to this week's guest, the arguments against workism don't stack up.

For decades, primatologists believed that primate societies were structured around aggressive alpha males - until a remarkable push from feminist scientists in the 1960s and 70s changed the narrative. So why does the "dominant alpha male" story persist in human culture?