Jenny Kleeman

If life has a price, who gets to live and who is left to die in world of finite resources?

Join us for an evening with journalist, broadcaster and documentary-maker Jenny Kleeman to discuss what we lose and what we gain by leaving the judgments that really matter up to cold, hard logic.

The Price of Life

We say that life is priceless. Yet the cost of saving a life, creating a life or compensating for a life taken is routinely calculated and put into practice. In a world in love with data, it is possible to run a cost-benefit analysis on anything – including life itself. For philanthropists, judges, criminals, healthcare providers and government ministers, it’s just part of the job. The Price of Life takes us on an adventure to meet some of the people who decide who gets to live, and who doesn’t.

In a series of extraordinary encounters – with people who have faked their own death or lost a loved one to terrorism, with hitmen and with modern day slaves – she discovers more questions than answers. What does it mean for our humanity when we crunch the numbers to decide who gets the expensive life-saving drugs, and who misses out? What do we learn about ourselves when philanthropic giving by the effective altruists in Silicon Valley is received by some, while others are left to suffer? Are some lives really worth more than others? And what happens when we take human emotions out of the equation? Does it make for a fairer decision-making process – or for moral bankruptcy?

About Jenny Kleeman

Jenny Kleeman is the author of the provocative and fantastically well-reported Sex Robots and Vegan Meat. She writes for the Guardian, Tortoise, The Times and The Sunday Times. She has reported for BBC One's Panorama, Channel 4's Dispatches and VICE News Tonight on HBO, as well as making thirteen films from across the globe for Channel 4's Unreported World. She is also the host of the six-part documentary series The Gift, for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.