With one of the world's most controversial thinkers on hand, Monday night's Q&A was bound to offer some curly conundrums. And so it was that Peter Singer came to the panel offering guidance on the following; how many slices of cake to eat at a kid's birthday party; guide dogs - good or bad?; and a diverting final debate that could really keep you up nights - should the courts grant human rights to chimpanzees?
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Between the dogs and the chimps, another animal-related question lurked unasked - was Q&A finally jumping the shark? - but in the context of the debates it all sort of made sense, even if you were wondering why everyone avoided the elephant in the room, Singer's far more confronting opinions on mercy killing of the severely disabled.
But for Monday night's purposes, the renowned ethicist's thoughts on the wisdom of funding guide dogs for the blind were probably provocative enough. In a debate over the best way to spend one's charitable dollar, Singer mounted what in a philosopher's lecture hall would sound an impeccably logical case but which may have played less well in suburban living rooms.
In essence, he suggested that the costs of funding guide-dog training in the wealthy west compared to the cost of donating to save someone in a developing country from becoming blind in the first place made the latter a better use of your charity buck. "It's a matter of getting the best value for your money," Singer said. 'What's better - to prevent someone becoming blind or give a dog to a blind person?"
The obvious question - can't we do both? - didn't come up. One could hear Australia's hard-working guide dog charity workers shouting in despair at their TV sets as Singer spoke.
Later, one could imagine Australia's parents puzzling over another Singer-inspired dilemma - would you take cake off your greedy child at a party? Well, yes you probably would - but what does that have to do with climate change? Plenty in the Singer analogy, handily made, over this country's disproportionate contribution to global carbon emissions.
"Let me put it this way," he said by way of inventing an analogy even a cake-guzzling five-year-old could grasp. "Imagine that your child went to a birthday party. There were 25 children there and the host had cut the birthday cake into 25 equal slices and your child went and grabbed three of those slices. What would you say to them?"
This was a good point, but in the tradition of Q&A climate-change debates there was mostly smoke and mirrors as the pollies on the panel - Environment Minister Greg Hunt and Labor counterpart Mark Butler - traded barbs and obfuscations. At times in these debates you think a panel full of chimps might make more sense - and to close the show we had a question that hinted there may come a day when we get it.
In the US, we learned, a judge has agreed to hear a case seeking "rights of personhood" for chimpanzees, similar to the legal protections afforded both humans and non-humans such as corporations. "It would mean [the chimps] had standing in court to claim those rights," Singer explained.
What, a questioner wanted to know, might that mean for our right to discriminate against lesser animals. "Who will be their lawyers?" she asked.
It sounded a thorny moral dilemma for the ages, and one beyond the capacity of Q&A to resolve in its final five minutes. But it did at least give host Tony Jones an opening for the best hand-off to another panelist all year: "Let's hear from the other humans on the panel - Greg Hunt?"
This was a missed opportunity - what the nation wanted was to hear from a real chimp. Suggestion for the ABC: bring on a panel full of litigious primates and watch those ratings soar.
