Matters of Life and Death

Premier Unbelievable?
Premier Unbelievable?

In each episode of Matters of Life and Death, brought to you by Premier Unbelievable?, John Wyatt and his son Tim discuss issues in healthcare, ethics, technology, science, faith and more. John is a doctor, professor of ethics, and writer and speaker on many of these topics, while Tim is a religion and social affairs journalist. We talk about how Christians can better engage with a particular question of life, death or something else in between.

  1. 4d ago

    How do you solve a problem like social care?

    It’s been obvious for decades now that the UK’s system for looking after older people who need some kind of care in their later years is horrendously underfunded and riddled with holes. And yet despite numerous governments pledging to finally fix the issue and create a proper safety net for social care, nothing has actually happened even as the population ages and millions more people are faced with trying to cover the spiralling costs of care by themselves. This week we are joined by Christian economist Andrew Dilnot, who was tasked by the government 15 years ago to come up with a solution (only for his recommendation to then be jettisoned later). We discuss what he proposed, why it (and all other proposals) failed to be implemented, and whether a form of social insurance for social care is a truly Christian response to the crisis. • You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

  2. Sep 23

    Will AI kill us all?

    It’s been hard to avoid the endless news stories coming out of Silicon Valley in recent weeks, as AI insiders and executives earnestly tell the world they really are now worried that the tools they are making could destroy humanity as we know it. What on earth should we as Christians make of these stark predictions, and should we be starting to prepare as a church to live in a much more dangerous, unpredictable and unstable world? But first, we begin this episode reflecting on the recent defeat of the assisted dying bill in the House of Commons, the second time in the last year such a proposed law has come unstuck in parliament. What happened to stymie it this time, is this the end of the road for the pro-euthanasia side, and what role did Christians play this time round? • You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

  3. Sep 16

    The Ebola emergency

    You may not have read too much about it, but the current outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is by far the most serious for years, and remains far from under control months after it began. This week we interview Giles Cattermole, a British emergency doctor who has just come back from a month volunteering at a makeshift hospital in the heart of the epidemic. We talk about what life is like trying to care for people with an incurable and highly infectious disease in rural Africa, what motivated him as a Christian to risk his life to head to the midst of the crisis, and why the West seems so apathetic and uncaring about this horrific disease cutting a swathe through the DRC. Find out more about Samaritan’s Purse’s work combatting Ebola - https://www.samaritans-purse.org.uk/EbolaResponse The US CDC’s page on the latest on the Ebola outbreak - https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/index.html Africa CDC also has information on the Ebola epidemic - https://africacdc.org/bundibugyo-virus-disease-bvd-ebola-outbreak/ • You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

  4. Sep 9

    Intergenerational sin, reparations and truth-telling: The church and the legacy of slavery, with Richard Reddie

    The Church of England has been for several years embarked on a highly controversial plan to spend £100m of its historic assets to try and make amends for the way its institutions profited from investments in the slave trade centuries ago. Plenty of other denominations are also wrestling with similar dark legacies from their past. Should the church of today be held morally accountable for the sins of their forebears? Are financial transactions the best way to atone for the past anyway? And can we still trace the impact of the enslavement and oppression of Africans centuries ago in the Western church even to this day? To discuss this, Tim is joined by Richard Reddie, the director of justice and inclusion at Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. • You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

  5. Sep 2

    Ethical populism: Should elites block questionable policy developments which nevertheless have strong public support?

    A new study has revealed that ordinary people in both America and China are fairly strongly in favour of so-called liberal eugenics – using genetic screening to choose your own children’s non-medical traits like IQ, appearance or even personality. Medical and scientific figures tend to be opposed to using advanced polygenic screening for anything beyond serious medical conditions, worried by the ethics over ‘designer babies’ and unintended consequences. But is it fair or feasible in the long-term for elites to refuse to grant access to a technology which appears to have substantial backing within society? But first, we discuss a major legal defeat for the tech firm Meta, which has settled an £18bn lawsuit by most of the state attorney generals in the US over the harm caused by its social media apps Facebook and Instagram. This is the latest in a series of courtroom setbacks for Meta and other Silicon Valley giants, who are being forced into placing more restrictions on teenagers using their addictive and ubiquitous social networks. • You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

  6. Aug 26

    On whose secret service? The alarming rise of AI agents

    There has recently been a slew of stories about cutting-edge AI models which have apparently broken out of their sandbox digital playgrounds and escaped onto the open internet and conducted sophisticated and deceptive hacking operations, all without their tech company owners being aware of it. Tim is sceptical this sounds like marketing guff, but John thinks otherwise and says it may be time society properly considered both the risks of this kinds of semi-autonomous AI software and in theological terms how we should think about them. Smarter than any animal and capable of rational, independent decision-making, and yet clearly not the same as a human being made in the image of God: do we need some kind of novel philosophical category to discuss AI agents? • You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

  7. Aug 19

    Why should Christians care about the crisis in universities?

    After decades of rapid expansion and booming student numbers, the British university sector is gripped by a financial crisis. Dozens of institutions are trying to make major cuts, gutting entire departments and making thousands of academic staff redundant. This week we are joined by two Christian university professors, who are each trying to face down their own university’s cuts to staff, to discuss the roots of this crisis, but also why it should matter to the church more broadly. We talk about the Christian origins of the idea of the university itself and how their goal to unveil knowledge about the world might be a surprisingly godly one. But we also discuss the growth of managers and administrators (something familiar to many denominations), if university education really is a universal public good, and if it was a mistake to turn universities from an elite pursuit for a tiny academically-minded minority into the default method of training young adults for the workplace. The series of blogs on the university crisis recommended by Nick Megoran are here: https://isrf.org/search?q=&tags%5b%5d=he-dispatches&type=posts John Heathershaw’s own writing on the topic is here: https://johnheathershaw.substack.com/p/the-crisis-in-britains-universities • You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

  8. Aug 12

    ‘Childfree’ not ‘childless’: The changing culture around choosing not to have children

    Two quickfire topics for today’s episode. A listener writes in with some concern about a BBC article which explored the growing trend of people celebrating their choice to not have children, known online as being ‘childfree’. Is it a problem if people wish to rid the social stigma or shame about not having kids, in a world in which birthrates continue to plummet? And what does the Christian tradition think about people opting out of parenthood because they want to focus on their career, be able to travel more, or just don’t feel they have the emotional resources to raise children? But first, we look at a pioneering medical science breakthrough, after an American surgical team successfully corrected an intestinal problem while a child was still in the womb. The media reporting on this has been understandably celebratory, but it does raise the question of doublethink in a culture which simultaneously lionises doctors for saving ‘babies’ while pre-term and also defends the rights of those same doctors to abort other children with the same congenital disabilities or health concerns if that is the mother’s wish. The two articles we refer to in today’s episode: These women said no to having kids - here's why - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz0jx2z2l41o Woman has pioneering womb surgery to fix 'miracle' baby with intestines outside its body https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c86ngegz9qno • You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

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In each episode of Matters of Life and Death, brought to you by Premier Unbelievable?, John Wyatt and his son Tim discuss issues in healthcare, ethics, technology, science, faith and more. John is a doctor, professor of ethics, and writer and speaker on many of these topics, while Tim is a religion and social affairs journalist. We talk about how Christians can better engage with a particular question of life, death or something else in between.

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