Matters of Life & Death

Covid reconsidered 1: Pandemic amnesia, ‘Stay at home, Protect the NHS, Save lives’, lingering Long Covid, and 13.47 billion vaccine doses

12 Jul 2023
00:56:49

This podcast happened to launch a week or two into the first lockdown in spring 2020, and so for the first year almost all we could talk about on the show was coronavirus. But since normality finally returned last year, it feels like nobody wants to...

Dementia: Listening to our bodies, 72 unique behaviours, multi-dimensional personhood, and the sacramental ministry of touch

5 Jul 2023
00:44:49

‘Granny’s body remains, but she was gone’. The public narrative around dementia often presumes that as our ability to talk, move and think gradually withers away, so does our personhood and sense of self. But if we believe as Christians that our huma...

Surrogacy: The intended parents, altruistic versus commercial, ancient Christians saving abandoned babies, and a post-genetic community

28 Jun 2023
00:55:24

The numbers of couples choosing to have children via surrogate mothers has been steadily rising in recent years. Now, the UK authorities are considering plans for a radical overhaul of the laws around surrogacy, making it more heavily regulated but a...

Digital church: Worship on Zoom, pandemic revival, time-shifting and Gnosticism (Replay)

21 Jun 2023
00:34:00

We're both on holiday this week so we're bringing you an episode we first recorded in 2021 during the covid pandemic. It explores one of the most significant and potentially long-lasting ways the covid pandemic has affected church life – the shift to...

Trans children: Gender dysphoria, diagnostic overshadowing, boy Lego versus girl Lego, and the non-replicated Dutch Protocol

14 Jun 2023
00:54:41

Perhaps the most contentious political, medical and social issue of the day is how to treat and care for young people who are questioning or experiencing distress around their sex and gender. In this episode we speak with Christian community paediatr...

Q&A: Christian pacifism in times of war and the Tower of Babel reconsidered

7 Jun 2023
00:31:29

In this episode we tackle two questions from listeners. The first asks in the light of the conflict in Ukraine whether it is ever right for Christians to become active participants in war. Then we move on to think about how the Genesis account of the...

Digital persecution: Deadly rumours on WhatsApp, a ‘Panopticon’ of censorship, the corrosion of trust, and China’s spreading surveillance state

31 May 2023
46:27

The persecuted church today lives as it always has under the threat of arrest, imprisonment, physical attack, verbal threats and harassment, and even death. But today these traditional methods are supplemented by the technological revolution. Increas...

Q&A: Helping unmarried couples have children and court-ordered blood transfusions

24 May 2023
42:30

Today’s episode was recorded as part of the New Zealand Christian Medical Fellowship’s annual conference. Doctors there sent over two bioethical conundrums for us to chew over as part of a special episode of Matters of Life and Death. The first explo...

Generative AI: Second Contact, avoiding the fate of Nokia, hacking the human operating system, and the resilience of Western democracy

17 May 2023
42:27

A new kind of artificial intelligence software has swept through the internet over the last year. Many are thrilled by the potential and power of AI which can generate by itself impressively creative text, images, sound and video. But others are soun...

Q&A: Introverts versus extroverts, faith in the consultation room, and a moratorium on AI research

10 May 2023
39:53

More quickfire initial thoughts in response to questions from listeners. This week we discuss whether introverts are marginalised in the church, or actually disproportionately likely in the pulpit? We also consider how spirituality might play a role...

Contemporary spiritualities: Nominal atheism, New Age prayers for £25, moving on from Empty Tomb evangelism, and the church of social justice

3 May 2023
50:46

The non-religious are an ever-increasing segment of the population, in the UK, the United States and across the Western world. But what do they actually believe, and indeed not believe, in? In this episode we’re joined by evangelist and author Glen S...

Effective altruism 2: Tithing, second-hand stuffed toys in Turkey, the Parable of the Lost Sheep, and one-hundredth of a guide dog

26 Apr 2023
33:50

In this second part of our effective altruism conversation, we explore the Christian sub-community within EA and ask whether the movement’s fundamental ideas are compatible with Christian tradition on giving. Is Christian EA a welcome challenge to ou...

Effective altruism 1: QALYs, longtermism, Jeremy Bentham’s embalmed corpse, and ethical elitism

19 Apr 2023
28:05

A movement founded at the University of Oxford in 2009 has now captured the imagination – and the wallets – of some of the brightest and most successful across elite Western academic and business circles. Effective altruism, a 21st-century data-dri.....

Webinar 2: Totalitarian regimes, the tobacco regulation lag, eternal life for materialists, and ‘Don’t be afraid’

12 Apr 2023
00:00

In the second part of John’s webinar with Premier Unbelievable, he takes questions from listeners on everything from whether AI tech is inching us towards the end times to how families can stave off the destructive influence of smartphone addiction....

Webinar 1: Redefining human-ness, testing for consciousness, hoodwinked by ChatGPT, and a black box

5 Apr 2023
25:47

We are taking a few weeks off over Easter but to give you something to chew on until normal service resumes, we’re uploading in two parts a webinar John took part in for Premier Unbelievable. Called ‘How to live faithfully in a technologically confus...