Matters of Life & Death

Social media and politics 1: The judgemental society, 3,000 offensive tweets a day, freedom from vs freedom to, and Elon Musk’s Twitter

14 Dec 2022
25:16

This week we’re joined by the former leader of the Liberal Democrats Tim Farron to discuss social media and politics. Research suggests UK members of parliament like Tim get sent thousands of offensive tweets every single day. Why have social network...

Mental health 2: Emotional resilience, the bio-psycho-social model, the power of story, and depression in the Psalms

7 Dec 2022
29:08

In the second half of our discussion with Christian psychiatrist Daniel Maughan, we work through some ways in which the church might play in role in supporting those struggling with their mental health back to fullness of life. But is there also a pl...

Mental health 1: Power dynamics, the psychiatrist as brick wall, casualties of social media, and over-pathologising distress

30 Nov 2022
29:36

Since the covid pandemic there has been an alarming rise in people presenting with mental health problems. Today we speak with Christian psychiatrist Daniel Maughan to better understand why this might be happening, how our mental healthcare systems a...

Dependence 2: The Panopticon at home, evangelising to retirees, existential angst in the House of Lords, and rejecting self-sufficiency

23 Nov 2022
31:38

In the second part of our conversation on ageing and dependence, we think about how secular society has tried to ameliorate the crisis of isolated older people with technological solutions. Can the smart home or robotics really save us from having to...

Dependence 1: Isolated elderly people, altruistic suicide, a second childhood, and a crucified hero

16 Nov 2022
31:04

We’ve discussed in previous episodes the looming ‘demographic timebomb’ – a growing mass of elderly and increasingly chronically ill people in many developed nations, expected to place huge strain on public resources. The policy debates around this i...

Protestant Social Teaching 2: The ars moriendi, open casket funerals in Derry Girls, the end of Christendom and ethical quietism

9 Nov 2022
33:21

Resuming our conversation with Rhys Laverty from the Davenant Institute, we look at John’s contribution to the Protestant Social Teaching book – a chapter exploring post-Reformation tradition around death and dying. What might medieval and early mode...

Protestant Social Teaching 1: Overlap with Catholicism, chronological snobbery, rejecting one-size-fits-all ethics, and ‘worldly’ versus ‘spiritual’ matters

2 Nov 2022
33:16

Over 150 years the Catholic Church has built up a body of ethical doctrine commonly known as Catholic Social Teaching, which applies Catholic theology to wider social concerns, covering everything from labour relations to contraception. In this episo...

AI sentience 2: I-Thou relationships, talking to stuffed animals, thanking Alexa, and Turing red flag laws

26 Oct 2022
32:26

Building on last week’s discussion of AI chatbots, we consider the theology and sociology of why interacting with other human beings is so central to our personhood. But would it matter if we did enter into a counselling or caring relationship with a...

AI sentience 1: Blake Lemoine and LaMDA, trillions of words, mute idols, and the God who speaks

19 Oct 2022
30:23

Earlier this year, a Google engineer went public with his concerns an artificial intelligence chatbot program he had been testing had become sentient. Although his fears were dismissed by Google’s bosses, parts of his conversations with the softwar.....

Matters of Life and Death: The book reconsidered, the Moscow State University reading list, audiobooks, and the decline of the reading Christian

12 Oct 2022
35:45

Twenty-four years ago, John published the book which gave this podcast its name: Matters of Life and Death. His first foray into Christian writing and teaching on ethics, it’s now available as an audiobook for the first time which we’re using as an e...

Embryology 2: Psalm 139, reconsidering ‘ensoulment’, the language of right and wrong, and co-operation with evil

5 Oct 2022
33:14

Building on last week’s whistlestop tour through the latest ground-breaking embryo research, in this episode we consider what we should do as Christians about all this. Do we continue to hold onto the position that every embryo is a distinct and prec...

Embryology 1: A stem cell ‘Mini Me’, CRISPR, Brave New World, and extending the 14-day limit

28 Sep 2022
37:48

There has been a flood of highly significant if poorly reported developments in embryo research in recent years, all of which raise new and confusing questions for Christians and non-Christians alike. Is it acceptable to use stem cells to create embr...

Evolution 2: Tracking coronavirus variants, the immorality of mutation, roughly one thousand hominids, and intelligent uncertainty

21 Sep 2022
33:20

Our second episode on the evolution debate considers three more bones of contention: where do different species come from? Are we all commonly descended from a single source, or does God intervene? Then we consider homo sapiens, and whether science s...

The Queen: Monarchy as service, astonishing the President of Ireland, the changing Christmas Speech, and a testimonial faith

14 Sep 2022
33:06

In this special one-off episode, Tim speaks with Mark Greene from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity about Queen Elizabeth II, her faith and decades of service. We consider her own particularly Biblical vision for how constitutional m...

Evolution 1: Finding common ground, the cosmic watchmaker, interpreting Genesis, and a 6,000-year-old Earth?

7 Sep 2022
33:12

Evolution vs creationism. It's been one of the most divisive and contentious debates within Christianity. But is there a way to tackle these questions without falling into rancour and accusation? In this episode we tentatively attempt just that, expl...