Matters of Life & Death

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 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.

Abusive relationships and coercive control in church

24 Apr 2024
01:04:11

Society has been on a long and slow journey in recent decades into a richer and more sympathetic understanding of how abuse and coercion work within relationships. We are much better at both identifying and prosecuting this kind of abuse, and at bein...

Q&A: Did ending Roe v Wade actually save unborn children’s lives, and have we got food culture wrong in church?

17 Apr 2024
00:38:29

Our first topic in this Q&A episode is a recent study which found that in 2023, the first full calendar year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion, total abortions actually increased. Despite 21...

ADHD, over-diagnosis and should Christians try to enhance our brains with stimulants?

10 Apr 2024
00:51:28

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the faster growing mental health diagnoses of our age. More and more people, including those well into adulthood, are seeking out and being diagnosed with ADHD. And the typical treatment plan...

Tim Farron, toxic social media, and how to navigate the ‘mucky business’ of politics

3 Apr 2024
00:45:36

We’re both away for our Easter breaks, so this week we’re bringing you a classic episode from the MOLAD archive, when we were joined by the former leader of the Liberal Democrats Tim Farron to discuss social media and politics. Research suggests UK m...

New obesity drugs, the morality of food, and has neuroscience killed off free will?

27 Mar 2024
00:54:17

A new wave of anti-obesity drugs led by Wegovy (also known as Ozempic) are causing huge ripples in the medical world and popular culture. Astonishingly successful at helping people lose weight, these drugs both offer a tantalising solution to the obe...

Tech hype: Should Christians resist or lean into AI?

20 Mar 2024
00:57:36

As is probably obvious from previous episodes, John is extremely interested in generative AI and thinks it will be the next transformative technology to entirely up-end how society works. Tim, however, is much more sceptical and thinks a lot of the r...

Q&A: Why have anti-abortion activists accidentally banned fertility treatment in Alabama?

13 Mar 2024
00:42:57

Alabama’s Supreme Court has ruled that embryos in deep freeze, stored as part of IVF treatment, can be considered as legally children. This unexpected judgement has prompted many clinics to shut their doors, fearing lawsuits, as the storage and event...

Medical Assistance in Dying: Judicial activism, suicidal ideation, reasons to stay alive, and Hippocrates’ successful medical practice

6 Mar 2024
01:04:10

This week we’re bringing you a classic episode from the MOLAD vault. Medical Assistance in Dying is Canada’s euthanasia programme. It started in 2016 with a Supreme Court decision but has since rapidly expanded and liberalised. The latest battlegroun...

Psychedelics: Shamans and spirits, the philosophy of Harry Potter, delusions of hearing from God, and the neuroscientific turn

28 Feb 2024
00:54:09

Culture is increasingly interested in psychedelic drugs. Whether it’s Silicon Valley execs micro-dosing LSD to turbocharge their meetings, Americans doing ayahuasca weekends in Mexico, or rafts of studies suggesting ketamine can really help in treati...

Q&A: Should single Christians use dating apps if they strike out at church?

21 Feb 2024
00:35:11

A listener has emailed in his dilemma off the back of our recent series of episodes: His small evangelical church teaches a traditional Christian message on relationships and marriage, yet offers single members like him no opportunities to meet like-...

New Creation: Reading the Bible backwards, the ‘opiate of the masses’, Physics 2.0, and the resurrected yet scarred body

14 Feb 2024
00:56:38

Our four-part series on the deeper narrative of the Bible comes to an end with New Creation. Just as with the beginning of the story, this final chapter is often overlooked in many churches and the Christian narrative is compressed simply to fall and...

Egg freezing revisited: What about the ‘surplus’ eggs, and is better contraception part of the solution?

7 Feb 2024
00:52:03

A listener has emailed in two excellent questions in response to our recent episode looking at egg freezing. What happens to the leftover eggs which are frozen but never reimplanted, and can Christians be relaxed about this intrinsic wastefulness of...

Gender gap in church: Onward Christian Soldiers, the only man in a room full of women, Bonhoeffer’s ‘cheap grace’ and Christian dating apps

31 Jan 2024
00:39:53

One major response to our conversation on egg freezing was the idea that for many single Christian women it is a sensible choice given the difficulty in finding a partner/husband. For years it has been often said that the church is disproportionately...

Q&A: The contradictions which underpin anti-suicide efforts in an era of euthanasia, and are there any honest and unbiased journalists left these days?

24 Jan 2024
00:42:38

Some more listener questions: what kind of line is crossed once a country legalises euthanasia and how can a state simultaneously fund suicide prevention for some while offering state-sanctioned and facilitated assisting dying for others? Will this c...

Egg freezing: The ticking biological clock, prosecco and cheese evenings, the culture war over maternal age, and living with wisdom and contentment

17 Jan 2024
00:56:38

Increasing numbers of women are choosing to freeze their eggs in the hope that years down the line they can use these younger, healthier eggs to have children once their relationship, personal, financial or work circumstances are right. And fertility...