Matters of Life & Death

The assisted suicide bill has been passed by parliament. What comes next?

4 Dec 2024
00:53:57

MPs in the House of Commons passed Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill last week. It will be several years before Britons are able to ask their doctors to help them kill themselves, but it is a totemic moment nonetheless – the first time Parliamen...

Should Christians abandon contraception?

27 Nov 2024
00:58:02

While most Protestant Christians have been at ease with using contraception for generations, there is a growing movement to re-examine the ethics of this, with more and more evangelicals asking if perhaps their Catholic brothers and sisters may have...

Earthquakes and cancer: Why is God’s good world so full of suffering? with Sharon Dirckx

20 Nov 2024
01:05:15

Christians normally explain away human-caused suffering by pointing to God giving us free will, and our sinful natures using that to harm ourselves and each other. But what about all the things entirely out of our control which cause so much sadness,...

Vaccine conspiracies, mistrust and catastrophism: How the church lost its way, with Dr Francis Collins

13 Nov 2024
00:46:23

Francis Collins is one of the leading scientists of his generation, a world-renowned geneticist who led the international project to map the human genome. Later he served under three presidents as the director of the National Institute of Health, whi...

DNA, parenthood and selecting for IQ: The surprising return of eugenics

6 Nov 2024
00:59:58

A couple of inter-connected news stories set us off this week. First, the prominent DNA ancestry company 23andMe is teetering on the brink of collapse and considering selling off its database of 15m people’s genomes. Can someone else own your DNA, an...

Near death experiences

30 Oct 2024
00:49:08

Once dismissed as quackery or New Age woo, near death experiences are seeing something of a modern revival. A slew of serious scientists and doctors have begun studying the phenomenon, even constructing clinical trials to try and see what, if anythin...

Prenatal screening: Is all knowledge a good thing?

23 Oct 2024
01:09:11

Pregnant women today are offered a battery of tests and screening for their unborn child, looking for an ever-increasing range of conditions and risks. But is the onward march of technology in this sphere always an unmitigated good thing? With aborti...

Same-sex attraction and friendship in church, with Ed Shaw

16 Oct 2024
01:04:21

This week we speak with church pastor and author Ed Shaw about John’s book on friendship, and in particular how it intersects with those who are same-sex attracted like him. How has the church unintentionally colluded with the sexual revolution in pr...

Yoga, mindfulness and truly Christian meditation

9 Oct 2024
00:49:57

Yoga and mindfulness are everywhere in popular Western culture: in school PE lessons, in company retreats, prescribed by doctors, and even sometimes endorsed by churches. Are these harmless or even quasi-Christian practices we can all enjoy, or pagan...

Remembrance and forgetting: Why is nobody talking about covid any more?

2 Oct 2024
00:53:23

Harrowing testimony from healthcare staff at the UK’s national covid inquiry has reminded us of the horrendous sacrifices made by doctors and nurses during the pandemic, just a few years ago. And yet the inquiry has drawn hardly any media attention,...

Will anti-obesity wonder drugs save our broken NHS?

25 Sep 2024
00:47:37

The new British government has been crystal clear that in their view, the National Health Service – a state-run socialised system which is quasi-worshipped by most Britons – is in long-term crisis. Services from family doctors to cancer treatment to...

Stigma, anti-depressants and emotional resilience: Rethinking mental health and the church

18 Sep 2024
00:56:10

Tim is away this week so we’re sharing a classic episode from the MOLAD vault. 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 bet...

Assisted suicide: Euthanasia tourism takes off in the US amid fresh push to change law in Britain

11 Sep 2024
00:55:15

Today we pick up a number of stories and updates in the conversation around assisted suicide. Long since legal in a growing number of states in the US, a new report has detailed how things are liberalising further. Some states now permit non-resident...

Should robots be given human rights?

4 Sep 2024
01:01:47

If and when autonomous and intelligent robots come into existence, should they be granted rights, or even personhood? A growing number of technologists argue governments must lay out what status conscious and rational machines would have before they...

Lucy Letby reconsidered: Innocence and guilt, partial evidence, and living with unknowns

28 Aug 2024
00:56:30

We covered the case of Lucy Letby – a neonatal nurse convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill seven more – last year. Since then, there has been a growing campaign claiming she is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, as Letby her...

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