Matters of Life & Death

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...

Friendship 2: Walks in the Garden of Eden, David and Jonathan, covenantal clarity, and red flags

29 Mar 2023
38:30

God’s understanding of friendship is very different to the sexualised and suspicious framework society now inhabits. In this episode we take a lightning-quick tour through the Bible to consider what we can learn about friendship there – with God, bet...

Friendship 1: The hermeneutic of suspicion, Classical ideals, scandalising middle-class Vienna, and the ‘mysticism of materialism’

22 Mar 2023
32:33

Somebody once said that in contemporary society we all want to ‘have sex with our friends, and be friends with our sexual partners’. There is a broad suspicion of intimate but non-sexual friendships, especially those which are intergenerational or cr...

Listener questions: Polarised culture wars, the challenge of elder care, and childlike sexbots

15 Mar 2023
39:01

To mark one year since Matters of Life and Death joined the Premier Unbelievable network, we have a special one-off episode answering some questions emailed in by listeners. We discuss everything from whether Christians should lean into the culture w...

Public sector strikes 2: Taking patients hostage, employment as service, slaves and masters, and Christian peacemaking

8 Mar 2023
32:19

There are two strong Christian traditions when it comes to robust political or industrial action such as strikes. One argues for enduring oppression and unfair employment in the manner of Jesus and points to Paul’s teaching in the Bible on slaves and...

Public sector strikes 1: The Winter of Discontent, austerity-era pay freezes, Christian socialist solidarity, and continuity of patient care

1 Mar 2023
31:45

The UK is currently gripped by a wave of strikes from public sector employees – nurses, teachers, postal workers, train drivers, paramedics, and soon junior doctors too. But this raises complex ethical questions. Few Christians would deny it is legit...

Surveillance capitalism 2: QR codes in China, privacy, the manipulation of desire, and a neo-Benedictine Rule of Life

22 Feb 2023
33:22

If surveillance capitalism permeates all of modern society, how on earth can we step back to think critically about what it may be doing to us? In this episode we think through more of the implications of living in a non-private digital village in th...