Episodes

  • Prenatal screening: Is all knowledge a good thing?

    Prenatal screening: Is all knowledge a good thing?
    Oct 23 2024
    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 abortion for a disability legal in the UK up to term, women are being given terrible choices previous generations never faced: give birth to a child who probably has a life-limiting or even fatal condition, or end the pregnancy early. In this episode we dig further into the complex ethics of prenatal screening and explore what the Christian tradition makes of seeking to understand the future, and the different arguments for and against aborting children we know will be disabled. • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Same-sex attraction and friendship in church, with Ed Shaw

    Same-sex attraction and friendship in church, with Ed Shaw
    Oct 16 2024
    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 prioritising and idealising marriage, relegating friendship in the process? Why is it so important for celibate, single leaders like Ed to cultivate and sustain an array of deep friendships in church? And how can we ensure this is being done sensibly and accountably, avoiding the potential for abuse and harm that we’ve seen in so many recent evangelical scandals? Ed is also ministry director of Living Out - https://www.livingout.org/ • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Yoga, mindfulness and truly Christian meditation

    Yoga, mindfulness and truly Christian meditation
    Oct 9 2024
    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-derived movements which believers should steer clear of? And is there such a thing as ‘Christian meditation’ we should all be leaning into instead? Richard Foster – Celebration of Discipline https://www.eden.co.uk/christian-books/spiritual-growth/the-spiritual-disciplines/celebration-of-discipline/ John Mark Comer – Practising the Way https://www.practicingtheway.org/ • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    50 mins
  • Remembrance and forgetting: Why is nobody talking about covid any more?

    Remembrance and forgetting: Why is nobody talking about covid any more?
    Oct 2 2024
    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, with most of us happy to move on with our lives and never think about those long months in lockdown again. But is this a wise, or even a Christian, way of dealing with trauma in the past? And is covid even something in the past anyway, with new variants spiking and some public health experts baffled at our society’s ‘capitulation’ in the face of a resurgent virus? What damage may be being done to us as we wilfully ignore covid, and should Christians be among those trying to draw more people’s attention? Some of our previous episodes on covid: • Covid reconsidered 1:Pandemic amnesia, ‘Stay at home, Protect the NHS, Save lives’, lingering Long Covid, and 13.47 billion vaccine doses https://www.johnwyatt.com/covid-reconsidered-1/ • Covid reconsidered 2: Empty Nightingale hospitals, difficult triage decisions, a failure of Christian leadership, and reconsidering lockdown https://www.johnwyatt.com/covid-reconsidered-2/ • The origins of covid: Gain of function research, zoonosis, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and truth over tribe https://www.johnwyatt.com/origins-of-covid/ • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    53 mins
  • Will anti-obesity wonder drugs save our broken NHS?

    Will anti-obesity wonder drugs save our broken NHS?
    Sep 25 2024
    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 A&E in hospitals are struggling and failing to hit targets, and constantly underfunded. In this episode we discuss the reasons why healthcare services across the developing world and especially in the UK are buckling under the pressures of keeping our older and sicker populations healthy. Is the fabled ‘free at the point of use’ taxpayer-funded NHS really the best system to be facing the challenges of the 21st century? Will modern technology from overseas inevitably begin to take over, and will that be a good thing? And should we be enthusiastic about the new class of anti-obesity medication which seems to be having remarkable success in tackling the chronic conditions which bedevil Western societies and cripple our healthcare services? Or is the idea we can make people more virtuous and less addicted simply by mass prescribing new pills a foolish delusion? Our previous episode going into more depth on Ozempic and the new GLP-1 anti-obesity drugs can be found here: https://www.premier.plus/matters-of-life-and-death/podcasts/episodes/new-obesity-drugs-the-morality-of-food-and-has-neuroscience-killed-off-free-will • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    48 mins
  • Stigma, anti-depressants and emotional resilience: Rethinking mental health and the church

    Stigma, anti-depressants and emotional resilience: Rethinking mental health and the church
    Sep 18 2024
    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 better understand why this might be happening, how our mental healthcare systems are coping (or not), and how his faith intersects with his work diagnosing and treating those with psychosis. What can we do to protect ourselves and especially our younger people from this tsunami of anxiety and depression? And has society over-corrected in its desire to eradicate mental health stigma? Is there a place for the church to gently push back on the medicalisation of ordinary emotions and model a greater sense of mental resilience?
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    56 mins
  • Assisted suicide: Euthanasia tourism takes off in the US amid fresh push to change law in Britain

    Assisted suicide: Euthanasia tourism takes off in the US amid fresh push to change law in Britain
    Sep 11 2024
    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-residents to cross state lines solely to die, creating a new market in euthanasia tourism for those living in less liberal parts of America. Meanwhile, there are new attempts by activists to legalise assisted suicide in England, and the new Labour government has pledged to allow a free conscience vote by all MPs on the issue soon. How should believers respond to this, and is there any real prospect of Christian healthcare workers winning the right to not only opt out of assisted dying procedures, but to set up their own independent euthanasia-free clinics, hospitals and hospices? Find out more about a new book on assisted dying John has contributed a chapter to here: https://www.mheducation.co.uk/the-reality-of-assisted-dying-understanding-the-issues-9780335253173-emea-group#tab-label-product-description-title • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    55 mins
  • Should robots be given human rights?

    Should robots be given human rights?
    Sep 4 2024
    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 actually have been invented. But how can we decide what is and isn’t a person, and what rights and responsibilities such a thing should have? And how could this philosophical and technical debate affect our Christian beliefs on human uniqueness? We then explore three Christian responses to calls for robot personhood, spanning the spectrum of hostility to optimism about the development. What Biblical truths and doctrines can we turn to as we wrestle with what is a fundamentally brand new dilemma? And how would our theology and practice as believers change should conscious, intelligent, autonomous robots come to live among us? • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    1 hr and 2 mins