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In the CAVE: An ethics podcast, is back with Season 7 of the show! Join your hosts, Professor Paul Formosa and Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers, from the Macquarie University Ethics and Agency Research Centre, as they explore a range of philosophical topics focused on the question of how we can live well as moral agents in an ethically complex world.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Philosophical and applied ethics • AI governance, alignment, copyright, authorship, education, work, gendered robots • Technology impacts on attention, belief, conspiracy theories, radicalisation, virtual-world morality • Bioethics: healthcare refusal, devices, reproduction • Food, animal welfare, conservation biotech • Social justice, race, religion, legal identity • Emotions, empathy, responsibility, loneliness, memory, cooperationThis podcast is an academic ethics and philosophy show that examines how people can live and act well in a world shaped by complex institutions, emerging technologies, and persistent forms of injustice. Across conversations with philosophers, legal scholars, and applied ethicists, it brings philosophical tools to questions that arise in everyday life as well as in public policy, medicine, and digital culture.
A recurring focus is technology ethics, especially the social consequences of AI and platformed media. Discussions consider how large language models and other generative systems intersect with copyright, creative labor, authorship, and education, and how design choices can embed values and biases (including gender norms) into human–AI interaction. Related episodes probe risks such as misinformation, conspiracy belief reporting, recommendation systems, radicalisation, and broader questions about trust, autonomy, and the attention economy in smartphone-centered life. The show also addresses value-sensitive design and governance topics like AI alignment and “responsible AI.”
Another core theme is biomedical and healthcare ethics. The podcast explores ethical tensions in clinical practice and health systems, including conscientious objection by clinicians, allocation and duties in pandemics, the use of AI in healthcare decision-making, conflicts of interest around medical device representatives, and debates around reproductive technologies such as uterus transplantation. Several episodes extend the ethical lens to food systems and animal ethics, covering animal welfare, meat consumption, milk production and sustainability, and the use of animals in research.
The series also engages moral psychology and social philosophy: how beliefs relate to emotion, why people form “bad beliefs,” how anger and empathy connect to responsibility, and how loneliness may be shaped by social othering, including in autism. Additional topics include race and social construction, legal identity and human rights, democratic deliberation and exclusion, cultural and epistemic appropriation, and the idea that film can function as a medium for ethical reflection and transformation. Overall, the podcast emphasizes careful conceptual analysis alongside attention to real-world stakes.
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Special Episode: AI, Copyright, and Model Collapse, with Professor Alain Strowel 2025-Aug-26 30 minutes |
Ontology and the Ethics of Milk: A Relational Materialist Approach2025-Jul-22 25 minutes |
Loneliness and Being Other/ed in Autism2025-Jul-15 29 minutes |
Synthetic Biology and the Goals of Conservation, with Christopher Lean2025-Jul-08 31 minutes |
Feeling is Believing? Exploring Belief as Emotion with Professor Miriam Schleifer McCormick2025-Jul-01 31 minutes |
The Gamer's Dilemma: Navigating Morality in Virtual Worlds, with Dr. Tom Montefiore2025-Jun-25 27 minutes |
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Public Reason and Conscientious Objection in Healthcare, with Dr Doug McConnell 2025-Apr-10 34 minutes |
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Do People Really Believe in Conspiracy Theories? With Dr Robert Ross 2025-Apr-10 17 minutes |
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Can ChatGTP be an author? Exploring the ethics of AI creative writing assistance with Paul Formosa. 2025-Mar-03 33 minutes |
Exploring the roles of medical device reps in Australian hospitals: ethical challenges, with Dr Brette Blakely2025-Feb-24 30 minutes |
The law and religious privilege, with Mareike Riedel2024-Jul-16 30 minutes |
Epistemic Appropriation and the history of being “woke”, with Paul-Mikhail Catapang Podosky2024-Jul-09 27 minutes |
Film-Philosophy, Cinematic Ethics and the Transformative Experience of Film, with Robert Sinnerbrink2024-Jul-02 33 minutes |
Empathy, Moral Understandings and Psychopaths with Heidi Maibom2024-Jun-25 29 minutes |
AI Special Series Pt 3: Responsible AI and the Future of Education, with Virginia Dignum2024-Jun-18 18 minutes |
AI Special Series Pt 2: Generative AI and Copyright – Where to from here? With Rita Matulionyte2024-Jun-11 26 minutes |
AI Special Series Pt 1: The AI Alignment Problem, with Raphaël Millière2024-Jun-04 28 minutes |
Should we aim for a world without work? With Jean-Philippe Deranty2023-Dec-12 42 minutes |
From Theory to Practice: The Ethics of Uterus Transplantation with Mianna Lotz2023-Dec-05 28 minutes |
Legal Identity and Human Rights with Christopher Sperfeldt2023-Nov-28 23 minutes |
AI, Robots and Gender with Inês Hipólito2023-Nov-21 26 minutes |
AI, Ethics and Meaningful Work with Sarah Bankins2023-Nov-14 24 minutes |
Do human races exist? An exploration of social constructionism about race with Adam Hochman2023-May-15 22 minutes |
Remembering and self-narratives with Regina Fabry2023-May-08 24 minutes |
The Pleistocene Social Contract with Kim Sterelny2023-May-01 21 minutes |
Animal welfare and food ethics with Rachel Ankeny2023-Apr-24 27 minutes |
Smartphones, mind-wandering, and the attention economy with Jelle Bruineberg2023-Apr-17 17 minutes |
Exclusion and Uptake in Deliberative Democracy with Professor Sarah Sorial2022-Sep-20 18 minutes |
Bad Beliefs with Professor Neil Levy2022-Sep-13 18 minutes |
Enculturation, Cognition and Technology with Professor Richard Menary2022-Sep-06 19 minutes |
Moral Conflicts in a Pandemic with Professor Wendy Lipworth2022-Aug-30 15 minutes |
Moral Responsibility and Anger with Professor Michael McKenna2022-Aug-23 30 minutes |
In the CAVE Season Two Coming this Wednesday!2022-Aug-22 1 minute |
Gender Bias in Surgery with Dr Katrina Hutchison2022-Feb-14 29 minutes |
YouTube, Radicalisation, and Conspiracy Theories with A/Prof Mark Alfano2022-Feb-14 14 minutes |
The Ethics of using Animals in Research with Dr Jane Johnson2022-Feb-14 14 minutes |
The Ethics of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare with Professor Wendy Rogers2022-Feb-14 18 minutes |
The Ethical Impacts of Social Robots on Human Autonomy with A/Prof Paul Formosa2022-Feb-14 21 minutes |