TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: Practical Ethics Bites

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9 episodes
2014 to 2015
Median: 18 minutes
Collection: Philosophy

Description (podcaster-provided):

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

This podcast offers short, classroom-oriented interviews on practical ethics, designed for UK school pupils studying philosophy and intended as a teaching resource. Each episode features an academic connected to Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, discussing how philosophical reasoning applies to real-world moral controversies.

Across the episodes, a central theme is how to weigh competing rights, interests, and values when personal choices and public policy collide. Several discussions focus on sexuality and sexual orientation, examining what it means to call something “natural,” whether orientation is chosen, and how ethical arguments about consent, harm, and social attitudes shape these debates. Bioethics is another major strand, with attention to the moral status of embryos, the ethics of genetic engineering, reproductive choices such as selecting a child’s sex, and the conflicting interests involved in abortion. End-of-life ethics also appears, addressing euthanasia and the kinds of considerations that bear on legalisation and moral permissibility.

The podcast also introduces key philosophical ideas used to analyse these issues. It explores the relationship between free will and moral responsibility—what it takes to be blameworthy—and presents an accessible account of virtue ethics as a major approach to moral theory. Political and wartime ethics are included as well, probing whether war can ever meet ethical standards given the presumption against violence.

Overall, the series emphasises clear argumentation, conceptual distinctions, and the practical implications of ethical theories for contemporary debates.