Site • RSS • Apple PodcastsDescription (podcaster-provided):
Practical Ethics Bites is a series of audio podcasts on practical ethics targeted specifically at pupils studying philosophy in UK schools. It is produced by the team behind the popular podcast Philosophy Bites, David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton. Philosophy Bites has had over 21 million downloads. David Edmonds is a Senior Research Associate at Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and all the interviewees are academics linked to the Uehiro Centre. The series aims to be a free educational resource for teachers. Each interview is around 20 minutes long.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Practical ethics for UK philosophy students • Sexuality and sexual orientation • Abortion, foetal moral status • Embryo genetic engineering, sex selection • Euthanasia legality • Just war ethics • Free will and moral responsibility • Virtue ethicsThis podcast offers short, classroom-oriented interviews on practical ethics for UK school philosophy students, featuring academics associated with Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Across the episodes, it examines how ethical theory applies to contentious real-world decisions, often by clarifying key concepts, mapping the main arguments on different sides, and highlighting where moral disagreement comes from.
A major theme is bioethics and medical ethics: questions about abortion and the competing interests of pregnant people and fetuses, the moral status of embryos in genetic research, the permissibility of choosing a child’s sex, and debates about whether euthanasia should be legal. These discussions raise broader issues about rights, harm, justice, and what kinds of interventions in reproduction and healthcare are ethically acceptable.
The podcast also addresses ethics of sexuality and sexual orientation, including disputes about whether orientation is chosen and how claims about what is “natural” relate (or fail to relate) to judgments about what is morally good or bad.
In addition, it tackles foundational ideas that underpin moral reasoning, such as the relationship between free will and moral responsibility—what it takes to be blameworthy—and an introduction to virtue ethics as a major approach to evaluating character and action. It extends practical ethics beyond the personal and medical into political morality through discussion of whether war can ever be just, and how violence might be justified, if at all.
| Episodes: |
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Can you choose to be gay? 2015-Jul-14 10 minutes |
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The ethics of sexuality 2014-Nov-04 17 minutes |
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Should we allow genetic engineering on embryos? 2014-Oct-28 19 minutes |
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Is there such a thing as a just war? 2014-Oct-21 23 minutes |
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The rights and wrongs of abortion 2014-Oct-14 18 minutes |
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Choosing the sex of your child 2014-Oct-06 15 minutes |
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Free will, and its connection to moral responsibility 2014-Sep-29 20 minutes |
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What is virtue ethics? 2014-Sep-22 18 minutes |
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Should euthanasia be legal? 2014-Jul-22 21 minutes |