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Thinking Out Loud provides audio-podcasts based on a series of videos produced by Katrien Devolder in which she talks to leading philosophers from around the world on topics related to practical ethics. The podcast and videos are meant for a non-specialist audience. You can watch the videos on the Practical Ethics Channel. Katrien is a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Practical ethics interviews • Covid-19 and pandemic ethics • lockdowns, liberty restrictions, privacy/contact tracing • vaccine allocation, nationalism, child vaccination • triage and scarce medical resources • healthcare worker duties/PPE • inequality and social justice • zoonoses, factory farming, animal ethics • AI moral obligationsThis podcast introduces a non-specialist audience to practical ethics through interview-style conversations between host Katrien Devolder and philosophers and other experts. Across the episodes, the discussions use real-world dilemmas—often prompted by Covid-19 and other infectious-disease threats—to examine how moral reasoning can inform public policy, healthcare practice, and individual choices.
A major theme is how societies should respond ethically to pandemics under uncertainty. The conversations explore what it even means for a pandemic to “begin” or “end,” and how historical comparisons can help while also having limits. The podcast also examines the justification and design of public-health restrictions, including questions about whether limits on liberty should apply universally or be targeted at particular groups, and what values are at stake when balancing freedom, risk, and protection of the vulnerable.
Another recurring focus is allocation under scarcity: who should get vaccines, treatments, or ICU care when not everyone can be helped at once. These episodes consider different ethical frameworks for prioritization, the role of indirect protection, and whether factors such as caregiving responsibilities should matter. They also address the lived realities of triage in overwhelmed health systems, including the moral burden placed on clinicians, and the downstream effects of delayed care for non-Covid patients. Related questions about professional duty arise as well, such as what obligations healthcare workers have when protective equipment is insufficient.
The podcast frequently widens the lens to global and structural ethics, including whether countries may prioritize their own citizens in vaccine distribution and how corruption, racism, and perceptions of “social value” can distort fair access to care. It also highlights how pandemics can amplify existing inequalities, making social justice a central part of preparedness and response.
Beyond human-to-human ethics, the show connects pandemic risk to animal agriculture and zoonotic disease, considering factory farming as a driver of emerging infections and discussing individual and systemic routes to prevention. Additional episodes extend practical-ethics analysis to technology, including privacy risks of contact-tracing apps and emerging questions about how humans should understand and relate to AI agents, including the possibility of mutual moral obligations.