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Combative, provocative and engaging live debate examining the moral issues behind one of the week's news stories. #moralmazeThemes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Moral philosophy debates • politics, democracy, populism • immigration, social cohesion • media, truth, online harms, privacy, AI • justice system, punishment, juries • welfare, inequality, trade, climate ethics • family, masculinity, fatherhood, fertility • war, humanitarian duties, death, gratitudeThis podcast stages live, adversarial debates about the moral questions that sit beneath major news stories and cultural flashpoints. Each discussion typically brings together a chair, a regular panel and outside witnesses to test competing ethical frameworks—religious and secular, liberal and conservative, consequentialist and deontological—against real-world dilemmas. The tone is often combative by design, with an emphasis on argument, scrutiny and cross-examination rather than consensus.
Across the episodes, recurring themes include the health of democratic life and the pressures placed on it by populism, polarisation, violence, and distrust of institutions. The show frequently asks what legitimacy means in practice: how power should be constrained, whether citizens’ assemblies and juries improve or weaken democracy, and how media systems and online platforms shape public perception and political temperature.
Another major strand concerns the moral dimensions of law, punishment and fairness. Debates explore what justice requires in sentencing, imprisonment and the use of mitigating circumstances, including questions about bias, responsibility, intent, and “moral luck”—the ways upbringing, genetics, environment and outcomes influence moral judgement. Related conversations examine privacy, state authority, and whether morality should be enforced through rules, surveillance or even biomedical interventions.
Social and cultural controversies are also central, including disputes over national identity, religion in public life, the idea of the sacred, and how societies remember history through heroes, monuments and symbols. Episodes often probe concepts like disgust, loyalty, gratitude and forgiveness to show how emotions and virtues can be both socially constructive and morally risky.
The podcast also tackles applied ethics in policy areas such as climate action, trade, welfare, healthcare and migration, weighing collective obligations against personal liberty, economic constraints and competing goods. Technology features prominently too, especially AI and social media, with attention to truth, manipulation, children’s wellbeing, and the ethics of witnessing violence online. Overall, the series uses contemporary events as entry points into enduring moral philosophy and public ethics.
