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 students • sexuality and sexual orientation • abortion and fetal moral status • embryo genetic engineering • sex selection • just war and violence • free will and moral responsibility • virtue ethics • euthanasia legalizationThis podcast offers short, classroom-oriented interviews on practical ethics, aimed at UK school pupils studying philosophy. Across the episodes, academic guests introduce core ethical concepts and apply them to contentious real-world questions, with an emphasis on clarifying arguments rather than telling listeners what to think.
A recurring theme is bioethics and the moral status of human life at different stages. Discussions consider how to weigh competing rights and interests in debates about abortion, embryo research and genetic engineering, and end-of-life decisions such as euthanasia. The episodes also examine reproductive choices, including the ethical implications of selecting a child’s sex and the potential social harms or injustices such choices might involve.
Another cluster of topics focuses on sexuality and sexual orientation. The podcast explores whether sexual orientation is a matter of choice, how to think about the ethics of sexuality, and how claims about what is “natural” relate (or fail to relate) to claims about what is morally good or bad.
Alongside these applied issues, the series includes foundational ethical theory and moral psychology. It introduces virtue ethics as one major approach to moral reasoning and investigates the relationship between free will and moral responsibility, including what it means to be blameworthy. Questions about the ethics of violence and warfare also arise, probing whether the idea of a “just war” is coherent and under what conditions, if any, war might be morally justified.
Overall, the content is structured as accessible conversations that connect philosophical tools to public and personal moral dilemmas.
| 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 |