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 • Sexual orientation and homosexuality • Embryo moral status, genetic engineering, sex selection • Abortion rights conflicts • Just war and violence • Free will and moral responsibility • Virtue ethics • Euthanasia legalityThis podcast is a short-form educational series on practical ethics aimed at UK school pupils studying philosophy. Episodes take the form of interviews with academics associated with Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and are designed as classroom-friendly discussions that introduce key moral questions and ways of reasoning about them.
Across the series, the content focuses on ethically complex, real-world issues where rights, interests, and social consequences can pull in different directions. A recurring theme is bioethics and medical ethics: questions about the moral status of embryos, the permissibility and limits of genetic intervention in early human development, and the ethical and legal considerations involved in end-of-life decisions. The podcast also examines reproduction and family-related choices, including whether selecting a child’s sex can be justified and what harms or injustices might arise from such practices.
Another strand explores sexual ethics and sexual orientation, engaging with debates about how to understand homosexuality, what (if anything) follows morally from claims about what is “natural,” and the ethical dimensions of thinking about orientation as chosen or unchosen. Relatedly, the series tackles conflicts of rights and bodily autonomy in discussions of abortion, framing the issue in terms of competing claims between a pregnant person and a foetus.
Alongside these applied topics, the podcast includes episodes that introduce foundational ideas in moral philosophy. It addresses the relationship between free will and moral responsibility—what it takes to be blameworthy—and presents an overview of virtue ethics as a major approach to ethical theory. It also considers ethics in international conflict by examining whether war can be morally justified and what conditions might make violence permissible or impermissible.
Overall, listeners can expect accessible introductions to practical ethical dilemmas, paired with philosophical frameworks for analysing them.
| 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 |