Matters of Life and Death
In each episode of Matters of Life and Death, brought to you by Premier Unbelievable?, John Wyatt and his son Tim discuss issues in healthcare, ethics, technology, science, faith and more. John is a doctor, professor of ethics, and writer and speaker on many of these topics, while Tim is a religion and social affairs journalist. We talk about how Christians can better engage with a particular question of life, death or something else in between.
Episodes
January 7, 2026 • 40 mins
Our series on the theological foundations of Christian ethics and the grand narrative of the Bible has reached the third chapter – redemption. How is the story of what Christ accomplished on the cross a uniquely Christian approach to the problem of evil, and what light does it shed on our approach to everything from artificial intelligence to reproductive medicine? In this episode we discuss the mysteries of the cosmic universal st...
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December 31, 2025 • 46 mins
Creation. Fall. Redemption. New Creation. This is the grand narrative of scripture and the theological foundation we use to try to probe into the ethical challenges thrown up by advances in science and technology. We looked at creation, and now we’ve come to the Fall. What is the uniquely Christian approach to the nature of evil in our world, and how does it stand in sharp contrast to our secular society’s presumptions? Are people ...
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December 24, 2025 • 51 mins
Over the Christmas break, we’re going to be returning to a series we did on Matters of Life and Death a few years ago, exploring the theological underpinnings of much of what we discuss on the podcast. Many Christians, going back to church fathers, have understood the grand narrative of scripture through a four-part journey: from Creation, to Fall, to Redemption, to New Creation. This week we are beginning with creation. Why is it ...
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December 17, 2025 • 55 mins
A MOLAD listener got in touch with a fascinating question about hormone replacement therapy and the menopause. If some Christians are becoming sceptical about using hormonal contraception, should they be equally sceptical about the widespread use of hormone replacement therapy for women going through the menopause? Are our bodies good exactly as God made them, or is taking additional hormones just a non-controversial medical treatm...
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December 10, 2025 • 42 mins
We begin by exploring the remarkable offering of PickYourBaby.com, from a company which claims it can help you select the precise genetic inheritance of your child through IVF, to ensure your offspring are taller, more beautiful, healthier and cleverer. There are plenty of questions around the supposed science of this, and its ethics. But beyond all that, why is this kind of service attractive to would-be parents in the 2020s? What...
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December 3, 2025 • 43 mins
Nigel Biggar is one of the most high-profile and controversial Christian thinkers in Britain today. A theologian and priest in the Church of England by background, he has shot to the forefront of the culture war in recent years for his books and articles exploring the morality of Britain’s empire and critiquing what he sees as the self-hating excesses of wokery, becoming a hate figure on the left and lionised by the right (and even...
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November 26, 2025 • 63 mins
Psalm 139 is one of the most famous and most quoted chapters of the whole Bible. Some indeed have even constructed an entire Christian ethic of the unborn child from its famous central verses. But what do we think David is trying to say in this beautiful and mysterious poem? What can it teach us about how we should view fetuses in the womb, and have some gone too far in trying to use this psalm as the lynchpin of the anti-abortion ...
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November 19, 2025 • 50 mins
There’s been a flurry of news stories and even scientific papers exploring the concept of ‘AI psychosis’ – the idea that people can become psychotic and mentally ill having spent too much time locked in hours of conversation with an AI chatbot such as ChatGPT. There’s also been a handful of cases where the family of someone who has killed themselves has accused the chatbot they were using of encouraging or facilitating the suicide....
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November 12, 2025 • 70 mins
Here in the UK, parliament continues to debate a bill to legalise assisted suicide. As we wait to see whether Britain follows the lead of many other Western nations in introducing a form of assisted dying, we thought we would share as this week’s podcast a lecture John gave recently to the Church of Ireland in Belfast. It’s entitled Autonomy, Suffering and Human Dignity: Theological and Medical Responses to Assisted Dying, and in i...
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November 5, 2025 • 53 mins
A listener in the United States has written in pondering the, ahem, sensitive issue of circumcision. In America it’s been commonplace as a medical procedure for newborn boys for generations, while in the rest of the world it’s almost exclusively a Jewish or Muslim religious rite of initiation. Does circumcision actually offer any real medical benefits? Following the growing pressure to stamp out female genital mutilation, once know...
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October 29, 2025 • 54 mins
Perhaps the most contentious political, medical and social issue of the day is how to treat and care for young people who are questioning or experiencing distress around their sex and gender. We are both away for half-term this week, so we’re bringing you an episode from 2023 when we spoke with Christian community paediatrician Julie Maxwell about the rise in children reporting gender dysphoria, the evidence base behind controversi...
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October 22, 2025 • 52 mins
In the first part of this episode we talk through a startling new scientific breakthrough: researchers claim they can insert genetic material from an ordinary skin cell into a human egg cell, and then use that to fertilise and grow an embryo. This means an infertile couple or a same-sex couple could theoretically have a child who was genetically related to both parents for the first time. But just because we can, should we be doing...
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October 15, 2025 • 59 mins
Of all orthodox Christian doctrines, the trinity is perhaps the one which most languishes understudied and underappreciated. Many of us see it as a baffling paradox, a riddle without an answer. Only of interest to egg-headed nerds and without any practical application to day-to-day Christian life. But have we been getting this wrong all along? Could reflecting on what it means to say we believe in one God in three persons actually ...
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October 8, 2025 • 65 mins
It has been hard to miss the ways that right-wing political movements have become marked by Christian rhetoric and language in recent years. Clearly, something about the unstable and fractious era we live in has seen people yearning to turn Western nations back to an imagined Christian past. But is this a mirage, or even an idolatrous worship of the nation state? How should Christians engage in politics in democracies? Is it helpfu...
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Natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have caused untold misery, suffering and death over the centuries. Some, like the infamous Lisbon earthquake and tsunami in 1755, have even been held up as prompting turns away from belief in God entirely. How can believers account for the apparent brokenness and destructiveness of the earth, and yet continue to believe it was made by a good God who declared his creation to ...
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September 24, 2025 • 51 mins
Christians often find themselves disagreeing about what posture to adopt in our increasingly secular and faith-hostile culture. Should we stand apart from society, keeping ourselves unsullied by its godlessness, so we can prophetically call out evil and witness to Christ? Or should we seek to engage deeply in our context, seeing our calling as to shape creation in a kingdom direction, acting incarnationally and incrementally for go...
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September 17, 2025 • 42 mins
Artificial Intelligence is everywhere these days, and the hospital, surgery and clinic are no different. It’s getting into wearable tech, it’s assisting in making diagnoses, and much more. There’s a lot of promise, but is there also some peril? What compromises around human connection and compassionate care might we make in our rush to integrate AI into healthcare? How can Christian doctors, nurses and others continue to embody Chr...
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September 10, 2025 • 54 mins
An influential Canadian doctors’ association has proposed expanding the country’s euthanasia laws so newborn babies suffering from serious disabilities could be given lethal drugs for the first time. In light of this, we discuss the often conflicting philosophies that lie behind our medical thinking on the unborn child versus newborn babies. What was so shocking and distinctive about how the early church treated babies so casually ...
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September 3, 2025 • 56 mins
We weren’t able to record an episode this week so please enjoy one from the MOLAD archive: This week’s guest is Nick Spencer, senior fellow at the faith thinktank Theos, and recent author of Magisteria: The entangled histories of science and religion. Nick joins us to discuss the complicated backstory to how we all came to believe science and faith were inevitably at odds with each other. Where did this myth come from, and what is ...
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August 27, 2025 • 62 mins
In today’s Q&A episode, we first explore a question sent in about a troubling story from Georgia, USA, where a braindead pregnant woman was kept on life-support for months (against the wishes of her family) in order that once her unborn child had developed sufficiently he could be born alive. The hospital reportedly believed it was compelled to do so thanks to Georgia’s strict anti-abortion laws which they feared would make doctors...
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