C B m E & U

Send us Fan Mail Did you know that over 80% of people who give birth experience an injury? That anywhere between 30 and 50% of people who give birth find it traumatic? And that up to 15% of people experience PTSD from giving birth?  Professor Angela Ballantyne (University of Otago) talks about what birth trauma means, who is at the highest risk for experiencing it, and why so few people talk about...

Send us Fan Mail Could a blob of cells in a petri dish one day think? Feel? Have rights? In this episode, Professor Insoo Hyun (Harvard Medical School, one of the world's leading experts on the ethics of stem cell and organoid research, joins Sinead and James to discuss what organoids are, why scientists are so excited about them, and why bioethicists are watching very closely. Insoo explains...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, guest-host Kat Muyskens and Sinead chat with Dr. Johannes Kniess from Newcastle University (UK) about what governments are legitimately allowed to make us do, whether we like it or not. Using case studies of tobacco restrictions and vaping bans, Johannes discusses how governments must grapple with their duties to let us live our lives the way we see fit, but also...

Send us Fan Mail Is feminist science more than just having more women in STEM? Is science itself capable of being a form of feminism? Have you ever wondered whether there's more to science than Nobel Prizes and almost magical discoveries? In this episode, Professor Deboleena Roy (Emory University), a neuroscientist and behavioural biologist, discusses what it means to do feminist science and...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of CBmE & U, Associate Professor Charlotte Blease (Uppsala University) talks about the placebo process for validating and testing mental health chatbots. With James and Sinead, Charlotte discusses whether, if we don't have the means to measure whether things like ChatGBT and theratbot are making us better or worse off, are justified in letting people use t...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to CBme&U! For our first episode of 2026, and the new season 3, we have Assistant Professor Emily Largent (University of Pennsylvania), a bioethics expert, trained nurse, and Harvard law juris doctor graduate. With Sinead and James, Emily discusses decision-making capacity, dementia, and how legal frameworks should adapt to recognise the whole class of people who...

Send us Fan Mail The New York Times recently published an article on a woman who is fighting for custody and legal parenthood of twin children that she is not genetically related to, whom she did not gestate and birth herself, and who have not been living with her: her only connection with the twins is that she wanted them and so (under very interesting conditions) paid for the IVF and surrogate t...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Prof. I. Glenn Cohen (Harvard University) gives us his world leading answers to some of the stickiest issues in modern reproductive ethics: What does in-vitro gametogenesis (and can Sinead pronounce it correct at least once) mean for parenthood? If there is no other means for a person to exist but with a genetic condition, is trying to select against certain embry...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Dr. Rand Hirmiz (Singapore Management University) discusses how people with dementia can sometimes drastically change their preferences, including their long held values such as religious views or ethical standpoints. If a person then tries to go against their former views, such as by eating meat despite being a lifelong vegetarian, which views should we respect?...

Send us Fan Mail If you were a doctor, woken in the middle of the night to decide which patient should get the only available liver, would you be comfortable making that decision yourself? What if an AI device could also do it, or even do it better? In this episode, Prof. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics at Duke University) gives us the reasons why AI can h...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Prof. Jacob Stegenga (Nanyang Technological University), author of the book, Medical Nihilism , chats with us why we should all be more sceptical about medical interventions. Jacob discusses the placebo effect, research malleability, and publication bias. Sinead and Kat ask how we can know when we are being misled by journals and media reports, and encourage Jacob...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, James and Sinead ask Dr. Brandon Yip (Singapore Management University) whether the instinctive 'yuck' that we respond to some things is a reliable tool for evaluating moral judgements. Brendan considers the sticky and icky situations, like relationship age gaps, and asks whether we can really trust our emotions and instincts to guide our responses. As al...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Dr. Matthew Hammerton (Singapore Management University) presents the ideas of happiness, well-being, and the meaningful life, to answer what it really means to live a good life. He discusses the difference between meaning in life, meaningful lives, and the meaning of life (we promise they are different!), and whether there is a point in our lives where time doesn&...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Professor Larry Temkin (Rutgers University) proposes the initially controversial idea that expecting all countries to provide universal healthcare is more problematic than we realise. In what Larry has retrospectively described as a podcast that 'may have been my most FUN interview ever', Larry talks about his impact on Chinese healthcare systems, the so...

Send us Fan Mail Why do people judge getting Traditional Chinese Medicine as pointless, or even as bad? Is your grief related to your lungs? In this episode, Dr. Michael Stanley-Baker from Nanyang Technological University discusses the history and ethics of Asian medical practices with Kathryn and James. Michael talks about the value of meaning for patients in understanding the role of medicine, w...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Kat and James interview world famous David Benatar on his controversial work, 'The Second Sexism', a book that argues that we need to understand how men are also, and uniquely, discriminated against, including conscription and men's mental health. Some people have said David is just anti-feminist, but we get to the bottom of it, and Kat and David bo...

Send us Fan Mail Should children be able to sue their birth parent? Is not being genetically related to your parents really that bad? And is every child always a blessing? In this episode, Sreenivasan Narayanan and Sathya Narayanan from Sreenivasan Chambers LLC talk about what should happen when children are conceived because someone was negligent, and how this has played out in Singapore’s courts...

Send us Fan Mail Is ethics really just mob rule? Could ethics really be solved with asking millions of people what they think is right? Should an automated car get to decide who lives and who dies? In this episode, Dr. Edmond Awad from the Uehiro Oxford Institute and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at Oxford University to talk about morals and machines, moral machines, and what peopl...

Send us Fan Mail Should religious views be a part of bioethics debates? Should doctors be able to conscientiously object on religious grounds to abortion or assisted dying? And would excluding religious views be discriminatory or sometimes okay? In Episode #5, Dr. Anantharaman Muralidharan from the Centre for Biomedical Ethics discusses his research on religious bioethics, how we can distinguish r...

Send us Fan Mail What is Daoism? What is to be in harmony with Dao? Is it just to roll with the punches or go with the flow? How can doctors use Daoism to better help their patients live with chronic illnesses? Is Daoism just jazz or does James just love scatting? Dr. Alexa Nord-Bronzyk from the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at NUS talks about her research on ancient Chinese philosophy and its rela...

Send us Fan Mail What, if any, is the role of the masses in deciding who gets which kidney? Why should the public be involved in these ethical dilemmas? Should the public get to decide whether bioethics researchers keep their jobs? In episode #3, Professor Lucy Frith (Centre for Social Ethics & Policy, University of Manchester) answers these questions with Sinead and James the role of the publ...

Send us Fan Mail In episode 2, and series first, James and Sinead banter their way through the ethics of human genetic enhancement. Many people think of this as designer babies, but whether we should genetically modify people requires us to ask deeper questions: what is it to live a good life? Is wanting a better life for your child always a good reason to change your child? Where is the line betw...

Send us Fan Mail In the first episode of 2025, Julian and Sinead interview Professor Peter Singer on his life's work and controversial ideas in bioethics and ethics more broadly. Peter discusses his favourite karaoke song, his legacy as a philosopher, utilitarianism, what morality requires of us, and how is views have changed over time. Peter discusses various topics including euthanasia, ani...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of CBmE, Sinead and James interview Associate Professor Saumya Shekhar Jamuar (Senior Consultant in the Genetics Service at KK Women's Children Hospital & Director of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Institute of Precision Medicine). Saumya answer questions about what precision medicine is, whether you should use smart watches to track your health, sharing genomics...

Send us Fan Mail In Episode 8, Sinead and James interview CBmE Doctoral Candidate Marcus Teo on his PhD analysing the ethics of having children (or not). Marcus answers questions about the antinatalist movement, his unique approach, and the difference between a life worth continuing from a life worth starting. Marcus asks us to consider whether we can truly ensure a child's life will contain...