Episodes

  • Sticky & Icky: Trusting Your Moral Gut
    Aug 1 2025

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    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 always, James and Sinead fight over which karaoke is best (at what point is the podcast just a conduit for curating a top tier karaoke list), but most importantly, we learn when and how to control our moral gut.

    Remember people, be savvy!

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    45 mins
  • Happiness and Meaning: Can you have both?
    Jul 14 2025

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    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't give us more meaning. More importantly, we discuss spiderman, Matthew turns the questions back on Sinead and James, and philosophers who don't wear pants.

    Remember people, be savvy!

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    46 mins
  • Healthcare for All? with Larry Temkin
    Jul 3 2025

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    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 social determinants of health, and our moral responsibilities to help other countries.

    Remember people, be savvy!

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    59 mins
  • TCM Again? Can! with Michael Stanley-Baker
    Jun 19 2025

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    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, whether medical care is really just a relative practice, and if the only benefit is merely placebo, is it really ethical to sell it to someone?

    Remember people, be savvy!

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    48 mins
  • Discrimination Against Men?? with David Benatar
    Jun 2 2025

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    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 bond over their shared hatred of karaoke.

    Remember people, be savvy!

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    58 mins
  • Wrongfully Alive with Sreenivasan Chambers LLC
    May 13 2025

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    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.

    Remember people, be savvy!

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    48 mins
  • Choosing Who Lives with Edmond Awad
    Apr 14 2025

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    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 people's preferences really are about the trolley problem.

    Remember people, be savvy!

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    45 mins
  • Religion & Bioethics with Anantharaman Muralidharan
    Apr 1 2025

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    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 religious from moral views, and the gods of philosophy.

    Remember people, be savvy!

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    43 mins