playing god? A bioethics podcast
- Episode 1: I Would’ve Let You Die, Too
- Episode 2: The Girl Who Died Twice
- Episode 3: Need a New Liver? Drinkers to the Back of the Line
- Episode 4: Why Can’t I Buy A Kidney?
- Episode 5: A Womb of One’s Own?
- Episode 6: Creating One Life to Save Another
- Episode 7: An Off Switch for Depression?
- Episode 8: Miracle Drugs, Million Dollar Price Tags
- Episode 9: The Future of Baby-Making
- Prequel: The God Squad
Listen now and subscribe for updates
In the world of science and medicine, every advancement opens the door to complex questions about its use. Bioethicists help shape the answers. Season 1 of the playing god? podcast tells the stories of individuals who grappled with issues raised by life-changing medical innovations. Coming soon, Season 2 will expand that focus to a societal and even planetary scope
The Berman Institute is partnering with a group of nationally recognized K-12 educators from across the country to create educational materials that accompany the podcast. Learn more.
Listen to the Season Two trailer
Sign up for project updates, including the release of educational materials for each episode of the playing god? podcast.
Listen to Season One
About playing god?
Life-and-death dilemmas. New medical technologies. Controversial treatments. In playing god? we hear from the patients whose lives were transformed—and sometimes saved—by medical innovations and the bioethicists who help guide complex decisions.
Ventilators can keep critically ill people alive, but when is it acceptable to turn the machines off? Organ transplants save lives but when demand outpaces supply how do we decide who gets them? Increasingly, novel reproductive technologies can help people have babies in ways that are far beyond what nature allows. So, when should such “Brave New World” technologies be introduced and who should control them?
playing god? is a podcast created by the Berman Institute of Bioethics. hosted by Lauren Arora Hutchinson, Director of the Berman’s Institute’s Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab; executive producers are Anna Mastroianni and Jeffrey Kahn, working closely with Amelia Hood.
Episodes of Season One of playing god?, made possible by generous support from The Greenwall Foundation, premiered each Tuesday from October 20 through December 12, 2023. Season Two will debut in early 2025.