Matt Beard, Eleanor Gordon-Smith, Bryan Mukandi (2020) | The Ethics of the Pandemic

Matt Beard, Eleanor Gordon-Smith, Bryan Mukandi (2020) | The Ethics of the Pandemic

Author: Festival of Dangerous Ideas July 27, 2020 Duration: 49:46

In stripping away so much of ordinary life, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a lot about us – not all of it pretty. It's also confronted us with brutal ethical choices.

Who deserves to be saved when you're running out of ventilators? How much are we willing to give up so others can get by? Who gets to decide and what beliefs are shaping their decisions?

Step back from the day-to-day dilemmas of the pandemic to understand the crucial lessons and hidden costs of our choices.

Matt Beard is an Australian moral philosopher at The Ethics Centre and a regular writer on philosophy and ethics.

Eleanor Gordon-Smith is a writer and radio broadcaster working at the intersection of academic ethics and the muddy chaos of life between real humans.

Bryan Mukandi is an academic philosopher and health humanities researcher, with a background in the practice of medicine in a resource-poor, sub-Saharan African context.


For more than a decade, the Festival of Dangerous Ideas has curated a space where provocative thinking isn't just welcomed, it's the entire point. This podcast is a direct line to that stage, offering an archive of talks that deliberately unsettle comfortable opinions and interrogate the stubborn problems we often agree to ignore. Each episode captures a live conversation from Australia's original disruptive ideas festival, presenting arguments that can be exhilarating, uncomfortable, and vitally important. You’ll hear from a compelling roster of festival alumni-including leading experts, intellectual troublemakers, and visionary authors-who share perspectives that conventional discourse frequently sidelines. The discussions here aren't theoretical exercises; they grapple with the pressing and difficult issues shaping our society and culture right now. Tuning in means granting yourself access to a decade-long tradition of intellectual courage, where the core assumption is that some truths are only reached by first entertaining a dangerous idea. It’s a chance to listen as boundaries are pushed, not for shock value, but for clarity. The result is a consistently challenging and refreshing audio experience that complicates simple narratives and expands what feels possible to talk about.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Festival of Dangerous Ideas
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