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Listener Covidundrums

Are there particular moral dilemmas and conundrums the coronavirus pandemic and its effects have raised for you? Have you struggled to find an ethical way to balance your own needs and the needs of others? In this week’s show we’re discussing listeners’ real life covidundrums.

#FrancisOnFilm: Mission Impossible

Mission Impossible: Fallout is an intensely escapist movie, but it's also a deeply philosophical one. It explores the question: should you be the kind of person who saves his friends and risks millions of lives, or the kind of person for whom saving the millions matters to the exclusion of all else?

To Retract or Not to Retract

Third World Quarterly, a journal that boasts Noam Chomsky on its editorial board, recently published, then withdrew, “The Case for Colonialism,” by Bruce Gilley when death threats were made against the journal's editors. But was the journal right to retract the piece?

When Driverless Cars Must Choose

Will driverless technology someday make human drivers obsolete? Would you be willing to trust your safety to an algorithm? What if you knew that the algorithm might decide to sacrifice your life to save the lives of others?