playing god?
by Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics
Latest episode
The Future of Baby-Making
The Future of Baby-Making
About this podcast
Life-and-death decisions. Difficult tradeoffs. playing god? explores ethical dilemmas in health and medicine through the first-person stories of people who have lived them.
Recognized with three 2024 Signal Awards.
Brought to you by the Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 22 episodes
- The Future of Baby-Making · 34 minThis playing god? episode, The Future of Baby-Making, first aired in December of 2023 and won a gold signal award for Best Conversation Starter in 2024. We’re thinking about…
- Gut Strings · 24 minplaying god? presents… "Gut Strings," a musician’s experience with uncertainty around an unexpected colon cancer diagnosis. Loren Ludwig, previously protected by confidence in…
- A World Without Nurses · 25 minplaying god? presents… "A World Without Nurses"—it’s a future no one wants to imagine, but doing so brings into sharp focus just how essential nurses are today. Prepare to be…
- playing god? presents... · 2 minThe iDeas Lab team is hard at work on playing god? Season 3, but we have some special things to share with you in the meantime. Listen for a preview of what’s coming next in the…
- Two Bodies, One Prescription · 24 min · Season 2 Episode 6When Ashley Womble decides she wants to start a family, she worries she'll need to stop taking her antidepressant medication. Instead of finding clear guidance, she runs…
- A Shot at Weight Loss: Should I Take It? · 26 min · Season 2 Episode 5Rebecca Morrison is healthy by many measures. But like millions of people today, she finds herself wondering whether or not she should be taking a GLP-1 drug. What's the right…
- How Far Would You Go to Have a Healthy Baby? · 29 min · Season 2 Episode 4After losing their son Noahto to mitochondrial disease, Kristelle and Evan Shulman are determined that his death will not be in vain, holding fast to their dream of having…
- Losing Noah · 25 min · Season 2 Episode 3When Kristelle and Evan Shulman lose their young son Noah to a rare mitochondrial disease, they are told they may never be able to have a healthy biologically related child. Then…
- To Infinity and Beyond—At What Cost? · 25 min · Season 2 Episode 2Humanity is actively working towards a mission to Mars. When astronauts like Bernard Harris leave Earth, they accept risk as part of the mission. But a journey to Mars would push…
- I Need You To Help Me Die · 29 min · Season 2 Episode 1When journalist Esmé Deprez receives a text from her father, Ron Deprez, asking for help to die, she enters one of the most ethically fraught spaces in modern medicine: Medical…
- Coming soon: playing god? Season 2 · 2 min · Season 2 Episode 1Life and death decisions. Difficult tradeoffs. “playing god?” explores ethical dilemmas in health and medicine through the first-person stories of people who have lived them…
- Prequel: The God Squad · 21 min · Season 1 Episode 10Back in the 1960s, a committee of seven Seattle residents met regularly to decide which patients with chronic kidney disease were “worthy” of life-saving dialysis. Whoever wasn’t…
- The Future of Baby-Making · 34 min · Season 1 Episode 9In this episode we head into the future to learn about a controversial technology that could change the face of reproduction. Researchers are developing a technology called in…
- Miracle Drugs, Million Dollar Price Tags · 32 min · Season 1 Episode 8Cheryl Yoder’s son Jase, was born with an incurable rare disease called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), which meant he was unlikely to live beyond two years old. Jase managed to…
- An Off Switch For Depression? · 28 min · Season 1 Episode 7For years Brandy Ellis had tried everything to treat depression but nothing worked. Then one day she heard about something called deep brain stimulation, a brain implant that…
- Creating One Life to Save Another · 29 min · Season 1 Episode 6When Laurie Strongin’s son Henry was born with the rare, often fatal disease of Fanconi anemia, doctors told her that the best way to save his life was with an umbilical cord…
- A Womb of One’s Own? · 35 min · Season 1 Episode 5Jen Dingle yearned to get pregnant and have children, but there was one problem: she was born without a uterus. So when she was ready to have children she was desperate to find a…
- Why Can’t I Buy a Kidney? · 25 min · Season 1 Episode 4It can take years to get to the top of the waiting list for a donated kidney in the U.S. So when Sally Satel found out she’d need a kidney transplant, she wondered why she…
- Need a new Liver? Drinkers to the back of the Line. · 30 min · Season 1 Episode 3One day, when she was only 39, bar manager Jamie Imhof collapsed. While she lay in a coma, doctors told her family that they knew how to save her life: she needed an immediate…
- The Girl Who Died Twice · 34 min · Season 1 Episode 2When a 13 year-old girl from Oakland named Jahi McMath was pronounced brain dead after a surgical complication in 2013, California issued her a death certificate. Five years…
