CBH Talk | Playing God: Bioethics and the Choices We Face
Johns Hopkins bioethicists use first-person storytelling and live audience discussion to explore real dilemmas where medical possibility meets ethical complexity.
Why we picked this
Should terminally ill people control when they die? Can a child be conceived to save a sibling? The Johns Hopkins bioethics team doesn't shy away from the hard questions—and neither does the format.
The Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics brings its playing god? podcast to Brooklyn for a live event built around first-person storytelling and genuine audience engagement with medical ethics. The format invites the room into the conversation rather than keeping the audience at a remove from the dilemmas being discussed.
Jeffrey Kahn and Anna Mastroianni are the co-founders of the podcast and among the most respected bioethicists in the country. The questions they tackle are not abstract—they include whether terminally ill people should have the right to control end-of-life decisions, whether designing a child to serve as a donor for a sick sibling is ethically defensible, and what happens when medical technology outpaces the frameworks we use to govern it.
This event celebrates the launch of Season 2 of the podcast. Lauren Arora Hutchinson, Director of the iDeas Lab and podcast host, joins Kahn and Mastroianni for the evening. The program ends with a light reception. Free and open to the public.