playing god?

About playing god?

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.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics

Category

science · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

26 Sept 2023

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

8 of 21 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   13 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Gut Strings

   Bioethicist Gail Geller, PhD, and musician Loren Ludwig, PhD, explore navigating medical uncertainty after a cancer diagnosis in this interview.

2. 

   7 Jul 2026TRANSCRIPT

   A World Without Nurses

   Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics' Simon Adler explores a future without nurses, highlighting their critical importance through immersive storytelling.

3. 

   30 Jun 2026TRANSCRIPT

   playing god? presents...

   The iDeas Lab team previews upcoming "playing god?" Season 3 content and introduces a new listener voicemail segment.

Inside a recent episode

Gut Strings

Published 13 Oct 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] And so, you know, medical school has to evolve. You know, medical school has to become more and more about teaching you a way of thinking and how to find the information that you need. Not this sort of, we have all the information and you just need to memorize it. But if uncertainty in medicine can be seen as a problem, she says, it can also be seen weirdly as progress. Look at Lauren's situation, she says. Yes, it was full of uncertainty, and yes, it was miserable. But the very presence of that uncertainty was a consequence of our ever-expanding knowledge. Like, he could only be uncertain about what he should do because we knew that he should get screened at 45, and because we know how to biopsy polyps, and because we know how to remove 18 inches of your colon without automatically killing you, and In that way, she says, the uncertainty he faced, as painful as it was, it is a feature of the system we've built, not a bug. […]

Who has been a guest on playing god?

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Loren Ludwig
• Gail Geller
• Ashley Womble
• Ruth Faden
• Crystal Clark

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

79 ratings

Spotify

4.9 / 5

37 ratings