Questions of our Times interviews explore health and wellbeing

Health and poverty, assisted dying, social media and the pressure to be beautiful, the NHS, and the influence of big pharma – all these issues and more were discussed during the latest season of Questions of our Times. We explored some of today’s big social questions with four public figures in the area of health and wellbeing. The four interviews are all now available online.

Will the poor always be with us? In the first episode Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, who has ministered in the former coal mining communities of Country Durham and in inner-city Liverpool, talks about how poverty affects the health of communities and individuals.

Is wellbeing more than skin deep? In episode 2, Dame Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, explores the connections between health and spirituality, the wellbeing of the NHS itself, and the questions around assisted dying.

Do our bodies shape who we are? In our third episode, the journalist and author Chine McDonald considers the question ‘Do our bodies shape who we are?’ and thinks about the beauty industry, the influence of social media, and the pressure to be beautiful.

How ethical is medicine? In our final conversation, Dr Claire Gilbert, whose life has been spent in medical ethics, and who received a stem-cell transplant in response to cancer, talks about the big ethical questions of today, such as big pharma, stem-cell research, gene therapy and AI.

Our guests in Questions of our Times did some thinking out loud with the help of journalist and series host Major Nigel Bovey, former editor of the Salvation Army newspaper The War Cry. As in our previous seasons, each episode ends with questions from listeners.

The videos from all four seasons of Questions of our Times, which cover the areas of physics, the environment, racial justice, truth in journalism, astrophysics, the relevance of Jesus to modern life, health and wholeness, social robotics, and the religion and science debate, are available to view on the link above.

Questions of our Times is produced by the Christian Evidence Society and Premier Christian Radio, and is made possible with the support of the Montgomery Trust.

Main photo by Rémi Walle on Unsplash