Podcast
Along with my son Tim Wyatt, a religion and social affairs journalist, I run a podcast called Matters of Life and Death, which is part of the Premier network. Each episode is a conversation between the two of us discussing how Christians can engage with a particular issue around healthcare, ethics, technology, science or faith. You can subscribe to the podcast on all major podcast apps, including Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts, or you can listen to our latest episodes below.
In each episode of Matters of Life and Death, brought to you by Premier Unbelievable?, John Wyatt and his son Tim discuss issues in healthcare, ethics, technology, science, faith and more. John is a doctor, professor of ethics, and writer and speaker on many of these topics, while Tim is a religion and social affairs journalist. We talk about how Christians can better engage with a particular question of life, death or something else in between.
For the first part of this episode we return to a subject we discussed last year, after new data from India showed its fertility rate had continued to plummet and was now below replacement rate. Just a few decades ago, many feared India would be among those countries whose populations would uncontrollably explode, plunging tens of millions into famine and disaster. But in fact, even developing nations with wildly different cultures around marriage and family are emulating the developed West’s steep decline in birth rates. Does any of this matter though, and should it concern Christians beyond blood-and-soil nationalists worried about ethnic vigour?
Then we move on to consider the wave of bans on social for under-16s, as countries like the UK and Canada begin to follow Australia’s lead in restricting access to apps like TikTok and Instagram for teens. Is it credible to actually prevent determined teenagers and greedy tech firms from colluding to sidestep these laws? And what responsibility should Christian parents take on themselves, rather than wait for governments or Silicon Valley to protect their children?
The Economist article on India’s birth rates https://www.economist.com/briefing/2026/06/04/indias-population-will-soon-be-falling-probably-quite-fast
• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk
• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
• Find some of Tim’s journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com
• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
To find a full list of our entire back catalogue of episodes, click here.
If you have enjoyed listening to Matters of Life and Death, please share it with your friends and family and leave a review in your podcast app. We are also very interested in hearing questions or comments from listeners, so if you have any thoughts or would like to suggest a topic for us to cover, please email molad@premier.org.uk.
