Episodes
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Knocking Human Beings Off the Pedestal of Exceptionalism
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith takes a look at "personhood theory" advocated by such as Princeton University's Peter Singer. Listen in and learn more about the threat to the sanctity of life ethic as the fundamental value of our...
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Everyone Matters, No Matter What
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Discovery Institute senior fellow in human rights and bioethics Wesley J. Smith takes a look at what's behind the radical euthanasia movement. According to Smith, "Support for euthanasia can be seen as merely a symptom of the deeper illness of…
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Nature Rights: Radical Environmentalism Pushes the Agenda
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley J. Smith explains how the push for granting rights to nature endangers human exceptionalism. According to Smith, “It can’t happen here” denial isn’t going to stop those committed to the cause from pushing these agendas into our body politic and...
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Conscience Rights for Medical Professionals
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley J. Smith examines the need for conscience clauses to protect medical professionals. Today, physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals whose moral beliefs prevent them from participating in legal but ethically controversial acts such as...
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Brave New World Isn't Inevitable
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley J. Smith examines the transhumanism of Slate's William Saletan. Is it possible to resist the bleak future Saletan paints? Listen in and find out.
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When Animals Sue: Animal Rights Run Amok
On this episode of What It Means To Be Human, Wesley J. Smith looks at animal standing, which "would both undermine the status of animals as property and elevate them with the force of law toward legal personhood. On an existential level, the perceived exceptional importance of human life would...
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"Rational" Suicide Advocates Push Assisted Suicide in Mental Health Journals
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, bioethicist Wesley J. Smith examines the subversive movement within psychiatry, psychology, and social work which holds that only “irrational” suicides should be prevented -- while other suicides should be "validated" by mental health professionals....
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Biological Colonialism
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, bioethicist Wesley J. Smith examines the biological colonialism that has come in the wake of the devaluation of human life. With the rejection of human exceptionalism, we now have the commoditization and exploitation of the body parts and functions of...
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Granting Rights to Plants in Switzerland
An ethics panel in Switzerland is considering granting rights to … plants. On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley Smith, Discovery Institute senior fellow in human rights and bioethics, looks at how Switzerland's enshrining of "plant dignity" is a symptom of a cultural disease that...
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Euthanasia Comes to Montana
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, bioethicist Wesley Smith looks at the judicial activism that has overturned a Montana state law banning assisted suicide. Listen in as Smith explains how this case is part of a slow motion coup de culture, a steady drive to topple the social order...
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Predictions for 2009 - A Dark Year for Ethical Bioethics
With the cultural earthquake of last year's elections, what will happen in 2009? On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley Smith predicts a grim future for ethical bioethics. Human cloning, legalized assisted suicide, embryonic stem cell research -- listen in as Smith takes a tour of…
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Conscience Rights and Bioethics Debates
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley J. Smith looks at the rights of conscience for health care professionals. Western culture is profoundly split about what is right and what is wrong, and the culture of death is already punishing dissenters because their refusal to participate...
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The Great Ape Project Monkeys Around With Human Rights
Why grant apes rights? On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Discovery Institute senior fellow Wesley J. Smith exposes the radical Great Ape Project, which seeks a UN declaration welcoming apes into “a community of equals” with humans. The point is not animal welfare, but to break the...
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The Media's Love for Suicide Outlaws
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley J. Smith takes a look at the media’s fawning treatment of suicide advocates. What does a reporter see when he visits the home of a suicide facilitator? Strangely and sadly, he often sees a hero. Listen in as bioethicist Wesley J. Smith shows…
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What We Are Becoming With the Culture of Death
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, bioethicist and Discovery Institute senior fellow Wesley J. Smith takes a look at our culture’s "terminal nonjudgmentalism." How far have we come as a society when we lose the will to save suicidal people's lives? Smith examines two outrageous cases...
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Why We Call Them Human Rights
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley J. Smith examines a new extreme environmentalism that seeks to grant equal rights to . . . Nature. Yes, Nature. "Nature rights" have just been embodied as the highest law of the land in Ecuador's newly ratified constitution. Rather than...
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Human Exceptionalism Is Necessary for Human Rights
On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at Discovery Institute, explains why human exceptionalism is so important for universal human rights. There is a war being waged against unique human worth on many fronts, from personhood...
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From Ralph Nader to the Discovery Institute
In this installment of BNB, Anika Smith interviews Discovery Institute Senior Fellow and bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, who shares his story of the people and events which shaped him into the advocate he is today. Hear how his career spanned from consumer advocacy to campaigning with Ralph Nader to...
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Vick Charges Speak to Our Humanity
Do animals have rights? Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith investigates this issue in light of the dog fighting scandal surrounding football star Michael Vick. Smith argues that the outrage generated by Vick’s alleged actions stems not from any violation of animal rights, but from the violation of his…
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Soul Believer: In Defense of Human Exceptionalism
In this installment of BNB, Wesley J. Smith discusses the ongoing assault on human exceptionalism. Exceptionalism holds that human life is intrinsically unique and valuable, different from life as experienced by other organisms. Rising to challenge this idea is an array of figures including...
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Is the DEA scaring doctors away from treating pain aggressively
Is the Drug Enforcement Administration scaring doctors away from treating pain aggressively? Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith discusses recent reports on the DEA’s aggressive pursuit of doctors who subscribe pain medication for chronic pain sufferers. The perception by doctors that the DEA is…
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Eugenic Embryo Screening
On this episode of Brave New Bioethics, Wesley Smith takes a look at the disturbing trend toward embryo quality control. After embryo-screening was recently employed to prevent a child from being born who might contract adult-onset cancer, Wesley asks if this eugenic attitude might continue to…
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Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Partial Birth Abortion
On this episode of BNB Wesley Smith looks at last week's Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on partial birth abortion. Smith examines the majority decision, written by Justice Kennedy, and notes that it an assertion that seems to be a stronger affirmation of the moral value of nascent human...
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Cloning Double Talk
On this episode of Brave New Bioethics senior fellow Wesley J. Smith explains how a new bill introduced in the US Senate actually authorizing human cloning can yet be called a ban on cloning. New congressional legislation that explicitly legalizes human cloning and also authorizes researchers to...
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Hospice association abandons patient's best interests with refusal to denounce physician assisted suicide
On this episode of Brave New Bioethics, CSC senior fellow Wesley J. Smith looks at the newly release statement from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine on the issue of physician assisted suicide in which they assume a position of neutrality. According to Smith their new…
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Animal Rights Liberationists
On this episode of Brave New Bioethics, Wesley J. Smith takes a look at how an anti-human agenda like that of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is capable of causing great human harm. In the story of Dr. Edward Taub, we find that animal rights liberationists who literally believe...
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Is China Murdering Dissedents for Organs?
There is no question that Chinese transplant centers sell their wares. China has admitted to selling the organs of executed prisoners. The question is whether some of these organs come from Falun Gong dissedents executed for heterodox religious beliefs that the Chinese government disagrees with…
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The Trouble With Transhumanism
There is a new religion spreading across the globe. It is called transhumanism. Transhumanists believe that natural humans aren’t good enough, smart enough, strong enough, athletic enough, beautiful enough, or genetically diverse enough. They reject the very idea of normal, indeed, of there being...
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The Making of an Activist
I am often asked how I became an anti euthanasia activist. Like most people on both sides of the issue, it began with a personal experience. Usually after a suicide, those who were close to the deceased person wonder why, grieve, and finally go on with their lives. But I had a queasy feeling that...
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On Keeping a Disabled Girl "Small"
I have had several requests to comment on the story of the cognitively disabled girl named Ashley, whose parents subjected her to hormone treatments and invasive surgeries (hysterectomy, mastectomy) to keep her "small." The point of these "treatments" was to ensure that by remaining at about 75...
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The Truth About the Ghoulish Aspirations of Jack Kevorkian
Jack Kevorkian will soon be out of jail on parole, but we likely will not be told much about the ultimate goal Kevorkian sought to achieve through his nearly 10-year, law-defying campaign of assisted suicide. Kevorkian does not believe that assisted suicide should be narrowly applied to the dying...
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Two Different Views on Life, Loving and Killing
On this episode of BNB Smith highlights the stark difference between the attitudes of two men toward the weakest and most vulnerable among us, a difference that can be described literally as the distinction between loving and killing. The choice we make about such contrasting paths will determine...
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BNB #2: The New Ethics of Personhood Theory
What is this new idea called personhood theory? Under Personhood theory each human being doesn’t have moral worth simply and merely because he or she is human, but rather, we each have to earn our rights by possessing sufficient mental capacities to be considered a person. Personhood theory...
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Are We Defining A Brave New Future Where All Human Life Is Not Protected?
Are we headed for a brave new world where unconscious people are treated as if they were simply biological machines? Wesley warns that we maybe headed down that path, even though today most people believe “that treating people as mere things violates the intrinsic dignity of the individual and…
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Human Exceptionalism and Universal Human Rights Focus of Bioethics Podcast
Brave New Bioethics is a new podcast reported by Discovery Institute senior fellow and nationally acclaimed bioethicist Wesley J. Smith. Listeners can tune in to the first episode on Tuesday, November 14 right here on this page. Subscribe to this podcast Click here to subscribe with iTunes Click...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does What It Means to Be Human have?
What It Means to Be Human currently has 35 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is What It Means to Be Human about?
What It Means to Be Human is a podcast covering topics in science.
How often does What It Means to Be Human release new episodes?
What It Means to Be Human has 35 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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Who hosts What It Means to Be Human?
What It Means to Be Human is created and hosted by Wesley Smith.
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