As culture wars put ethics in the spotlight, a new podcast is making a surprising new case for progressive ideas - with a twist.

Should 10-year old kids get the vote? Should we stop developing AI? Do human rights imply animal rights? Is the manosphere wronging not only women, but the men it draws into its web?

Surprising Ethics sets a microphone in front of the academic philosophers whose new ideas on such topics have the potential to change society forever. It starts with the ‘status quo’, before putting this to the test and examining radical alternatives.

Find Surprising Ethics on all major podcasting platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

Hooked

The host, Dr William Gildea, a researcher in philosophy at McGill University and a regular contributor to The Ecologist, said: “Not everyone will agree with every surprising view, but the point is to use philosophy’s toolkit to get underneath the issues and build bridges. 

"I hope the podcast showcases intriguing arguments that philosophers are making about life, its meaning, and the future of societies.”

The podcast promises to deliver a surprise in every episode. And there are surprises aplenty. In many episodes, popular right-wing attitudes are grilled, such as when Andrew Tate’s ideas are subjected to logical analysis in an episode due out on Wednesday, 1 April 2026.

But progressives are also invited to consider whether their own values lead to unexpected conclusions. For example, two guests argue that parents concerned for their kids’ autonomy should eliminate animal products from their diet wherever possible. 

Restricting choice in childhood can, the argument goes, expand it in adulthood, since kids not already hooked on meat can think more clearly about their future diet, health, and relationships to others. 

Salacious

In this episode, Jeremy Fischer and Rachel Fredericks also argue that people who defend human superiority are more likely to be prejudiced against human out-groups. 

The idea that humans are special may seem egalitarian and necessary to defend minority rights, but Fischer argues that “when you teach people to divide human beings from other animals, you’re giving them a set of tools that they can use to attack other human beings as well”. 

So, hundreds of years of social movements have been relying on a false hypothesis. Speciesism is weaponised against minorities, who are disparaged as being “like animals”.

The podcast also explores defences of envy, hedonism, and sexual non-exclusivity: ideas hardly seen as ‘moral’ by most. 

Jealousy

On the nature of wellbeing, we hear from the hedonist and Victorian firebrand John Stuart Mill, who argued that pleasure is all that makes life worth living: a salacious proposition in 19th Century England. 

The podcast also unpacks a recent defence of non-monogamy. Imagine your friend saying, “you know our friendship means so much to me, I want you not to have any other friends, otherwise I’m not sure we can carry on”. 

You’d be appalled, and yet this is what we routinely ask of our romantic partners. Why? Jealousy is the stock response, but does it stand up to scrutiny?

Surprising Ethics is supported by the Centre for Research in Ethics, an academic research centre based in Montreal. It is available now on all major podcasting platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

This Author

Brendan Montague is an editor at The Ecologist.