The Be Better Club
An informal ethics discussion group
Students, faculty, and staff interested interested in talking with us about contemporary ethical issues are welcome to participate in the bi-weekly “Be Better Club,” an informal but informed bi-weekly discussion group. Topics are chosen by community interest and driven by your thinking.
Discussions are held by Zoom and are open to everyone. Join us at
https://ucf.zoom.us/j/94911033007
Current Schedule
Download the 2022-2023 Schedule
Previous Discussions
August 31, 2021
Vaccines, Variants, and Uncertainty
As we negotiate viral variants, what’s the right thing to do? How do we deal with ongoing uncertainty about a changing risk landscape?
FRAMING PODCAST: Baker and Maxmen. 04 June 2021. Coronapod: Uncertainty and COVID ‘lab-leak’ theory.
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/ZYAloMFnlgI
September 14, 2021
Free Speech, Intellectual Diversity, and HB 233
What’s the relationship between intellectual diversity and free speech in academic contexts?
FRAMING PODCAST: Gladstone, B. 04 June 2021. There is No ‘Cancel Culture’. On The Media.
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/phmqcB_6wbM
September 28, 2021
Intellectual Property, Ownership, and Theft
What are the ethical concerns around intellectual property? What are their implications in new FL legislation like FL HB 7017 and 1523?
FRAMING PODCAST: Aronczyk, A. 26 June 2020. Seed Spy. Planet Money. After Dinner Conversation.
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/rvLWgwOLSA0
October 12, 2021
Online Learning, Choice, and Equity
Cameras on or off? Attending live or listening later? How do we balance engagement, privacy, and choice for students learning online?
FRAMING PODCAST: Stommel, J. July 29, 2020. How to Be Together in Learning Online. Teaching in Higher Ed.
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/_qTwoEaDnGo
October 26, 2021
AI and Autonomous Vehicles
Autonomous systems challenge views of responsibility, blame, and agency. What should a future of ethical AI look like?
FRAMING PODCAST: Burnley, M. 01 April 2021. “A.I. in the Driver’s Seat.” A.I. Nation.
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/KeeQTvwwYh0
November 9, 2021
Data Scraping and the IRB
What are the ethically relevant differences between data scraped from online social media and other human subjects data?
FRAMING PODCAST: Rodebaugh, T. and Leary, M. September 2014. More than meets the IRB – Social media research ethics: Considering the Facebook “emotional contagion” study. HRPO Podcasts.
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/joGlW5V4DBc
February 14, 2022
Morally Neutral or Morally Neutered?
The volume is up in the critique against perceived political bias in higher education. What gives? What does the future look like?
FRAMING PODCAST: Coaston, J. 8 December 2021. Can a New University Really Fix Academia’s Free Speech Problem? The Argument.
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/g0qEUnOw634
February 28, 2022
Rise of the Robots
As robotics become more advanced, robots play a bigger and bigger role in tasks that humans traditionally have done. What are the ethical limits, if any, to their rise?
FRAMING PODCAST: Beard, M. 25 December 2020. Should Robots Replace Humans? Short and Curly.
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/joGlW5V4DBc
March 16, 2022
Facial Recognition, AI, and You
Like the old western, there’s good, bad, and ugly here. We’ll talk them through and see where you stand.
FRAMING PODCAST:MIT. 12 October 2021. How AI is Destroying Our Moral and Civil Efficacy. Bold Stories. Future Focused.
March 30, 2022
Baby Xenobots and Other Potential Horrors
So xenobots procreated. We’ll talk implications, both positive and negative, of the rise of artificial life.
FRAMING PODCAST: Levin, M. 12 October 2021. Synthetic Living Organisms. UCF’s Ethically Speaking.
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/luoCdohmcnY
April 27, 2022
Humans, Inhumans, and the In-Between
Chatbots push us down the hill into uncanny valleys, but also might help us connect. UCF Postdoctoral Researcher Dr. Stevie Carnell will join us to talk about her cutting-edge work on teh Ethics of Conversational User Interfaces.
FRAMING PODCAST: 5 May 2019. The Ethics of Chatbots. The Conversologist, Ep2..
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/UfTeshLHfQ8
August 30, 2022
Rights and Personhood
What sorts of things have rights? How do we decide? We’ll talk babies, cephalopods, and artificial agents.
FRAMING PODCAST: Peña-Guzmán and Anderson. 7 June 2022. Animal Personhood. Overthink.
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/KsXS_95kmjY
September 27, 2022
Extraterrestrial Environmentalism
What do we do about space trash, off-planet pollutants, and interplanetary invasive species? What is an environmental ethics of space?
FRAMING PODCAST:Adkins. 9 December 2021. Space Environmentalism. Celestial Citizen.
October 25, 2022
Public/Private Partnerships
Do we make moral exceptions to otherwise tricky ethical issues during crises? Should we?
FRAMING PODCAST: Marks, J. 11 March 2022. The Perils of Partnership. UCF Ethically Speaking.
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/XUym03B1PrQ
November 30, 2022
Critical R* Theory and FL HB7
Some concepts become politicized. We’ll discuss tensions between politics, policy, and power.
FRAMING PODCAST: Understanding ‘How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics’ with Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò. Why is this Happening?
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/_ofn7J1mnXM
November 29, 2022
Critical R* Theory and FL HB7
Some concepts become politicized. We’ll discuss tensions between politics, policy, and power.
FRAMING PODCAST: Hayes. 15 June 2022. Understanding ‘How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics’ with Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò. Why is This Happening?
Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/_ofn7J1mnXM
January 31, 2023
Water Scarcity and Ethical Access to Resources
When natural resources become threatened, how do we share ethically? We’ll talk tragic commons and changing climates.
FRAMING PODCAST: Baraka. 28 March 2022. A Drowning World: Kenya’s Quiet Slide Underwater. The Long Read.