Hello listeners, happy Christmas and welcome back to Get Fit Guy.

Thank you to the listeners that emailed in about their thoughts on the question I posed about the title of the show.

As I mentioned in that episode, I think that a gender-neutral approach would be better.

I did get an email from one listener who said that it's called Get-Fit Guy because I'm a guy.

Now, I would argue that in my perspective, this is a demonstration of the position I'm taking,

which is that gender neutrality is important

because it's quite assumptive, or using philosophical parlance inductive. Now, whilst it is

indeed the case that the pronouns I use are he and him, I have never discussed this on the show. So it's a significant

assumption that I myself would want to be referred to as a guy. So there's an ethical model

in philosophy called utilitarianism. I'm not able to fully explain it here because it would

take too long and it's too nuanced. However, in a callback to my geekiness, it's the position

that Spock takes at the end of the movie Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Cannes. Spock sacrifices himself to save the enterprise, telling Kirk,

the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the one. Utilitarianism is where the morally right

thing to do would be the thing that increases the net happiness or net good. In this case, if we apply this to the title of the show and write it out as an argument in

deductive logic, which is where the conclusion logically follows on from the premises,

then we get an argument that looks like this.

Premise 1, the morally right thing is that which increases happiness. Premise 2. More people could be

unhappy with a gender-specific title than would be unhappy with the show changing its name.

Conclusion, therefore, the morally right thing to do is to change the name.

I remember when I was a kid my grandparents used to use some really unacceptable language to refer to immigrants.

It was a shock to hear because it was just wrong.

It felt acceptable to them because in their day, it was normal and accepted. But it's

...