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PODCAST

The Minefield

In a world marked by wicked social problems, The Minefield helps you negotiate the ethical dilemmas, contradictory claims and unacknowledged complicities of modern life.

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

53:37

What is social cohesion, what cultivates it, and what...

The Minefield ·

2023/11/22

The latest Mapping Social Cohesion report from the Scanlon Foundation paints a complex picture that helps us understand the conditions within which social cohesion is able to strengthen, and those factors which cause it to become brittle and even break down.

en

52:21

What is the moral case for a ceasefire in Gaza?

The Minefield ·

2023/11/15

Calls for an end to the devastation of Gaza, and the death and displacement of its residents, reached a crescendo on Remembrance Day. While the moral case is compelling, it raises questions that are complex and consequential.

en

54:10

What’s behind the anger? On Virginia Woolf’s “A Room...

The Minefield ·

2023/11/08

Nearly a century after its publication, Australian novelist Charlotte Wood joins Waleed and Scott to discuss what Virginia Woolf’s essay tell us about egotism, contempt, creative freedom and the possibility of moral transformation.

en

54:21

Do we know what the result of the Voice referendum...

The Minefield ·

2023/11/01

Because referenda are zero-sum contests, the message they convey is paradoxically both obscure and unambiguous — which is to say, their meaning is open to interpretation and unintentionally harsh.

en

54:01

Is it time to reconsider Australia’s bipartisan...

The Minefield ·

2023/10/25

Australia recently marked ten years since the introduction of Operation Sovereign Borders — a policy whereby refugees entering Australian waters by boat were met with unwavering, military-led deterrence.

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53:43

Some deaths matter more to us than others — but...

The Minefield ·

2023/10/18

The civilian massacres in Israel on 7 October and the devastation inflicted on residents of Gaza both make claims on our humanity, on our capacity to recognise and respond to the deaths of others — but some find these claims mutually exclusive.

en

54:20

Can young people stay politically engaged without...

The Minefield ·

2023/10/11

One of the great paradoxes of democracy is that those who will have to bear the consequences of the political decisions we make now have little-to-no say in the decision-making process itself.

en

54:23

Travel is bad for the climate — but what if it’s also...

The Minefield ·

2023/10/04

Most of us are aware of the environmental costs associated with international tourism. But have we considered whether travel enhances or diminishes our moral lives?

en

00:40

What’s the point of blame? When is it right to forgive?

The Minefield ·

2023/09/27

Blame and forgiveness are two of the most natural responses to wrongdoing — and yet, increasingly, these responses are viewed with a degree of suspicion, if not outright hostility, due to the myriad ways they can go wrong.

en

53:49

Can democracy withstand the strategic use of online...

The Minefield ·

2023/09/20

Is there any way of retrieving the deliberative conditions under which democratic life is possible, when the social media cacophony makes hearing one another so hard?

en

53:12

In a critical age, are we losing the ability to say...

The Minefield ·

2023/09/13

We’ve reached the point in mass culture, to say nothing of the “higher culture” of academia, when criticism is the norm. To the point that we increasingly define ourselves by what we hate.

en

53:27

Facing the darkness: The moral challenge of Goya’s...

The Minefield ·

2023/09/06

Spanish painter Francisco de Goya’s depiction of Saturn eating his son is a haunting portrait of lust and the fear of one’s own finitude. Christos Tsiolkas joins Waleed and Scott to look into that darkness, and discover what looks back.

en

53:20

When is a referendum an unethical way of resolving a...

The Minefield ·

2023/08/30

Now that the PM has announced the date of the referendum, it’s worth remembering that the zero-sum nature of referenda can unleash the kind of bruising rhetoric that does lasting damage to a political community, no matter the outcome.

en

54:21

Should climate change make us rethink the ethics of...

The Minefield ·

2023/08/23

Opposition leader Peter Dutton has recently reintroduced the prospect of nuclear power as part of Australia’s commitment to decarbonisation. But what is behind the push for nuclear, and does it make sense in a nation like this?

en

53:47

1 May 1956: Was Elizabeth Anscombe right to charge...

The Minefield ·

2023/08/16

When Oxford University proposed to confer an honorary degree on the man who ordered an atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe condemned the decision as “shar[ing] in the guilt of a bad action by praise and flattery”.

en

59:09

8 September 1974: Was Gerald Ford right to pardon...

The Minefield ·

2023/08/09

When US President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon of his crimes, did he thereby place the presidency above the law — or did he understand a hard reality about democratic politics that should inform the multiple prosecutions of Donald Trump?

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54:08

Is there any benefit to boredom?

The Minefield ·

2023/08/02

It is fair to say that boredom is a distinctly modern terror. But, as Stan Grant discusses with Waleed and Scott, what if existential boredom points us to our deeper need?

en

54:03

Does AI pose a threat to human life — and if so, what...

The Minefield ·

2023/07/26

Are the doomsday scenarios associated with Artificial “Super” Intelligence distracting us from the ways that the pervasive use of AI is already corrupting our use of language and the transmission of knowledge?

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53:31

Are cluster munitions a “lesser evil” in the war in...

The Minefield ·

2023/07/19

Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden made the surprising decision to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions. Does the threat posed by Russia outweigh the moral considerations that place such weapons beyond the pale for many other nations?

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53:54

Why do we distance ourselves from our age?

The Minefield ·

2023/07/12

Western culture’s association of ageing with decline and obsolescence fuels (and is fuelled by) a desire to dissociate ourselves from our age — but such forms of subtle and overt ageism express contempt for something that is essentially human.

en

345 results

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