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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

00:00

Sports betting: Is it corrupting what it means to be...

The Minefield ·

2023/02/15

Dr Lauren Gurrieri joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss the sophisticated ways sports gambling operators are targeting new clientele — through targeted ads and by parasitising existing social media technologies.

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00:00

What is generative-AI doing to our capacity to write...

The Minefield ·

2023/02/08

Professor Naomi Baron joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether ChatGPT and its soon-to-be-released competitors, with their lure of efficiency and ease, are threatening the human ability to write.

en

00:00

What does it mean to be “literate” — and is it under...

The Minefield ·

2023/02/01

Professor Maryanne Wolf joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether we are entering an age of widespread moral illiteracy — an incapacity to engage in the processes that make up the habit of deep reading.

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00:00

What’s at stake in this year’s constitutional...

The Minefield ·

2023/01/25

Professor Mark McKenna discusses with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens why any proposal to change the Australian Constitution must navigate Australians’ conservative disposition and underlying sense of national pride.

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00:00

What’s the point of political comedy?

The Minefield ·

2023/01/19

While political comedy has long been a distinguishing feature of truly democratic cultures, one of the more notable shifts over the past two decades has been the merger of comedy into political commentary. What has this done to the conditions of our common life?

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00:00

The ethics of shame

The Minefield ·

2023/01/12

Perhaps no “moral emotion” in our time is more reviled than shame. It is regarded, certainly in the West, as uniquely destructive to a healthy sense of self, as psychologically damaging and socially abusive, and to be avoided at all costs. Professor Owen Flanagan joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether shame has been given a bad rap, and why we might need more of it.

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00:00

Is anger corrosive to the moral life? A conversation...

The Minefield ·

2023/01/05

There is no doubt that emotions like anger can be a proper response to the persistence of injustice or inequality or prejudice or cruelty in the world. But it can also be exhausting and insatiable in its desire for retribution, or to impose one’s will upon the world. Should we, then, seek to renounce anger?

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00:00

Purification and the Moral Life: Disciplining the Eyes

The Minefield ·

2022/12/29

There are habits of seeing which can corrupt our moral lives, or clutter our vision, or defile our imaginations. Just as there is a “contemptuous gaze”, as Iris Murdoch puts it, there are also “eyes tempered by grace”. So what might it mean to undergo a “fast for the eyes” in order to see the world more clearly?

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00:00

The Art of Living: Jane Austen's "Emma"

The Minefield ·

2022/12/22

In Jane Austen’s novel Emma, we find an abiding concern with the demands, not just of propriety, but of morality, an attentiveness to the dangers of self-deception, and vivid reminders of the importance of friendship to progress in the moral life.

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54:23

Bonus episode: The 2022 Simone Weil Lecture on Human...

The Minefield ·

2022/12/21

In November 2022, Scott Stephens delivered the 20th annual Simone Weil Lecture on Human Value hosted by the Australian Catholic University. His topic was the moral conditions of democratic life.

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00:00

Should you avoid disagreements this Christmas or...

The Minefield ·

2022/12/15

Over the next few weeks, we are bound to be in the same space with some most disagreeable company. Is this a prospect we should dread?

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00:00

The ethical demands of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"...

The Minefield ·

2022/12/08

Does Stanley Kramer's 1967 film, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", have to make too many sacrifices in order to be morally palatable to its white audience?

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00:00

Is jealousy a moral emotion, or an immoral one?

The Minefield ·

2022/12/01

Jealousy is one of those rare emotions whose presence or evidence is almost always looked down upon, but whose total absence is also viewed with a certain suspicion, even disdain. So how does it differ from envy? Can jealousy ever be "moral"?

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00:00

Is fashion remaking our bodies?

The Minefield ·

2022/11/24

Ever since the advent of “ready-to-wear” mass-produced clothing, the brands and prevailing fashions they establish hold out a kind of “idealised” body to which wearers must conform.

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00:00

Is civility a moral obligation in a democracy?

The Minefield ·

2022/11/17

In our time, civility has gotten a bad name — usually by being reduced to something like politeness or courtesy. But is that all there is to civility?

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00:00

Queen at Live Aid, 1985

The Minefield ·

2022/11/10

There is no denying that Queen’s set at Live Aid on 13 July 1985 was one of the most electrifying live performances ever captured. But did Queen simply pull out their “greatest hits”, or were they attuned to the ethical demands of the occasion?Guest: Shane Homan is the Head of the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University.

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00:00

Disruption or continuity: What does climate change...

The Minefield ·

2022/11/03

Movements like Extinction Rebellion and Effective Altruism both regard the fact of climate change and the impending threat of climate catastrophe as moral realities that cannot be ignored. Which is the more fitting response?

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00:00

Sports, sponsorship and solidarity

The Minefield ·

2022/10/27

How far should clubs be expected to go when it comes to accommodating the ethical or religious objections of their players to wear sponsor logos?

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What are the moral limits of compromise?

The Minefield ·

2022/10/20

Politics is sometimes called the “art of the possible”, which entails sacrificing what is ideal for the sake what is tolerable and achievable. But when are such compromises virtuous, and when are they a form of consent to injustice?

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00:00

Can Twitter be reformed, or should it be abandoned?

The Minefield ·

2022/10/13

What are we to make of Elon Musk’s claims about “free speech” and about a private company functioning as a “de facto public town square”?

en

345 results

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