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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

0:54:27

Ramadan: Is despair always detrimental, or can it...

The Minefield ·

2025/03/04

The political climate over the last six months in much of the world has been undeniably dark. It’s little wonder that so many people seem to have given in to despair.The causes of this prevailing condition are numerous — they include the ongoing death and destruction in Ukraine and Gaza, the devastating return of dead Israeli hostages, the rising tide of antisemitic and Islamophobic violence, the tearing of Australia’s social fabric, the ascendancy of anti-democratic forces in the

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0:53:19

Are “firewalls” the best way to counteract the appeal...

The Minefield ·

2025/02/26

As the results of the recent German election came in, a familiar pattern took shape. A broadly unpopular centre-left political party was voted out — due, in no small part, to its immigration policies and perceived economic failures — in favour of a centre-right party who pledged to adopt a “stronger” approach to borders and migrants, and to restore the nation to its former prosperity.Lurking in the wings, meanwhile, is growing far-right movement that cannot overtly be courted by

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0:53:03

How hate speech in healthcare tears at something...

The Minefield ·

2025/02/19

At a time when the Australian community seems to be so deeply divided along multiple faultlines, there was something somewhat heartening about being able to share a common outrage. That’s only word that captures the depth of public response that greeted a now infamous video in which two nurses at Bankstown Hospital seemed to express extreme anti-Israeli/antisemitic sentiments and allegedly boasted about killing Israeli patients in their care.While some have used the video to

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0:57:34

The School of Sport: Bob Murphy and the centrality of...

The Minefield ·

2025/02/12

In 2016, the Western Bulldogs made an improbable run to the ALF Grand Final. The seventh-place team would beat the minor premiers, the Sydney Swans, and end a six-decade drought. But their longest serving player, the erstwhile captain and heart-and-soul of the team, Bob Murphy, would not take the field. In the third round, a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament had ended the 17-year veteran’s season.After their triumph, Murphy watched his teammates walk up to the dais, one by one,

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0:53:01

The School of Sport: Craig Fitzgibbon and the burden...

The Minefield ·

2025/02/05

There are few jobs in professional sports that are more important, and more unforgiving, than that of coach. Their most significant work is invisible to the fans. When things go wrong, the coach is usually the first to be blamed. When the team is enjoying success, it is the players that typically reap the accolades.Coaches can make or break a club. They can transform mid-tier teams to genuine contenders, and they can utterly “lose the locker room”.But the weight of responsibility

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0:52:22

The School of Sport: Lydia Williams and the virtue of...

The Minefield ·

2025/01/29

Athletes would seem to be the embodiments of strength, discipline, autonomy, self-reliance. Of all people, we would expect them to be invulnerable to the moments of self-doubt and weakness that afflict the rest of us.And yet, particularly after serious injuries or during long periods of convalescence and rehabilitation, many athletes experience intensified forms of the vulnerability — the dependency upon others, the dis-ability, even — that are essential to the human condition.So

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0:54:05

The School of Sport: Madison de Rozario and the...

The Minefield ·

2025/01/22

Within certain religious traditions, pride is a “special sin” because it involves an overestimation of one’s self — making oneself a little “god” in one’s own eyes. But Aristotle did not regard pride as such to be a vice, only its unwarranted or unmerited expressions.The important thing for Aristotle was not to seek recognition or adulation from just anyone. Instead, we should try to do things that make us proud of the person we have become — and that elicit pride from those we

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0:53:47

The School of Sport: Why does sport bring out the...

The Minefield ·

2025/01/15

Over the next five weeks, we are going to be exploring a series of profound moral dilemmas with some of Australia’s most accomplished athletes. How has their life in elite competition prepared them to wrestle with challenges so many of us have faced ourselves? Has sporting excellence succeeded in bringing out the best in them? If so, what can that teach the rest of us?But before we examine the best, it seems only fitting that we first acknowledge the worst. In their frequent

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0:53:52

Is Australia breaking?

The Minefield ·

2025/01/08

One of Australia's greatest strengths has been the remarkable diversity of its multicultural society. But is this also a potential source of weakness? In this live recording at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens, along with guest Stan Grant, explore the internal and external forces that risk undermining our sense of social unity.This episode was first broadcast on 08 September 2024.

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0:53:47

What's behind the mass appeal of live music events?

The Minefield ·

2025/01/01

It is worth reflecting, not just on what is singular about Taylor Swift at this particular cultural moment — why she attracts both the loyalty and the animus that she does — but on what it is about live music events that now draw millions of people to them.This episode was first broadcast on 18 February 2024.

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0:53:47

The ethics of "Groundhog Day"

The Minefield ·

2024/12/25

During the pandemic, there was a sudden renewal of interest in Harold Ramis's 1993 film "Groundhog Day" — especially its bleaker aspects. But this missed its sophistication and humanity, to say nothing of its acute depiction of moral growth.This episode was first broadcast on 05 May 2024.

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0:52:58

Are we losing a sense of "the common"?

The Minefield ·

2024/12/18

Because our lives are increasingly tailor-made, we are constantly seeking ways of distinguishing ourselves from others. What is being lost through it all is our sense of a humanity whose inherent vulnerability to misfortune, malfeasance and violence makes us dependent on one another.This episode was first broadcast on 07 July 2024.

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0:53:35

The necessity of withdrawing

The Minefield ·

2024/12/11

Are periodic bouts of withdrawal from life’s urgent demands and heated debates necessary to regain a sense of our shared humanity, and to renew the commitments that sustain the moral life? This episode was first broadcast on 17 March 2024.

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0:53:47

What are we doing when we give gifts?

The Minefield ·

2024/12/04

Poised as we are at the brink of our great annual festival of shopping, wrapping, giving and exchanging, we can sometimes forget just how ethically complicated the act of “gift-giving” is.In fact, those who recoil at the idea of receiving the “charity” of others, as well as those who are suspicious of the clandestine giving of gifts and doing of favours —suggesting a corrupt quid pro quo — are more attuned to this ethical complexity than those who take an unseemly delight in the

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0:52:59

Bonus episode: Can democracy be saved with decency? A...

The Minefield ·

2024/12/03

Democracy is in retreat, authoritarianism on the rise. But this has happened before. So how did big thinkers of the past respond to the threats to democracy, and what can we learn from them?Scott Stephens delivered the Humanities Research Centre 50th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture at the Australian National University on 31 July 2024. It was recorded and subsequently broadcast as part of the SOS DEMOCRACY series on Big Ideas.After the lecture, Scott answers questions from Dr Kim

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0:54:30

“The Godfather, Part II” — a parable of corruption...

The Minefield ·

2024/11/27

In December 1974, “The Godfather, Part II” premiered in New York City. Following the unlikely success and unexpected acclaim that his 1972 adaptation of Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel received, Francis Ford Coppola was granted almost unlimited discretion to realise his cinematic vision for the sequel — and he used that discretion to greatest possible effect.In fact, “The Godfather” and “The Godfather, Part II” are rare instances of films that far outstrip, in both its narrative

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0:54:23

Is a “digital duty of care” enough to protect young...

The Minefield ·

2024/11/20

Since the start of November, the Australian government has made two significant announcements aimed at preventing the harms that social media platforms are causing to the mental health of adolescents — but are these measures enough?

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0:53:58

How much control should corporations have over the...

The Minefield ·

2024/11/13

Most of us are aware that the emergence of social media platforms and their omnipresence in our lives have fractured public discourse and undermined the conditions of democratic deliberation.But we are only now beginning to grapple with the way corporations — having already decided to make “values” and “ethics” central in their self-presentation to consumers — have become increasingly susceptible to public pressure to deal harshly with employees who express controversial,

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0:54:09

The return of Donald Trump — do we know what it means?

The Minefield ·

2024/11/06

“Donald Trump is no longer an aberration; he is normative.” Such is the assessment of Peter Wehner — a Republican strategist and former adviser to President George W. Bush, and an outspoken critic of Trump himself — in the aftermath of the former president’s thundering re-election victory.It was not an electoral college landslide of the order of Barack Obama’s in 2008 or Bill Clinton’s in 1996. But it was sufficiently decisive as to command a reckoning. Perhaps most obviously, his

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0:54:10

Is the concept of “evil” worth retaining?

The Minefield ·

2024/10/31

One of the defining features of the last century is the fact that “evil” has become more vivid to our imaginations and common in our language than “good”. Stan Grant joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether “evil” is, in our time, a concept worth holding onto. Or does its use and misuse in our public discourse cause more harm and confusion than good?

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