The Minefield

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.

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.

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?

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”.

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?

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?

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?

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?

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.

The newly formed National Anti-Corruption Commission faces both unrealistic expectations and a potentially fraught political climate. Professor A.J. Brown joins Waleed and Scott to discuss how it can restore popular faith in democratic politics.

Platforms like Spotify have transformed the way people listen to music through their use of recommendation algorithms and customised playlists designed to cater to either a particular activity or a particular mood.

The tendency over the past four decades has been for governments to try to shield their populations from energy shocks and their associated “cost of living” crises — but is such a response truly sustainable?

The proposed Voice to Parliament is particularly susceptible to two arguments: that it violates the principle of equal citizenship; and that it will enshrine a divisive form of “identity politics” in Australian public life. Whether these arguments hold depends on our understanding of the meaning of democratic equality.

The final season of HBO’s prestige television series Succession confirms that the various characters’ willingness to betray, deceive, manipulate and enact an unrelenting cruelty upon one another has all but assured that, in the end, everyone loses.

It’s been a long time since a policy adopted by the federal government has presented such a knot of party-political, parliamentary, social and ethical problems — Professor Miranda Stewart joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to try to untangle it.

At the end of Monday’s Q+A, Wiradjuri man and journalist Stan Grant stated: “We in the media must ask if we are truly honouring a world worth living in.” Why aren’t more taking him seriously?

As the fourth and final series of the HBO television show “Succession” approaches its finale, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens revisit the first three seasons. Why does this show matter? What does it tell us, despite its opulence and obscenity, about what is of greatest value in human life?

We live in an era dominated by vast digital platforms, what David Auerbach calls “meganets” – the sheer volume of data they trade in and numbers they produce seem to render them unassailable, irresistable.

Hyperconnectivity has coincided with an epidemic of loneliness — but is loneliness simply part of the human condition? Samantha Rose Hill joins The Minefield to discuss whether we can counter its harmful effects while nurturing genuine solitude.

Can soldiers be trained to kill their fellow human beings without that training doing irreparable damage to the moral lives of the soldiers themselves?

In the final episode of our Ramadan series, we explore the roots of our occasional heedlessness when confronted by the plight and pleas of another person: What could make us callous to their suffering, and how should we respond?

In the fourth instalment of our Ramadan series, we discuss whether “knowledge” which is wielded in a way that demeans others, or which is accumulated as a form of vanity, can really be considered beneficial?

For this third show in our Ramadan series, we’re asking what it is about the human condition that seems to drive it to perpetual discontentment? What is the virtue of repose, and when does “contentment” become indolence or conformity, a chronic lack of curiosity?

Ego-centrism is a form of inattentiveness, a failure to be responsive to the moral reality of another person. In this second instalment in our Ramadan series, we explore how such inattentiveness can corrupt our words and actions.

What does it mean to be intellectually humble? How might such humility be cultivated? What are its benefits — both to ourselves and to those around us?