In a world marked by wicked social problems, The Minefield helps you negotiate the ethical dilemmas, contradictory claims and unacknowledged complicities of mod...
The School of Sport: Why does sport bring out the worst in some athletes?
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 displays of superiority, and in their demand for adulation — even “worship” — elite athletes mark themselves as a class apart. More than billionaires, music stars and monarchs, it is athletes who seem to live among us like gods: bigger, faster, stronger than the rest of us.Should we be surprised, then, when these athletes do not want to be bound by the normal laws of human behaviour? After all, the arenas they inhabit are governed by rules of their own, and their conduct in these arenas evokes older, mythic, more violent times: a time of combatants, aggressors, warriors, giants, titans. Is it any wonder that so many elite athletes — given their physical supremacy, the vast sums of money at their disposal, and the ready throng of worshippers that surround them — should be peculiarly susceptible to the arch-vices, the seven deadly sins?
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Is Australia breaking?
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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What's behind the mass appeal of live music events?
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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The ethics of "Groundhog Day"
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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Are we losing a sense of "the common"?
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.
In a world marked by wicked social problems, The Minefield helps you negotiate the ethical dilemmas, contradictory claims and unacknowledged complicities of modern life.
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