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 world’s advanced democracies, the seeming impotence of international and constitutional law to safeguard our ideals of justice and accountability, the waning of political determination to address climate change.Our despair stems from a sense of radical disappointment with the state of the world. It is not only that the world seems impervious to our collective aspirations for justice, peace and the protection of the vulnerable — it is as if the world rewards mere force and a casual indifference to the fragility of human life.Over the four weeks of the month of Ramadan, we will be exploring some of our responses to this radical disappointment with the world — beginning, appropriately, with despair itself. Should despair always be avoided? When it gives rise to resignation and a kind of nihilist inaction, yes. But despair can also be a morally fitting response to the preciousness of what it is that is lost or under threat.Could it even be, as Henry David Thoreau recognised, that despair can be “the slime and muck” out of which hope, like a water lily, can grow?

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 the governing parties, but whose popular appeal is implicitly acknowledged in the way they frame their policies and rhetoric.For decades, the “firewall” (die Brandmauer) has stood between the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), on one side, and the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and the centre-left Social Democratic Party, on the other. But forces from with without, and political tactics from within, seem intent on testing whether that non-cooperation agreement should continue to hold.So is a “firewall” — which seeks to limit the parliamentary influence of the far-right — the right way to defend a constitutional democracy, or does it undermine claims of democratic legitimacy?

Supriya Subramani, a Lecturer in healthcare ethics at the University of Sydney, delves into the fallout from a controversial video where nurses expressed anti-Israeli sentiments, raising urgent ethical concerns in healthcare. The discussion highlights the sacred duty of health professionals to care for all patients, transcending societal conflicts. It also addresses the complexities of community outrage, the intersection of discrimination in healthcare, and emphasizes the need for compassion, understanding, and ethical responsibilities to restore trust among marginalized groups.

In 2016, the Western Bulldogs made an improbable run to the AFL 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, to receive their premiership medal. He felt elation, and pride, at his team’s success. But there was an undeniable separation between him and them. As he wrote in his memoir, Leather Soul:“The Dogs sat atop the football mountain as famous victors and I was part of that, but the 22 players on the field had just become football immortals. There was a clear line between the 22 who played and the rest of us. That’s just how it is in our game.”The secret to the Bulldogs’ success was “team over individual” — and no one embodied that ethos more than Bob Murphy. He tried to console himself that it couldn’t be any different after their Grand Final victory.But then the Bulldogs’ coach, Luke Beveridge, said into the microphone, “I’d like to call Bob Murphy to the stand …”What did this experience teach Murphy about the emotional cords that bind teams together, about the importance of shared stories, about the centrality of connection?

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 that many coaches feel is not just the expectation to win. It’s the cultivation of a winning culture — creating the kind of environment that encourages players to sacrifice for one another, and strengthening the bonds that enabling them to withstand the dangers of failure and success.

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 what can the experience of physical limitation on the part of elite athletes tell us about what Alasdair MacIntyre calls “the virtues of acknowledged dependence”?

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 respect and admire.Many people are (rightly) turned off by arrogant or contemptuous or boastful athletes. But the ability to be proud of oneself — the person I’ve become, what it took for me to get here, that I’ve honoured the faith my mentors placed in me, to say nothing of the time and effort of the team around me — is surely inseparable from athletic achievement. From true greatness.

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?

Stan Grant, a Wiradjuri and Kamaloroi man, columnist, and distinguished professor, engages in a thought-provoking discussion about Australia’s multicultural strengths and potential weaknesses. He highlights the erosion of trust between citizens and the government, exacerbated by the housing crisis and systemic inequalities. The conversation examines the moral dissonance in political discourse and the importance of community bonds in fostering social cohesion. Grant stresses the critical need for meaningful dialogue to bridge divides and promote understanding among Australians.

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.