The Minefield

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 podcast delves into the proposed Voice to Parliament in Australia and its potential implications. It explores the importance of referendums and democratic participation, the expansive nature of rights claims, the relationship between moral equality and democratic life, and objections to the Voice to Parliament. It also emphasizes the need for injecting newness into the political debate to allow for problem-solving.

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?