Uncomfortable Collisions with Reality
Nicholas Gruen
In this podcast, Nicholas Gruen discusses the issues of today in a unique way. The three questions we've always got an eye to are
1) What's missing in the way people normally talk about these issues?
2) Where do they fit in the bigger picture, whether that's
* the long history of our species or
* the deeper aspects of the way we're thinking about it and
3) Do these ways of thinking help us improve the world we live in? (Which we often focus on in our shorter 'Policy Provocations' podcasts.)
1) What's missing in the way people normally talk about these issues?
2) Where do they fit in the bigger picture, whether that's
* the long history of our species or
* the deeper aspects of the way we're thinking about it and
3) Do these ways of thinking help us improve the world we live in? (Which we often focus on in our shorter 'Policy Provocations' podcasts.)
Episodes
Mentioned books
Jul 21, 2023 • 20min
Bureaucracy as oppression: The case of out of home care
Poverty used to be the principal vector of oppression, but increasingly bureaucracy is integral to the story as anyone who's watched I, Daniel Blake will realise. Or way back in the 19th-century in Australia, at the Indigenous reserve at Corranderrk in Victoria as you can see here. In any event, it's alive and well in out of home care. You can watch the video if you prefer here.
Jul 21, 2023 • 1h 11min
How we all became competitors
In this episode of uncomfortable collisions with reality, Peyton and I talk to Jonathan Hearn who has just published "The Domestication of Competition" a history of the way in which competition became increasingly significant through history. Increasingly competition came to be seen as a worthwhile way to distribute power, align interests and serve the common interest. This was true in politics as modern electoral democracy developed, in science, in business and of course in sport. And as competition grew in significance, more attention was paid attending to building the institutions necessary to both compete and to govern competition for the common good. In this discussion we discuss his book and also explore differences in his own approach to these things as an historian, anthropologist and sociologist and my own. I'm particularly interested in the ways we could shape competition to improve its functioning in the social interest. If you'd like to watch the conversation, the video is here.
Jul 21, 2023 • 1h 7min
Jarrod Wheatley on saving abused and neglected kids
In this episode I speak with Jarrod Wheatley about how he took a model of out of home care from Germany and brought it to Australia, the obstacles he faced and the successes he's had with it. We swap notes, me from the perspective I've got in the gods thinking about how policy systems work from the offices of the central agencies, he from the work he does every day with the kids and their carers. If you prefer to watch the discussion, you can find the video here.
