The Minefield

Mar 04 2025 239 ep. 54 mins 1.7k
The Minefield Podcast artwork

In a world marked by wicked social problems, The Minefield helps you negotiate the ethical dilemmas, contradictory claims and unacknowledged complicities of modern life.

  Society & Culture
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Ramadan: Is despair always detrimental, or can it give rise to hope?

Mar 04 2025 54 mins  
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 Islam

Are “firewalls” the best way to counteract the appeal of the far-right?

Feb 26 2025 53 mins  
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

How hate speech in healthcare tears at something sacred in our common life

Feb 19 2025 53 mins  
At a time when the Australian community seems to be so deeply divided along multiple faultlines, there was something somewhat heartening about being able to share a common outrage. That’s only word that captures the depth of public response that greeted a now infamous video in which two nurses at Bankstown Hospital seemed to express extreme anti-Israeli/antisemitic sentiments and

The School of Sport: Bob Murphy and the centrality of connection

Feb 12 2025 57 mins  
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

The School of Sport: Craig Fitzgibbon and the burden of responsibility

Feb 05 2025 53 mins  
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 tea

The School of Sport: Lydia Williams and the virtue of vulnerability

Jan 29 2025 52 mins  
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 vulnerabil

The School of Sport: Madison de Rozario and the importance of pride

Jan 22 2025 54 mins  
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

The School of Sport: Why does sport bring out the worst in some athletes?

Jan 15 2025 53 mins  
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 befor

Is Australia breaking?

Jan 08 2025 53 mins  
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 b

What's behind the mass appeal of live music events?

Jan 01 2025 53 mins  
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.