Poised as we are at the brink of our great annual festival of shopping, wrapping, giving and exchanging, we can sometimes forget just how ethically complicated the act of “gift-giving” is. In fact, those who recoil at the idea of receiving the “charity” of others, as well as those who are suspicious of the clandestine giving of gifts and doing of favours —suggesting a corrupt quid pro quo — are more attuned to this ethical complexity than those who take an unseemly delight in the prospect of “ou...
Dec 04, 2024•54 min
Democracy is in retreat, authoritarianism on the rise. But this has happened before. So how did big thinkers of the past respond to the threats to democracy, and what can we learn from them? Scott Stephens delivered the Humanities Research Centre 50th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture at the Australian National University on 31 July 2024. It was recorded and subsequently broadcast as part of the SOS DEMOCRACY series on Big Ideas . After the lecture, Scott answers questions from Dr Kim Huynh , th...
Dec 03, 2024•53 min
In December 1974, “The Godfather, Part II” premiered in New York City. Following the unlikely success and unexpected acclaim that his 1972 adaptation of Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel received, Francis Ford Coppola was granted almost unlimited discretion to realise his cinematic vision for the sequel — and he used that discretion to greatest possible effect. In fact, “The Godfather” and “The Godfather, Part II” are rare instances of films that far outstrip, in both its narrative depth and its ae...
Nov 27, 2024•55 min
Since the start of November, the Australian government has made two significant announcements aimed at preventing the harms that social media platforms are causing to the mental health of adolescents — but are these measures enough?
Nov 20, 2024•54 min
Most of us are aware that the emergence of social media platforms and their omnipresence in our lives have fractured public discourse and undermined the conditions of democratic deliberation. But we are only now beginning to grapple with the way corporations — having already decided to make “values” and “ethics” central in their self-presentation to consumers — have become increasingly susceptible to public pressure to deal harshly with employees who express controversial, distasteful or simply ...
Nov 13, 2024•54 min
“Donald Trump is no longer an aberration; he is normative.” Such is the assessment of Peter Wehner — a Republican strategist and former adviser to President George W. Bush, and an outspoken critic of Trump himself — in the aftermath of the former president’s thundering re-election victory. It was not an electoral college landslide of the order of Barack Obama’s in 2008 or Bill Clinton’s in 1996. But it was sufficiently decisive as to command a reckoning. Perhaps most obviously, his victory releg...
Nov 06, 2024•54 min
One of the defining features of the last century is the fact that “evil” has become more vivid to our imaginations and common in our language than “good”. Stan Grant joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether “evil” is, in our time, a concept worth holding onto. Or does its use and misuse in our public discourse cause more harm and confusion than good?
Oct 31, 2024•54 min
There is something undeniably satisfying about revenge. When we feel we have been aggrieved, harmed or humiliated, it is natural to want payback. In ancient Greece, to inflict such an injury was conceived of as incurring a debt — and the only way to make the perpetrator “whole” was to have the injury repaid in kind. The paradox — as Socrates, Sophocles and Euripides all knew — is that revenge, though it is desired, is never satisfying, because it gives rise to a perpetual cycle of hit-and-retali...
Oct 23, 2024•54 min
Just weeks before a US presidential election, a combination of political mendacity, the perverse incentives offered by social media platforms, and opportunism on the part of content creators/consumers, have come together to form a perfect storm. The tragic irony is that the devastating consequences of these forces have become apparent in the aftermath of two hurricanes which hit the American south-east in quick succession. With state and federal elections around the corner, and little more than ...
Oct 16, 2024•53 min
After the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the outcome of the Brexit referendum, “populism” became the catch-all diagnosis for everything the ails democratic politics. But its polemical use has tended to obscure rather than clarify the meaning of the term.
Oct 09, 2024•54 min
The policy of negative gearing — which gives the owners of investment properties an unlimited ability to deduct losses from their overall taxable income — has come to symbolise the disparity between the different ways Australians see home ownership: for some, it is a means of wealth creation; for others, it represents the ever-receding promise of shelter, stability, security. It is unsurprising, then, that the policy would evoke such strong feelings whenever it re-enters public debate. Will chan...
Oct 03, 2024•54 min
The war poetry of Wilfred Owen refuses the comfort of hollow consolation in response to the mass loss of life — it also urges the sacrifice of the kind of bellicose pride that sees nothing but territorial gain and national self-interest, and is prepared to offer up the lives of the young to these ends. In a time of heightened violence and bloodshed, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens – along with acclaimed concert pianist and award-winning writer Simon Tedeschi – attempt to recover the rhetorical pow...
Sep 25, 2024•53 min
With the US presidential election on the horizon, to say nothing of a number of Australian elections, our airwaves, news sites and social media feeds are filled with political rhetoric. Many of us have come to accept political rhetoric — with its obfuscations, generalisations, exaggerations and outright evasions — as the price of doing business with democratic politics. Is there a meaningful difference anymore between political rhetoric and propaganda? What disciplines and constraints must polit...
Sep 18, 2024•54 min
Given the dependence of many Australian universities on international student fees, a significant drop in enrolments with no corresponding increase in government funding will likely yield a decline in the quality of teaching and research, a reduction in academic staff, and a precipitous tumble down the world university rankings. This would do considerable damage to Australia's fourth largest "export". If the forecasts are accurate, why would the federal government embark on legislation that amou...
Sep 11, 2024•54 min
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.
Sep 04, 2024•54 min
Even for a nation obsessed with the concept of “freedom” — or perhaps it would be better to say, concepts, not all of them easily reconciled, some of them utterly incommensurable — the prominence it was given during the recent Democratic National Convention was arresting. It was as though the Democratic Party vaulted the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush alike — both of which used “freedom” as a mantra, a talisman, a point of vital differentiation over against communism and terror...
Aug 28, 2024•54 min
In democracies with a history of racial injustice, are “colourblindness” and recognition of a “common humanity” — which were at the heart of the moral philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. — desirable as expressions of our commitment to justice as equality?
Aug 21, 2024•53 min
When the first episode of Seinfeld went to air in 1989, it faced stiff competition from a packed field of American sitcoms. By its finale in 1998, the “show about nothing” had redefined the sitcom genre and conquered comedy. Critical to its success was the unlikely alchemy of the four central characters — their navigation of the interpersonal conflicts and petty irritations of New York City life, and their heedless disregard for conventions of morality. That was the trick: the situations they fo...
Aug 14, 2024•54 min
Humour can often be a response to the sense of being ill-at-home in society — perhaps even ill-at-home in the world. But whether it takes the form of fatalism or self-deprecation, all such forms of ironic self-distancing have a sting in the tail.
Aug 07, 2024•53 min
In one form or another, comedy often proceeds from a certain exaggeration of life — exaggerated bodily movements, or facial expressions, or scenarios, or reactions. These exaggerations have an unreality to them, but still maintain an uncanny relationship to more “normal” life. Put another way: sometimes comedy is just plain silly, the art of relishing the fun of suspending our expectations and upending our social conventions. What is happening when performers give free reign to the silly? Does i...
Jul 31, 2024•54 min
Immanuel Kant called laughter a form of the disappointment of the understanding — which is to say, surprise — for which the body then compensates: “Whatever is to arouse lively, convulsive laughter must contain something absurd … Laughter is an affect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into a nothing.” But surprises, it turns out, come in many shapes and sizes — from a slip or a fall, to a near-miss when you expected an accident, to an uncanny coincidence where you expected random...
Jul 24, 2024•54 min
The attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump, while undeniably shocking, was not altogether surprising. It was just the latest blow in a steady drumbeat of political violence that has only grown louder over the last decade. This reflects the fact that political violence is “in the air”, and is increasingly being regarded by many Americans — and citizens of nations around the worlds — as a justifiable response to political disagreement. What does it take for such violence to be...
Jul 17, 2024•54 min
Comedy happens when something occurs that makes visible just how futile are our most earnest efforts, and how superficial are our solemnities, our moments of greatest seriousness and decorum — hence the deep connection between comedy, absurdity and tragedy.
Jul 10, 2024•53 min
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.
Jul 03, 2024•54 min
The Beatles composed their best music in the years after 1965 — so what could account for the ecstatic response the band received in the United States and Australia in 1964? Why were they “big” before they were “good”?
Jun 26, 2024•54 min
On 30 May 2024, after two days of deliberation following a five-week trial and hearing the testimony of 22 witnesses, a jury of 12 New Yorkers found former President Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony charges. But do the facts of the case brought against him, and the overriding fact it was brought in an election year, present insurmountable political risks?
Jun 19, 2024•54 min
The results of the recent European Parliament elections have only fuelled the growing concern across the member nations of the European Union that far-right, radical right, Eurosceptic and otherwise anti-immigrant parties are, once again, on the rise.
Jun 12, 2024•55 min
Apple Music recently released its list of the “100 Best Albums”. It was, without question, a clever marketing technique — but one that raises the problem of whether it’s appropriate to rank works of high human achievement in the first place.
Jun 05, 2024•55 min
At a time when so many eyes are on international courts, is their apparent failure to protect civilians in Gaza — or to punish the perpetrators of 7 October — further damaging an already shaky public confidence in the concept of international law?
May 29, 2024•54 min
It’s 18 months since the technology company OpenAI made its wildly popular interface with an advanced large language model — GPT-4 — available to the public. What has ChatGPT done to the habits of thought and consideration that produce distinctly human expression?
May 22, 2024•54 min
