The Minefield

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.…

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. B…

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 wr…

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…

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 d…

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 competit…

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…

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…

During the pandemic, there was a sudden renewal of interest in Harold Ramis's 1993 film "Groundhog Day" — especially its bleaker aspects. But this missed its sophistication and hum…

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…

Are periodic bouts of withdrawal from life’s urgent demands and heated debates necessary to regain a sense of our shared humanity, and to renew the commitments that sustain the mor…

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-giv…

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…

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 no…

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 he…

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 de…

“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…

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 A…

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…

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 conten…