This week we're exploring links between queer liberation and animal subjugation, and discovering how the struggles for acceptable queer identity are often entwined with entrenching animal exploitation. Along the way we get into some fascinating history of sexual violence, colonial constructs of the human, and those ever-shifting categories of "natural" and "deviant" behaviour.

This program includes themes of sexual assault and animal abuse that some listeners may find distressing.

AI is making all kinds of important decisions for us these days, but how far can we trust it? Or rather, what kind of trust is appropriate to bring to AI? The inner workings of "black box" AI are inscrutable even to its creators, so if transparency and explainability are essential to the development of trust, then we could be in trouble. It all depends on how we think about trust.

The forced removal of First Nations children from their families was active government policy in Australia between the 1910s and the 1970s, and still continues today under the banner of child protection. Today we're hearing that the story of the Stolen Generation has a historical parallel in the "child rescue" movement in 19th century Britain, when so-called "ragged children" were taken from their families - in many cases, abducted - and placed in institutions, to be trained and moulded into productive citizens.

We all feel we know what a conspiracy theory is: it's a belief held by other people about a conspiracy or conspiracies. Nobody likes being identified as a conspiracy theorist - including conspiracy theorists - and this makes life difficult for social scientists, psychologists and other researchers. When it comes to philosophy and the business of nailing down exactly what a conspiracy theory is, things get even muddier.

Our current "post-truth" environment means it's getting harder to trust what we see, hear and read - and this is a problem for all of us, but especially for educators and anyone in the business of teaching younger people about the world. This week we hear from a scholar who's looking to a modern philosophical tradition to come up with critical thinking strategies for students.

Our "moral circle" encompasses fellow humans, other primates, dogs, cats and other animals to which we attribute feelings and interests. But as science teaches us more about the inner lives of insects, marine animals and even microbes, it becomes more and more apparent that we might need to include them in our moral circle as well. Furthermore, we may need to bestow moral significance on an upcoming population of artificial intelligences. How can we possibly care for them all, and accommodate their various conflicting interests?

Conventional wisdom has it that if you've never fallen in love, if you've never given birth to a child, if you've never tasted Vegemite... then you can't know what these experiences are like. But is the conventional wisdom correct? This week we're asking if there could in fact be various kinds of what-it-is-like knowledge, not all of which require direct first-hand experience.

It's often said that we're experiencing a crisis in the arts and Humanities, with declining student numbers in subjects that aren't deemed suitable for creating "job-ready graduates", and funding cuts slashing support for the arts. In a world of tight job markets and increasing importance given to STEM subjects, what can we do about it?

The American thinker Wilfrid Sellars died in 1989, and has been remembered as a primarily analytic philosopher. But today, Sellars is being rediscovered by a new generation of Continental philosophers - and, perhaps surprisingly, Marxists. What do these thinkers find in Sellars, and how are his thoughts on science and knowledge being applied to questions of politics and society?

This week marks 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz at the end of the Second World War. Representation in literature and cinema of the horrors that took place at Auschwitz is fraught with ethical ambiguities, as is the experience of actually visiting Auschwitz, which many people do today. The place stands as a famous memorial, known to all - and yet, this week's guest fears that the lessons of Auschwitz are being forgotten.