The Minefield

When US President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon of his crimes, did he thereby place the presidency above the law — or did he understand a hard reality about democratic politics that should inform the multiple prosecutions of Donald Trump?

It is fair to say that boredom is a distinctly modern terror. But, as Stan Grant discusses with Waleed and Scott, what if existential boredom points us to our deeper need?

Are the doomsday scenarios associated with Artificial “Super” Intelligence distracting us from the ways that the pervasive use of AI is already corrupting our use of language and the transmission of knowledge?

Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden made the surprising decision to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions. Does the threat posed by Russia outweigh the moral considerations that place such weapons beyond the pale for many other nations?

Western culture’s association of ageing with decline and obsolescence fuels (and is fuelled by) a desire to dissociate ourselves from our age — but such forms of subtle and overt ageism express contempt for something that is essentially human.

The newly formed National Anti-Corruption Commission faces both unrealistic expectations and a potentially fraught political climate. Professor A.J. Brown joins Waleed and Scott to discuss how it can restore popular faith in democratic politics.

Platforms like Spotify have transformed the way people listen to music through their use of recommendation algorithms and customised playlists designed to cater to either a particular activity or a particular mood.

The tendency over the past four decades has been for governments to try to shield their populations from energy shocks and their associated “cost of living” crises — but is such a response truly sustainable?

The proposed Voice to Parliament is particularly susceptible to two arguments: that it violates the principle of equal citizenship; and that it will enshrine a divisive form of “identity politics” in Australian public life. Whether these arguments hold depends on our understanding of the meaning of democratic equality.

The final season of HBO’s prestige television series Succession confirms that the various characters’ willingness to betray, deceive, manipulate and enact an unrelenting cruelty upon one another has all but assured that, in the end, everyone loses.