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239 episodes
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The Minefield ABC listen
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- Society & Culture
In a world marked by wicked social problems, The Minefield helps you negotiate the ethical dilemmas, contradictory claims and unacknowledged complicities of modern life.
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Beatlemania at 60: Why was the band so popular before they were even great?
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”?
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Right verdict, wrong case? The political dangers of Trump’s felony conviction
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?
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Is the rise of the far right in Europe inevitable? It’s complicated
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.
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Is it wrong to "rank" works of art?
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.
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Is international law powerless in the face of conflicts like Gaza?
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?
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If chatbots are polluting the commons of human communication, what are the moral consequences?
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?