Get The App

Download the Josplay app for the best experience.

Download Now

Charts

Discover the latest hits and trending music.

Explore Charts

Podcasts

Stories, music and conversation from Africa and its diaspora.

Browse Podcasts

New Releases

Stay updated with the latest music releases.

See New Releases
← The Minefield
Bonus episode: Can democracy be saved with decency? A public lecture by Scott Stephens artwork

Bonus episode: Can democracy be saved with decency? A public lecture by Scott Stephens

The Minefield
52:59
Play episode

Show notes

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, the Deputy Director of the Humanities Research Centre, and members of the audience.

More from this show

More
  1. Why do we keep remaking films and TV shows?

    Over the last decade, the proliferation of streaming services made more movies and television series available to more people than ever before. It revolutionised what we watch (inc…

    54:40
  2. These days everything is political — is that bad for politics?

    Writing in the 1850s, at the advent of what we would come to understand as the popular press — which is to say, periodicals for mass distribution, rather than aimed at paid-up memb…

    54:36
  3. If AI can’t be brought under human control, why are we still pressing ahead?

    When the history of artificial intelligence is written, the middle months of 2026 may well emerge as a kind of turning point. For this was the period when hundreds of programs or “…

    54:36
  4. Last Words: Is ‘Abbey Road’ a fitting end to the Beatles?

    In our previous explorations of famous “last words” — performances or compositions delivered with a certain end in view, with a sense of either culmination or parting, or with an e…

    54:36
  5. Does a ‘digital duty of care’ put free speech at risk?

    Evidence has been mounting for more than a decade that social media tears away at the fabric of democratic life by eroding the conditions of deliberation, shared understanding and…

    54:36
  6. Is loyalty a virtue?

    It is surely one of the more perverse achievements of modern marketing to have taken words that have a certain moral valence — which is to say, words that connote intimacy or an in…

    54:45
Now Playing

No Track Playing