waleed aly

10.11.23
What Happens Next?
Can We Learn to Be More Civil? | 93

New this season: Subscribe to Monash’s YouTube channel to watch the video version of each episode.

With the advent of social media, conversations and disagreements are magnified. But as our exchanges become increasingly digital, we must remember that behind every screen, there’s a fellow human being.

In the last episode of Season 8, Dr Susan Carland’s expert guests highlight the importance of maintaining civility, and its role in preserving democratic principles and collective pursuit of the common good.

Dr Amanda Stephens emphasises the importance of being aware of our mindset before engaging with others.

Dr Steven Zech points out that building cooperation – whether it’s between governments or individuals – takes time, and it can be lost in a moment.

Professor Lucas Walsh calls attention to the need to educate young people about common challenges such as climate change that demand collective solutions.

Associate Professor Helen Forbes-Mewett recognises the significance of civility as a cornerstone of social cohesion, particularly in multicultural societies.

Scott Stephens, co-host of ABC Radio National’s The Minefield, emphasises the essential nature of face-to-face interactions for understanding the moral reality of another person.

Finally, academic and presenter Dr Waleed Aly identifies the ways we can remove contempt and engage in good faith with people whose views we oppose.

A full transcript of this episode is available on Monash Lens.

Learn more:

• Ripple effect: The social consequences of the ‘everyday’ hate crime
• Hi, neighbour: The dynamics that shape Melbourne's inter-ethnic relationships
• Why do people tailgate? A psychologist explains what's behind this common (and annoying) driving habit

Thank you for joining us for Season 8 of “What Happens Next?”. We’ll be back with all-new episodes in a few short months. Explore our back catalog or watch your favourite episodes.

Don’t forget to subscribe to be notified about our next season, and rate or review the show to help others discover it.

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3.11.23
What Happens Next?
Are We Getting More Rude? | 92

New this season: Subscribe to Monash’s YouTube channel to watch the video version of each full episode.

Lockdown helped stop the spread of COVID-19, but it didn’t do our social skills any favours. Have we forgotten how to get along?

Civility goes beyond simple politeness  – it’s a crucial virtue that binds people together. It’s also essential for maintaining democracy.

This week, host Dr Susan Carland is joined by world-leading journalists, commentators and academics for an investigation of civility.

Are we getting more rude? Monash University’s Dr Steven Zech talks about the concerning trend of increasing incivility among certain groups, especially politicians.

Dr Amanda Stephens, of Monash’s Accident Research Centre, discusses road rage and the “de-identifying bubbles” of our cars.

As our society becomes more individualised, finding shared values and a mutual understanding of the common good becomes a critical challenge. Without them, says education expert Professor Lucas Walsh, a breakdown of civility in public discourse is inevitable.

Engaging civilly means inviting responses and acknowledging humanity. Dr Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens, co-hosts of The Minefield, consider the issue of contempt, highlighting how it can erode the foundation of a democratic society.

A full transcript of this episode is available on Monash Lens.

Learn more:

• Anger and aggressive driving all the rage on our roads
• The Oscars slap raises important moral question about civility and incivility
• Scanlon report: Taking Australia's temperature on migration attitudes

“What Happens Next?” will be back next week with part two of this series and our final episode of the season: ‘Can We Learn to Be More Civil?’.

If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe, or rate or review “What Happens Next?” to help listeners like yourself discover it.

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Waleed Aly is a lecturer, a lawyer, a gold logie winner, one of our most respected journalists, a husband and a father.....and not a bad musician. There is a decent amount going on in the world at the moment, so probably a good time for a good chat.

Next episode, one of the biggest DJs in the world is touring Australia.....Matty catches up with the one and only Fatboy Slim. Right here, next episode.

Check out The Matty Johns Podcast YouTube channel here

The guys on Insta here and TikTok here.

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While political comedy has long been a distinguishing feature of truly democratic cultures, one of the more notable shifts over the past two decades has been the merger of comedy into political commentary. What has this done to the conditions of our common life?

Perhaps no “moral emotion” in our time is more reviled than shame. It is regarded, certainly in the West, as uniquely destructive to a healthy sense of self, as psychologically damaging and socially abusive, and to be avoided at all costs. Professor Owen Flanagan joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether shame has been given a bad rap, and why we might need more of it.

There is no doubt that emotions like anger can be a proper response to the persistence of injustice or inequality or prejudice or cruelty in the world. But it can also be exhausting and insatiable in its desire for retribution, or to impose one’s will upon the world. Should we, then, seek to renounce anger?

There are habits of seeing which can corrupt our moral lives, or clutter our vision, or defile our imaginations. Just as there is a “contemptuous gaze”, as Iris Murdoch puts it, there are also “eyes tempered by grace”. So what might it mean to undergo a “fast for the eyes” in order to see the world more clearly?

In Jane Austen’s novel Emma, we find an abiding concern with the demands, not just of propriety, but of morality, an attentiveness to the dangers of self-deception, and vivid reminders of the importance of friendship to progress in the moral life.

Does Stanley Kramer's 1967 film, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", have to make too many sacrifices in order to be morally palatable to its white audience?

Jealousy is one of those rare emotions whose presence or evidence is almost always looked down upon, but whose total absence is also viewed with a certain suspicion, even disdain. So how does it differ from envy? Can jealousy ever be "moral"?

On a bleak day in the CBD, cars and trams flash past as pedestrians shuffle down streets glued to their phones. One misstep meant Sammy's friend Ross might have walked into traffic. But thanks to some quick thinking, a life was saved. It's just what heroes do.

Plus Yon from Tripod, a journalist confronts her bully and seeing stuff with Waleed Ali.

It’s become a sad commonplace in our time to hear the lines along which democratic societies are now divided. What is often absent, however, is mention of class. Why? Do Korean films like Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, or Hwang Dong-hyuk’s smash hit Squid Game, have anything to teach us? Atlantic staff writer George Packer joins us.

How might we avoid bad faith quotations, served up in vain interests, and locate ourselves, our hearers, our readers, in a community of mutual interest and intellectual wonder — not so much using quotations, as exposing ourselves to their provocation?

They seem innocuous, but since their invention more than two decades ago, emojis have come to permeate our forms of online communication. Indeed, they are the perfect expression of what communication has become in a social-media saturated age.

Over the last year, there have been a number of high-profile cases where journalists have either landed themselves in legal trouble, or have sparked fierce backlash, due to their conduct on social media. This raises complex problems, not just for the public’s perception of journalists, their impartiality and credibility, but also of the news organisations to which they belong.

Opinion writing plays a disproportionate role in our media eco-system: it drives online traffic, fuels emotion, feeds the forces of polarisation, and promotes an incapacity to understand one another. But is there a different way to think about opinion?

One of the most notable cultural changes to have taken place over the past two decades is the emergence of “prestige television” — which is to say, television as the visual equivalent of literature, and with similar ambitions. What has this shift done to our moral sensibilities, or to our understanding of the shape and demands and limits and possibilities of the moral life?

On the show today…

Mariah Carey has reemerged into the world to fulfil her yearly Christmas promo duties and her first stop was an interview on The Project to spruik her new Christmas special. However, things got off to an awkward start when she greeted host Waleed Aly.

And in a landmark ruling earlier this year, Channel 7 was ordered to pay compensation to a former My Kitchen Rules contestant after she logged a workers compensation claim for psychological injury following her appearance on the show. But now the story has taken a new turn and one that could have lasting ramifications for reality TV contestants across Australia.

Plus, a new book has just been released detailing the private lives of Prince William, Kate Middleton, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. One section of the book appears to answer the most scandalous question posed in Meghan’s infamous Oprah interview and the royal family is already striking back.

CREDITS

Hosts: Laura Brodnik & Kee Reece

Producers: Laura Brodnik & Madeline Joannou

Audio Producer: Leah Porges

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Off the back of Eddie McGuire's baffling and now-notorious comments responding to a report detailing the history of systemic racism at Collingwood Football Club, we speak to Rana Hussain, Diversity and Inclusion Co-ordinator at Richmond FC and co-host of the Outer Sanctum podcast about the long, ugly reality of racism in footy. Plus, we reflect on the 2020 results of the Scanlon Foundation's 'Mapping social cohesion' survey, which point to a complication of the term 'multiculturalism'.

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