The Minefield
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Latest episodes
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If AI can’t be brought under human control, why are we still pressing ahead?
September 30, 2026 · 55 minWhen 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 “AI agents” developed by the frontier lab OpenAI went…
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Last Words: Is ‘Abbey Road’ a fitting end to the Beatles?
September 23, 2026 · 55 minIn 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 eye to the future and hence to what one leaves behind — we…
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Does a ‘digital duty of care’ put free speech at risk?
September 16, 2026 · 55 minEvidence 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 mutual trust; that it is the conduit of widespread…
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Is loyalty a virtue?
September 9, 2026 · 55 minIt 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 interpersonal bond — and use them to describe purely…
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Live from the Festival of Dangerous Ideas: Does longevity threaten the future?
September 2, 2026 · 55 minIt is suitably ironic that one of the most poignant, and pertinent, moments in Homer’s The Odyssey was airbrushed out of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation. The first time we meet Odysseus, the endlessly resourceful architect of…
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What response does Jason Arday’s life, and death, morally demand?
August 26, 2026 · 54 minIt is hard to imagine a series of events more tragic, more unseemly, more emblematic of the performativity and polarisation that dominate our time, than the premature rise, sudden fall and untimely death of Jason Arday. In 2023, the…
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Is opposition to data centres good news for democracy?
August 19, 2026 · 55 minAt a time of profound polarisation, when the fracturing of media ecosystems has been so complete that any agreement on threats to our common life seems impossible, an issue has emerged capable of bringing voters of every political…
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Should fat from cadavers be used for cosmetic procedures?
August 12, 2026 · 55 minThe widespread availability of GLP-1 based drugs has been lauded as a “revolution in weight loss” and as inaugurating the “end of obesity”. As we’ve discussed previously, health benefits aside, there are concerns that such weight-loss…