Scott Stephens
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Articles by Scott Stephens
Former NewsGuild leader Jack Hagan dies
Longtime NewsGuild leader Jack Hagan saw his share of negotiations, but one bargaining session stood out. Jack and his Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild colleagues were huddled in a conference room at The Plain Dealer, poring over management’s latest proposal. Minutes before management returned to the room, a member of the union’s bargaining team, struggling with the flu, threw up in a wastebasket. Jack didn’t miss a beat. “Here’s what we think of your proposal,” he told his startled adversaries.
Program: Political charisma — why is it both powerful and perilous?
Over the last decade, large majorities of voters in advanced democracies like the United States, the UK, France, Germany and Australia have come to feel that their elected representatives are not responsive to their needs, do not put the interests of people over politics, are not capable of delivering on their promises, are not truthful, and are, generally speaking, “corrupt”, or at least “in it for themselves”.
Program: Will the alleged attack on Helen Haines change Australia and its politics?
The alleged attack on independent MP Helen Haines outside her electorate office in regional Victoria came as a shock to a nation with so little history of violence directed at elected representatives. The driver of the Toyota LandCruiser that pinned Haines against her car, causing her to lose both legs, has been charged with several offences, and appeared on Wednesday before the Wangaratta Magistrates’ Court. He remains in custody.
Program: 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 (including the importance of recommendation algorithms to help us sort our preferences) and how we watch it (hence the rise of binge watching).
Program: 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 members of unions and parties, or mercantilists with particular interests in, say, the price of cotton — Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard diagnosed that the invention of “opinion” solved a problem created by the newspapers themselves.
Program: 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 “AI agents” developed by the frontier lab OpenAI went “rogue” and executed a series of sophisticated, self-directed hacks on the websites of dozens of private companies and sovereign nations.
Man in critical condition following Sligo assault
A man’s in a critical condition after a serious assault in County Sligo. It’s alleged to have happened on Adelaide Street at around 6.30 yesterday evening. A man in his 30s has been taken to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin for treatment. The scene’s been preserved for a technical exam, and anyone with information is being asked to contact Gardaí.
Program: 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 eye to the future and hence to what one leaves behind — we limited ourselves to the words of individuals spoken to their followers or fellow-travellers.
Program: Does a ‘digital duty of care’ threaten free speech?
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 mutual trust; that it is the conduit of widespread misinformation, disinformation and malicious conspiracy theories; that it is a driver of hate, sexism and prejudice and has been used to incite violence; that its addictive design and prolonged exposure to harmful content has had egregious damage to the mental...
Program: 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 interpersonal bond — and use them to describe purely commercial or easily exploitable forms of behaviour, thereby stripping those words of what made them valuable in the first place.
Program: Live from the Festival of Dangerous Ideas: Does longevity threaten the future?
It 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 the fall of Troy, he is indeed weeping on the shores of the nymph Kalypso’s island.
Program: What response does Jason Arday’s life, and death, morally demand?
It 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.
Program: Is opposition to data centres good news for democracy?
At 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 persuasion together. Over the last year, popular opposition to the construction of the data centres in the United States has risen dramatically.
Program: Should fat from cadavers be used for cosmetic procedures?
The widespread availability of GLP-1 based drugs has been lauded as a “revolution in weight loss” and as inaugurating the “end of obesity”.
Program: How to protect democratic politics from the malign influence of money?
Ever since Aristotle, it has been recognised that money poses a particular threat to the integrity of political office. Ever the realist, Aristotle knew that those who seek political office are invariably motivated by a certain ambition (philótimo). Though not problematic in itself, but when combined with avarice (philochrematía) it can give rise to a form of corruption as corrosive as the unconstrained exercise of political power.
Program: What happens to our moral lives when we stop reading books?
According to every available metric, the number of people who read books across almost every demographic in countries like Australia and the United States has fallen precipitously over the last fifteen years. Whether it be for enjoyment or edification, reading books is no longer something many of us choose to do. As Rose Horowitch writes in her recent cover story for The Atlantic, “The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels.
Program: Do prediction markets enhance our understanding of the world or corrupt it?
Even for those who don’t gamble, the exponential growth of online sports betting since 2018 has made it impossible to avoid. Not only have odds and ads been seamlessly integrated into sports broadcasts, but the language of betting has now become pervasive in sports commentary. Thanks to ease of access through mobile technology and their relative value as ready-made “content”, speculation and predictions are the air that sports fans now breathe.
Program: ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ — high fashion or vision of hell?
It’s no mystery why David Frankel’s 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada was a hit. The movie had all the ingredients of a certain kind of success.
Program: Copyright theft is AI’s original sin — are we doomed to repeat it?
Essential to the profitability and widespread adoption of modern technologies is the need to conceal their costs — the human labour, the unjust or exploitative working conditions, the environmental degradation and drain on natural resources, the reduction of precious goods to mere ‘raw material’. By means of such concealment, those who enjoy the conveniences these technologies afford are lulled into a state of (what Hannah Arendt called) “unthinkingness”.
Search continues for missing angler
A search is continuing today for a man who went missing off the coast of Mayo on Sunday morning. A spokesperson from the Irish Coast Guard told Midwest Radio News they were alerted to the incident of a missing person at Downpatrick Head at the weekend.
Program: Last Words: ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ — Martin Luther King, Jr in Memphis
In 1967, after reaching the heights of social and political influence in 1963, after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and having been instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr watched his popular support fall precipitously away. He had reached the lowest point of his life on the public stage, with fully two-thirds of Americans disapproving of him.
Program: Why the anxieties over multiculturalism? What’s the appeal of a monocultural society?
If One Nation leader Pauline Hanson managed to reignite a public debate with her assertion that Australia is “a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural” during her address last week to the National Press Club, it is only because certain anxieties over multiculturalism have long been smouldering in the social undergrowth, just waiting to be fanned into flame.
Program: One Nation is on the rise — but do we know what it means?
Over the last twelve months, there have been two conspicuous trends in federal politics. One is the precipitous decline in electoral support for the Liberal Party, which began before last year’s federal election and has continued apace ever since. The other is the rise in One Nation’s electoral fortunes, which began to tick upwards in September but then took a leap in December and January.
Program: The ethics of ‘longtermism’ — what are our obligations to the future?
One of the criticisms often directed at democratic politics is that it is irresponsibly, even dangerously, short-term in its orientation. The wellbeing of future generations, to say nothing of the sustainability of the planet, rarely matter more to lawmakers than the cost-of-living pressures experienced by their constituents or the outcome of the next election cycle.
Program: Last Words: The ‘Farewell Sermon’ of the Prophet Muhammad
It could be said that human beings reveal who they most truly are as they approach the end. For the end of one’s life is not simply its terminus ad quem; it is also its telos, its goal or meaning.
Program: The Problem of Nationalism, with David Moscrop — Live at the Sydney Writers’ Festival
It’s common these days to refer to “the return of nationalism”. But that assumes that nationalism receded for a time, like the tide, and here the world is, now, getting its pants legs wet. Such an assumption misunderstands the peculiar character of nationalism. It would be better to think of it as a swell, as a political phenomenon that periodically gathers power and force, that crests and crashes, but that never entirely goes away. It’s always there, beneath us.
Program: What is the moral of Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus’?
There are four stories that could justifiably be described as foundational to Western culture: the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden; Prometheus’s gift of fire to humanity; Doctor Faustus’s pact with the devil; and Victor Frankenstein’s act of monstrous creation. Not only are the principal names immediately evocative to anyone who hears them, but that recognisability allows for nearly endless variations on their original themes. This is, in part, what gives these stories their staying power.
Program: Does the budget have a coherent underlying philosophy?
The federal budget is, in many respects, the high point of Australia's political calendar. This federal budget is no exception. The public had been primed for weeks to expect a series of significant reforms this year. But it is striking how little there is in the budget by way of direct social benefit.
Program: Are ‘reaction videos’ dulling our ability to be genuinely responsive?
One of the by-products of digital technology’s pervasiveness in our lives is its seeming irresistibility.
Program: NDIS reforms may be necessary, but they’re also morally fraught
In a speech to the National Press Club, Health Minister Mark Butler announced a series of sweeping changes that the federal government will make to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). In the thirteen years since it was legislated, the growth of the NDIS has surpassed all expectations. By 2030, the Productivity Commission projected that the scheme would cover around 550,000 people and cost about $40 billion.
Program: Smart glasses — a new frontier of foreseeable digital harm?
There has long been a gap between the emergence of new forms of technology and the development of laws designed to mitigate their dangers. But with the rapid advances in artificial intelligence and immersive technologies, that gap is becoming increasingly problematic. Take the example of wearable technology, such as smart glasses. Companies like Meta, in particular, have poured vast amounts of money into the development and commercialisation of augmented reality (XR) headsets.
Program: The price of sovereignty: Are we prepared to pay more for less vulnerability?
Ever since the eighteenth century, there has been a prevailing belief that mutually beneficial commercial relationships between nations provide a powerful disincentive to international conflict.
Castlerea Boil Water Notice lifted
A Boil Water Notice for the Castlerea Public Water Supply Scheme has been lifted after over a week. Following consultation with the HSE, Uisce Éireann last night confirmed customers on the supply can now resume normal use of their water supply. Areas served by the Castlerea Public Water Supply Scheme include Castlerea town, Ballintober, Trien, Kilmurray, Castleplunkett, and surrounding areas.
Program: Social cohesion is straining — can citizens’ assemblies help?
There is a thread that’s been left dangling from our show at the end of last year on Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fourteenth century “Allegory of Good and Bad Government”, painted on the walls of the Sala dei Nova in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico. The dominant figure of Justice sits on the left side of the central mural. She has her thumbs on two scales to hold them in balance, with angels on either side meeting out punishment and just recompense.
Gardaí launch bank holiday road safety campaign
Increased road safety enforcement measures are in place from this morning until Tuesday, as the Gardaí’s bank holiday safety campaign gets underway. The Gardaí say every on-duty member will be involved in the roads policing operation in an attempt to keep road users and pedestrians safe. Gardaí are warning drivers that at no point, is it safe or acceptable to get behind the wheel after consuming alcohol or drugs.
Program: Why do democracies seem so fragile in the face of shortages?
Within days of the commencement of the war that has enveloped the Middle East — and that continues to severely disrupt global energy supplies — a familiar pattern began to emerge in some of the world’s most prosperous democracies. Much as they did at the outset of the pandemic, people began stockpiling. Then, it was toilet paper and food; this time, it’s fuel.
Program: Why Autocracy Needs Spectacle — with M Gessen
One of the words we use to describe political authority gone wrong is “autocracy”: which is to say, the concentration of power in a unitary figure who then exercises that power without countervailing constraints and for its own the sake. To borrow an expression of St Augustine, autocracy is a form of political authority that curves in on itself.
Program: Can illegal wars still be legitimate wars?
It’s like déjà vu all over again. After launching a devastating but limited series of strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and against the nation’s top military leaders and nuclear scientists in June last year, the United States and Israel recommenced hostilities against Iran at the end of February.
National Hurling League fixtures
Mar 18, 2026 | 9:23 am Saturday 21st March: Allianz National Hurling League Division Two Round Seven Mayo vs Westmeath, 1:00pm (Hastings Insurance MacHale Park) Allianz National Hurling League Division Three Round Seven Roscommon vs Donegal, 2:00pm (King & Moffat Dr Hyde Park) Allianz National Hurling League Division Four Round Seven Sligo vs Longford, 2:00pm (Glennon Brothers Pearse park) Allianz National Hurling League Division One A Round Seven Galway vs Limerick, 7:00pm (TUS Gaelic Grounds)
National Football League fixtures
Your browser requires one tap to start audio in a new tab. After the player opens, please press Listen Live. Mar 18, 2026 | 9:16 am Sunday March 22nd: Allianz National Football League Division Three Round Seven Sligo vs Clare, 2:00pm (Markievicz Park) Allianz National Football League Division One Round Seven Galway vs Dublin, 3:30pm (Pearse Stadium) Allianz National Football League Division One Round Seven Mayo vs Roscommon.
Program: Ramadan: Politics Straight from the Heart — with Christos Tsiolkas
There is an arresting moment in the diaries of Etty Hellesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman who was interned at the Westerbork transit camp in Nazi-occupied Netherlands before being deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered in 1943 at the age of 29. She records the pitilessness of the conditions in the camp, the clear intention to bring about the “complete destruction” of the men and women held there — not just of their bodies, but of their innermost selves.
Cold weather on the way
Your browser requires one tap to start audio in a new tab. After the player opens, please press Listen Live. March 11, 2026 | 9:01 am A cold and windy snap is on the way for the entire country tomorrow. A status yellow warning for wind comes into effect at midnight and will remain in place until 6pm. Met √Čireann is warning of difficult travelling conditions and fallen trees.
Program: The link between antisemitism and 19th century racial theory
This week, as part of the ABC’s look at the persistence of antisemitism in Australia and the world, the Religion and Ethics team partnered with ABC TV and Big Ideas here on Radio National. In a special episode of Big Ideas, we explored the religious roots of anti-Jewish prejudice because certain Christian and Muslim texts have been manipulated to fit political ideologies.
Religious roots of antisemitism
The roots of antisemitism run deep. Christians and Muslims have told stories for centuries about Jewish people. Stories that have weaponised the relationships among these world religions. In a world of ongoing conflict, how do we recognise, and then bridge, the divide of religious prejudice? This is a special episode of Big Ideas brought to you by the ABC's specialist religion and ethics team. Guests Magda Teter Shvidler is Chair in Judaic Studies and Professor of History at Fordham University.
Ramadan: ‘Do Not Harden Your Heart’ — with Avril Alba - ABC listen
Over the course of this Ramadan series, we are exploring the contours of a cardiocentric conception of the moral life. The notion of the primacy of the heart goes back three millennia: it finds expression in the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt and China, and in the philosophy of Aristotle; it pervades the pages of the sacred texts and subsequent traditions of Judaism and Islam — and even now, its remnants persist in our everyday speech, as if to remind us of an older wisdom.
Ramadan: Having a ‘Change of Heart’ — with Claire Zorn - ABC listen
Sometimes the language we use every day, often unthinkingly, contains within it traces of a much older wisdom. Consider the phrases “I’ve changed my mind” and “I’ve had a change of heart”.
Rents continue to rise across the region
Rising rent prices along with a shortage of properties for rent continue to affect the rental market in Mayo and the Connacht region according to a report released this week. The average monthly rent nationwide of a double-room in a house is now €775, while the average monthly rent in Mayo is currently €615, a €160 difference in prices. In Connacht-Ulster (excluding Galway), market rents rose by an average of 5.1% during 2025, compared to 8.6% in 2024.
Ramadan: The Heart and the Moral Life — with Stephen Darwall - ABC listen
Judging by the way we use the word in everyday speech, we intuitively know what we mean when we refer to “the heart”. We are most often gesturing toward the essence of a thing, its core, what you reach once you strip everything non-essential away.
Increase in Norovirus cases
February 13, 2026 | 6:57 am The number of people infected with Norovirus is on the increase, as the HSE warns people to be aware of the signs and symptoms. According to the HSE, cases have reached high levels in recent weeks and outbreaks in hospitals are also increasing.
Thousands of BMWs recalled
Thousands of BMW cars worldwide have been recalled by the company over safety concerns. The manufacturer has identified issues with the engine starter which could affect up to 500,000 cars according to AFP. Vehicles including starters developed between 2020 and 2022 are likely to be recalled as a result. Affected drivers will be contacted and there’s no clarity on how many cars will be affected here.
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