Have drones and distance dulled our sense of war’s brutality? episode artwork

EPISODE · Apr 24, 2026 · 54 MIN

Have drones and distance dulled our sense of war’s brutality?

from The Radio National Hour · host Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Does the gamified footage we see of missile strikes and drone attacks lead to a detached view of what war is really like? This ANZAC day, soldiers who've lived the real fear and horror of the battlefield are angered by the sanitised imagery we are served up on our screens. Google’s former head of AI ethics, Margaret Mitchell explains why Silicon Valley’s claim that dangerous chatbot behaviour can be fixed by new guardrails just doesn't stack up.Melbourne Opera is giving Don Giovanni a #MeToo makeover, shifting the focus from the casanova to the women who bring Don Giovanni to justice. So does this scoundrel from the eighteenth century still have lessons for us all today? 

Does the gamified footage we see of missile strikes and drone attacks lead to a detached view of what war is really like? This ANZAC day, soldiers who've lived the real fear and horror of the battlefield are angered by the sanitised imagery we are served up on our screens.  Google’s former head of AI ethics, Margaret Mitchell explains why Silicon Valley’s claim that dangerous chatbot behaviour can be fixed by new guardrails just doesn't stack up. Melbourne Opera is giving Don Giovanni a #MeToo makeover, shifting the focus from the casanova to the women who bring Don Giovanni to justice. So does this scoundrel from the eighteenth century still have lessons for us all today?

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Have drones and distance dulled our sense of war’s brutality?

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This episode was published on April 24, 2026.

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Does the gamified footage we see of missile strikes and drone attacks lead to a detached view of what war is really like? This ANZAC day, soldiers who've lived the real fear and horror of the battlefield are angered by the sanitised imagery we are...

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