Big Ideas
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Big Ideas
Feed your mind. Be provoked. One big idea at a time. Your brain will love you for it. Grab your front row seat to the best live forums and festivals with Natasha Mitchell.
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The role of spirituality and religion in mental health care
The connection between body and mind is well established. But mental health expert Daniel Fung also includes the soul in this 'ecosystem' that shapes...
A song for every feeling? Pub Choir's Astrid Jorgensen with Natasha Mitchell
From innocently conning controversial radio duo Kyle and Jackie O as a kid, time in a Zambian convent as a teen, to nearly becoming an air traffic con...
Victoria's new treaty with First Peoples — a turning point for Australia?
Australia now has its first treaty with this country's first peoples. After nearly a decade of formal consultation and negotiation, the Victorian Stat...
Pay attention — writer Emily Maguire finds promiscuous curiosity and cultural receptivity in the creative process
Humans are by nature creative, but how do we turn a spark of inspiration into something more tangible? Author Emily Maguire draws inspiration from som...
Can science keep dementia at bay and keep your brain sharper − for longer?
As we grow older, changes to our bodies and minds are inevitable. But what if science could help us age better? Our experts on Big Ideas uncover the l...
Acclaimed author Christos Tsiolkas on fence-sitting in a time of fracture
When acclaimed Australia author Christos Tsiolkas was invited to give the 2025 Ray Mathew Lecture at the National Library of Australia, he had in mind...
The stories we tell about cricket — with Paul Giles and Gideon Haigh
From The Don to Warny, the Gabba to the G, from its legacy of British colonialism, to the Asian powerhouse nations of today — cricket is not just a sp...
Judge Navi Pillay on the fight for human rights, justice and accountability
Born in apartheid South Africa, she became the country's first female high court judge. She sat on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and...
Musician Holly Rankin on why young Australians feel that politics isn't delivering for them
Young Australians are losing faith that our politics, our civic institutions and the mainstream media are working for them. Why is this? And how can o...
What are universities for today? The usefulness of "useless" knowledge
Are our universities facing an existential crisis by trying to be too many things? Places for learning, research, the production of new knowledge, the...
Jane Caro — why Australia is failing our school system
We often hear about "failing schools", but what if it is us, the Australian community, who are failing them? Public school advocate Jane Caro argues...
Coming Out and Inviting In — with Zoe Terakes, Nina Oyama, Mon Schafter, Atari Metcalf, Ji Wallace
Join ABC's Mon Schafter and four incredible speakers as they share honest, powerful stories about revealing their identities on their own terms. From...
Searching for convivencia — philosopher AC Grayling makes peace in the culture wars
If you're a feminist, or pro-civil or gay rights, does that make you "woke"? And if you're not, does that mean you should be cancelled, or abused onli...
The Sophia Club live philosophy — what are friends for?
Friends are different from family. We choose them and they choose us. Philosophers long wondered about what makes friendship such a distinctive relati...
Understanding China's history is crucial for Australia
To deal with China as a major trading partner, and also a national security threat requires understanding the history that made China what it is today...
Universities and other antidotes to authoritarianism
The United States has long been famous for its world leading universities. But in the face of research funding cuts, government attacks on free speech...
One day, everyone will have always been against this — Omar El Akkad and Peter Greste reckon with Western hypocrisy over Israel's war on Gaza
The Western world is supposed to stand for values like freedom, justice and human rights, a commitment to meet wrongdoing with consequence, guided by...
Fixing Australia's housing crisis — is increasing supply really a silver bullet?
Build more houses. That'll fix Australia's housing crisis won't it? If you listen to governments, you'd sure think so. Under the National Housing Acc...
Gough Whitlam's dismissal — why is it still relevant today?
Whitlam's dismissal and following double dissolution 50 years ago, was arguably the most tumultuous period in Australia's political and constitutional...
An intriguing story of art and espionage — how a classical scholar turned codebreaker during World War 2
In the 1930s, New Zealand-born, Cambridge educated Arthur Dale Trendall carved a niche for himself as the world's foremost expert in the study of anci...
Empire of AI — Karen Hao goes inside the reckless race for total world domination
When it was founded in 2015, openai — the company behind Chat GPT — had a mission to develop artificial intelligence tools that would benefit humanity...
ABC's CITIZEN JURY — Fixing salmon farming's environmental harms in Tasmania
ABC Radio National's CITIZEN JURY takes hard, hot-button issues affecting a community — and places citizens at the centre of finding solutions. It's c...
Anne Summers — 50 Years of Damned Whores and God’s Police
In 1975, aged just 29, she wrote a bestselling book that changed Australia. Since then, she's courted controversy and acclaim, but Anne Summers has ne...
Why we need to cancel cancel culture — with defamation barrister Sue Chrysanthou
When people say or do the wrong thing, we have laws and a legal system that should be able to deliver consequences and, hopefully justice. But in this...
Out of this world — with Booker Prize winning author Samantha Harvey
For all of human history, space has been a place of mystery, awe and fascination. But unless you're an astronaut, a billionaire, or a pop star, most o...
What Artists See? Critic Quentin Sprague helps you get to the messy human heart of art
Have you ever visited an art gallery full of wonder, ready to be inspired, only to leave feeling like it was all a bit over your head? You're about to...
Matrescence — on the metamorphosis of motherhood
When a child is born, so too is a mother. This idea, known as "matrescence", was first conceived in the 1970s by American medical anthropologist Dana...
Alexander the Great — A genius? A tyrant? A visionary? A killer? A maniac?
He was undefeated in battle and established one of the largest empires in history. But his legacy goes beyond his military conquests. He increased tra...
Nobel laureate Donna Strickland on her life in lasers
She became the third ever woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, and the first in 50 years. This is the story of how Donna Strickland became a...
Ziggy Ramo’s latest project asks what makes us human?
Ziggy Ramo is an award-winning musician and author whose latest book titled Human?: A lie that has been killing us since 1788 weaves song, visual art...
New legislation to protect you against invasion of your privacy
2025 is a landmark year for Australian privacy law. The new statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy came into effect in June this year. This c...
How to build a stock exchange — the past, present and future of finance
This rollicking history traces the evolution of the London stock exchange, from the Transatlantic slave trade to modern day missions to Mars, arguing...
Is Jane Austen the greatest English novelist of all time?
She's on a bank note (British 10 pounds), and a bath soap (Suds and Sensibility), and she also wrote some of the most beloved novels in English litera...
We’re F**ed! It’s too late to avoid civilisational collapse. 2025 Beaker Street Festival Great Debate
Is the end of the world nigh, or just the end of the world as we know it? Are we set to doom-scroll our way to apocalypse? Or is this the moment we wa...
Who killed the liberal international order (and what comes next)?
Conflict and great power rivalries are on the rise, democracy is in retreat, and multilateral institutions created to maintain global cooperation appe...
Can the Democrats save the threatened democracy in the US?
The Democratic Party in America is in an identity crisis. It's shifting priorities to claw back grounds from the Republicans. But is it too little, to...
Maria Ressa on what Donald Trump learnt from Rodrigo Duterte and other strongman rulers
From Rodrigo Duterte, to Narendra Modi, to Donald Trump, strongman leaders around the world are harnessing big tech to consolidate their power. Social...
Prove It! Elizabeth Finkel's Scientific Guide for the Post-Truth Era
If a stiff dose of medical misinformation is what you're after, look no further than the White House right now. And, on social media and in online for...
John Lennon and Paul McCartney — a partnership that changed cultural history
The Beatles shook the world to its core in the 1960's and, to this day, new generations continue to fall in love with their songs and their story. At...
'Militarism gone mad' — Labor firebrand hits out at party’s support of AUKUS
The world feels more dangerous and unpredictable, but with Australia wedged between our traditional ally, America, and our biggest trading partner, Ch...