Big Ideas
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Big Ideas
Your front row seat to big thinkers at the best live events, forums, and festivals. Feed your mind. Be provoked. One big idea at a time. Your brain will love you for it. We love hearing from you about the show or events you are planning. Get in touch! Email: Bigideas@abc.net.au SMS line for ABC Rad...
Legutóbbi epizódok
407 epizód
Was Malcolm Fraser a conservative warrior or a closet progressive?
Malcolm Fraser's legacy remains contested territory in Australian politics. Decades after he left office, we still can't quite figure him out. The Pri...
"Here I am, here we are" Jewish Australian women reflect on the rupture of October 7 2023
October 7 has become synonymous with the Hamas attacks on Israel in 2023, in which more than 1200 Jewish people were murdered. What has followed — the...
Resistance — Yanis Varoufakis with Helen Vatsikopoulos on the people who fought back against fascism
Through the stories of five women across three generations of his family, the influential Greek economist, author, politician and public intellectual...
What lies behind the scientific breakthrough? Professor Georgina Long on medicine's third space
Every scientist dreams of a breakthrough — a new discovery that will change everything. Professor Georgina Long is someone who has done it — as a pion...
40 years after Chernobyl we face a new nuclear risk — this time as a weapon of war
The explosion of reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is not only a story of the past. Right now, nuclear plants are weaponised in...
Is Trump a new Nero, Caligula, Caesar? Can the Roman Empire help us make sense of today's chaos? And other burning questions
Is President Trump a new Nero, or a contemporary Caligula? The Roman Empire was full of merchants of chaos, power-hungry emperors, epic wars, backstab...
Australia's broken social contract — Tahlia Isaac wants to protect women in prison
What happens to a community when it punishes its most vulnerable instead of protecting them Drawing on her own story of addiction, imprisonment, and r...
Australia's Broken Social Contract — Tahlia Isaac wants to protect women in prison
What happens to a community when it punishes its most vulnerable instead of protecting them Drawing on her own story of addiction, imprisonment, and r...
Is Southeast Asia Australia's blind spot? — with Michael Wesley and Geoff Raby
Australians love a holiday in Southeast Asia. But our proximity to this region also makes it key to our national security and prosperity. Yet Australi...
The future of the past — how artificial intelligence is changing history
Artificial intelligence has been defined as a cluster of technologies of and for the future. But like most humans, AI is built using what has happened...
Aliens exist (and the truth is out there)!? Science Smackdown at World Science Festival Brisbane 2026
It's Team 'Aliens Alive' versus Team 'Earthlings United'. Get out of this world, hear the arguments, and you decide. Was the X-Files really a document...
British journalist Emily Maitlis on THAT Prince Andrew interview and news in a post truth world
Former BBC presenter and host of the hit podcast The News Agents, Emily Maitlis, gives a fearless assessment of modern news coverage, public broadcast...
Tennis prodigy Todd Ley on the underbelly of elite junior sport
Todd Ley exposes a high-pressure world where talent is everything, but protection is rare; where overzealous parents, manipulative coaches, hungry spo...
Who's afraid of a joke? Comedy in an authoritarian age — with comedians Sam Jay, Tom Ballard, Bahaa Dabbagh and Leon Filewood
Comedians are increasingly being forced to navigate a world where the right punchline at the expense of the wrong politician carries the risk of perso...
The science of SEX! Natasha Mitchell and guests at World Science Festival Brisbane
Get bonkers on bonking with Natasha Mitchell and guests at the 2026 World Science Festival Brisbane. It’s a sexy, fun, and educational – what's not to...
Forgiveness — a generous gift or social pressure disguised as a virtue?
You often hear that forgiveness is the key to healing and moving on — but is it always the right thing to do? This conversation explores how forgivene...
The diplomats — the ups and downs of life in Australia's foreign embassies
According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia has some 120 embassies, high commissions, consulates-general and representative of...
Six years of writing, 200 rejections — how Miles Franklin award-winning writer Siang Lu learned to live with failure
Failure is a part of life, whether we like it or not. While most of us don't ever want to fail, failure does have things to teach us — about ourselves...
Disinformation, deep fakes, and other dodgy doings — the threat to Australian security, democracy, and you
Misinformation, disinformation, deep fakes, false news — do you feel confident spotting them? They’re doing real harm to our relationships, our commu...
A human rights agenda for Canada (2025 CBC Massey lecture 5)
In more than 40 years on the front lines of international human rights Alex Neve has heard Canada described as ‘the land of human rights’ — and seen t...
How people power makes human rights real (2025 CBC Massey Lecture 4)
Eleanor Roosevelt once said that universal human rights begin in “small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any...
Human Rights don't have to be earned (2025 CBC Massey lecture 3)
Our inherent human rights belong to us from the moment we are born. There is nothing we need to do to earn them, and they are supposed to apply to us...
The six years that remade human rights (2025 CBC Massey Lecture 2)
The ideals behind the concept of human rights — such as the sacredness of life, reciprocity, justice and fairness — have millennia-old histories. Afte...
Renewing the broken promise of universal human rights. Alex Neve (2025 CBC Massey lecture 1)
Human rights are universal, right? For everyone, everywhere, without exception. That promise, born out of the Holocaust and World War II, has been bro...
From breadwinners to Bluey's Bandit — a history of Australian fathers and their families
This episode explores the past and present expectations and experiences of Australian fathers, in the workforce, domestic duties, and child-rearing, a...
Girl on Girl — How pop culture turned a generation of women against themselves with The Atlantic's Sophie Gilbert
Dive into the world of heroin chic and Girl Power to make sense of the mixed messages Millennial women experienced as they came of age. Before social...
Randa Abdel-Fattah and Louise Adler on the cost of speaking out in a time of division
She's attracted controversy and cancellation, but Palestinian Australian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah has not been deterred from speaking ou...
Mental illness —Taking stigma out of media reporting
When a violent crime makes the news, mental illness is often part of the story. But how that story is told, the words chosen, the details included, th...
Shattered lands — Sam Dalrymple on the five partitions of British India
Over five decades, one single, sprawling dominion, from Yemen to Myanmar, became twelve modern nations. This is the story of how the actions of politi...
Three Nobels! Are we backing young minds today to pull off what Brian Schmidt, Peter Doherty, Rolf Zinkernagel did?
Nobel Prize winning work often happens in a young scientist's 20s or 30s — early in their careers. Are the conditions right in Australian universities...
The secret of how to topple tyrants and dictators — and crimes against humanity under the microscope
Presenting a road map to a world with fewer Putins and Kim Jong Uns. Political scientist Marcel Dirsus exposes the precarious reality behind the façad...
ABC National Forum
The inaugural ABC National Forum is a live, televised panel discussion bringing together Jewish Australians to examine their lives in Australia in 202...
Antisemitism's religious roots
The roots of antisemitism run deep. Christians and Muslims have told stories for centuries about Jewish people. Stories that have weaponised the relat...
In a time of division, how can we rebuild social cohesion? — with Australian Human Rights Commissioner Hugh de Kretser
A global pandemic, a foreign war, a failed referendum on Indigenous rights, increasing inequality and a fractured media — these and other forces have...
How a song became a movement for Afghanistan's women and girls — with International Children's Peace Prize winner Nila Ibrahimi
In March 2021, Afghanistan's Taliban rulers banned female students over the age of 12 from singing in public. The prohibition sparked a wave of online...
Scientist Tim Flannery — a Panopticon for our times?
The Panopticon was a prison design by the famous philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham which placed prison guards in a central tower overlook...
Two Visions, One Challenge: Building a better Australia
Join acclaimed author and human rights advocate Thomas Mayo and media icon Ray Martin AM as they deliver two powerful orations on justice, reconciliat...
Can an arts degree change the world? A defence of the study humanities at Australian universities
Universities are under pressure — particularly the study of subjects like languages, history, social sciences and the creative arts. This lecture look...
Dearest Gentle Reader, a very Bridgerton Big Ideas! Australian novelists dissect the regency era
As Bridgerton continues to captivate millions and we just marked the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, the Regency era has never been more thr...
The Stoic and the introvert — life hacks from Brigid Delaney and Jenny Valentish
Feeling a little world weary? Is Stoicism the philosophy you need a little more of in your life? Can an introvert be your guide to getting out the fro...