Life & Faith

Got a burning creative project? Face your finitude, says this productivity expert, by learning to number your days.  Everyone is pressed for time, and in a never-ending quest to conquer their schedules. It’s why productivity tips and hacks are big business these days. But underneath our productivity problem is a reality no one wants to face: the fact that we’re all going to die, argues self-d...

Journalist, author and theologian, Stan Grant on responding to injustice with grace and love. In a decades-long career as a journalist and foreign correspondent, Stan Grant saw some of the worst that humanity is capable of. It took its toll on him. And as a Wiradjuri man he has had to wrestle with identity, belonging, and who we all are in 21st century Australia. He went through a period of angst...

There are currently 7 living generations. That makes for plenty of crossed-wires, misunderstandings and confusion about each other, and the future. In this episode of Life & Faith, we speak to futurist, speaker and author Ashley Fell from McCrindle, a social research and advisory firm that uses cutting edge research and data analysis to decode the generations and make sense of each other and e...

An Anglican priest on Ash Wednesday, a Benedictine nun on Lent, and a Lutheran minister on Bonhoeffer’s last words. In this episode of Life & Faith, we go beyond the chocolates and hot cross buns to sit with the darkness of the Easter story that unfolds in three acts: dust, desert, and death. Our guests provide different snapshots of the Easter season, and the unexpected glimmers of life to be...

In the 1940s a group of German students saw it as their duty to oppose the tyranny of Nazism.  The members of The White Rose, young students and some lecturers, became convinced that they had to take action against their own government and its crimes. They began a campaign writing and disseminating thousands of pamphlets condemning the Nazis and calling on Germans to embrace passive resistanc...

In an age of outrage, how can we rise above cynicism and work towards a healthier and more vibrant form of political debate and engagement? With a Federal election campaign looming and cynicism about politics at an all-time high, Life & Faith interviews eminent Political Scientist Professor John Warhurst about how we can navigate an increasingly grumpy political landscape. If politics is downs...

Increasing interest in psychedelics, the occult, and the supernatural all point to one thing: enchantment is back. “The thing is you can't have enchantment that's only selective. You can't only have the bright side. You also need to acknowledge the dark side. That's one of the things I really wanted to do with this book and it caused some consternation with my first publisher. She didn't want the...

What does the Christmas promise of “peace on earth” mean in the face of human suffering, natural disasters, and other heartbreaks that are part of all our lives? Twenty years ago, the Indian Ocean tsunami claimed the lives of some 225,000 people, after battering the coastlines of India, Indonesia, Malysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Thailand, and Somalia. Tim Costello, then CEO...

In 1894, South Australia was the fourth place in the world to grant universal female suffrage. Christian housewives were key to the cause. History was made on Dec 18, 1894, when a bill passed in the South Australian parliament granting women the right to vote and the right to stand for public office. This made the South Australian Parliament the first in Australia, and the fourth place in the worl...

Journalist Michael Visontay uncovers intriguing stories from the fragments of a 1450s Gutenberg Bible, including an amazing link to his own family. In 1921 when rare book collector Gabriel Wells broke up his Gutenberg Bible and began to sell off individual pages, it caused a scandal, and a rush for collectors to get the chance to own and be a part of the Gutenberg mystique. Was Wells’ action...

International Justice Mission wants tech companies to step up efforts to protect vulnerable children. Warning: distressing content.  The Philippines is the global epicentre of the online sexual exploitation of children, where children are abused by parents and other relatives in their own homes, in front of a video camera, for a fee. It’s awful and sickening trade in vulnerable human lives, o...

Erinch Sahan believes that the key to building safer, healthier and stronger communities can be found in a doughnut. Doughnut Economics is a visual framework and growing movement that seeks to tackle humanity’s biggest problems through a fresh new understanding of our world. Erinch shares how his experience as a senior executive at Procter & Gamble, Oxfam and head of the World Fair Trade Organ...

Tim Winton talks to Life & Faith about his new novel Juice. Tim Winton is one of Australia’s most loved writers. He is also well-known as an environmental activist and defender of landscapes and fragile ecosystems. And now, as a grandfather to 6 children, he is clearly deeply concerned about what we might be leaving behind to them and those who come after them. His lates novel, Juice, is set i...

Living out one’s commitments and beliefs is the most political thing we can do, says theologian and public commentator Michael Jensen. Politics, both here in Australia and around the world, feels increasingly existential as we angst over whether our political tribe, or the other side, will gain office. In this episode of Life & Faith, we get public commentator Michael Jensen to set us straight...

The US will soon choose its 47th president. Peter Wehner, former Republican insider, explains the national mood.  In the week before the 2024 US presidential election, perhaps the most consequential election in this year of elections, we hear from former Republican speechwriter and evangelical Peter Wehner on what has happened to the party he used to call his own. Wehner served in three Repub...

Sarah Irving-Stonebraker makes a case for history as a key part of understanding who we are and where our lives find meaning. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker says we are living in an ahistoric age – where we are increasingly ignorant of the past and therefore less equipped to understand ourselves and those around us. In her latest book Priests of History: Stewarding the past in an ahistoric age, Sarah ur...

Investigative journalist Nick McKenzie explains what drives him to risk huge amounts to expose injustice and corruption. Nick Mackenzie is a 14 x Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist who has uncovered some of the highest profile cases of corruption in recent Australian history. Nick has exposed the local mafia, Crown Casino’s links to criminal figures, political donations by Chinese inte...

Author Shankari Chandran believes storytelling may be our most powerful weapon in the search for hope, truth, empathy and justice.  Shankari is a Sri Lankan Thamil Australian author. Her third novel Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens won Australia’s most prestigious literary award, the Miles Franklin, last year. In this interview with Life & Faith, Shankari shares her story, her inspirations a...

Research uncovers the secrets to thriving as individuals and communities.  What are the ingredients of a life that will help us to thrive as people? How do we go about cultivating those ingredients? What does it mean to truly flourish as a person? Policy makers are interested in these questions. So are educationalists. And as individuals it’s a topic that we increasingly seek answers to. Peop...

In a money-hungry world that's focused on profits, ethical impact investing seeks to re-introduce compassion and benevolence to our system of buying, selling and money-making. Sam Richards is the Managing Director of Brightlight, an investment firm that seeks to do more than simply make money. Brightlight - along with a growing number of family offices and individual investors - seeks to use finan...

Life & Faith producer, Allan Dowthwaite, takes over the studio to mark 500 episodes of amazing conversations. Allan Dowthwaite, CPX’s media director, normally runs the recording studio for the team. But in this special episode, marking twelve-and-a-half years of the podcast, he’s commandeered the mic as your personal guide to Life & Faith’s greatest conversations, organised into the follow...

On the 24th anniversary of the Sydney Olympic Games, we look back at what made those games so special. Simon Smart and Mark Stephens ask what these kinds of events can tell us about who we are as human beings.  Former Olympics Minister Bruce Baird talks us through the hair-raising bid process and the joy of seeing the whole thing come together so well. Veteran sportswriter Greg Baum outl...

Reconstructive surgeon Tertius Venter tells Life & Faith how his life changed forever when he saw how much he could impact the lives of desperate people. Dr Venter is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who spends 8 months of every year volunteering his time to two charities helping the poorest people on the planet get surgery they’d have no hope of getting were it not for people like him. Ov...

Trevor Cooling explains how educating the whole person lays foundations for the ‘life worth living’. Professor Trevor Cooling has spent a life time in education, in universities and also public and independent schools. Here he talks to Life & Faith about why teaching worldview is a crucial skill students need to learn as they engage in a pluralistic society. We discuss the true purpose of educ...

What vision of a full and flourishing life can we offer the young men in our lives?  Justine Toh interviews Simon Smart about his new book The End of Men? Simon wrote this book after observing that boys and men are struggling in many ways—socially, emotionally, and at school. Boys are finding it difficult to understand their place, and wondering if there is something inherently toxic about th...