Big Ideas

Martin Luther King III knows what the long fight for equity looks like. His father was the late great Martin Luther King Jr who led the modern American civil rights movement. And he's got something important to say to corporate Australia. Why are you missing out on Indigenous talent? Ignore it at the peril of Australia's future economic growth, he argues. It's more than a social or equitable good....

Are Royal Commissions just a lawyer's picnic? A political witch hunt? Or, a necessary reckoning? They're Australia's highest form of inquiry on matters of public importance. But they've also become the go-to solution when corruption, misconduct or systems failures are exposed. The lowdown with three people who have seen how they work up close. The conversation How do Royal Commissions work? And Ho...

Malcolm Fraser's legacy remains contested territory in Australian politics. Decades after he left office, we still can't quite figure him out. The Prime Minister who came to power in controversy, governed for seven years, then spent the rest of his life surprising everyone with his increasingly progressive views. Whether Fraser was cautious conservative, pragmatic reformer, or something more compl...

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 hostage crisis, the war in Gaza, and the global response — has reverberated in communities far beyond the Middle East, including here in Australia. For Jewish Australians, it has turned their lives, their careers, their relationships and their ident...

Through the stories of five women across three generations of his family, the influential Greek economist, author, politician and public intellectual Yanis Varoufakis tells the tumultuous tale of Greece's modern history, and reflects on its parallels with the once again global rising tides of fascism, authoritarianism, and the actions of those who resist. This conversation was recorded on 6 March...

Every scientist dreams of a breakthrough — a new discovery that will change everything. Professor Georgina Long is someone who has done it — as a pioneer of life saving cancer treatments. So what are the ingredients for breakthroughs to occur? And why are the conditions that can lead to new discoveries under threat right now? The 2026 Ann Moyal lecture When groundbreaking cancer treatments save 50...

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 the Iran war. It happened in 2022 when Russian forces occupied the Chernobyl exclusion zone. A new way of weaponising nuclear power. What have we learned from the worst nuclear accident in history — and what have we failed to learn? This conversatio...

Is President Trump a new Nero, or a contemporary Caligula? The Roman Empire was full of merchants of chaos, power-hungry emperors, epic wars, backstabbing, betrayals — the whole horror show. And it was a time of civilisational scale change. As we grapple with a rewriting of the world order,  does Ancient Rome have lessons for us today — about the building and breaking of empires, or the rise and f...

What happens to a community when it punishes its most vulnerable instead of protecting them Drawing on her own story of addiction, imprisonment, and recovery, as well as her frontline work supporting women behind bars and post-release, Tahlia Issac challenges the "tough on crime" narrative. The typical incarcerated woman in Australia is First Nations, a mother, a survivor of violence, and imprison...

Australians love a holiday in Southeast Asia. But our proximity to this region also makes it key to our national security and prosperity. Yet Australia has hitched its security and foreign policy wagon to an increasingly unpredictable United States, while China asserts in dominance in our own backyard. So are we taking Southeast Asia for granted? This conversation was recorded at Readings Bookshop...

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 in the past — scraping behaviours, experiences and other data to shape its outputs. In this sense, AI is a new kind of historian — but operating without guardrails, ethics, or any sense of doubt. This annual lecture for the History Council of Victor...

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 documentary, or was Mulder deluded? Join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell from the stage of the 2026 World Science Festival Brisbane for an hilarious hour of science and comedy. TEAM ALIENS ALIVE Dr Joel Gilmore (Team Captain)Energy specialist, physicist, sci...

Former BBC presenter and host of the hit podcast The News Agents, Emily Maitlis, gives a fearless assessment of modern news coverage, public broadcasting, and the royal family's handling of Andrew Mountbatten-Windor's arrest.  The event No Spin, No Compromise was recorded live at the Sydney Opera House for the 2026 All About Women festival. Speakers Emily Maitlis Co-host, The News Agents and The N...

Todd Ley exposes a high-pressure world where talent is everything, but protection is rare; where overzealous parents, manipulative coaches, hungry sponsors and indifferent associations can push young athletes to their breaking point. It's not just a story about tennis, it's about what happens when a child's identity is consumed by a dream that may not be their own and the long road back to self-wo...

Comedians are increasingly being forced to navigate a world where the right punchline at the expense of the wrong politician carries the risk of personal and professional consequences. So when poking fun at the powerful could get you cancelled, sued, land you in jail — or worse — who's afraid of a joke? This episode was recorded on 28th March 2026 as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Fest...

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 love?! Sex historian Dr Esme Louise James is creator of the viral Kinky History TikTok series and does a Sextistics show with her mathematician mother. The complexity of the human clitoris can no longer be ignored by science, thanks to the world-cha...

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 forgiveness is something far more complex than a simple act of letting go. Is it a generous moral gift, or a burden placed on those who've been wronged? What really happens when we forgive? And is sometimes withholding forgiveness the more honest response? 20...

According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia has some 120 embassies, high commissions, consulates-general and representative offices located across five continents. So when an Australian gets into trouble overseas, or a politician travels abroad on government business, or other countries take actions that damage Australia's national interest, it's likely a diplomat is not fa...

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, about resilience, about persistence, and about doing the things we love. Over six years, Siang Lu received more than 200 rejections from publishers for three manuscripts — before going on to publish a Miles Franklin award winning novel. What did he...

Misinformation, disinformation, deep fakes,  false news — do you feel confident spotting them? They’re doing real harm to our relationships, our communities, our health, even to the future health of our democracy.  New research has found 73% of Australians believe disinformation will be a major threat to our national security in the next decade. Former Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers ...

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 the profound ways Canada has failed to uphold universal human rights, both at home and abroad. In his final Massey Lecture, he lays out his vision for a way forward. Lecture five and last of the 2025 CBC Massey Lecture series : Universal: Renewing Hum...

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 map of the world.” In his fourth Massey Lecture, Alex Neve reflects on moments when people power won the  Lecture four of the 2025 CBC Massey Lecture series : Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World Speaker Alex Neve Secretary-General o...

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 until the day we die. But in his third Massey Lecture, Alex Neve argues the powerful have made human rights a ‘club.’ Lecture three of the 2025 CBC Massey Lecture series : Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World Speaker Alex Neve Secret...

The ideals behind the concept of human rights — such as the sacredness of life, reciprocity, justice and fairness — have millennia-old histories. After the carnage of the Second World War and the Holocaust, these ideas took a new legal form. In his second Massey Lecture, Alex Neve considers six dizzying years that laid out a blueprint for a new world. Lecture two of the 2025 CBC Massey Lecture ser...

Human rights are universal, right? For everyone, everywhere, without exception. That promise, born out of the Holocaust and World War II, has been broken repeatedly. But in a time of fear and fracture,  can we renew it? World-renowned Canadian human rights activist and lawyer Alex Neve has seen the best and worse of humanity. He's worked in war zones in Darfur and Eastern Chad, with detainees in G...