Big Ideas

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...

This episode explores the past and present expectations and experiences of Australian fathers, in the workforce, domestic duties, and child-rearing, and examines how their roles have also shaped the lives of mothers, children, and society. These conversations were recorded at the launch of the book Fathering: An Australian History at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. Speakers Fathering and...

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 media warped our sense of self, other aggressive forces were at work, hellbent on exploiting feminism for profit, and taking women down while they did. Sophie Gilbert, a Pulitizer-nominated culture writer with The Atlantic, investigates the impacts i...

She's attracted controversy and cancellation, but Palestinian Australian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah has not been deterred from speaking out about the plight of Palestinians in the war on Gaza, and the experience of Muslim Australians since 9/11. At this event organised in the wake of the cancellation of Adelaide Writers' Week, she joins that festival's former Director Louise Adler, to...

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, the connections drawn, has consequences that ripple far beyond the news cycle. For people living with schizophrenia or psychosis, irresponsible reporting isn't just frustrating. It affects how neighbours treat them, how employers see them, and how they...

Over five decades, one single, sprawling dominion, from Yemen to Myanmar, became twelve modern nations. This is the story of how the actions of politicians in London and revolutionaries in Delhi, princes in remote palaces and soldiers in trenches, redrew the map of British India, uprooting millions, and leaving a legacy that explains much about the region today. This conversation was recorded at t...

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 today for young, hungry minds to do what Nobel laureates Brian Schmidt, Peter Doherty and Rolf Zinkernagel did in the 1990s and 1970s at the Australian National University in Canberra? The three join Big Ideas presenter Natasha Mitchell and a huge c...

Presenting a road map to a world with fewer Putins and Kim Jong Uns. Political scientist Marcel Dirsus exposes the precarious reality behind the façade of the dictator's absolute power, and the remarkable ways in which even the most ruthless despots can be felt. Gareth Evans, Geoffrey Robertson, Tobias Buck and Dorcy Rugama take a closer look at crimes against humanity. When is reconciliation poss...

The inaugural ABC National Forum is a live, televised panel discussion bringing together Jewish Australians to examine their lives in Australia in 2026, amid a sharp rise in antisemitism since October 7, 2023. Moderated by Insiders presenter and National Political Lead David Speers, the forum launches a new series designed to create a space for Australians to confront major national challenges and...

The roots of antisemitism run deep. Christians and Muslims have told stories for centuries about Jewish people. Stories that have weaponised the relationships among these world religions.   In a world of ongoing conflict, how do we recognise, and then bridge, the divide of religious prejudice?  This is a special episode of Big Ideas, prepared by the ABC's specialist religion and ethics team. The b...

A global pandemic, a foreign war, a failed referendum on Indigenous rights, increasing inequality and a fractured media — these and other forces have been causing deep divisions in Australian society. So how can we instead focus on the ties that bind this country together, to reconcile our differences and foster community? What can be done to strengthen our social cohesion? The 2026 Menzies Oratio...

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 protests across the country, with women and girls posting videos of themselves singing, using the hashtag "I am my song". Aged just 14, Nila Ibrahimi's song, Boro Bakhair Ba Maktab or "Go to school" became an anthem of the movement. The 2025 Gandhi...

The Panopticon was a prison design by the famous philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham which placed prison guards in a central tower overlooking inmates. So why does scientist and climate advocate Tim Flannery want us to re-imagine the Panopticon as a path towards a more compassionate society? And why does he find warmth and connection even in conflicted communities angry about climate ch...