Big Ideas

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 helped to establish sexual violence and rape as war crimes in international law. At a time of global conflict and instability, the work and achievements of Navi Pillay are a reminder of what can be achieved when accountability trumps impunity, when...

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 our democracy adapt to win back the trust and engagement of new generations? The 2025 Speaker's Lecture was recorded at Parliament House on 27 October 2025. Speakers Holly Rankin - Musician and recording artist Jack River , founder, Sentiment , direct...

Are our universities facing an existential crisis by trying to be too many things? Places for learning, research, the production of new knowledge, the production of job-ready graduates, and profit-making enterprises? Does everything they do have to produce a tangible, measurable, practical, or profitable outcome? Should they also foster intellectual life and the pursuit of ideas just for curiosity...

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 that Australia's pursuit of school choice, and the tax payer funding that enables it, has come at a huge cost to the school system, to children's education, and to our broader society. The 2025 Dymphna Clark Lecture at Manning Clark House was recorde...

Join ABC's Mon Schafter and four incredible speakers as they share honest, powerful stories about revealing their identities on their own terms. From fear to freedom, isolation to community - this is a conversation about truth, courage, and connection. Held in recognition of 40 years of ACON , it celebrates every journey of coming out and shines a light on personal stories, collective resilience,...

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 online, or lose your job? So many of our public debates nowadays are divided along these lines, but is there a better way? This event was recorded at the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival . To explore more Melbourne Writers Festival talks, visit mwf.com.au...

Friends are different from family. We choose them and they choose us. Philosophers long wondered about what makes friendship such a distinctive relationship in our lives. Is being a good friend a kind of moral virtue?  Can friends help us find our true selves? What about the dark and difficult side of friendship — toxic friends and frenemies? How is the love between friends different from romantic...

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.  That history is shaped by resistance and different waves of uprising. How have governments dealt with these movements? How do they influence politics today? China: Past, Present, Future was recorded live at the 2025 Sydney Writers' Festival. Liste...

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, DEI and the right to protest, and the persecution of foreign students, could all that be changing? The speech, Poison Ideas: Universities and other Antidotes to Authoritarianism, was recorded at the 2025 conference of the Australasian Council of De...

The Western world is supposed to stand for values like freedom, justice and human rights, a commitment to meet wrongdoing with consequence, guided by rules and obligations. How then, do we reconcile that with Western governments' and media's support of and complicity in the horrors in Gaza? How do we witness the bloodshed and destruction, and yet look away? This conversation was recorded at the Ca...

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 Accord, all governments have agreed to support a target of building 1.2 million new, well-located dwellings in 5 years.  But will that increase housing affordability, availability, quality, security of tenure, and the growing gap between the haves and h...

Whitlam's dismissal and following double dissolution 50 years ago, was arguably the most tumultuous period in Australia's political and constitutional history. This political crisis raises key questions about constitutional change and the robustness of Australia's current democracy.  What are the lessons? And could it happen again? Presented at the National Archives of Australia Speakers Anne Twom...

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 ancient South Italian vase painting. How then, did he end up leading a crack team of code-breakers working in Melbourne to decipher Japanese messages for the Allies during the Second World War? This lecture was recorded at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembran...

When it was founded in 2015, openai — the company behind Chat GPT — had a mission to develop artificial intelligence tools that would benefit humanity. But somewhere along the way, that mission changed.  While the use of AI in our daily lives is increasingly pervasive, the technology's toll on the environment, human rights, copyright, privacy and workers and resources in the global south is starti...

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 citizen-driven democracy in action! Tasmanian salmon is on dinner plates across Australia. It's a 1.4 billion-dollar industry producing jobs for Tasmanians, and more than 70, 000 tonnes of fish annually — with plans for expansion.  But salmon farming...

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 never given up the fight for gender equality. This conversation was recorded live at the 2025 Sydney Writers' Festival . Speakers Dr Anne Summers Author, Damned Whores and God's Police , Ducks on the Pond: An Autobiography 1945-1976, The Misogyny Facto...

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 digital age, the human instinct to inflict punishment in the court of public opinion has reached fever pitch. So do we want to live by mob rule, or the rule of law? The 2025 James Merralls Fellowship in Law Lecture , hosted by the University of Melb...

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 of us will never have the opportunity to travel there — except in our minds. This conversation features two writers who've used the perspective of space to explore our humanity, Earth's place in the universe, and the meaning of it all. The conversatio...

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 meet one writer whose new book of essays rejects the over-complication and gets to the messy, human heart of art. What Artists See is a collection of essays from award-winning arts writer and critic Quentin Sprague, canvassing twelve contemporary Au...

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 Raphael. Parenting in 2025 looks very different in many ways,  the scientific evidence now supports the theory that women undergo radical physiological, psychological and social changes during pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. This conversation...

He was undefeated in battle and established one of the largest empires in history. But his legacy goes beyond his military conquests. He increased trade between East and West, spread the Greek civilisation and founded cultural centres that still thrive today. Learn more about Alexander the Great's life, personality and impact with a fresh perspective on his reign, including the vital roles that ot...

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 "Laser Jock", and why she's now on a mission to restore trust in science. This event was recorded at the Centre for Ideas at the University of New South Wales . Speakers Donna Strickland Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Un...

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 and personal history to present a new way of looking at this country’s past.  Led by Mparntwe and Alice Springs-based poet Laurie May, Ziggy reflects on the project and where it took him at the Byron Writers Festival . Each chapter of Human? is a mul...

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 could be a breakthrough providing you with a better way to protect your privacy interests through the court system. Big Ideas digs deep into its origins, its inspirations, and its potential future. Presented at the Queensland University of Technology....

This rollicking history traces the evolution of the London stock exchange, from the Transatlantic slave trade to modern day missions to Mars, arguing that the financial markets wield the power to bring down governments, and shape our societies, for better and for worse. This lecture was recorded at the Australian National University . Speakers Philip Roscoe Author, How to Build a Stock Exchange: T...