ChangeMakers

We jump on the World Cup band wagon to talk about what team support and our collective enthusiasm for it tells us about organisations, associational life and democracy. Of course, there is plenty to chat about given all the political interference in these games - and we do talk about Trump and his sporting "knowledge" - but we focus on what we know, the analogies and lessons about strong and weak...

Anna Funder is one of Australia's most successful and accomplished writers. She has used her craft to explore power abuse and people's response, whether through stories about life under the Stasi in East Germany, the rise of Hitler, or by giving voice to the agency of Eileen O'shaughnessy - the wife of George Orwell. In telling new stories about power she has challenged the narratives of the power...

The Prime Minister of the Labour Party in the UK just resigned, and looks set to be replaced by Andy Burnham. It got us thinking, what can you change (and not change) when you change leaders? We aren't particularly focused on the specifics of the UK situation - but we wanted to reflect broadly on what it means for organisations to change leaders, and what it takes to change organisational culture,...

Leisel Jones is an Australian household name. She is a champion swimmer with 3 Olympic Gold medals and participated in four Olympics. In her post-Olympic career she has become a powerful advocate, lifting the lid on the kind of pressures and pain that are put onto young hopeful Olympians and sharing her own mental health struggles. She has written about these stories with Felicity McLean in the bo...

Dr Daniel Nour considers himself an accidental change maker, but he is also a pretty prodigious one. A doctor, inspired by the health care that helped his brother as a child, it was an experience offering emergency medical care to a homeless man in London during his medical studies that left him unable to ignore the gaps in the healthcare system, especially for marginalised communities. In respons...

Democracy is in trouble right now. In the US, Trump’s authoritarian impulses are closing over the checks and balances that used to make space for people to participate. In the UK the success of Reform in May’s local government elections reveal that people are increasingly seeing politics as elite sport - choosing to attack the system as a whole. In Australia, the success of One Nation in recent bi...

What is this? Today we are releasing a new podcast format on the ChangeMakers Channel - the ChangeMakers Digest where we take an issue in the news or that has grabbed our attention and try to make sense of it - "digesting" it - to draw out lessons and meaning for how we make change. It is hosted by Amanda Tattersall with Samuel Chu, a long time US based community organiser. Our aim is to release t...

Since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, US politics has polarised sharply - with the rise of Trump and right-wing populism, but also a renewed class-based left around figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and Zohran Mamdani. Part of what has given rise to these candidates is a Democratic Socialist political movement - and a key part of that movement is the publication Jacobin , whi...

Antoinette Lattouf not only fought and won a battle against the ABC - who unfairly dismissed her for sharing posts about the genocide in Gaza - but while she was doing that, she wrote a book about women who have fought and won across Australian history. Its called Women Who Win , and it was launched last week. In this chat we unpack what she found about what it takes to win - reflecting on her jou...

Rules and assumptions like economics are far from natural or neutral. They are written by a certain group of people and serve a particular set of interests. So what does it look like when a growing group of African women begin to disrupt these assumption by building approaches to economics, food, health and politics that starts with their lives? Crystal Simeoni has spent six years spearheading a p...

When war mongering has reached a new level of absurdity, this week we are tuning into a chat we recorded last year with comedian Sami Shah about the change making power of satire. Sami shares his story of finding comedy - and political satire in particular - as a way to cope with political instability in Pakistan, and how he brought those insights to his work as a comedian in Australia. He shares...

The world's attention is focused on War in Iran and across the Middle East, but less attention is being paid to the people who will have to uplift their lives and seek refuge in other countries because of the bombs. Mona Bani knows this journey as her family were refugees from Iran decades ago. In this podcast - that was recorded in 2024 - she tells the story about how her family's journey to seek...

Alex Kelly has been involved in climate and Indigenous campaigning and social change for decades - with a focus on communications, storytelling and the arts. She has long taught people about how to communicate their messages in the media. But in January 2026, she found herself at the centre of unprecedented bushfires then flooding in regional Victoria - and used her skills to project a message abo...

We talk with Michael Bradley who has taken on Murdoch as well as defending the rights of refugees about what it takes to be a lawyer and a change maker at the same time. He shares his 20 year journey from conventional law to a different kind of lawyering that he has now practiced for 17 years at  Marque Lawyers  – and how he now centres his legal practice around relationships. He also sh...

Trump's abusive war against immigrants has been jailing children and extracting people's neighbours for years - but in Minnesota his abuses are being challenged directly, powerfully and with enormous bravery. For our first episode for 2026, we speak with Erik Peterson who is a 40 year resident and community organiser and also someone who has trained community organisers across Minnesota, the rest...

For our last episode of 2025, we listen back to one of the leading communications specialists in US politics - Anat Shenker-Osorio. Lucky for listeners in Sydney, Anat is visiting Australia in December and you can get tickets to see her speak hosted by Australian Progress on December 11 at the University of Sydney. More details here: https://www.australianprogress.org.au/events/anat-in-conversatio...

When Zohran Mamdani voted in the New York Mayoral election last week he told the press that he followed the Working Families Party ticket. Who is the Working FamiliesParty? This episode is one we recorded earlier with the national leader of the Working Families Party - Maurice Mitchell. This episode was recorded in the wake of the Movement for Black Lives protests, but he also explains the origins...

We have a chat with Radio Nation's Saturday Extra Host Nick Bryant about all things America - and the long story behind the intractable conflicts in the US. This episode was recorded in December 2024 - after President Trump's election but before he took office so it doesn't focus on what has happened in 2025. Instead it casts a long history that sheds light on the fissures and conflicts, the trend...

In Australia, since 2012 there has been an explosive growth in community independents who have been challenging the two-party system and bringing new voices in the parliament. But there is a much bigger story than just the arrival of many new faces in parliament. Behind the new elected representatives is a massive movement of people - the "Voices of" movement - that started in Indi and has spread...

When millions of fish died overnight in Menindee in western NSW, the community came together to mourn, interpret and respond to what had happened through a series of powerful arts events. What happened was supported by the use of a socially-engaged arts practice that brought people together across difference to create a space where communities could lead a response. This chat is with Vic McEwan, a...

Senator Fatima Payman was the first hijab wearing member of parliament representing the Australian Labor Party and in 2024 she was removed from the ALP caucus in response to her campaigning (and crossing the floor of parliament) calling for the ALP to recognise the genocide in Gaza and the need for a Palestinian State. As it turns out, her leadership was ahead of its time, with much of the world n...

There is a lot of talk about co-design and community engagement in research and public policy - but in practice a lot of that talk ends up looking like window dressing rather than real community partnership. We talk to one of the world's leading co-design, community engaged researchers in nursing - Professor Brendan McCormak Head of the Nursing School at the University of Sydney - to find out stra...

The second Trump Administration has brought with it an unprecedented attack on migrants, led by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) focused on people who are living in the United States without formal documentation. In this conversation we talk with Alexandra Pineros Shields - a long term community organiser, immigrant rights campaigner and researcher about how communities are fighting b...

Climate change has led the Northern Rivers has been inundated by flood and flood threats, but it has also shown Australia - and the world - what it looks like to lead a community response to climate change. In this episode we talk with Rebecca McNaught, a community researcher on disaster response who shares with us how the community did respond to the extreme floods in 2022, and what all communiti...

On the Winter Solstice in 2025 Amanda spoke at an event in Albury held to raise awareness about Mental Illness and Suicide. She shared about her story of living with bipolar and some of the lessons it has generated about how we make a difference. In this podcast we replay that speech. Thanks to Survivors of Suicide and Friends for creating this event. For more on their work and previous events, vi...