Life & Faith

Hope feels scarce, but it’s not lost – and it’s within our power to be people of hope.    --- “I certainly have clients who are in their twenties who are saying to me, I will not have children because look at the world! So, the question is, where is the vision of hope?”  Clinical psychologist Leisa Aitken gets that hope seems in short supply right now. Daily headlines are a barrage...

Why have conspiracy theories gained so much traction? And are Christians more prone to believe them?   ---  “I’d like to say that it’s all intellectual, but I don’t think it is.”  The belief that behind the visible mechanisms of society, powerful forces are up to no good is hardly a new idea (or reality). But geopolitics and culture wars in recent years have thrown up plenty of...

Why might someone who’s not religious want to send their kids to a faith-based school? --- “Teachers are one of the few groups of people in society who can tell other people what to do in their discretionary time and – by and large – they obey.”  Education is among our core activities as a society – so it’s unsurprising that it can be a battleground for all sorts of ideas.  David I. Smit...

We’ve heard of burnout and PTSD but what about “moral injury”, that’s affecting soldiers and also Covid-19 health workers?   --- “Soul sick”.   That’s how some of the literature describes the effects of “moral injury” on people. Perhaps we’re more used to violence leaving a physical mark or causing psychological trauma that disrupts a person’s ability to live their everyday lif...

Australians are used to filling in forms that ask whether they have Aboriginal or Torres Strait heritage. But not many of us have contact with people from the farthest northern reaches of our country.   --- This week on Life & Faith we talk with Torres strait community leader and pastor Gabriel Bani. We hear about his growing up on the islands where houses were crowded but community...

A detective and a scholar tackle the question: why are we all so obsessed with crime stories? --- “When I was a child, not everything was a detective story. Now it is, on television. And it’s almost as if we all want to know, we want to know the big question: who did it??”  Judging by the perennial popularity of detective novels and crime shows, and the current wave of true crime podcasts, it...

Sixty years ago, MLK declared “I have a dream”. As Australia votes on the Voice, we grapple with racism.  --- It’s been 60 years since Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr. ascended the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., declaring that “one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters an...

An award-winning Australian novelist shares her experience of grief, chronic pain, great joy – and the supernatural.   ---  “As I’ve travelled the world and talked to endless strangers and asked them, did they ever have an experience they couldn’t explain? … I would have asked that question many, many hundreds of times. There’s been nobody who said no.”  49% of Australians say...

Rob Stokes reflects on the joys and challenges of his political career, as well as his latest challenge – solving homelessness.   --- Simon Smart speaks with ex-politician Rob Stokes about public service and the most satisfying aspects of his life in politics. Stokes gives an honest account of not only the best aspects of being able to “get things done” but also the frustrations of compromise...

This week we take on a topic most of us want to avoid and find it surprisingly life-giving.   --- Sydney Morning Herald opinion editor Chris Harrison faced death as a teenager and lived to tell the tale. Listeners will find his account of returning to the sports field where, after being hit with cricket ball, he was clinically dead for two minutes, both moving and confronting.   Thi...

This highly acclaimed, speculative novel tackles the mind-body problem, and the mystery of consciousness.  --- If given the choice, would you agree to be uploaded to an entirely digital existence: freed from death, pain, and suffering – because freed from the body? Or would you remain human on a dying planet?  That’s the thought experiment behind Grace Chan’s speculative novel Every Vers...

Scholar and peacemaker Riad Kassis, from the perspective of a region in crisis, calls all of us to hope and generosity.   ---  “We talk about peace in our region; we have a greeting that says, peace be upon you , and we respond, and be upon you as well . But it is just a greeting. We would like to see it in practice.”   When Riad Kassis was a teenager, he and his family left their h...

How the “invisible hand” of the market relies on the critical – and undervalued – work of care.   ---  “We need to put care at the centre of the Australian economy.”  Before Sam Mostyn headed up the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, advising the Federal Government on ways to improve women’s economic equality, she gave a blistering address to the National Press Club about the long...

The CPX team freaks out about AI, explores stories of “efficiency” run amok, and probes our tech utopias.    --- The apocalypse will be ... boring.  Or so says Charlie Warzel, tech journalist for The Atlantic . He means that AI won’t put you out of a job or take over the world, so much as overstuff your inbox and give you more mind-numbing tasks to complete.  Other people...

Jo Swinney grew up in family committed to environmental care and community. Her parents’ efforts to revitalise a small piece of land in Portugal eventually spawned an international family of organisations committed to conservation of the natural environment.          --- In this wide-ranging discussion, Jo Swinney talks to Simon Smart about growing up in a c...

Can Australia’s “dreaming beauty” – our Indigenous languages – be reclaimed? Meet some people who say a joyful yes.   ---   250 years ago, hundreds of languages were spoken across this continent; today, only about 3 percent survive.   What happened in between is a familiar and harrowing story of dispossession – of land, lives, and culture – including a story of linguicide...

Nicholas Spencer insists the history of the relationship between science and religion is infinitely more interesting than the myths would have us believe.   --- Most things you ‘know’ about science and religion are myths or half–truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century.  Nick Spencer takes these myths on in his comprehensive book, Magisteria: the entangled his...

A tender conversation about the start of life, the end of life, and quality of life.  --- 1 in 10 babies in Australia are born premature, and 15% of all babies will need some form of extra care at birth.   Today on Life & Faith , we venture into a place that will be unfamiliar to many – but all too familiar to some: the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU. Dr Annie Janvier is a neo...

“The Pill is a bad metaphysic”: Mary Harrington on says the pill has changed everything – and not really for the better. ---- “Is there something to be said for all of these things which I’ve been busy trying to dismantle? Because I’d taken it at face value that they were all just bad by definition.”  As Mary Harrington writes in her book  Feminism Against Progress , she’s someone who ha...

You have probably mucked things up once or twice in your life. Congratulations, you’re human. There’s hope for all of us in the Easter story. ---  This week, Simon Smart and Justine Toh tiptoe through the minefield of ‘guilt’, ‘sin’, and ‘morality’: three words and ideas that are offensive to the modern ear – no doubt partly due to the perception that Christians and the church have been all t...

On March 25, it’s Tolkien Reading Day: a day to enjoy all things Tolkien – including what makes The Lord of the Rings so beloved.  --- “… above all shadows rides the Sun”.   That’s a line from a song that the hobbit Samwise Gamgee sings to give him hope at a critical moment in J R R Tolkien’s epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings . Sam is stranded in the dark land of Mordor and Frodo,...

Bruce Robinson knows more than most about the impact of suffering on human beings. But he also knows about resilience and joy in the face of life’s biggest challenges.    --- As a doctor, Professor Bruce Robinson has been on the front line of Tsunami-ravaged or earthquake-devastated poor regions of Indonesia. And as a lung specialist and expert in asbestos-induced cancer, he has had deca...

Cynthia Banham barely survived a brutal plane crash. She speaks about trauma, suffering, and hope.  --- It was supposed to be a routine assignment. Back in 2007, journalist Cynthia Banham was sent to Indonesia by the Sydney Morning Herald to cover a visit by then Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. But tragedy struck. The Garuda flight she was on crashed on landing at Yogyakarta Int...

What our love affair with food reveals about us; and navigating a modern no-no: judging others. --- Life & Faith is 450 episodes and counting, and we’re about to hit a million downloads. We’re excited to mark the milestone – even we’ve forgotten all the things we’ve ever talked about.  That’s why we’ll occasionally dip into the Life & Faith archives this year and bring you t...

Christopher Watkin is an expert in cultural theory – and thinks the Bible yields the best one we've got.  ---  “If all we think of when we hear the term critical theory is something like critical race theory, then we tend to think of ourselves as some sort of SWAT team parachuting down into society to deal with one particular spot fire, and then airlifting ourselves out at the end of it...