Big Ideas
Kanalaren Xehetasunak
Big Ideas
Your front row seat to big thinkers at the best live events, forums, and festivals. Feed your mind. Be provoked. One big idea at a time. Your brain will love you for it. We love hearing from you about the show or events you are planning. Get in touch! Email: Bigideas@abc.net.au SMS line for ABC Rad...
Atal Berriak
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The future of TRUTH — Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, philosopher A.C Grayling, journalist Barbara Demick, AI scientist Toby Walsh
A power panel on the future of truth. In a world of AI hallucinations and corporate algorithms, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, and misinfor...
Can Art, artists and activists save Australia’s famous multicultural experiment?
The fabric of multicultural Australia is under a kind of pressure it hasn't faced in a long time. Can it be renewed? And what role do artists, activis...
Pride or shame? Searching for the story of Australia — with Tony Abbott, Mark McKenna and Sally Warhaft
Two authors. Two books. Two very different histories of Australia. Tony Abbott's Australia: A history and Mark McKenna's The Shortest History of Austr...
Zoe Daniel with Thom Woodroofe on winning middle Australia in the climate wars
Has the Iran War got you thinking about changing to an electric vehicle? Did government subsidies help you go solar or install a home battery? When re...
Duty to warn — when challenging power becomes personal, and why journalists Cheng Lei and Charlotte Grieve didn't give up
What's the toll when your story becomes the story? What these journalists endured for their work beggars belief, but it hasn't stopped them believing...
Trump, Xi, Putin and what's next for the world? Former White House insider Thomas Wright with the Lowy Institute's Sam Roggeveen
Three leaders of three different countries, who decided they would no longer accept the limits placed upon them by the international rules based order...
Sperm shortages, shady Facebook groups, and other intimate stories of modern donor conception
Donor-sperm conception has become even more difficult in Australia. Would-be parents are now facing a shortage of sperm. That's on top of an already c...
How can we design our way out of Australia's housing crisis? With Anthony Burke and Tim Ross
From embracing the future of new technologies, materials and innovations, to returning to past times of multigenerational and communal living, archite...
Dark Emu's Bruce Pascoe and astrophysicist Ray Norris — can Aboriginal astronomy unite humanity under one big sky?
Join Bruce Pascoe and Professor Ray Norris with Natasha Mitchell to discuss their eye-opening new book Big Sky: When the Emu Left the Earth. Then go o...
Hard-won progress in women's rights is dismantled — and it threatens global security
Rising authoritarianism, splintering alliances and an organised backlash against women's rights, gender equality and international development are thr...
Medical misogyny — how the health system overlooks women's pain and how it's finally adapting
From GP appointments and hospital procedures, to medical research and clinical trials, for centuries, women's health has historically been dismissed,...
When Turnbull met Trump — and what it means for today’s changing world order
Australia's 29th Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull joins former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland to deliver a candid appraisal of the sh...
The untold Titanic story of Evelyn with Lisa Wilkinson
The untold story of Evelyn Marsden and the woman who rowed against the tide. You've heard of the Titanic disaster. Luxury ship. Largest ever. Impossib...
What can Plato teach us about democracy today?
Democracy is on the decline, so could Plato help? Irish scholar Dr David Horan spent 16 years translating Plato's complete works, including his dialog...
Could self-driving cars & other innovations end the tyranny of distance in regional Australia?
Communities that once built their future around coal and agriculture are asking: what do we become next? Regional Australia usually gets left behind w...
Regional Australia at the crossroad
Communities that once built their future around coal and agriculture are asking: what do we become next? Regional Australia usually gets left behind w...
Love for your neighbour: how to cultivate radical empathy in a disenchanted world
From running a massage clinic for homeless men to running the largest independent human rights organisation in the country, Kon Karapanagiortidis has...
What makes Putin tick — and how will his iron-fist rule of Russia end? Natasha Mitchell with guests
Some say Russian president Vladimir Putin is growing increasingly paranoid, as his war with Ukraine wages on. It's hard to know from the outside looki...
When the safety net frays − nuclear weapon risks in a new era
The global treaty for preventing nuclear proliferation is under serious strain. The last review conferences for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty h...
How to date from a position of power, with Bad Dates of Melbourne creator Alita Brydon and Nelly Thomas
Have you ever heard of something called Chatfishing? From to AI profiles to cat-face filters, finding true love has never felt more difficult. And yet...
How to date from a position of power, with the creator of Bad Dates of Melbourne Alita Brydon
Have you ever heard of something called Chatfishing? From to AI profiles to cat-face filters, finding true love has never felt more difficult. And yet...
How to live and die well — with Marieke Hardy, Hannah Gould and Antonia Pont
It's the only sure thing in life: that we will all die some day. But many of us are scared to think about death — our own, or our loved ones'.
...
Is there an alchemy to good leadership? And why Prime Ministers should love their mums
Three savvy political minds get up close and (very) personal with power to consider where it succeeds and struggles. They've got gripping stories to t...
Jimmy Lai's fight for press freedom and democracy in Hong Kong
From rags, to riches, to a prison cell. He could have stayed wealthy and silent, but chose not to. Hong Kong's Jimmy Lai launched newspapers that dare...
From deepfakes to dodgy headlines, what’s going on in your newsfeed? — journalism, AI and the algorithm
These days, more Australians get their news from their social media feed than traditional media outlets. Meanwhile artificial intelligence is supercha...
Why working-class kid turned millionaire banker Gary Stevenson wants you to join the fight against economic inequality
He's got a rags to riches origin story, a hit Youtube channel and a bestselling memoir. Now Gary Stevenson is using his platform to fight the growing...
Dear Prime Minister Albanese: Where are all the BIG IDEAS?
A year on from its landslide victory, has Labor used its historic win to deliver big on BIG ideas to set Australia up for the future? Or is Prime Mini...
Martin Luther King III on why Indigenous employment is essential for Australia's prosperity
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 America...
How do Royal Commissions work (and are they worth it)? With Betty King, Jack Rush and Jon Faine
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 matter...
Was Malcolm Fraser a conservative warrior or a closet progressive?
Malcolm Fraser's legacy remains contested territory in Australian politics. Decades after he left office, we still can't quite figure him out. The Pri...
"Here I am, here we are" Jewish Australian women reflect on the rupture of October 7 2023
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...
Resistance — Yanis Varoufakis with Helen Vatsikopoulos on the people who fought back against fascism
Through the stories of five women across three generations of his family, the influential Greek economist, author, politician and public intellectual...
What lies behind the scientific breakthrough? Professor Georgina Long on medicine's third space
Every scientist dreams of a breakthrough — a new discovery that will change everything. Professor Georgina Long is someone who has done it — as a pion...
40 years after Chernobyl we face a new nuclear risk — this time as a weapon of war
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...
Is Trump a new Nero, Caligula, Caesar? Can the Roman Empire help us make sense of today's chaos? And other burning questions
Is President Trump a new Nero, or a contemporary Caligula? The Roman Empire was full of merchants of chaos, power-hungry emperors, epic wars, backstab...
Australia's broken social contract — Tahlia Isaac wants to protect women in prison
What happens to a community when it punishes its most vulnerable instead of protecting them Drawing on her own story of addiction, imprisonment, and r...
Australia's Broken Social Contract — Tahlia Isaac wants to protect women in prison
What happens to a community when it punishes its most vulnerable instead of protecting them Drawing on her own story of addiction, imprisonment, and r...
Is Southeast Asia Australia's blind spot? — with Michael Wesley and Geoff Raby
Australians love a holiday in Southeast Asia. But our proximity to this region also makes it key to our national security and prosperity. Yet Australi...
The future of the past — how artificial intelligence is changing history
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...
Aliens exist (and the truth is out there)!? Science Smackdown at World Science Festival Brisbane 2026
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 document...