The finance industry is turning away from investing in fossil fuels, consumers are forcing businesses to create more sustainable supply chains and preserving nature is being rewarded with cash incentives. Big Ideas explores how the nature of financial investment is changing to better reflect the ecosystem of the planet we live on, and how investing in nature can underpin sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

We've been encouraged for decades to learn an Asian language but many of us don't see the need to be bilingual. If we want deep engagement with our Asian neighbours then language learning should be a priority. In China, the government is pushing for the use of the national language Mandarin. While the benefits of a common language are understood minorities fear the loss of local languages and cultural identity.

The Chinese Communist Party celebrated its centenary recently. In 1921 China was a poor country dominated by foreign powers. One hundred years later it’s an emerging superpower with the party and its leader Xi Jinping tightly in control. So how does President Xi see China’s future?

Inspired teaching can change lives. What are the ingredients of great teaching, and great schools?

If you’re trying to make a decision you collect all the data, weigh up the alternatives and come to a logical conclusion. That’s how it’s supposed to happen. But in real life decisions are made on the run, you follow your intuition or fall back on what you did last time. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman has made a career of understanding how we make decisions and judgements. And how we can be better at it.

The statistics are overwhelming. One woman in four has experienced violence from an intimate partner according to national surveys. And there’s a campaign to introduce laws which deal with the insidious nature of coercive control. Journalist Jess Hill has spent many years investigating domestic violence. She speaks to Kerry O'Brien about our failure to adequately deal with the causes or the crime.

Artificial intelligence is being applied to almost every activity and profession. So will humans continue to set the standard in skills like surgery or driving cars or will robots be the benchmark? We look at how laws might have to change to judge fault in accidents or in deciding intellectual property rights. And how AI is revolutionizing drug development and diagnostics.

Can covid help to create a kinder, better, Australia? Adversity, it has been said, can make us stronger, and pull us together more tightly, as a community. Social psychologist, Hugh MacKay, told Paul Barclay he noticed last year, after the pandemic arrived, that Australians started to become kinder to one another. Hugh is hoping the lessons from the pandemic can trigger a “kindness revolution”.

Whether you are for or against the death penalty, you would at least expect that that decision is based on a sound legal process. But death penalty law expert Marc Bookman reveals the foibles of the system in practice. 

And - the true and epic story of Captain Moonlite. He was one of Australia’s most notorious bushrangers and in all probability the first openly gay one.

There’s a famous quote about learning the lessons of history: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But perhaps the reverse is also true. Too much memory, too much focus on injustice and grievances, can make us captives of the past . Stan Grant looks at the uses and abuses of history either as a foundation for justice or as a way to promote an endless cycle of revenge and retribution..