Big Ideas

Stop playing around and start playing seriously. Our deep drive to play has shaped our cultures and our philosophies, our working lives, and our civilizations since we first started playing. AND – women’s soccer in Australia. Fighting for more equality on and off the field, women's football is a story of community, endurance and success. A celebration of the sport and The Matildas.

Journalist, Simon Akam, investigates the failures of the British Army, including alleged war crimes, in his provocative book, The Changing of the Guard. He examines what has gone wrong with the British Army since 9/11, how it has changed, and what it has learnt from unsuccessful campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Modern parents juggle work and home and try to meet high expectations about each child reaching their potential. Two parenting experts talk about the particular demands of raising teenage girls and raising boys with a healthy masculinity. And is striving for personal happiness a worthwhile goal or does trying to be happy all the time create more anxiety?

International negotiations on climate change and biodiversity often put the scientific case behind economic and political interests. So, people increasingly turn to the courts to get justice for the environment. What makes those court cases successful? And what does a new form of environmental justice that connects nature with economic and social rights looks like? The new way of getting just rights for nature is to fall back on the very old legal tradition of Chthonic law.

How do different societies decide who is on the top, and who is at the bottom , of the social hierarchy? African American journalist Isabel Wilkerson compares the racial ideology of America’s deep South with Nazi Germany and the caste system in India. And indigenous musician Jessie Lloyd talks about her quest to collect and preserve the songs written by the indigenous Australians moved off country to live on Christian missions, government reserves or on the outskirts of country towns.

There is a dark side to clean energy and digital technologies Solar panels, wind turbines, mobile phones, and electric cars all depend on rare metals, But there are big problems with how these metals are mined, processed and traded. And there are profound economic and geopolitical impacts resulting from China’s dominance of the rare metals industry.

The French Revolution hasn’t only shaped our political ideologies to this day. It’s also been extremely influence in the field of science. Steve Jones explores the scientific advances made during this time and how they shape modern science. Many French scientists of that time literally devoted their lives to science with many of them being executed – for their new insights as much as for their involvement in politics.

Many of us are working from a home office or the kitchen table . The pandemic has boosted the popularity of remote work but we want to make sure it's good quality work and not lose the benefits of face to face contact with colleagues. One of the downsides is loneliness. Lockdowns and working alone can make you feel disconnected and lonely. Loneliness increases your risk of serious disease and the UK now has a Minster for Loneliness responsible for a government public health campaign.

Australian history stretches back 60,000 years but our written history is only 250 years old. Historians are restoring indigenous people to their proper place in the story of Australia but there’s much we still don’t know. An indigenous historian is leading an international team to discover how communities responded to other seafarers who arrived on our shores long before the British. And can indigenous fire management help contain contemporary bushfires?

Pro-democracy activists are urging Australia to impose sanctions on the military leaders in Myanmar. In February the Myanmar military suspended democratic government. They blocked the National League for Democracy from forming a government despite a landslide election victory. Protests are on-going but can they succeed without tough sanctions from the international community?