Big Ideas

Dr Ranjana Srivastava has spent more than 20 years treating patients with cancer, often dispensing very bad news. Along the way she has gained acute insights into life, death and the practice of medicine.  As the end approaches, what matters? How do people cope?  How do doctors deal with death?

Time management is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century and digital technology has made it even more difficult.

Is there such a thing as a free lunch?  Can all economic problems be solved by government? Do market prices reflect the full cost of our choices? Economics professor, John Quiggin, addresses these, and many other, fundamental economic questions.

In her final Boyer Lecture Rachel Perkins makes the case for a treaty process and we hear how indigenous communities are seeking to preserve and revitalize traditional languages.

Australia doesn’t have a treaty with its indigenous people. We’ve also been slow to acknowledge our history of violent dispossession. Indigenous film-maker Rachel Perkins looks at the Uluru Statement as the way to end the silence on the unfinished business of reconciliation. It calls for Voice, Treaty and Truth.

3,000 Australians died by suicide last year. Men are most at risk and indigenous communities have much higher rates of suicide across all age groups. A federal government campaign has an ambitious target to reduce the loss of life to zero. Our first National Suicide Prevention Advisor, a psychiatrist and an indigenous psychologist outline the challenge we face.

Public discourse of migration in Australia is far too narrow.

Border regulation, the labour market, analyses of criminal justice data and the experience of international students - it’s inter-related and needs to be considered together to shape a healthy migration policy.

Chloe Hooper on Victoria's 'Black Saturday' bushfires, the arsonist responsible for two of the fires, and why we are living in an age of fire.

Only 16 percent of the Australian workforce belong to a union. Are unions still relevant to the economy and society or are they a relic of the past? Former union boss Bill Kelty and business leader Jennifer Westacott discuss the history and role of unions and what's needed to meet our current economic problems.

Donald Trump is a maverick in the White House. He’s thrown out the rule book and shoots from the hip via Twitter. Allies can no longer predict how America will react nor depend on its commitment to free trade.

Veteran American diplomat Nicholas Burns says it’s time for a change.