Big Ideas

A frank and impassioned plea for peace by Gareth Evans. As Australia's former Foreign Minister and former president of the International Crisis Group, he's spent most of his career forging real paths to peace globally. From Sudan to Gaza, Myanmar to Ukraine - who can we rely on to stop "forever" wars and genocides?  Does Australia have a unique role to play? And what about the UN in its 80th year? It was created after the horror of World War 2 to keep the peace. Has it lost its way? The 2025 Brisbane Peace Lecture is presented by the United Nations Association of Australia, Brisbane -  and includes responses by two key leaders from the Sudanese and Palestinian communities.

Speakers

Professor the Hon Gareth EvansHonorary Professor at the Australian National University; Australia's former minister of Foreign Affairs and cabinet minister in the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments.

Dr Yassmin KhadraBrisbane-based physician, Doctors for Palestine, and Palestinian human rights advocate

Bishop Daniel AbotSouth Sudanese Anglican bishop

Primatologist Jane Goodall once said: "It actually doesn't take much to be a difficult woman. That's why there are so many of us." She spoke up. For all the species who go unheard, or unnoticed by humans. She was a giant in the global environmental movement. She first walked into the wild forests of Tanzania as a young woman with no science training and embarked on what is now the longest-running study of chimpanzees in their natural habitat. Her trailblazing fieldwork changed our understanding of other primates and the threat we pose to their continuing existence. It changed her. And it changed the world. At 91, she was still travelling the world right up until her last breath, to help give all other species theirs. She was deeply compassionate, and her campaigns deeply connected with people. Dr Jane Goodall joined Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell to discuss hope in action the 2022 WOMADelaide Festival. This conversation was originally broadcast on ABC Radio National's Science Friction in May 2022.

Guest

Dr Jane GoodallPrimatologist, environmentalist, naturalistFounder, Jane Goodall Institute

Further info:

The Book of Hope: A survival guide for an endangered planetJane Goodall and Douglas Abrams (Penguin, 2021)

Thanks to the 2022 WOMADelaide Festival.

AI is an incredible tool, but is AI also a new coloniser? Is there actually anything new or artificial about artificial intelligence? Join Natasha Mitchell at the 2025 Now or Never Festival to meet two big thinkers building a bridge between First Nations and Western knowledge to disrupt and reimagine the who, what, and why of AI?

This conversation was recorded on 26 August 2025, in partnership with The Wheeler Centre and Now or Never Festival. Discover more talks and bold conversations by following The Wheeler Centre wherever you get your podcasts or at wheelercentre.com

Speakers

Wiradyuri Wambuul woman

Associate Professor of Social Work in the School of Allied Health, Australian Catholic University.

Professor and Director, Centre for Human Anatomy Education

Deputy Director, Centre for Scholarship in Health Education Monash University.

Coauthors of the open-access book THE AI (R)EVOLUTION: Valuing Country, Culture and Community in a World of Algorithms (Monash University Publishing, 2024).

Get the book here:

AI is an incredible tool, but is AI also a new coloniser? Is there actually anything new or artificial about artificial intelligence? Join Natasha Mitchell at the 2025 Now or Never Festival to meet two big thinkers building a bridge between First Nations and Western knowledge to disrupt and reimagine the who, what, and why of AI?

This conversation was recorded on 26 August 2025, in partnership with The Wheeler Centre and Now or Never Festival. Discover more talks and bold conversations by following The Wheeler Centre wherever you get your podcasts or at wheelercentre.com

Speakers

Jessica Russ-Smith

Wiradyuri Wambuul woman

Associate Professor of Social Work in the School of Allied Health, Australian Catholic University.

Michelle Lazarus

Professor and Director, Centre for Human Anatomy Education

Deputy Director, Centre for Scholarship in Health Education Monash University.

Coauthors of the open-access book THE AI (R)EVOLUTION: Valuing Country, Culture and Community in a World of Algorithms (Monash University Publishing, 2024).

Get the book here:

https://publishing.monash.edu/product/ai-revolution/

Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice assesses the break-up of globalisation and the world order. The way in which countries such as the United States or Germany focus on sovereign goals is part of the problem. And that's likely not to stop any time soon. But she also comes up with practical ideas for creating a common economic and security future to address the issues that are too big for any single nation to tackle alone.

What Comes Next? Imagining a New Economic and Security Commons was presented by the American Academy in Berlin

Speakers

Condoleezza Rice66th Secretary of State of the United States (2005-09)Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy

Philip ZelikowBotha-Chan Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; 2009 Fellow, American Academy in Berlin

Daniel Benjamin (host)President American Academy in Berlin

American music journalist Liz Pelly interrogates the ways Spotify and other streaming giants are reshaping music, not just for listeners, but also for the people who make it.

This conversation was recorded on 28 August 2025 in partnership with The Wheeler Centre and Now or Never Festival. Discover more talks and bold conversations by following The Wheeler Centre wherever you get your podcasts or at wheelercentre.com.

Speakers

Liz Pelly Music critic, author, Mood machine: The rise of Spotify and the costs of the perfect playlist

Lauren Taylor Senior programs and podcasts manager at The Wheeler Centre, and host of Breaking and Entering on community radio Triple R

Australian Indigenous art is celebrated around the world – but how much is understood about its pivotal role in Indigenous culture, country, politics and law? 

For the Yolngu people of north-east Arnhem Land, art is more than just aesthetic, it is a means of cultural diplomacy, and a respectful assertion of power in its diverse forms, from sovereignty to influence, authority and control, to energy, strength and pride.

This episode brings together two significant exhibitions of Indigenous art on now, Yolngu Power: the art of Yirrkala, and 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art.

This conversation was recorded at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on 30 July 2025. 

Speakers

Marcia Langton Co-curator (with Judith Ryan) of the exhibition 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art, Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne (until 22 November 2025) Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies, Associate Provost and Distinguished Professor, University of Melbourne   

Clare Wright Author, Naku Dharuk The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy and more Professor of History and Professor of Public Engagement at La Trobe University 

Anna Clark (host) Author, Making Australian History, Private Lives, Public History, the History Wars  Professor of history, Australian Centre for Public History, University of Technology Sydney 

Further information:

Yolngu power: the art of Yirrkala Art Gallery of New South Wales (until 6 October 2025)

65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne (until 22 November 2025) 

Join a full house at the Sydney Opera House with Nobel winning scientist Jennifer Doudna and Big Ideas' presenter Natasha Mitchell to discuss the huge social, ethical, and scientific implications of the CRISPR gene editing revolution her groundbreaking discovery with Emmanuelle Charpentier and colleagues kicked off. From curative therapies to gene edited babies - will we use it to hack our own evolution - are we already? 

This event was presented in 2024 by the Sydney Opera House, Big Questions Institute (BQI), Sydney Writers’ Festival, UNSW Sydney.

Original publication: 24 July 2024

Speaker:

Professor Jennifer Doudna2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry co-winner Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s ChairProfessor, Departments of Chemistry and of Molecular and Cell BiologyFounder, Innovative Genomics InstituteUniversity of California, BerkeleyInvestigator, Howard Hughes Medical InstituteSenior investigator, Gladstone Institutes

Further information and listens:

World's first CRISPR gene edited babies born - are we ready?(2018 Science Friction episode with Natasha Mitchell)

The CRISPR gene-edited babies and the doctor who made them - what really happened? (2019 Science Friction episode with Natasha Mitchell)

Out of jail, is the CRISPR-baby scandal scientist at it again? (2023 Science Friction episode with Natasha Mitchell)

Feral science or solution? Unleashing gene drives (Science Friction episode with Natasha Mitchell)

Making happier animals? Gene editing in the farmyard (Science Friction episode with Natasha Mitchell)

Hear Natasha Mitchell learn how to do CRISPR gene editing in 2016 (as part of a 4-part Earshot series The Hidden History of Eugenics, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

The science and ethics of genome editing with Jennifer Doudna and Kevin Esvelt (video of event hosted by Natasha Mitchell in 2018)

Natasha Mitchell's review of Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Gene: An Intimate History

Stories help us to understand what is happening in the world and how it impacts us. Stories help us to relate to the experience of 'the Other' and their suffering building an emotional understanding. Journalist and academic Helen Vatiskopoulos describes the power of stories to share information to the masses and the problems that arise when the narrative is distorted. What is the responsibility of the media? How does media and social media impact on whose stories are being told and whose are being left out?

What's the Story? Migration, Memories and the Importance of Controlling the Narrative, the Inaugural Oration for the 50th anniversary of the Multicultural Council of South Australia

Speaker

Dr. Helen VatsikopoulosWalkley Award-Winning Journalist; Industry Professional Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney

For 85 years, Meanjin has published the essays of Australian writers. The magazine's founding editor, Clem Christesen, wanted Meanjin's writers 'to reveal and clarify our life by showing it to us though a vision different from ours and deeper." In the wake of the news the magazine is closing, Big Ideas explores and celebrates the essay in all its forms.

This conversation was recorded at the Words on the Waves Festival on 28 May 2025.

Speakers

David Marr Presenter, Late Night Live, ABC Radio National, author, My Country: Stories, essays and speeches and more

Esther Anatolitis Out-going editor, Meanjin, editor, Essays that Changed Australia, Meanjin 1940 to Today, and author, When Australia Became a Republic, (out in October through Monash University Publishing's In the National Interest series)

Brooke Boland Author, Gulp Swallow

Ashleigh Wilson (host) Author, Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing, A Year with Wendy Whiteley, and Transcendence: 50 Years of Unforgettable Moments at the Sydney Opera House