Big Ideas

Is the world really in the midst of an AI revolution, or is it all just clever marketing, powered by immense amounts of money, capital and hype? This episode arms you to spot AI hype in all its guises, expose the exploitation and power-grabs it aims to hide, and push back against it at work and daily life.

The conversation with Emily M Bender was recorded at RMIT University in partnership with Readings books on 1 July 2025.

The panel discussion Reboot the Narrative was recorded at the Rose Scott Women Writers Festival on 27 June.

Speakers

Emily M Bender — Professor of Linguistics and Adjunct Professor in the School of Computer Science and the Information School at the University of WashingtonCo-author (with Alex Hanna), The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We WantCo-host, Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 podcast

Kobi Leins (host) — Digital ethics and human rights lawyerAuthor, New War Technologies and International Law: The Legal Limits to Weaponising Nanomaterials

Tracey Spicer — Journalist and broadcaster, author of Man-Made: How the bias of the past is being built into the future

Paula Bray — Chief Digital officer at the State Library of Victoria

Lucy Hayward — Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Society of Authors

Ally Burnham (host) — Screen writer and novelist, author, Swallow

Barry Jones and Kerry O'Brien - Two titans of Australian political and social commentary share insights into how to think well, how to act well and how to make sense of politics, history, the fragility of civilisation, science and love.

Presented at the Byron Writers Festival

Speakers

Barry JonesFormer science minister, Labor member of the Victorian and Commonwealth parliaments, author

Kerry O'Brien (host)Award-winning journalist and broadcaster

They cook, make babies, and look impossibly perfect while doing it.Tradwives are using social media to redefine femininity and womanhood… or are they just setting it waaaayyy back?

The Tradwives Club was presented by the Sydney Opera House at the 2025 All About Women Festival.

Speakers

Megan Agnew — Senior Features Writer (New York), The Times of London

Rosie Waterland — Comedian, author of Broken Brains (with Jamila Rizvi), The Anti-Cool Girl and Every Lie I've Ever Told, host of podcasts Mum Says My Memoir is a Lie and Just the Gist

Beverley Wang — National Culture Correspondent, ABC and host of Stop Everything! and Life Matters ABC Radio National

Nakkiah Lui (host) — Writer, actor, director, producer, Black Comedy, Kiki & Kitty, Preppers, Total Control and more

Further information:

Meet the queen of the 'trad wives' (and her eight children) — article by Megan Agnew, The Times

Esther Freud’s first semi-autobiographical novel Hideous Kinky became a film starring Kate Winslet and told the wild story of two little girls living in Morocco with their bohemian mother.  More than 30 years on, those girls are back and growing up fast in her sequel, My Sister and Other Lovers.  Esther joins Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell at the Byron Writers Festival to explore the ties that bind, that tether, and that can traumatise in complicated families. Esther’s great-grandfather was the psychologist Sigmund Freud, her late father was the artist Lucian Freud, and her sister is the fashion designer Bella Freud. How has fiction helped her make sense of her own family? And what is it about sisterly love that can sustain through it all? 

Speaker

Esther FreudNovelist and playwrightAuthor, My Sister and Other Lovers (2025) Thanks to festival director Jessica Alice and team.

The Byron Writers Festival has a series of author events throughout the year. See their website for details.

Thanks to festival director Jessica Alice and team.

What happens when the harsh realities of our daily lives — death, war, illness, hardship — invade that most private of realms — our sleep? Four poets and writers explore how things show up in dreams that otherwise can't be expressed, and how they've used the subconscious to inspire their creative work.

This conversation was recorded at the Addi Road Writers Festival on 17 May 2025.

Speakers

Mireille Juchau - Essayist, novelist, critic, author of The World Without Us and more

Peter Boyle - Poet and translator, author of nine poetry collections including Companions, Ancestors, Inscriptions (shortlisted, 2025 Prime Minister's Literary Awards)

Šime Knežević Poet and playwright, author of the poetry collection In Your Dreams

Felicity Plunkett (host) Critic, editor and poet, author of Vanishing Point and more

Further information:

How Dreams Change Under Authoritarianism — New Yorker magazine, 7 November 2019

The neuroscience of sleep and its disorders - Big Ideas, Monday 9 May 2022

With Donald Trump mediating conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, what has become of the United States' strategy in the Asia Pacific region?

The event Asia Disrupted: Trump's First Six Months was recorded at La Trobe Asia on 1 August 2025.

Speakers

Daniel Flitton — Managing Editor, The Interpreter The Lowy Institute

Dr Lupita Wijaya — Research fellow, La Trobe Asia

Ambika Vishwanath — Principal Research Fellow, La Trobe Asia

Professor Nick Bisley — Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University

Professor Bec Strating (host) — Director, La Trobe Asia

Even years later, children's books can hold a special place in our hearts, and they also teach, comfort, inspire, and grow young minds, and set kids up for life. Two of Australia's best loved children's authors explore the importance of storytelling for children, and reflect on the books that have changed their lives.

This talk was recorded at the Sorrento Writers Festival on 24 April 2025.

Speakers

Alison Lester - Author, Magic Beach, Imagine, Noni the Pony, Kissed by the Moon and many more, Inaugural Children's Laureate 2012-13, Ambassador, Indigenous Literacy Foundation

Jane Godwin - Gogo and the Silver Shoes, Today we have no plans, Red House, Blue House, Green House, Treehouse, Say Hello and many more

Francesca Carter (host) Sorrento Writers Festival

From the archives:

Which subjects are taboo in children's books?Big Ideas, ABC Radio National, 11 September 2019

From  finding the right language to connect to Country, making the world a more poetic place for kids, to a Vulcan salute between two lovers — communication makes the world go round. Three brilliantly creative communicators join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell at the 2025 Byron Writers Festival to consider ways we communicate and how we can do it better. With great communication comes deep connection, understanding, meaning and that wonderful feeling of being understood and understanding another. With bad communication comes deep misunderstanding, disconnection, confusion, and conflict.

Speakers

Dr Debra DankGudanji, Wakaja, Kalkadoon womanEnterprise Fellow, University of South AustraliaAuthor of Terraglossia (2025) and We Come With This Place (2022)Winner of four New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards in 2023, including Book of the Year.

Maxine Beneba ClarkWriter, poet, author and children's author of Afro-Caribbean descentMulti-award winning author of more than fifteen books including The Hate Race (2018), Foreign Soil (2017), Carrying the World, Stuff I'm Not Sorry For: 99 poems for young people (2025) and forthcoming in 2025 is Beautiful Changelings.Inaugural Poet in Residence at the University of MelbourneWinner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry

Dr Damon YoungAward-winning philosopher, author and children's authorAuthor of thirteen books including On Getting Off: Sex and Philosophy (2020), The Art of Reading (2016), Philosophy in the Garden (2012), and Immortal Gestures: Journeys Into the Unspoken (2025)

Our thanks to the 2025 Byron Writers Festival director Jessica Alice and team.

A brass band, goulash cooking in giant pots over open flames, people dancing around a bonfire — a pan-European picnic at the border between Hungary and Austria in 1989 was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Suddenly hundreds of East Germans stormed the border into the West and freedom. It's a moment in history where the power of ordinary people changed the world.

An Escape to Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain was presented at the Adelaide Writers' Week

Speakers

Matthew LongoAuthor of The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron CurtainAssistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University

Annabelle Quince (host)ABC broadcaster and presenter of ABC Radio National's Rear Vision

Without permission, or payment, artificial intelligence has stolen the published words of thousands of Australian writers, and it seems that they have little power to stop it.  What does this mean for the future of human creativity?

Anna Funder's speech was recorded live at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival.

The panel discussion, Can Australian literature survive in the age of streamers & AI? was recorded at Readings bookshop in Hawthorn.

Speakers

Anna Funder - Author, Wifedom, Stasiland, All that I Am

Sophie Cunningham - Writer, artist, teacher, speaker and advocate, Chair of the Board of the Australian Society of Authors, non- executive director of the Copyright Agency

Emily Bitto - Author, The Strays (2015 Stella Prize winner), Wild Abandon

Jenny Darling - Literary agent, Jenny Darling & Associates

Ben Eltham (host) - Arts, media and cultural critic, commentator and journalist