Big Ideas

Join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell with three women embracing the radical practice of finding joy in big bodies. Fat bodies are often stigmatised, stereotyped, shamed, medicalised, and politicised. Even the word F.A.T gets denigrated. But there is another way. Reckoning with eating disorders and society's limitations, Dani, Evie, and Kalpana are no longer holding back from the delights of food, fashion, dance, ocean swimming, and more. Hear why, for them, the personal is political. But can expectations to be fat and jolly become a burden too? What about the radical act of just being and big?

This event was hosted and organised by the inaugural Fat Joy Festival and the 11th International Weight Stigma Conference

Speakers

Dani Galvin (aka Dani Adriana)Content creator and body positivity and mental health advocateFat peer support facilitatorCo-creator, plus-size pop-culture inspired costumes and accessoriesBachelor of Counselling graduate

Evie (Evangeline) GardenerPublic health researcher and advocatePhD studentUniversity of Queensland

Kalpana PrasadPerformer, facilitator, choreographer with Bring a Plate Dance companyPostgraduate speech pathology studentDisability support worker

Thanks to Dr Lily O'Hara from Griffith University, the convenor of the Fat Joy Festival and the 11th International Weight Stigma Conference.

Further reading and viewing

How we think about obesity and body weight is changing, here's why (article co-athored by Evie Gardener)

The Real Cost of Appearance Ideals and Discrimination report (The Butterfly Foundation)

The body is not an apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

What we talk about when we talk about FAT by Aubrey Gordon

You have the right to remain fat by Virgie Tovar

"Fat" isn't a bad word — it's just a way I describe my body by Aubrey Gordon 

Selling Stigma: Afflictive Power and Fat Oppression - presentation by Rachel Fox

Meet apes that swallow leaves to dislodge worms and sparrows that use cigarette butts to repel parasites. Many animals use medicine to treat themselves — something that for a long time has been thought to be the exclusive domain of humans. Now scientists are turning to the medical knowledge of the animal kingdom to improve agriculture, create better lives for our pets, and develop new pharmaceutical drugs.

Presented at the Free Library of Philadelphia

Listen to Big Ideas:

Speaker

Jaap de RoodeSamuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Biology at Emory UniversityAuthor of Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves

At face value, collaboration sounds like a good thing: collaboration in the classroom, with colleagues, or between nations. But throughout history, collaboration was not always considered a virtuous act, and those who were identified as collaborators were shunned, humiliated or worse. This talk explores how people justify their involvement in wrongdoing, and how when collaboration devolves into conformity, it risks silencing dissent.

This event was recorded at the Bundanon Art Museum.

Speaker

Dr Simon Longstaff — Executive Director, The Ethics Centre

Food is essential to human life, but are we taking it for granted? Popular chef, writer and broadcaster Adam Liaw is an advocate for good food for everyone. He takes us on a journey through the history and science of food, and its place in our societies, economies and cultures throughout time, arguing that food should play a central role in government policy making.

The 2025 Hugh Stretton Oration was recorded at the University of Adelaide on 14 May 2025.

Speakers

Adam LiawCook, writer, broadcaster

Alison CoatesProfessor of Human Nutrition, University of South Australia

Books on tyrants, dictators, and authoritarian leaders are suddenly bestsellers again as we all try to make sense of the tilt towards tyrannical leadership around the world, the mass compliance it commands, and its use of terror, fear, and often violence, to govern. Two of Australia's leading scholars on China and the Soviet Union, Linda Jaivin (author of BOMBARD THE HEADQUARTERS! The Cultural Revolution in China) and Sheila Fitzpatrick (author of The Death of Stalin) join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell to consider two 20th Century tyrants whose legacies live on today.

Speakers

Linda JaivinAuthor and China specialistAssociate, Australian Centre on China in the World, Australian National University

Professor Sheila FitzpatrickHistorian of modern Russia and the Soviet UnionProfessor, Australian Catholic University and Honorary Professor, University of Sydney

This event was presented by Readings Books with Black Inc Books, with thanks to events producer Christine Gordon.

At a time when governments are retreating from promises of progress for First Nations people, what can be achieved through legal and human rights mechanisms?

The 2025 Mabo Oration was recorded at the Cairns Performing Arts Centre on 30 May 2025, with thanks to the Queensland Human Rights Commission and QPAC.

Speakers

Katie KissAboriginal and Torres Strait islander Social Justice Commissioner

Gail MaboVisual Artist, Artistic Director, Choreographer, Writer and Actor

Doctor Who has acted as a mirror to more than six decades of social, technological and cultural change. It's been able to evolve and adapt more radically than any other fiction. Why we are so addicted to fiction, and why does this wonderful wandering time traveller mean so much to so many. This talk was provided by the York Festival of Ideas. The Festival is led by the University of York, UK.

Speaker

John HiggsAuthor of Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2025)

Acclaimed British author Jeanette Winterson argues that 200 years ago, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, was a message in a bottle, a prophesy, of today's AI revolution.

This conversation was recorded at the Sydney Writers' Festival, in partnership with the University of New South Wales's Centre for Ideas on 21 May 2025.

Speakers

Jeanette WintersonAuthor, 12 Bytes: How artificial intelligence will change the way we live and love, Oranges are not the only fruit, and many moreProfessor of New Writing at the University of Manchester

Toby Walsh (host)Author, The Shortest History of AI: Six ideas to understand artificial intelligence today and moreChief Scientist of AI, University of New South WalesFellow, Australian Academy of Science

Citizen Jury is ABC Radio National's experiment in citizen-led democracy. The ingredients? A gnarly issue + a jury of citizens = conversations + ideas for solutions + a public event to share them. Join Big Ideas presenter Natasha Mitchell in Dubbo, NSW for our first Citizen Jury. We all want electricity at the flick of a switch, but who bears the brunt of making that happen? Join citizens who live in Australia's first official Renewable Energy Zone or REZ where millions of solar panels, hundreds of wind turbines, large storage batteries, and high voltage transmission lines are being rolled out over a 20,000 square kilometre area.But the scale and pace are sowing seeds of division in the community. Some see benefits, some see potential harms.What they think could be done better or differently? What can the rest of Australia learn from their experiences about the energy transition?

Thank you to the Dubbo Regional Council and the Western Plains Cultural Centre teams for their support for this event.

Speakers

Adam Ryan (Citizen Jury member)Wiradjuri man and fatherTeacher, Wellington Correctional CentreCouncillor, Dubbo Regional Council (but not representing Council on this panel)

Grant Gjessing (Citizen Jury member)Business owner, Strait-Up Cranes and DiggingPresident, Business Mudgee

Linda Gant (Citizen Jury member)Cattle and sheep farmer with her husband for 40 years in Cassilis, NSW.Member, Cassilis District Development GroupMember, Liverpool Range Wind Farm Community Consultation Committee 

Tony Inder (Citizen Jury member)6th generation merino wool farmer and 'solar sheep grazier' in Wellington, NSW

Andrew Bray (participated in Citizen Jury meetings)National director, ReAlliance (Australian Renewable Energy Alliance)

Janine YoungEnergy and Water Ombudsman NSW (EWON)

Ash AlburyExecutive Director, Planning and Communities, EnergyCo

Peter BennettExecutive Project Director, EnergyCo

And thank you to the various community members and other stakeholders in attendance who participated in the event.

Representatives from ACEREZ and Squadron Energy were also in attendance.

Thanks to cattle and sheep farmer Simon Barton from Wellington, NSW and Michael Bullock, Manager of Bodangora wind farm (Iberdrola) for their participation in a social media story.

Particular thanks to ABC Western Plains Chief of Staff Nick Lowther and rural reporters Claudia Sullivan and Catherine James for their support.

Further information

Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner (AEIC): Community Engagement Review (in relation to Renewable Energy Infrastructure developments).This review was undertaken by the former Commissioner Andrew Dyer, who is now a Professorial Fellow at Monash University.

John Maynard Keynes was an economist whose dreams went beyond balance sheets and into political ideas and cultural movements.

He advised world leaders during world wars, witnessed the great depression first hand and counted himself as one of the Bloomsbury group, a set of London's most influential writers and intellectuals like Virginia Woolf.

This discussion from CUNY Graduate Center is an in depth look at the life of JohnMaynard Keynes and explores his influence on 20th century economics and politics.

Speakers

Zachary CarterJournalist and author who wrote the award-winning Keynes biography "The Price of Peace: money, democracy, and the life of John Maynard Keynes"

Paul KrugmanNobel Prize-winning economist, longtime former columnist for The New York Times, and distinguished professor of Economics at the CUNY Graduate Center