Big Ideas

For every cancer patient, there's a life story that has influenced diagnosis, treatment, and survival.

A patient in a vulnerable housing or financial position may not be able to participate in treatment fully, while those incarcerated may only be accessing cancer care for the first time. It's this holistic view of patients that clinicians want to better integrate into treatment — in and outside of the hospital.

In this panel discussion from the 2023 NSW Cancer Innovations Conference, learn how experts in Indigenous health, justice, psychiatry, and oncology are getting cancer care to better respond to the social and cultural determinants of health.

To change violent behaviour, regulators and assistance services need compassion for the perpetrators. That's the consent of our panel of psychiatrists, psychologists and women who went through domestic violence themselves. You'll hear about the impact of trauma and what it does to your brain; how abuse destroys your identity; the hurt and healing effect of speaking out and what turns a victim into a survivor.

In a world that's warming faster than ever before, there are some places that are seen as future refuges from the ravages of climate change. New Zealand is high on the list, especially among the ultra-rich.

But for architect and social entrepreneur Indy Johar, that escape can't really exist — the world's too entangled. After all, it takes a planet to make an iPhone. So how would a deeper reckoning with this entanglement inform the way we adapt to climate change, and the machine-learning revolution that's on our doorstep?

Although Elizabeth was only a little girl when her mother Anne was executed, their relationship significantly shaped the later queen's character, religion and reign. Historian Tracy Borman pieces together evidence from original documents and artefacts to show their bond and long-lasting influence; and she tells a story of famous royal women, the significance of symbols and the skills of outsmarting the intrigues of competing male courtiers.d.

From the Amazons to the Ukraine conflict, women have always been on the frontline of war. But their role and contribution are still disputed. Big Ideas sets the record straight. How has war become an all-make space? And why were women allowed to be astronauts a full thirty years before they were allowed to fight in combat?

It was on Antarctica's most remote stations that prompted scientist Meganne Christian to consider a life in space.

On Concordia, also dubbed 'White Mars', Meganne did some accidental training. She experienced windchills at –104 degrees, 100 days without sun, and profound isolation — conditions the European Space Agency uses to test future astronauts. 

In 2022, Meganne became one of 17 new reserve astronauts for the ESA, out of a pool of 22,500 applicants. 

In this keynote for National Science Week 2023, Meganne shares her insights and explains why a ride on the 'vomit comet' is a pre-requisite for any budding astronaut.

The consumption of media is perhaps the most fragmented it's ever been. It's a world swimming in unopened tabs, in-video links, and scrolls that never end: a world of near-infinite choice.

In this roundtable from the 2023 Melbourne International Film Festival, an author, a critic, a film buff, and cook join forces to discuss what culture they're consuming, how they're doing it, and why.

Nicole Kitman, Errol Flynn, Peter Finch and David Gulpilil… they all are Australian actors who made their fortune in Hollywood. Australian talent is in fact very popular in the glitzy and cut-throat cinema business. Why is that? The book 'Cast Mates' looks behind the Hollywood curtain, from the Golden Age in the 1930s to the streaming wars of today. It follows the lives these four Australian actors and their cast mates and tells a story of how Australian cinema was founded, then faltered, before finding itself again.

For fire scientist Philip Zylstra, there are a lot of myths contained in the modern approach to containing bushfires in Australia. Namely, that management practices after colonisation continued pre-colonial Indigenous approaches in the form of prescribed burns.

In his view, that's not correct. Instead, he argues the science underpinning prescribed burns isn't sound, resulting in a one-size-fits-all approach whose roots lie in classical England.

A 31,000-year-old skeleton with a successfully amputated foot has rewritten the medical history books. The extraordinary find in Borneo challenges modern medicine's amputation record, which stretches back a mere 100 years. An expert panel traces the discovery story and describes a pre-historic caring and medically skilled society.