Big Ideas

What is more important to you, that authorities can monitor online messages for crime and child abuse — or that your messages are always completely private? You can't have it both ways, and that's the problem with end-to-end encryption. And what about government exploiting workarounds to access the encrypted messages of political dissidents? Big Ideas investigates the dilemma between possibly necessary online surveillance and privacy.

How do you resist when your identity is reduced to a number? A conversation with Behrouz Boochani and his good friend, writer and human rights advocate, Arnold Zable, about the language and art of resistance.

Australia has a long tradition of dissent – with some environmental protections won as a result. But do new laws unduly impede the right to protest and silence dissent?  What are the reasonable limits to peaceful protest in a democracy, especially when facing an existential threat such as climate change?

Big Ideas is unable to provide podcast episodes of the 2022 Reith Lectures being broadcast this week from Monday to Thursday.

Audio of the four lectures will be available on the Big Ideas website for a limited time only. 

However, you can listen to the lectures and find transcripts on the BBC website.

There’s already plenty of debate, for and against about the need for a permanent Indigenous Voice to federal parliament. Victoria decided to get ahead of the game in 2021 and set up a commission on truth and treaty.

More people, worldwide, are becoming 'sober-curious', and questioning their relationship with alcohol. Teenagers and twentysomethings are less likely to binge drink. It's far cry from the situation, Jill Stark, found herself in ten years ago, when she released her book 'High Sobriety', about her 12 months off the booze.

Australians are feeling the pinch of cost of living pressures.

Cryptocurrencies are revolutionising the finance world as we know it. Fintech has produced a decentralised finance system that exists parallel to the traditional one, and it's difficult to move assets between the two. But is crypo in finance recreating the old problems? Or is it offering new solutions?

Extreme heat has negative effects on your health and we're experiencing more heatwaves due to climate change so how can we protect our health and lifestyle?And online learning versus face-to face....which is best?

The 'Feared and Revered' exhibition, currently on display at the National Museum of Australia, explores how goddesses, demons, witches, spirits, and saints, have shaped our understanding of the world.  The exhibition celebrates a diverse range of female spiritual beings across cultural traditions and religions - like the Hindu goddess, Kali - and it examines feminine power and identity