God Forbid

What does living simply mean in 2025? 

With an increasingly complex world, it is becoming harder and harder to detach from Earthly possessions. 

But what if we don't need to, in order to live an awakened and spiritual life?

The monks of today don't look like the ones you might picture from your childhood. They carry iPhones, have social media, and catch planes across the world. 

From Hare Krishna to Humanistic Buddhism, modern followers of mindful traditions grapple with maintaining a connection to the world while not falling prey to its modern trappings of selfishness, consumerism, and greed. 

How do they do it? And what can we learn from them?

GUESTS: 

• His Holiness S.B. Keshava Swami, a Hare Krishna monk, author, and teacher of the Vaishnava Hindu tradition
• Tosana Krsna Dasa, also know as Tilak, a Hare Krishna teacher, pastor and disciple, also a student in both law and religion at the University of Sydney
• Venerable Dr JueWei Shi, a member of the Fo Guang Shan order of Buddhists and Director of the Nan Tien Institute’s Humanistic Buddhism Centre.

This episode of God Forbid was recorded on Dharawal and Gadigal land and produced on Gadigal land. 

It was first broadcast in January 2025

Is a cult a misunderstood religion? Or something much more dangerous?

The line between high-control religions, new religious movements, and 'cults' is as grey as ever. But the fascination we have with these groups is only getting stronger. What counts as a 'cult'? Is it your highly controlling tech workplace? Your gym with a forever-binding contract? Or does the casual use of the word 'cult' do a disservice to those stuck in dangerous and emotionally manipulative religious and spiritual organisations?

To shed some light on the difference between a new religious movement, a cult, and your regular high-control Pentecostal mega-church are the God Forbid guests who have lived, studied, or spoken to survivors of these groups. 

GUESTS: 

• Professor Carole Cusack, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney, specialising in new religious movements (NRMs) contemporary religious trends and Western esotericism.
• Sarah Steel, host and creator of award-winning podcast, Let's Talk About Sects
• Scott Parker, writer and star of stage production, Hillsong Boy

This episode of God Forbid was made on Gadigal land and first broadcast in May 2025. 

Technical production by Craig Tilmouth and Tegan Nicholls.

More Information

If you or someone close to you has been affected by an extreme or controlling group, you can make a submission or anonymous report to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry here: Inquiry into the recruitment methods and impacts of cults and organised fringe groups. 

If you need support or help you can call Lifeline 13 11 14

If God says that man is fallible, and man wrote the Bible, then how can we know that the Bible is the true word of God? 

For most of history, body size has been about more than just health — it’s been a tool of control. 

From colonial ideals of “discipline” to modern-day diet culture, our ideas about fatness and thinness are deeply tied to morality, power, and profit. 

But are we getting it all wrong?

Why do we see fatness as a personal failure rather than a natural variation in human bodies? 

How have our ideas of race and femininity affected our ideas of acceptable fat? 

Is public health really about health, or does it fuel stigma? 

And in an era of body positivity, have we actually made progress — or just rebranded the same old shame?

GUESTS:

• Tess Royale Clancy, fat activist and co-founder of Radically Soft, Sydney’s first ever market for plus sized 2nd hand & new clothes. April Helene-Horton aka The Bodzilla, body positivity advocate, model, and a 2025 ambassador for the Butterly Foundation. 
• Dr Kathryn MacKay, researcher in feminist bioethics and a lecturer at the Sydney Health Ethics Centre.  
• Dr Jane Williams, researcher at the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney and the Australian Centre for Health Engagement, Evidence and Values (ACHEEV) at the University of Wollongong. Also co-host of the Undisciplinary podcast.

This episode first went to air in April 2025

This episode of God Forbid was made on Gadigal and Ngunnawal land.

Technical production by Roi Huberman and Dylan Prins. 

Looking towards the heavens for meaning doesn’t always mean looking to God. 

UFOs (and the modern moniker UAPs) have long been the food for thought of sceptics, theologians, and astrobiologists alike.  

But what does belief in these mysterious phenomena have in common with religion? 

And what implications does life outside Earth have for the existence of God? 

GUESTS:

• Bill Chalker, UFO researcher. Contributing editor, International UFO Reporter. Author of Hair of the Alien and The Oz Files: The Australian UFO Story. 
• Reverend Dr Tim Jenkins, Reader in Anthropology and Religion, Divinity Faculty, University of Cambridge. Author of Images of Elsewhere 
• Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka, Professor, Religious Studies, University of North Carolina Wilmington, specialising in UFO and UAP religions 

This program first went to air in February 2025

This episode of God Forbid was produced on Gadigal land, and recorded on Gadigal and Dharug land as well as the sovereign land of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

The big news for Christians is that this year we had BOTH a new Pope and – for the Anglican communion – the announcement of a new Archbishop of Canterbury.

For Catholics, of course, Leo was the surprise choice at the papal conclave in May.  The first pope from the United States. And the first from the Order of Saint Augustine. And Dr Sarah Mullally will be the first woman to be enthroned as the Church of England’s senior bishop at Canterbury Cathedral in March next year.

Anglicanism is reaching what could be an emerging global schism in the church. Next March the bishops of the conservative Global Anglican Future Conference or GAFCON have been summoned to meet in Nigeria. This could well be one of the most eventful Anglican assemblies in history.

This year saw fundamental change in the power of Artificial Intelligence. For centuries we've defined ourselves by capacities we thought were uniquely human — reasoning, language, creativity, pattern recognition. 

We are now at the stage where Artificial Intelligence makes decisions and generates ideas that we can't fully explain or understand. It may well be a paradigm shift at least as big as evolution.

And...the Zionist Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari famously said this year – 2025 – may be the biggest turning in Jewish history since the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. Harari says Judaism has survived every catastrophe imaginable – even the Holocaust – but never until now has it faced a spiritual catastrophe.

GUESTS:

• Andrew West from the Religion and Ethics Report
• Meredith Lake from Soul Search 
• Senior religious reporter and Editor, Religion and Ethics, Noel Debien
• Scott Stephens from The Minefield

A bohemian journalist who found God in the slums — and built a movement that unsettled both Church and State.

Born in Brooklyn in 1897, Dorothy Day lived many lives: radical writer, suffragist, single mother, and eventually Catholic convert. 

In the midst of the Great Depression, she co-founded the Catholic Worker movement, opening houses of hospitality for the poor and protesting every war America fought. 

To admirers, she was a saint in street clothes; to critics, a communist in disguise. Can holiness and revolution coexist? Day’s life suggests that faith and rebellion may be closer than we think.

GUESTS:

• Paul Elie — author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage
• Martha Hennessy — granddaughter of Dorothy Day and lifelong member of Catholic Worker Movement.
• Robert Ellsberg — former editor of Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker newspaper. He worked closely with her in the final years of her life and is the editor of her published diaries and selected letters, The Duty Of Delight and All the Way to Heaven. 
• Rev Simon Moyle — ordained Baptist Minister and elder at the Grace Tree Christian community in Coburg Melbourne.

This is the sixth and final episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

A street hustler turned minister whose faith transformed Black politics — and himself.

Born Malcolm Little in 1925, Malcolm X rose to fame as a fiery preacher in the Nation of Islam, calling for Black self-determination “by any means necessary.” But after his pilgrimage to Mecca, he embraced Sunni Islam and a universal vision of justice that transcended race. Weeks later, he was assassinated. 

Was Malcolm X a prophet of liberation or a threat to the powerful? His journey from militant separatism to spiritual reformer still forces America — and the world — to confront the cost of conviction.

GUESTS:

• Tamara Payne — co-writer and principal researcher of Pulitzer prize winning biography “The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X” 
• Assistant Professor Jimmy Butts — specialist in Malcolm X Studies at Trinity university in San Antonio Texas 

This is the fifth episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

A French lawyer-turned-theologian who split from Rome — and built his own city of God.

John Calvin fled Catholic France to lead a new Protestant movement in Geneva during the 1500s. His ideas about predestination and the absolute authority of Scripture reshaped Christianity and inspired the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions. Yet under his rule, dissenters were exiled, imprisoned, and violently executed. 

Was he a reckless heretic or a visionary thinker centuries ahead of his time — and what does his death say about the danger of new ideas?

GUESTS:

• Randall C. Zachman Professor Emeritus of Reformation Studies, at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, after many decades at University of Notre Dame. 
• Professor Ben Myers at Alphacrucis University College in Brisbane - author of The Apostles’ Creed: A guide to the ancient catechism 
• Dr Constance Lee is Lecturer in Law at Adelaide University, and author of a forthcoming book Natural Law and the Nature of Government: John Calvin’s Constitutional Theology 

This is the fourth episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

A Persian poet and scholar who tore off her veil — and announced the dawn of a new religious age. 

In the 1840s, Táhirih became one of the first women to preach in public in Iran. As a leading figure in the Bábí movement — a precursor to the Bahá’í faith — she argued that revelation had not ended and that women should be free to study, speak, and lead. 

Her defiance of clerical and royal authority terrified the establishment. In 1852, she was executed in secret, her body buried in silence. Was Táhirih a prophet of liberation or a heretic undone by her own courage?

GUESTS:

• Professor Negar Mottahedeh — cultural critic and film theorist specialising in interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University
• Raya M Hazini — doctoral candidate with her Masters from the Graduate Theological Union
• Dr Zara Moballegh — PhD from Tehran University, she’s now visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard Divinity School. 

This is the third episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.