Life & Faith

Erinch Sahan believes that the key to building safer, healthier and stronger communities can be found in a doughnut.

Doughnut Economics is a visual framework and growing movement that seeks to tackle humanity’s biggest problems through a fresh new understanding of our world.

Erinch shares how his experience as a senior executive at Procter & Gamble, Oxfam and head of the World Fair Trade Organisation, led him to his current role as head of the Dougnut Economics Action Lab, where he and his team works with businesses, governments and communities, to re-imagine how economics can be used to build a better future.

Erinch also teaches at the University of Cambridge and is a respected global voice on global trade, business practice and bringing ethics to economics.

We examine how this innovative new movement brings a fresh perspective to some of our biggest local and global challenges. And we take a closer look at how it’s possible to include ideals like stewardship in our continued pursuit of profits, pleasure and happiness.

Explore:  

Doughnut Economics Action Lab website 

Kate Raworth’s ‘Doughnut Economics’ Ted Talk 

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Tim Winton talks to Life & Faith about his new novel Juice.

Tim Winton is one of Australia’s most loved writers. He is also well-known as an environmental activist and defender of landscapes and fragile ecosystems. And now, as a grandfather to 6 children, he is clearly deeply concerned about what we might be leaving behind to them and those who come after them.

His lates novel, Juice, is set in the distant future, a time when climate catastrophe has wreaked havoc on the globe. Civilisation has crumbled. Huge parts of the earth, in a band emanating from the equator, are completely uninhabitable. It's all about the global unravelling that could accompany climate devastation. It’s frightening and sobering. And yet somehow determinedly hopeful.

Tim came into the CPX studio to talk about Juice and what inspired this challenging piece of art.  

Explore:

Tim Winton’s novel Juice 

Ningaloo Nyinggulu

Simon Smart’s review of Juice at ABC Religion & Ethics

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Living out one’s commitments and beliefs is the most political thing we can do, says theologian and public commentator Michael Jensen.

Politics, both here in Australia and around the world, feels increasingly existential as we angst over whether our political tribe, or the other side, will gain office.

In this episode of Life & Faith, we get public commentator Michael Jensen to set us straight: how do we solve a problem like the ultimacy of our politics – the fact that it feels as though the fate of the country rests on whoever gets elected to lead it?

We cover the way Christianity is often identified with one side of politics and why “sin”, though an unpopular idea, acts as a helpful check on anyone who wields political power. Michael also offers us “a litmus test for whether a political position is Christian” and challenges everyone to be more realistic, and less idealistic, about what earthly politics can achieve.

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Explore:

Michael Jensen’s book Subjects and Citizens: The Politics of the Gospel 

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The US will soon choose its 47th president. Peter Wehner, former Republican insider, explains the national mood. 

In the week before the 2024 US presidential election, perhaps the most consequential election in this year of elections, we hear from former Republican speechwriter and evangelical Peter Wehner on what has happened to the party he used to call his own.

Wehner served in three Republican administrations. He explains how President Ronald Reagan’s vision of America as a “shining city on a hill” drew him to conservatism in the first place and contrasts that aspirational national myth with the current mood in the Republican party.

Now a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum based in Washington D.C., Wehner’s public commentary on politics, faith, and the politicisation of faith regularly appears in The New York Times and The Atlantic.

We delve into the role of self-described evangelicals in American politics, and Wehner’s grave concerns for the future of not only the Republican party, but his country.

Explore

Peter Wehner’s profile on X (Twitter)

Peter Wehner’s article in The Atlantic: This Election is Different

Simon’s interview with Michael Wear, Cultivating Better Politics.

Simon’s interview with Darrell Bock, The US Election and the Politicisation of Faith. 

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Sarah Irving-Stonebraker makes a case for history as a key part of understanding who we are and where our lives find meaning.

Sarah Irving-Stonebraker says we are living in an ahistoric age – where we are increasingly ignorant of the past and therefore less equipped to understand ourselves and those around us. In her latest book Priests of History: Stewarding the past in an ahistoric age, Sarah urges her readers to attend to history; to seek to understand the past – it's people and events. She promises that if we do, we’ll find out “that it's far stranger and far more fascinating than you realise.”

In an age underpinned by the idea that life is about self-invention and fulfilment, Sarah believes that paying careful attention to history we will find ourselves more connected,  more embedded in stories larger than ourselves. This is something deeply needed in our rootless and disconnected age.

Explore:

Sarah's book: Priests Of History: Stewarding The Past In An Ahistoric Age

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Investigative journalist Nick McKenzie explains what drives him to risk huge amounts to expose injustice and corruption.

Nick Mackenzie is a 14 x Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist who has uncovered some of the highest profile cases of corruption in recent Australian history. Nick has exposed the local mafia, Crown Casino’s links to criminal figures, political donations by Chinese interests, national security issues, foreign bribery by the Reserve Bank and other companies. Most recently he uncovered corruption in the CFMEU - Australia's main trade union in building and construction.

When he and veteran journalist Chris Masters together revealed shocking war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, they opened a wound in the Australian psyche. Huge and powerful forces tried to shut them down, but they wouldn’t keep quiet. When the “defamation case of the century” was launched against them, they relied on SAS soldiers themselves telling inconvenient truths about their war experience.

Nick’s book on the war crimes saga and the unsuccessful defamation case against him and Chris Masters is Crossing the Line: The Inside Story of Murder, Lies and a Fallen Hero.

Explore

Nick McKenzie’s website https://www.nickmckenzie.com.au/

The book Crossing the Line: The Inside Story of Murder, Lies and a Fallen Hero

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Author Shankari Chandran believes storytelling may be our most powerful weapon in the search for hope, truth, empathy and justice. 

Shankari is a Sri Lankan Thamil Australian author. Her third novel Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens won Australia’s most prestigious literary award, the Miles Franklin, last year. In this interview with Life & Faith, Shankari shares her story, her inspirations and the power of storytelling as a carrier of hope, an antidote to injustice and a catalyst for empathy.   

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Explore:  

Shankari’s website

Research uncovers the secrets to thriving as individuals and communities. 

What are the ingredients of a life that will help us to thrive as people? How do we go about cultivating those ingredients? What does it mean to truly flourish as a person?

Policy makers are interested in these questions. So are educationalists. And as individuals it’s a topic that we increasingly seek answers to. People these days are very focused on wellbeing and what will aid or hinder that.

Tyler VanderWeele’s research in this area engages huge data sets and deep analysis. He is Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Director of the Human Flourishing Program.

Professor VanderWeele’s many insights into what makes for human flourishing are worth hearing. Some might come as a surprise!

In a money-hungry world that's focused on profits, ethical impact investing seeks to re-introduce compassion and benevolence to our system of buying, selling and money-making.

Sam Richards is the Managing Director of Brightlight, an investment firm that seeks to do more than simply make money. Brightlight - along with a growing number of family offices and individual investors - seeks to use financial markets to improve social and environmental outcomes for real people in real communities. In this interview with Life & Faith, Sam offers us a glimpse into the world of ethical investing - its motivations, its challenges, its inner workings and its growing impact.

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Explore: 

• Brightlight website 
• CPX Podcast Episode: The Ethics of What We Eat  
• Adam Smith’s ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’

Life & Faith producer, Allan Dowthwaite, takes over the studio to mark 500 episodes of amazing conversations.

Allan Dowthwaite, CPX’s media director, normally runs the recording studio for the team. But in this special episode, marking twelve-and-a-half years of the podcast, he’s commandeered the mic as your personal guide to Life & Faith’s greatest conversations, organised into the following categories for your listening pleasure.

Links are included to any episode you want to listen to in full.

1. The cultural waters in which we swim, featuring Sydney Morning Herald Economics Editor Ross Gittins, political scientist Dale Kuehne, New York Times film writer Alissa Wilkinson, cultural critic Andy Crouch, and author Tim Winton.
2. How Christianity explains our world, featuring cold case detective Jim Warner Wallace, author Marilynne Robinson, author Francis Spufford, and historian Tom Holland.
3. Surprising stories, featuring Oxford mathematician John Lennox, Alex Gaffikin, who wintered on Antarctica for two years, Johnnie Walker, beloved authority on the Camino de Santiago, and the late scholar of African-American religion, Albert J. Raboteau.
4. Indigenous Australians, featuring Yorta Yorta man William Cooper, Torres Strait Islander leader and pastor Gabriel Bani, and Aunty Maureen Atkinson, member of the Stolen Generation.
5. Changing one’s mind about faith, featuring ABC Religion & Ethics editor Scott Stephens and author Susannah McFarlane.
6. Ordinary people, extraordinary acts, featuring Australian nurse Valerie Browning AM, Zimbabwean fast bowler Henry Olonga, and Danny and Leila Abdallah, whose remarkable act of forgiveness stunned the nation.

Big thanks to Hugh Clark, Karen Tong, and Anthea Godsmark who have all worked on Life & Faith over the years. 

Thanks to Phillipa West for her photographic prowess on this episode's artwork.

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Get tickets to this year’s Richard Johnson Lecture with Tim Winton.