The Interrobang

By The Wheeler Centre

Personal Journals Society & Culture Arts Technology Natural Sciences Comedy Social Sciences

What's The Interrobang about?

Catch up with the best discussions and reflections from The Interrobang: a new festival driven entirely by your questions, from the Wheeler Centre.

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The Interrobang episodes:

02.24.2016
Is the concept of a country obsolete?
Responding to a huge volume of questions on borders, refugees and migration, Geraldine Brooks, Tom Elliott, Voranai Vanijaka and Mark Colvin search for insight and progress on this charged and crucial subject. 'I've had a lot of experience in places where...
01.27.2016
What is the best way to destroy the internet before it destroys us? Cory Doctorow and Alan Brough
It has to be said: the cat pictures might not be enough. The internet definitively sucks sometimes. It’s a willing and fertile host to our most objectionable prejudice, anger and desire; an open marketplace for exploitation, child porn and illicit...
01.25.2016
What’s the ‘good’ in the good fight? Questions for ethical thinking in strange times
If we peel back religion, politics, economics and other big players in our collective pursuit of the ‘common good’ … what do we end up with? How are our ideas of goodness formed – and can they ever be agreed upon? The...
01.20.2016
When is Australia racist? Questions of difference and fairness
Australian racism is a slippery thing. We’ve seen it (at the football, on a bus with a singing French tourist, in select policies of successive governments, at anti-something protests). We know it exists. But as a nation – a deeply multicultural...
01.08.2016
Why are people nicer when it’s your birthday? Questions of relativity and hope
How are you? Such a habitual, everyday question remains one of our most difficult to answer honestly and fully. Where do we even begin? Are we ever possessed by just one state or feeling? What moves the tides of our emotional...
01.05.2016
One last question: Cheryl Strayed, on jumping off mountains
As part of The Interrobang, Cheryl Strayed – author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things – shares a story of her children leaping, literally, into the unknown. 'When I contemplated the question of the relationship between words and actions,' she begins, 'I thought about a recent...
01.05.2016
One last question: Mary Norris, on the importance of words
The chicken is just the egg’s way of making another egg.Mary Norris 'Well,' says Mary Norris – New Yorker copy editor and author of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, 'it’s true that my life has been completely squandered on words. I’ve...
01.03.2016
Adam Liaw: What is the difference between muffins and cupcakes?
In this rollicking short lecture, MasterChef Australia-winning chef and Destination Flavour presenter Adam Liaw attempts to pick apart the differences – etymologically, compositionally, and culturally – between muffins and cupcakes. Along the way, he touches on how we assign meaning to what we eat,...
01.03.2016
Upulie Divisekera: How does the world end?
Scientists have told us how the world began, but how do they think it will end? Explore pre-human mass extinctions (and how close it came to ‘the end’) – and why our thoughts often drift toward apocalyptic predictions and end...
12.03.2015
Mary Norris and Jane Caro: Why does ‘i’ come before ‘e’, except after ‘c’?
In the hierarchy of improbable things, a grammatical error in the pages of the New Yorker must certainly sit close to the top – and as copy editor at the notoriously fastidious literary institution, Mary Norris has been at the frontline of...
12.01.2015
Why be good? Questions of work, love and feminism
Discuss the complexities of gender and power with the formidable critical faculties of Meghan Daum, Jane Caro, Geraldine Brooks, Nakkiah Lui and Sally Warhaft. While Roxane Gay has popularised the notion of being a ‘bad feminist’, one might ask: what does...
11.28.2015
What future do we want – and deserve? Questions for the places, politics and pleasures of the hereafter
Where are we headed – and what will the journey be like? How do we deal with rapid change, how can we make more deliberate decisions – and how do we ensure we’re even included in that process? In this session, Cory...

What's The Interrobang about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Interrobang episodes:

Is the concept of a country obsolete?

What is the best way to destroy the internet before it destroys us? Cory Doctorow and Alan Brough

What’s the ‘good’ in the good fight? Questions for ethical thinking in strange times

When is Australia racist? Questions of difference and fairness

Why are people nicer when it’s your birthday? Questions of relativity and hope

One last question: Cheryl Strayed, on jumping off mountains

One last question: Mary Norris, on the importance of words

Adam Liaw: What is the difference between muffins and cupcakes?

Upulie Divisekera: How does the world end?

Mary Norris and Jane Caro: Why does ‘i’ come before ‘e’, except after ‘c’?

Why be good? Questions of work, love and feminism

What future do we want – and deserve? Questions for the places, politics and pleasures of the hereafter