Bob Brown is a giant of the environmental movement and Australian politics.

A former doctor, Bob is the co-founder of the Australian Greens, served as a Senator from 1996, and party leader from 2005 until his retirement in 2012. Today at 81 he continues his lifelong work of environmental campaigning with the Bob Brown Foundation. 

The first biography of Bob aptly called him the “Gentle Revolutionary”. The BBC once called him the World’s Most Inspiring Politician.

1976 is the year Bob has called his "year of reformation". The seeds of Australia's most significant environmental campaign were sown when he rafted down the Franklin River for the first time. Calling the Franklin "the river that set me free", that trip led Bob to publicly came out as gay in the same year. He also protested the arrival of a nuclear war ship in Hobart with a hunger strike atop Kunanyi/Mount Wellington.

In his 2025 book Defiance, Bob writes of the  “unifying purpose” of “safeguarding life on earth, honouring happiness and securing humanity for its future in the universe”.

Guest: Bob Brown

Footage of Bob rafting the Franklin from The Franklin Wild River (1980)