Big Ideas

Feed your mind. Be provoked. One big idea at a time. Your brain will love you for it. Grab your front row seat to the best live forums and festivals with Natasha Mitchell.

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Episodes

Being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza — with Peter Beinart and Sarah Schwartz

What's happening in Gaza is horrifying and shocking. As the world watches on, how are different Jewish communities reckoning with a war being waged in their name by Israel, against Hamas and the Palestinian people? This event was recorded at The Wheeler Centre on 27 May 2025 in partnership with the Jewish Council of Australia. Speakers Peter Beinart Author, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning and The Crisis of ZionismProfessor of Journalism and Political Science at the City U...

Jun 05, 2025•55 min

We asked for workers and got people — inside the temporary visa scheme putting food on your plate

A workforce we rarely hear about, lives in limbo, and stories from the coalface. From economic gains and cultural exchanges to exploitation and absconding, what are the successes and problems of the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme? Who picks and processes those yummy strawberries you're about to put in your shopping trolley, or the crisp veggies you might stir-fry tonight? Did you know it could be a nurse or a police officer from a Pacific Island or Timor Leste on a temporary sea...

Jun 04, 2025•1 hr 6 min

The unbearable intimacy of voicing someone’s words — with Forced Entertainment

Words can mean everything, or nothing at all: it all depends on how they're delivered. This relationship between writer, script, actor and audience creates a particular tension that lies at the heart of performance. Who gives meaning to the words, interprets the creative material, who holds the power? This is a lecture, but not as you know it, by members of the multi award-winning British theatre company Forced Entertainment. The 15th annual Rex Cramphorn Memorial Lecture was delivered at the Un...

Jun 03, 2025•1 hr

Gina Chick on what dark nights of the soul can teach us about life and living

Gina Chick made her name as the inaugural winner of Alone Australia, but her story begins a long time before that. It involves unimaginable hardship, death grief, illness and injury. How has she learnt to sit with all that life has thrown at her, and remain joyful and true to herself, in the face of adversity? This event was recorded at the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne, with thanks to Readings Books . Speakers Gina Chick Author, We Are the Stars (Winner of the Australian Book Industry's Matt R...

Jun 02, 2025•55 min

Safe at home – who profits when you’re afraid of your neighbours?

Your personal safety is big business, so much so that it’s given rise to “security capitalism”, a phenomenon where attempts to buy personal safety shape the world around us. As security becomes just another status symbol, do these gadgets make us safer or do they create a whole new list of anxieties – a self-fulfilling prophecy of perceived threat and risk aversion? This conversation 'Trapped: Does the security industry make us less safe?' was recorded at the CUNY Graduate Centre. Speakers Mark ...

May 29, 2025•54 min

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