Some things feel impossible to change without money and power. Meet four trailblazers didn't let that stop them. Fighting corporations. Stopping violence. Transforming talk on sex and consent. Helping men heal from childhood trauma. They join Natasha Mitchell and an audience of high school students to explore what pushed them to act.
Women and girls in Iran continue to take to the streets and protest gender oppression and human rights abuses. And too often they risk their lives for this fight. Iranian-born human rights advocate Nazanin Boniadi has used her public profile as an actress to campaign in solidarity with the people of Iran. For that, she's been honoured with the 2023 Sydney Peace Prize. The 'Women, Life, Freedom' movement has demonstrated the unifying power and potential of women's rights as a lever for mobilisati...
US singer, songwriter and producer Caroline Polachek is known as one of the most inventive pop musicians working in the industry today, pushing the boundaries of what the genre is, and what it means for the people who listen to it. Off the back of her acclaimed seventh album, ‘Desire, I want to turn into you’, Polachek opens up about her creative process, her varied career, and why pop should be respected as an artform in its own right.
Speaking freely isn't only about Freedom of Speech legislation, it's equally about social norms, loving your family and courage. Authors Lea Ypi and Hayley Campbell discuss what's difficult to talk about. Death and what happens your body when you die. And whether Albania has experienced more freedom in communist times – only in very specific circumstances. They explore the factors that allow us to speak freely, what forces can constrain these … and what happens when we are unleashed to speak the...
Housing is a hot mess in many remote Aboriginal communities, including Tennant Creek, and the rollercoaster of government policies and interventions hasn't helped the situation. What's on offer is often culturally unsafe, crowded, and a climate disaster. But housing is hard to fix too. This group of Traditional Owners, health professionals, architects and others have a vision for how.
Psychedelics were once the domain of hippies and cults, but these drugs have come long way from the ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ countercultural philosophy of the 1960s and 70s. Nowadays, the field of psychedelic research is experiencing a resurgence, with substances like psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine being used in controlled laboratories to treat complex mental health issues. In 2023, Australia became the first country in the world to permit psychiatrists to use psychedelic medicines to treat c...
Finishing your undergraduate assignments in English Literature in breaks between selling drugs … fighting and hurting people and committing crimes while discussing the finer nuances of human morality. Best-selling author Gabriel Krauze speaks openly about his life as a former gang criminal living on a notorious housing estate in South Kilburn in London - with quite different extra-curricular activities than most other English literature students. Because that's his other side: A passionate stude...
Tiger parents: do their methods raise happy and successful human beings, or burnt out, damaged therapy cases? In this hyper competitive age we live in, could their approach bring up a new generation of winners this country needs to get ahead? Six Asian Australian comedians, writers and performers thrash it out in debate form to decide: Does Australia need more tiger parents? The audience’s applause will decide the winner.
From the moment we’re born, we all age. So why limit the possibilities? The latest Intergenerational Report describes Australia's ageing population as an economical and fiscal challenge ... a burden. Ageism is rife, but to age is to live. So what about thriving too? Find out how there's magic to found when relationships across the generations are fostered and why we all benefit — whether we're young, middling, or older
Craig Foster has a vision for the future: An Australia without racism, with equal access to food and representation and compassion for refugees. But it's 75 years since the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Craig Foster has a warning for us: Things need to change, and hopefully it doesn't take another 75 years. His passionate insights will leave you with a lot to think about …. heavy and uncomfortable thoughts.
In her fifth Massey lecture, Escaping the Burrow, self-described "feral intellectual" Astra Taylor explores how insecurity can also offer us a path to wisdom — individually and collectively. A vision of hope and possibility. For the CBC Massey lectures , the renowned filmmaker, writer, political activist, and sometime rock musician Astra explores how our society now runs on 'manufactured' insecurity — and asks, is there another way?...
An appeal for solidarity with species other than our own, in this fourth Massey lecture by renowned Canadian-American filmmaker, writer, political organiser, rock musician and self-described 'feral intellectual' Astra Taylor. We, Them, Us, our stories and actions are all intimately intertwined across space, place, and time. In her thought-provoking CBC Massey lectures, Astra explores how our society now runs on heightened sense of manufactured insecurity. Can that be unmade?...
In her third provocative CBC Massey lecture, Canadian-American filmmaker, writer, political organiser, rock musician and self-described "feral intellectual" Astra Taylor argues our innate existential insecurity is vital to our curiosity, creativity, compassion, and capacity to care. Drawing on her own childhood, she asks, how can educators better foster these? We're in the middle of an attack on our essential nature, Astra argues, with confronting consequences for our society and state of mind. ...
We take certain fundamental rights for granted, but who got to define them and are they enough? You'll find solidarity in these stories of baroners and commoners from filmmaker, writer, political organiser, sometime rock musician and self-described 'feral intellectual' Astra Taylor. In this year's thought-provoking CBC Massey lectures, Astra explores how our society runs on 'manufactured insecurity' — and how we can challenge that.
Who was Cura and what's she got to do with how capitalism shapes our lives and psyches? In this year's thought-provoking CBC Massey lectures, renowned Canadian-American filmmaker, writer, political organiser, rock musician and self-described 'feral intellectual' Astra Taylor explores how our society is now driven by a 'manufactured insecurity'. Fundamental to the human condition is a sense of existential insecurity — the sense that we are all vulnerable and dependent on each other. But manufactu...
