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ABC Australia

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

We love hearing from you about the show or events you are planning. Get in touch!
Email: Bigideas@abc.net.au
SMS line for ABC Radio National: 0418 226 576

Airs Monday to Thursday 8pm, repeated Tuesday to Friday 12pm, on ABC Radio National.

Big Ideas

From doctors spruiking untested therapies to celebrities selling "revolutionary wellness hacks", self-styled health gurus promise results traditional medicine can't. Social media transforms a healthcare system that struggles with GP wait times and short face-to-face appointments. Because when it comes to trust, it turns out fame competes surprisingly well with scientific evidence.

Bad Influence: How the internet hijacked our health was recorded at the York Festival of Ideas. The festival is led by the University of York, UK.

Speakers

Dr Deborah CohenBroadcaster, journalist and author of Bad Influence: How the Internet Hijacked Our Health

Simon GilbodyProfessor of Psychological Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of York and the Hull York Medical School

When you trust social media influencers more than your GP — what can only go wrong?

Alice Pung started writing her first published book as a teenager. Now, it's been read and studied by two generations of Australian teenagers through the school curriculum. On the 20th anniversary of her irreverent, loving memoir of her migrant family's 's everyday struggles and bittersweet triumphs, she reflects on the book's endurance and the various reactions it's provoked in her young readers.

The 2026 EW Cole Lecture was recorded by The Wheeler Centre Australia's first dedicated centre for Books, Writing and Ideas. Explore more discussions like this one on The Wheeler Centre podcast — available wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow @wheelercentre for updates

Speakers:

Alice PungAuthor, Unpolished Gem, Her Father's Daughter, Laurinda, One Hundred Days, Growing Up Asian in Australia (editor) and more

Raina Tran15 year-old writer

Marina SanoCo-creator and owner of Amplify Bookstore

Alice Pung's Unpolished Gem and her conversations with the teenagers who've studied it

Migration has shaped modern Australia, but as the country grows, debates around immigrants and multiculturalism are intensifying. Join David Speers for the ABC’s latest National Forum. We bring together Australians from all walks of life to ask: Is our migration system still working? And just what is our National Identity? It’s a big discussion about the kind of country we want to be.

Panellists

Dr Abdul RizviFormer Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration

John AndersonFormer Deputy Prime Minister

George MegalogenisJournalist and author

Nyadol NyuonLawyer and human rights advocate

Dr Anne AlyMinister for Multicultural Affairs

Andrew HastieShadow Minister for Industry and Sovereign Capability

Barnaby JoyceOne Nation MP

ABC National Forum — migration and the kind of country Australia wants to be

Being poor has become big business in Australia, but not for people who need work. Billions spent. Millions of profits. But who's getting them? Why do unemployment and poverty continue to be stigmatised? And does the legacy of the Robodebt scandal live on? The Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research concluded in a new excoriating report Who’s rorting who? The failure of outsourced job services that the system is "filling the pockets of private equity and millionaires" while leaving job-seekers without work. Three people close to the coalface join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell to weigh in.

This event was held at the 2026 Festival of Dangerous Ideas on Gadigal Country in Sydney. 

Speaker

Rick Morton Investigative journalist Multi-award-winning author, Mean Streak, My Year of Living Vulnerably, On Money, and One Hundred Years of Dirt.

Mark Considine Political scientist and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Co-Director of the Australian Welfare and Work Lab, University of Melbourne Author, The Careless State Co-author, Buying and Selling the Poor: Inside Australia's privatised welfare-to-work market

Emily Roy Chief Executive OfficerNot-for-profit employment services provider JobLink Plus 

Thanks to Danielle Harvey, Lauren Bennett, and the whole Festival of Dangerous Ideas team.

Further reading 

Report: Who's rorting who? The failure of outsourced job services (Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research, 2026) Australia's jobseeker system fails workers and enriches millionaires, report says The Shaping the future of employment services Discussion Paper (Australian Government, 2026) Senate Committee Report: Rebuilding Employment Services (2023)

Buying and Selling the Poor at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas — Rick Morton, Mark Considine, Emily Roy with Natasha Mitchell

Helen Garner is one of Australia's most significant and renowned writers, known for her precise and observational writing style, disarming honesty and piercing curiosity about her fellow human beings. Here, she reflects on a lifetime of writing, from her groundbreaking 1977 debut Monkey Grip, to her work in the courtroom covering some of Australia's most shocking crimes, to her keen observations of daily life in her collections of letters and diaries.

To celebrate ABC Radio National's Top 100 Australian Books countdown we bring you this celebration of Garner's immense contribution to Australian letters and life across five decades.

"I'm terribly interested in working out what happens between people."

The first event in the Body of Work series presented by Federation Square and the Melbourne Arts Precinct was recorded Thursday 6 August 2026

Speakers:

Helen Garner Author, Monkey Grip, The Children's Bach, Cosmo Cosmolino, Joe Cinque's Consolation, How to End a Story: The Collected Diaries 1978-1998 (winner the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction), This House of Grief, The Season, The Mushroom Tapes (with Sarah Krasnostein and Chloe Hooper) and more

Michael Williams (host)Editor, The Monthly, former artistic director of Sydney Writers Festival, former director of The Wheeler Centre, former host, ABC Radio National

Helen Garner reflects on five decades of writing — an ABC Radio National Top 100 Books countdown special

Foraging and eating wild food is nothing new in Australia. First Nations people have done it for over 50,000 years. Even your grandparents often still used to search for eatable weeds, mushrooms and nuts at the edge of their fields and in the woods. This knowledge is lost today. But attitudes to weeds have also changed. We don’t see weeds as a valuable resource anymore, only as a pest to get rid of. Is it time to change that and to rediscover the traditional knowledge of foraging? And what would that mean for how we manage our farmland in the future?

Presented at the Lyrebird Festival

Speakers

Diego Bonetto Edible weeds advocate, forager and author of EAT WEEDS, A field guide to foraging

Gregg Borschmann (host)Writer, radio producer and oral historian for the National Library of Australia

Why Diego Bonetto wants you to eat weeds

Trailblazing feminist, political activist, journalist, and founder of Ms Magazine Gloria Steinem died this week at age 92 after a big life changing lives. In her memoir My Life on the Road she recounted how taking to the road fundamentally changed her understanding of the world and who she could be. Médecins Sans Frontières co-founder, French diplomat and novelist Jean-Christophe Rufin worked in war zones as a doctor and walked the Camino de Santiago as a pilgrim. Acclaimed poet and Yankunytjatjara woman Ali Cobby Eckermann found family, connection, and Country on a different kind of pilgrimage. This well-travelled trio joined Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2016 to explore their love of life on the road, and the bigger consequences of their transformative encounters along the way.

Speakers

Gloria SteinemAmerican feminist and political activist, journalist, and founder of Ms Magazine

Ali Cobby EckermannProud Yankunytjatjara womanMulti-award-winning poet and author

Jean-Christophe RufinAuthor, former diplomat, doctor, co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders

This event was held in 2016 (not 2015 as mentioned) and first broadcast in 2017 on ABC Radio National.

Feminist trailblazer Gloria Steinem with Natasha Mitchell and guests on travels that transformed them

Blockbuster Australian children's authors Andy Griffiths (The Treehouse series), Hilary Rogers aka Maddy Mara (Dragon Girls) and bookseller Tamuz Ellazam join Natasha Mitchell to share the iconic kid's books they'll be voting for in ABC Radio National's Top 100 Books (vote now!) — and weigh in on current controversies in kid's literature. Have children's books become too moralistic, too obsessed with teaching kids how to behave, or with imparting Very Important Messages? Is there a tension between education and entertainment in kid's literature? And why does all this matter?

How to vote in ABC Radio National's Top 100 Books. Don't forget you can also nominate books you love that aren't on the list of suggestions.

Speakers

Andy GriffithsAustralian Children's LaureatePopular children's author (The Treehouse series, The Bum Trilogy, the JUST! books, You & Me and The Giant Knucklehead, and more)

Hilary RogersAuthor, the Girltopia trilogyCo-author (with Meredith Badger as Maddy Mara) of the Dragon Girls, Max Beast, Itty Bitty Kitty series.Former children's publisher of Go Girl, Zac Power, Billie B Brown series

Tamuz EllazamManager, Readings Kids bookshop in Carlton, MelbourneResearcher into children's literature

Thanks to Chris Gordon and the Readings events team, and the Church of All Nations community venue.

Further reading

Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children (2026), by Mac BarnettA Beloved Children's Book Author Said Most Children's Literature Is "Crud." It Has Not Gone Well.Children's Book Community Responds in Outrage to Mac Barnett CommentsMac Barnett on Make Believe (video)Mac Barnett Responds Amid Continued Backlash

SOME FAVOURITE AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN'S BOOK NOMINATIONS

Andy Griffiths

The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay the pudding Coles Funny Picture Book by E.W. Cole Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner My Place by Nadia Wheatley & Donna Rawlins My Place in Space by Robin and Sally Hirst, illustrated by Roland Harvey Bamboozled by David Legge Unreal by Paul Jennings Magic Beach by Alison Lester Sunshine (and Moonlight) by Jan OrmerodAll Right, Vegemite! and Far Out, Brussel Sprout! by June Factor And more!

Hilary Rogers

The Terrible Plop by Ursula Dubosarsky and Andy Joyner My Shadow is Pink by Scott Stuart Hating Alison Ashley by Robin KleinPlaying Beatie Bow by Ruth Park And more!

Tamuz EllazamThe Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek by Jenny Wagner Possum Magic by Mem Fox and Jenny Vivas Stay For Dinner by Sandhya Parappukkaran and Michelle PereiraOnce I was a Giant by Zeno Sworder Derek the Dinosaur by Mary Blackwood and Kerry Argent And more!

Are kid's books too moralistic, worthy, or 'woke'? Andy Griffiths, Hilary Rogers, Tamuz Ellazam for Radio National's Top 100 Books

From the drama of her private world to the diplomacy of her position as queen. From the woman her family knew to the public figure the world saw. With unique access to royal family members, senior staff, and advisers Robert Hardman explores the parallel lives of Elizabeth as daughter, wife, mother and sovereign.

Inside the Life of Elizabeth II was presented by the Royal Society of Arts, UK

Speakers

Robert HardmanBritish author, journalist and documentary filmmakerAuthor of Elizabeth II: In Private. In Public. The Inside Story.

Emily AndrewsJournalist and royal commentator

Inside the life of Elizabeth II with royal biographer Robert Hardman

Leading tech critic Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the slow decay of the digital platforms most of us are now forced to rely upon to operate in the modern world. So why and how did the internet get bad, and is it too late for people, countries and governments to reclaim technology as a force for humanity and the common good?

This episode was recorded on 25 August 2026 at The Wheeler Centre, Australia's first dedicated centre for Books, Writing and Ideas, in partnership with RMIT University for Now or Never festival. Explore more discussions like this one on The Wheeler Centre podcast — available wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow @wheelercentre for updates.

Speakers:

Cory DoctorowJournalist, technology activist and author, Enshittifcation: Why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI and more, podcaster, Who broke the internet? (CBC), and blogger craphound.com

Lisa GivenDistinguished Professor of Information Sciences, RMIT UniversityDirector of the Centre for Human AI Information Environments

Tech activist Cory Doctorow says the internet's been enshittified. So is it too late to save it?

Books on tyrants, dictators, and authoritarian leaders are suddenly bestsellers again as we all try to make sense of the tilt towards tyrannical leadership around the world, the mass compliance it commands, and its use of terror, fear, and often violence, to govern. Two of Australia's leading scholars on China and the Soviet Union, Linda Jaivin (author of BOMBARD THE HEADQUARTERS! The Cultural Revolution in China) and Sheila Fitzpatrick (author of The Death of Stalin) join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell to consider two 20th Century tyrants whose legacies live on today.

Speakers

Linda JaivinAuthor and China specialistAssociate, Australian Centre on China in the World, Australian National University

Professor Sheila FitzpatrickHistorian of modern Russia and the Soviet UnionProfessor, Australian Catholic University and Honorary Professor, University of Sydney

This event was presented by Readings Books with Black Inc Books, with thanks to events producer Christine Gordon.

Mao and Stalin — did they lead the way for tyrannical leaders like Trump?

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