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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.

Big Ideas

It's Team Wellness Warriors versus Team Medical Miracles. Hear the arguments and you decide! The wellness industry is booming. It's worth billions and its influencers are all over social media spruiking miracle pills and mystery remedies, crystal healing and cancer cures. Some are even steaming their vaginas (hellooooo Gywneth Paltrow!). Have they done the research that mainstream medicine refuses to? Is your doctor really the best person to help you be the healthiest you can be? Or ... are many wellness influencers shysters and swindlers, selling hoax cures, making unproven claims, and putting your bank balance and your health at serious risk? Join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell from the stage of the 2025 World Science Festival Brisbane for an hilarious hour of science and comedy. Laughing is good for your health, that's for sure.

Speakers

TEAM WELLNESS WARRIORSDr Joel Gilmore Clean energy expert, physicist, and science communicatorAssociate professor, Griffith University

Dr Lily BentleyMarine biologistUniversity of Queensland

Ting LimStand-up comic and star of ABC TV's Fisk

TEAM MEDICAL MIRACLESStacey Thomson aka TV's Ranger StaceyHost of the former long-running TV show Totally Wild

Dr Mike TodorovichMedical educator and host of the Dr Matt and Dr Mike Youtube channelAssociate Professor of Medicine, Bond University

Steven OliverComedian, poet, playwright, cabaret performer, and star of ABC TV's Black Comedy

Thanks to event producers Jane O'Hara, Dr Rob Bell, and the whole World Science Festival Brisbane team.

Wellness influencers will outlive us all! The Science Smackdown Debate at World Science Festival Brisbane

The American essayist, philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said that all life is an experiment, and the more experiments you make, the better. So can experimenting with your career, your health, where you live or who you love, improve your life, by helping you to make better decisions?

This event Test and learn: living an experimental life was recorded at the University of Sydney's Raising the Bar night.

Speakers

May Samali - Founder and CEO of the Human Leadership Lab

How to live an experimental life

Their closest relative is the elephant; they eat about 60 kg of sea grass per day; and there are only three dugongs in captivity in the world. One in the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium. Big Ideas deep dives into the mysterious world of dugongs — with fascinating stories and surprising insights.

Presented at the World Science Festival Brisbane in the Queensland Museum.

Big Ideas — Turning a third of our oceans into marine parks. A good idea?

Speakers

Dr Janet LanyonWorld authority on dugongs, Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at The University of Queensland

Dr Merrick EkinsCollection Manager of Sessile Marine Invertebrates at the Queensland Museum

Brooke WitherbySea World Marine Education Officer

Michael Balk (host)Actor, and television & radio presenter

Further Information

Sea World Dugong Population Research

The Sea World Rescue Team: call on 07 5588 2222 (9:00am to 5:00pm) or 07 5588 2177 (After Hours)

Dugong Pig at Sea Life Sydney Aquarium

Dugongs — up close and personal

In your daily life you use more material than you think: metals, stones, wood, ceramics – the list goes on. We have sufficient resources to support growth, but not enough to support greed. A circular economy could support a more sustainable resource management. 

Presented by Planet Ark's Australian Circular Economy Hub (ACE Hub)

Speaker

Janez PotočnikCo-Chair of UN Environment International Resource Panel, former EU Commissioner for responsible for Science and Research and for Environment

Dr Nicole Garofano (host)Head of Circular Economy Development for Planet Ark

Further information

Report: Global resource outlook 2024

Do you know the size of your material footprint?

If you knew the world as we know it was on the verge of collapse, would that change the way you live your life? Author, activist and podcaster Sarah Wilson has found many reasons to believe our post-industrial civilisation is nearing its end. So how does she live with this confronting reality?

This conversation was recorded at the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival. To explore more Melbourne Writers Festival talks, visit mwf.com.au.

Speakers

Sarah Wilson - Author, First, We Make the Beast Beautiful and This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

Carody Culver (host) - Editor, Griffith Review

Further information:

Read the Collapse Book on Sarah's Substack This is Precious

Sarah Wilson reckons with our civilisational collapse

Foreign spies attempt to infiltrate media organisations, break into restricted laboratories, target public servants on sites such as LinkedIn, approach academics at conferences … the list goes on. On Big Ideas, you have the rare opportunity to hear Mike Burgess give an unfiltered look at the threats of espionage and reveal for the first time the true costs it has on the Australian economy.

Counting and Countering the Cost of Espionage, the 26th annual Hawke Lecture presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, University of South Australia.

Speaker

Mike Burgess Director-General of Security, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) 

Further information

Why national security and intelligence is women’s work Big Ideas, 22 October 2022

Mike Burgess — Espionage is a growing and costly threat to Australia

For the ﬁrst time in human history, we have the scientific know-how to vaccinate against most of the infectious diseases that killed our ancestors. But an explosion of pseudoscience and disinformation makes people hesitate to accept the shot. And so once contained diseases like measles is on the rise again. Hear why we have to act now, or risk losing centuries of gains that vaccines have brought to the world.

Presented at Gleebooks

Speakers

Raina MacIntyreProfessor of Global Biosecurity at UNSW and an NHMRC Research FellowAuthor of Vaccine Nation: Science, reason and the threat to 200 years of progress

Dr Norman Swan (host)Host of Radio National's The Health Report and co-host of What's That Rash

Plummeting vaccination rates threaten public health

The decline of the mainstream media has forced many outlets to try new things to keep audiences engaged and informed. So what works, and what is the industry's future?

The ABC's 2025 Andrew Olle Lecture was recorded in Sydney on Friday 25 July 2025.

Speakers

Geraldine Doogue - Host (with Hamish Macdonald), Global Roaming, ABC Radio National

Not drowning waving, a modern media tale — with Geraldine Doogue

Australia is a multicultural country, but up until recently, when you turned on the telly, you wouldn't know it. So what role has TV played in Australia's diverse communities, on screen, behind the scenes and in the living rooms across this country, over the past 70 years?

This event was recorded at Sydney's Gleebooks on Friday 11 July 2025.

Speakers

Kate Darian-SmithProfessorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne, President of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia

Kyle HarveyCulture and media and social change historian

Sukhmani KhoranaAssociate Professor in the School of Arts and Media at University of NSW

Sue TurnbullSenior Professor of Communication and Media, University of Wollongong

Pearl Tan (host)Discipline Lead in Directing, Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS)

Further information:

Season two of Heartbreak High makes diversity feel 'banal'. This is its strength - article by Sukhmani Khorana

From Con the Fruiterer to East West 101 — the changing face of Australian TV

Join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell with three women embracing the radical practice of finding joy in big bodies. Fat bodies are often stigmatised, stereotyped, shamed, medicalised, and politicised. Even the word F.A.T gets denigrated. But there is another way. Reckoning with eating disorders and society's limitations, Dani, Evie, and Kalpana are no longer holding back from the delights of food, fashion, dance, ocean swimming, and more. Hear why, for them, the personal is political. But can expectations to be fat and jolly become a burden too? What about the radical act of just being and big?

This event was hosted and organised by the inaugural Fat Joy Festival and the 11th International Weight Stigma Conference

Speakers

Dani Galvin (aka Dani Adriana)Content creator and body positivity and mental health advocateFat peer support facilitatorCo-creator, plus-size pop-culture inspired costumes and accessoriesBachelor of Counselling graduate

Evie (Evangeline) GardenerPublic health researcher and advocatePhD studentUniversity of Queensland

Kalpana PrasadPerformer, facilitator, choreographer with Bring a Plate Dance companyPostgraduate speech pathology studentDisability support worker

Thanks to Dr Lily O'Hara from Griffith University, the convenor of the Fat Joy Festival and the 11th International Weight Stigma Conference.

Further reading and viewing

How we think about obesity and body weight is changing, here's why (article co-athored by Evie Gardener)

The Real Cost of Appearance Ideals and Discrimination report (The Butterfly Foundation)

Fat Joy Podcast

The body is not an apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

What we talk about when we talk about FAT by Aubrey Gordon

You have the right to remain fat by Virgie Tovar

"Fat" isn't a bad word — it's just a way I describe my body by Aubrey Gordon 

Selling Stigma: Afflictive Power and Fat Oppression - presentation by Rachel Fox

FAT is not an F-word! The radical practice of fat joy

John Maynard Keynes was an economist whose dreams went beyond balance sheets and into political ideas and cultural movements.

He advised world leaders during world wars, witnessed the great depression first hand and counted himself as one of the Bloomsbury group, a set of London's most influential writers and intellectuals like Virginia Woolf.

This discussion from CUNY Graduate Center is an in depth look at the life of JohnMaynard Keynes and explores his influence on 20th century economics and politics.

Speakers

Zachary CarterJournalist and author who wrote the award-winning Keynes biography "The Price of Peace: money, democracy, and the life of John Maynard Keynes"

Paul KrugmanNobel Prize-winning economist, longtime former columnist for The New York Times, and distinguished professor of Economics at the CUNY Graduate Center

Radical economics — what can we learn from the life of John Maynard Keynes

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