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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

Failure is a part of life, whether we like it or not. While most of us don't ever want to fail, failure does have things to teach us — about ourselves, about resilience, about persistence, and about doing the things we love. Over six years, Siang Lu received more than 200 rejections from publishers for three manuscripts — before going on to publish a Miles Franklin award winning novel. What did he learn about failure, and what did it teach him about success?

The 2025 E.W Cole Lecture was recorded on 20 November 2025 at 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

Siang LuAuthor, Ghost Cities (2025 Miles Franklin Award), The WhitewashCo-founder (with Jonathan O'Brien), The Beige Index

Toni Jordan (host)Author, Tenderfoot, Addition, Dinner with the Schnabels and more

Six years of writing, 200 rejections — how Miles Franklin award-winning writer Siang Lu learned to live with failure

Misinformation, disinformation, deep fakes, false news — do you feel confident spotting them? They’re doing real harm to our relationships, our communities, our health, even to the future health of our democracy. New research has found 73% of Australians believe disinformation will be a major threat to our national security in the next decade. Former Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers believes we can’t afford to be complacent. Australia is only one of 29 fully fledged democracies in the world and three quarters of the global population lives in autocracies, the highest since the 1980s. Join Natasha Mitchell and guests to discuss why media literacy matters. 

This event was organised by ABC Education with the Australian Media Literacy Alliance. 

Watch The Matter of Facts with Hamish Macdonald on ABC Iview.

Speakers

Tom Rogers Former Australian Electoral Commissioner Distinguished advisor, ANU National security College Australia’s advisor to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). 

Professor Michael Dezuanni Chair of the Australian Media Literacy Alliance Chief investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child Program Leader, Digital Inclusion and Participation QUT Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology 

Paula Kruger CEO, Media Diversity Australia Former journalist and broadcaster Former manager, community radio station 2SER. 

Thanks to head of ABC Education Annabel Astbury and event producer Grace Ernestine.

Disinformation, deep fakes, and other dodgy doings — the threat to Australian security, democracy, and you

In more than 40 years on the front lines of international human rights Alex Neve has heard Canada described as ‘the land of human rights’ — and seen the profound ways Canada has failed to uphold universal human rights, both at home and abroad. In his final Massey Lecture, he lays out his vision for a way forward.

Lecture five and last of the 2025 CBC Massey Lecture series: Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World

Speaker

Alex NeveSecretary-General of Amnesty International Canada (2000 to 2020); adjunct Professor in international human rights, University of Ottawa, Human rights lawyerAuthor of Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World

A human rights agenda for Canada (2025 CBC Massey lecture 5)

Eleanor Roosevelt once said that universal human rights begin in “small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world.” In his fourth Massey Lecture, Alex Neve reflects on moments when people power won the 

Lecture four of the 2025 CBC Massey Lecture series: Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World

Speaker

Alex NeveSecretary-General of Amnesty International Canada (2000 to 2020); adjunct Professor in international human rights, University of Ottawa, Human rights lawyerAuthor of Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World

How people power makes human rights real (2025 CBC Massey Lecture 4)

Our inherent human rights belong to us from the moment we are born. There is nothing we need to do to earn them, and they are supposed to apply to us until the day we die. But in his third Massey Lecture, Alex Neve argues the powerful have made human rights a ‘club.’

Lecture three of the 2025 CBC Massey Lecture series: Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World

Speaker

Alex NeveSecretary-General of Amnesty International Canada (2000 to 2020); adjunct Professor in international human rights, University of Ottawa, Human rights lawyerAuthor of Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World

Human Rights don't have to be earned (2025 CBC Massey lecture 3)

The ideals behind the concept of human rights — such as the sacredness of life, reciprocity, justice and fairness — have millennia-old histories. After the carnage of the Second World War and the Holocaust, these ideas took a new legal form. In his second Massey Lecture, Alex Neve considers six dizzying years that laid out a blueprint for a new world.

Lecture two of the 2025 CBC Massey Lecture series: Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World

Speaker

Alex NeveSecretary-General of Amnesty International Canada (2000 to 2020); adjunct Professor in international human rights, University of Ottawa, Human rights lawyerAuthor of Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World

The six years that remade human rights (2025 CBC Massey Lecture 2)

Human rights are universal, right? For everyone, everywhere, without exception. That promise, born out of the Holocaust and World War II, has been broken repeatedly. But in a time of fear and fracture, can we renew it? World-renowned Canadian human rights activist and lawyer Alex Neve has seen the best and worse of humanity. He's worked in war zones in Darfur and Eastern Chad, with detainees in Guantánamo Bay, on reconciliation for Indigenous communities in Canada, and beyond. In this special series, his stirring words will cut deep, bring clarity, shine a spotlight on the past, and offer hope for troubled times.

Don't miss this first lecture "Renewing the promise of human rights" in his 2025 CBC Massey Lecture series: Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World

Lecture one of the 2025 CBC Massey Lecture series: Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World

Speaker

Alex NeveSecretary-General of Amnesty International Canada (2000 to 2020); adjunct Professor in international human rights, University of Ottawa, Human rights lawyerAuthor of Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World

Renewing the broken promise of universal human rights. Alex Neve (2025 CBC Massey lecture 1)

This episode explores the past and present expectations and experiences of Australian fathers, in the workforce, domestic duties, and child-rearing, and examines how their roles have also shaped the lives of mothers, children, and society.

These conversations were recorded at the launch of the book Fathering: An Australian History at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.

Speakers

Fathering and Mothering:

Professor Jacqui McDonaldConvenor of the Australian Fatherhood Research Consortium, Deakin University

Associate Professor Richard FletcherFathers and Families Research Program at the University of NewcastlePrincipal Investigator with the SMS4dads & SMS4DeadlyDads support lines

Emeritus Professor Alistair ThomsonMonash UniversityCo-author, Fathering: An Australian History

Dr Johnny BellMonash UniversityCo-author, Fathering: An Australian History

Professor Michelle Arrow (host)President of the Australian Historical Association

Fathering and Work:

Belinda ProbertSocial scientist, academic and author, Bill's Secrets: Love, War and Ambition

Professor Sean ScalmerUniversity of MelbourneAuthor, A Fair Day's Work: The Quest to Win Back Time

Emeritus Professor John MurphyUniversity of MelbourneCo-author, Fathering: An Australian History

From breadwinners to Bluey's Bandit — a history of Australian fathers and their families

Dive into the world of heroin chic and Girl Power to make sense of the mixed messages Millennial women experienced as they came of age. Before social media warped our sense of self, other aggressive forces were at work, hellbent on exploiting feminism for profit, and taking women down while they did. Sophie Gilbert, a Pulitizer-nominated culture writer with The Atlantic, investigates the impacts in her eye-opening book Girl on Girl: How pop culture turned a generation of women against themselves.

This event was hosted and produced by The Wheeler Centre in Naarm/Melbourne. Check out its full event schedule.

Speakers

Sophie GilbertStaff writer, The AtlanticAuthor, Girl on Girl: How pop culture turned a generation of women against themselves (2025)

Kate Jinx (host)Writer, critic, film curatorSenior programmer, Melbourne International Film Festival

Girl on Girl — How pop culture turned a generation of women against themselves with The Atlantic's Sophie Gilbert

She's attracted controversy and cancellation, but Palestinian Australian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah has not been deterred from speaking out about the plight of Palestinians in the war on Gaza, and the experience of Muslim Australians since 9/11. At this event organised in the wake of the cancellation of Adelaide Writers' Week, she joins that festival's former Director Louise Adler, to talk about her latest novel, Discipline, and the experience of art imitating life.

This conversation was recorded at the Adelaide Town Hall as part of the Constellations: Not Writers' Week festival on 1 March 2026.

Speakers

Dr Randa Abdel-FattahAuthor, Discipline (winner of the People's Choice Award at the 2026 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards), Does My Head Look Big in This? and Coming of Age in the War on TerrorFuture Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University

Louise Adler (host) Former Director, Adelaide Writers' WeekFormer CEO, Melbourne University PressFormer editor-at-large, Hachette Australia

Randa Abdel-Fattah and Louise Adler on the cost of speaking out in a time of division

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