Big Ideas

Mar 30 2025 250 ep. 53 mins 2.9k

Big Ideas Podcast artwork

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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Good conversations — with writer and poet Ian WIlliams (CBC Massey Lecture 5)

Mar 30 2025 58 mins

What makes a good conversation? And do good conversations have anything in common? Ian Williams studies his daily conversations and explores how our age has left many people in what he calls a "drought of loving voices." In searching for conversations that feel transcendent, not transactional, he argues that in great conversations, the content is less important than the interaction

Who can speak for whom to whom about what? — with writer and poet Ian Williams (CBC Massey Lecture 4)

Mar 26 2025 53 mins

We're in an era where many people feel an ownership over certain words, and how a community expresses itself. The term "appropriation" has come to create guardrails around what can be said and by whom. Award-winning Canadian writer Ian Williams considers the role of speech and silence in reallocating power, and what it means to truly listen. The CBC Massey Lecture series What I me

Personal conversations — with writer and poet Ian Williams (CBC Massey Lecture 3)

Mar 25 2025 53 mins

Bookstores are full of titles that are supposed to help us deal with difficult conversations — about emotions, misunderstandings and hurt feelings. The problem is that difficult conversations are almost always about something other than what they seem to be about. And what we're actually looking for in a conversation isn't always answers — it's communion. The CBC Massey Lectur

Public conversations — with writer and poet Ian Williams (CBC Massey Lecture 2)

Mar 24 2025 52 mins

Public space is important for democracy. This is where we articulate our values, and perhaps change our minds. So how do we open ourselves up to connection with strangers while safeguarding our personal sovereignty and resisting efforts to convert us? And what can we learn from our conversations with strangers and loved ones alike about how to navigate the murky waters of national

Why we need to have a conversation about conversations — with writer and poet Ian Williams (CBC Massey Lecture 1)

Mar 23 2025 52 mins

Ever felt that no one is really listening? At a time when we're more connected than ever, why does it seem like we can barely talk to each other? Civic and civil discourse have deteriorated, and the air is raw with anger and misunderstanding on all sides. Award-winning Canadian author and poet Ian Williams is reviving the lost art of conversation in his CBC Massey Lecture series W

Australians – the ‘aristocrats’ of Asia? The Lucky Country 60 years on

Mar 19 2025 55 mins

In his influential 1964 book The Lucky Country, Donald Horne wrote that Australians played an aristocratic role in Asia: "rich, self-centred, frivolous, blind". A lot has changed in 60 years, but does Australia still think it's better than its neighbours? Recorded at the Australian Academy of the Humanities annual symposium, The Ideas and Ideals of Australia — The Lucky Country

Choices created Australia's housing mess, what choices will fix it? Natasha Mitchell and guests

Mar 18 2025 58 mins

Australia's housing crisis hasn't always been with us. So what choices created it, and what choices are now needed to fix it? Buying a house is now out of reach if you're on an average wage, and rental options are expensive and precarious. If we don't address the issues urgently, generations to come will face homelessness or profound poverty paying rents on a pension. There are sol

Free your attention — meditation and mindfulness in the digital age

Mar 17 2025 54 mins

How many times have you checked your phone today? How many tabs are open in your web browser? Do you feel in control of your attention? In the digital age, attention is now a commodity. Can practices like meditation and mindfulness help us feel more free to focus on what really matters? This event was hosted at the Brunswick Ballroom by the Sophia Club in partnership with the Un

Today — you choose your family

Mar 16 2025 54 mins

The structures of families have gotten complex, even messy. Patchwork families are increasingly common. You can a birth mother, a genetic mother and a social mother. People choose friends as kin. How have families and communities changed? Presented at the Byron Writers Festival, supported by the Byron Shire Council. Speakers Kon Karapanagiotidis CEO and Founder of the Asylum Seek

Riverhood — oral histories in the Murray Darling Basin

Mar 12 2025 53 mins

The Murray Darling Basin is the most important river system in Australia, and the most contested. What does it mean to live by those rivers, through the droughts, the floods, and the water politics that shape these communities. A beautiful and evocative history of the Murray Darling Basin, as told by people who live there. This speech was recorded at the History Council of Victori