Big Ideas

It's been called the idiot box, the drug of the nation, the tube. This year marks 100 years of broadcast television. Over its lifetime, TV has adapted to big changes in technology, government policy, culture and media consumption habits. And yet, while its future remains uncertain, for now, it endures. This is the incredible true story of television. This keynote address was re...

How free should artists be to make risky work, to provoke, to get political? Who gets to decide if a work of art is deemed too risky, too dangerous, too difficult? Cancellations. Censorship. Controversy. Political pressure. Mass boycotts. The collapse of festivals. The Australian arts community has seen it all recently, in part triggered by the devastation in the Middle East. Bu...

Gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters, quests and odysseys, sex and violence. Greek mythology seemingly has it all. And as Christopher Nolan's box office smash retelling of the Greek epic The Odyssey suggests, these stories will never die. Join three superstar writers with their own mythical retellings to explore why these stories endure and how they have been re-imagined over...

As the great powers renegotiate their alliances and priorities, Africa is reshaping its future. From the promise of digital economies and homegrown innovation to the complex legacies of foreign aid, debt and dependency — this is a conversation about power, possibility, and the remaking of a continent on its own terms. What needs to change in policy, in investment, in the storie...

The decisions being made right now, in parliament, in budget lock-ups, in policy debates, will shape the lives of your kids and their kids. Think: Climate. Housing. Aged care. AI., But in many cases, those decisions are being deferred. There's a name for it: policrastination. The habit of delaying what we know needs doing because the short-term political incentives reward inacti...