Big Ideas ABC listen

Since the announcement of the AUKUS plan for nuclear submarines, we’ve been hearing a lot about Australia’s maritime security. But as an island “girt by sea”, that security depends on much more than our military capability.

Australia's unique biodiversity, a product of almost 50 million years of glorious evolutionary isolation, is in freefall. The threats are not just the rabbits, the cane toads, the cats and foxes – the common culprits. Let's not forget the small but impactful smooth newt or the fierce red fire ants, and the many invasive weeds. Twenty new weeds will establish in the wild in Australia this year – and every year to come … unless things change. But is it possible to stop this ongoing invasion? How do we go about it?

Join Natasha Mitchell and guests for a robust conversation about forging a shared future between Black and White Australians through deeper understanding. Indigenous curator Margo Neale thought her nickname was "Abo" when she was a little girl. She didn't understand it was racist. Writing on politics and race for decades, David Marr thought he knew a lot — until he unearthed an family story. Thomas Mayo is thinking deeply about what's possible for Black and White Australia after the Voice referendum.

For more than half a century, the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle allowed and covered up an extensive network of paedophile priests who sexually abused hundreds of children in their care.

Through sinister marketing and loose regulation, the tobacco industry has hooked a whole new generation of kids on smoking. How did it come to this, and will the federal government’s new laws to crack down on vaping actually work?

What lessons can we learn from J. Robert Oppenheimer and the development of the nuclear bomb? How should we govern and legislate new technologies that have the power to change the world? Like nuclear technology in the mid of last century, now large digital platforms and generative AI are putting humanity at the threshold: progress or possible exploitation and abuse? How can we regulate cutting-edge technology on a global stage?