Big Ideas

When you lose people and places, you can't bear to be without - or the baggage that weighs you down, is loss really nothing more than change? This conversation goes looking for loss in all its shapes: the identity we misplace growing up between cultures, the self we lose and remake as our bodies change and the strange, unsettling experience of coming face to face with who we used to be.
Griffith Review: Lost and Found was presented at the Melbourne Writers Festival
Speakers
Dr Ahona Guha Clinical and Forensic Psychologist, author, media consultant and speakerAuthor of Reclaim: understanding complex trauma and those who abuse and Life Skills for a Broken World
Madison GriffithsAuthor of Sweet Nothings and Tissue
Georgia MaluPoet, writer and editor. Boigu Island woman from the Umu Mere and Umai Lag clans
Carody Culver (host)Editor of the Griffith Review

Two neurospicy minds talk neurodiversity, creativity, and what it's like to get a diagnosis like Autism or OCD as an adult. Can it bring clarity, upheaval, grief, or all of the above? And how can writing about it help? Host of The Bachelor and Bachelorette, podcaster, and mental health advocate Osher Günsberg and poet, essayist, editor and author of Kill Your Boomers Fiona Wright join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell. This event was held at the 2026 Byron Writers Festival on Bundjalung Nation Country. Speakers
Osher Gunsberg Host of TV shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, and of the Better Than Yesterday podcast.  Author of Back, After the Break (2018). Co-author of So What? Now What?: How to Stop Being Stuck and Start Living (2026) with illustrator Campbell Walker aka Struthless. 
Fiona Wright Poet, writer, editor 2024 Judy Harris Writer in Residence, Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney Author, Small Acts of Disappearance: Essays on Hunger (2015); Kill Your Boomers (2026), and contributor to the Someone Like Me anthology of autistic writers. 
I was unseen even to myself: as many as half of people with anorexia are autistic (Fiona Wright in The Conversation, 2026)

From the rise of One Nation at home, to surprising election results abroad, recent events suggest that people feel that politics as usual is no longer delivering for them. So what alternatives are they reaching for?
This conversation Political Rupture: Identity, Equality and Opportunity was recorded at the Canberra Writers Festival on 17 October 2026.
Speakers:
Niki SavvaAuthor, Earthquake: the election that shook Australia and morePolitical commentator and columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapersFormer press secretary to Liberal Treasurer Peter Cosetllo
Waleed AlyAuthor, Chaos: Dispatches from disorder, Time of Monsters: What Future for Liberalism? (Quarterly Essay #103) and moreCo-host (with Scott Stephens) of The Minefield, ABC Radio NationalAdjunct Professor at Monash UniversityColumnist with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspaper
Jordan McSwiney (host)Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy, University of Canberra2026 ABC Top 5 Humanitites Scholar

Is there method in Donald Trump's madness? His plans for Venezuela, Iran, Ukraine, Greenland — even Canada. His disdain for global institutions and democratic processes. His preference for traditional values. What is the logic behind "Trumpian world making", and how is it reshaping the globe?
This event was recorded at the Ultimo Institute at the University of Technology Sydney on 14 October 2026.
Speakers:
Gary GerstleEmeritus Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of CambridgeAuthor, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era
Roy Green (host)Emeritus Professor and Special Innovation Advisor at the University of Technology Sydney

The fire season is changing across Australia, becoming hotter, drier and longer. The evidence about the best ways to protect lives, property, and the environment is changing too. While fuel reduction burning has become a vital tool in the arsenal for land managers in every state and territory, some are now questioning whether we are doing it right - or whether we should be doing it all.
The Burning Conversation was recorded at the Royal Society of Victoria on 21 September 2026.
Speakers:
Professor Trent Penman Bushfire risk modeler and Team Leader of FLARE Wildfire Research at the University of Melbourne
Dr Phil Zylstra Adjunct professor, Curtin University and the Australian National University
Gregg Borschmann (host) Writer and oral historian, Driector, Talking Country