God Forbid

Evolving digital technologies have supercharged our anxieties about privacy and surveillance. 
These concerns may feel new, but they have always existed. 
Access to privacy is central to human dignity and intimacy - but it is also conditional in a society which values openness and accountability. 
So what should remain seen and unseen? 
When does surveillance become intrusive? 
And can privacy survive the digital age? 
Guests: 
Anita Allen, Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania 
Hugh Breakey, Professor of Philosophy, Griffith University 
David Vincent, Professor Emeritus, Open Universities UK, author of Privacy: A Short History

"Don't judge me" is the unofficial commandment of our secular liberal society. We're told so long as you’re not hurting anyone, live however you want. But online, judgement is relentless and cruel. Have we lost the ability to wisely judge, and — eventually — forgive? Or did we never really have it in the first place?

These days, we want Rights, not religion. Choice, not Church. Pleasure, over prayer. 
In Australia, and the world  increasingly, the market is the Messiah, and the self is the saviour. 
But, if we’re the freest people who’ve ever lived, to choose our partners, careers, genders, and Gods or no God, free to buy anything, stream anything, be anything...why then do we seem to be unravelling?   
In a world of loneliness, anxiety, extremism, polarisation, the more we chase freedom, the more it seems to slip away. 
Are we in a freedom trap?
GUESTS:
Priyan Max Jeganathan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity, author of The Freedom Trap.
Alexander Lefebvre is Professor of Politics and Philosophy at the University of Sydney. He's the author of Liberalism as a Way of Life.

What is the state of women in Australia and globally in 2026?    Mainstream social media is increasingly clogged with misogyny, there's the horrendous revelations around Jeffrey Epstein, a rise in women killed by their partners and online harassment of women is at a peak. Are we going backwards? 
Guests:
Ginger Gorman is a journalist and author of Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and its Human Fallout
Nayomi Kannangara is CEO of the International Women's Development Agency.

Why would you trade the visible for the invisible?  
And experts believe in the census later this year – for the first time ever - those ticking “no religion” will surpass Christians. 
And it’s happening across the global north - even the US – where 95% believed in something 30 years ago – today, nearly 1-in-3 American’s say they’re atheist or agnostic or no religion in particular. 
So why in this sea of secularism would some swim against the current? People raised without faith, who find themselves drawn to prayer, or ritual, or surrender to the unseen? 
To the disbeliever it can look madness. 
Or maybe in a world of clicks and content the hunger for sacred silence makes more sense than we think. 
GUESTS:
​Tanya Luhrmann, Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University and author of “How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others” 
Kelsey Osgood, a journalist, a convert to orthodox Judaism, and the author of “Godstruck - Seven Women's Unexpected Journeys to Religious Conversion”
Abdullah Kunde is a medical doctor a convert to Islam, and Founder and President of the Muslim Debate Initiative Australia.