Big Ideas

Alex Neve, human rights lawyer and former Amnesty International Canada leader, delivers a bold call to reclaim rights as inherent, not a privileged club. He spotlights detention in northeast Syria, nationality-based exclusions, corporate and state abuses, Indigenous and refugee injustices, and the forces eroding universality. Short, urgent reflections on law, accountability, and why rights must apply to everyone.

Alex Neve, an international human rights lawyer and former Amnesty International Canada leader, traces six pivotal postwar years that reshaped legal protections. He surveys the roots of human rights, Nuremberg and genocide law, the 1948 Declaration, Geneva Conventions, and the Refugee Convention. Short, vivid scenes show how universality, prevention, justice and collective responsibility emerged in that era.

Alex Neve, seasoned human rights lawyer and author, reflects on the broken promise of universal rights and his work from conflict zones to Indigenous reconciliation. He explores threats like disinformation, climate harms, and impunity. Stories range from Rohingya and Syria to Afghanistan and Canada. The talk ends with renewed hope in collective action and people-driven change.

Sean Scalmer, labour historian and author, explores work hours and family time. Alistair Thomson, oral historian, traces century-long shifts in fathering. Jacqui McDonald, fatherhood and mental health researcher, outlines diverse modern fathering. They discuss breadwinner roots, changing care roles, workplace pressures, time scarcity, and cultural images like Bluey’s Bandit shaping expectations.

Sophie Gilbert, award-winning culture critic at The Atlantic and author of Girl on Girl, examines how 1990s–2000s pop culture shaped millennial women. She explores commodified Girl Power, reality TV spectacle, porn’s cultural influence, cosmetic makeover culture, and how internalized misogyny is learned and can be unlearned. Short, urgent, and reflective.

Louise Adler, former Adelaide Writers' Week director and long‑time publisher, and Randa Abdel‑Fattah, Palestinian Australian novelist, academic and lawyer, discuss Discipline. They explore why the novel is titled that way and links between law, self‑censorship and academic disciplines. Conversation covers research origins, media and university responses since October 2023, social media mischaracterisation, and pressures on racialised professionals.

Tim Heffernan, lived-experience advocate who survived psychosis and promotes peer support. Gayle McNaught, StigmaWatch manager who engages journalists to reduce harmful reporting. Dr Anna Ross, researcher of media portrayals and stigma. They discuss how news links mental illness to violence, patterns of sensational headlines, newsroom pressures and wire content, and ways media practice can reduce retraumatization and social harm.

Husnara Khanum, poet, writer and researcher who moderates and probes with sharp questions. The conversation traces five partitions from British India to modern borders. They explore hidden archives, hastily drawn lines, princely states’ choices, and how personalities and wartime pressures reshaped nations. Oral histories and declassified files surface forgotten paths and displaced lives.

Rolf Zinkernagel, immunologist and 1996 Nobel laureate; Peter Doherty, immunologist, Nobel winner and science communicator; Brian Schmidt, astrophysicist and 2011 Nobel laureate. They recall serendipity, risky experiments and the young‑career conditions that enable breakthrough work. They debate funding, institutional culture, global shifts and how to protect time and freedom for big, risky science.

Marcel Dirsus, a political scientist who studies how dictators collapse, explains why tyrants depend on small coalitions and how nonviolent mobilization can split regimes. Geoffrey Robertson, an international law expert, discusses trials, Nuremberg’s legacy and accountability for mass crimes. Dorcy Rugamba, a Rwandan survivor and playwright, reflects on reconciliation, Gacaca courts and the survivors’ need to tell their stories.