Sixty years ago, MLK declared “I have a dream”. As Australia votes on the Voice, we grapple with racism.  --- It’s been 60 years since Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr. ascended the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., declaring that “one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers – I have a dream today.”  More than half a century on from King’s dream, where are we in...

An award-winning Australian novelist shares her experience of grief, chronic pain, great joy – and the supernatural.   ---  “As I’ve travelled the world and talked to endless strangers and asked them, did they ever have an experience they couldn’t explain? … I would have asked that question many, many hundreds of times. There’s been nobody who said no.”  49% of Australians say they never have a spiritual conversation. We think of ourselves as a very secular people – yet behind labels like “no...

Rob Stokes reflects on the joys and challenges of his political career, as well as his latest challenge – solving homelessness.   --- Simon Smart speaks with ex-politician Rob Stokes about public service and the most satisfying aspects of his life in politics. Stokes gives an honest account of not only the best aspects of being able to “get things done” but also the frustrations of compromise, the exhausting demands and the life of a politician. Ultimately Stokes encourages would-be political...

This week we take on a topic most of us want to avoid and find it surprisingly life-giving.   --- Sydney Morning Herald opinion editor Chris Harrison faced death as a teenager and lived to tell the tale. Listeners will find his account of returning to the sports field where, after being hit with cricket ball, he was clinically dead for two minutes, both moving and confronting.   This week we hear from Chris about that experience as well as from Marianne Rozario, the co-author of a report that...

This highly acclaimed, speculative novel tackles the mind-body problem, and the mystery of consciousness.  --- If given the choice, would you agree to be uploaded to an entirely digital existence: freed from death, pain, and suffering – because freed from the body? Or would you remain human on a dying planet?  That’s the thought experiment behind Grace Chan’s speculative novel Every Version of You, a book that fleshes out our anxieties and fears – and also, desires – about technology and how...

Scholar and peacemaker Riad Kassis, from the perspective of a region in crisis, calls all of us to hope and generosity.   ---  “We talk about peace in our region; we have a greeting that says, peace be upon you, and we respond, and be upon you as well. But it is just a greeting. We would like to see it in practice.”   When Riad Kassis was a teenager, he and his family left their home in Lebanon during a civil war and took refuge next door, in Syria. These days, living back in Lebanon not far...

How the “invisible hand” of the market relies on the critical – and undervalued – work of care.   ---  “We need to put care at the centre of the Australian economy.”  Before Sam Mostyn headed up the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, advising the Federal Government on ways to improve women’s economic equality, she gave a blistering address to the National Press Club about the long-ignored contribution of care – and the women who were mostly expected to do it – to national wellbeing....

The CPX team freaks out about AI, explores stories of “efficiency” run amok, and probes our tech utopias.    --- The apocalypse will be ... boring.  Or so says Charlie Warzel, tech journalist for The Atlantic. He means that AI won’t put you out of a job or take over the world, so much as overstuff your inbox and give you more mind-numbing tasks to complete.  Other people in the know about AI are less optimistic. Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather” of AI who resigned from Google in May, Sam...

Jo Swinney grew up in family committed to environmental care and community. Her parents’ efforts to revitalise a small piece of land in Portugal eventually spawned an international family of organisations committed to conservation of the natural environment.          --- In this wide-ranging discussion, Jo Swinney talks to Simon Smart about growing up in a commune-type existence in Portugal where her English parents were committed to conservation and fostering biodiversity. And also...

Can Australia’s “dreaming beauty” – our Indigenous languages – be reclaimed? Meet some people who say a joyful yes.   ---   250 years ago, hundreds of languages were spoken across this continent; today, only about 3 percent survive.   What happened in between is a familiar and harrowing story of dispossession – of land, lives, and culture – including a story of linguicide, or the deliberate killing of language.   Is it possible to revive a language that has been long dormant – that has “gone...

Nicholas Spencer insists the history of the relationship between science and religion is infinitely more interesting than the myths would have us believe.   --- Most things you ‘know’ about science and religion are myths or half–truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century.  Nick Spencer takes these myths on in his comprehensive book, Magisteria: the entangled histories of science and religion. The history of science and religion is complex. It’s a story of religion at...

A tender conversation about the start of life, the end of life, and quality of life.  --- 1 in 10 babies in Australia are born premature, and 15% of all babies will need some form of extra care at birth.   Today on Life & Faith, we venture into a place that will be unfamiliar to many – but all too familiar to some: the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU. Dr Annie Janvier is a neonatologist (she takes care of sick babies); she’s also a researcher and ethicist, thinking about difficult...

“The Pill is a bad metaphysic”: Mary Harrington on says the pill has changed everything – and not really for the better. ---- “Is there something to be said for all of these things which I’ve been busy trying to dismantle? Because I’d taken it at face value that they were all just bad by definition.”  As Mary Harrington writes in her book Feminism Against Progress, she’s someone who has “liberalled about as hard as it’s possible to liberal”. In her 20s, she pursued maximum sexual freedom,...

You have probably mucked things up once or twice in your life. Congratulations, you’re human. There’s hope for all of us in the Easter story. ---  This week, Simon Smart and Justine Toh tiptoe through the minefield of ‘guilt’, ‘sin’, and ‘morality’: three words and ideas that are offensive to the modern ear – no doubt partly due to the perception that Christians and the church have been all too judgmental of others.  The weighty, Christian baggage of these words aside – is there not something...

On March 25, it’s Tolkien Reading Day: a day to enjoy all things Tolkien – including what makes The Lord of the Rings so beloved.  --- “… above all shadows rides the Sun”.   That’s a line from a song that the hobbit Samwise Gamgee sings to give him hope at a critical moment in J R R Tolkien’s epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings. Sam is stranded in the dark land of Mordor and Frodo, his master, has been captured. Their quest to destroy the one ring of power looks hopeless. But hope is not...

Bruce Robinson knows more than most about the impact of suffering on human beings. But he also knows about resilience and joy in the face of life’s biggest challenges.    --- As a doctor, Professor Bruce Robinson has been on the front line of Tsunami-ravaged or earthquake-devastated poor regions of Indonesia. And as a lung specialist and expert in asbestos-induced cancer, he has had decades of experience breaking bad news to patients.   His book, Behind the tears – understanding, surviving...

Cynthia Banham barely survived a brutal plane crash. She speaks about trauma, suffering, and hope.  --- It was supposed to be a routine assignment. Back in 2007, journalist Cynthia Banham was sent to Indonesia by the Sydney Morning Herald to cover a visit by then Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. But tragedy struck. The Garuda flight she was on crashed on landing at Yogyakarta International Airport. 21 people were killed. Cynthia survived but with terrible injuries, including a...

What our love affair with food reveals about us; and navigating a modern no-no: judging others. --- Life & Faith is 450 episodes and counting, and we’re about to hit a million downloads. We’re excited to mark the milestone – even we’ve forgotten all the things we’ve ever talked about.  That’s why we’ll occasionally dip into the Life & Faith archives this year and bring you two conversations from the vault.   This time, we’re hearing from chef Alex Woolley, Simon Smart and Justine Toh...

Christopher Watkin is an expert in cultural theory – and thinks the Bible yields the best one we've got.  ---  “If all we think of when we hear the term critical theory is something like critical race theory, then we tend to think of ourselves as some sort of SWAT team parachuting down into society to deal with one particular spot fire, and then airlifting ourselves out at the end of it – without realising that there are lots of different ideas in culture that are connected with each other...

Pilgrim Hill is an off-grid, family-run hostel in the beautiful Huon Valley, Tasmania.   ---  “We have these people coming into our community every single year, and they’re a huge part of our economy and they’re a huge part of our community, but they're not really seen by the Australian public.”  Christina Baehr was a professional harpist, and Peirce Baehr planned to be an academic. But after they fell in love and got married, they decided instead to pursue a different dream: to create a...

Sheridan Voysey is very familiar with the pain of broken dreams – and the beauty of what can come next.   ---  “Life is not made of straight lines. Nothing in nature has straight lines – that’s a human-created invention, the perfectly straight line. All else in creation has a curve, it has a kink, it has a twist … and here I am expecting life to go from Point A to Point B in a nice straight line.”  After the last few years of curveballs and cancelled plans, you may well be wary about making...

What qualifies as a Christmas movie? And what version of Christmas do they offer?  ---  It’s the final episode of Life & Faith for 2022! And time for Simon Smart, Justine Toh, and Natasha Moore to talk Christmas movies past and present: the films that stand the test of time and those that don’t; the borderline cases that feature Christmas but may or may not count as Christmas movies; and some new contenders for the title of Christmas classic.  The team discuss Violent Night, a cinema...

The story of what happened when one family decided to live simply so that others could simply live.  --- The rising cost of living is forcing hard questions upon plenty of Australians: can we afford our lives? More to the point: is our way of life sustainable – for us and the planet?   Jonathan and Kim Cornford and their two daughters are an Australian family leading a fairly ordinary, middle-class existence in the suburbs of Bendigo, Victoria. But through a series of small changes over the...

You don’t need to be a creative or an entrepreneur to share the human calling to make culture.    --- Here at CPX, we’ve been raving about Andy Crouch’s work on technology lately. But in this Life & Faith conversation, we revisit Andy’s earlier work – especially his influential first book Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling.   Andy tells us why he believes all humans are called to be culture makers: people who make culture or who are drawn to make something of the world. This...

It’s often said that religion is a cause of war – but can it also be a cause of peace?  --- “Part of what makes religion such a powerful motivator in support for peace, is also what makes it a powerful motivator in support for violence.”  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.   This principle of retaliation, that a person who has injured another should be penalized in a similar way, and to a similar degree, forms the basis for many codes of justice around the world. But Jesus had a...