Life & Faith

Peter Hartcher joins Life & Faith to discuss his life in journalism and the precarious state of the world.Peter Hartcher is a leading Australian political and foreign affairs journalist. He has had a long career in the media, beginning with a cadetship at the Sydney Morning Herald fresh out of school in 1982. He is now the Political and International editor for the Herald and for The Age.He had a couple of stints in Tokyo and Washington and at the Australian Financial Review. He is the author of several books, the latest being, Red Zone: China’s Challenge and Australia’s Future.He’s won a number of awards for journalism including a Gold Walkley.Hartcher is known for his incisive commentary, his lively and engaging writing and his careful, sober but hard-hitting style. He hasn’t always been loved by politicians, which is no doubt part of the job description.In this conversation he talks about his career, the future of journalism, the perilous state of the world and why he won’t give in to despair. Exp

Sheridan Voysey, from Friendship Lab, explains why, in an age of increasing loneliness, the art of cultivating friendship is needed as much as ever before.When Sheridan Voysey was confronted with the question, “Who can you call at 2am when everything goes wrong?”, he realised that friendship was a facet of his life he had neglected for too long. This set him on a path to consider how we cultivate good friendships, how we can learn the skills required to be a good friend and maintain deep, rich friendships.He now runs the Friendship Lab, a movement and a course to help adults build the skills to create and sustain healthy friendships. Reflecting on ever-increasing loneliness, Sheridan recognised the need to help people develop skills in collecting more “2am friends”. This is an art you can get better at with the right help. Sheridan says that even those who enjoy great friendships can get better at them.What are the factors that help grow close friendships? What things get in the way of healthy, long-lasting f

Niall Williams discusses the conversion of his treasured novel into a major film starring Pierce Brosnan, Helena Bonham Carter and Gabriel Byrne.Four Letters of Love is the 1997 novel by Irish writer Niall Williams, and has just been adapted, by Williams, into a movie starring Pierce Brosnan, Helena Bonham Carter and Gabriel Byrne.Life & Faith speaks with Niall Williams about the film and the book. It’s a love story that offers up intriguing and provocative portraits of faith, loss, tragedy, meaning and God.The story itself engages with human longing, the notion of fate and calling and whether our lives have any pattern or purpose. How do we make sense of the vicissitudes of life? Is there a God behind it all? Can we still believe in miracles?Niall Williams is an Irish writer of novels, plays and works of non-fiction. Four letters of love was an international best-seller. The film is released July 2025.ExploreFour Letters of Love trailerFour Letters of Love novelNill Williams website

Julia Verdouw used silence, faith and writing poetry to survive the sudden death of her husband.Julia is an accomplished academic and policy expert, but her book In the Valley of the Shadow may be her most important work.  Through reflection, poetry and prayers, the book documents her journey of grief.Regardless of who we are or what we believe, suffering comes for us all. Perhaps the worst kind of suffering is the grief that we face when we lose someone we love. How can we navigate such immense loss and deep sorrow?In this episode, we explore Julia’s journey of finding comfort, strength, hope, and even redemption, through the deepest suffering.EXPLOREPurchase Julia’s book through her website

A columnist’s job is to process deeper currents in news, politics, and culture – all in 800 words.Who are we as a nation and a people, and what’s going on for us beneath the daily headlines of the 24/7 media cycle?Few of us stop long enough to wonder – but if we ever wanted to find out, a good place to start would be Sean Kelly’s writing in The Sydney Morning Herald. Sean Kelly is a former political staffer in the Rudd and Gillard governments, who now writes a weekly column on politics for The Sydney Morning Herald. He’s also the author of the book The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison.Sean has a front row seat to what’s going on for us as a nation and combines that perspective with an insider’s view of how politics works. In this interview with Life & Faith he considers what it might mean to be considered a chronicler of the national soul. Explore Sean Kelly’s column on how “kindness” won Anthony Albanese the 2025 Federal election.His column about what might be called “the Albanese effect

Stories and stats from the UK suggest that something has shifted, spiritually, over the past few years.-- Since 2018, two million more people in England and Wales have started regularly attending church – an increase fuelled largely by Gen Z, and by young men especially.So say the results from a new survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of the British and Foreign Bible Society, results which cut across a bunch of our assumptions: that Western societies are on a secularising trajectory; that women are more religious than men; that young people are more likely to reject “traditional” beliefs such as Christianity.In this episode of Life & Faith, we gather a few reports from abroad to get a handle on what’s happening in the UK, spiritually speaking. Vicar-in-training and Oxford research student Daniel Kim, who has written extensively about spirituality and occult beliefs in contemporary culture, talks about the spiritual openness of Gen Z. Bri Walsh, an Aussie who spent a season in London recently, offers

Got a burning creative project? Face your finitude, says this productivity expert, by learning to number your days. Everyone is pressed for time, and in a never-ending quest to conquer their schedules. It’s why productivity tips and hacks are big business these days.But underneath our productivity problem is a reality no one wants to face: the fact that we’re all going to die, argues self-described “recovering” productivity expert Oliver Burkeman, and the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. The average human life is about 80 years, or some 4000 weeks, and the sooner we come to grips with the ultimate deadline, the better off we’ll be, argues Burkeman.In this interview with Life & Faith, Oliver explains how “mortality” emerged as a theme for his 2021 book, how the solace of “deep time” – as experienced during times of flow, prayer, meditation, and hiking – connects us with our humanity, how AI might change the game for human creativity, and how he, as someone more drawn to East

Journalist, author and theologian, Stan Grant on responding to injustice with grace and love.In a decades-long career as a journalist and foreign correspondent, Stan Grant saw some of the worst that humanity is capable of. It took its toll on him. And as a Wiradjuri man he has had to wrestle with identity, belonging, and who we all are in 21st century Australia. He went through a period of angst and anger, and he would say, some bitterness, as he and his people confronted injustice, prejudice and a history of oppression, violence and dispossession.But through a serious spiritual re-awakening, Grant has found a different way to be. On Life & Faith he describes the shape of that spiritual life and the surprising ways it has impacted him and how he sees the world and his place in it. Turning his back on anger, Grant outlines his renewed motivation for meeting hate with love and grace.His latest book, Murriyang: song of time, is a poetic account of his life and that of his family and his people, and offers a

There are currently 7 living generations. That makes for plenty of crossed-wires, misunderstandings and confusion about each other, and the future.In this episode of Life & Faith, we speak to futurist, speaker and author Ashley Fell from McCrindle, a social research and advisory firm that uses cutting edge research and data analysis to decode the generations and make sense of each other and even predict the future.It turns out that there’s much more to each generation than our slang, cultural references or relationship with technology. Join us as we explore how a better understanding of the generations can foster empathy, strengthen social trust and even offer us a window into the future.Explore:  McCrindle Research website: https://mccrindle.com.au/ What defines a Generation? (video clip): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMB2_aNINdM Inside the mind of Generation Alpha:  https://mccrindle.com.au/article/topic/generation-alpha/inside-the-mind-of-generation-alpha/ Welcome

An Anglican priest on Ash Wednesday, a Benedictine nun on Lent, and a Lutheran minister on Bonhoeffer’s last words.In this episode of Life & Faith, we go beyond the chocolates and hot cross buns to sit with the darkness of the Easter story that unfolds in three acts: dust, desert, and death.Our guests provide different snapshots of the Easter season, and the unexpected glimmers of life to be found in the time.From Anglican priest Chris Allan, from St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney, we hear about the visceral experience of having the cross marked on your forehead in ash, and why Ash Wednesday is the ultimate reality check about who we are.Then, Sister Antonia Curtis, from Jamberoo Abbey on NSW’s South Coast, allows us to briefly experience a Desert Day, a time set aside for reflection and contemplation observed by her and her community on Sundays throughout Lent.Lastly, we dwell on the last words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor, theologian, and unlikely co-conspirator in the Hitler assassination plot. On

In the 1940s a group of German students saw it as their duty to oppose the tyranny of Nazism. The members of The White Rose, young students and some lecturers, became convinced that they had to take action against their own government and its crimes. They began a campaign writing and disseminating thousands of pamphlets condemning the Nazis and calling on Germans to embrace passive resistance in order to bring down the regime and end the war.It was a highly risky thing to do. The Nazis were at the peak of their powers and opposition like this simply not tolerated.Brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl were part of the group, and, with their friend Christoph Probst, were the first to be arrested, tried and executed. The story of the White Rose continues to challenge and inspire all of us to think about courage in the face of injustice and moral bravery when it costs you a lot.---ExploreAlexandra Lloyd's book, Defying Hitler: The White Rose Pamphlets

In an age of outrage, how can we rise above cynicism and work towards a healthier and more vibrant form of political debate and engagement?With a Federal election campaign looming and cynicism about politics at an all-time high, Life & Faith interviews eminent Political Scientist Professor John Warhurst about how we can navigate an increasingly grumpy political landscape.If politics is downstream from culture and we get the politics that we deserve, how can we do better? Do we expect too much from our politicians or not enough? And do we give up too quickly when things don’t go our way in elections?John Warhurst brings decades of experience to these questions. He believes there are more silver linings than we think and that self-reflection, compassion, gratitude and intelligent humility are an important part of the answer. Instead of focusing on what we think of our politicians, this interview explores how recalibrating how we approach politics as citizens, can put us on a path to a healthier democracy an

Increasing interest in psychedelics, the occult, and the supernatural all point to one thing: enchantment is back.“The thing is you can't have enchantment that's only selective. You can't only have the bright side. You also need to acknowledge the dark side. That's one of the things I really wanted to do with this book and it caused some consternation with my first publisher. She didn't want the dark side in there.”The modern experience is one of disenchantment, argued sociologist Max Weber – a world from which the supernatural, and all gods and monsters, had been scrubbed.Not anymore, apparently. Increasing interest in the occult, and people’s willingness to share about their ecstatic experiences, as well as their evil encounters with the supernatural, suggests a higher tolerance for talk about the spiritual realm – for good and ill.Life & Faith kicks off 2025 with an eye-opening interview with journalist Rod Dreher, author of Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. In this wide-r

What does the Christmas promise of “peace on earth” mean in the face of human suffering, natural disasters, and other heartbreaks that are part of all our lives?Twenty years ago, the Indian Ocean tsunami claimed the lives of some 225,000 people, after battering the coastlines of India, Indonesia, Malysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Thailand, and Somalia.Tim Costello, then CEO of World Vision, was among the first to be on the ground in Sri Lanka, which was among the countries worst affected. He recounts being confronted with the mammoth scale of devastation on the ground and the tragedy of so many lives lost. Then we hear from former CPX-er Mark Stephens, now Lecturer in New Testament at Sydney Missionary Bible College, about what the Christmas promise of “peace on earth” could possibly mean in the face of untold human suffering – and what are the grounds of hope now and into the future.This is our last episode of Life & Faith for the year but we will be back in 2025. From the whole team

In 1894, South Australia was the fourth place in the world to grant universal female suffrage. Christian housewives were key to the cause.History was made on Dec 18, 1894, when a bill passed in the South Australian parliament granting women the right to vote and the right to stand for public office.This made the South Australian Parliament the first in Australia, and the fourth place in the world, to extend voting rights to women.In August of that year, a petition of 11,600 signatures had been presented to parliament, supporting women’s right to a voice in the political process. It was the result of long campaigning and legwork by women’s groups: the Women’s Suffrage League, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Working Women’s Trades Union, which gathered signatures from all over the state.In this episode of Life & Faith, Dr Nicole Starling, historian of 19th century Australian religious and political history, explains the role of the WCTU in gaining women the vote, and also how temperanc

Journalist Michael Visontay uncovers intriguing stories from the fragments of a 1450s Gutenberg Bible, including an amazing link to his own family.In 1921 when rare book collector Gabriel Wells broke up his Gutenberg Bible and began to sell off individual pages, it caused a scandal, and a rush for collectors to get the chance to own and be a part of the Gutenberg mystique.Was Wells’ action an act of vandalism, or just a smart move from an enterprising rare book dealer? Either way, these fragments became much sought-after, and Wells became a rich man. Decades on, Michael Visontay traces these “noble fragments” as they pass through various collectors' hands and carry with them fascinating stories.Michael’s own family – holocaust survivors from Hungary who immigrated to Australia in the 1950s – have their own connection to Gabriel Wells and the Gutenberg Bible. Michael Visontay tells this “detective story”/intriguing family history with panache.Here he tells Life & Faith about that history and how

International Justice Mission wants tech companies to step up efforts to protect vulnerable children.Warning: distressing content. The Philippines is the global epicentre of the online sexual exploitation of children, where children are abused by parents and other relatives in their own homes, in front of a video camera, for a fee.It’s awful and sickening trade in vulnerable human lives, one that’s particularly insidious since it distorts a child’s relationship with their primary caregivers and that transforms a child’s home – the exact place they should be safe – into a predatory environment of abuse. And Australians are the third-highest consumers of this content worldwide, paying for these crimes to be live-streamed, and often through commonly used social media platforms and video conferencing tools.International Justice Mission (IJM) works to end modern slavery, partnering with NGOs, social workers, child advocates, faith communities, and law enforcement to bring about justice for survivors of traffi

Erinch Sahan believes that the key to building safer, healthier and stronger communities can be found in a doughnut.Doughnut Economics is a visual framework and growing movement that seeks to tackle humanity’s biggest problems through a fresh new understanding of our world.Erinch shares how his experience as a senior executive at Procter & Gamble, Oxfam and head of the World Fair Trade Organisation, led him to his current role as head of the Dougnut Economics Action Lab, where he and his team works with businesses, governments and communities, to re-imagine how economics can be used to build a better future.Erinch also teaches at the University of Cambridge and is a respected global voice on global trade, business practice and bringing ethics to economics.We examine how this innovative new movement brings a fresh perspective to some of our biggest local and global challenges. And we take a closer look at how it’s possible to include ideals like stewardship in our continued pursuit of profits, pleasure and

Tim Winton talks to Life & Faith about his new novel Juice.Tim Winton is one of Australia’s most loved writers. He is also well-known as an environmental activist and defender of landscapes and fragile ecosystems. And now, as a grandfather to 6 children, he is clearly deeply concerned about what we might be leaving behind to them and those who come after them.His lates novel, Juice, is set in the distant future, a time when climate catastrophe has wreaked havoc on the globe. Civilisation has crumbled. Huge parts of the earth, in a band emanating from the equator, are completely uninhabitable. It's all about the global unravelling that could accompany climate devastation. It’s frightening and sobering. And yet somehow determinedly hopeful.Tim came into the CPX studio to talk about Juice and what inspired this challenging piece of art.  Explore:Tim Winton’s novel Juice Ningaloo NyingguluSimon Smart’s review of Juice at ABC Religion & EthicsTell us what you think of Life & Faith in thi

Living out one’s commitments and beliefs is the most political thing we can do, says theologian and public commentator Michael Jensen.Politics, both here in Australia and around the world, feels increasingly existential as we angst over whether our political tribe, or the other side, will gain office.In this episode of Life & Faith, we get public commentator Michael Jensen to set us straight: how do we solve a problem like the ultimacy of our politics – the fact that it feels as though the fate of the country rests on whoever gets elected to lead it?We cover the way Christianity is often identified with one side of politics and why “sin”, though an unpopular idea, acts as a helpful check on anyone who wields political power. Michael also offers us “a litmus test for whether a political position is Christian” and challenges everyone to be more realistic, and less idealistic, about what earthly politics can achieve.--Explore:Michael Jensen’s book Subjects and Citizens: The Politics of the Gospel