Natasha Mitchell (she/her)

BREAKING: 3 members of the Adelaide Festival Board have resigned after it refused to reverse its decision to rescind Dr Abdel-Fattah's invitation. No statement has been issued but their names have been quietly removed from the website.

Four people are now responsible for the ongoing crisis.

Love and light, and stay off social media if the imagery, footage, grief, shock, and comments sections, are all too much right now (as they are).
All we have is our shared humanity.
Words matter. Choose them carefully and with sensitivity.
Connect with loved ones.
Reach across.

Don't share photos of the tragic scenes up in Sydney tonight. Loved ones will not know yet. Let police processes and community safety be the first consideration.

What are universities for today? The usefulness of "useless" knowledge - ABC listen Are our universities facing an existential crisis by trying to be too many things? Places for learning, research, the production of new knowledge, the production of job-ready graduates, and profit-mak...

Podcast Alert: The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge
We recently marked our 25th Anniversary at UWA with a conversation about the value of enquiry for its own sake.
📻 You can listen to this discussion on ABC Radio National’s Big Ideas with @natashamitchell.bsky.social www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Head spinning (in a good way) after seeing playwright Suzie Miller in conversation with ABC journo @natashamitchell.bsky.social at a Monash Alumni event tonight. What a smart, compassionate, engaged and engaging woman Miller is. Her play Prima Facie destroyed me, and I loved ‘meeting’ its creator

This is a must listen on ABC Radio National's BIG IDEAS wherever you pick up your favourite podcasts. Thanks Simon, and welcome back to Australia.

Oh my gosh the late great science journalist Sharon Begley wrote an obit about Watson. Logging into STAT....

CDC team running top survey on health and nutrition is laid off NHANES has collected data on eating patterns, diabetes, and other common diseases for decades. The CDC team that runs it has been fired.

Ugh... This study has existed for decades, providing valuable health data for all sorts of topics and publications. This is just more awful news. 🛟😷 Sociology medsky

TOP 100 BOOKS of the 21st Century Vote Now ABC Radio National Colourful artoon image of piles of books and little people amongst them

#Top100Books of the 21st Century Tune in 18 & 19 October

Alt text: Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity - Andrew Solomon Stasiland - Anna Funder The Lovely Bones - Alice Seabold Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda - Roméo Antonius Dallaire Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal - Jeanette Winterson Boy, Lost - Kristina Olsson A Human Being Died that Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness (2003) - Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela The Gene: An intimate history - Siddhartha Mukherjee The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions - Thom Van Dooren

ABC Radio National's #Top100Books of 21C vote is going OFF!

Tens of 1000s of you have already voted!

Most are voting for glorious novels.

I'm a weirdo.

My lucky occupational hazard is I interview a lot of non-fiction authors.

Was profoundly affected by these.

Vote now!
top100books.abc.net.au

The small wins

Wordle 1,495 3/6

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Charting the Future: First Nations Knowledges and Artificial Intelligence

See you at the NOW OR NEVER FESTIVAL in August

Hosting this important discussion at the @wheelercentre.bsky.social
on First Nations knowledges & AI with authors of the book The AI (R)evolution, Associate Prof Jessica Russ-Smith and Prof Michelle D. Lazarus

www.wheelercentre.com/events-ticke...

THE BEAKER STREET DEBATE Natasha Mitchell hosts the battle of brains and bravado

See you at Beaker St Festival in Hobart in August

Hosting the annual GREAT DEBATE ...always a hit and hilarious
tickets.beakerstreet.com.au/Events/THE-B...

and the DARK SKY DINNER
tickets.beakerstreet.com.au/Events/DARK-...

See you at Byron Writers Festival in August
Hosting these four fabulous sessions

www.byronwritersfestival.com/festival/wri...

What are friends for? — Brunswick Ballroom, July 16 What is the nature of friendship? What is its purpose and what does it require? And why do humans have friends in the first place?

Melbourne! Join us at the Sophia Club on 16 July where we’ll explore the meaning and purpose of friendship with philosopher @markalfano.bsky.social, ⁠hosted by‬ @natashamitchell.bsky.social‬. Get your tickets: buff.ly/iXOuSSq

Congratulations!

We asked for workers and got people — inside the temporary visa scheme putting food on your plate - ABC listen A workforce we rarely hear about, lives in limbo, and stories from the coalface. From economic gains and cultural exchanges to exploitation and absconding,  what are the successes and problems of the ...

WE ASKED FOR WORKERS, WE GOT PEOPLE

Hear this timely event I hosted. On BIG IDEAS
www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

And read recent related excoriating reportage on PALM visa scheme issues

Pregnancies, abuse, discrimination
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06...

Slavery
www.abc.net.au/pacific/prog...

French Senate backs law to regulate ultra fast fashion The new legislation would impose eco-taxes, advertising bans, and influencer restrictions, but critics believe the bill falls short of its initial environmental ambitions. #EuropeNews

And look what just happened in France. Big. We talk about this too.

"French Senate backs law to regulate ultra fast fashion giants Shein and Temu"
www.euronews.com/my-europe/20...

4 women and a man standing in front of a banner

We're addicted to it, especially Australians.

But fast farshun, sweetie darling, is seriously f**ed up for the planet & humanity.

Four guests, including acclaimed fashion designer #KitWillow, join me from the frontier of change.

Hear now on the BIG IDEAS podcast
www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Book cover: Black Convicts: How slavery shaped Australia - by Santilla Chingaipe

Book cover: She Shapes History: Guided Walks and Untold Stories About Great Australian Women - by Sita Sargeant

Book cover: Nation Memory Myth: Gallipoli and the Australian Imaginary by Steve Vizard

4 people, 3 women, one man, standing side by side on a stage looking at camera

Where do you look for the secret, untold, lost, hidden histories? Can we are to truly understand ourselves without them? Joining me at Melbourne Writers Festival

Santilla Chingaipe
Sita Sargeant
Steve Vizard

for THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY

Hear now on BIG IDEAS

www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Celebrating the small wins and flukes.

Wordle 1,428 3/6

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Mark Zuckerberg claims corporations are culturally neutered — are they? Men, women, work, and the manosphere - ABC listen Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has said “a lot of the corporate world has become culturally neutered” and that it needs more “masculine energy”? Has it and does it? At Meta, he recently shut down initiatives ...

Mark Z*ckerberg claims corporations are being culturally neutered - are they?

Joining me: journo #CatherineFox (author, The Boss Bias) & lawyer @joshbornstein.bsky.social (author, Working for the Brand:How Corporations are Destroying Free Speech)

We roam far & wide!
www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

James Baker dies aged 71: the big beat behind some of Australia’s most influential garage-rock With his lifelong bowl cut, the musician was a totem of punk style and sound, drumming in Hoodoo Gurus, Beasts of Bourbon, the Scientists and others

Vale

www.theguardian.com/music/2025/m...

Want to make sense of this extraordinary moment & a world in chaos?

@johnthelyonsden.bsky.social Greg Sheridan
@emmashortis.bsky.social @joshtaylor.bsky.social joined me for a BIG conversation at Sorrento Writers Festival.

8pm across Oz on ABC Radio National or HERE
www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Want to make sense of this extraordinary moment & a world in chaos?

@johnthelyonsden.bsky.social Greg Sheridan
@emmashortis.bsky.social @joshtaylor.bsky.social joined me for a BIG conversation at Sorrento Writers Festival.

8pm across Oz on ABC Radio National or HERE
www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

How do we make cancer treatment worth it, work better, and less harmful? - ABC listen Cancer is common and chemo and radiotherapies can save or extend our lives. But sometimes they don't, or they stop working, or they come with disabling long-term side effects. In a state of desperation, some of us seek out unproven alternatives which might even put us at greater risk of cancer. Join Big Ideas host Natasha Mitchell and guests to find out how scientists are attacking the problem of cancer treatment. This event was organised by the Australasian Society of Stem Cell Research, University of Adelaide, and National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia. Speakers Professor Mark Dawson Haematologist and clinician-scientist Associate Director of Research Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the University of Melbourne. Associate Professor David Elliot Stem cell researcher and leader of the Heart Disease group, Murdoch Children's Research Institute Principal investigator, Novo Nordisk Foundation for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW).  Professor Megan Munsie Immediate Past President, Australasian Society of Stem Cell Research (ASSCR) Professor of Emerging Technologies (Stem Cells)  Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the University of Melbourne Thank also to Tanya Ha from Science in Public and Dr Luke Isbel from the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute. Further listening How surfing writer Tim Baker and doctor Peter Goldsworthy learnt to live well and laugh with cancer (Big Ideas, 2025)

Tune in tomorrow and Thursday for ABC Radio National’s broadcast of the ‘Making cancer treatment worth it’ public forum with Big Ideas presenter Natasha Mitchell in conversation with top cancer and stem cell scientists: www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...
@natashamitchell.bsky.social @asscr.bsky.social

pile of books

Bit on, and then some!

Hosting these Sorrento Writers Festival panels this weekend:

sorrentowritersfestival.com.au/artfuel/prog...

Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing

"On Tyranny" is a #1 NYT bestseller again. I wish the moment were different. But I’m glad the book is useful. And grateful for all the kind words about putting the 20 lessons to work.
snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...

The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature. 2. Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events. 3. Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels. 4. Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market. 5. By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t.

The White House has turned COVID.gov from a public health resource into a politically charged platform promoting the lab-leak theory and attacking specific scientists and the pandemic response in general. Let’s fact check its 5 headline claims… 🧵