Ideas at the House

Laila Lalami’s eerily prophetic new book imagines a world where AI can punish us for “potential crimes”. Known for her razor-sharp explorations of the immigrant experience, Lalami once again proves the power of fiction to illuminate and anticipate the world around us.From her celebrated essay collection Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America to her acclaimed novels, she has long interrogated power and national belonging. Enjoy this rare chance to hear Lalami unpack identity, belonging, justice and the power of storytelling.

You might be familiar with the concept of the “second shift” — the domestic burden that awaits a woman when she returns home from work. Then there’s the third shift (emotional labour) and the fourth shift (nighttime caregiving). Now we ask: is sex just the so-called “fifth shift”?Join Yumi Stynes, Chanté Joseph and Aleks Trkulja for an engaging chat about whether keeping the spark alive in long-term relationships is totally hot… or just another unpaid shift women are expected to clock into.Is maintaining a sex life in log-term relationships a labour of love, or just… labour?

Bringing up boys isn’t getting any less complicated. One minute they’re sweet, funny little humans. The next, they’re parroting some podcast bro who insists “patriarchy isn’t real” and “grindset” is a personality.Shows like Adolescence and books like The Anxious Generation tapped a nerve. As toxic masculinity is loudly (and often rightly) called out, a generation of boys is confused and ashamed — and the algorithm is happy to lead them down dark alt-right rabbit holes. It’s part of the reason the Australian government introduced age restrictions for social media accounts.So how do we cut through the bro-fluencer noise to raise resilient, emotionally literate boys?Investigative journalist Jess Hill (See What You Made Me Do) and men’s mental health researcher Zac Seidler unpack the cultural forces shaping boys today and how adults can guide them with compassion.

For solo parents, queer couples and people experiencing fertility issues the path to parenthood often comes with extra steps. Today, finding donor sperm is harder than ever — It’s the drought Australia is not talking about!As Australian fertility clinics scramble to meet demand, the search for sperm becomes an unexpectedly intimate chapter in the story of forming a family. Some navigate year-long clinic waitlists. Others sift through overseas profiles or have delicate conversations with friends. And some, like our moderator Edwina Storie, find themselves trawling unexpected corners of Facebook.Bringing together lived experience, this panel unswaddles the messy truth of modern conception — from awkward donor conversations and legal grey zones to financial burdens, cultural complexities and what donor-conceived people wish their parents knew.Join Melanie Saward, Alisha Burns, Maeve Marsden and Edwina Storie for an eye-opening conversation about what it really takes to make a baby today.

Women’s pain isn’t “mysterious”. Medicine is failing us.For centuries, women’s symptoms have been misunderstood, minimised or dismissed, from wandering wombs and so-called “hysteria” to modern-day misdiagnosis, mistreatment and delayed care.Medical science made extraordinary advances in the 20th and 21st centuries, but gender bias remains stubbornly embedded in healthcare, from a body of scientific research based largely on male experience, to a medical culture that can still see women dismissed or even belittled.An increasing body of testimony shows how dangerous this is for women — particularly First Nations women, women of colour and gender-diverse people — with poorer health outcomes across cardiovascular, neurological, reproductive and autoimmune conditions.Against this backdrop, studies like Australia’s first-ever Inquiry into Women’s Pain — drawing on the lived experiences of more than 13,000 women, girls, carers, healthcare professionals, peak bodies and researchers — point to the urgent need for reform.Join this expert panel as they put medical misogyny under the microscope and, crucially, map out what meaningful change could finally look like.

What if ageing wasn’t something to avoid, but something to embrace?Right now, a revolution is gathering force. Middle-aged and older women are refusing to fade out, shrink back or apologise for taking up space.Jacinta Parsons’ new book, A Wisdom of Age, was sparked by conversations with women across the country who are rewriting the rules and living with unapologetic confidence.Jacinta is joined by some of the formidable women whose humour, tenderness and rebellious wisdom shaped the book. This uplifting talk is a celebration of ageing with agency, and we’re just getting started.

When Emily Maitlis grilled then-Prince Andrew in that now-infamous BBC interview, she ignited “the worst PR crisis for the royal family since the death of Diana”. Ending the Duke’s royal career, the encounter also inspired several television adaptations including Amazon Prime’s A Very Royal Scandal (with Ruth Wilson as Maitlis).Since then, she’s only turned up the heat – challenging political spin, dismantling “both-sides” journalism, hosting one of the UK’s most-listened-to podcasts and putting pressure on the US Department of Justice to release the “Epstein Files”.Maitlis brings her signature fearlessness to All About Women to talk politics, power, journalism’s critical role in seeking justice and holding power to account – and what it takes to expose the truth when the stakes couldn’t be higher. 

When justice is redacted, women pay the price.The Epstein Files are not just about one man’s crimes, but about the systems that protected him and failed women — and girls — for decades. American journalist and writer Amy Wallace collaborated with Epstein survivor Virginia Roberts Giuffre on her memoir Nobody’s Girl, published months after her death, while British journalist Emily Maitlis famously put Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on the record about his involvement with Epstein’s dark world. Join them for a critically important discussion that looks beyond spectacle to examine the institutions that turned a blind eye, the lawsuits now seeking redress and what justice looks like when perpetrators evade consequences but survivors live with lasting harm.