Shows / Background Briefing
Background Briefing
Background Briefing is the ABC's flagship investigative journalism podcast. Its award-winning investigations and documentaries expose cover-ups, corruption, real-life mysteries, whistleblowing, crime, fraud and miscarriages of justice — often before these stories receive mainstream attention. The Background Briefing podcast brings you true stories not everyone will want you to hear, told by trusted reporters across Australia. This Australian podcast makes investigative journalism bingeable…
Episodes
- Background Briefing
Culture wars at CSIRO
When scientists - who believe passionately in independence, in pure research, and in sharing information - are asked to conform to business plans and…
- Background Briefing
Freefall: free markets and the sinking of the global economy
Economist and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz talks about the policy mistakes that led to the GFC and the lessons to be drawn from it. The key question is: what…
- Background Briefing
Hanging by a fibre
The Labor government is about to switch on the first leg of its National Broadband Network - super-fast internet that promises to revolutionise Australia's…
- Background Briefing
A wide open land
As the world's available farming land shrinks in the face of population growth, climate change and soil degradation, Australia's vast tracts of land are going…
- Background Briefing
Beyond reasonable doubt
Despite the built-in appeal process, Australia's criminal justice system still produces wrongful convictions based on flawed evidence. There are calls for a…
- Background Briefing
Energy demand and climate change in the developing world
These are the colliding trends that confront India, China and much of the developing world. How do you meet the expectations of hundreds of millions of people…
- Background Briefing
The spilling fields
As we watch the worst environmental disaster in US history unfold, it's worth comparing with our own gusher in the Timor Sea last year. The Montara well leaked…
- Background Briefing
Social media and sentiment mining
Businesses and advertisers can already access enormous amounts of personal data on social media sites, from where you live to what you like. The next step is…
- Background Briefing
Gas rush
Beneath the rich farming soils of the Darling Downs there's a gaseous gold mine. Mobile drilling rigs dot the landscape as energy companies rush to secure the…
- Background Briefing
Prevention or cure?
Primary school kitchen gardens, behavioural economics and frugal innovation, they're all important elements in a complex strategy to improve heart health and…
- Background Briefing
Soft power shifts
From Hollywood to Harvard, rock'n'roll to rap, American soft power is well understood. But what about Confucianism, or the Peking Opera, Bhangra music and…
- Background Briefing
Timber politics
Bunnings, Greenpeace, Ikea and the US Congress are part of an unlikely coalition pushing for a ban on illegally logged timber. An Australian DNA test may solve…
- Background Briefing
Bitter harvest
The National Farmers Federation says another 20,000 pickers are needed to harvest Australia's crops. Growers complain of fruit rotting on the ground…
- Background Briefing
The privacy paradox
Generational change and the power of social media has dramatically altered notions of privacy and as personal data files expand, our lives are going public by…
- Background Briefing
Dust to daylight
From the rural backblocks of northern Tasmania, the story of a deadly asbestos legacy, a company promising to open the books on the past, and an ambitious…
- Background Briefing
Whitlam as internationalist
Former High Court justice Michael Kirby talks about former prime minister Gough Whitlam's foreign policy initiatives. The greatest legacy, Kirby says, has been…
- Background Briefing
What is football for?
UK soccer fans are angry because the game is now a toy for sugar daddies, oligarchs, oil sheiks and media magnates or treated as just a business. Is the game a…
- Background Briefing
Food fears
There's a public inquiry into food labelling, and it opens a Pandora's box of very complex issues. Prawns from China can be labelled 'Made in Australia'!…
- Background Briefing
The great native pet debate
Marsupial-loving reporter Ian Walker grew up wanting a pet like Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Could encouraging more native mammals as pets be a canny new…
- Background Briefing
Space rules the world
Transport, banking, food production, social networking, global supply chains, the world economy - would all grind to a halt if the satellite system failed…
- Background Briefing
Emergency mental health
A clinical psychiatry professor in San Francisco General Hospital discusses the dangers, ethics, frailties and very difficult, sensitive decisions a…
- Background Briefing
Maybe Obama can't
Perhaps it's all too hard: Guantanamo, Republican hatred, Afghanistan, the global financial crisis and unemployment. The health bill may just pass and, if so…
- Background Briefing
Babies at risk?
Figures show that the number of babies taken from mothers at birth is rising dramatically, particularly in NSW. Judgments must err on the side of child safety…
- Background Briefing
What is wrong with the Catholic Church?
Not only in Australia, but around the world, the Catholic Church is rocked by news of sex abuse scandals. The vow of celibacy is often blamed, but it is more…
- Background Briefing
Problem pirates of Somalia
Many wonder why they are not just shot out of the water on sight, but in fact the merchant cargo ships, the insurers, and the many State navies are also caught…
- Background Briefing
Dengue epidemic
Mozzies are waiting as each day travellers arrive carrying the dengue virus. They want a sip of blood, and will spread it all about within days. Aedes…
- Background Briefing
The Matilda myth
Background Briefing and Hindsight join to explore the historical arguments about the deal of the real swagman, and the dozens of kooky versions, from Harry…
- Background Briefing
The last 10 years
The decade since the millenium year has seen fast changes, terrible suffering and a communication revolution. China emerges as a superpower, Iraq and…
- Background Briefing
On road cycling
With a dramatic increase in cycling, comes a plethora of new safety issues on the roads. Doctors, politicians, planners and cyclists agree it will mean…
- Background Briefing
Australian Muslim youth
Searching for their own identity in a changing world, young Muslims in Australia face a plethora of backyard imams and internet sheikhs. Many are turning to…
- Background Briefing
Assisted death
The law in Australia may not have caught up with modern medicine, and doctors and the authorities are caught between a rock and a hard place. So argues Dr…
- Background Briefing
Housing for millions
Planning for happy cities, when you're also jamming in millions more people, is politically tricky. Urban planners say they can make better communities with…
- Background Briefing
Internet piracy
Copyright began 300 years ago, but now laws can't cope with the anarchy of new technologies. There's a battle between the law and the 'mashers', from the White…
- Background Briefing
Controlling corruption
Out of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, the National Integrity System was born, and is now used by governments and authorities in most countries around the world. The…
- Background Briefing
What made the Romans laugh
The oldest collection of jokes in the world, Philogelos: The Laughter Lover, is examined for the light it throws on humour today. Professor in classics at…
- Background Briefing
Gillard's university reforms
Behind closed doors all the vice-chancellors are arguing about which bits of the Bradley Report they like and will agree to take on. Can we fit in 30% more…
- Background Briefing
On road cycling
With a dramatic increase in cycling, comes a plethora of new safety issues on the roads. Doctors, politicians, planners and cyclists agree it will mean…
- Background Briefing
Puppy farming
Hundreds of thousands of puppies are born every year, and many eventually end up in pounds, where most have to be put down. The vicious cycle involves…
- Background Briefing
Housing for millions
Planning for happy cities, when you're also jamming in millions more people, is politically tricky. Urban planners say they can make better communities with…
- Background Briefing
Rare earths and China
China currently produces about 95% of the world's rare earths, which are metals which are essential to modern living and used all around us every day. In…
- Background Briefing
One hundred years of spying
Britain's secret intelligence service, MI6, has both changed history and been changed by it. Unprecedented access was gained by the BBC World Service to people…
- Background Briefing
Internet piracy
Copyright began 300 years ago, but now laws can't cope with the anarchy of new technologies. There's a battle between the law and the 'mashers', from the White…
- Background Briefing
Indefatigable Chomsky
He's over 80 and has written or contributed to 95 books. At one time he was the most cited living academic, a Vietnam activist and a thorn in the side of…
- Background Briefing
War criminals in Australia
With so many new communities in Australia coming from countries where there have been brutal wars, the likelihood of some people having suspicious backgrounds…
- Background Briefing
Controlling corruption
Out of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, the National Integrity System was born, and is now used by governments and authorities in most countries around the world. The…
- Background Briefing
Who owns the news?
It's a question no one has really been able to answer, though many try. A new fight for the answer is breaking out all over the place because readers are…
- Background Briefing
Feral deer
Feral deer numbers have exploded in many parts of Australia, and they're chewing through farms and bushland. Farmers and environmentalists want them declared a…
- Background Briefing
The third era of AIDS
From Africa and India to Indonesia, government leaders face the reality of a resurgent AIDS epidemic: Men do have sex with men and pass it on to women, and…
- Background Briefing
Gold
In this BBC documentary, reporter Nick Rankin explores the impact of gold on people's lives. From brokers to miners and athletes the allure of gold has lasted…
- Background Briefing
Australian Muslim youth
Searching for their own identity in a changing world, young Muslims in Australia face a plethora of backyard imams and internet sheikhs. Many are turning to…
- Background Briefing
Global suicide increasing
Suicide rates around the world are rising, and rising fastest in rural areas. India, England, Wales, Canada, America and Australia all have alarming…
- Background Briefing
Rohan and the road to the apocalypse
Forty years ago an Australian shearer from Grenfell, gripped by religious mania, set fire to one of the most holy sites in Islam—the Al Aqsa Mosque in…
- Background Briefing
Christopher Hitchens
Writer and traveller Christopher Hitchens gives, with both gravity and humour, his take on the 'Axis of Evil'. He talks about why he underwent waterboarding…
- Background Briefing
Limits of power
Retired colonel in the US army and historian of international relations, Professor Andrew Bacevich argues that the US should get out of Afghanistan. Producer…
- Background Briefing
Self inflicted sickness?
There are debates and discussion about who should foot the bill if we get sick with something we could have prevented if we had lived a better lifestyle -…
- Background Briefing
Credit rating agencies
They have become both critic and chef in the big financial kitchens, but they say they're really journalists and take no responsibility for their advice. CRAs…
- Background Briefing
Who stopped the music?
The parlous state of music in public schools means not only are our children missing an important dimension in life, but they miss out on something that…
- Background Briefing
Expanding mental illness
Over the decades psychiatrists are finding and re-defining more of the constellation of emotions, reactions, and ups and down of life as mental illness. No…
- Background Briefing
Cairo, a divided city
The rich are deserting the old city of Cairo and moving to luxurious, Hollywood style, gated communities in the desert, with lush golf courses and artificial…
- Background Briefing
Australia's ocean territory
Our ocean territory is greater than our landmass, and one of the biggest in the world. Yet our capacity to explore the deep ocean is smaller than landlocked…