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Keywords: Book Chat

  • AUSTRALIA

    Decades of discovery: Robyn Williams and the evolution The Science Show

    • Michele Gierck
    • 08 March 2024

    If you made a list of top Australian scientists, who would make your top three? Robyn Williams, host of The Science Show since 1975,  discusses the rise of new scientific areas, incredible breakthroughs and thousands of Australian men and women pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Re-building the commons: In conversation with Joshua Lourensz

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 06 February 2024

    In a world that has become increasingly more divided in the aftermath of the pandemic, Executive Director of Catholic Social Services Victoria Joshua Lourensz is questioning how we might best re-develop a sense of the commons to reignite our communities and foster social responsibility?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Conversations at the Crossroads: In conversation with Joe Camilleri

    • Michele Gierck
    • 22 September 2023

    Can genuine dialogue influence societal change? In discussion with Professor Joe Camilleri, Michele Gierck explores initiatives to achieve productive public discourse, and the transformative power of conversation as our most effective catalyst for global change. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Saida Pearlie: A nurse's window to war

    • Erica Cervini
    • 24 April 2023
    1 Comment

    A small autograph book from an Australian army nurse in World War II provides a unique glimpse into the lives of those she cared for in Palestine. With sketches and heartfelt inscriptions, the book illuminates the overlooked efforts of nurses whose dedication continued even after the war. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Take this: A story of pharmacy

    • Michael McGirr
    • 14 April 2023
    5 Comments

    What are the implications of widespread use of Metformin, Pembrolizumab, or Nivolumab, and what do they say about us? Featuring a humourless pharmacist and a thick wad of prescriptions, the story of our complicated relationship with pharmaceuticals is a meandering map of the human condition.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Does ChatGPT have a place in the classroom?

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 22 February 2023
    3 Comments

    Does ChatGPT have a place in the classroom? Educators worldwide are grappling with this new ubiquitous technology, fearing not only that it will facilitate cheating, but may create an over-dependence leading to cognitive decline. But the same was once said about writing.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Chatbots for love

    • Michael McGirr
    • 09 February 2023
    6 Comments

    At the root of questions around ChatGPT are issues of authenticity and creativity. It has the capacity to call the bluff on a society which is increasingly inclined to trade pre-digested ‘messaging’ and call it a conversation. Outsourcing self-expression to a computer forces you to ask yourself what makes a human being. Where does the machine end and where do I begin? 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Making My Island Home

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 18 October 2022

    ‘My Island Home’ was first recorded 35 years ago, a song that emerged from a journey and conversation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices. It’s helped Australians better understand our home and place in it, and points to the value of enshrining Indigenous voices in our constitution so they can continue to speak to us all. 

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    The spirit of The Way

    • Michael McGirr
    • 09 September 2022
    5 Comments

    The Way had been a community of homeless people, built around difficult but wonderful characters. It taught me more than I can easily say. It was a world where things were not always as they seemed and people did not fit into little boxes. We had many challenging days and relationships with our guys were seldom easy, but there was an energy that found light in unexpected places.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Memory and Austen

    • Juliette Hughes 
    • 14 July 2022
    4 Comments

    History is on my mind at the moment, all because of yet another awful Austen adaptation. The latest cinematic mud-pie thrown at her in the new Persuasion movie may even be the worst one yet, which is something, because there’s a lot of competition. Who can forget Gwyneth Paltrow in the 1995 Emma driving a carriage in a yellow ball gown as though she were doing the time trial in Top Gear?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    LaMDA and the (lack of) body

    • Julian Butler
    • 05 July 2022
    3 Comments

    Just over a fortnight ago Google suspended Blake Lemoine, an engineer for Google’s AI organisation, for publicly claiming a computer chatbot he was working on is sentient and thinks and reasons like a human. The publicity surrounding the suspension has raised questions about the development of artificial intelligence (AI), about our shared understanding of what it means to be conscious and sentient.  

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    True friendship

    • Barry Gittins
    • 04 February 2021
    2 Comments

    All three of us are parents, we’ve all been adversely impacted by COVID-19, and prior to that we’ve shared the usual rough and tumble dynamics of male friendships and bridal party affiliations. We have been in and out of each other’s good books, hard conversations, interpersonal dynamics and orbits. We’ve been through a lot as mates. COVID-wise, though, that affinity has been at a remove.

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