Have you made any resolutions to read more books this year? Many of us turn to fiction to ask and explore big questions. This week we look at Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and how the Russian literary tradition can help clarify our questions about truth, love for one another, and ethics.

The Dalai Lama is one of the world's most recognisable people and he turned 90 in July, 2025. Tributes flowed from Tibetans around the world, including from Grammy-nominated musician Tenzin Choegyal.

Eighty years ago on 11 April 1945, American soldiers marched into Buchenwald concentration camp and liberated the people they found there, including 14-year-old Joe Szwarcberg.

Food is a basic need, but also more than just a way of nourishing the body. The food on our plates and the drinks in our cups tell us all kinds of things about who we are and what we believe.

Where do you feel like you belong? A sense of belonging can change or be refined throughout our lives, and through experiences like travel or creating art. On Soul Search, we examine the complexities of belonging, and what it is that makes us feel at home — or far from it.

Disability is an all-of-us thing. Almost everyone will experience disability — in our communities, and, with time, directly in our own bodies.

Today, we're taking a break from all the noise and distraction – to pay attention to the quality of silence. Why is it so precious in many of the world's spiritual traditions? And how do we find it? An artist shares her encounter with a transforming silence in Antarctica, and a Quaker shares her habits around seeking silence. 

When was the last time you felt at home? Was it something about the place, how people treated you, or perhaps something more internal? Award-winning poet Miriam Wei Wei Lo explores a longing for home through her poetry, and why homes can be complicated.

Anyone who has raised kids knows it's hard work. We do our best, but it can confront us with how we were raised ourselves. Steve Biddulph is one of the world's best known parenting educators, and now in retirement, Steve has been reflecting on anxiety, the value of spirituality, and the challenges of masculinity today.

What do the mystics have to teach us about healing our external — and internal — landscapes?

The way we imagine the future matters. Not only does it change how we feel, those feelings change how we live today — and that might just change how things actually turn out!

Imagine living life without money — cutting up your credit card, closing up your bank account, and finding new ways to feed and clothe yourself. On Soul Search, we examine what it might look like to step away from the cycle of getting and spending, and towards a gift economy.

The novelist Patrick White once said yes, religion was behind all his books – but his religious and spiritual identity was far from straightforward. In the final instalment of the Big Questions in Books series we explore the (sometimes ambivalent!) Australian expressions of the sacred in literature, from Helen Garner to Tim Winton.

The acclaimed scientist Jane Goodall has died on October 1st, at the age of 91. But Dr Goodall's legacy, along with her study of chimps, is arguably as much to do with hope – and the spiritual curiosity that underpinned her quest for hope in difficult times.

Making art and music has been an endeavour for at least as long as humans have existed, and it has the power to connect us in all kinds of ways. From the mountains of the southern Philippines to urban Melbourne, people are creating things that connect us to each other — and the transcendent.

What does it mean to live a good life? According to some of the earliest Christians, the answer has a lot to do with... death! Orthodox scholar John Behr tells the stories of some of these saints and martyrs, and unpacks what they are telling us today.

Jerusalem is one of the most fraught cities on earth. It's a city that has broken the hearts, yet also inspired the hopes, of millions around the world. In the midst of conflict in and around a city that means so much to so many, how does one work for peace?

The world is due to have its very first millennial saint — Carlo Acutis, the 'saint in sneakers' who died at the age of 15 in 2006. He's usually depicted holding a phone or laptop, and his cause for sainthood blends the medieval and mystical with the hyper modern.

In this fast-paced world where so much of our attention is focused on the now, why do complex ancient texts still speak to us? Soul Search explores the multigenerational epic, the Mahabharata.

It’s a big thought — that our story as a species is partly to do with grass. But it turns out that grasses and grasslands can play a surprising role in moulding who we are. How do we restore our relationship with native grasses, and what are some of the threats from introduced grasses like buffel?