God Forbid

If God says that man is fallible, and man wrote the Bible, then how can we know that the Bible is the true word of God? 

For most of history, body size has been about more than just health — it’s been a tool of control. From colonial ideals of “discipline” to modern-day diet culture, our ideas about fatness and thinness are deeply tied to morality, power, and profit. But are we getting it all wrong?Why do we see fatness as a personal failure rather than a natural variation in human bodies? How have our ideas of race and femininity affected our ideas of acceptable fat? Is public health really about health, or does it fuel stigma? And in an era of body positivity, have we actually made progress — or just rebranded the same old shame?GUESTS:Tess Royale Clancy, fat activist and co-founder of Radically Soft, Sydney’s first ever market for plus sized 2nd hand & new clothes. April Helene-Horton aka The Bodzilla, body positivity advocate, model, and a 2025 ambassador for the Butterly Foundation. Dr Kathryn MacKay, researcher in feminist bioethics and a lecturer at the Sydney Health Ethics Centre.  Dr Jane Williams, researcher at the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney and the Australian Centre for Health Engagement, Evidence and Values (ACHEEV) at the University of Wollongong. Also co-host of the Undisciplinary podcast.This episode first went to air in April 2025This episode of God Forbid was made on Gadigal and Ngunnawal land.Technical production by Roi Huberman and Dylan Prins. 

Looking towards the heavens for meaning doesn’t always mean looking to God. UFOs (and the modern moniker UAPs) have long been the food for thought of sceptics, theologians, and astrobiologists alike.  But what does belief in these mysterious phenomena have in common with religion? And what implications does life outside Earth have for the existence of God? GUESTS:Bill Chalker, UFO researcher. Contributing editor, International UFO Reporter. Author of Hair of the Alien and The Oz Files: The Australian UFO Story. Reverend Dr Tim Jenkins, Reader in Anthropology and Religion, Divinity Faculty, University of Cambridge. Author of Images of Elsewhere Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka, Professor, Religious Studies, University of North Carolina Wilmington, specialising in UFO and UAP religions This program first went to air in February 2025This episode of God Forbid was produced on Gadigal land, and recorded on Gadigal and Dharug land as well as the sovereign land of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

The big news for Christians is that this year we had BOTH a new Pope and – for the Anglican communion – the announcement of a new Archbishop of Canterbury.For Catholics, of course, Leo was the surprise choice at the papal conclave in May.  The first pope from the United States. And the first from the Order of Saint Augustine. And Dr Sarah Mullally will be the first woman to be enthroned as the Church of England’s senior bishop at Canterbury Cathedral in March next year.Anglicanism is reaching what could be an emerging global schism in the church. Next March the bishops of the conservative Global Anglican Future Conference or GAFCON have been summoned to meet in Nigeria. This could well be one of the most eventful Anglican assemblies in history.This year saw fundamental change in the power of Artificial Intelligence. For centuries we've defined ourselves by capacities we thought were uniquely human — reasoning, language, creativity, pattern recognition. We are now at the stage where Artificial Intelligence makes decisions and generates ideas that we can't fully explain or understand. It may well be a paradigm shift at least as big as evolution.And...the Zionist Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari famously said this year – 2025 – may be the biggest turning in Jewish history since the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. Harari says Judaism has survived every catastrophe imaginable – even the Holocaust – but never until now has it faced a spiritual catastrophe.GUESTS:Andrew West from the Religion and Ethics ReportMeredith Lake from Soul Search Senior religious reporter and Editor, Religion and Ethics, Noel DebienScott Stephens from The Minefield

A bohemian journalist who found God in the slums — and built a movement that unsettled both Church and State.Born in Brooklyn in 1897, Dorothy Day lived many lives: radical writer, suffragist, single mother, and eventually Catholic convert. In the midst of the Great Depression, she co-founded the Catholic Worker movement, opening houses of hospitality for the poor and protesting every war America fought. To admirers, she was a saint in street clothes; to critics, a communist in disguise. Can holiness and revolution coexist? Day’s life suggests that faith and rebellion may be closer than we think.GUESTS:Paul Elie — author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American PilgrimageMartha Hennessy — granddaughter of Dorothy Day and lifelong member of Catholic Worker Movement.Robert Ellsberg — former editor of Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker newspaper. He worked closely with her in the final years of her life and is the editor of her published diaries and selected letters, The Duty Of Delight and All the Way to Heaven. Rev Simon Moyle — ordained Baptist Minister and elder at the Grace Tree Christian community in Coburg Melbourne.This is the sixth and final episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

A street hustler turned minister whose faith transformed Black politics — and himself.Born Malcolm Little in 1925, Malcolm X rose to fame as a fiery preacher in the Nation of Islam, calling for Black self-determination “by any means necessary.” But after his pilgrimage to Mecca, he embraced Sunni Islam and a universal vision of justice that transcended race. Weeks later, he was assassinated. Was Malcolm X a prophet of liberation or a threat to the powerful? His journey from militant separatism to spiritual reformer still forces America — and the world — to confront the cost of conviction.GUESTS:Tamara Payne — co-writer and principal researcher of Pulitzer prize winning biography “The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X” Assistant Professor Jimmy Butts — specialist in Malcolm X Studies at Trinity university in San Antonio Texas This is the fifth episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

A French lawyer-turned-theologian who split from Rome — and built his own city of God.John Calvin fled Catholic France to lead a new Protestant movement in Geneva during the 1500s. His ideas about predestination and the absolute authority of Scripture reshaped Christianity and inspired the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions. Yet under his rule, dissenters were exiled, imprisoned, and violently executed. Was he a reckless heretic or a visionary thinker centuries ahead of his time — and what does his death say about the danger of new ideas?GUESTS:Randall C. Zachman Professor Emeritus of Reformation Studies, at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, after many decades at University of Notre Dame. Professor Ben Myers at Alphacrucis University College in Brisbane - author of The Apostles’ Creed: A guide to the ancient catechism Dr Constance Lee is Lecturer in Law at Adelaide University, and author of a forthcoming book Natural Law and the Nature of Government: John Calvin’s Constitutional Theology This is the fourth episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

A Persian poet and scholar who tore off her veil — and announced the dawn of a new religious age. In the 1840s, Táhirih became one of the first women to preach in public in Iran. As a leading figure in the Bábí movement — a precursor to the Bahá’í faith — she argued that revelation had not ended and that women should be free to study, speak, and lead. Her defiance of clerical and royal authority terrified the establishment. In 1852, she was executed in secret, her body buried in silence. Was Táhirih a prophet of liberation or a heretic undone by her own courage?GUESTS:Professor Negar Mottahedeh — cultural critic and film theorist specialising in interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies at Duke UniversityRaya M Hazini — doctoral candidate with her Masters from the Graduate Theological UnionDr Zara Moballegh — PhD from Tehran University, she’s now visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard Divinity School. This is the third episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

A former Dominican friar who dared to say the universe had no centre — and paid with his life.Born in 16th-century Italy, Giordano Bruno broke with Church teachings to imagine an infinite cosmos filled with countless worlds. To him, God was not confined to heaven or hierarchy but alive in every corner of creation. The Inquisition saw it differently. After years of imprisonment and interrogation, Bruno was burned alive in Rome in 1600. Was he a reckless heretic or a visionary thinker centuries ahead of his time — and what does his death say about the danger of new ideas?GUESTS:Ingrid Rowland — Emeritus Professor of History at the US University of Notre Dame. Dilwyn Knox — Emeritus Professor of Renaissance Studies at University College, London Dr Shaun Blanchard — Lecturer in Theology at Notre Dame University Australia.This is the second episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

A teenage peasant who claimed to hear the voice of God — and changed the course of European history. At just seventeen, Joan of Arc convinced the French prince to let her lead an army against the English, turning the tide of the Hundred Years’ War. But her victories came at a price: captured, accused of heresy, and burned alive at nineteen. Was she a divinely inspired saviour or a dangerous fanatic? Centuries later, her story still provokes questions about faith, gender, and power — and how belief can turn an ordinary girl into a national saint.GUESTS:Dr Charlotte Millar — Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Melbourne.    Author Witchcraft, the Devil & Emotions in Early Modern EnglandDr Stephanie Downes — Lecturer at La Trobe University, an expert on the history of English and French, and of books and writing of the periodDr Shaun Blanchard — Lecturer in Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia. His anticipated fifth book – Catholicism and Enlightenment.This is the first episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels. A six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.