This week on The ABR Podcast, Patrick Mullins reviews What’s the Big Idea?, edited by Anna Chang and Alice Grundy, and Age of Doubt, edited by Tracey Kirkland and Gavin Fang. In What’s the Big Idea? essayists suggest changes to combat the myriad crises – from violence against women to climate catastrophe – that Australia faces. The writers in Age of Doubt analyse the ways trust has been eroded in Australia, and how the country might restore it. Writes Mullins, ‘Time will tell whether Australians will take the opportunities presented’. Patrick Mullins is a writer and visiting fellow at the ANU’s National Centre of Biography. Here is Patrick Mullins with ‘Denial, obfuscation, defiance: Two earnest books on the challenges ahead’, published in the April issue of ABR.