Armed with a tripod and an internet connection, as well as a coterie of scruffy lambs, dogs and horses, Tara Bellerose broadcasts a message to the world.

From a farm in the Victorian highlands, the 21-year-old uses video app TikTok to share what she believes are urgent messages about climate change — and point users to Friday's global climate strike.

This is a generation anxious about the future, and that's key to Tara's social media rants, which are raw and unapologetic — and detail what Tara fears is on the way.

And as the global climate strike approached, it was one of many social media tools being used to politically organise.

Read more in the article by Ariel Bogle and Farz Edraki.

Helen knew something was wrong as soon as she woke up. The world was suddenly mono instead of stereo: she couldn't hear out of her right ear.

She hadn't had a cold or been unwell, so at first she brushed it off as nothing. But overnight, ordinary events — conversations with friends, the open plan office at work — became distressing.

"It was frightening. I went out with my husband … we went out for dinner. It was just dreadful. The sound was bouncing off the walls, making me feel ill, making me dizzy," she said.

When it hadn't gone away by the next morning, Helen visited her GP, who urged Helen to get to an emergency room as soon as possible.

Though Helen didn't know it, she was at risk of permanently losing hearing in that ear unless doctors acted fast.

Read more in the article by James Bullen.

And listen to his interview with Helen on The Health Report.

In a Grimms' fairy tale from the early 1800s, two brothers are instructed by their father on how to kill a pig. By the end of the story, the whole family is dead.

Though it's a far cry from the children's stories of today, debate about what kids should be reading remains. And these days, kids' books feature everything from sexual abuse to death and terrorism.

Celebrated author Morris Gleitzman says this is as it should be: we shouldn't shy away from "taboo areas", or stories that are complex, confronting or dark.

"If we slam the lid down on certain areas of the world that they inhabit and already know a fair bit about ... well, there's nothing more fearful for a young person than to see that an adult they trust and love just doesn't want to talk about some aspects of life," he says.

"That's monsters-under-the-bed time." 

Read more in Anna Kelsey-Sugg's article.

And listen to the full conversation on Big Ideas. ​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​

It's difficult to know where to place Sigmund Freud in the canon of Western thinkers.

Some critics say they know exactly where to place him: straight in the bin. From one side of the culture war trenches, Freud's ideas are viewed as emblematic of everything that's gone wrong with Western civilisation.

On the other hand, it's hard to dismiss completely a figure who's had such a profound influence on contemporary life. But for someone so manifestly part of the modern cultural furniture, Freud is hard to get a fix on, to articulate in terms of exactly who and what he was.

Freud himself had a very clear idea. According to Matthew Sharpe, an associate professor in philosophy at Deakin University and a Freud specialist, the good Viennese doctor saw himself as a man of science first and foremost.

"He was sceptical about philosophy, because he thought that philosophers overvalued the power of human thought," says Sharpe.

Read more in David Rutledge's article.

Listen to the full interview with Matthew Sharpe on The Philosopher's Zone.