Justin Brierley: Why Is Belief in God Making a Comeback?

Sometimes in medicine, it's not just considering what you could do for a patient - it's also about what you should do. For renal physician Professor Mark Brown, this is how he looks at the decision of putting a patient on dialysis. It's not for everyone, he insists. In this conversation with Karl Faase, Mark traces the road from a working-class Sydney home, shaped by a sister with profound disabilities, to the forefront of kidney medicine. He talks candidly about a lonely year in a freezing Nottingham garage, a first marriage he wasn't ready for, a chance seat on a plane that led him to his wife Wendy, and the Sunday nights at a church car park that brought him back to faith. It's a conversation about life and death, and what it means to care for the whole person. About Professor Mark Brown Professor Mark Brown is a renal physician (kidney specialist) who has spent his whole consultant career at St George Hospital in Sydney. He is an international authority on pre-eclampsia, has published around 350 peer-reviewed papers, and was recently made an honorary member of the Royal College of Obstetricians in the UK. With his wife Wendy, who has a nursing background, he also started a medical clinic for homeless men at the Mission Australia Centre in Surry Hills, which has since become St George's Homeless Health Department. Key Moments & Highlights

Wendy Simpson was running a school for troubled teens, earning $36,000 a year and fielding the occasional death threat, when she flew to Connecticut and stayed in the homes of millionaire business leaders. She came home, looked at her husband Jeff and said, “I reckon if I really wanted to, I could have a go at that.” His reply: “Well, why don't you?” In this episode of Insight, Wendy traces an unlikely path from a humble Baptist church in Melbourne's northern suburbs to the corporate boardrooms of Australia and the negotiating tables of Shanghai. Along the way she talks about community living shaped by liberation theology, fostering 13 teenagers, pioneering Australia's first small business awards, and the day she was told she couldn't be a “Young Lion” because she was a woman. She also speaks openly about three cancer diagnoses, a first-in-human clinical trial, and the words she believes God spoke to her at her lowest point: “You can live in fear or you can live in faith.” This is a conversation about calling, courage, and seeing God's image in everyone, whether that's in a boardroom or among the homeless people at her local church. About Wendy Simpson Wendy Simpson is a Member of the Order of Australia, has been nominated to the Australian Businesswoman Hall of Fame, and was named one of the Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence. The daughter of a low-paid railway worker, she studied at RMIT and Melbourne University, taught at what was then considered Australia's most disadvantaged school, and ran a school for juvenile delinquents before moving into policy roles with the Victorian government under Premier Joan Kirner. Her corporate career took her through QBE Insurance, TNT and Alcatel, including seven years based in Shanghai leading work across 17 Asian countries. With her husband Jeff she bought and ran an engineering business and now works in commercial property development. She serves on boards, sits on the Sydney Prayer Breakfast Committee, and is helping start Redemptive Ventures Australia. Key Moments & Highlights

Tom Price was as far from Christianity as he could get - trying to cope with life by self-medicating and intentionally distancing himself from the religion of his parents. That was until a choking uncle and some late-night advice sent him down a path that led, eventually, to lecturing at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. In this conversation, Tom talks with Karl Faase about why he thinks the New Atheists were never a serious intellectual movement, what's really behind Richard Dawkins' talk of being a “cultural Christian,” and the uncomfortable questions apologetics now has to answer in the wake of high-profile church scandals - including the one that engulfed his own organisation's history. He also charts his personal journey of finding faith after adding Philosophy to his university study. About Tom Price Tom Price is an author, lecturer, and speaker with the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (OCCA). His PhD examines how popular film shapes the ideas people carry into everyday life, and his work takes him into schools, universities, workplaces and churches, helping people think through faith questions. Tom became a Christian while studying computer science and philosophy at university, after years estranged from his own churchgoing parents. Key Moments & Highlights

At just fifteen, Noah Brierley watched a video he'd made - a lighthearted challenge asking baristas for 10% off, just to practise getting over the fear of rejection - get reposted by a huge Instagram meme page. The comments were filled with mockery. He messaged them, begging them to take it down. They didn't. Years later, that same account messaged him again: “congrats on the growth, man.” It's a small window into the ride Noah has been on since he started posting on TikTok during COVID lockdown as a schoolboy with a side hustle and no plan - a ride that took him to 1.8 million followers by 17, a business managing accounts with a combined reach of around 4 million, and a decision to turn down Oxford University altogether. About Noah Brierley: Noah Brierley started building an audience on TikTok as a UK schoolboy during COVID lockdown, documenting side hustles like car washing and reselling on eBay rather than chasing dance trends. By 17 he'd reached 1.8 million followers, and he has since turned that following into a business managing content for clients, with accounts under his company reaching a combined audience of around 4 million. Rather than follow his parents - both Oxford and Cambridge graduates - to university, Noah left college to go all-in on social media full time. Key Moments & Highlights: - Turning “no” into fuel: the door-to-door car-washing mindset that taught Noah to treat every rejection as one step closer to a “yes” - Taking a £20 loan from his younger sister to buy car-washing supplies — and feeling he had to make it back - Deliberately skipping TikTok's dancing trend to build an educational, “document the journey” niche instead - Hitting 80,000 followers at 15 and getting invited to a cinema's opening night — the moment it first “felt real” - Getting mocked by a major Instagram meme page at 15, getting emotional about it, and years later receiving a congratulations message from the same account - The friction at home and school when Noah told his parents and his old teacher he wouldn't be going to university - Helping his dad grow a TikTok account to 100,000 followers within weeks, while Noah was still in school - Learning not to tie his happiness to view counts: “as long as I'd posted a video that day, I was happy” - Marrying Phoebe, his partner since age 11, at 20 and designing their business around the life and family they want - A wild prediction for AI and content creation: kids asking an app to generate a custom animated show on the spot

Katy Faust’s own childhood - her parents’ divorce, split households, and years of quietly people-pleasing the new partners - sits behind the things she now advocates for in public. In this wide-ranging conversation, she traces that story through her conversion to Christianity, the rage that turned her into an accidental activist against gay marriage and the step to start an anonymous blog that attracted a lot of hate. Eventually, her identity was revealed and her greatest fears came true - they went after her family and her church. This is when the elders decided that she should “go big” rather than stop. This was the beginning of her public advocacy - standing against some of the big culture war issues of our day: gay marriage, divorce, abortion, and reproductive technologies on behalf of children. She is the founder of Them Before Us - an organisation that fights for children’s right to their mother and father in courts, culture and legislatures. In this interview, Katy shares her hard-won thoughts on marriage, motherhood, and the cost of telling the truth. About Katy Faust Katy Faust didn’t set out to become an activist. She was a pastor’s wife and stay-at-home mother when cultural conversations around marriage and family began to shift dramatically. As debates intensified, one question kept surfacing. Who is speaking for the children? That question led Katy to launch an anonymous blog defending the rights of children in marriage and family policy. What began as a small online voice quickly gained traction. Within a few years she was writing for national publications, speaking around the world, and eventually founding the global children’s rights movement Them Before Us. Today, Katy is a leading voice in the conversation about marriage, family, and child-centred policy. Key Moments & Highlights - Katy shares her “three staples of a child’s social-emotional diet” - mother’s love, father’s love and stability - The honest admission that as a child she learned to “people please” the new partners entering her parents’ lives, just to keep them close - Why it took her four years after becoming a Christian to "love God with all my mind," especially on sexuality and morality - "I don’t have mums. I have a mother and a father like everybody else" — Katy on why she distinguishes her mother’s partner from her mother - The moment the gay marriage debate made her angry enough to start writing — and why she published anonymously out of fear for her family - Being doxxed by a rival blogger who traced her IP address to her husband’s church, flooding it with fake reviews and SEO attacks - Her church elders’ choice to "go big" rather than ask her to stop, and the trip to Australia — meeting MPs and Millie Fontana — that followed - Walking onto Lateline with Tony Jones on no sleep, after reading a verse from Deuteronomy, in what became the most-watched clip in ABC history - Why she started Them Before Us in 2018 to give children formal representation in courts and legislatures, and the "change hearts, change laws" strategy behind it - Inside This Is a Child, the documentary built from her ARC speech and filmed partly in Australia