Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

This week's tiny mystery caller inhabits only a few eucalypt forests on the edge of just one state – the Forty-spotted Pardalote

Dr Rose McGready is a leading authority on maternal malaria and an expert on refugee health. Rose grew up in Canberra, nearly qualified to swim in the 1982 Commonwealth Games, and has spent the last 32 years living at the Thai-Myanmar border, where she has established locally-run clinics that have saved thousands of lives. Rose's research has driven the death rates of malaria in pregnancy in the r...

On October 31st in New York, fans of Harry Houdini, the world famous - and long-deceased - showman, gathered in his former home in preparation for a seance to try and contact him. Houdini, who was born Eric Weitz in Hungary, died on October 31st 1926 and for the first decade his wife Bess held a yearly seance because of a promise he made to try and reach her from beyond the grave. That promise tur...

When Taimalelagi Mataio Faafetai (Matt) Brown was working as a barber in Aotearoa New Zealand, he found that men felt comfortable opening up to him while he cut their hair.  As a survivor of family violence, Matt found that many of his clients had similar histories, and saw first hand the transformative power of creating space for men to openly discuss their feelings. Matt began holding group ther...

In the November edition of Extra Intrigue Jeremy Dicker explains the significance of the return to Venezuela of María Corina Machado, the popular pro-democracy politician and Nobel Prize winner. 

On November 1 2024, a collapse at the Novi Sad railway station killed 16 people.  The building project was closely associated with the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) government and  president Aleksandar Vučić.  Outrage over that incident sparked a student-led protest movement that led this week to a national election in which the newly formed Student List ousted the Serbian Progressive Party.   G...

This week's magnificent mystery caller feeds on fruits in our east coast forests – the Wompoo Fruit-Dove.

The Shot on Shit Film Festival is a short film festival with one key eligibility criterion: the film has to be made with “a non-professional camera - the shittier, the better!”.  Shot On Shit is the brainchild of The Collective of Underground Movie Lovers, a film club dedicated to screening alternative, underground, censored cinema. Their slogan is “The Profane is Profound”. Guest: Parker Constant...

When Nicholas Brown couldn't find work as an Indian-Australian actor in the 2000s, he moved to India, the homeland his parents had rejected, and became a Bollywood star. But his success brought it's own burden, as Nicholas tried to navigate how to exist authentically as a gay man, in a country where homosexuality was illegal. Guest: Nicholas Brown, actor and musician

Right now there are between 20 to 30 trillion red blood cells coursing around your body, delivering oxygen to your organs and transporting carbon dioxide to your lungs for disposal.   All being well, your red blood cells are donut shaped, with a dimple in the centre on both sides. But a single mutation in a gene on chromosome 11, if carried by both parents, could result in, not nice bouncy donuts,...

As the US midterms approach, videos of people on the street expressing their support for candidates have appeared on social media platforms with millions of views. And while they seem authentic, they were actually distributed by internationally managed bot accounts, and funded by opaque entities. Campaigns like this are pervasive on social media, with marketing bodies, political actors and governm...

The German Reich was the colonial power in what is now Namibia from 1884 to 1915.  In 2021, the German Government officially acknowledged “atrocities … that, from today's perspective, would be called genocide”.  From 1904 to 1908, German colonial rulers waged a war of extermination against the Herero and Nama people in order to install a German settler colony.  And although in 2021, the German gov...

Tensions are high in the lead up to Israel's first national election since October 7, 2023. And some of the loudest voices are those of hostage family members, using the election to seek justice and accountability for the fate of their loved ones. Journalist Jessica Steinberg reporting on the lives of many hostage families in the months after October 7 and she joins Sunday Extra to share what host...

This week's mystery caller migrates from southeast Asia to feed over our summer wetlands – the Whiskered Tern.

Suzie Miller is one of the world’s most influential contemporary playwrights. In The Year That Made Me, Suzie publicly shares for the first time why 1995 was a year she didn't think she would survive, and why it changed the course of her life. A former lawyer who has a degree in science and grew up in a working class family in St Kilda, Suzie's theatrical works have been staged in fifty different...

FC aka Freakyclown has spent 3 decades breaking into banks and secure government locations, and he gave a keynote address at Melbourne's CyberCon 2026 on Friday. FC is an ethical hacker, who works for organisations that want him to reveal their security weaknesses to them. He's the co-founder of cyber security company  Cygenta , former Head of Offensive Cyber Research at defence contractor Raytheo...

The death of a Russian lab worker at an anti-plague research institute earlier this month has raised fresh concerns about the global implications of lab leaks.  Initial local reporting suggested that the worker died of pneumonic plague following a lab accident, but Russian health authorities deny this, and the official cause of death remains unknown. Alison Young has reported on the Russian incide...

Six weeks after flash flooding hurtled through northern Nepal, the government has concluded it's search and rescue mission for the thousands of people still missing. But as the government begins the slow process of recovery, how will it support and restore the lives of the 32,000 displaced Nepali who are mourning the loss of homes, livelihoods and loved ones? Guest: Kunda Dixit, publisher and form...

This month the African Union launched the Africa Credit Rating Agency. The continent's first ratings agency aims to level the playing field for banks, companies, sovereign wealth funds and other institutions seeking to access credit.  Africa is generally seen as a riskier lending prospect than other parts of the developing world and that means borrowers face much higher costs to access credit.  Th...

This week's mystery caller floods back to Australia from the north to enjoy our summer months – the Sacred Kingfisher.

Photojournalist Lorrie Graham was the first female photography cadet at The Sydney Morning Herald in 1975, and over the five decades since became “one of Australia’s most distinctive and influential photojournalists”. 

The Australian Museum holds an archive of photos, specimens and films taken by Harry Burrell, a vaudeville performer turned amateur naturalist, who changed the way the world understood the platypus. Harry used his vaudeville showmanship to display the quirks of the platypus in a specially built 'platypusary' which he took on travelling exhibitions around the country and even overseas.  By today's...

At the tender age of 95, Liz Hicklin keeps expanding her repetoire — from author and poet, to comedian and now star of a one-woman show about being a footnote to history, as the girlfriend who dated Ted Hughes before Sylvia Plath Guest: Liz Hicklin, writer and star of Sylvia Plath Stole My Boyfriend , playing at the Melbourne Fringe Festival from October 15-18

100 word including guest & book

Dr. Rachael Gunn aka Raygun represented Australia in women's breaking at the Paris 2024 Olympics. While she scored no points from the Olympic judges, she instantly scored a starring role at the centre of a social media firestorm debating her Australiana inspired routine.  Recently Raygun told her side of the story in the Netflix documentary series Untold, which features endearing star turns from h...