Our Changing World

A story of a community taking the lead to investigate their own history. Near the small fishing village of Moeraki, whānau members are doing the work of excavating, sorting, and identifying artifacts from an old Māori archaeological site. Standing over a stainless-steel sink, spray gun in hand, Robyn Maguigan is ready to wash and sieve a pile of jumbled up bones, rocks, shells and charcoal she has...

This sea week Our Changing World joins Dr. Kim Currie on the Munida transect time-series - a long running investigation of how the chemistry of the oceans off New Zealand is changing. Six times a year, for the last 23 years, Dr. Kim Currie has made the same boat journey, for the same reason - to collect valuable ocean chemistry data. As Kim knows, sometimes good science takes time. Follow Our Chan...

Creating safe spaces for wildlife to thrive means benefit for the local community too. This week, two stories on that theme. We know humans benefit when biodiversity flourishes. This week, Claire Concannon brings us two stories about providing sanctuary for fish, and how local communities also gain from these spaces. Listen to DOC ranger Tim Shaw and Mountains to Sea director Zoe Studd on Our Chan...

Alison Ballance catches up with two earthquake researchers. Geologist Carolyn Boulton is a "fault finder", interested in how faults slide. And geophysicist Martha Savage eavesdrops on the earth to better understand why earthquakes do what they do. Dr Carolyn Boulton is a structural geologist at Victoria University of Wellington and she sees things in rocks that most of us would never notice. Inclu...

Claire visits a macroalgae research facility in Tauranga to learn how and why the team there are growing large quantities of seaweed and freshwater macroalgae. At Sulphur Point in Tauranga sits a warehouse-sized greenhouse, designed for just one purpose - to grow macroalgae. Follow Our Changing World on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRADIO, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic or wherever you li...

Claire learns about honey fingerprinting while Katy Gosset meets a scientist studying the anti-microbial properties of some native plants. Honey is big business in Aotearoa. An estimated 27,000 tonnes of honey was produced in the 2019/20 season, with the value of honey exports for that time at $425 million. So New Zealand honey is in global demand, but how can you be sure that honey labelled as Ne...

Claire Concannon joins a meteorite hunt on the South Island's West Coast and learns what these rocks from space can tell us about the early formation of our solar system. In January 1976 Ted Dowie was looking for gold in a river in the mining district of Dunganville near Greymouth when he came across a black, smooth-topped boulder in a dry creek bed. It rang like a bell when he hit it and was unus...

The story of titipounamu, New Zealand's smallest bird, on Otago Peninsula, told by Karthic SS, a wildlife film maker and podcast producer based in Dunedin. From the bustling hot city of Coimbatore in southern India to the rather less bustling, and definitely cooler, south of Te Wai Pounamu in Aotearoa, Karthic SS* has spent most of his life paying close attention to the sounds around him. Follow O...

Summer science continues with a play of a science related episode from RNZ's Voices podcast. In 'To spray or not to spray' we meet Tim Vandervoet as he investigates ways to reduce insecticide use in orchards. This week on Our Changing World, as part of the Summer Science series, a science related episode from the Voices podcast. To spray or not to spray - from cotton fields to codling moth As a Pe...

Centre for Science Communication student Laura McDonald speaks to Dr. Mike Palin about lead contamination in the environment. Laura McDonald learns the backstory to the discovery of lead contamination in the environment. Follow Our Changing World on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRADIO, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic or wherever you listen to your podcasts After the incident in Waikouaiti...

Summer science continues with a play of a science related episode from RNZ's Black Sheep podcast. Invasive tells the story of one man who released thousands of invasive fish into New Zealand's rivers, lakes and streams. Programme Code This week on Our Changing World, as part of the Summer Science series, we bring you one of our favourite conservation related episodes from the Black Sheep podcast....

Centre for Science Communication student William Bowden speaks to Dr. Mike Joy & Dr. Tim Chambers about the issue of nitrates in New Zealand's waterways. William Bowden dives into the controversial topic of nitrates in our waterways. Follow Our Changing World on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRADIO, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic or wherever you listen to your podcasts Dr Mike Joy is a fre...

How to deal with unwelcome visitors. Katy Gosset learns about a native fungus that might help in the battle against wilding pines. And two national research programmes combine on an expedition to protect our oceans from plastics and invasive species. Invasive species in Aotearoa are the unwelcome guests who have taken over, made a mess, and just won't leave. Plants that smother ecosystems, se...

Chemical isotope analysis is a powerful technique - Dr. Charlotte King explains to Claire how she uses it to reconstruct past lives of forgotten people from the Otago gold rush. Our skeleton, our nails, our tissues, are all made from basic chemical elements. These elements pass from the soil, to growing plants, to the food we eat and into our bodies. By following this pathway backwards, one resear...

Sci Fi / Sci Fact is a new podcast series in which scientists from New Zealand's MacDiarmid Institute talk to RNZ host Bryan Crump about whether some of science-fiction's most popular concepts could actually come true. Sci Fi / Sci Fact is a new podcast series in which scientists from New Zealand's MacDiarmid Institute talk to RNZ host Bryan Crump about whether some of science-fiction's...

Two stories on keeping an eye on river flow - helping fish to migrate back upstream, and development of a national river flow forecasting tool. Fish friendly flow For thousands of years several species of New Zealand's native freshwater fish have been making journeys from the rivers, down streams, to the ocean, and back upstream again, as part of their natural lifecycle. Until we started putt...

A team of scientists are installing an array of seismic sensors along the South Island's Alpine Fault. Claire Concannon joins them to find out how and why. Standing in the last back field of a deer farm near Whataroa on the South Island's West Coast, orange high-vis vest on, shovel in hand, Professor John Townend is looking for the perfect spot - not too wet, not too stony, with a good view o...

Katy Gosset speaks to a PhD student designing new tech to catch predators and Claire Concannon meets the team who are working to restore a unique landscape on the South Island's West Coast. Whistles, song, calls, booms, rustling in the undergrowth, hooting at night. How busy the bush of Aotearoa must have been, this land of birds, before human-introduced predators and tree clearance. Today, two st...

On the 100th anniversary of radio in Aotearoa, Claire Concannon learns about the very first broadcast, explores how radio works, and finds out about current research into communicating using light. How are you reading this? On a computer, laptop, mobile phone? Connected to the internet by a cable or wirelessly through the use of radiowaves? Instantaneous round-the-world communication is now an eve...

Claire visits the team at K9 Medical Detection Charitable Trust to learn how their dogs are being trained to detect bowel and prostate cancer. Levi loves what he does. He gets picked up each morning at 8:30am, happy and excited to go to work. He spends his time investigating samples, figuring out whether they contain cancer or not. His payment - toys and play time. Follow Our Changing World on App...

Claire Concannon hits the Central Otago hills with Botany PhD student Ben Teele to imagine the landscape as it use to be, and to follow the clues to find leftover pockets of tōtara trees. The hillsides of Central Otago are known for their golden grass and tussock slopes with scattered low-lying shrubs. But once this landscape was covered in tōtara forest. Now only a few trees remain, cryptic and s...

Claire Concannon hears how the the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network's favourite plant competition is shaping up, while Katy Gosset learns about research to improve the quality and growth efficiency of grapevines. If you had to choose, what would your favourite plant be? Something beautiful and flashy like kōwhai or pōhutukawa? Or maybe something subtle like a native moss or grass? Or perhaps...

This week on Our Changing World, Aotearoa Science Agency's Damian Christie speaks to three scientists about the world of data. As we approach the end of our second year dealing with Covid-19, it's notable how many of us are now familiar with the basic concepts of epidemiology. Social conversations are no longer about house prices and sports results, but debates over elimination versus suppres...

Claire Concannon hears from Dr. Brigid Ryan of the University of Auckland about the New Zealand genetic frontotemporal dementia study and speaks to some of the family members involved in this unique research study. Frontotemporal dementia is one of the sneakiest forms of dementia, arriving with no warning signs and slowly chipping away at a person's personality, behaviour and language. It eve...

Stories about the potential of bioengineering to transform health care. A new tracheostomy kit design that has halved the time for emergency operations and 3D bioprinting of tissues to help healing. Stem cell infused wound dressings that promote healing, bone scaffolds that help knit breaks before dissolving naturally and clever device design to half the time of emergency life-saving procedures ar...