The Science Show - Separate stories podcast

As a professor in astrophysics, Katherine Blundell studies variable objects in the night sky. These are colliding or exploding objects. She uses spectroscopy to infer the dynamics of the objects. In addition to her astronomy, Professor Blundell has established the STEP initiative which offers science to students where science literature is unavailable in their native languages.  A monthly online m...

Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a rare, chronic liver disease characterised by inflammation, scarring, and narrowing of bile ducts. Scar tissue restricts the flow of bile from the liver into the digestive tract, causing bile to back up and damage liver cells over time. The cause is unknown. There is no treatment. And those with the condition eventually need a liver transplant, and the cond...

So says potato geneticist Ingo Hein. It’s due to the chaos which results when two potato plants are crossed. The result can be one of tens of thousands of variations, which is challenging when you just want to combine a few favourable traits. As Professor Hein explains, potato geneticists are using all the tools in the box to painstakingly come up with new potato varieties to suit the demands of m...

Trees in Kew Gardens, like many across Europe this year, have suffered intensely from baking hot summers. The head of the gardens’ tree collections, Kevin Martin, reports that 72 per cent of street trees in London are threatened by increased heat and humidity and lower rainfall – including many of the rare examples grown in the famous Kew Botanic Gardens.

Brendan May is a London-based environmental adviser to businesses around the world and has been specialising in South Pacific regions including Indonesia and South-East Asia. He has been concerned about the huge plantations of palm oil yielding trees threatening all plants and animals including the once many orangutans. After decades, corporations are taking notice of his warnings. But now, it see...

In March 2018, a South African astronomer looking into the distant universe "discovered" a bright red spot in the sky that hadn't been there previously; it felt like an exciting potential discovery. A message was sent to other astronomers, asking them to look at this new dot and study it further. After forty minutes and a few more calculations, he realised this "star" was much closer to home and n...

Crick: A Mind in Motion – from DNA to the Brain was published in 2025, full of new information and the disposal of false tales. The story is so vibrant that, after the West End play about him, author Matthew Cobb tells Robyn Williams there is a Hollywood film about Crick in production and even an opera.

Poor household air quality can affect people’s health, and high pollution levels lead to increased risk of cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological disease. With the kitchen being a primary pollution-producing area in the home, Belinda Smith discovers which cooking methods release the most harmful emissions, and what we can do to reduce health risks.

Belinda Smith reports on the winners of this year’s Nobel Prizes in medicine, physics and chemistry.

If you reach for the old tea towel in the cupboard, this episode is for you.  It's time to talk textiles: why older towels seem to be better at drying, and when it may be time to throw out your more well-worn towels. Jonathan follows the thread with Ellen Phiddian to find out what we can do with our linen.  You can binge more episodes of the Lab Notes podcast with science editor and presenter Jona...

In her book What the Flora? Vanessa Fuchs tells of the remarkable ways plants have shaped our world: fuelling civilisations, inspiring innovation and sustaining all life on Earth. Blending science, true crime, history and a touch of lore, What the Flora? offers a fresh perspective on the ingenuity and wonders of the plant kingdom.

Many Australian native trees are struggling. Nearly 25 per cent of all eucalypt species are threatened with extinction, impacted by land clearing, climate change and other factors. In 2015 it was decided to assess the conservation status of all Australian trees. Chantelle Doyle meets two ecologists, Ella Plumanns Pouton and Rachael Gallagher, coordinating Australia’s contribution to The Internatio...

The bones were found in 2013 by a team in Türkiye. They look like granules of instant coffee. 40 bones were recovered, with analysis applied to 10, producing one success. This is the genetic lottery with the result being genome sequences of two dogs dating back 14,000–16,000 years, the earliest dogs to be sequenced. Dogs at that time were already genetically distinct from wolves. The work shows th...

Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society of London, discusses the responsibility of science in a world where ideology-driven politics is on the rise. A Nobel Prize winner, Paul Nurse was the inaugural Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Francis Crick Institute in London, a centre for biomedical research in a collaboration between six major UK research institutions. 

Your phone battery doesn't like being fully charged or discharged. This is why it's sometimes advised that to extend its life, you shouldn't charge your phone beyond 80 per cent, or let it drop below 20 per cent. But what's actually happening inside a lithium-ion battery to cause this effect, and what does it mean for battery engineering — and the life of the battery in your phone, or your electri...

Three evolutionary biologists changed the way we think about life and our world.  They were all brilliant in their own ways and all difficult, gutsy fighters against scientific orthodoxy. But with the insight came ideas which were sometimes very wrong. Sharon Carleton explores the achievements and sometimes wacky views of Lynn Margulis, Paul Ehrlich and Desmond Morris.

Ecologist Angela Moles chats with Tim Entwisle about Australia’s support for young scientists and how it compares with other OECD countries. They discuss how plants are responding to a warming world, and touch on some big ideas in conservation. Should all species be saved? And why is the year 1750 a benchmark for conservation legislation in NSW? Are we ever returning to the conditions of that year...

Millions, perhaps billions of sharks teeth lie on the ocean floor. Valuable mineral deposits collect on their fossilised remains. Now they are viewed as a resource and if exploited devastation will come to an little known ecosystem.

Deep in an old gold mine in South Dakota, scientists witnessed a flash of energy in a giant pool of xenon. Some in the astronomical community are pretty excited, saying this is our best hint yet at what dark matter is. How do we know, why does it matter — and what happens next? Jonathan Webb shines a light on dark matter with Dr Theresa Fruth, who was involved in the potential discovery. You can b...

A UN report in September said global heating will hit 1.8C — at least — but this could be partially reversed by removing carbon from the atmosphere. One way to achieve this is by establishing vast new forests. Trees take carbon dioxide from the air for photosynthesis, and it turns out microbes living in tree bark can absorb another potent greenhouse gas, methane. Shelby Traynor meets two researche...

Around the start of September 1859, an intense solar storm triggered widespread auroras and set fires in telegraph stations throughout Europe and North America. This event is often cited as the first such event that had a big impact on technology. And as space weather researcher Brett Carter explains, earlier solar storms impacted systems such as railway signals, causing train delays.

The Pantheon in Rome features the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. It has a diameter of more than 43 metres and was completed nearly 2,000 years ago yet is still in excellent condition. So how have Roman concrete structures such as the Pantheon dome and the vast system of aqueducts lasted for hundreds of years when modern concrete seems shoddy in comparison?

The African lion and, to a lesser extent, the leopard, are the most dangerous big cats for people living in Africa today. But a couple of million years ago, our ancestors and hominin cousins had to contend not just with lions and leopards, but many other predators, including multiple species of sabre-toothed cat. Palaeontologist Justin Adams describes some of the now-extinct big cats that looked a...

AI is getting so good at maths that it is now tackling, and apparently solving, some of the hardest mathematical problems that exist. But as huge companies like OpenAI and Anthropic race to outdo each other, human mathematicians are getting caught in the crossfire... and their field is changing forever.  Jonathan Webb speaks to ABC AI Technology Reporter Cam Wilson about the furore over the Navier...

There's a corner of the social media platform TikTok that has racked up hundreds of billions of views and it is all about books. BookTok is a subcommunity of reading enthusiasts and hopeful influencers creating videos about the books they love. It has been described as the "last wholesome place on the internet” and is popular with teens and those in their early 20s. So do algorithms affect which b...