Science Friction

You're a top cancer scientist. And then you get cancer. Suddenly you become "A Cancer Patient", and one of your colleagues is wielding the (robotic) scalpel. A story about science, knowledge, and vulnerability. (Summer Season highlight)

Why do deadly viruses love bats so much, why don’t bats get crook, and what’s with China’s wild wet markets? The curious making of a pandemic. (Summer Season highlight)

Three generations with powerful, personal stories of family lost and found, racism, and the right to education reclaimed. This is not your average Science Summer School. (Summer Season highlight)

Pack your pyjamas, we’re heading to camp! From Arnhem Land to Adelaide, Caboolture to Coffs – let's gather from far and wide to meet on Kaurna country. A scientific and cultural odyssey in two parts. (Summer Season highlight)

A flesh-eating botanical saga. Outside the hallowed halls of science, revolutions are made. (Summer Season highlight)

From Day of the Triffids to Little Shop of Horrors, meet a most sagacious animal. What the hell is a plant doing eating flesh? (Summer Season highlight)

Imagine holding in the palm of your hand an object that holds a big secret - one that could unlock the history of the Australian continent.

A million migratory birds, a 26 year civil war...what's an Australian mining company got its eye on?

Decorated, detachable, curly, spiked, thorny, hooks, claspers, valves, flaps, spirals...is it time to reconsider what makes a penis...a penis?

Two teams...science journalists...scientists...and twenty big years of big science to bone up on. Let the hilarity begin. Ready, set, go!

It's the cosmic glue that tethers us together in the universe, ever-present but invisible. Poet Alicia Sometimes meets Australia's dark matter detectives.

If we made machines our kin, our siblings, our children...would we think differently about their design? Why Indigenous thinking can change A.I...

Two seasoned journalists pick up stethoscopes to become doctors...in the middle of a global pandemic. And a punk band in the making.

How do you climb inside the mind of someone who commits an evil act?

The showdown between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is on. Why are many scientists angry, frightened, and galvanised?

The long haul of 'long COVID'. Are we facing another global pandemic...this one silent, confusing, and harder to understand?

A skeleton with a back story that's almost too bizarre to believe. What would Suzy think?

Psychotherapist Maurice Temerlin called Lucy his "daughter"...but then things got weird.

When Jade was 21, she was charmed by a wellness influencer. Then she got a big shock.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Kathrin's friends have been sending her a range of wild theories about the virus.

Two families, two posts...and two stories of how seemingly benign shares on social media can turn bad.

A vaccine arms race is on to get us out of this pandemic, but could we all lose out if we don’t do things differently?

Even big diseases start small...PATIENT ZERO is a new podcast that tells the stories of disease outbreaks: where they begin, why they happen and how we found ourselves in the middle of a really big one.

When Whanganui River in New Zealand was declared a legal person, Maori scientists knew exactly what they meant. But how do you unearth the science hidden in ancient oral stories?

The algorithms are out to get you and to protect you. Meet the directors of two films that will shock, surprise and move you, Welcome to Chechnya and Coded Bias.