Citizen Science Show

How does a frog surveyor end up running a wildlife sanctuary in the PNG Highlands, working with gold mines, earning an OBE and then farming redclaw in far north Queensland? Dani sits down with Rod Ingersoll, environmental scientist, conservationist, farmer and author of Crayfish Cashflow: From Gold Mines to Gumboots. Rod talks about his 22 years in Papua New Guinea, where he survived kidnappings a...

Where does the water go when it rains, and what happens when we help the landscape hold onto it? In this episode, John Marsh talks with Carolyn Hall, CEO of the Mulloon Institute, a not-for-profit restoring the health of Australian landscapes through landscape rehydration, science and community engagement. Carolyn explains how the Institute grew from a single farm pilot into a 23,000 hectare catch...

Recorded live in the Citizen Science Show podcast booth at the Hunter Science Festival, Dani sits down with Nick Whalan-Daniels, Head Teacher for the TAFE NSW Manufacturing Centre of Excellence at Tighes Hill, to talk about a stand packed with augmented reality welding, robotics and renewable energy demonstrations. Nick explains how the new centre is training the Hunter's next generation of advanc...

Recorded live in the Citizen Science Show podcast booth at the Hunter Science Festival, Dani sits down with Karen Eastwood, Program Delivery Officer for Newcastle Museum and Library, to talk about the library's new Little Bang Discovery Club, a hands on program turning preschoolers into "little scientists" (and their parents into "lab assistants"). Karen shares what's inside the program's take hom...

Recorded live in the Citizen Science Show podcast booth at the Hunter Science Festival, Dani sits down with Heather Wightman, biosecurity officer for the Hunter Valley Amateur Beekeepers, to find out about a gold medal winning Australian invention putting fresh, spin-your-own honey on the kitchen bench, and what's changed for beekeepers since Varroa mite arrived in Australia. Heather explains how...

Ever wondered how you could contribute to ocean science without being a scientist yourself? In this episode, we speak with Dr Paige Maroni, founder of the Polar Blast Project, about how private yacht owners, captains and crews around the world are helping scientists access some of the most remote and least understood marine environments on Earth. From automated water samplers to remotely operated...

Beneath the waves, one of the ocean's most important ecosystems is hiding in plain sight. In this episode, Sarah talks with Natalie Coy, a PhD candidate and founder of the citizen science project Seeds of the Sea, about Posidonia australis, an endangered, flowering seagrass found only in Australia, and home to a single clone in WA stretching 180 kilometres, making it the largest known organism on...

What's really in the air over Darwin, and why wasn't anyone measuring it? In this episode, Dani talks with Dr Louise Woodward, a Darwin paediatrician and founder of CHANT (Community Healthy Air Northern Territory), Australia's first community-led air quality monitoring project. Louise explains how a Senate inquiry into a major gas industry expansion in Darwin Harbour revealed the Northern Territor...

What is the Australian landscape trying to tell us, and are we actually listening? In this episode, host John Marsh sits down with regenerative farmer Martin Royds of Jillamatong, near Braidwood, NSW, to explore a philosophy built over four decades: reading weeds, soil and water as feedback rather than problems to be sprayed away. Martin shares how a simple handful of urea outperforms a toxic, dec...

It's National Science Week, and Dani welcomes back a familiar face: Dr Jessie Oliver, Technical Manager of SciStarter Australia, the local home for finding and sharing citizen science projects across the country. Jessie walks through what's currently on the platform, from backyard biodiversity spotting on iNaturalist to hyperlocal air-quality monitoring in Tasmania, and explains why physics-based...

It's National Science Week, and this episode is all about physics and the people bringing it to life across Australia. Dani sits down with Associate Professor Dr Karen Livesey, Chair of the NSW branch of the Australian Institute of Physics and a 2023 Marie Curie Lecturer, to talk about the AIP's first-ever stall at the Hunter Science Festival, the 2026 Marie Curie Lecture Series touring the countr...

Ben Newsome, founder and director of Fizzics Education, has spent over two decades turning kids into scientists, reaching more than four million young Australians since 2004. In this episode, recorded ahead of National Science Week 2026, Ben joins Dani to unpack this year's "Seeds of Science" theme, runs three physics experiments live on the podcast using nothing but a balloon, a straw and his own...

Two billion years ago, a microscopic organism invented photosynthesis and changed the fate of life on Earth. In this episode, we go micro with Steph Scott, founder of the East Coast Algae Group and a micro-documentary filmmaker who spends her days peering through a microscope at nearly 1,000x magnification. Steph unpacks the surprising world of microalgae, from beta-glucan compounds that could rep...

At just 22, Oscar Mower built a machine learning model that can listen to raw ocean audio and pick out the call of a minke whale in real time, one of the most elusive and under-studied baleen whales in the world. In this episode, Oscar explains how he turned whale song into images a computer could learn to recognise, why minke whales have been so hard to track using traditional methods, and how th...

Microplastics are everywhere, in our waterways, our food, and now, our bloodstreams, yet almost entirely invisible to the naked eye. In this episode, Sarah talks with toxicologist Dr Scott Wilson, research director of AUSMAP (the Australian Microplastic Assessment Project), about what plastic actually is, why "degradable" packaging is a greenwashing trap, and how bioaccumulation and biomagnificati...

Wombats might be Australia's most underrated marsupial, and Associate Professor Julie Old has spent over a decade making sure they get the attention they deserve. In this episode, Dani talks with Julie about founding WomSAT, the citizen science project that's logged more than 25,000 wombat sightings, burrows and scat records since 2015. They cover the devastating impact of sarcoptic mange, how eve...

This episode leaves Earth's oceans behind, almost. Planetary scientist Dr Eriita Jones from Curtin University joins Sarah to explore what it really takes for a planet to support life, from deep-sea hydrothermal vents to supercooled microbes floating in Earth's stratosphere. Eriita explains why Europa, Enceladus and Mars remain the solar system's most tantalising candidates for extraterrestrial oce...

What started as one mum's idea to make ocean science fun has become Australia's leading celebration of the sea. In this episode, Sarah sits down with Anita Kolni and Caz Grant, founders of the Ocean Lovers Festival, to talk about building a platform that connects scientists, conservationists, artists and everyday ocean lovers, from a Trashion parade made of beach litter to a citizen science BioBli...

After the Black Summer megafires, wildlife ecologist Dr Alex Carthey saw a gap no one was filling: the critical weeks after a fire, when surviving animals have no cover and predators move in. In this episode, Dani talks with Alex about founding ReHabitat, a profit-for-purpose start-up making biodegradable cardboard shelter pods that give ground-dwelling animals somewhere to hide while the bush reg...

From dive guide to Nikon Ambassador: in this episode, Sarah reconnects with wildlife photographer Jake Wilton, whose lens has taken him from the grey nurse shark caves of Fish Rock, NSW, to the manta ray waters of Ningaloo, WA, and the rainforests of Far North Queensland. Jake shares the extraordinary story of freeing a hooked manta ray named Freckles, a rescue that made international news, and th...

For more than 40 years, Tom Clarke has been on the front line of shorebird conservation in the Hunter estuary, NSW. One of the most significant migratory shorebird habitats in the world. In this episode, Tom joins Dani to talk about decades of hands-on restoration work with the Hunter Bird Observers Club, the alarming decline in shorebird numbers over the past 20 years, and the mangrove-clearing p...

There are an estimated **3,000* shipwrecks still undiscovered on Australia's ocean floor and up to 300 of them could be sitting in a single 3km stretch off Newcastle, NSW. In this episode, host Sarah sits down with Dr James Hunter, Manager of Maritime Archaeology at the Australian National Maritime Museum, for a deep dive into the science, history and heartbreak of shipwreck discovery. James takes...

What if the thing we most need to conserve isn't a place, but darkness itself? In this episode, Sarah speaks with Grant Salmond, Education and Astronomy Manager at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, about how the small Queensland town of Winton became one of only eight internationally accredited Dark Sky places in Australia. Grant explains how a plague of insects led to a town-wide lighting o...

This July, Australia goes on a fungi hunt. In this episode, Dani sits down with Dr Michael Priest, president of Fungimap, to explore the hidden kingdom beneath our feet. With an estimated 50,000 fungal species across Australia, and only 10% of them named. Michael explains why the Great Aussie Fungi Hunt needs citizen scientists more than ever. From mycorrhizal partnerships and the "wood wide web"...

Ninety-nine point nine percent of Earth’s species have gone extinct, but their stories are still being uncovered, sometimes by everyday people. In this episode, host Sarah sits down with Sabrina Ricci of the I Know Dino podcast to explore how citizen scientists keep rewriting the dinosaur record. From “Teen Rex,” a juvenile T. rex found by a hiking family in North Dakota, to the recent scientific...