Conversations: Our Evolving World

Tanya Latty is an insect scientist with a quirky taste in pets, and a keen eye for detail. But it's the lessons from her brainless pet slime mould that she's most fascinated about. Scientist, Tanya Latty, studies the behaviour of ants and bees. She's particularly interested in their ability to work effectively as a team to achieve a common goal. But her pet project is focused on a creature that de...

Lee Berger, the National Geographic Explorer in Residence and real-life Indiana Jones, has found remarkable things underground. His discoveries are revolutionising what we understand about our own origins

Dr Christina Zdenek wants to change our minds about Australia’s deadly snakes, not just because their venom holds healing secrets

Dr Nerida Wilson spends a lot of her time getting acquainted with the mysterious creatures lurking in the dark depths of the sea

Scientists continue to discover the rarer and rarer objects which make up our universe. Why are we so obsessed with the particles around us?

Anh Nguyen Austen's family fled Vietnam by sea in 1982, on a wooden boat bound for the Philippines. When a once-in-a-century storm struck in South China Sea, they thought all hope was lost. Anh is an academic and community volunteer. She grew up in Vietnam in a Catholic family. Anh's childhood was idyllic, with a big extended family and a close friendship with her cousin named Joe. But life for th...

Professor Toby Walsh is a world leader in AI research. He asks questions like, 'can we train machines to be fair?' and 'how do we resist the spread of lethal autonomous weapons?' His job is making sure the future of AI is for better, not worse. Artificial intelligence has become an essential part of our lives — it helps us to navigate and communicate, and is responsible for incredibly accurate med...

Rodney Fox was torn apart by a great white shark and it took 462 stitches to put him back together again. He was then instrumental in filming Jaws, the most terrifying shark film of all time. But over time, this salty seadog has become the apex predator's fiercest protector

Dr Kira Westaway is a geochronologist who places modern and ancient humans in context by dating things found in caves. For Kira, how we understand ourselves now, is tied up in the past

Biologist David Sinclair believes aging is a disease, and we can find a cure for it

One of the foremost historians of black and white Australia, Henry says now is the time to acknowledge how the country was founded. Frontier violence, the myth of peaceful settlement, and the failure of the British to make treaties with the First Nations have led to consequences we still live with today (CW: material might be distressing to ATSI listeners) When Henry moved to Townsville to teach h...

Biologist Merlin Sheldrake's extreme experiments, many of which involve his physical body and varying forms of fungi, have led to equally remarkable discoveries English biologist Merlin Sheldrake, son of Rupert Sheldrake, became fascinated by fungi when he was a boy. He grew mushrooms in his cupboard and brewed bog myrtle beer under his bed. He went on to study fungi at Cambridge University, and h...

Gisela Kaplan fell under the spell of birds when hand-rearing a magpie nestling. After it learned to speak, she was so intrigued she switched careers and began her research into avian behaviour. Her many books on Australian native birds have been ground-breaking. Many assumptions about the nature of birds and their behaviour are completely wrong when applied to Australian birds. Gisela Kaplan was...

Sound designer and naturalist Douglas Quin makes field recordings from everywhere on Earth and uses them to create soundscapes for film and tv, galleries and museums

Zenith Virago married at 17, and had two children. Then she left her young family to create a life of her own on the other side of the world

Saving the orphaned kangaroo joeys of Central Australia

Dominic Rowe is asking how common degenerative brain diseases begin

Jenny Briscoe-Hough is helping Port Kembla locals take back control at the end of life

Botanist and D'harawal elder Fran Bodkin uses western science to explain up to 80,000 years of Indigenous plant knowledge

Understanding and managing the psychopaths in our midst at work and at home David Gillespie is a former corporate lawyer and investor and the author of the best-selling book, Sweet Poison. Some years ago, David found himself working alongside a toxic human being, whom he now considers to have been a psychopath. Psychopaths are typically people incapable of human empathy. They tend to be charming i...

Bill Hayes moved to New York at 48. He took up photography, and fell in love with his neighbour, Dr Oliver Sacks Doctor Oliver Sacks was a neurologist, a naturalist and a university professor. He became famous for writing case histories of his patients in books including, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, and An Anthropologist on Mars. But Oliver had never been in a relationship. Then, at th...

Lisa-Ann Gershwin discovered a new species of deadly Irukandji jellyfish.  Lisa-Ann Gershwin was in her late 20s when she visited a small aquarium in Los Angeles. There she found white moon jellyfish in a tank, hanging 'like clouds in the sky'. They were the most beautiful, mesmerising creatures Lisa had ever seen, and that day set her life's work in motion. She's now one of the world's foremost j...

The mind-bending physics of String Theory, decoded

Having more than 140 foster siblings was a major influence on one of Australia's best-selling crime writers

Mandyam Srinivasan: how the birds and the bees are revolutionising flying and robotics