Short & Curly

Kind lies. White lies. Little lies. We take a trip to the fun park to look at all sorts of lies we tell for all sorts of reasons. Like what if your parent asks you to pretend to be younger than you are to get a cheaper entry fee? What’s the right thing to do? Amidst the rides and games, junk food and excitement, we explore a few stories about lying, a subject which has divided some of the greatest...

In the 1950s, a group of young boys took part in a now famous experiment to find out how easy it would be to turn two groups of children into enemies. The boys didn’t know they were in a scientific study, and many later regretted the things they did to each other. Is the knowledge we might get from such an experiment worth the pain it might cause to get it?

Unless you’re a vegetarian, there are some animals you probably eat regularly.  But how would you cope if your next dinner was some stir-fried dog?  Why is it okay to eat a baby cow (veal) or sheep (lamb) and not a cute little puppy?  Are our ideas about eating animals a bit of a mess?  And does this matter?

When you dive into the pool at the school swimming carnival, how fair is the race? You might all start swimming at the same time, but what things give you an unfair advantage over other competitors? You might have access to great coaches, great equipment and great healthy food. Are these good things fair or not? We are joined by Liz Ellis, the three time world champion former captain of the Austra...

Back in 2011, an Australian teenager was filmed being punched again and again in the school playground by a bully. What made the video go viral was what happened next. The bullying victim lifted up the bully and threw him to the ground, hard. Was that a kind of justice? Our guests are Onor, Izzy and Alex from Theatre Bugs in Adelaide.

They share most of our DNA and many of our social skills, and in some experiments, chimpanzees outperform human children. So why do we put chimpanzees in zoos and children in schools? Is the line between humans and other animals a little more blurred that you'd think? Our guest Lou Grossfeldt is a zoo keeper with over twenty years on the job. She works with primates at Mogo Zoo and even has a tatt...

Not all stealing is about taking someone's physical property. If a comedian comes up with a joke, you see it on YouTube and then start telling all your friends, is that stealing? If you take a small sound or beat from a song you love and then use it in a whole new piece of music you've created, is that stealing? Our guest, Urthboy, is one Australia’s best known hip hop artists and is also part of...

By the time today's 7-12 year olds get their driver's license, robotic cars will become more common. They will be programmed to make snap decisions when something goes wrong on the road, but can we trust them? And, as robots around us become more and more sophisticated and human-like, how can we be sure what they tell us is real? Our guest Gerard Waldron doesn't think his granddaughter will ever n...