Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

This week's mystery caller is a uniquely colourful inhabitant of Western Australia's southwest – the Red-capped Parrot.

1979 was the year Captain Deborah Lawrie fought for her wings. When her application to become a commercial pilot with Ansett Airlines was unsuccessful, she knew it wasn't because she was underqualified. Deborah brought Australia’s first equal opportunity anti-discrimination case to court, thinking she would be out of there in a day. But after a year of bitter legal battles, Deborah became Australi...

After his death, Oliver Sacks left his partner Bill Hayes an unexpected gift: a library filled with his marginal notes, revealing his inner thoughts, philosophies, and intellectual struggles. Guest: Author Bill Hayes 

When Shaddap You Face by Joe Dolce was named Australia’s best novelty song, it revived an old tension: in a comedy culture steeped in racial stereotypes, where does humour end and caricature begin — and who gets to call it? Guest:  Jess Carniel, Associate Professor in Humanities, University of Southern Queensland

Thirty years ago the Internet Archive was created to digitally preserve content published on the internet. It claims to hold copies of 1 trillion web pages which are freely accessible via the Wayback Machine. Now the Wayback Machine is being threatened by media companies blocking access to their websites.

A landmark ruling in a case involving a French concrete company that operated in Syria during the height of Islamic State may clear the way for national courts to prosecute corporations for serious crimes such as terrorist financing and crimes against humanity.

40 years since the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster, a team from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine are researching the effect of nuclear radiation on rodents that live in the forested exclusion zone. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, support from  Bioplatforms Australia , with funding from the Ukraine-Australia Research Fund launched by the Australian Academy of Science has he...

While there has been greater recognition of the challenges faced by women during their service, women veterans report being “under-recognised, under-represented, and routinely excluded” from support organisations. 

This week's mystery caller hunts insects in Tasmanian woodland, farmland and heath – the Dusky Robin.

Yann Martel might have found fame and fortune when his novel Life of Pi won the Booker Prize in 2002, but the year that shaped his path as a writer came much earlier. After a nomadic childhood spent traversing the world, ricocheting between cultures and languages, it was in a moment of stillness in a Paris apartment that Martel found the inspiration and confidence to write the story that launched...

From ancient Greece to today’s culture wars, a new book explains why pretentious and punctilious people have always annoyed us.

“Beauties of My Style: Errata and the Printed Mistake” explores the history of typos across five centuries. 

Vasili Mitrokhin was sent to work in the KGB archives after failing as an intelligence operative. His disgust with the Soviet spy agency led him to steal troves of secrets and share them with the West. 

Frida Kahlo’s works are so revered in Mexico that, in 1984, they were declared “artistic monuments” — protected as national treasures by the Mexican government. But now a major group of Kahlo self-portraits, part of the world-famous Gelman Collection, is at the centre of a dispute between Mexico’s art establishment and the Spanish bank now managing the paintings. The fight is exposing the opaque f...

When the billionaire Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, he was billed as its ‘saviour’, and for a while, it seemed like he was. But across his tenure, the masthead that broke the Watergate scandal has been in financial and reputational decline. In The New York Review of Books, ex-managing editor of The Post Robert G. Kaiser says that a directive from Bezos to not endorse Kamala Harris...

This week, Pakistan’s Prime Minister crossed the Middle East, meeting with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Türkiye about a second round of peace talks between Iran and the US. Why was regional player the United Arab Emirates left off the guest list?

This week's common, conspicuous and colourful caller inhabits the east and the south-east – the Crimson Rosella.

Queanbeyan raised, Bornean-Australian poet, visual artist, and award-winning author Omar Musa says his "hyperactive mind" keeps him looking for the next project. He has published five hip-hop records, four books of poetry, wrote and starred in a one-man play about the death of Muhammad Ali, and creates woodcut prints.  2023 was a year that Omar describes as containing "all the highs and lows that...

In 1951 the High Court witnessed one of Australia's most high profile legal battles: the Communist Party case. The case saw future Chief Justice of Australia, Garfield Barwick KC, argue against the then Leader of the Opposition, Bert Evatt KC, to determine the constitutionality of the Communist Party Dissolution Act 1950.

In her new book The Framing, lawyer Fernanda Dahlstrom unpacks her past and the crime that sent her mother to jail when she was eight years-old. 

The oldest and largest crossword event in the United States, The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is celebrating its largest attendance ever this year. It is directed by Will Shortz , who founded the tournament in 1978, and has been the editor of the New York Times crossword since 1993. Will is also the only person who holds a degree in ‘enigmatology’ or ‘the study of puzzles’. 

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has published a draft of the Children’s Online Privacy Code. It contains new rules to create better online experiences for children, including a requirement that "agencies and organisations [...] consider the best interests of children before collecting, using or disclosing their personal information."

A new UN-backed Gang Suppression Force, led by Chad, has begun its deployment into Haiti. The new force hopes to succeed where its predecessor — the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support — has failed. In pushing back the violent gangs that have taken over much of Haiti. Guest: Diego Da Rin, Haiti Analyst at the International Crisis Group

A constitutional brouhaha is brewing in Canada as the Supreme Court weighs legal arguments presented in a landmark case known as English Montreal School Board v. Quebec.

The Most Reverend Kanishka Raffel is the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney. Kanishka was born into the Buddhist faith, but a chance conversation with a Christian friend while he was studying law at the University of Sydney inspired a spiritual journey that led him to Christianity and, ultimately, to the priesthood.