The Drawing Room

Did you know that new research has indicated one of those Magpie population’s is smarter than the other? And that the more aggressive the swooping the less intelligent the bird?

The marvellous art critic and curator Julie Ewington regales us with tales of those artists who began the Impressionist art movement and the women and Australians among their ranks.

One of Australia’s leading housing economists has taken a deep look at the way we do housing and believes the whole system is a hoax and a myth.

Bush food is diverse and plentiful in Far North Queensland, and in a new series premiering on SBS, Samantha Martin, the Bush Tukka Woman, embarks on a hunt and forage through this extraordinary region for fresh local ingredients from the sea to the trees and the land.

Kyle Chayka's new book Filterworld asks the question, are you really thinking for yourself or are the algorithms doing it for you?

Soprano singer Nina Korbe is playing Maria in Opera Australia's production of West Side Story, she speaks with us about what the character means to her.

You may have seen The Mona Lisa, but few have been as up close and personal as Optical Engineer and consultant to The Louvre Museum, Pascal Cotte who was given unprecedented access to the painting by the French Ministry of Culture. 

The Baroque opera movement had it all celebrity, money and bad behaviour. Find out more about the origins of this era of opera. 

What exactly is the West? Is it a Big Mac, the Magna Carta, the Christian cross, or the Statue of Liberty? One Professor of Classics at Oxford University argues the West is a sum of its parts, borrowed, stolen and traded from the East.

There are around 900 shipwrecks off the east coast of Australia and it's Maddy McAllister's very job as a Maritime archaeologist to find and study them. 

Contemporary circus is no longer about animals, strongmen and clowns. It's a new kind of tradition, one that comes with arguably more intellectualism. 

The California prison system is a tough place, overcrowded and violent, but a small group of prisoners get together and record their stories. Uncuffed  is a podcast made on the inside, for the outside world to hear.

Ondara joins Andy in the studio for a chat about the reason he listens to songs without words, and his use of falsetto in his music. He plays his songs 'Seminar in Tokyo' and 'Lebanon'.

Ludwig van Beethoven was in the middle of composing some of his most popular works and those works provide the score to wartime. Find out his work reflected the time he lived in.

You’ve seen Oppenheimer the movie about the Manhattan Project and the creation of the world’s first atomic bomb, known as the Trinity test. What you didn't see was that the desert where the bomb was detonated was not deserted.

Russian-born British satirist and author, Konstantin Kisin is in Australia for the first time. 

Over two thousand years ago Mount Vesuvius destroyed everything in its path, including a town called Herculaneum. Miraculously papyrus scrolls in a library survived enough to be read by new A. I technology.

Former Australian Special Forces Commando Tim Thomas knows all too well the devastating lived experience of PTSD - having been debilitated for years by distressing symptoms, sleeplessness and a reliance on pills to simply function.

What do you think of when you hear the name Gillian Triggs? On her return to Australia, she takes a moment to reflect on her career.

The news business feels like it's at a crossroads yet again, having survived into the digital age, journalism is now facing threats from artificial intelligence and a rising trend in news avoidance.

Find out why this code was considered one of the top 50 unsolvable codes in the world and meet the person who finally cracked it.

Sathnam Sanghera's new book Empireword explores the contrasting dichotomies of the empire's lasting legacy.

We’ve all looked to the heavens in a moment of panic and made a deal with whoever is up there to get out of a pickle that we’re in. Mozart must've known that feeling when he wrote the opera Idomeneo at the age of 25.

It’s as Scottish as haggis, smoked kipper and single malt whiskey - or is it? You’re about to learn that Tartan has a story far wider and perhaps older than Vivienne Westwood or the Punks, far older than William Wallace and Scotland the Brave as we know it.

A tall, dark and handsome man with his shirt half unbuttoned, stands holding a woman in his muscular embrace. She is also in a state of undress looking up at her saviour, swooning. There’s a rugged landscape behind them …. even the horse is looking lusty and brooding.