Wonder

Did you know that humans are a type of lobe-finned fish!? Turns out our story begins 400 million years ago, when some very special fishies began making the move from sea to land, and we want to talk about it!! Dr Alice Clement heads up the Early Vertebrate Evolution Lab at Flinders University and has dedicated her career to understanding this history of life on Earth ... how the evolution of fish...

What does it take to discover a continent? Apparently four months in the Madagascan wilderness with no phone, some crunchy crickets to snack on, and a whole lot of time bouncing around on terrible roads in a beat-up Peugeot while thinking some very big thoughts. Professor Alan Collins from Adelaide University joins Holly and Anthony for a conversation that spans the formation of Gondwana, the nami...

The Rocky Mountains - lands of towering peaks glacier carved valleys, huge faults and unique geological heritage. In this episode of Wonder, we lace up our boots and head into the heart of the Rockies with the endlessly enthusiastic Nick Zentner, professor of geology at Central Washington University . Nick is a great storyteller, and together we unravel the colossal forces that built this iconic m...

We adored our time with writer, illustrator, educator, and 'not-geologist(!!!)', Vojta Hybl (aka @vojta.illustrates ). Look, we don't have better words to summarise these ideas than those Vojta gifted us throughout this conversation.... so, please, go listen & enjoy 💗 What a joy. Here you can Vojta's gorgeous new book, Rocks, A Guide to the Stones Around Us and the Stories They Tell . Make su...

We start todays episode at the end of the world with Professor of Earth System Evolution, Ben Mills. Soon we're looking at his incredible grid cell model of the Earth and watching 537 million years of evolution play out in pixels: continents drifting, plants evolving, ice sheets growing, CO2 falling, climates flipping. Ben then really shows us something cool: a simulation wherein we build, or rath...

Todays show is something super special for you guys... Professor Ben Mills joins us in studio (all the way from the UK!) to walk us through what is genuinely one of the most interesting scientific ideas about our planet: the Gaia hypothesis. The Gaia hypothesis posits that life doesn't just passively inhabit habitable conditions on the Earth ... rather, life itself regulates the atmosphere, oceans...

Today we continue our electrifying conversation with the hilarious Dr Chris Voisey about his impressive experiments and what they tell us about the mysterious ways of gold nugget formation. Find Chris and friends Nature Geoscience paper here . Thanks to the  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Geological Society of Australia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  for making this episode of Wonder possible! Make sure you're following Wonder wherever y...

Gold is one of the most chemically inert elements on the periodic table, and the fluids that carry it through the crust contain barely any of it… so how on Earth do we end up with enormous gold nuggets? Dr Chris Voisey, research fellow at Monash University, joins Wonder to talk about the geology of gold deposits, the mystery of how gold nuggets actually form, and the weird property of quartz cryst...

Fifty million years ago, two colliding tectonic plates began building the biggest mountain range on Earth today. Structural geologist Dr Melanie Finch from the University of Melbourne joins Wonder to explain exactly how these mountains are rising: deep in the crust, where it's too hot for rocks to snap, thin layers of rock flow like honey, slowly pushing everything above them skyward. These ar...

Thanks to the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Geological Society of Australia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for making this episode of Wonder possible! Find us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.thegeoco.com.au⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@thegeoco⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Got questions? Get in touch- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠hello@thegeoco.com.au⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ GeoCo connects to you from the traditional country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, South Australia. We pay our respects to their Elder...

It's the lightest metal on the periodic table and a crucial component in our modern technologies... but lithium also presents a fascinating cosmological problem. Professor Brian Fields joins WONDER podcast from the University of Illinois and shares with us the mysteries of primordial lithium formation in the universe - a story that takes us from interstellar dust to the big bang itself. Turns...

Professor Carl Spandler joins WONDER podcast to walk us through the lightest metal of all - lithium! We dive head first into Carl's world of critical minerals, from crystals the size of cars to manipulated markets and the 'science fights' behind the genesis of lithium ore deposits. Enjoy with us these explorations of the geological cycle of metal on Earth... soon enough these stories w...

On todays episode of WONDER, Holly & Anthony cross live to Washington State for a chat with Nick Zentner! Nick is a professor at Central Washington University and he chats to us live from Ellensberg (not Seattle; close but no cigar for Holly, can't tell you why that brain fade happened!!)... Here we cover the ancient kinship between Australian and North American geology, and also, we explore the s...

Bubbling mud? The origins of life? Field expeditions into Malaysian jungle? On this episode of Wonder, we're joined by the Mud Volcano Guy himself and we cover it all! With Dr Mark Tingay we expore the weird and wonderful world of mud volcanoes, and Mark shares his unbelievable saga to find a long-lost mud volcano hidden in the thicket of Malaysian jungle... This episode is supported by the ⁠⁠...

Well hello there! On todays show, Holly and Anthony sit down with Dr Ross Chandler to figure out how to find Australian orebodies... We break down the world of mineral exploration, covering everything from why and how we find new deposits to the ways we can think about their value. We chat about those critical metals that you hear about in the news like lithium and rare earth elements (REEs), and...

So ... what are the rock blocks that built Australia? And if we lived in the times of the Gondwanan or Pangean supercontinents, what would our world map look like? And finally, what's this about mountains on the deep undersides of Earth's continents? In this episode of Wonder Podcast, we synthesise the fascinating earth science we've learned from our latest guests, and share with our n...

Welcome to another cracking geological conversation with Dr Sabin Zahirovic (or should we say, welcome to today's episode of ' what is Sabin 3D printing today'....!!??!! ) Here we explore the great Australian tilt , what the mantle has to do with it, and what this continental tilt has meant for the natural evolution of our country. Sabin continues to show us some unbelievable data visu...

Ever noticed that the coastlines of Africa and South America match up like perfect puzzle pieces? Turns out we need to investigate Earth's youngest supercontinent, Pangea, to explain that one! In this episode of Wonder we're joined by the brilliant Dr Sabin Zahirovic, who shows us some mindblowing visual reconstructions of the Pangean supercontinent and the geologic mega-events that ripple...

Welcome to the ultimate deep time exploration Down Under! With Professor Pete Betts from Monash University, Holly & Anthony imagine the Australian continent as a geologic mosaic of stone. We ask about the origins of these cratonic blocks, and how they came together to form the Australian jigsaw we know and love today. Prof Betts walks us through it all, from missing ocean basins to that time h...

Welcome to Kīlauea, one of the planet's most active volcanoes in the heart of Hawaii. You've likely seen its incredible lava fountains and ongoing eruptions in the news, or all over your social feeds ... Well, on today's show, we crossed live to geochemist and volcanologist Dr Abigail Nalesnik to talk everything Hawaiian volcanoes . What's up with lava fountains?? What do eruptions sound like (obv...

Welcome to the rock bottom of the Australian continent. Here, hundreds of kilometres underground, there are inverted mountains and valleys beyond anything at our country's land surface. With Dr Caroline Eakin we find out how earthquakes paint pictures of Australia's deep roots, why our country experiences earthquakes, and finally, why those Western Australian's are building an epic &#3...

Today's show begins deep in Earth's mantle. It's mostly a beautiful, green place ... but, apparently, also much like a marble cake? On todays show, Holly & Anthony are joined by the ultimate mantle legend Dr Isra Ezad, who's an igneous experimental petrologist at the University of Western Australia. Dr Ezad walks us through the dark side of Earth's mantle, the kind of exper...

WOW, we've spoken to some incredible scientists over the last few episodes. We think it's time to hit pause and absorb what we've learned? From the ceaseless cycles of Nature to the evolution of flora and fauna, from Holly's field travels into living landscapes and Anthony's curiosity about Gondwanan ice sheets— let's reflect on the spectacular stories of our recent guests...

"A nation that loses its connection to its country either culturally , emotionally or scientifically loses. That is our biggest societal and human challenge... how we understand and connect with our planet. As Australians, we have responsibility for our bit of the earth. It's what sustains us as people and everything else we share our planet with..." Here is part 2 of our conversatio...

In today's show we traverse iconic Australian landscapes and uncover their roots in deep time. Dr Steve Hill shows us how 'reading landscapes' reveals their formation - by fire, by ice, by water - thus allowing us to imagine the ancient sculpture of todays world. We find out that encoded in our landscapes today are ancient inland seas, Australia's slow drift across the face of the...