Welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Infinity and our first for 2023. We discuss how Unmanned Aerial Vehicle technology is re-shaping the battlefield and beyond. We dive into the exciting world of drones and how they will revolutionize space exploration - like on Mars with the Ingenuity helicopter, which has just completed its 40th ground breaking autonomous flight. Join us as we explore the future of space exploration and the role that AI-powered drones will play in it. Let's get started!

A retrospective on the year's podcasts: how bee-keeping works; extreme weather hits eastern Australia; covid dwindles yet lingers as other biohazards emerge; Elon Musk's Twitter fiascos; the Multiverse; the mega hacks of Optus and Medibank.

2022 was supposed to mark an inflection point in history - with the rise of China, war in Ukraine and a climate emergency, but did we really 'inflect'?

The world's most successful entrepreneur now owns what he hopes will be Earth's digital town square, but he faces stiff head winds. He paid a very high price for the business at the top of the market, seems to have pissed off many employees, including senior management, as well as raised doubts among key advertisers. He's made his presence felt through mass sackings, a ban on working from home, a move towards a subscription service model whereby users pay $8 a month for the blue tick and foreshadowed a mayhem mode free for all. Can Musk weave his magic at Twitter or has he bitten off more than even he can chew?

The Premier looks like winning another four years in office, despite what many see as his disastrous and incompetent mishandling of the pandemic. First, there was Melbourne's hotel quarantine fiasco, then problems with contact tracing and hundreds of preventable aged care deaths. There followed the longest cumulative lockdown of any city on Earth - 267 days - with devastating effects on mental health, personal freedoms, education, family businesses and our economy. The repercussions will be felt for years to come. Why then, after all this plus serious allegations of corruption and foul play, are voters likely to renew Premier Andrews tenure on 26th November?

A massive cyber attack threatens the private data of 9.8 million current and former Optus customers. Authorities are being forced to reissue drivers licenses and passports, while the Federal Government promises regulatory reforms with stiff telco penalties for future breaches.

Better to recycle waste water and reduce ocean outfall or rely on energy-hungry desalination plants? In the lead up to the Victorian state election, a petition on change.org calls for a $60 million upgrade to the Eastern Treatment Plant to remove all contaminants from wastewater currently discharged near Gunnamatta on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne. The Clean Ocean Foundation claims the Weedy Seadragon is directly impacted by the outfall - its numbers are in decline and the species is considered "near threatened." They argue that advanced wastewater treatment plants provide purified recycled water and reduce ocean pollution.

Bee keeping activist Simon Mulvany explains the problem of varroa mites for bees; how the pest entered Australia and what's being done to control it, including the controversial use of fipronil insecticide. We broaden the conversation to include other biohazards, like foot and mouth disease in Indonesia, the reemergence of drug-resistant polio, monkey pox and covid-19.

It's theorised that birds use quantum effects to navigate with help from the Earth's magnetic field. And how do massive flocks move as clouds in such exquisite and controlled close proximity? Inspired by the movie 'Everything Everywhere All At Once', mathematician and lecturer in information systems Dr. Ian Storey outlines the two main theories of QM - the Copenhagen interpretation and the multiverse. He thinks one is arrogant and anthropocentric, while the other is, well, hard to get your head around. Either way, "our intuition is not built around understanding events at the quantum level" he says.

Easy listening on a complicated subject.

Musk's dream to make humanity a multi-planetary species. The frenetic pace of development at Starbase, his private rocket production facility, test site and spaceport in Texas. Success of Starlink in Ukraine annoys Russia. Musk defies the critics and weathers plenty of bets (and threats) against him, including shorting Tesla.

Piers is joined by activist influencer Simon Mulvany. Part 2 of a 2 part interview.

A look at the world's wealthiest individual and his delayed takeover of the loss-making microblogging service. His battles with Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter shareholders and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Why would Musk want control?

Piers is joined by activist influencer Simon Mulvany. Part 1 of a 2 part interview.