Eavesdrop on Experts

Climate scientist and paleoclimatologist Dr Joelle Gergis has spent over a decade painstakingly piecing together Australia’s climate history, using historical records dating back to the First Fleet, natural records held in our trees, corals and ice and computer modelling. As she outlines in her book Sunburnt Country, published by Melbourne University Publishing, Australia’s climate has always been “spectacularly erratic”, but human activity has accelerated these rates of change. As the developed nation most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, she says we must act now to slow its worst impacts.

Episode recorded: 11 May 2018

Interviewer: Steve Grimwade

Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-Wall

Audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis

Banner image: Brisbane floods, 1893/State Library of Queensland

Professor Frances Separovic has amassed many ‘firsts’ in her career as a scientist, including being the first female chemist to become a member of the Australian Academy of Science and the first female Head of the School of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne. Our reporter Dr Andi Horvath sits down for a chat with Frances, where she discusses the road she travelled to reach the peak of her profession, from school in Broken Hill to Deputy Director of the Bio21 Institute.

Episode recorded: 30 April 2018

Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath

Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-Wall

Audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis

Banner image: Professor Separovic (centre, right), with her research team at the Bio21 Institute. Picture: Peter Casamento/Bio21

Rivers in New Zealand, Australia, India and Colombia have all been granted legal rights recently. Environmental law expert Dr Erin O’Donnell explains to our reporter Dr Andi Horvath why granting nature legal rights is becoming more accepted.

Episode recorded: 23 March 2018

Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath

Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-Wall

Audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis

Banner image: The Whanganui River in New Zealand was the first in the world to be awarded legal rights. Picture: Tim Proffitt-White/Flickr

When social media micro-targeting is shaping political views and ‘alternative facts’ abound, is there any hope for democracy? Cognitive psychologist Professor Stephan Lewandowsky explains why we still believe something to be true, even after we have been told it is not, and why we are all so willing to believe what we read - including fake news. In our post-truth era he suggests we all need to become a little more cynical, to ward off misinformation and guard against its potential to manipulate.

Episode recorded: March 26, 2018

Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath

Producers: Chris Hatzis, Dr Andi Horvath

Engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis

Banner image: Getty Images

Cultural geographer Tim Edensor is passionate about place. His career has taken him from the Taj Mahal to industrial ruins in England's north, and now to Melbourne and its stone buildings. Wandering is the best way to get to know a place, says Dr Tim Edensor, and as a cultural geographer who has explored everything from what Christmas lights reveal about British class identity to Melbourne's old stone buildings, he should know.

Episode recorded: March 1 2018

Interviewer: Steve Grimwade

Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-Wall

Audio engineer: Arch Cuthbertson

Banner image: Travellers Travel Photobook/Flickr

Cultural geographer Tim Edensor is passionate about place. His career has taken him from the Taj Mahal to industrial ruins in England’s north, and now to Melbourne and its stone buildings. Wandering is the best way to get to know a place, says Dr Tim Edensor, and as a cultural geographer who has explored everything from what Christmas lights reveal about British class identity to Melbourne’s old stone buildings, he should know.

Episode recorded: March 1 2018

Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-Wall

Audio engineer: Arch Cuthbertson

Banner image: Travellers Travel Photobook/Flickr

Anthropologist Monica Minnegal has spent her career observing "the extraordinary things that people do", with much of her work dedicated to learning more about the Kubo people in Papua New Guinea. A community in the last uncontrolled part of the country, the Kubo are now encountering the West through mining companies and navigating the many cultural and social changes that brings.

Episode recorded: February 23, 2018

Interviewer: Steve Grimwade

Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-Wall

Audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis

In 1980 Ben Shneiderman published one of the first texts in the field that would come to be known as human-computer interaction, and has since pioneered innovations we take for granted today, like touchscreens and hyperlinks. He has now turned his attention to maximising the real-world impact of university research, by combining applied and basic research; a topic he addresses in his new book 'The New ABCs of Research'. He chats with our reporter Steve Grimwade.

Episode recorded: December 14 2017

Interviewer: Steve Grimwade

Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Van-Wall

Audio engineer: Gavin Nebauer

Editor: Chris Hatzis

Banner image: Getty Images

Acting is not natural - but it can be learned, and the VCA's Rinske Ginsberg passes on her wisdom about how the body can express an internal state; as well what it takes to make it as an actor. The Melbourne Fringe 'living legend' talks to Steve Grimwade, reflecting on life in Melbourne's radical arts scene of the 1980s, and how performance and art making has changed since.

Episode recorded: December 8 2017

Interviewer: Steve Grimwade

Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-Wall

Audio engineer: Arch Cutherbertson

Editor: Chris Hatzis

Banner image: Laura Canovaro/Flickr

You're chatting and posting online to your various social media accounts. But where does that data go? Who else is seeing your daily data habits? And does your social media define your identity? In this episode, Professor Luciano Floridi from the University of Oxford explores some of the ethical questions about our digital lives that are being asked by us more and each day.

Episode recorded: 25 October 2017

Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath

Producers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris Hatzis

Co-producer: Silvi Vann-Wall

Audio engineer: Gavin Nebauer

Editor: Chris Hatzis

Banner image: iStock