Pioneering Minds

In the final episode of our inaugural podcast season our guest is Professor Catharine Lumby, speaking to Ben Mckelvey about her work with the NRL in the wake of the 2004 Canterbury Bulldogs gang rape allegations, how the media landscape is changing, modern feminism and much more in episode 10 of the Pioneering Minds podcast

Why do some companies thrive, and others boom and bust? Is it the importance of a strong hand on the helm? A culture of innovation? A pervasive sense of employee satisfaction? Or is it some other element that sits outside the parameters of conventional business wisdom?

This week's podcast guest is Professor Gayle Avery from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, whose dedicated field of research is organisational sustainability. We speak to Professor Avery about these pertinent questions and the fascinating work she's done in translating the personal business ethic of the King of Thailand into a business bible for South East Asian people.

This week's Pioneering Minds Podcast guest is Quantum Physicist Dr Robert Pfeifer from the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He talks to Ben Mckelvey about making sense of the true meaning of 'quantum', what inspired him to leave a career in medicine to pursue physics, and what the future of quantum computing could look like in episode 8 of the Pioneering Minds podcast.

Our guest this week is Professor Barbara Messerle, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. She talks to Ben Mckelvey about her research work as an organometallic chemist, her role in shaping the future of scientific research at Macquarie, and what Australia needs to do as a country to keep up the pace on STEM innovation.

On our podcast this week, Ben Mckelvey talks to Distinguished Professor Anne Castles from Macquarie's Department of Cognitive Science and a leading dyslexia researcher. They discuss how the human brain makes sense of the squiggly lines we call writing, how far the bounds of neuroplasticity really go, and how brain damage Ben suffered as a result of a stroke may be be similar to the effects of dyslexia on children.

“Vision loss disconnects you from objects, but hearing loss disconnects you from people. We are social animals. When you lose your hearing, you lose your ability to communicate in the broadest possible sense, because you also lose your ability to speak effectively. And it’s about being connected to your environment. We do more than just listen to words and music with our ears; we understand what room we’re in, we understand threats around us… We don’t have eyes in the back of our head – and we don’t need them; we have ears.”

This week, Professor David McAlpine, Director of Hearing Research at the Australian Hearing Hub, talks to Ben Mckelvey about the important role hearing plays in our communication and social interaction, how we can better protect our ears from harm with ‘noise diets’, and how a young Protestant boy from Belfast discovered his love for all things academic.

This week's guest, Professor Jeanette Kennett from the Department of Philosophy, is a pioneer of neurolaw - a new interdisciplinary field that investigates the relationship between neuroscience and law. In her interview with Ben Mckelvey she discusses the implications of this on moral agency, criminality and culpability, the establishment of the neurolaw database, and how she was drawn to questions of justice.

Our guest this week is Rifaie Tammas, a postgraduate student from the Department of Security Studies and Criminology who survived the Syrian conflict that devastated his hometown of al-Quasir. He tells Ben Mckelvey his story of sadness, resilience, hope, and relocation.

The Director of Macquarie University's Ancient Cultures Research Centre, Malcolm Choat, sits down with Ben Mckelvey to discuss his work on papyrology, his forensic investigation of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife, and how a Queensland boy ended up an expert on Ptolemaic and Roman Egyptian History.

Ben Mckelvey talks to Macquarie University's David Christian, Director of the Big History Institute about his unique perspective on historical study, his time in Soviet Russia, the economics of vodka, and his relationship with Bill Gates.