Rear Vision — How History Shaped Today

Hollywood has come to a standstill with actors and writers on strike, from the most famous to the bit player. 

It's a dispute not just about money but the use of artificial intelligence and the way TV and movies are made.   

But it's not the first-time workers in Hollywood have had to face down bosses. 

The story of Hollywood and its current existential crisis. 

Through most of the 20th centuries mercenaries didn’t exist but that was an anomaly - historically mercenaries have always played a major role in conflicts as they are increasing doing in the 21st century. So, who are the mercenaries, who employees them and what impact have they had on warfare.

Guests

Dr Sean McFate is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington DC think tank, and a professor of strategy at the National Defence University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is former private military contractor, US Army paratrooper, and has written extensively on the world of mercenaries. Author of Mercenaries and War: Understanding Private Armies Today.

Sarah Percy is an Associate Professor of International relations at the University of Queensland and the author of Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Catrina Doxsee, Associate Director and Associate Fellow with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

Lithium-ion batteries power everything from consumer goods, electric vehicles, large storage batteries and everything else we need to achieve net zero.

While China currently dominates the global supply chain for lithium batteries, it relies on Australia for the raw material.

But there are other players in the lithium market especially from South America, in a region known as the Lithium Triangle, which has one of the largest reserves on the planet.

Australia is facing a housing crisis - there is a shortage of affordable housing, essential workers can no longer live in the areas they work, and families are finding themselves homeless. While our politicians are struggling to come up with ideas to solve this crisis, one city that has managed to develop a housing strategy that works for most of its citizens - Vienna.

Guests

Julia Anna Schranz is a historian at the University of Vienna and is also a guide at the Red Vienna Exhibition at the Museum at Karl Marx Hoff.

Dr. Justin Kadi Assistant Professor in Planning and Housing, at the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge.

Kurt Hofstetter is an Urban development Planner in the city of Vienna and is currently working for a department that is dealing with the funding for subsidised housing.

Following controversies involving films like 'Top Gun', 'Mulan' and now 'Barbie', there's been growing pushback against China's perceived influence over Hollywood. But are these calls too little, too late?

Jet streams are narrow bands of strong winds in the upper atmosphere.  This is the story of how they were discovered and what can happen when they behave in unexpected ways.

The strikes and street protests across France in the first months of this year were part of an ultimately failed attempt to stop the French government raising the pension age from 62 to 64. Age pensions were established as a means of preventing poverty in old age and they were originally associated with a compulsory retirement age. The range and diversity of schemes for funding old age evolved during the twentieth century along with the nature of retirement itself.

The story of diet drugs is one full of miracle cures that don't live up to the hype or come with serious side effects.

There's a new class of drugs being touted as a revolution in weight loss.

But will the future of diet drugs just end up looking a lot like the past?

The Republic of Moldova, a former Soviet republic, is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moldova has wrestled with the attraction of closer ties with the West and its longer, deeper connection with Russia. There’s also Transnistria, a self-proclaimed independent region, a part of Moldova that lies along its border with Ukraine, which hosts Russian troops.

For the first time, a woman will fly to the moon when NASA sends four astronauts on the Artemis 2 lunar orbit mission next year. More than 650 people have journeyed in space since the early sixties and of these nearly ninety percent are men. But the gender divide is slowly changing, and NASA’s lunar mission is a pivotal moment for women, with plans to send humans to Mars in coming decades.