This week's mystery caller is common in inland towns, scrub and woodland – the Yellow-throated Miner. 

Rodney Croome was among a group of people arrested at Hobart’s Salamanca Market back in 1988, for defying a ban on a stall, set up to collect signatures on a petition calling for homosexuality to be decriminalised in Tasmania.

It was the start of a civil disobedience campaign that would lead all the way to the United Nations, and ultimately to Tasmania reforming its punitive laws in respect to homosexuality.

GUEST:

Rodney Croome Tasmanian gay law reform activist, and a founder of Australian Marriage Equality. 

Are we in a parasitic relationship with our smart phones? A new article in the Australiasian Journal of Philosophy suggests that rather than being a helpful extension of our working mind, our endless doom-scrolling and the mining of our data by phone apps, makes our phones much closer to a parasite than a helpful tool.

GUEST: Rachael L. Brown, Director of the Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences and Associate Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University

The Mennonites are a Christian faith stream established in the Netherlands in the 16th century. They are a pacifist faith and live largely without technology. They have spread across the globe through Russia to North America and then 100 years ago into South America. Now as they search for more farming land they have set up a community in Northen Angola. 

Guest: Photojournalist Nadia Shira Cohen, reporter and photographer of the New York TImes article The Mennonite Colony that Made a Deal with a Diamond Company

In 1981 Midnight Oil released their Place without a Postcard album including a song called Burnie inspired by a tour the band did to North West Tasmania. Midnight Oil guitarist Jim Migonie wrote the song with lead singer Peter Garrett. The song was not universally appreciated in Burnie as the town became a battleground between industry and the environmental movement.

Guest: Jim Moginie, musician, songwriter and writer, guitarist with Midnight Oil

Author of The Silver River (Harper Collins)

Justin Heazlewood is an author, songwriter, comedian and performer whose creative work takes him all over the world. 

But after returning to his hometown, Burnie, in Tasmania during COVID, Justin developed a new appreciation for port-side city of his childhood. It has accumulated in his new book, Dream Burnie, an ambitious, memoir, art book and cultural time capsule tracing 20 creative artists who were also Burnie-born. 

Guest: Justin Heazlewood, songwriter, comedian and author of Dream Burnie.

Australian NGOs have been devastated by Trump's USAID cuts, according to a new report by the Australian Council for International Development. Aid organisations partnering with the US on programs and local partner charities have been hit with financial losses that have forced the closure of programs throughout the Pacific and South East Asia. From clean water projects, to girl's education, vulnerable communities are already feeling the impact of the cuts.

Guest: Matthew Maury, CEO of Australian Council for International Development

Tasmanians are going, somewhat reluctantly, to an election on July 19th.

It's been just 16 months since the last state election, with the snap poll being triggered by a no-confidence motion against Premier Jeremy Rockliff.

GUEST

Kevin Bonham Tasmanian election analyst

This week's mystery caller is the Spotted Catbird. 

It's often found between about Townsville and Cooktown, and especially in forest around Cairns.

Fruit makes up most of the diet - figs, palm seeds and berries. And, unlike its southern counterpart, it often comes down to the ground to find food.

Ann Odong's journey from a child in war torn Uganda, to growing up in the suburbs of Perth is a story in itself.

But that was just the beginning for a soccer mad kid who would eventually turn her passion for football into a career with the Matildas.

GUEST:

Ann Odong, Media Manager The Matildas