Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

Professor Marcia Langton explores "the challenges to distinctive Aboriginal ways of being and knowing" in advance of her inaugural Rechnitz Memorial Lecture.

Guest: Marcia Langton, Professor of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne.

Professor Langton is presenting the inaugural Rechnitz Memorial Lecture for the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia on the 14 July.

On Tuesday July 7, a French court of appeal will decide whether Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally party can run for president for a fourth time in 2027. If not, her hand-picked protégé Jordan Bardella will run in her stead. A child of Italian migrants who grew up in one of France's poorest neighbourhoods, Bardella is an unusual presidential candidate. But his ascent in the anti-immigration National Rally party has been "dizzying", and his populist appeal is broad. Guest: Sophie Pedder, Paris bureau chief at The Economist.

Shifra Ainomugisha grew up on a tomato farm in western Uganda and saw first hand the enormous amount of food waste that kept her family in poverty. Now she runs a social enterprise which uses centralised cold storage facilities powered by solar energy to improve farmer's yield and their profits. 

Guest: Shifra Ainomugisha, founder and CEO of Solafam, and 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year.

Why do we still "have a crack", but don't "give it a burl"? 

A notebook has been discovered in the National Library of France that contains compositions part-written by Mozart. Julian speaks with one of the people who authenticated the discovery. 

Irina Berezina is one of the few women in the world in chess to become an International Master. She started out as a child chess prodigy in the former Soviet Union, and after moving to Australia she went on to represent the country at 8 Chess Olympiads. But it was an international chess competition in 1997 that nearly ended her life, and changed the way she played the game forever.

Guest: Irina Berezina, International Master of Chess.

In 2025, the Republic of the Marshall Islands rolled out the world’s first nationwide universal basic income scheme. 

When the US captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and backed his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, Trump promised a new era of prosperity was ahead for the people of Venezuela.

Six months on, despite Venezuelan oil prices finally catching up with the world market, and the influx of investment, the Venezuelan bolívar has plummeted and the promised era of prosperity for Venezuelans is yet to materialise. 

So where is Venezuela's oil money?

Guest: Ricardo Hausmann, Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School  and a former Minister of Planning in Venezuela

$90 million worth of flight credits with Virgin Australia are set to expire on June 30. The credits date back to the COVID period, but the equivalent credits with Qantas or Jetstar do not have an expiry date.

While attention focuses on saving the bees, what is happening to the wider insect world that underpins global ecosystems?

Entomologist Jonathan Finch explores the gaps in current research on insect decline, and the new innovations that may still help turn the tide.

Guest: Jonathan Finch, entomologist at the Tasmania Institute of Agriculture, part of the University of Tasmania.