Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

Can you guess this week's mystery caller?

Afghan Australian media mogul Saad Mohseni was 12 years old in 1978 when the first president of Afghanistan was assassinated with his family by communist rebels, which led the way for the Soviet invasion.

Notorious currents, freezing waters and sharks, but groups of swimmers regularly brave the waters and swim out to Alcatraz prison island.

A Māori radio station is using A.I. to help build a digital language archive to revitalize and increase Maori language speaking.

For the longest time, Western beauty has been celebrated. The desire and pressure to look more 'Western' has led to skin whitening products, nose jobs and double eyelid surgery. But the tide is turning. Celebrities like the Kardashians are leaning into an ethnically ambiguous aesthetic. Is this cultural appropriation or cultural appreciation? What do people of colour, who've often been racially vilified for their appearance, have to say about others cherry-picking their features?

Sexual selection is a potent evolutionary force responsible for much of the weird and wonderful diversity of life on our planet. So what happens when it's disturbed by human-induced environmental change?

Forestry officials in India were shocked to find three adult kangaroos in the wild in West Bengal

The Irish government will pay 2-thousand randomly selected struggling artists a basic wage of more than $400 a week for three years.

Russia says ‘unfriendly’ European countries will have to pay for its gas in roubles, which the EU says would breach the sanctions it has imposed.

With inflation at its highest level in more than two decades, and a rise in the cost of living, it seems a good time to ask how equality is faring in Australia. Is inequality set to get much worse?

Guests:

Dr Barry Jones, former ALP politician, lawyer, teacher, quiz contestant and writer.

Alison Pennington, Senior Economist, The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

Mikayla Novak, author and economist.

Producer: Margie Smithurst