Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

According to UNICEF, the United National Children’s Fund, there are an estimated 50 million refugee and displaced children around the world. 

This month on Sunday Intrigue, Jeremy Dicker, managing editor of International Intrigue, looks back at Switzerland's referendum on whether to enshrine a strict definition of neutrality in its constitution.

And Brazil goes to the polls for the first round of the presidential election on October 4, in something of a re-run of the 2022 campaign. Incumbent president Lula da Silva is running against Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. 

Nike might be the largest sportswear brand in the world, but earlier this month, the iconic American company fell off the S&P 100 after a solid 18 year run, and a 78% drop in share price since 2021.

The loss of the brand’s blue chip status indicates that its prestige is slipping along with its customer base. So, where did Nike stumble on the track, and what’s overtaken it?

Guest: Hans Westerbeek, Professor of Sport, Business and AI at Victoria University.

For more than 80 years it was thought that the Australian military had failed to rescue Australian prisoners of war held by the Japanese in Borneo because of a lack of political will and resources. 

Almost 30 years ago, historian Lynette Ramsay Silver revealed that there had been a secret rescue mission known as Operation Kingfisher that was abandoned due to faulty intelligence. 

Now she has published a new book titled Operation Kingfisher: Unravelling Sandakan's Darkest Secret detailing a second rescue mission that failed again due to false intelligence and was subsequently covered up.  

The result of the failure was the deaths of 2434 Australian and British soldiers, only 6 people survived. 

After 27 painstaking years of painstaking and dangerous work, the HALO Trust is finally able to wrap up it's work clearing landmines and cluster bombs in Kosovo.

Guest: Major General James Cowan, CEO of the HALO Trust

Stephen Hawking's celebrity status often framed him as a superhuman genius. But in a new authorised biography, Hawking: His Life and Work, author Graham Farmelo weaves a very human story of a man who was both extraordinary and deeply flawed.

Guest: Graham Farmelo, author of Hawking: His Life and Work

This week's mystery woodland caller is Australia's smallest bird – the Weebill.

Despite the name, Tasmanian devils once lived across mainland Australia. Including, according to new research, the arid Pilbara region in the north west of Western Australia.

Remains found at Juukan Gorge suggest that Tasmanian devils may have scavenged from human camps in the region for tens of thousands of years.

While Juukan Gorge was partially destroyed by Rio Tinto in 2020, it is being carefully recovered by SCARP archaeology and the PKKP Aboriginal Corporation. The ongoing excavation could become "one of the most significant archaeological sites in all of Australia.” 

Guest: Dr Timothy Churchill, a zooarchaeologist and fauna specialist with SCARP Archaeology and a researcher at UNSW.

Winnie Dunn became the first Tongan-Australian to publish a novel with her 2024 debut Dirt Poor Islanders, a coming-of-age story about a Tongan-Australian girl growing up in Western Sydney.

Now she has been invited to give the 2026 Ray Mathew Lecture at the National Library of Australia, and she previews her theme of representation in publishing for Sunday Extra.

Guest: Winnie Dunn, author of Dirt Poor Islanders and General Manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement.

It is unlikely that a political memoir published today would be described as 'frustratingly discreet', rather today’s former politicians often publish juicy tell-alls after leaving office, with shocking behind-the-scene revelations and an occasional stab at former rivals.

As Josh Black explains in his new book Performance Politics: Australian politicians and the stories they tell, a century ago memoirs by Australian politicians were few and far between, for very interesting cultural reasons.