Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

A major new study from the University of Sydney, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, has found medicinal cannabis is no more effective than a placebo in treating common mental health conditions like anxiety, depression and PTSD.

Despite that, more than one million applications for medicinal cannabis have been approved in Australia, with prescriptions continuing to rise.

So, is the evidence lagging behind prescribing?

And should the Therapeutic Goods Administration rethink how medicinal cannabis is regulated and prescribed?

Guest: Jack Wilson, Research Fellow at the Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney.

Julian speaks with former Matildas vice captain Moya Dodd about the outcome of the Matildas Asia Cup final against Japan.

Guest: Moya Dodd, former Matildas Vice Captain

“A political earthquake” with “massive national implications”: that was the verdict of ABC Election Analyst Casey Briggs on the outcome of Saturday's South Australian state election.

Antarctica has long captured the imaginations of artists and poets, as well as explorers and scientists.

Since 2023, The University of Tasmania has been running a research project called Creative Antarctica , the first comprehensive survey of Antarctic-themed works by Australian writers and artists, funded by the Australian Research Council. 

Melbourne's RMIT is holding a free exhibition of works from the project, called Creative Antarctica: Australian Artists and Writers in the Far South until 2 May 2026. 

Guest: Elizabeth Leane, Professor of Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania.

Adam Elliot is an auteur writer and director of animated films, who has carved his own path in the Australian film industry with his idiosyncratic films that have resonated across the globe. 

Australia will mark the 30th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre in April 2026. The process of dealing with the grief and its ongoing effects are dealt with in Beyond the Neck, a theatre production written by acclaimed playwright Tom Holloway.

Have you ever wondered what your ancestors were feeling decades or centuries ago? Rob Boddice is an historian who argues that differences in our contexts and world-views would make our emotional experiences completely different - even the experience of pain.

Guest: Rob Boddice, Core Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki, author of The History of Emotions and A History of Feelings, and member of the Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences at the University of Tumpere.

As an official in the US State Department, Edward Fishman worked on imposing sanctions on Russia. Eddie discusses his latest book Chokepoints, which examines how critical economic monopolies have become the key to geopolitical power in the twenty-first century.

Chokepoints was chosen by The Economist as one of the best business and economics books of 2025. 

Guest: Edward Fishman, Director of the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations

NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in 2022, hoping the kinetic impact would nudge it off its orbit. The mission was called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART.

Four years later, scientists have published their findings and say the experiment was even more successful than expected.

Guest: Rahil Makadia, planetary defence scientist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and co-author of Direct detection of an asteroid’s heliocentric deflection: The Didymos system after DART

As the conflict in the Middle East enters its third week, Iran continues to launch attacks against US allies in the Gulf. Iraq, which borders Iran, is being struck by both Iran and the United States because the country plays host to a range of groups allied to both sides.