Monash University academics Dr Daniel Heller and Dr Farid Zaid noticed their students were increasingly unwilling or unable to discuss controversial or uncomfortable conversations and were instead staying silent in class, while a minority of voices on the extremes dominated debates.

This week's mystery caller is the largest of a family of four unique, tiny Australian birds – the Red-browed Pardalote.

In 2024 a record 13,350 million students sat for China's gaokao university entrance exam. Chinese students start preparing for the test in primary school and the result can determine the course of the rest of their lives.

Gary Stevenson used to be a  successful trader, making millions of pounds betting on the economic downfall of the economy. But his real success has come from leaving the world of high-flying traders and starting a YouTube channel, Gary's Economics, in which he breaks down the causes of financial inequality and offers bold solutions on how to restart the entire western financial system. 

Guest: Gary Stevenson, Inequality Economist, YouTuber and author of The Trading Game: A Confession.

Gary Stevenson will be touring Australia in Feb-Mar 2026.

Malawi, the fourth poorest country in the world, went to the polls on the 16th September for their general election. The two main Presidential Candidates have both served as President of Malawi previously and been accused of corruption in the role. As food prices skyrocket, fuel becomes a scarce commodity and a country largely reliant on rain-fed crops struggles with drought and natural disasters, Malawians wait in anticipation for the election results.

Guest: Charles Pensulo, independent journalist based in Blantyre, Malawi

Sir Gibuma Gibbs Salika is Papua New Guinea's longest-serving judge on the country's Supreme Court. 

He was only a young man when PNG achieved independence on 16 September 1975, and has graciously joined Julian to reflect on the last 50 years.

Guest: Sir Gibuma Gibbs Salika, Chief Justice of the National and Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea

Brian Robinson is a contemporary artist originally from Waiben (Thursday Island) in the Torres Strait. His work explores imagery drawn from ancestral iconography of the Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait), and he uniquely interweaves this with images from popular culture and science fiction.

Guest: Torres Strait Islander Artist, Brian Robinson. His exhibition, Ur Wayii, is currently on display at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. 

Paul White's work has taken him to some of the world’s most volatile conflict zones and humanitarian crises. Since the mid-2000s, he’s been on the ground in countries like Iraq and Nepal, working with refugees, displaced communities, and Indigenous peoples.

Guest: Paul White is a Senior Protection Adviser for the UN’s ProCap organisation, living in Kabul Afghanistan.

Professor Georgina Long has led global breakthroughs in immunotherapy and targeted therapies, transforming advanced melanoma from a disease with no effective treatment into one where long-term survival and even cures are possible. Her pioneering research and international collaborations continue to set the standard for how cancer is understood and treated. She joins Sunday Extra to share how this breakthrough research has fundamentally changed patient care. 

Guest: Professor Georgina Long AO, Medical Director of Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA), and Chair of Melanoma Medical Oncology and Translational Research at MIA and Royal North Shore Hospital, The University of Sydney.

In 2023, Jack Toohey created a cut through viral video on the subject of Australian house prices. Now he's written a book about the housing crisis, climate change, persistent gender inequity and other social ills, making the case for choosing hope over apathy.