Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

As India refuses to back away from the abeyance on the Indus Treaty, what will become of the river systems that support the livelihoods, energy generation and ecosystems of close to 300 million people across India and Pakistan?

Guest: Ambika Vishwanath, Principal Research Fellow with La Trobe Centre for Global Security and Director of Kubernein Initiative

The BRICS summit is taking place in New Delhi this weekend.

BRICS brings together eleven major emerging markets and developing countries: Brazil, Russia India, China and South Africa, who are now also joined by Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. 

The Iran war threatened to divide the grouping but members unanimously adopted a wide-ranging 45-page document called the New Delhi Declaration. 

Guest: Shruti Pandalai, inaugural India chair at the Lowy Institute.

Author Rosalie Ham's debut novel The Dressmaker was a breakout hit. Inspired by real events in her family life, the 2000 novel, went onto become the 2015 film of the same name, starring Kate Winslet. 

Rosalie has since written seven books, all fiction, except for her latest, Look after your feet, a non-fiction work exploring some of the unexpected advantages of growing older. 

Samuel Beckett's German Diaries have finally been published over 30 years after their posthumous discovery. They reveal a young writer, on a pre-war tour of Germany, not yet famous, but already was using dark, wry humour as he observed the absurdity of the early Nazi regime.

Guest: Professor Mark Nixon, Professor of Modern Literature and Beckett Studies at the University of Reading and editor of the German Diaries by Samuel Beckett

Tibetan-Australian musician Tenzin Choegyal has performed around the world, from  New York’s Carnegie Hall, to opening for the Dalai Lama’s during his visits to Australia and New Zealand. 

Now he's bringing Be The Sky to the Brisbane Festival, a collaboration with composer Philip Glass, in honour of The Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday.  

Guest: Tenzin Choegyal, musician

On the first Sunday of every month, Julian Morrow is joined by International Intrigue’s Jeremy Dicker to discuss one story in international politics that you might have missed and look ahead to an emerging issue or event.  

In this edition we discuss Xi Jinping's upcoming meeting with Donald Trump in the US and the last minute visit to Moscow by the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe.

Nancy Grace Roman, broke boundaries as NASA's first chief astronomer. Now she is breaking a new boundary as the namesake for NASA's latest telescope which was sent into space last week.

Guest: Joss Bland-Hawthorn, Sydney University Laureate Professor and Director of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy

Forensic Psychologist Helen Paterson has found that people who experience repeated abuse can remember very accurately what happened, but struggle to pin particular details to particular incidents. 

And that can have serious consequences when it comes to speaking to police, and providing evidence in court. 

For that research, Helen was this week awarded  the Eureka Prize for Excellence in Forensic Science, which is given for “outstanding forensic research that combines ground-breaking quality and significant societal or academic impact". 

Guest: Helen Paterson, Associate Professor in Forensic Psychology at the University of Sydney. 

Shein transformed the fashion industry with a model built on extraordinarily cheap clothes and thousands of new styles released each week. 

But after a lacklustre debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange, the fast fashion giant's shares have fallen below their listing price, a long way from the company once valued at $100 billion. 

Guest: Timothy McLaughlin, journalist and contributing writer for The Atlantic. 

At just 11 years old, Anderson Taylor is already the curator of his own natural history museum. 

Anderson opened the Cambridge Natural History Museum in Illinois when he was nine, after years spent collecting fossils and convincing his local town board to let him open the space. 

The museum now holds over 1,000 pieces in its collection, including a mastodon femur, a T. Rex replica and an opalised dinosaur bone from Australia.

Anderson has now been been recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's youngest museum curator. 

Guest: Anderson Taylor, curator of the Cambridge Natural History Museum and Guinness World Record holder.