Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

It’s the Moaning Tree Frog! 

Heleioporus eyrei has an unmistakable call, but the frog itself is nearly indistinguishable from related species in South West Australia, several of which occur in the same place. This frog species appears to be able to persist in suburbia, and calls from backyards near the centre of Perth.

Winner: 

Thanks to the team at the Australian Museum's Frog Id project run by Dr Jodi Rowley

From sailors, to bikies, to hipsters – the history of the tattoo industry in Australia can be traced back to the convict era.

What began as something of a dark art, is now the domain of baristas, influencers and suburban mums and dads.

This is the story of how tattoos, once tested on skin with handmade guns, eventually found their way onto reality TV and the social mainstream.

GUEST:

Rhys Gordon Tattoo Artist at Little Tokyo and tattoo historian

Objects that tell the lost history of women's stories in Zambia are at the heart of a new exhibition Frame, part of the virtual Women's History Museum of Zambia.

Guest: Samba Yonga, co-founder of the Women's History Museum of Zambia

Launched amid much fanfare back in 2007, Apple's iconic Iphone changed the way we communicated, listened to music and searched the web.

But 18 years on how much can the company reinvent its signature product, which has had no less than 15 versions of its all in one handset.

And how can Apple navigate the dual challenges of AI and Donald Trump?

GUEST:

Brian Merchant Technology Journalist and author of The One Device: The Secret History of the Iphone

Australia's longstanding ties to the United States, have rarely been tested.

But some uncertainty has crept into the strategic and diplomatic framework that's underpinned our decades long relationship with Washington.

Tensions between the US and China, and a push for Australia to spend more on defence is a causing something of rethink on what's often described as our 'special relationship' with the United States.

GUEST:

Peter Tesch Former Australian Ambassador to Russia and Germany

This week's mystery caller is common in inland towns, scrub and woodland – the Yellow-throated Miner. 

Rodney Croome was among a group of people arrested at Hobart’s Salamanca Market back in 1988, for defying a ban on a stall, set up to collect signatures on a petition calling for homosexuality to be decriminalised in Tasmania.

It was the start of a civil disobedience campaign that would lead all the way to the United Nations, and ultimately to Tasmania reforming its punitive laws in respect to homosexuality.

GUEST:

Rodney Croome Tasmanian gay law reform activist, and a founder of Australian Marriage Equality. 

Are we in a parasitic relationship with our smart phones? A new article in the Australiasian Journal of Philosophy suggests that rather than being a helpful extension of our working mind, our endless doom-scrolling and the mining of our data by phone apps, makes our phones much closer to a parasite than a helpful tool.

GUEST: Rachael L. Brown, Director of the Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences and Associate Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University

The Mennonites are a Christian faith stream established in the Netherlands in the 16th century. They are a pacifist faith and live largely without technology. They have spread across the globe through Russia to North America and then 100 years ago into South America. Now as they search for more farming land they have set up a community in Northen Angola. 

Guest: Photojournalist Nadia Shira Cohen, reporter and photographer of the New York TImes article The Mennonite Colony that Made a Deal with a Diamond Company

In 1981 Midnight Oil released their Place without a Postcard album including a song called Burnie inspired by a tour the band did to North West Tasmania. Midnight Oil guitarist Jim Migonie wrote the song with lead singer Peter Garrett. The song was not universally appreciated in Burnie as the town became a battleground between industry and the environmental movement.

Guest: Jim Moginie, musician, songwriter and writer, guitarist with Midnight Oil

Author of The Silver River (Harper Collins)