Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

August is Family History Month, and Jane Hutcheon is someone who intimately understands how to unravel the stories of our ancestors. After 25 years of work as a journalist, including as host of ABC TV’s One Plus One programme, Jane has dedicated herself to the archival work of uncovering family history - both her own, and other people's. Jane's 2022 theatre production Lost in Shanghai is about her own family’s fascinating history, and Jane now teaches with the Society of Australian Genealogists.

Guest: Jane Hutcheon: journalist, author, performer, and teacher with the Australian Society of Genealogists. You can find Jane’s work at https://janehutcheon.substack.com/

The emergence of 'hunger stones' — markers from centuries of drought — have emerged from dry riverbeds across Europe. Dominik Collet, professor of climate history, shares the dark stories behind the stones, and the ominous warning they provide for Europe's future climate.

Guest: Dominik Collet, Professor of Environmental and Climate History at the University of Oslo

It has been a big week for awards ceremonies with both Logies and the AACTAs gongs being handed out.

The other ACTA, the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance also held its annual awards ceremony this week to 'honour the remarkable Australians who advance our health system by designing, conducting, or participating in ground-breaking clinical trials'.

Six ACTAs were handed out, including the 2026 ACTA Trial of the Year Award which went to a trial known as 'OPTIMISTmain' that involved 4,922 patients across 114 hospitals in eight countries over 4 years.

The chief investigator on the OPTIMISTmain trial was Professor Craig Anderson, director of the Brain Health Program at The George Institute for Global Health.

In July, Kazakhstan formally farewelled its bicameral parliament with a new 145-member unicameral parliament, the Kurultai. 

On Sunday Kazakhs go to the polls to elect the first members and, on the surface, it looks like the start of a new beginning for the country: after a significant change to the constitution, there is not only a new parliament but also the creation of a Vice President and a People's Council. 

But, given the limited options available to voters it is unlikely that this election will lead to significant change. 

Guest: Catherine Putz, managing editor of the Diplomat

This week Taiwan set out the 2027 defence spending proposal, which would increase military spending by 18 percent.

However, the government of Lai Ching-te has only just managed to pass the 2026 budget after months of political opposition from the KMT, so whether next year’s budget will pass without significant cuts remains to be seen.

All this political wrangling is happening in the context of a continued ramp up of pressure by China, including more frequent 'patrols on the island’s East Coast. 

At the same time, Taiwan is simultaneously upgrading its military preparedness, and during the annual Han Kuang military drills, simulated a national internet blackout for the first time to test public readiness.

Guest: Dr Roger Lee Huang, Senior Lecturer, School of International Studies, Macquarie University

This week's melodious woodland songster migrates in Spring to Australia's southeast – the Olive-backed Oriole

As the Millennium Drought gripped south-eastern Australia, young farmer Anika Molesworth watched her family's farm near Broken Hill struggle through the effects of a changing climate. Twenty years and three degrees later, she is one of Australia's leading advocates for climate-resilient agriculture and a prominent voice for farmers demanding action on climate change.

Guest: Dr Anika Molesworth, agroecologist and co-founder and director of Farmers for Climate Action

The Memory Tapes is a new podcast from the National Library of Australia that showcases their oral history collection.

It features some incredible gems. Like the only recording of the voice of May Gibbs, creator of classic Australian children’s book Snugglepot and Cuddlepie

There is also the only known recording of the voice of Howard Florey, joint winner of the The Nobel Prize in 1945 for his work on penicillin.

And it’s not just famous names, across 10 episodes The Memory Tapes presents all sorts of sounds from Australian history, from all sorts of people.

The story of how the oral history collection came to be is also extraordinary and Episode 1 is dedicated to pioneering oral historian Hazel de Berg.

Guest: Dr Shirlene Robinson, former Director of Curatorial and Collection Research at the National Library of Australia, and the host of the Memory Tapes podcast.

Hard is Puck is a new documentary screening at the Melbourne Film Festival. It follows The Garden Island Pirates, WA's only para ice hockey team and their journey in this bruising, physically demanding sport.

Guest: Isaac Elliot, director of the documentary, Hard as Puck

In the wake of Australia's latest Census, data scientist and census historian Andrew Whitby reflects on the enduring power of counting populations, drawing on three millennia of census-taking to show how nations have been shaped by the quest to measure themselves. From the ancient world to today, he argues that while every census is necessarily imperfect, the effort to capture who we are can bring societies closer to understanding themselves.

Guest: Andrew Whitby, author of The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, from the Ancient World to the Modern Age