The Cosmos Podcast

Welcome to 'Would You Rather' a podcast where Cosmos science journalists debate a topic and only one comes out the victor.

Today, Cosmos journalists Jacinta Bowler and Imma Perfetto debate the merits of whether a plague of locusts or frogs – naturally of biblical proportions - would be worse.

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Welcome to a Cosmos Insights podcast, where we talk to scientists in Australia about the impact of their work.

Today, Cosmos journalists Matthew Agius and Evrim Yazgin ponder whether EVs are the answer to our climate commuting questions or whether a bit more planning and incentives for alternative transport would do the trick. They are joined by Dr Dorina Pojani, an associate professor in Urban Planning at the University of Queensland’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Professor Jago Dodson, the Director of the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT. 

Find the science of everything at the Cosmos Magazine website

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Watch and listen to all our Cosmos podcasts

Special 10% discount on Cosmos magazine print subscriptions (1 or 2 year), or 1 year Cosmos Weekly subscriptions for Cosmos Briefing podcast listeners!  Use coupon code COSMOSPOD in our shop.

Welcome to 'Would You Rather' a podcast where Cosmos science journalists debate a topic and only one comes out the victor.

Today, Cosmos journalists Petra Stock and Ellen Phiddian debate the merits of high-tech spacesuits verses high-tech sportswear.

Find the science of everything at the Cosmos Magazine website

Subscribe to Cosmos Magazine (print) or the Cosmos Weekly

Watch and listen to all our Cosmos Briefings

Special 10% discount on Cosmos magazine print subscriptions (1 or 2 year), or 1 year Cosmos Weekly subscriptions for Cosmos Briefing podcast listeners!  Use coupon code COSMOSPOD in our shop.

Welcome to a Cosmos Insights podcast, where we talk to scientists in Australia about the impact of their work.

At some point on a TV documentary, an internet video or even a school textbook, you've probably seen animation or still images of the earth's surface changing over time: from one massive content hundreds of millions of years ago to the surface we know today. 

Today, Cosmos journalist Matthew Agius talks to Dr Tristan Salle, whose team from the University of Sydney - working with French scientists from Institut des Science de la Terre - have now, for the first time, modelled and produced high resolution representations of the way millions of years of sediment flows from land to the ocean took place, and how the features of today's  land masses were created.

Find the science of everything at the Cosmos Magazine website

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Welcome to a Cosmos Insights podcast, where we talk to scientists in Australia about the impact of their work.

Kathleen Folbigg has served 20 years of a 30-year sentence for killing her four children. She had exhausted all her avenues for appeal. Only after petitioning from grassroots supporters and legal representatives on the basis of new forensic pathology assessments did the New South Wales’ Governor open an inquiry into her convictions.

That was back in 2019, and despite those new forensic assessments being heard, judicial officer Reginald Blanch was not convinced there was a reasonable doubt cast by that and other evidence.

During the course of that inquiry, a rare gene mutation possessed by the Folbigg children was identified by two teams of researchers. One of those teams pursued research into that gene and concluded it would potentially explain the cause of their deaths. That led to New South Wales Attorney-General Mark Speakman opening a second inquiry into Folbigg’s convictions, which has finished hearing evidence from the geneticists, plus cardiologists, forensic pathologists, paediatricians, and psychology experts.

Quite a lot of science! But science that would not have been heard if not for the state of New South Wales enacting the rare provisions of a Governor’s appeal.

So, what can be done to make sure new science that’s potentially relevant to a case is heard when conventional means of appeal is exhausted.

The Australian Academy of Science was granted leave by the commission to appear as an independent scientific advisor to the inquiry. Today Cosmos journalist Matthew Agius talks to its chief executive is Anna Maria Arabia.

Find the science of everything at the Cosmos Magazine website

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Welcome to a Cosmos Insights podcast, where we talk to scientists in Australia about the impact of their work.

Australia is facing its greatest ever engineering skills shortage, according to Engineers Australia.

The clean energy transition, major infrastructure projects and emerging sectors like space are increasing demand for engineering skills. Some 50,000 to 100,000 engineers are needed by 2030, just as fewer students, particularly girls, are choosing to enter the profession. 

Ok it may sound nutty, but could baking, and engineering contestants on shows like Bake Off and Baking Impossible, be key ingredients in helping solve the workforce crisis by improving awareness and perceptions of engineering, and broadening engagement with STEM.

Today, Cosmos journalist  Petra Stock talks to engineer, Great British Bake Off winner and now cookbook author Giuseppe Dell’Anno, and Jane MacMaster, Chief Engineer at Engineers Australia.

Find the science of everything at the Cosmos Magazine website

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Welcome to a Cosmos Insights podcast, where we talk to scientists in Australia about the impact of their work.

This week the Kathleen Folbigg inquiry began again in Sydney. Folbigg was convicted in 2013 for the deaths of her four children.

It’s a case which has engaged the scientific community, which is interested in how science is treated in the judicial process. And particularly complex science.

But what about how scientists themselves perform in court? It’s often an alien world but ultimately the scientific process of inquiry and replicating data, should help courts create fairer justice. 

In this podcast our Digital Editor Ian Mannix talks to Professor Adrian Lineacre, the former head of the Australian and New Zealand Forensic Scientists Association, and who now heads the South Australian Justice Chair of Forensic Science at Flinders University, about what happens when scientists are in the dock.

Find the science of everything at the Cosmos Magazine website

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Special 10% discount on Cosmos magazine print subscriptions (1 or 2 year), or 1 year Cosmos Weekly subscriptions for Cosmos Briefing podcast listeners!  Use coupon code COSMOSPOD in our shop.

Welcome to a Cosmos Insights podcast, where we talk to scientists in Australia about the impact of their work.

Daisuke Kanazawa is a collaborative researcher at the Centre for Global Commons in the University of Tokyo, Japan. 

He is one of the authors of the Planet Positive Chemicals report, which details how the global chemical industry, responsible for 8% of greenhouse gas emissions, can get to net zero.

Cosmos journalist Ellen Phiddian spoke to Kanazawa to find out more.

Find the science of everything at the Cosmos Magazine website

Subscribe to Cosmos Magazine (print) or the Cosmos Weekly

Listen to all our Cosmos Podcasts

Special 10% discount on Cosmos magazine print subscriptions (1 or 2 year), or 1 year Cosmos Weekly subscriptions for Cosmos Briefing podcast listeners!  Use coupon code COSMOSPOD in our shop.

Welcome to a Cosmos Insights podcast, where we talk to scientists in Australia about the impact of their work.

If we can predict the behaviour of individual molecules, we can do extraordinary things with them. We can desalinate water to almost perfect purity, fine tune batteries to perform as well as possible – and that’s just the beginning.

But it’s really difficult to simulate molecules to enable that prediction. A nearly-invisible microlitre drop of water has 10 billion billion molecules in it, all moving and changing at the speed of femtoseconds.

Which is why researchers are using supercomputers to model how molecules move and behave.

Today, Cosmos science journalist Ellen Phiddian talks Professor Debra Bernhardt and Dr Emily Kahl, at the University of Queensland, about how they are using the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre to simulate molecular behaviour.

Find the science of everything at the Cosmos Magazine website

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Watch and listen to all our Cosmos Briefings

Special 10% discount on Cosmos magazine print subscriptions (1 or 2 year), or 1 year Cosmos Weekly subscriptions for Cosmos Briefing podcast listeners!  Use coupon code COSMOSPOD in our shop.

Welcome to a Cosmos Insights podcast, where we talk to scientists in Australia about the impact of their work.

Cricket bats might be losing their quality thanks to climate change's impact on willow growth, could bamboo be a better option? One team out of Cambridge University thinks it might.

Today Cosmos journalist Matthew Agius talks to Cambridge University’s Ben Tinkler-Davies, about the potential of bamboo.

Find the science of everything at the Cosmos Magazine website

Subscribe to Cosmos Magazine (print) or the Cosmos Weekly

Watch and listen to all our Cosmos podcasts

Special 10% discount on Cosmos magazine print subscriptions (1 or 2 year), or 1 year Cosmos Weekly subscriptions for Cosmos Briefing podcast listeners!  Use coupon code COSMOSPOD in our shop.