Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

Dancing was always part of Frances Rings' childhood, helping her make sense of the world around her in a small country town. But when, at just 17, she boarded a bus to Sydney to study at NAISDA Dance College, Frances discovered dance could be more than movement — it could be a way of carrying culture, ceremony and storytelling, and a deeper connection to her identity.

Guest: Frances Rings, Artistic Director and co-CEO of Bangarra Dance Theatre

A growing body of research suggests that experiencing awe has positive effects for our sense of wellbeing - an idea that might make intuitive sense, but which is being increasingly supported by empirical research in the fields of neuroscience and psychology. Guest: Dr Nikki-Anne Wilson, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the UNSW Australian Ageing Futures Institute and Conjoint Research Fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia. 

How did the formative experiences, personality traits, world views and leadership styles of Australia's last seven Prime Ministers influence the instability of Australian politics in the last quarter century? Guest: Paul Strangio, author of The Alchemy of Leadership: Seven Australian Prime Ministers in a Turbulent Twenty-First Century, emeritus professor of politics at Monash University.

Proponents of direct action say it’s part of democratic life. It’s detractors say it's a threat to safety, a violation of majority rule and rule of law. What can the history of direct action tell us about its place in our democracy today? Guest: Sean Scalmer, professor of history at the University of Melbourne

Approximately 9,000 educational institutions and 275 million of their students have been affected by a data breach involving the 'learning management system' Canvas Criminal hacking group ShinyHunters has claimed credit for the hack and is demanding a ransom from the US tech company Instructure which runs Canvas. Guest: Abu Barkat Ullah, Associate Professor of Cyber Security at the University of Canberra.

The major human rights conference RightsCon was due to convene in Zambia this week but was cancelled at the last minute, with some suggestion the government was under pressure from China to do so. Guest: Linda Kasonde, Zambian lawyer and civil society activist.

ABC election analyst Casey Briggs not only called the seat for One Nation at 8pm, he also called Farrar as now a safe seat for One Nation. Guest: Casey Briggs, ABC election and data analyst

The Human Rights Legal Centre and the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom have intervened in a case being heard in the High Court to raise what they describe as 'public interest concerns relating to whistleblowing and press freedom'. 

Can you guess this week's tweeter?

Kon Karapanagiotidis struggled to belong as a Greek-Australian kid in a town of Smiths and Jones. It wasn’t until he began volunteering as a young adult that he found acceptance - among people who had been pushed to the margins.

Years later, after his father’s death, that sense of purpose deepened. Out of grief, Kon founded the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre - building a place for people seeking safety, and a legacy that honours his parents’ journey to Australia.

Guest: Kon Karapanagiotidis, Founder and CEO of Asylum Seeker Resource Centre

There is a new form of cultural event appearing at writers festivals and literary gatherings: the translation slam. The quiet mental task of translating a text from one language to another is brought to the stage and the nuances of meanings and mood unpicked for an audience. 

Saplings is a play highlighting the experience of the youth justice system, based on conversations with young indigenous people who have been through the cycle of courtrooms, detention and rehabilitation. It has been hailed as "a delicate story of challenge and possibility" and "moving, upsetting, and perhaps unexpectedly, strikingly funny. Saplings will be touring nationally with Australian Theatre for Young People from May 13.

Guest: Hannah Belanszky, actor, screenwriter, and playwright, and author of Saplings.

Includes original music created for Saplings' soundtrack

It is a well known fact that chimpanzees can be aggressive and even violent, but a new research article published in Science Journal last month has documented a very rare occurrence: a Chimp Civil war, seen in a previously harmonious society of Ngogo Chimps in West Uganda.

Guest: Aaron Sandel, Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology at University of Texas at Austin and Co-Director of Ngogo Chimpanzee Project

On May 1, China halted all exports of sulphuric acid, a rarely discussed but critical chemical, used in industrial processes in mining, agriculture and pharmaceuticals.

The controversial American software and data analytics company Palantir is becoming an increasingly consequential fixture in governments and companies across the globe. What makes it so indispensable, and why did its CEO release a manifesto calling for compulsory military service? Julian Morrow speaks with Michael Steinberger, author of The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir and the Rise of the Surveillance State - a book that demystifies Palantir and its unusual CEO, Alex Karp.

May 3 is World Press Freedom Day, the date harks back to a gathering of 63 people from 38 African countries in 1991 in Windhoek, capital of the newly independent state of Namibia. In 2026, UNESCO is marking World Press Freedom day with another conference in Lusaka Zambia. 

This week's mystery caller is a uniquely colourful inhabitant of Western Australia's southwest – the Red-capped Parrot.

1979 was the year Captain Deborah Lawrie fought for her wings. When her application to become a commercial pilot with Ansett Airlines was unsuccessful, she knew it wasn't because she was underqualified. Deborah brought Australia’s first equal opportunity anti-discrimination case to court, thinking she would be out of there in a day. But after a year of bitter legal battles, Deborah became Australia's first female pilot of a major airline, and paved the way for the women who came after her. Deborah Lawrie's memoir Touching The Sky is out now via Harper Collins. 

After his death, Oliver Sacks left his partner Bill Hayes an unexpected gift: a library filled with his marginal notes, revealing his inner thoughts, philosophies, and intellectual struggles.

Guest: Author Bill Hayes 

When Shaddap You Face by Joe Dolce was named Australia’s best novelty song, it revived an old tension: in a comedy culture steeped in racial stereotypes, where does humour end and caricature begin — and who gets to call it?

Guest:  Jess Carniel, Associate Professor in Humanities, University of Southern Queensland

Thirty years ago the Internet Archive was created to digitally preserve content published on the internet. It claims to hold copies of 1 trillion web pages which are freely accessible via the Wayback Machine. Now the Wayback Machine is being threatened by media companies blocking access to their websites.

A landmark ruling in a case involving a French concrete company that operated in Syria during the height of Islamic State may clear the way for national courts to prosecute corporations for serious crimes such as terrorist financing and crimes against humanity.

40 years since the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster, a team from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine are researching the effect of nuclear radiation on rodents that live in the forested exclusion zone. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, support from Bioplatforms Australia, with funding from the Ukraine-Australia Research Fund launched by the Australian Academy of Science has helped their research continue in the midst of war.

While there has been greater recognition of the challenges faced by women during their service, women veterans report being “under-recognised, under-represented, and routinely excluded” from support organisations. 

This week's mystery caller hunts insects in Tasmanian woodland, farmland and heath – the Dusky Robin.

Yann Martel might have found fame and fortune when his novel Life of Pi won the Booker Prize in 2002, but the year that shaped his path as a writer came much earlier. After a nomadic childhood spent traversing the world, ricocheting between cultures and languages, it was in a moment of stillness in a Paris apartment that Martel found the inspiration and confidence to write the story that launched his career.

Guest: Author Yann Martel, who is visiting Australia in May to introduce his new novel, Son of Nobody. 

From ancient Greece to today’s culture wars, a new book explains why pretentious and punctilious people have always annoyed us.

“Beauties of My Style: Errata and the Printed Mistake” explores the history of typos across five centuries. 

Vasili Mitrokhin was sent to work in the KGB archives after failing as an intelligence operative. His disgust with the Soviet spy agency led him to steal troves of secrets and share them with the West. 

Frida Kahlo’s works are so revered in Mexico that, in 1984, they were declared “artistic monuments” — protected as national treasures by the Mexican government.

But now a major group of Kahlo self-portraits, part of the world-famous Gelman Collection, is at the centre of a dispute between Mexico’s art establishment and the Spanish bank now managing the paintings.

The fight is exposing the opaque financial deals and ownership arrangements that have surrounded the collection for decades.

Guest: Ximena Apisdorf, curator and cultural analyst based in Mexico City. 

When the billionaire Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, he was billed as its ‘saviour’, and for a while, it seemed like he was. But across his tenure, the masthead that broke the Watergate scandal has been in financial and reputational decline. In The New York Review of Books, ex-managing editor of The Post Robert G. Kaiser says that a directive from Bezos to not endorse Kamala Harris before the 2024 election was one of the factors that signalled a serious change at the masthead, and which dealt it "a great blow".

This week, Pakistan’s Prime Minister crossed the Middle East, meeting with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Türkiye about a second round of peace talks between Iran and the US. Why was regional player the United Arab Emirates left off the guest list?

Queanbeyan raised, Bornean-Australian poet, visual artist, and award-winning author Omar Musa says his "hyperactive mind" keeps him looking for the next project. He has published five hip-hop records, four books of poetry, wrote and starred in a one-man play about the death of Muhammad Ali, and creates woodcut prints. 

2023 was a year that Omar describes as containing "all the highs and lows that you can experience in life... love, loss, grief, and then grief on a grand scale with the genocide in Gaza". It was the year he met his wife, the cello player Mariel Roberts Musa...

This week's common, conspicuous and colourful caller inhabits the east and the south-east – the Crimson Rosella.

In 1951 the High Court witnessed one of Australia's most high profile legal battles: the Communist Party case. The case saw future Chief Justice of Australia, Garfield Barwick KC, argue against the then Leader of the Opposition, Bert Evatt KC, to determine the constitutionality of the Communist Party Dissolution Act 1950.

In her new book The Framing, lawyer Fernanda Dahlstrom unpacks her past and the crime that sent her mother to jail when she was eight years-old. 

The oldest and largest crossword event in the United States, The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is celebrating its largest attendance ever this year. It is directed by Will Shortz, who founded the tournament in 1978, and has been the editor of the New York Times crossword since 1993. Will is also the only person who holds a degree in ‘enigmatology’ or ‘the study of puzzles’. 

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has published a draft of the Children’s Online Privacy Code. It contains new rules to create better online experiences for children, including a requirement that "agencies and organisations [...] consider the best interests of children before collecting, using or disclosing their personal information."

A new UN-backed Gang Suppression Force, led by Chad, has begun its deployment into Haiti. The new force hopes to succeed where its predecessor — the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support — has failed. In pushing back the violent gangs that have taken over much of Haiti.

Guest: Diego Da Rin, Haiti Analyst at the International Crisis Group

A constitutional brouhaha is brewing in Canada as the Supreme Court weighs legal arguments presented in a landmark case known as English Montreal School Board v. Quebec.