Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

A new online map has come online and while it can not give you directions for driving your car from Rome to Paris, it can tell you how long it will take you to get from Roma to Lutetia in an ox cart (the answer: 755 hours). Itiner-e is a digital map of the estimated 300,000 kilometres of roads built by the Roman Empire.

Anna Iltnere felt the pull of the sea when she moved from Riga - the capital of Lativia - to her new home looking out on the Baltic Sea. She started collecting books about the sea to try and find the words to describe that pull that many others had felt before. She accidentally became a sea librarian as people from around the world sent her books about the sea.

Guest: Anna Iltnere, sea librarian

Click here for the Sea Library Website

This week's mystery caller is plainly coloured but sings with an easily recognised voice – the Pallid Cuckoo.

Big business, tech and even universities are using maths to enrich their own pockets. Maths Professor Noah Giansiracusa shows us how we can take back the algorithms and beat the top end at their own game.

Guest: Professor Noah Giansiracusa, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Bentley University, and author of Robin Hood Maths: Take Control of the Algorithms That Run Your Life.

The 1990s saw huge increases in the numbers of children with peanut and other food allergies. Almost 10 years ago the guidelines were changed and parents were encouraged to introduce peanuts and eggs in the first year as research had show this would actually reduce the incidence of food allergies. Have the new guidelines made a difference for Australia - the allergy capital of the world? 

Guest: Associate Professor Jennifer Koplin, University of Queensland

Claire Lehmann is the founder and proprietor of the online magazine Quillette which is celebrating its 10th anniversary. What is the secret to the survival of Quillette in the current media landscape.

Guest: Claire Lehmann, founder and proprieter of Quillette

When Róisín  Heneghan and her firm, Heneghan Peng Architects entered a competition to design a new museum just 2kms from the Pyramids of Giza, they knew they needed to create a design that only complimented the ancient landscape, but deeply engaged with it too. 

20 years later, their vision has finally been realised, with the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo this month. Róisín Heneghan shares the complexities and triumphs in designing the largest single civilisation museum in the world.

Guest: Róisín Heneghan, founding partner of Heneghan Peng Architec

The former Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina has been sentenced to death in absentia for her role in the deaths of more than 1400 people during protests last year. Bangladesh has requested her extradition from India where she has been living in exile.

Guest: Zulkarnain Saer Khan is an investigative journalist who has reported extensively on corruption in Bangladesh.

A new investigation from the consortium behind the Panama Papers reveals how some cryptocurrency exchanges profit from money laundering, scams, theft and other crimes.

This week's mystery caller spreads south down the east coast in the warmer months – the Australian Rufous Fantail.

It is the most important thing we all possess, yet many of our body’s parts and processes are a mystery: why does blood have types? How do hormones work? And what do tonsils actually do? Brisbane university lecturers Dr Matt Barton and Dr Mike Todorovic have been diligently breaking down complex bodily processes and parts of the human anatomy via a hugely popular YouTube channel and podcast called Dr Matt and Dr Mike. 

Future Nostalgia is a project from the University of Cambridge Library, taking on the archiving of Britain's floppy disks, from the lectures of Stephen Hawkings, to the writings of Neil Kinnock. Although there are many challenges accessing and reading the archaic data technology, for project lead, Dr. Leontien Talboom, that's what makes it so fun. 

Guest: Dr. Leontien Talboom, Technical Analyst with the Digital Preservation team at Cambridge University Library.

In 1986 an explosive Radio National investigation revealed that hundreds of Nazi collaborators and war criminals had settled in Australia after the Second World War.

In the last 18 months there have been moves to ban greyhound racing in New Zealand, Scotland, Wales and Tasmania. What are the tipping points that make the industry no longer politically and financially viable?

Guest: Dr Mia Cobb, Animal Welfare Scientist, University of Melbourne Veterinary School

Cop30 is underway in Brazil and for the first time the theme Information Integrity is part of the COP agenda. Climate disinformation is increasing exponentially with the rise of AI and social media refusing to monitor the integrity of information on their platforms. So what are the ramifications for climate action and how will COP30 address this new climate threat? 

Guest: Chris Cooper, Climate Disinformation Expert, co-founder of Research and Action Hub, member of the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition. 

This week's mystery caller is a colourful inhabitant of windswept coastal habitats – the Rock Parrot.

After a disaster, before reconstruction can begin, survivors invariably face a huge and often toxic problem: debris and in particular rubble. Mobile Crisis Construction is an Australian charity that has developed technology that uses rubble to quickly produce new building materials to repair damaged buildings.

In an age of distraction we are losing a surprisingly important skill - daydreaming. 

According to Professor Hannes Leroy, productive daydreaming is not only essential for innovation, but for problem-solving everyday issues and when we don't make space for it, we are losing the ability to find resolutions and solutions in our lives. 

Guest: Hannes Leroy, Director of the Erasmus Centre for Leadership, at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.

The winner of the Prime Minister's Prize for Science this year was Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska from  the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at QUT. Lidia has done pioneering research into the air we breathe to safeguard public health and our environment, inlcuding during the COVID 19 pandemic. Now she wants to mandate air quality indoors.

Guest: Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska, QUT and Director of the International Laboratory of Air Quality and Health

“A giant of the Labor Party and a remarkable Australian” - that’s how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese remembered former ALP powerbroker and federal Cabinet Minister Graham Richardson, who died at the age of 76.

On 9 November 1975, Australia’s Governor General, Sir John Kerr, rang the Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Garfield Barwick, and asked him for a meeting to discuss his intention to dismiss Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

This month it's the Shoemaker Frog. 

It’s one of the many frog species that gets its common name from the sound of its call - with the call reminiscent of a shoe-maker tapping nails into the sole of a shoe!

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

Kari Byron's time as a co-host on Mythbusters formed the core of her passion for science, but in the years since then she has turned that passion into a calling. She is now an advocate for fostering a love of STEM to younger generations, through her media company, EXPLR and the National STEM Festival which she founded and is expanding from the US to the rest of the world. 

Guest: Kari Byron, former co-host of Mythbusters, co-founder of EXPLR Media and director and founder of the US-based National STEM Festival.

A new mockumentary from Netflix, 1670, looks back on the absurdities of an obscure era of history - the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, which lasted from 1569 to 1795. Central European history expert, Darius Von Guttner Sporzynski shares the nuances of the historical comedy, and the universal truths it satirises. 

Guest: Professor Darius von Güttner Sporzyński, Professor of History at Australian Catholic University 

It's being marketed as Sunlight On-Demand. American startup Reflect Orbital is proposing a 2026 launch date for it's test satellite, which will a carry giant mirror into orbit capable of reflecting the sun's rays back to earth. But astronomers aren't convinced that the plan can work, and they have many concerns as to the side effects of these giant satellites if they did. 

Guest: Michael Brown, Associate Professor of Astronomy at Monash University. 

The Five Eyes alliance involving Australia, the UK, US, Canada and New Zealand is an enduring and sophisticated intelligence-sharing agreement that has been critical to the security of its member nations since its birth following world war two. A proposal from the Lowy Institute would create a similar alliance in the Pacific involving Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

Parliamentary elections were held in Tanzania this week, but with the leaders of the two major opposition parties in jail or disqualified from running, the re-election of current President Samia Suluhu Hassan was inevitable. The Electoral Commission has announced the President won almost 98% of the vote. Protesters have taken to the streets demanding a new election. There are unconfirmed reports that hundreds of protesters have been killed in the violence.

Guest Nosmot Gbadamosi, Nosmot Gbadamosi is a multimedia journalist and writes the Africa Brief for the journal Foreign Policy. 

This week's mystery caller is a colourful summer migrant to Far North Queensland – the Buff-breasted Paradise-Kingfisher.

Omar El Akaad was at college in 2001 when the opportunity to become a writer opened up before him. Over the following decades this path would lead him through the violence of war in Afghanistan, the hidden injustices of Guantanomo Bay and the electric energy of the Arab Spring in Egypt. It would also allow him, in 2023 to voice his anger, disgust and outrage at the images he saw coming out of Gaza, which he has stilled in his latest book, part memoir, part searing manifesto, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. 

Guest: Omar El A...

This is the poem You, Me And That Chair by Johannes Winata, read by Trivita Tiffany Winataputri. The poem was the inspiration for the short film of the same name which recently won the ReelOZInd! short film festival. For more information about the festival click here.

YOU, ME, AND THAT CHAIR(translated from Bahasa Indonesia)Maybe these are the last moments we can spend together Going about our daily lives without worrying that tomorrow we might no longer see each otheror spend the night talking about the football match on TV,or watch you solve math formulas a...

It is the 10th year of the ReelOzInd! short film festival which is open to filmmakers from both Australia and Indonesia. The finalists are shown in both Indonesia and Australia both at the launch and as a pop up festival. This year's theme for the festival was imajinasi. The winning film this year centres on a father facing life as an empty nester.

Guests: Jemma Purdey, Festival Director and Trivita Tiffany Winataputri, the winner of this year's competition for her fllm You, Me and that Chair 

Click here to find more about the ReelOzInd! festival a...

Anti-immigration protests have become a regular fixture of the Australian news cycle. In the UK, CNN reported that anti-immigration rallies in London in September were attended by around 110 thousand people. That is the context for the upcoming 2025 Colin Clark Lecture at the University of Queensland on 29 October

Raila Odinga 'a towering figure in Kenyan politics' died on 15 October 2025, aged 80. A former Prime Minister, and son of Kenya’s first Vice-President, Odinga also famously ran in every Presidential election since 1997 bar one, never actually obtaining that office. 

Thirteen years after U Thant left his position as a school teacher in a small village in Burma, he found himself appointed as Secretary General of the United Nations. 

He was highly involved in many peace negotiations in his 10 years at the helm of the UN, including the Cuban missile crisis, the Congo, the Middle East and many more. Why is his legacy as a peacemaker largely forgotten?

Guest: Thant Myint U, historian, academic and author of The Peacemaker:  U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World 

Getting fired isn't normally something to celebrate, but Laura Brown, along with co-author Kristine O'Neill have created a part-memoir, part-manifesto for the modern woman - All the Cool Girls Get Fired. And it considers why the corporate ladder was never built for women, and how getting knocked off can be a blessing in disguise. 

Guest: Laura Brown, co-author of All The Cool Girls Get Fired

50 years after the murder of the Balibo 5 and 18 years after a coronial inquest confirmed the Australian journalists were deliberately shot by Indonesian forces, no action has been taken for accountability of the war crime. But one campaigner, Professor Clinton Fernandes, has been rallying to have the Balibo files declassified. 

Guest: Clinton Fernandes, Professor of International and Political Studies at UNSW

Theresa Payton made history as the first female Chief Information Officer in the White House, where she steered digital transformation strategy and helped secure critical government systems. With an increase in cybercrime in Australia, what's her advice to Australians on how to stay safe online and how to harness the enormous capabilities of generative AI without losing the human touch?

Guest: Theresa Payton - CEO of Fortalice Solutions and former White House Chief Information Officer

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is the architect of a suite of Donald Trump's hardline border policies, from the so-called “Muslim ban” to the ICE raids on undocumented immigrants. He has been described as a “race-baiting” nativist who is the “root of all evil” in the Trump administration. Who is Stephen Miller and why does he hold so much sway over the president?

Guest: David Klion, columnist for The Nation magazine and contributing editor at Jewish Currents. 

Stephanie Dogfoot is a comedian, poet and lawyer based in Singapore. They have been performing since 2008 and has established open mic nights for poets and comedians in particular encouraging women and the LGBTQI community to get up and perform. They have been forced to come out as bisexual in many different places and the reception is always different.

Guest: Stephanie Dogfoot, poet and comedian. She will be reading some of her poems at Queersland as part of the Brisbane Writers Festival and performing her stand up comedy show Gold Star Bisexual at the Melbourne Fringe Festival

From his early news on the business desk at a number of newspapers to a stint behind the scenes in Victorian state politics to the founding of the online news site Crikey, Stephen Mayne's career has occurred at the nexus of business, politics and journalism.

And while those worlds are often the scene of a lot of shenanigans and grubbiness, Stephen has made it his business to let some light in.

Stephen is now what could be called a professional corporate trouble maker, though his official title is full-time shareholder activist and publisher of The...