Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

Antarctica has long captured the imaginations of artists and poets, as well as explorers and scientists.

Since 2023, The University of Tasmania has been running a research project called Creative Antarctica , the first comprehensive survey of Antarctic-themed works by Australian writers and artists, funded by the Australian Research Council. 

Melbourne's RMIT is holding a free exhibition of works from the project, called Creative Antarctica: Australian Artists and Writers in the Far South until 2 May 2026. 

Guest: Elizabeth Leane, Professor of Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania.

Adam Elliot is an auteur writer and director of animated films, who has carved his own path in the Australian film industry with his idiosyncratic films that have resonated across the globe. 

Australia will mark the 30th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre in April 2026. The process of dealing with the grief and its ongoing effects are dealt with in Beyond the Neck, a theatre production written by acclaimed playwright Tom Holloway.

Have you ever wondered what your ancestors were feeling decades or centuries ago? Rob Boddice is an historian who argues that differences in our contexts and world-views would make our emotional experiences completely different - even the experience of pain.

Guest: Rob Boddice, Core Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki, author of The History of Emotions and A History of Feelings, and member of the Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences at the University of Tumpere.

As an official in the US State Department, Edward Fishman worked on imposing sanctions on Russia. Eddie discusses his latest book Chokepoints, which examines how critical economic monopolies have become the key to geopolitical power in the twenty-first century.

Chokepoints was chosen by The Economist as one of the best business and economics books of 2025. 

Guest: Edward Fishman, Director of the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations

NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in 2022, hoping the kinetic impact would nudge it off its orbit. The mission was called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART.

Four years later, scientists have published their findings and say the experiment was even more successful than expected.

Guest: Rahil Makadia, planetary defence scientist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and co-author of Direct detection of an asteroid’s heliocentric deflection: The Didymos system after DART

As the conflict in the Middle East enters its third week, Iran continues to launch attacks against US allies in the Gulf. Iraq, which borders Iran, is being struck by both Iran and the United States because the country plays host to a range of groups allied to both sides. 

This week seven members of the Iranian women’s soccer delegation were given humanitarian visas to stay in Australia rather than returning to Iran after competing in the Women’s Asian Cup. The events of this week echo previous instances of Australia giving humanitarian visas to athletes, such as the decision in 2021 to give visas to members of the Afghan women's cricket team. 

Julie Janson is a Burruberongal woman, novelist, playwright and poet. In her new book, Letters from India, she writes about the profoundly moving experience of visiting India as an Indigenous woman — the tears, the joy and the unexpected connections she makes along the way.

Guest: Julie Janson, novelist, playwright, poet and author of Letters from India

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO is a soprano and composer whose extensive CV includes Artistic Director of Short Black Opera and Dhungala Children's Choir, First Nations Creative Chair at Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and Chair of Vocal Studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Deborah describes herself as a “21st century urban woman who is Yorta Yorta by birth, stolen generation by government policy, soprano by diligence, composer by necessity and lesbian by practice.” 

Her career began with the autobiographical one-woman stage play White Baptist ABBA Fan, and followed with Australia's first Indigenous opera, Pecan Summer, which Deborah wrote after...

Gatz is a six-hour theatrical reimagining of The Great Gatsby (eight and a half hours with intervals), which The New York Times called “the most remarkable achievement in theatre … this decade”.

Gatz will be performed at the Adelaide Festival from 13 to 15 March.

Guest: John Collins, director of Gatz and founder of the Elevator Repair Service Theater.

As doctors are weighed down by increased demands, reduced support and the fast pace of change in medical research, could AI help save the health system for both patients and physicians?

Guest: Dr Charlotte Blease, associate professor in the Department of Women's and Children's Health at Uppsala University, Sweden; researcher at Harvard Medical School; and author of Dr. Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us — and How AI Could Save Us.

Roughly 98% of all global internet traffic travels not via phone towers or even satellites, but underwater, along a vast network of fiber optic cables that run some 1.5 million kilometres along the ocean floor. 

Rapper-turned-politician Balen Shah has been elected Nepal's new Prime Minister. The 35 year-old was the mayor of Kathmandu before he ran against former leader KP Sharma Oli.

Nepal went to the polls on Thursday 5 March, just six months after the Gen Z protests that saw the deaths of dozens of students and ultimately brought down the government of the day.

Guest: Roman Gautam, journalist and editor of Himal Southasian magazine.

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran, is pitching himself as a democratic future leader of Iran, claiming to have broad support in Iran. Who were the Pahlavi Shahs and what was life like under their rule?

Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz highlights how vulnerable global trade routes can be to disruption — and how easily strategic choke points can be weaponised.

Guest: Sarah Schiffling, Deputy Director of the HUMLOG Institute and Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management and Social Responsibility at the Hanken School of Economics.

Donald Trump has announced the death of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei from a missile strike coordinated by the United States and Israel. Julian speaks with UN and New York Correspondent at the BBC Persian Service, Bahman Kalbasi about what this means for the Iranian regime. 

Guest: Bahman Kalbasi, UN and New York Correspondent for the BBC Persian Service.

Bob Brown is a giant of the environmental movement and Australian politics.

A former doctor, Bob is the co-founder of the Australian Greens, served as a Senator from 1996, and party leader from 2005 until his retirement in 2012. Today at 81 he continues his lifelong work of environmental campaigning with the Bob Brown Foundation. 

The first biography of Bob aptly called him the “Gentle Revolutionary”. The BBC once called him the World’s Most Inspiring Politician.

1976 is the year Bob has called his "year of reformation". The seeds of Australia's most significant environmental campaign were sown when he...

As Constitutions go, America’s is the most famous and revered document. By contrast, the Australian constitution doesn’t inspire as much interest.

Two lawyers have taken upon themselves the task of promoting awareness about the Australian constitution and the constitutional system that surrounds it with a new book that former Chief Justice and Sunday Extra guest Robert French says is a “comprehensive and readable explanation of its history and working”.

Guest: Rosalind Dixon, Anthony Mason Professor of Law at UNSW, and co-author of The People's Guide to the Australian Constitution

Fiume o Morte! Has been praised as “the funniest and most unorthodox history lesson of the year”. In January, it was awarded Best Documentary at the European Film Awards. 

100 word including guest & book

When Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney gave his rousing speech on middle powers at Davos, he quoted Václav Havel - the Czech dissident, and later president - from his 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless.

Carney’s references to Havel’s essay prompted Australian Catholic University Professor of History Darius Von Guttner to write about The Power of the Powerless in The Conversation, where he described it as “eerily relevant today” 

Guest: Darius Von Guttner, Professor of History at the Australian Catholic University

Forty years ago this week, events in the Philippines were underway that would lead to the fall of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who had served as President for 21 years.

In November 2025 a bill was introduced to Israel's Knesset by the Jewish Power Party that would re-establish the use of capital punishment in the country's military courts.

The world is coming to grips with the joint American and Israeli strikes across Iran, and Iran retaliatory missile and drone strikes in Israel and in multiple countries across the Middle East.

Guest: Bilal Saab, former Pentagon official in the first Trump administration overseeing US security cooperation in the Middle East, now the senior managing director of consulting firm TRENDS US and an associate fellow with Chatham House.

Last October, we covered the story of Australian writer and resident of Thailand Murray Hunter, who was arrested in Thailand for articles he had written on Substack that the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission deemed to be false and defamatory.

We have an update on that case - a settlement agreement has been reached and the charges against Murray have been formally withdrawn.

Guest: Murray Hunter, retired academic, writer and journalist 

Listen to our previous episode about Murray's case here.

Last week we spoke with Christopher Gunness from the Myanmar Accountability Project about the universal jurisdiction legal case that Timor-Leste has opened against the Myanmar military regime for crimes against humanity. 

This week there has been a fresh development - Myanmar has responded by withdrawing their diplomatic representative from Timor-Leste.

Guest: Salai Za Uk, executive director of the Chin Human Rights Organisation who personally delivered the complaint of Myanmar’s crimes to the Timor-Leste Public Prosecutor’s Office on the 12th of January.

Listen to our previous episode on Timor-Leste's unprecedented legal case against...

The e-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant on growing up in a single parent household, her connection to Ted Bundy, rejecting an offer from the CIA and implementing the world’s first social media band for children.

In August 2024, astrophysicists from Swinburne University sent vials full of the mycelium of edible mushrooms to the International Space Station. 

They made it there on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and lived in space - where no mushroom has lived before - for a month, before returning to Earth, and finally to a frying pan in Melbourne, where they were cooked in a cheesy sauce.

Guest: Doctor Sara Webb, program lead and astrophysicist at Swinburne University.

A fascinating new study observing the effects of the psychedelic drug DMT - or dimethyltryptamine - on people who have already tried two other forms of treatment for depression has recorded “significant and lasting reductions” in depressive symptoms after a single dose.

This study, led by David Erritzoe from the Imperial College in London, shows the potential DMT could bring to the burgeoning psychedelic assisted therapy space. In 2023, The Therapeutic Goods Administration approved authorised psychiatrists to prescribe psilocybin for depression, and MDMA for PTSD. 

Guest: David Erritzoe, psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the Imperial College London, and the...

The legendary publisher and one half of McPhee Gribble has re-published her memoir Other People's Words with a new afterword.

The testing that identified the poison that killed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was carried out at Porton Down, a British government chemical defence laboratory with a long and secretive history.

Geopolitical analyst and president of the Eurasia group, Ian Bremmer has a new avenue for explaining the big news in international politics: Muppets-style satirical YouTube videos.

A political debate has erupted in New Zealand over whether or not to retain special Maori electorates in the New Zealand parliament. 

Steven Scherer has written about his unexpected journey from career high to just trying to make ends meet and provide for his family in a touching essay in which he reflects on the nature of fragility and desperation. 

This week's tweeter has a soft, high-pitched call, and can be found around dense undergrowth in forest, scrub, heath and along creeklines. It's the Red-browed Finch, known to some as the Red-browed Firetail.

Dr Marianne Jauncey works with people many in society dismiss as “lost causes” — drug users in Kings Cross, in inner-city Sydney. But far from acting the martyr, she approaches her work and her clients with optimism, passion and genuine respect. She is the first to admit how much she has learned from the people who come through the doors of the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre each day.

Guest: Dr Marianne Jauncey, Medical Director at Uniting's Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised that the following program contains names of people who have died.

“It seems certain some human voices can work magic, and I don’t know whether it’s their timbre, their range, or the way they harmonise and surprise… It’s a gift they’re given and, if all goes for the best and we are lucky, pass on to the rest of us.” These are the words of Kim Scott, from the introduction of Rivers Flow: Reflections on the songs of Archie Roach & Ruby Hunter that was recently published by Fre...

In what is perhaps the biggest news in TV comedy of the year - maybe in forty years - earlier this month, a brand new episode of The Muppet Show was released. 

The Muppet Show was Jim Henson’s star-studded vaudeville variety TV show that ran for 5 seasons over 120 episodes from 1976 to 1981. 

Now, forty years later, The Muppet Show is back, streaming on Disney Plus, with Seth Rogan as Executive Producer. 

Revivals are a fraught undertaking though … so was the new Muppet Show any good?  

Guest: Craig Shemin, TV show writer, Henson his...

In this episode of Household Names we delve into the history of Breville, a company that many of us are familiar with because of their iconic jaffle makers. The company started out in radios and even produced mine detectors during the Second World War because moving into home goods.