Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

Project Monarch is a crowd-sourcing initiative that uses Bluetooth tracking technology to help scientists and butterfly enthusiasts monitor individual monarch butterflies in real time. The butterflies are tracked through an app as they migrate from North America to central Mexico.

Guest: Jennifer Thieme, Senior Science Manager at Monarch Joint Venture

Toowoomba's pink-haired, motorbike-riding priest has overcome huge challenges on the road to becoming Reverend Harley.

Andrew "The Annihilator" Ngai  is an actuary by day, but he has just returned from Las Vegas where he was competing in the Microsoft Excel World Championships. He has already won the title three times, but will he win again? 

Guest: Andrew Ngai, Actuary and Excel World Champion

This week's tweeter is the Sahul Sunbird - and we also accepted its former name of Olive-backed Sunbird.

It's the only Sunbird found in Australia - pale yellow below and dusky brown above. And like its relatives, its equipped with a long downcurved bill, which is great for plucking insects or collecting nectar!

And the winner is: 

When an Airbus A320 made a dramatic altitude drop recently, Airbus grounded more than 6,000 planes to fix a software error that made aircraft computers vulnerable to cosmic radiation. So how exactly does radiation from deep space affect technology on earth, and should we be concerned?

Guest: Michael Wheatland, cosmic astrophysicist and Professor of Physics at University of Sydney

Thousands of Ukrainian refugees came to Australia in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Many of them are now facing their fourth Christmas in Australia and are conflicted about where they now call home. Svitlana and her son Max have made a new life in Adelaide where Max is attending university when he is not training to represent Australia in Canoe Sprint.

Guests: Svitlana and Maksym Gandziuk

Click here to find out more about the organisation that provides support to Ukrainian refugees in South Australia

100 word including guest & book

Evan Ratcliff's podcast Shell Game has returned for a second season that rivals the first for it's unsettling but comic exploration of AI. This time Evan creates the a one-human start-up run largely by AI agents.

Guest: Evan Ratliff, tech journalist and creator of the podcast Shell Game, and the one-human startup HurumoAI.

Season 1 of Shell Game is available on the ABC Listen App.

On August 14th 2003, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1500, establishing the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq, at the request of the Iraqi government. After 22 years, that mission is set to end on the 31st of December, and will leave behind a very different nation. 

It feels like compassion is dwindling in the current political climate. Can compassion be mobilised again? Or is the age of humanitarianism over? Michael Barnett is in Australia for the Annual Emma Hutchison Memorial Lecture at the University of Queensland

Guest: Michael Barnett, University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at the George Washington University

Katrina Watts left for Japan with the intention of staying two years. 25 years later she was still embedded in Japan, not only in language and culture but also as a popular commentator, on tv and in the stadium, for Japanese Sumo. 1990 was the year that she made the transition from a sumo fan to a prized member of the sumo community. 

Guest: Katrina Watts, Executive Board Member of the International Sumo Federation and Past President of the Australian Sumo Federation.

This week's mystery caller is Australia's only cuckoo that builds its own nest – the Pheasant Coucal.

The sheep dog is part of Australia's farming identity. But as good dogs become more expensive and pressure mounts on farmers, could they be replaced by cheaper robodogs? Ian Sinclair is working on a research project based at the University of the Sunshine Coast and thinks that robodogs have a real future on Australian sheep farms.

Guest: Ian SInclair, Senior Innovation and AI Analyst at the University of Sunshine Coast 

MTV was a groundbreaking media experiment when it first launched in the US in 1981.  The first channel to show 24-hour a day music videos, it was expanded to Australia and Europe in 1987. Now, many of the global channels are set to close as part of what is described as a cost-cutting exercise.

A coded puzzle embedded in a sculpture outside the CIA headquarters has been stumping cryptologists for more than 30 years until, in the lead-up to the puzzle's solution being sold at auction this year, two journalists stumbled on an answer that had been hidden in plain sight. 

Guest: John Schwartz, former New York Times journalist and Professor of Practice at the UT Austin School of Journalism and Media, University of Texas

The citizens of Iran’s capital Tehran are facing a dire situation: the government is warning that people may soon be forced to evacuate the city because it is about to run out of water. On November 19th, the President Masoud Peseshkian described the need to move as “not a choice but a necessity”. 

Victoria has followed Queensland in legislating tough new "adult crime, adult time" laws. In Victoria the new laws mean that a fourteen year old can be given a life sentence for crimes such as home invasion. And in Queensland 113,000 people have signed a petition to give people greater powers to defend themselves from home invasion. But is home invasion on the rise in Australia and will these new laws work to reduce the incidence of these crimes?

Guest : Alex Simpson, Associate Professor of Criminology, Macquarie University

Australian performance artist Stelarc has pushed the boundaries of the human body for the last 50 years, suspending himself by hooks, wiring his muscles to the internet, even adding a prosthetic ear to his arm. On The Year That Made me he traces his experimental foundations back to a visit to Japan in 1970.

Guest: Stelarc, Performance Artist.

The National Assistance Card is a tool that is increasingly being used by people with invisible disabilities to communicate their needs, particularly during emergency situations. 

The African Grey is a very clever parrot whose capacity to mimic has made them stars on social media. But has the increased demand for them threatened their survival in the wild? And should wild birds born to fly be sold as pets especially when they often outlive their owners?

Guest: Rene Ebersole, investigative reporter and co-founder of of the non-profit journalism organisation Wildlife Investigative Reporters & Editors (WIRES).

Her article in Rolling Stone can be found here.

Yet another adaption of Frankenstein emerges from Netflix this month, the latest in over 100 years of screen adaptations. But in 1818, when Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was first released, was the concept of reanimation considered science fiction or potential science fact? 

Guest: Kathryn Harkup, author of Making the Monster: The Science of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

As interest in the possibilities of neurotechnology accelerates, there are growing concerns that some of the downsides are being overlooked. Particularly the issue of what happens to patients if the company that produces their device stops producing component parts, or servicing their technology, or goes out of business altogether.

The 1st December is World AIDS Day and 2025 has proven to be a very challenging year globally for those working in HIV prevention and treatment. When George Bush introduced the US Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in 2003 it was a gamer changer. Millions of people - particularly in Africa gained access to both HIV treatment and prevention drugs. Now access to this program is limited to HIV positive pregnant women.  

Guest: Dr Beatriz Grindsztejn, President International AIDS Society

The 2025 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, has aligned herself closely with the Trump administration on the issue of regime change in Venezuela. 

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.

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. 

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

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.