Latest Episodes
It's your money they're spending in this election-eve budget. Here's how we're covering the story
Next Tuesday night is budget night, and it's happening on the eve of a federal election where the Coalition is in for the fight of its life to hold onto government. The Conversation's team of editors and experts will be in the budget lockup at parliament house next Tuesday, where they'll have early access to what the government plans to do with our money this year. Read more: Expect tax cuts and an…
1 Host: Sunanda Creagh
Mark Latham in the upper house? A Coalition minority government? The NSW election is nearly upon us and it's going to be a wild ride
We are but weeks away from an election in New South Wales – polling day is on March 23 – and it will be eagerly watched. Not just for the outcome but for the implications for the looming federal election. That's according to Dr Andy Marks, a political scientist from Western Sydney University, who tells us on the podcast today that this state election outcome may give us some clues on how some global…
1 Host: Andy Marks
'I think we should be very concerned': A cyber crime expert on this week's hack and what needs to happen next
When Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced this week that a "sophisticated state actor" had targeted the big Australian political parties in a major cyber attack, the revelation threw up more questions than answers. Who did it and how? What data did they get their hands on? How vulnerable is our data -- and our democracy? Read more: We've been hacked – so will the data be weaponised to influence…
1 Host: Nigel Phair
A refugee law expert on a week of 'reckless' rhetoric and a new way to process asylum seeker claims
Today, we're bringing you a special episode of our podcast Trust Me, I'm An Expert for anyone wondering: what the hell happened this week? A sitting government lost a vote on the floor of parliament (which hasn't happened in decades) over a bill that aims to facilitate medical transfers from Manus and Nauru. (You can hear the MP Kerryn Phelps, who set the ball rolling for that legislation, give her…
1 Host: Daniel Ghezelbash
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: how to spot the work of a political spin doctor this election season
It’s February, the holidays seem like a distant memory and here we are barrelling toward a federal election, which the government has indicated will be in May. Remember in the olden days -- as in, a few elections ago -- we used to have a fairly set election campaign period of usually about six weeks? Now, of course, politicians seem to always be in campaign mode. They’re not doing that all by themselves…
3 Hosts: Caroline Fisher, Fabrizio Carmignani, and Michelle Grattan
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: What research says about how to stick to your New Year’s resolutions
It’s that time of year when we all start to make promises to ourselves about how this year it’ll be different. This is the year I’ll get my health in order, exercise more, save money, cut that bad habit, do more of this, less of that, and just be better. But the fact is, change is hard. Most of us need help. So, we found some. Today, experts who have researched this terrain will be sharing with us…
2 Hosts: Amanda Salis and Lisa A Williams
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: the science of sleep and the economics of sleeplessness
How did you sleep last night? If you had anything other than eight interrupted hours of peaceful, restful sleep then guess what? It's not that bad -- it's actually pretty normal. We recently asked five sleep researchers if everyone needs eight hours of sleep a night and they all said no, you don't. Read more: Does everyone need eight hours of sleep? We asked five experts In fact, only about one quarter…
2 Hosts: Melinda Jackson and Roger Wilkins
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: Food fraud, the centuries-old problem that won't go away
What have you eaten today? And how much do you know about how it was produced, what was added to it along the way, and how it made its way to your plate? Even as most of us grow increasingly removed from actual food production, many consumers still take food fraud and perceptions of food purity incredibly seriously. Scandals around "meat glue" or milk and honey contamination, and the skyrocketing global…
2 Hosts: Andrew Ventimiglia and Shauna Murray
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: Cyclone season approacheth, but this year there's a twist
Australia has just had its driest September on record, and the second driest month ever: the only drier month was April 1902. The Bureau of Meteorology's tropical cyclone outlook is out today. It's predicting a weaker-than-normal tropical cyclone season this year but if one hits -- and it's likely one will -- it'll bring water to rain-starved soil that will soak it up and reduce the flooding risk…
2 Hosts: Andrew B. Watkins and Joelle Gergis
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: Australia's extreme weather
It's easy to write off Australia's extreme weather as business as usual. We deal with floods, droughts, cyclones and other wild events every year. But as climate change raises global temperatures, are the droughts happening more often? Are the floods getting worse? The October episode of Trust Me, I'm An Expert looks back through colonial evidence and prehistoric records, and forward to the Bureau…
1 Host: Andrew B. Watkins
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: How augmented reality may one day make music a visual, interactive experience
You probably heard your first strains of music when you were in utero. From then on it's helped you learn, helped you relax, hyped you up, helped you work, helped you exercise, helped you celebrate and helped you grieve. Music is ingrained in so many aspect of our lives, but it's also the subject of a significant body of academic work. Today's episode of Trust Me, I'm An Expert is all about research…
3 Hosts: Ben Swift, Clint Bracknell, and Hollis Taylor
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: what the huge HILDA survey reveals about your economic well-being, health and family life
On today's episode of the podcast, we’re talking about what one of Australia’s biggest longitudinal surveys and richest data sets, released today, says about how the nation is changing. And some of the trends may surprise you. The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey tells the stories of the same group of Australians over the course of their lives. Starting in 2001, the…
1 Host: Roger Wilkins
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: What is sport worth?
Even if you're no great sports fan, you may have noticed a lot of it around lately. There were the Winter Olympics and the Commonwealth Games, and now we're halfway through the 2018 FIFA World Cup. What isn't always so obvious is the money and the diplomatic power plays lingering just below the surface of every big sporting meet. But a growing body of academic research is examining those elements and…
4 Hosts: Andrew Hughes, Barbara Keys, Con Stavros and 1 other
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: The explainer episode
Today on Trust Me, I'm An Expert, we're bringing you the explainer episode - where we ask researchers to unpack some truly tricky topics. The University of Queensland's James Sherlock explains what psychology can reveal about why people like pimple popping and ingrown hair removal videos. They're more popular online than you may realise, as a quick YouTube search for words like "pimple" or "blackhead…
3 Hosts: Andrew White, James M. Sherlock, and Raffaello Pantucci
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: 'Dancing out of depression' – how Syrian refugees are using exercise to improve mental health
A growing body of research is drawing a link between mental and physical health – and the connection is much stronger than you might realise. Simon Rosenbaum, a senior research fellow in school psychiatry at UNSW, had been researching the role of exercise in mental health treatment for years when he teamed up with a colleague, Ruth Wells. Wells is a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at the University…
2 Hosts: Ruth Wells and Simon Rosenbaum
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: Brain-zapping, the curious case of the n-rays and other stories of evidence
You've had an x-ray before but have you had an n-ray? Of course not, because they're not real. But people used to think they were. Scientists had shown they were. And the weird history of n-rays, explored in today's episode of Trust Me, I'm An Expert, tells us a lot about people's willingness to believe wrong information -- but also how well-designed studies can debunk myths, reveal important truths…
5 Hosts: Colleen Loo, Fiona Fidler, Laurent Billot and 2 others
Trust Me I'm An Expert: The science of pain
As many as one in five Australians suffer from chronic and recurring pain. But despite its prevalence, it's not always easy to find the help you need to manage it. "When I went through medical school, we had about one hour on acute pain. And the whole concept of chronic pain and how it's so very different from acute pain was not something that was ever on our horizon," pain expert Professor Fiona Blyth…
5 Hosts: Fiona Blyth, Lorimer Moseley, Michael Nicholas and 2 others
Trust Me I'm An Expert: Why February is the real danger month for power blackouts
It's been hot -- and it's going to get hotter. Australia has experienced some record hot days in recent weeks and scientists say Sydney and Melbourne need to prepare for 50°C days by the end of the century, or sooner. In today's episode of Trust Me I'm An Expert, we're unpacking the research on why some of the most disadvantaged parts of our cities cop the worst of a heatwave. And Chris Dunstan, an…
3 Hosts: Casey Furlong, Chris Dunstan, and Marco Amati
Trust Me, I'm an Expert: Risk
Ah, the new year. A time for throwing off your shackles, following your bliss, quitting your job and abandoning your family to finally start the artisinal yak-butter-sculpture studio of your dreams. But big choices come with big risks. In this episode of Trust Me, I'm an Expert, Hassan Vally, an expert in epidemiology from La Trobe University, talks about "microlives", which measure how much your life…
3 Hosts: Alex Russell, Hassan Vally, and Michelle H Lim
Marrying across Australia's Catholic-Protestant divide
These days, when Australians of Irish Catholic descent have occupied the highest positions in the land, it may seem hollow to talk of them as marginalised. But right up to the 1970s the Catholic-Protestant divide was deeply entrenched – with painful and often lasting social consequences for those who dared to marry across it. Siobhan McHugh, a journalism academic and oral historian, captured some of…
1 Host: Siobhan McHugh
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: Competition
Did you fight with a brother or sister when you were little? Do you still? According to Rob Brooks, professor of evolutionary ecology at UNSW, sibling competition has played a more important role in human evolution than many of us realise. "Siblings compete with one another for the love and affection of their parents but even more importantly for the investment of their parents. And that's been a really…
3 Hosts: Rob Brooks, Rob Hess, and Seng W. Loke
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: a lawyer, a biblical scholar and a fact-checker walk into the same-sex marriage debate...
Where should the line fall between protecting people's right to hold religious beliefs and the right to be free from discrimination? It's a question that's emerged several times as the same-sex marriage debate has unfolded in Australia. "Freedom of religion is not absolute. And neither is anti-discrimination law. Both are rights, absolutely, but both have limitations - particularly where they impinge…
3 Hosts: Jennifer Power, Renae Barker, and Robyn J. Whitaker
Trust Me, I'm An Expert: a new podcast from The Conversation
Trust Me, I'm An Expert is a new monthly podcast from The Conversation, where we bring you the most fascinating, surprising stories from the academic world. On this show, we ask the experts to bust the myths, explain the science and put the news headlines into context -- and to do it in a way we can understand and enjoy. Listen to our teaser episode, above, to get a taste of the amazing stories ahead…
4 Hosts: Jennifer Power, Renae Barker, Rob Brooks and 1 other