Marrying across Australia’s Catholic-Protestant divide
Trust Me, I'm An Expert, CC BY-ND44.1 MB(download)
Until 1970s the Catholic-Protestant divide was deeply entrenched in Australia. On this episode of Trust Me, I'm An Expert, journalism academic Siobhan McHugh shares stories of those who married across it.
There are few options left for the asylum seekers remaining on Manus Island.
Marcella Cheng/The Conversation
There are about 400-600 people in the now-defunct regional processing centre refusing to move to recently built transit centres in Lorengau – but these numbers shift daily.
Crested pigeon in flight with the primary feathers spread and the narrow eighth primary is visible.
Geoffrey Dabb
Jenni Henderson, The Conversation and Josh Nicholas, The Conversation
Business Briefing: the business of prisons
CC BY31.3 MB(download)
Prisons are big business in Australia. Companies not only run entire prisons but provide many of the services. But what does the research say about the impact?
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (right) and Australian Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg today announced the government’s new energy policy.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
Michael Hopkin, The Conversation; Madeleine De Gabriele, The Conversation, and Wes Mountain, The Conversation
The National Energy Guarantee promises to make electricity supply more reliable, cheaper and less polluting.
Artist’s impression of the collision of two neutron stars, the source of the latest gravitational waves detected.
National Science Foundation/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet
Astronomers have finally confirmed the source of the latest detected gravitational waves was the collission of a pair of neutron stars, what they’d been searching for all along.
Our first episode of Trust Me, I’m An Expert tackles the debate unfolding as Australia contemplates changing the Marriage Act to allow same-sex couple to marry.
Axel Heimken/dpa
Trust Me, I’m An Expert: Episode 1
The Conversation, CC BY-ND81.9 MB(download)
In this episode of Trust Me I'm An Expert, we're wading into the same-sex marriage debate with experts on the Bible and the law, and fact-checking claims that kids do best with a mother and a father.
On this podcast, academic experts separate the signal from the noise, the data from the anecdotes, explain the science, look at the peer-reviewed evidence and ignore the media hype.
The Conversation
Australia was a different place 275 million years ago - wild storms surged through icy seas, and marine animals lived a tenuous existence. But brittle stars had a survival strategy.
Decriminalisation allowed sex workers to step out of the shadows and into active participation in public life.
Scarlett Alliance/Author provided
Full decriminalisation of sex work is advocated by many health and human rights organisations around the world. Sex workers in New South Wales kick-started the process 40 years ago.
Is birdsong simply a hard-wired, functional, primitive sound – or could we call it ‘music’? Australia’s pied butcherbirds show there are surprising overlaps between birds’ and humans’ musical abilities.
How should you signal that you don’t want to be disturbed?
www.shutterstock.com
In this episode of Change Agents, Andrew Dodd speaks with Amee Meredith and Caterina Politi, who lost family members to random acts of violence, on their campaign to reform 'one-punch' laws.
New research shows that fairy-wrens become more cautious as they change colour.
Niki Teunissen
Being blue is risky for superb fairy-wrens: males become more cautious when their plumage turns blue, and other wrens take advantage by using them as colourful decoys.
Listening to audio derived from DNA may help scientists better understand how cell biology works.
Mark Temple