Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast

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 Akkad, journalist and author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

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 and finish your schoolwork for the next day.The dining chair you always sit on will lose the warmth of your body;it will miss its duty of carrying your weight,which has grown ever since your first tooth came in and then fell out, one by one.It has witnessed how you learned to eat on your own,then faithfully listened to your stories and adventures that day and even your tales of first love,as usual, expressed through poems colored by romance.Perhaps it will be hard for us to see each other every day in the same house,for tomorrow, when you take your steps away from this place,there will be much you must do to pave your future.There are still mountains to climb,seas to cross,and wild forests whose secrets you must uncover.For that I let go of our time together,so that you may live through it all with passion, a gift that life can offer.Meanwhile, I must continue finishing what remains of my life,like the rambutan tree that must keep bearing fruituntil the time comes for it to fall to the ground,facing the change of seasons,or wither away, no longer able to draw water from the soil that once gave it life.Perhaps one day we will long to meet again.But your time and mine are like the sea water that reaches for the sand touching only for a moment before reeling back and vanishing into foams of memoriesI will keep waiting for that moment,even if it comes only at the edge of my final breath.Johannes WinataJakarta, 26 June 2018

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 and here to view the finalists.

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