In Mexico and across Latin America, and Australia, a quinceañera is a celebration of turning fifteen. It’s usually a party, usually for a girl and you might have seen a version of one in Jane the Virgin, One Day at a Time, or even Sweet 15: Qui

Dinner Table Racism (Nur Alam and Yvonne Perczuk)

Feb 9th, 2018 21m 52s

People say some stupid stuff when they think they're among friends. "All Jews" are this, maybe. Or "all Muslims" are that. Do you confront casual racism when you hear it, in private places like the dinner table, from family or friends? Or do yo

Making a Fashion Festival in Western Sydney (Thuy Ngyuen)

Feb 2nd, 2018 17m 59s

Just because you don’t see people like yourself up on stage in international fashion shows doesn’t mean you don’t want good fashion of your own. There are great designers making clothes that include Fijian design, hijabs or Vietnamese fabric. A

Ordinary Drones (Peter Robinson)

Jan 26th, 2018 22m 26s

There are exciting drones and there are definitely scary drones. But drones have quieter things going on as well. They’re already at work doing ordinary stuff: working in agriculture, in infrastructure, filming the news.Peter Robinson is a jou

Peace Journalism (Zainab Abdul-Nabi)

Jan 19th, 2018 20m 8s

War in the news is kind of hard to watch. Conflict gets presented like sports — two sides: one wins, one loses. Advocates of peace journalism think that war can be covered better than this. And, by reporting more to us than just a zero-sum game

Midwives, Doctors and Rabbits (Amelia Dale)

Oct 27th, 2016 18m 7s

Almost three hundred years ago, a woman called Mary Toft was interrogated a bunch of doctors in London. She was interrogated after having given birth to a litter of rabbits. Or so she claimed.But, in that era, one of the strangest things about

The Milky Way is Disappearing (Angel Lopez-Sanchez)

Oct 21st, 2016 17m 59s

There’s this thing that’s disappearing in cities across the world: the entire Milky Way. Light pollution means that more and more people can’t see our own galaxy in the sky. A view which used to be a fundamental human experience.Angel Lopez-Sa

406: Telling One Frog From Another (Jodi Rowley)

Oct 14th, 2016 22m 16s

It's not just that there are a lot of different kinds of amphibians. There are a lot of different kinds of frogs. Some fight, some bark, some sing. we have a lot to learn from this (often) threated variety of amphibians. Not just about how frog

Telling One Frog From Another (Jodi Rowley)

Oct 14th, 2016 22m 16s

How to Close All of Italy's Asylums if You're a Basaglia (John Foot)

Oct 6th, 2016 21m 23s

In 1978, Italy passed a law to shut down its Asylums. The asylums were ageing, horrfying institutions that weren’t so great at looking after people. Two people at the centre of the change were Franco Basaglia and his wife, Franca Ongaro Basagli

Reading What Spies Write About You (Lars Rutz)

Sep 29th, 2016 29m 55s

Lars Rutz grew up in the East Berlin bohemian scene in communist Germany in the 80s. Like a lot of people in the East, he wanted to leave. But East Germany was a police state, with an ever-present spy agency, the Stasi.What is it like to try t

Grandmas (Kristen Hawkes)

Sep 23rd, 2016 21m

Why is menopause a thing? Only three species really do it: short-finned pilot whales, killer whales and humans beings. It’s biologically strange. And it gives us another biologically strange thing: grandmas.Dr Kristen Hawkes (University of Uta

The Ex. Ex. (Will Scates Frances)

Sep 16th, 2016 19m 40s

Nowadays the Ex. Ex. is less famous that The XX. But in the early nineteenth century, it was one of the most ambitious journeys in history. The US Exploring Expedition (the Ex. Ex.), traveled the Pacific on a mission of non-violent exploration.

The Unreliability of Witness Testimony (Celine Van Golde)

Sep 9th, 2016 18m 51s

If you’re a fan of Serial, Law & Order, Making a Murderer, you’ve probably spent a bit of time watching TV police making people confess to their criminal acts and listening to witnesses place someone at the scene of the crime. But for the legal

Molluscs (Ross Coleman)

Apr 7th, 2016 20m 59s

They're pretty much all guts, foot, teeth and maybe a bit of shell. Snails, limpets, octopuses or giant squid: they're all a kind of mollusc. You'll find one in almost every ecosystem in the world. Sydney University's Professor Ross Coleman

LGBTIQ Domestic Violence (Moo Baulch)

Apr 7th, 2016 22m 14s

This episode talks about domestic violence in the LGBTIQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bixexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer) community. It's probably not appropriate for children and could be a trigger for some listeners.If you or someone you know is affected by

Making Newpapers for Children (Saffron Howden)

Mar 11th, 2016 19m 9s

While a lot of newspapers in the grownup world are struggling to get by,Â one kind of newspaper is doing kind of ok thank you. InÂ France, Germany and the UK children's newspapers areÂ going strong, mailed out to a waiting audience of school-ag

Making it Big and Making it Small in Comics (Matt Huynh)

Feb 26th, 2016 21m 23s

It seems a bit like comic books are everywhere these days: dominating our screens from Iron Man to Jessica Jones. But this isn't the first time that there's been a comic book boom. And it's not always as easy to ride that wave, as an artist, as

Motoboys and Motogirls (Antoni Abad)

Feb 19th, 2016 19m 25s

São Paolo has a traffic problem. But while the cars stand still, motoboys (and motogirls) ride up the "corridor of death" between gridlock. Over two hundred thousand of them. It's an incredibly dangerous job.Spanish artist, Antoni Abad gave th

Growing Older as a Lesbian (Teresa Savage)

Feb 12th, 2016 19m 38s

Have you ever thought about what the world is like as you get older? It can be hard. Even harder if you're a woman. And harder still if you're gay. Or transgender. If you don't fit in.Teresa Savage has spent her life not fitting in. And being

Living Secret Lives (Sophie Long)

Jul 23rd, 2015 21m 14s

Actor, standup and improvisor Sophie Long kind of has two secret lives. In one of them, she learned Impro at the Second City, where Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert got their start. It’s difficult to explain: which means sometimes it’s like having

Getting Bacteria to do What You Want (Nicholas Coleman)

Jul 23rd, 2015 21m 31s

We can actually do a lot just with bacteria. Microbiologist Nicholas Coleman wants to tell you exactly how much. We can build them into computers, redesign them and even use them as computers. Which you can eat.Links from this episode: Do some

How Pirates Get Organised (Kyra Maya Phillips)

Jul 23rd, 2015 21m 15s

Kyra Maya Phillips wrote a book trying to understand illicit economies with Alexa Clay, the Misfit Economy. But in this episode she’s geeking out about pirates. Get the lowdown on how pirates did things, from pirate voters in eighteenth-century

People Keep Grabbing My Hair (Ameisa Meima Konneh)

Jul 23rd, 2015 21m 41s

How would you feel if random strangers kept grabbing your hair? African Australian women deal with this all the time. It’s annoying, it’s humiliating and it’s about deeper things than just random hair touching.Ameisa Meima Konneh has African A

Gentleness in Dating (Emma Daniels)

Jul 23rd, 2015 19m 28s

How bad can a first date get? Emma Daniels has seen lots of first dates running her speed dating night, Dear Pluto. She likes first dates, she likes internet dating. She also wants to tell you that they work better with a little time thrown in.