Skip to navigation | Skip to content

ABC Home | Radio | Television | News | Your Local ABC | More Subjects… | Shop

Audio

The Science Show

The unique content of the Science Show has given Australians fascinating insights into all manner of things from the physics of cricket to prime ministerial biorhythms. According to Robyn Williams, the Science Show has consistently achieved what it originally set out to do in 1975: 'To produce a science program about ideas, not simply facts or bits of boffinry'.

latest programprogram website

Science on Mornings on triple j

Join Zan Rowe and her scientific guests, with a bunch of curious triple j listeners for a weekly injection of science, myth-bashing and answers! Science on Mornings is published every Thursday.

Join Zan Rowe and her scientific guests, with a bunch of curious triple j listeners for a weekly injection of science, myth-bashing and answers! Science on Mornings is published every Thursday.

All in the Mind

Are markets moral? Is our hunter-gatherer brain geared for modern capitalism, and do economies work like evolutionary organisms? The rise of neuroeconomics, the extinction of Homo Economicus and more - - with outspoken founder of the US Skeptics Society, Dr Michael Shermer, and shareholder activist and Crikey founder, Stephen Mayne. Read Transcript

Why do we often avoid speaking our mind? Does swearing have an evolutionary function? What do linguistic taboos do to your brain? How are new words born? Acclaimed author of The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker is a self-confessed verbivore. To him language offers a window into the human mind and how it works. He joins Natasha Mitchell in a feature interview to argue there's nothing mere about semantics.

Radio National often provides links to external websites to complement program information. While producers have taken care with all selections, we can neither endorse nor take final responsibility for the content of those sites.

 Read Transcript

Venerable Robina Courtin, acclaimed Australian Tibetan Buddhist nun, has excavated the suffering mind at its greatest depths of despair. Founder of the Liberation Prison Project, she's helped thousands of inmates release themselves from the prison withintheir mindusing Buddhist techniques. Venerable Tenzin Palmo was one of the first Westerners to be ordained as a Buddhist nun, spending years undergoing intense meditative practice in an isolated cave in the Himalayan mountains. We can all be our own therapist is their powerful claim. Read Transcript

What makes someone gay? The quest for the biological roots of sexual orientation remains rife with controversy. Is it in your genes, handedness, or the hormonal soup of the early foetus? Or, is the answer hidden deep inside the brain? Homo or heterothe science of sexual attraction captures everyone's attention. Read Transcript

In Conversation

Over fifteen years ago Dr Julia Horsfield was working on a way to disrupt the defensive coat of HIV, the AIDS virus. Her approach is only now bearing fruit. She describes how much patience, commitment and even passion are needed to make science work. She has long been outspoken about the need for proper funding for research in New Zealand where she lives. Read Transcript

The relatively new vice-chancellor at James Cook University in Townsville is a scientist-turned-to-business. Professor Sandra Harding reminds us that over one third of Australia is tropical and yet only one major university in this country, apart from Charles Darwin in the NT, is properly equipped to handle the range of topics so important to the north of our region. And, unlike some, they also have a successful campus in Singapore. Read Transcript

In this polar year many initiatives are offering new insights into changes in Antarctica. Dr Phil Tucak from Perth has spent several months exploring sites where Weddell seals are found. His studies of their behaviour and biology at a time of change are both illuminating and exciting. Read Transcript

Australia could move entirely to renewable energy systems and transform our economy in ten years. It's a bold idea but one that co-author of Climate Code Red, Philip Sutton, believes is doable and absolutely necessary. Alexandra de Blas is in conversation with Philip Sutton about how he thinks we can rescue our climate from its state of emergency...in a decade. Read Transcript

Ockham’s Razor

Nineteen-year-old Sarahjane Thompson is a double degree student at the University of New South Wales and has had a hearing impairment for as long as she can remember. She talks about her experiences living with a hearing disability. Read Transcript

Professor Jane Goodall from the University of Western Sydney is fascinated by the dramatic unpredictability of culture change. Today she focuses on the debates surrounding climate change. Read Transcript

150 years ago Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace made a joint presentation to the Linnean Society of London of their views on biological evolution. But who was Alfred Wallace? Emeritus Professor Tony Larkum from Sydney University relates the story of this unsung man. Read Transcript

Today Richard Begbie from Canberra looks at the environmental cost of air travel. Airplanes add around 750 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year to the atmosphere and in the process burn 250 million tonnes of a non-renewable resource. Read Transcript

The Health Report

There's no doubt that dependence on any drug can devastate people's lives - and Australia has one of the highest rates of illicit drug use in the world, in fact we are leaders in both cannabis and amphetamine use. In part one of this feature Lynne Malcolm explores the effects and latest treatments of addiction to these drugs and some encouraging results from a study on the treatment of drug dependence and post traumatic stress disorder simultaneously.  Read Transcript

Australia has one of the highest success rates in organ and tissue transplantation, but it also has one of the world's lowest donation rates. About 3,000 Australians are on the official organ and tissue transplant waiting list and 20% of the people waiting for a heart, lung or liver transplant will die before they receive one. ABC journalist Phil Ashley Brown met a patient 20 minutes after she received the good news that she would get new lungs and he follows her progress through the transplant and recovery.  Read Transcript

A special feature about post traumatic stress disorder, which is very timely after the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader. It's an extraordinary story of the lessons learned from the war in Bosnia, treating the psychological trauma in adolescence.  Read Transcript

According to Professor Michael Kahn from Tufts University in Boston, about two thirds of oral cancer cases go undiagnosed until they are in the advanced stages when the cancer has already travelled to other sites in the body. It is extremely important that dentists are aware of this problem and screen their patients accordingly.  Read Transcript

Breast cancer prevention in women at high risk Listen Now

A large number of cases of breast cancer in women at high risk of the disease could be prevented if anti-oestrogen medications were used. Research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer in Melbourne has looked at this issue.  Read Transcript

Science Show

  • 01:10 - Eureka Prizes 2008
  • 12:50 - Hagfish
  • 19:24 - Runoff affects waters of the Great Barrier Reef
  • 26:40 - Laura Molino - modern man struggles with primate urges
  • 30:00 - Living with Aspergers
  • 47:10 - The risk of sea level rise

More features from ABC Online

CrudeCrude: the incredible journey of oil
Spanning 160 million years of Earth's history

National Science WeekNational Science Week
Australia's largest national festival with loads of ways to get involved

Plantet SlayerPlanet Slayer
Worrier Princess Greena gets the dirt on greenhouse.