AMplify - The Australian Museum Podcast: Recent Episodes
The Australian Museum
Join Director and CEO Kim McKay AO in conversation with scientists from the Australian Museum Research Institute (AMRI) and experts in Indigenous Australian and Pacific cultures. When not 'in conversation', AMplify will bring the best from the AM’s live talks, giving you a front row seat at enlightening presentations from inspirational people.
Experience the award-winning eco-poetry of Craig Santos Perez from the University of Hawaiʻi, as he reflects on the vital role of Pacific literature in the environmental movements of Oceania.
Listen to the Schindler's Ark author Thomas Keneally in conversation with AM Director Kim McKay.
Lesley Green (University of Cape Town) considers how environmentalism squares with anti-racism and social justice in the sourcing of `green’ commodities from the sands of South Africa.
In his urgent call to action, Birch identifies the powerful roles that First Nations ecological knowledge, environmental activism, scholarship and creativity can play in addressing the impact of climate change, particularly on vulnerable and disempowered communities suffering human rights abuses as a direct result.
Australian film legend George Miller traces his multi-award winning engagement with film to the ritual Saturday matinee in his hometown of Chinchilla, Queensland. After a stint at medical school he became a filmmaker, going on to create the Acadamy Award-winning Mad Max, Babe and Happy Feet series among many others.
Layne Beachley is widely regarded as the most successful female surfer in history, and is the only surfer, male or female, to claim six consecutive world titles (1998-2003); she went on to win a seventh in 2006. In this inspiring conversation with AM Director Kim McKay, Layne reveals the source of her drive to be the best of the best, and opens up about her marriage to INXS rock legend Kirk Pengilly.
Software engineer Noel Gordon was part of the team that developed Google Maps. He recounts the development in conversation with AM Director and CEO Kim McKay.
Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay AO has led the transformation of the nation’s first museum into one of the world's pre-eminent natural history and cultural institutions. Hear her in conversation and Q and A with Tracey Holmes
From copy girl to editor at the age of 23, Ita Buttrose’s boundary-pushing career at The Telegraph, Cleo, The Australian Women’s Weekly and The Sunday Telegraph won her status as a feminist icon. The legendary media trailblazer, businesswoman, best-selling author and 2013 Australian of the Year continues her active leadership role as a committed community and welfare contributor.
Listen to adventurer, businessman, entrepreneur, philanthropist, political activist and 1986 Australian of the Year, Dick Smith in conversation with AM Director Kim McKay.
This lively panel is hosted by Director and CEO of the Australia Museum Kim McKay AO and features 2017 Eureka Prize winners Associate Professor Madhu Bhaskaran, Dr. Emilie Ens and Dr. Bryn Sobott.
Drawing on scholarship and activism connected to cultivation by Indigenous peoples, this talk - examines texts by Indigenous writers alongside historical and contemporary media texts about gardens and gardening to explore the diverse ways in which relationships (human and non-human) are mediated and nurtured through acts of gardening.
What are plants? What can they do? And how can we bring a feminist approach to our relationships to them?
For more than two decades Oron Catts (Director of SymbioticA, an artistic laboratory at the University of Western Australia) has been at the forefront of experiments in the manipulation of fragments of living systems for artistic ends. This lecture explores the role that art has played and continues to play in shifting understandings of what life is and does.
Hear Mike Hulme, University of Cambridge, explores some of the many fascinating ways climates are historicized, known, changed, lived with, blamed, feared, represented, predicted, governed and, at least putatively, re-designed.
The icy expanses of Antarctica were an unforgiving frontier for early explorers. Among them was Sir Douglas Mawson, who faced frostbite, exposure and exhaustion in his journeys across the frozen continent. He passed some of his time writing love letters to his wife back home. But how did he stumble on a meteorite in all that ice and snow?
Early British settlers were so flummoxed by the platypus that they thought it an elaborate hoax, created by stitching a duck’s beak onto the body of a mole. But Australia’s greatest charlatan is an entirely different creature to behold.
One of the most significant objects in the Australian Museum’s collection is a humble, hand-crafted bird-shaped pestle. Its invention marked a crucial moment in human history, upon which entire civilisations grew. The influence of the simple stone object stretched all the way to the Pacific, where this story takes a sudden, violent twist.
The wilful and wanton destruction of the Tasmanian Tiger is a sad reminder of the importance of conserving our natural history. Charles Wooley reveals the tragic tale of the man who shot the world’s last Tasmanian Tiger in the wild. And the team tells the story of resurrecting the world’s rarest insect, now living on a lonely volcanic rock at sea.
Mel Ward started life on the stage as an acrobat and comedian. But something about the creatures he found on the beach as a child kept calling him back to the sea. But what drove him to collect 25,000 crabs from around the world? And what exactly is eccentric dancing?
Working in a museum in the 19th century was a hazardous occupation. In 1831, the Australian Museum’s inaugural custodian William Holmes accidentally shot himself with his own shotgun, while collecting a cockatoo. But the sudden demise of museum curator, Darwinian and “guardian angel” Gerard Krefft, was more curious still.
Sydney in the early 1800s was a fledgling colony, full of convicts, soldiers, settlers and social climbers – the kind of town where you might win and lose your fortune in a single day. With the release of Australia’s first bank note and the subsequent gold rush in NSW came the whiff of financial security. But how did a large gold nugget go from an abandoned mine shaft to a government office corridor game of cricket?
Step inside the Westpac Long Gallery – home of 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum. The nation’s first museum gallery is a treasure in its own right. Newly restored, it showcases the most important items in the museum’s collection of more than 18 million scientific specimens and cultural objects.
In the latest episode of AMplfiy, Australian Museum Director & CEO Kim McKay AO is joined by Michael Mel, Manager of the West Pacific Collection at the Australian Museum.
Join us on an archaeological journey through Jordan, over 8,000 years in the making, to the ancient cities of Pella, Petra and Jerash.
The AM held its annual AMRI Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony on Wednesday 9 August 2017, designed to recognise eminent researchers and science communicators who have made outstanding contribution to science and biodiversity conservation. This year, the
For NAIDOC week, Laura McBride talks to Kim McKay about her indigenous heritage, the start of her museum career and how museums play a special role to be able to change the way Aboriginal people are portrayed.
This week, Kim McKay talks to Sharni Jones about her roots, beginnings and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Collections at the Australian Museum.
This week, Kim McKay talks to Gillian Scott about the beginnings of her museum career and her plans for exhibitions at the Australian Museum.
In this live recording hosted by The Science Show's Robyn Williams, Dr Michael Bowen, Dr Richard Major, Professor Angela Moles and Sonya Pemberton share their Eureka Prize-winning work and discuss the big issues facing Australian science.
A clinical psychologist, toxicology expert and naturalist examine the dangers – real and imagined – which underpin our society’s persistent fear of spiders in this episode of Live at the AM.
This week, Kim McKay talks to Dr Jenny Newell about her extensive background and expertise in the Pacific art and culture, as well as her focus in the cultural communities affected by the climate change.
Hear Dr Helen Maynard-Casely share her fascinating insights as we celebrate the United Nations’ inaugural International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
Get behind-the-scenes of Australian Museum's newest exhibition Transformations - Art of the Scott Sisters with Vanessa Finney, Manager of Archives and Rare Books as she talks about this jewel of AM's collection with Kim McKay.
Sheldon Teare works in Materials Conservation across the AM's Collections, and specialises in Natural Sciences Collection materials and objects.
Listen to Kim McKay in conversation with Professor Tim Flannery who has made many remarkable discoveries in palaeontology, mammology and environmental science.
Listen to Kim McKay in conversation with Anthropologist Dr Robin Torrence, whose current research aims to understand changes in the nature of western Pacific societies over the past c. 50,000 years.
Listen to Kim McKay in conversation with Catherine Timbrell, the Exhibition Producer of the Australian Museums new exhibition Spiders - Alive and Deadly.
Listen to the Asaro Mud Men panel discussion featuring members of the Komunive community (Asaro valley, Eastern Highlands, Goroka), documentary filmmaker Ms Klinit Barry and pacific specialist and Asaro Project Manager, Yvonne Carrillo-Huffman.
Hear the inspiring stories behind nature photographer Luke Tsharke's most powerful images
Listen as Kim McKay speaks with Steven about producing innovative exhibitions, public programs and events supported by extensive community engagement at the Australian Museum.
Listen to a live talk by NSW chief scientist Professor Mary O'Kane, presented by the Australian Museum Research Institute at the Australian Museum.
Listen as Kim McKay speaks with AM artist-in-residence Janet Laurence after the opening of
This week, another LIVE Trailblazers Talk, with Gaby Kennard the first Australian woman to fly solo around the world.
This week Kim McKay talks with Phil Gordon about the museums important Aboriginal collection and repatriation work.
Kim McKay talks with Paul Flemons about the highly commended DigiVol program created by the museum.
In this episode, Kim McKay discusses the Cockatoo Wingtag and Hollows as Homes citizen science projects with Ornithologist Dr Richard Major.
Kim speaks further with Dr Jodi Rowley, whose research reveals the critical role amphibians play in our echo-systems and the unique ways frogs can be identified.
Kim McKay speaks with Creative Producer Keren Ruki about the significance of the Pacific Collections.
This week, another LIVE Trailblazers Talk, join ‘long-rider’ Tim Cope for an evening on the Steppe.
This week Kim McKay speaks to ornithologist Dr Richard Major about the plight of native birds in Sydney.
This week, listen to some dynamic Trailblazers of Australian Science from the 2016 Australian Museum Eureka Prizes launch.
Australian Museum CEO and Executive Director Kim McKay in conversation with Dr Mark Eldridge, Principal Research Scientist in Mammalogy Collection at the Australian Museum Research Institute (AMRI).
The first Trailblazers Talk taking place at the Australian Museum is a conversation between Australian Geographic's founding editor, Howard Whelan, and renowned Aussie explorer and mountaineer, Greg Mortimor.
Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay talks to Dr Jodi Rowley, Amphibian Biologist in Herpetology, whose research reveals amphibian diversity and her a passion for communicating biodiversity conservation.
Curiosity about the natural world led Chris into a museum job at age 12, kicking off a lifetime of research. In this episode, Kim chats with Chris about the decline of Christmas beetles, studying leeches in an igloo on Lord Howe Island, and the 6.5 million insect species held in the AM collection.
Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay talks to Dr Rebecca Johnson, Director of the Australian Museum Research Centre (AMRI) about her motivations to become a wildlife geneticist.