Eavesdrop on Experts: Recent Episodes
University of Melbourne
Overhear researchers talk about what they do and why they do it. Hear them obsess, confess and profess - changing the world one experiment, one paper and one interview at a time. Listen in as seasoned eavesdropper Chris Hatzis follows reporters Dr Andi Horvath and Steve Grimwade on their meetings with magnificent minds. Made possible by the University of Melbourne.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused uncertainty and stress for so many university students. So how can universities support and reach out to students? And how do students build up their resilience? Professor Sarah Wilson is the Pro Vice-Chancellor Student Life at the University of Melbourne and an internationally recognised expert in cognitive neuroscience and clinical neuropsychology. She says a sense of belonging and connection is crucial for mental health and wellbeing. “We know that social friendships, even just a brief hello with the local barista while we are ordering a coffee, social contacts, connections are in fact the things that alter our mood and protect our mental health because they are associated with increases in our sense of wellbeing.” And while COVID-19 has made that challenging, people should take the opportunity to reconnect as restrictions ease. “Our sense of belonging and connection and your sense of mental health and wellbeing depends on you stepping out of that door and not stepping back in, but hopping on the tram, or on your bike, or in your car... and being part of the community.” Professor Wilson also says it’s important to get used to the “idea of change” as we move through lockdown and pandemic restrictions. “Having in our toolkit, methods for starting to learn to live with this virus and accepting that this fluctuating pattern might be part of life for the foreseeable future and learning to adapt to that.” Episode recorded: June 21, 2021. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Part exhibition, part experiment, MENTAL is a welcoming place to confront societal bias and stereotypes about mental health. It features 21 works from local and international artists and research collaborators that explore different ways of being, surviving and connecting to each other. Opening in July 2021, book your free tickets now. Banner: SELFCARE4EVA_2001 by Mary Angley and Caithlin O’Loghlen: Installation view, MENTAL: Head Inside, Science Gallery Melbourne. Picture: Alan Weedon.
As consumers and citizens we have very little say about how AI technologies are used, what control we have over their use and what is said about us, says Jeannie Paterson, Professor of Law and Co-director of the Centre for AI and Digital Ethics at the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne.“Technology has a lot of potential for improving people’s lives, in terms of including marginalised people or providing access and equity to people who are otherwise disadvantaged. In fact, I’m a technology optimist,” says Professor Paterson.She points out that most people would be aware that their social media activity generates information and data about them that is being collected and used to target advertising at them.“The issue is that our interactions with the world are being mediated through these digital profiles that are created about us, so we cease to be ourselves – full, rich, interesting humans.For example, “there are all sorts of stories about the way now that insurance pricing is determined by your credit score or the friends you associate with.”Professor Paterson explains that when algorithms are used to make important decisions, we also need to have oversight by people who understand the context of the information being used. For example, there may be valid social reasons or other political or policy reasons why we shouldn’t really be relying merely on past performance or past behaviour to make important decisions about the future.“When the ads that are being shot back to you are news reports, conspiracy theories or political views based on something you looked at in the past, that’s the challenge to democracy and to ourselves,” she says.“And the promise of AI in medicine, for example, isn’t that it will replace doctors, but that it will help doctors do the job that they want to do better. The best relationship with AI is one of collaboration rather than domination or control.”Episode recorded: June 16, 2021.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner: Getty images.
The COVID era has reinforced the vital nature of friendship, community and connection - not just to other humans but also nature, algorithms, animals and art.As you'll hear in this episode, friendship also influences our health and humanity.Featuring:Rosie Braidotti - contemporary philosopher and feminist theoretician at Utrecht UniversityProfessor Nikos Papastergiadis - from the University of Melbourne Arts Faculty, author of ‘On Art and Friendship’Dr Katie Greenaway - from University of Melbourne's Psychological Sciences, researcher on social connectionOur sound engineer is Arch Cuthbertson.Your hosts and researchers are Dr Andi Horvath ad Dr Suzie Fraser.Additional voices are Siri and Chris Hatzis.The producer is Dr Andi Horvath.Production assistant is Silvi Vann-Wall.This podcast was recorded in December 2020 and January 2021.
It’s estimated that there are 5.5 million insect species on Earth, says Phil Batterham, Professor Emeritus at the School of BioSciences and the Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne. “Those that are pests may number in hundreds, so it’s a minority of insects that cause damage in agriculture. “In fact, many insects are beneficial and really vital to us and to ecosystems.” Professor Batterham’s research looks at the interaction of chemical insecticides with pest insects and beneficial ones, like bees. “If you spray a fly with insecticide it dies quite rapidly because it binds to a target protein in the brain. So, many insecticides aren’t really pest-specific at all because they also bind to proteins in the brains of non-pest insects.” Professor Batterham’s work aims to understand these insecticide interactions so as to underpin the development of more effective and sustainable control strategies that have a reduced environmental impact. “A former PhD student Felipe Martelli examined low-dose impacts of insecticides on a model insect organism called Drosophila (fruit fly). He worked on two classes of insecticides, one called imidacloprid, which has been banned in agricultural settings in Europe because of demonstrated impacts on the honeybee. The other was an organic insecticide called spinosad. “Felipe showed these insecticides were damaging mitochondria, which are the energy centres in cells. There was a precipitous drop in energy levels in short term exposures. In longer chronic exposures in adults, he saw neurodegeneration and blindness. “And although spinosad is labelled as organic, it creates more damage at much lower doses than imidacloprid does. “It’s really important for us to study other insecticides and verify that they are causing such damage or clear them of it. At the moment we need to use insecticides in agriculture and as a bare minimum, we need to be using the safest ones. “Insecticides are important for food production, but they may be having impacts on pollinators which are also essential for food production.” Episode recorded: June 15, 2021. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Getty Images.
The speed of climate decline is reaching an alarming tipping point. Now, we are calling on all social media influencers and creative artists: it's time to hold the big companies to account, and go viral... for Earth’s sake.In this episode, we explore how the art of viral marketing can influence science for good.This podcast was made possible by the University of Melbourne and the Centre of Visual Art.Thanks to our guests: Margaret Wertheim, Brent Coker, and Will Steffen.Your hosts were Dr Andi Horvath and Dr Suzie Frazer, audio engineering was by Arch Cuthbertson, with production assistance from Silvi Vann-Wall.This episode was recorded on the 11th of August 2020.
“People have been worried about opera’s demise for about four centuries now,” says Dr Caitlin Vincent, Lecturer in Creative Industries at the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. “It’s a very old art form. We first saw western opera emerge in the 1600s in Italy and in the 21st century we’re coming across the issue that opera is really defined by its museum work - the greatest hits of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries - that are still the mainstay of opera companies worldwide.” Dr Vincent explains that in order to maintain the tradition of these works, some companies are resorting to problematic and outdated practices like blackface or yellowface makeup. “This is where you start to get a rift between different kinds of audiences, between the really traditionalist audiences who say opera should be done exactly the way as it was first intended to be done and between more modern, progressive audiences that say, we love opera but it needs to be updated in order to reflect a modern-day society,” she says. So how can we interpret these works in a way that does not perpetuate harmful stereotypes or cultural appropriation? One of the popular and successful strategies is education, Dr Vincent says. “Companies program problematic works like Madam Butterfly or The Mikado alongside educational initiatives that are designed to contextualise the works, framing it as a historical artefact and giving you the history that you need.” “The other thing about cultural appropriation, is who are the people who have been hired to interpret these works on stage? Do they represent diverse viewpoints, do they have any connection to the culture that is being portrayed on stage? “What we really need is to try to embed support for emerging composers and mid-career librettists to promote talent in Australia, the United States and the UK to actually cultivate those voices of the next generation. “Otherwise, we will just continue to program Madam Butterfly and Turandot forever, until eventually we can’t anymore because they’re too problematic.” Episode recorded: June 1, 2021. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: In the Box by Mary Cassatt (Photo by Francis G. Mayer/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images).
Einstein theorised a point in the universe where time, space and gravity bend. Almost 100 years later, we took a photo... a photo of something we weren’t even sure was there. Now it hangs in an art gallery. Is it really art? Come with us to edges of the universe - and back again to New York.In astrophysics, an event horizon is a boundary beyond which events cannot affect an observer.This podcast was made possible by the University of Melbourne and the Centre of Visual Art.Thanks to our guests: Margaret Wertheim and Peter Galison.Your hosts were Dr Andi Horvath and Dr Suzie Frazer, audio engineering was by Arch Cuthbertson, with production assistance by Silvi Vann-Wall.This episode was recorded on the 11th of August 2020.
“I don’t think many people watching films understand how much work and how many people actually go into creating [special] effects,” says Genevieve Camilleri, a visual effects artist, nominated in the 2021 Academy Awards for her work on the film Love and Monsters.“Basically there’s multiple departments, starting from somebody who ingests the film footage that they shot on set, and then the next artist creates a CG (computer-generated) camera to replicate the one on set. That’s passed to the next department that will create, say in Love and Monsters, one of the big CG creatures.“The next person animates it to move him the way that he needs to into the footage, for another artist to add texture and colour. After that the next artist renders out those computer graphic images for the last department to put it all together with the live action footage.“It’s quite a complicated process. To create just two seconds of film, could involve up to 10 people and a couple of months of work.”Ms Camilleri says “working on (Love and Monsters) was fun, it was quirky and different, but it never crossed our mind that it would be entered into the Academy Awards and of course be nominated for an Oscar.”Initially headed for a career in biotechnology, Ms Camilleri instead decided on a Postgrad Diploma in Visual Effects at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.“To be honest for me it’s following what you enjoy. I think if you do something that you really enjoy and you’re passionate about, you’re going to succeed at it because you’re putting your heart into it. Then to get paid for it as well at the same time is just a double reward there,” says Ms Camilleri.“But in terms of getting into visual effects (VFX) itself, it’s quite a technical and creative industry, so finding a balance between learning between both of those things I think is really important.”Although ‘Love and Monsters’ made it into the final nominations, it was the film ‘Tenet’ that was awarded the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 2021. Episode recorded: May 17, 2021.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner: Getty Images.
“Happiness itself isn’t overrated. I think happiness is great and I like being happy as much as possible, but sometimes what we don’t realise is the psychology behind it,” says Brock Bastian, Professor in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne.“We know from psychology that the human mind often works in fairly ironic ways, so when you’ve focused on something too much, or try not to experience something, it actually produces the opposite. A good example is pink elephants, where you ask people not to think about pink elephants... (but then) they tend to think about them more,” he says.Professor Bastian explains that many of us have a mistaken idea that we can continually build happiness and become, ever happier.“No matter what we do in life, we do tend to come back to somewhat of a resting baseline around happiness and this can be slightly different for different people. If you go and rent yourself a room in a five-star hotel it’s going to make you incredibly happy for a little while, ultimately you’ll eventually get used to it though and probably that initial happiness you experienced won’t continue.“I think it’s fair to say that it’s very hard to really experience any happiness in life if we don’t also have its opposite. That means sometimes leaning into, I suppose fearlessly in some way, those experiences which can seem difficult, challenging, hard, even painful. It’s actually through that process that we achieve happiness.Professor Bastian says two examples that provide people with a sense of achievement, satisfaction and happiness – meaningful happiness – are running a marathon and graduating from a course.“So I guess I would just simply say don’t focus on happiness as a goal in and of itself, it won’t work,” he says.“Focus on other things that you think are actually going to make a difference and that are going to contribute to the world and to your own life in meaningful ways. Then you’ll probably find along the way that you’ll notice one day that you wake up and think I’m actually a little bit happier than I was.”Episode recorded: April 22, 2021.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner: Getty Images.
“One of the biggest problems we face is people thinking ‘we’ll just throw mindfulness at them and it’ll fix the problem’ or at least it feels like it’s fixing the problem,” says Dr Nicholas Van Dam, Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. “We’re increasingly seeing that [mindfulness] isn’t a silver bullet, it’s not a panacea. It won’t fix every problem for every person and it probably shouldn’t be for every child in every school. That kind of thinking just probably isn’t going to work and the science doesn’t support that, but we’re starting to get better.” Dr Van Dam is the inaugural director of the Contemplative Studies Centre at the University of Melbourne, a first point of entry into the world of mindfulness, meditation and contemplative practice. The Centre focuses on interdisciplinary, evidence-based research into contemplative practice and methodology. “We’re trying to understand these practices - we’re starting to actually look at comparing meditation practices against good active controls, which is something that’s been lacking,” he says. “This combination of mindfulness (and) meditation is important, but the confusion is very real. People often think they’re interchangeable when they’re not. Often when people are talking about mindfulness, they’re talking about the quality or the activity, it’s a way of engaging with the world. Meditation is a much broader set of largely introspective practices, where you’re looking inside. “So mindfulness isn’t as present moment as people often think it is. It’s kind of like a remembering to pay attention, a remembering to be present, a remembering to be aware. However what you’re aware of, what you’re attending to, doesn’t necessarily have to be the present. “That’s often the goal, but as you’re sitting thinking or as you’re going about your day, the mind will wander to the past, it will wander to the future. That’s fine. It’s all about how you engage with that.” Episode recorded: April 8, 2021. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Getty Images.
“There’s nothing inevitable about any form of sexual violence,” says University of Melbourne criminologist Professor Bianca Fileborn.Professor Fileborn researches the range of factors surrounding how sexual violence occurs – from gender, sexual orientation and identity, to societal attitudes, and the locations where it happens. But Professor Fileborn has a particular focus on the sexual violence occurring on the street and at music festivals.For her, a critical question is what can be done to counter the sexual violence we see in society, which is perpetrated predominately against women and the LGBTIQA+ communities. She says we can’t just rely on law reform, which has for decades failed to deliver substantive change.“I’m much more interested in, firstly, what can we do around preventing sexual violence and in changing those norms, attitudes and structural factors that drive sexual violence in the first place.“Secondly, how might we develop alternative avenues for achieving a sense of justice, because it’s pretty clear that the mainstream justice system just isn’t up to task.”One alternative is “transformative” justice, which she says is “aimed at actually challenging and undoing those structural factors that underpin sexual violence.”“It could involve working with a perpetrator to challenge and change their understandings of masculinity that led to them perpetrating in the first place. It can also involve supporting perpetrators who might be marginalised in other ways, for example in relation to mental health or, say, a lack of employment.“Finally, it’s also focused on working with survivors to help them to heal and recover and to ensure that they’re safe in the community at all times.”If you need support or more information on this issue, please contact 1800 Respect national helpline: 1800 737 732 or Lifeline: 131 114. Professor Fileborn is the author of Reclaiming the Night-Time Economy - Unwanted Sexual Attention in Pubs and Clubs, and Co-editor of #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change.Episode recorded: March 30, 2021.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner image: Getty Images.
Queer performance is one space that queer identifying people will go to to be with their tribe, says Alyson Campbell, Associate Professor in Theatre (Directing and Dramaturgy) at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne. “Theatre is a way of collectively thinking through the world. We’re actually in a space together and something is in front of us and we’re kind of working our way through it together. “It’s actually trying to work in different ways from normative theatre. It’s about the processes of making and that is largely around collaboration and who else is in that team and is this being driven by this kind of commitment to challenging normative forms and structures as well as perhaps, say, telling gay stories.” In 2021, Alyson and Steve Farrier will lead a hybrid digital/face-to-face version of their Feral Queer Camp, hosting activities about what makes performance queer, and how we might develop a network of queer thinkers, all stemming from the performances in the Midsumma Festival in Melbourne. “Performance can teach us things about queerness and that we can speak back or have a dialogue with theory. It’s not that one has a hierarchical position above the others.” “I will just really strongly emphasise here that Steve and I might be facilitators, but we are learning as much from everybody who comes to the Feral Queer Camp as they are learning from us.” For more information, go to Feral Queer Camp. Episode recorded: March 22, 2021. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer, editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Getty Images.
“All democratic constitutions, including ours, contain some protection of freedom of speech. It’s a really central democratic value and so that’s not surprising,” says Adrienne Stone, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. “Understandings of freedom of speech have for a very long time been dominated by the law and theory of the first amendment to the constitution of the United States,” Professor Stone says. But the Australian constitution addresses freedom of speech in a unique way. “Unlike most constitutions, it doesn’t have a provision that says there shall be freedom of speech, or everyone has the right to freedom of expression,” Professor Stone says. “Our constitution simply says that the two houses of parliament shall be directly chosen by the people, and that has formed the basis of a very interesting body of law, a lot like a right to freedom of speech. “The High Court has said, not at all unreasonably, that if we’re serious about having a parliament that’s directly chosen by the people, we ought to be able to be free to discuss political matters amongst ourselves and it’s developed something called the freedom of political communication.” “Any serious thinker, any serious judge, who has had to implement the principles always recognises that freedom of speech operates over a limited field and the task of determining the boundaries is the hard bit. Merely asserting a right to freedom of speech doesn’t make it true.” Professor Stone points out that many people think that there is a settled idea about what freedom of speech is. “But I can’t think of any area of political thought that is more contested than freedom of speech, so there isn’t a correct answer,” she says. “We need to be very careful about taking the view that there are positions that are so wholly unacceptable that they don’t receive the protection of freedom of speech. “But saying that we allow people to put out views about climate change, not getting vaccinated or strange views about COVID, for example, by saying that they’re protected by freedom of speech doesn’t necessarily mean that the idea is accorded any respect.” Episode recorded: February 4, 2021. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer, editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Getty Images.
“When I get an idea, it comes to me as a still image,” says Dr Laura Jean McKay, winner of the 2021 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for her debut novel ‘The Animals In That Country.’Dr McKay is now a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University in New Zealand, after completing her PhD at the University of Melbourne focusing on literary animal studies.“This novel took seven years to write, but that image is very, very clear and stays very, very true the whole way and it really keeps me going through the whole writing process,” she says.Dr McKay says her initial inspiration was, what would happen if we could finally understand what other animals were saying?“Not with their mouths but really saying with their bodies and the way they are in the world, what are they saying to us and what are they saying to each other?” she adds.Her novel is an eerily-timed tale about a world in the throes of a pandemic, exploring other consciousnesses, and the limits of language.“It’s been a very, very strange time to launch this book into that world. On the one hand, it’s been really interesting to see what aspects of the novel are similar, but on the other hand, it’s really heartbreaking to see people suffering throughout the world.”On the process of writing, Dr McKay says it can be a very lonely activity.“When you’re doing it, you need to be alone. There can be a sense of isolation in creating a new work and something you really believe in but that nobody else really cares about until you publish it and hopefully it’s read,” she says.“I think the really surprising thing is the incredible connection that you can have with other people who read your work or who write work that really inspires you.”The Animals In That Country by Laura Jean McKay is published by Scribe.Episode recorded: February 16, 2021.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner: Getty Images.
“Everything surprises me about my research. Every time I dive into a new archive or pick up a set of newspapers, talk to a person who I’ve just met, I’m constantly being surprised." So says Dr Nick Tochka, Senior Lecturer in Music and Head of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne. Dr Tochka researches popular, traditional and art musics in Europe and the Americas, with a particular emphasis on the politics of music-making since 1945. “In terms of how a political economic system like communism in Albania or the Soviet Union shaped music making, I look at the institutions and the kinds of political and economic logics that organise the activities of the musicians,” says Dr Tochka. Currently working on a book manuscript titled “Rocking in the Free World: Popular Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America,” Dr Tochka is looking at how post-war politics influenced the reception and practice of rock genres in the US between the 1950s and 1980s. “There is an idea that music and especially certain kinds of popular music, might function as a form of self-expression or they might function as a form of therapy...in a way that we connect with on records or on MP3s or however we listen to that music. “One of the roots of this idea comes from the 1960s folk music movement where a guy or a girl with an acoustic guitar are singing into a microphone, that kind of unmediated presence, a live, first-take connection with an audience.” Episode recorded: January 28, 2021. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Getty Images.
“One of the things I’m continually surprised about is just how creative and resilient people can be around death, dying and memorialisation,” says Dr Hannah Gould, ARC Research Fellow at the DeathTech Research Team, based at The University of Melbourne.“I think there’s a kind of belief that death is very taboo... but actually, we continually encounter a great degree of creativity in how people want to memorialise the dead, how people want to be remembered themselves and how they feel about the future of our cemeteries and cemetery spaces.Dr Gould’s work shows that two-thirds of Australians are open to new and perhaps innovative uses for cemetery spaces including walking tours, botanical gardens, fitness classes – or even public events like theatre or festivals.“Our word for cemetery comes from the Greek for ‘a sleeping place’,” says Dr Gould. “So the dead are at peace, for example. But now, they’re also popping up with Facebook notifications or you might even have an AI bot that Tweets out for you after you’ve passed. If you can continue participating in contemporary debates, well, when does your identity end?”Dr Gould says that the COVID pandemic has changed some of our attitudes to death and dying.“During the pandemic, we have had the ‘clap for the carers’ or frontline heroes events. That’s often really focussed around healthcare professionals like doctors who are doing extraordinary work.”But Dr Gould says it should also be noted that the end-line, the frontline workers who work in death care have been putting themselves on the line to care for the dead.“They have an extreme level of respect, care and love for the dead, particularly when they know that that person has not seen any bereaved family member for a very long time because of lockdown,” says Dr Gould.“I’d love for people to think more about their own death and mortality and how that might affect future generations and what they’d like to happen for them.”Episode recorded: Jan 14, 2021.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner: Getty Images.
“I tend to focus on communities of people and how they mobilise around and interpret technologies,” says Associate Professor Dunbar-Hester, from the School of Communication at the University of Southern California.Her writing and research centres on the politics of technology in culture, especially media and technology activism.“If we take a fairly conventional view that hacking has to do with computers, programming and hardware, the longer trajectory in North America and Europe was that actually women were some of the earliest professional programmers during the war effort in World War II. And when programming was a new occupation, it wasn’t gendered and computers weren’t gendered,” Professor Dunbar-Hester says.She says another of the really interesting things that came up during her research was that if you’re teaching people to program and hack because it’s fun, where does that lead?“I had spoken to people who were saying, well, you can wind up working for Silicon Valley,” Professor Dunbar-Hester says. “And a lot of their contracting work, as we know, not all of it, but a lot of it might have surveillance or military implications. Where does the line get drawn between when you’re really enjoying solving this technical problem and your responsibility for an application for it?”Professor Dunbar-Hester says an important thing to note is that we tend to grant technology and technologists so much power and special status in society that if we want to change society, we need to change who the technologists are, or we need to open that seat up to new kinds of people.“And that may well be true and I have nothing against it, but the other thing that I would ask us to maybe step back and think about, is how did that segment of society come to be so powerful in the first place and is that really what we want?”Episode recorded: November 17, 2020.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner: Getty Images.
More epidemics like COVID-19 are inevitable unless we reassess our relationship with the natural world.That’s according to Gerry Ryan, a PhD student in the School of Biosciences, a conservation scientist working on Southeast Asian and Australian biodiversity and a board member for the Society for Conservation Biology Asia.He employs statistical, mathematical modelling to look at how we can improve making decisions for wildlife conservation, particularly as competition for space between people and wildlife increases – both here in Australia and across South East Asia.But while the illegal wildlife trade flourishes, we will continue to see problems like we’ve seen during this pandemic; and governments must use this as an opportunity to improve their regulations and enforcement in order to protect the health of wildlife and humans in the future.Episode recorded: November 16, 2020.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner: Getty Images.
"I see Country as the world around us, what we live in, but also ourselves," says Associate Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher, descendant of the Wiradjuri, Director of Research Capability at the Indigenous Knowledge Institute and Assistant Dean (Indigenous) in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne.“Country recognises the role and the obligations that people have in the world around them. It doesn’t abstract the world from ourselves, it actually embeds us within the world around us and reveals the kind of reciprocity or the obligation that we have to the world in caring for it and looking after it."Associate Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher explains that one of the things that Aboriginal people did was to maintain open landscapes with fire.“To care for Country, but also to increase green pick for animals, to increase grains, and there are a whole suite of species that Aboriginal people used in this Country that depend on fire at some stage in their life cycle.”“There are areas that were described and which my data shows that are now forested, be that rainforest in Tasmania, or eucalypt forest on the mainland, that were forest-free. They were grasslands under Aboriginal management,” he says.He adds that the very biodiversity that we love and appreciate in this Country is the direct product of Aboriginal management.“We need to look to the Country that we’re in and talk to the traditional owners. In the circumstance where there might not be the continuance of knowledge because colonisation was so effective, then you’ve just got to roll your sleeves up and experiment.”Episode recorded: November 25, 2020.Interviewer: Steve Grimwade.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner: Getty Images.
During COVID-19, many of us have reacted a little more sensitively to seeing someone cough - but coughing is a very important human defensive reflex.A cough can help clear our respiratory system and keep our breathing unobstructed, and it actually accompanies more than 100 different conditions of the respiratory tract.But about 10 per cent of the population globally experience chronic coughing – a cough that lasts longer than eight weeks in the absence of a respiratory tract infection. For some people, this can last for decades, with them coughing more than 200 times every hour of their waking lives.Professor Stuart Mazzone is working to understand the neural networks or nerve circuits that are important for controlling coughing, and shine a light into the role of the brain and the cough.Episode recorded: November 9, 2020.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner image: Getty Images.
Dr Brent Coker collects memes.A lecturer in the Department of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne, he says “I spend most of my time researching and reading and, of course, watching memes is one of my hobbies.”Dr Coker has always been fascinated by why certain things get shared more than others.“There is a lot of psychology that goes on in marketing nowadays. Quite often we rely on intrigue. But what is intrigue?” he asks.“In psychology, there’s this idea that people need to finish the story. They don’t like it when the story’s unfinished.”He uses the example of lying in bed at night when you hear a bump.“You’re not going to go to sleep very easily unless you get up out of bed and go see what that bump was, so in other words, you finish the story. We rely on that kind of thing when we’re creating content, as well, creating that intrigue,” Dr Coker says.He notes we see this pattern in super-viral content, that is content that has over one million shares. Dr Coker explains that when looking at how viral something is, the metric is shares, not likes.“We find that the pattern very often begins with intrigue and then we have this spike in the story framework where emotions get injected over time and then there’s a big resolution at the end of the story.”Episode recorded: October 16, 2020.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi-Vann Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner image: Getty Images.
"I’m a mathematician by training but lately, I’ve started to become very interested in how mathematics can help us trust algorithms," says Kate Smith-Miles, professor of Applied Mathematics and Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers.“Algorithms are everywhere, and how we can trust them is becoming a really pressing issue. The good news is that mathematics and statistics offer some really valuable tools for us to be able to develop this trust.”Professor Smith-Miles’ research quest to stress-test optimisation algorithms has led to a large collection of intricate and beautiful 2D images, contour plots of mathematical functions that have been mathematically generated to create challenging landscapes.“The research took a direction where we’re trying to deliberately generate diverse problems, unique problems [to test the algorithms]”, Professor Smith-Miles says.“It turns out, we were able to visualise them as beautiful 2D images. We had so many, that it turned into a new motivation to try to create an artwork.But mathematics wasn’t something Professor Miles-Smith had considered as a career path.“During Year 12, I had a mathematics teacher who really helped me understand some beautiful things about mathematics, and it was just scratching the surface,” she says.“I got to the end of Year 12, and I thought, no, that can’t be the end of it; I have to keep going with this because I’ve just got a little glimpse of what this might actually be.”Episode recorded: October 13, 2020.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner image: Supplied.
"As humans we tend to think in pictures, so using that approach you could think of peptides as segments of protein," says Dr Troy Attard, from the Melbourne Protein Characterisation platform at the Bio21 Institute at the University of Melbourne.“You can think of protein like a ball of twine, a long linear string that is all scrunched up into a ball or various shapes. If you took a pair of scissors and snipped little bits of a segment of that string, that would be your peptide,” Dr Attard says.“They’re basically short proteins, which are chains of amino acids that are joined head to tail, a little bit like links in a chain.”Dr Attard explains that insulin is an example of a peptide, it’s two peptide chains that are joined by a couple of bridges. “There are a lot of small proteins that you would consider peptides and they have all manner of functions in the body including metabolism and communication.”Dr Attard synthesises, or makes, specific peptides for research.“You can manipulate peptides for whatever purpose you’d like. If you want to investigate specific parts of a protein, you can make a whole range of peptides that represent that area, and you can test which ones are important for binding in the cell.”Just by doing this basic research, you can build up a profile, and you get more knowledge about the interactions that are going on in the cell, Dr Attard says.“When you come across a problem such as the classic one is cancer of course, the more you know about that mechanism, the better a position you’ll be in to develop a therapeutic, for example.”Episode recorded: September 29, 2020.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner image: Shutterstock.
"The experience of music is really a whole-brain activity," says Professor Sarah Wilson, Head of the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne.“When we’re listening to music, what we see when we put people in the scanner is that large areas of their brain light up – both hemispheres. That’s because music involves many different networks or systems in the brain,” Professor Wilson says."There’s all sorts of debate in the research literature as to why we are even musical," she adds.“When we think about music, it is something unique to being human. Other species, animals, they don’t really use music in the way that we do. They might have song, or calls, but these are more simple, for mating purposes, or the like."“No other species uses a complex musical system like we do.”Professor Wilson explains that while you’re listening to music, you’re giving your brain a general workout.“You’re not only exercising the music-related bits, you’re also exercising your memory, you’re exercising the language system, you’re exercising all these other networks. So, that’s what, potentially, is protective. It’s based on that 'use it or lose it' principle.”Episode recorded: September 8, 2020.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner: Getty Images.
Associate Professor Chris Reid was working as a hospital pharmacist when he saw a series of patients in a neurological ward who were not treatable.“I thought well I can only do so much as a pharmacist. I would like to actually do something at a more fundamental level,” says Associate Professor Reid, Principal Research Fellow, member of Faculty and Head of the Neurophysiology of Excitable Networks Laboratory at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health.“I’ve been very fortunate to be part of the genetic revolution which was started by Professor Sam Berkovic and Professor Ingrid Scheffer from the University of Melbourne. I joined Professor Steve Petrou’s lab at a time when that was very new.“Things have moved incredibly quickly over the last 25 years, which is when the first epilepsy gene was discovered, to a point now where gene therapy is becoming a reality.”Associate Professor Reid is currently developing a new treatment for epilepsy.His research project is part of BioCurate, an independently-operated venture catalyst jointly formed by the University of Melbourne and Monash University.“We do need alternative approaches as well – which is really the program that I’ve been driving with BioCurate. What we’ve done is actually identified a channel in the brain that’s in a hotspot that causes seizure generalisation. That’s when seizures cause the big tonic-clonic seizure that we mostly associate with epilepsy,” says Associate Professor Reid.“We have a small molecule program to design drugs to that target with the view of treating a larger population of epilepsy people. So it’s a two-pronged approach, both of which have their risks, but both of which are moving forward particularly well.”Episode recorded: August 6, 2020.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner image: Shutterstock.
“We’re facing what has been called this global democratic recession,” says Associate Professor Tom Daly, Deputy Director of the Melbourne School of Government at the University of Melbourne and Associate Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law at the University of Edinburgh.“What we had for decades was – especially from the mid-1970s, was an overwhelming trend – it wasn’t the universal trend, but an overwhelming trend towards democracy becoming more widespread, globally,” he says.“But if you look at every major democracy assessment organisation, they all started to register declines from about 2005 onwards. We’re not dealing with the old fashioned sort of issues like military coup d’état, we’re looking at a deterioration of democracy that happens step by step, some people call it death by a thousand cuts.”Associate Professor Daly explains that the trend in recent years is a narrative that democracies are inefficient, that they’re incapable of producing public goods like prosperity, stability and security.But he says that’s simply not true. “It’s not borne out by the evidence. In fact, when you look at the COVID response, for example, some democracies have done well, others have not done well. Some authoritarian regimes have done well, others have not done well.”“I think one of the most positive signs for me, in Australia, has been it’s shown that we can innovate,” Associate Professor Daly says.“The National Cabinet is an absolute case in point. No other federation came up with this idea of such an effective mechanism to cut across what is a very hyperpolarised political system to bring together executives of different party colours and achieve consensus and robust and swift decision-making.”“I think the lesson from the pandemic is, if we can do it with the National Cabinet, we can do it in other areas too. Really reinvigorating citizen participation in governance, not just at the federal level, but possibly at the state level, at the local level too.”Episode recorded: July 22, 2020.Interviewer: Steve Grimwade.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner: Getty Images.
"I would say we have millions of dark matter particles passing through our bodies every day, continuously," says Elisabetta Barberio, Professor of Physics at the University of Melbourne and the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics. “The dark matter particle gets its name because it doesn’t emit light. So, if you have a telescope, you cannot see it. But it does not only not emit light in the visible spectrum, it doesn’t emit any electromagnetic radiation, so radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet. “No matter which kind of astronomical instrument you try to look at the sky, you cannot see it,” Professor Barberio says. She explains that we know that galaxies have been formed at a certain time in the history of the universe, and they’ve been formed where there were pockets of this dark matter. So, we know that dark matter is there. “To catch dark matter that is all around us in the galaxy, we need to go deep underground because we don’t want all these cosmic rays that reach us every day from the sun, the stars and the galaxy to spoil the signal of dark matter. “We found the perfect site in Stawell, near the Grampians because there’s a gold mine that is one of the deepest mines in Australia. They offered to host us one kilometre underground.” The experiment has been called Stawell Underground Physics Lab or SUPL, the first of its kind in the world. “We have another experiment under the Gran Sasso in Italy that showed a signal that could be interpreted as a dark matter particle signal. This is huge and quite important. However, no other experiment has been able to replicate the signal,” Professor Barberio says. “Dark matter is the majority of the material of the universe, so at the end of the day, we know only five per cent of the universe. It’s just exploring the most unknown.” Episode recorded: July 22, 2020. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer, editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: This image from the Hubble Space Telescope indicates that a huge ring of dark matter likely exists surrounding the centre of CL0024+17 that has no normal matter counterpart. NASA, ESA, M. J. Jee and H. Ford et al. (Johns Hopkins University)
“There just aren’t that many different ways we can think of to attack viruses.” This is according to Associate Professor Stuart Ralph, Acting Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Melbourne. “We’ve got lots and lots of drugs for parasites and bacteria, which have lots of potentially susceptible targets, but in the case of viruses – there aren’t that many things that they actually do. “So we’re limited to a handful, maybe only a dozen, discrete processes... that would cause the virus to either stop replicating or stop our bodies getting sick because they’ve got virus inside them.” Dr Craig Morton is a Senior Research Fellow, based at the Bio21 Molecular Science & Biotechnology Institute at the University of Melbourne. He says “In the case of COVID-19, [the drugs] remdesivir and dexamethasone have both been shown to have significant impacts on medical outcomes.” “Remdesivir is a drug that targets viral replication. It wasn’t designed for COVID-19 but appears to work. Dexamethasone is an immune system modulator that actually turns your immune system down slightly. In the very sick patients that seems to be a clinically extremely useful thing to do. “By repurposing existing drugs, you can rapidly get from having no possible treatment to having at least some way of mitigating the infection and improving the outcome of patients.” Dr Morton explains that if you’re starting from scratch, finding a brand new compound, it traditionally takes three to five years of lab research before you get to a point of understanding the chemistry of the potential drugs. Then, the process of testing in people takes normally five to 10 years and costs hundreds of millions of dollars. “At the moment, we know a lot more than we did six months ago, but we’re not able to say when we’ll have drugs that work, when we’ll have a vaccine that is clinically effective,” Dr Morton says. “Drugs for the man in the street to make sure that they don’t get sick? I think they’re still a long way off.” Episode recorded: July 21, 2020. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer, editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall & Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Getty Images.
“If you think about the history of humanity, exploring new frontiers has always been a key driver of our pursuit for knowledge and I think it reflects intrinsic curiosity of us as a species,” says Associate Professor Michele Trenti from the University of Melbourne’s School of Physics. “Space today is the ultimate frontier for exploration... looking up at the night sky seeing stars, planets and wondering what is our place in the cosmos. “That’s the part that took me towards being today at the University of Melbourne studying the universe and how we can build small satellites to help us with that.” Professor Trenti is the lead investigator of the Space Industry Responsive Intelligent Thermal satellite or SpIRIT satellite – a joint project between the Australian Space Agency, Australian space industry companies and the Italian Space Agency. Dr Airlie Chapman is a senior lecturer in mechatronics from the Melbourne School of Engineering at the University of Melbourne and co-investigator on the project. “Australia has actually had quite a long, rich history in space exploration and been part of the space economy, says Dr Chapman. “It actually began probably in about the 1950s and 60s when Australian experts were involved in tracking the Apollo spacecrafts. Few people know this, but in 1967 Australia became the third nation to design and launch a satellite into orbit, and it was actually launched from Woomera,” she says. “It’s very exciting to be part of this first call for proposals by the Australian Space Agency,” adds Associate Professor Trenti. “We have been awarded about $A4 million to design, build and launch in orbit a small satellite the size of a shoe box, about 10 kilos. “We want to demonstrate that SpIRIT will have advanced onboard computing capabilities to take decision autonomously and achieve real-time communications with the ground in both directions. For example, if our X-ray detector onboard SpIRIT spots a star dying with a massive cosmic explosion called gamma-ray burst in a faraway galaxy.” Dr Chapman adds: “I see this being a really exciting environment that we can keep on building our abilities as a nation and collaborate with other nations, as well as training future engineers and scientists to continue to build this field.” Episode recorded: June 30, 2020. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: NASA.
“You don’t know what health problems a population has unless you can measure them, and that’s what I try to do,” says Alan Lopez, Laureate Professor of Global Health at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. “If you’re going to improve a population’s health, then you need to know which are the leading causes of death, and particularly which ones are increasing so that you can match interventions to those health problems,” he says. Professor Lopez specialises in descriptive epidemiology, which looks at not the causes, but the measurement of disease and mortality patterns in populations. He says getting the measurement right on lung cancer, heart disease, COVID-19, measles, TB or road traffic accidents, matters a lot to health policy. “If you can demonstrate that death rates from a particular condition or disease are rising rapidly, or falling rapidly, then you’re either doing something wrong, or something right and policy can be calibrated according to that knowledge. “The really big concern, is that three or four decades ago, Australians began to become obese in large numbers, and now we have one in three Australian adults clinically obese. About another one in three are overweight. “Both of those categories carry significant excess risk of death, primarily from major vascular disease, like heart attacks and stroke, but also from some cancers. Those death rates for cardiovascular disease are no longer declining. In fact in Australia, they are, or are about to rise. Professor Lopez says it isn’t an outrageous contention, that life expectancy for the generation born in the last 10, or 20, or 30 years, will be lower than their mothers and fathers. “That, I think, is a major public health concern. We have achieved a lot of what we’re going to achieve in terms of mortality reduction through smoking control, but there’s still more to be done.” Episode recorded: June 18, 2020. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Getty Images.
Major depressive disorder is common and costly – one in seven Australians will experience depression in their lifetime. So understanding what’s going on in the brain and using that knowledge to identify new, faster-acting therapeutic strategies for treatment makes sense. “Our job is to record the electrical activity of nerve cells, the excitable cells in the brain, by way of eavesdropping on their function,” says Professor Scott Thompson, Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “Our research is focused on the neurobiology of depression, what goes wrong in the brain when there is a case of depression and we would like to use that knowledge to offer up ideas for better, more effective, faster acting antidepressant drug treatments,” he says. While current antidepressants – that include SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) like Prozac – are effective in two thirds of patients, they typically require four to eight weeks to work and may then still need changes to the dose. “SSRIs inhibit the uptake process of the hormone serotonin, so it builds up to a higher concentration. SSRIs like Prozac were discovered accidentally, they were being developed for treatment of problems with blood pressure and, lo and behold, some patients reported that their mood was better.” “But where Prozac takes six to eight weeks to work, within a matter of a few hours, depressed patients given ketamine report an improvement in their mood and in their symptoms. “Ketamine has a rapid antidepressant action, but it comes with its own set of problems. It’s an anaesthetic so it’ll knock you out if you take too much and can have a hallucinonogenic effect because it activates cells throughout your brain. “We came up with a class of molecules that would target particular structures limited to the brain’s ‘reward circuitry’. So, in [animal models] this ketamine is a novel candidate for a rapid antidepressant, without the side effects.” Episode recorded: February 12, 2020. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Getty Images.
“The work on conspiracy theories surprises me every day because I’m troubled by the general lack of trust in so many institutions – political and health institutions – that have been trusted for a long time,” says Dr Robin Canniford, Senior Lecturer in Management and Marketing in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne. “As to why this is happening now, I would draw on the climate of fear that people are experiencing,” Dr Canniford says. “In addition to the fight or flight response that we know psychologically as a response to fear, I think one thing that humans tend to do is to make up stories to rationalise that which they afraid of and that which they can’t control.” But Dr Canniford adds that some of the questions raised by the public are fair and relevant. “If we take the United Kingdom as an example, the SAGE Committee –the group of scientists who were put together to advise on the response to COVID-19 – remained a closed shop. Now the questions then immediately come about, well why can’t the public know who’s on a committee that’s making decisions about their livelihood?” “And when voters are witnessing a set of global leaders, many of whom themselves are promoting what we can only call conspiracy theory – promoting cures to the virus that rely on bleach for example – it is no wonder that people are searching for nefarious groups who they believe to be controlling them. “It is no wonder that there is a lack of trust at the moment and I think that is really fuelling and providing the fertile soil for this kind of conspiracy theory to grow.” Episode recorded: May 28, 2020. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Getty Images.
“A lot of people think of an earthquake as a one-off example, but [the after shocks from the 2010-2012 Canterbury earthquake] went on for a year and a half,” says Mark Quigley, Associate Professor of Active Tectonics and Geomorphology in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne. “At any time we could be sitting in our University or at home and just have this strong shaking come and just completely disrupt our world. Through all that, you had to try to keep your teaching curriculum going as best you could,” Professor Quigley says. “Those were the experiences I had in Christchurch, and they’re so analogous to what’s happening now on a whole bunch of levels.” Professor Quigley describes how people can use challenging times as an opportunity to stimulate new alternatives. “There will be opportunities here to better engage the underprivileged countries around the world with things like scientific conferences and meetings through virtual connections... that they never were able to afford through their own challenges that they might face.” “As an earthquake scientist, I’ve been really fascinated by the fact that earthquakes are still happening, but there’s not the usual urban noise levels like cars, so we can study them now in urban environments with much more accuracy and precision than we ever would be able to.” He asks “can we try – in the face of something that is affecting the entire globe, to find novelty and innovation in some of the approaches we’re taking?” “Perhaps things like creating virtual materials that will benefit your academic communities and your students going forward?” Episode recorded: April 6, 2020. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Audio engineer: Arch Cuthbertson. Co-production: Silvi Van-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Shutterstock.
“I think it’s very likely we’ll get to good drugs even quicker than we’ll get to a good vaccine,” says Peter Doherty, Nobel Prize winner, University of Melbourne Laureate Professor, patron and namesake of the Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. “What’s worked for HIV is what we call designer drugs,” Professor Doherty says. “Structural biologists design a chemical which will fit in to the really important part of that [virus] structure for binding to the cell, for instance. That would be a blocker, and that’s an effective drug.” In terms of what we need to do to prepare for a future pandemic caused by an unknown virus, Professor Doherty highlights the work of CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. “[CEPI] funded the research of Professor Paul Young and his group at the University of Queensland, who’ve developed the primary Australian COVID-19 vaccine candidate. They developed a platform technology called the protein clamp. When this new virus came along, they were just able to slot in those new virus genes and move down that road,” he says. “So, I think we need an equivalent of the CEPI organisation that’s involved in developing drugs against all the major classes of virus that could be a potential threat to us.” But Professor Doherty reminds us that COVID-19 isn’t the biggest threat facing humanity, “this is something we’ll be through in 12 to 18 months”, he says. “The biggest threat facing humanity is clearly climate change and we all understand that if we’ve got any sense at all. I think, personally, that what should come out of this is we need to rethink some of the ways we do things.” Episode recorded: April 22, 2020. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer, editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Shutterstock.
“Isolation is bad for a lot of people,” says Cathy Humphreys, Professor of Social Work at the University of Melbourne. “It’s bad for people’s mental and physical health, it’s bad for domestic violence and child abuse,” she says. “But, of course, when you’ve got this extraordinarily virulent virus you don’t have too many choices [but to stay home to prevent its spread].” “In Western Australia for example, the most worrying aspect of the data we are seeing is a 30 per cent decline in the calls women have been making to the helpline, even though they are potentially experiencing a lot more violence,” she says. “But they haven’t got the opportunity to be able to seek help.” But she says there has been an international increase in the use of searching on websites and chat rooms to try and gain information. “There’s a lesson there about expanding the ways of being able to access women and their children at a time when you’ve got increased danger,” Professor Humphreys says. “Men have been reaching out to the men’s help line and workers in men’s behaviour-change programs have continued to contact the men individually in case management and support. “I think we might see a bit of an avalanche of people coming out of isolation and calling for help.” 1800RESPECT - 1800 737 732 - 1800respect.org.au Men’s Referral Service - 1300 766 491 - ntv.org.au Lifeline - 13 11 14 - lifeline.org.au Episode recorded: April 17, 2020. Interviewer: Silvi Vann-Wall. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Getty Images.
“I think a unique thing about this COVID pandemic is it’s been a real triple whammy for a lot of people,” says Dr Grant Blashki who is a GP, Associate Professor at the Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne and lead clinical advisor at Beyond Blue. “People are obviously worried about their health, not getting the infection. Secondly, many have lost jobs or are under a lot of financial pressure at the moment. “Thirdly, their home life has been drastically transformed. For some people, it might be that they’re home on their own. For others, they might find suddenly they’re in a very busy household with partners and kids,” he says. Working with Beyond Blue, Dr Blashki has been encouraging people to be proactive about maintaining their mental wellbeing. “Sometimes we do just have to shut off, particularly if the media is getting too much,” he says. “Your mind isn’t designed to be on all the time, it actually gets exhausting.” “And routine is really useful. I recommend that people create a schedule for the day and the week.” Dr Blashki also recommends one pleasurable activity and one activity that gives you a sense of achievement each day. “Something that you like doing, going for a walk, if you can, depending on your isolation situation, “ he says. “Or reading a book, watching your favourite show, and one achievement activity. That might be enrolling in an online course you’ve been wanting to do or fixing up your CV or cleaning that cupboard that you’ve been ignoring.” “We also tend to underestimate ourselves, and most of us have got a bit more resilience than we think,” he says. Beyond Blue Coronavirus Mental Wellbeing Support Service - 1800 512 348 or coronavirus.beyondblue.org.au 1800 RESPECT - 1800 737 732 or 1800respect.org.au Lifeline - 13 11 14 or lifeline.org.au Episode recorded: April 14, 2020. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Getty Images.
“Our profession began with infectious diseases,” says Professor Tony Blakely. “So, if I break it down and say epidemic and -ology, which equals study, we are the study of epidemics – epidemiology,” he says. “My day job is to model the effect of interventions on the population’s health. “Sometimes I look in the rear vision mirror of the car and sometimes I look out the front window and I actually forecast the future, under business as usual. Then I layer an intervention over that, like a tax on sugary drinks or a colorectal cancer screening program. “Then we estimate the health gains (from those interventions) and report back to our academic and policy end users on which interventions appear to have a big impact, versus a small impact, and which are cost effective.” Professor Blakely explains that this particular skillset also applies to modelling COVID-19 infection control and exit strategy models. “We have three exit strategies out of this COVID epidemic. One, we eliminate, we lock our borders and we hunker down until a vaccine arrives. The second strategy is the one people call suppression or controlled adaptation because you really are adapting,” he says. “The third option is we’ll protect our elderly, we’ll protect those with co-morbidities, we’ll get the best treatments possible, but we’re going to let this infection wash through society until such time we get to a number of people being infected that they’re therefore immune - we have what we call herd immunity. “There are different pros and cons of each of those three strategies.” Episode recorded: April 20, 2020. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Getty Images.
One of the things about literature is that it always responds immediately to what’s happening in the environment, says Associate Professor Justin Clemens from the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. “People started writing responses to the plague immediately, but the most famous book is probably Boccaccio’s The Decameron, which was written after the plague in Florence of 1348,” says Professor Clemens. The Decameron is a group of stories united by the overarching tale of a group of young aristocrats who have retreated to the hills to avoid the plague. “They didn’t have Zoom, they didn’t have the internet and so they tell each other stories over the course of two weeks,” Professor Clemens says. Dr Suzie Fraser adds that the Black Death, or the Bubonic Plague, was also depicted by visual artists using representations of death, pestilence and disaster. “One of the most prevalent visual allegories that emerged in the Middle Ages was the Danse Macabre, or the Dance of Death,” Dr Fraser says. “This theme depicts a universality to death where the living and dead exist side-by-side. Living people who are rich and poor, young and old, all genders and classes are being targeted, are being tugged, pulled and harangued into the afterlife.” Fast forward to today, and COVID-19 is also bringing out some very positive examples of public creativity and citizen artists, says Dr Fraser. “Dr Kate Just from the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, along with Dr Tal Fitzpatrick, started an Instagram project titled COVID-19 Global Quilt. “This project invites people to contribute a patch to the quilt which reflects their experience of the current pandemic.” Episode recorded: April 8, 2020. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Van-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: 17th Century Woodcut Depicting Londoners Fleeing from the Plague An illustration showing Londoners fleeing the country because of the plague. Printed 1630. (Photo by © Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE.The inspiration for the exhibition Flesh after Fifty came about as a result of Professor Martha Hickey’s work in the menopause service.“Women facing menopause at an early age would often say ‘I’m going to be an old woman’,” explains the professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Melbourne and Royal Women’s Hospital.“Those two words together were the worst thing in the world. Reflecting on myself and the women that I knew and the contribution of older women, I really wanted to change that message.”Lead curator of the exhibition Jane Scott describes the dilemma and also the delight of this exhibition was attempting to photograph 500 women over the age of 50 in the nude.“Most of the women would comment and talk about the fact that they were unhappy in their own skin,” she says. “But once they got that off their chest, they started to talk about how proud they were of their bodies for carrying them around, for delivering them the ability to have the life that they now enjoy.”“In an ageing society, it’s unsustainable to not give full recognition and support to old people,” adds Professor Hickey.“Women are the larger proportion of older people. Maintaining their physical and mental health is absolutely paramount for us.”Episode recorded: March 10, 2020.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.The Flesh After Fifty exhibition is on at the Abbotsford Convent, Victoria, Australia, and runs until April 11, 2021. For more information visit the website, fleshafterfifty.com.Banner: Getty Images.
“I challenge you, nothing is more fascinating, nothing is more puzzling than our brain,” says Professor Tracy Bale from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA and the Director of the Centre for Epigenetic Research in Child Health and Brain Development.Professor Bale studies epigenetics – biochemical marks on our DNA.“It doesn’t change the DNA sequence, we still inherit that from mum and dad. It is the environment’s way of allowing specific genes to be expressed or not expressed during given times or in specific tissues.”Epigenetics can have an intergenerational and even potentially a trans-generational effect on how offspring may develop, she says.“This is based on different environmental exposures – Mum was obese, Dad was stressed – or enrichment such as your parents may have read to you more or less.“Our brain continues to respond to its environment. So all of these factors together determine exactly how we function in our risk and our resilience.”Professor Bale notes that ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) may in evolutionary terms reflect a need for vigilance.“It may have been advantageous if you’re out somewhere and there’s more lions, so you need to be vigilant. So the right environment has you watching what’s going on outside the window instead of listening to a teacher in a classroom.”“So from an evolutionary biology point of view, we need all types in the tribe because it’s survival.”Episode recorded: February 12, 2020.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, editor and audio engineer: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner image: Getty Images.
Welcome to a special episode of Eavesdrop on Experts where we encourage experts to obsess, confess and profess. On the 11th March 2020, producers Silvi Vann-Wall and Arch Cuthbertson attended the International Womens Day event called “My Brilliant Career”. It was held by the MDHS at the University of Melbourne. It features 6 female leaders in the field of child health, who speak about their career journeys, lessons learnt and advice to younger people. We can actively choose to challenge stereotypes, fight bias, broaden perceptions, improve situations and celebrate women's achievements. My Brilliant Career is one part of our journey to supporting female voices, career pathways and experiences in science and health. Collectively, we can make change happen – we can all choose to be #EachforEqual. #UniMelbMDHS #GenerationEquality We have captured the event here - so without further ado, we bring you “My Brilliant Career”. Moderator: Professor Megan Munsie. Panellists: Dr Katie Allen MP, Associate Professor Margie Danchin, Dr Alyce Wilson, Dr Valerie Sung, Ms Carra Simpson, and Ms Banok Rind. Presented by: Professor Sarah Wilson. Recorded: March 11, 2020. Producer: Silvi Vann-Wall. Executive producer: Dr Andi Horvath. Audio engineer and editor: Arch Cuthbertson.
Dr Ashleigh Hood’s career in geology started as a child.“When I was just a kid, my grandpa used to take me on walks. I’d find rocks and put them in people’s letterboxes, so that was the start of my love affair with geology,” says Dr Hood.She now searches the globe for ancient reefs, looking for ancient life forms and information about animal evolution. No longer in the oceans, these 500 million-year-old reefs are preserved high in mountains across Canada, Namibia and Australia.“Earth’s history spans back about 4.5 billion years, so these tiny little slivers of rock record one snapshot of time, Dr Hood says. “Our work addresses one of the most fundamental questions in science and that’s how did we get here? This is, of course, a very big question.”“For example, these reefs formed during a time called Snowball Earth, which is when the Earth froze over almost completely, twice. This is our most severe climate change in Earth’s history and so right in the middle of this big ice age we see these huge tropical reefs grow,” Dr Hood says.“We know, for example, that animals potentially survived this climate change and so can use examples like this to better understand how we’re going to go with climate change in the future.”Episode recorded: December 4, 2019.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner image: Getty Images.
“I’ve always followed the issues that the Australian community are concerned about,” says social researcher Dr Rebecca Huntley. “There are high levels of concern in the community about climate change, regardless of how you measure them, but people have very low levels of expectation that our leaders not only can, but will, do anything about it,” she says. Dr Huntley says studies have revealed a common misconception in which people believe there are greater numbers of climate change deniers and coal supporters in the community than there actually are. “That’s because those voices are amplified in the media, in certain parts of corporate Australia and in some parts of the government, so that’s a really important misconception,” she says. “This is why things like reform of the political donation system, certainly at the Federal level, is an important part of restoring people’s faith that a transition away from old energy sources to these new renewable energy sources, is something that will actually happen.” Episode recorded: November 18, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, editor and audio engineer: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Van-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Shutterstock.
In 2009, Professor Peter Singer wrote his book The Life You Can Save in order to highlight that our response to world poverty was not only insufficient, but ethically indefensible.In the tenth anniversary edition released in late 2019, Professor Singer examines the progress we have made since the book’s release and how the first edition transformed the lives of both readers and the people they helped.“I’ve argued that we can expand our circle of moral concern and that that’s an important thing to do, beyond the social group that we’re part of,” says Professor Singer, who holds positions as the Ira W DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne.“I think we need to include all human beings, not just people who are alive now, but into the future, which has of course become a much more critical issue with climate change, with our awareness of what we’re doing to the planet.”He notes that psychology is starting to test what leads people to give to others.“There is strong evidence that people who are generous, who help others, who think about the wellbeing of others, actually enjoy their lives more than those who are more narrowly self-interested,” says Professor Singer.For more information about The Life You Can Save Australia go to https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org.au/Episode recorded: December 18, 2019.Interviewer: Steve Grimwade.Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Silvei Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Image: Shutterstock.
Twenty years ago, Professor Elizabeth Vincan set out to understand how cancer cells ‘talk’ to each other and the cells around them. Her research group was among a number to realise that some cancer cells always ‘switched on’ specific genes that function in an ancient form of cell-to-cell communication. And the idea was that if you could find out what these genes did, and block them, it could provide a new way to treat cancer. “At that time I was a young post doc mum and working where I was working was just too difficult because I had to go over the West Gate Bridge,” she says. So when a position came up at Western Hospital that suited her, she fell into cancer research. “The good thing about that is that I don’t actually have any formal cancer training, so when I address a question I come at it from a completely different tack. So that has been instrumental in the path that my career has taken,” Professor Vincan says. “What I realised way back in the late 1990s is that growing – a solid tumour, for example, is very similar to growing an organ in the body. The same pathways are involved.” Since then Professor Vincan, her lab and collaborators have been recognised for their work on cell to cell communication in cancer. “We’ve shown that the genetic mutations that initiate cancer form the platform of disease. On top of that there’s the genes my lab work on, involved in a particular communication pathway. When we block a gene called Frizzled-7, we can actually hit cancer on the head,” she says. Now, that to me is – has just been wonderful.” Episode recorded: November 12, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, editor and audio engineer: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Lorna McInroy/ Wellcome Trust.
Lupus isn’t well known, but the currently incurable autoimmune disease often marked by a ‘butterfly’ rash on the face, is highly prevalent, affecting five million people globally. Treatments are few and far between and few researchers are focused on it. But award winning medical researcher Professor Fabienne Mackay has concentrated much of her career on tackling lupus, and in 2011 her genetic research work led to the approval of the first new treatment for the disease in more than 50 years. And while that is good news for some patients, the treatment isn’t effective for all patients, and she says more research work and breakthroughs are needed. “I would love the public to realise that lupus is actually very prevalent; that the therapies we have at the moment, even though I worked towards one, are not serving everybody. It helps some patients but not all of them,” says Professor Mackay who in October 2019 received a Distinguished Innovator Award from the US-based Lupus Research Alliance. The good news is that we are still unravelling the secrets of the human body, which means there continues to be research leads to follow, including for instance the potential role of diet and the gut microbiome – the bacteria in our digestive system. “There is a whole story we didn’t realise was there and now it’s excitement all over again finding out how these layers are working on top of the layers we’ve already unravelled,” says Professor Mackay. “That is what fascinates me – you think you know it all and then there’s always something that comes and surprises you.” And her advice to her medical research students is to think big. “Always be bold. Think blue sky. It is a bit of risk and I know it’s never something that students are comfortable to do, but I think that where you find the most valuable discoveries.” Episode recorded: November 11, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Getty Images.
The teenage brain is very interesting. According to Dr Katherine Canobi, author and cognitive developmental psychologist at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, it’s a time when young people are starting to work out who they are, as well as looking to form meaningful and authentic relationships. “During this stage, their brains are still developing in various ways, for example executive function like decision making isn’t fully developed yet and neither is impulse control.” Combining novel writing and research, Dr Canobi is interested in how teenagers respond to the technology in their lives. Her novel Mindcull, explores how technology can be used to disguise and escape from reality. “It’s probably fair to say that there are links between extensive screen use and symptoms of depression and anxiety, but not every study has found that. Some studies have found positive results for social media for a sense of connection with others,” she says. Dr Canobi says we need to look at how we use technology. In particular, think about the vulnerabilities of young people and how we can use technology well. “Technology is with us and it does many, many wonderful things but we also need to be aware of the risks.” Episode recorded: October 8, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, editor and audio engineer: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Getty Images.
Now a professor of biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, in 1969 Sir Thomas Blundell was one of the first people to see what the hormone insulin looked like. As part of the team led by Nobel Prize winner Dorothy Hodgkin, it was a medical breakthrough for diabetes patients everywhere. “I was always interested in doing a range of different things,” Professor Blundell says. “I came from a family where my grandfather was a very gifted artist and musician. And although my parents left school when they were 14 and 15, they always encouraged me to think more broadly.” “So I may be a little bit unusual because I’ve ended up doing things in politics, music and science, and that of course led me to advise prime ministers and to run organisations and found companies.” Professor Blundell’s research has focussed on understanding the structure and function of molecules for targets to improve drug design. “By using X-rays with very short wavelength, I can see these very tiny molecules. Add in other methods like electron microscopy and the individual molecules can be revealed. His work has contributed significantly to stopping the progression of HIV into AIDS and to developing new drugs for cancer treatment in both his academic career and through a spinoff company he initially founded with two former students. “In Europe, Australia and the United States, we are lucky, we have access to medicines that research has developed, but the real challenge is to make sure that it’s available not just to the rich, but to the world in general.” Episode recorded: September 26, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Getty Images.
The hepatitis B virus causes liver inflammation that, despite treatment, still leaves people at greater risk of developing liver disease and cancer. While it can be effectively vaccinated against, there is no cure. Researchers Professor Peter Revill and Dr Thomas Tu are on front line of global efforts to find a cure; helped by Dr Tu developing a new method to better detect the virus’ ‘master blueprint’. For Dr Tu, who was diagnosed with the disease as a teenager, finding a cure for Hep B is personal. “I wasn’t given much information, just that you will have this for the rest of your life, and that was it. You may get liver disease down the track,” recalls Dr Tu. “After that I was a bit despondent, as you can imagine, but then “I thought what is this”? And so I went online and started really looking up what hepatitis B was and I accrued all of this knowledge and realised I could do something.” In fact, Dr Tu’s research in part led him to meet his now-wife. Professor Revill says Dr Tu’s new method could be a “game changer” in terms of developing and testing new drugs. “There’s many things we still don’t understand about the virus lifecycle or replication cycle, and we still cannot cure it,” says Professor Revill. “The most important thing we need to do is develop a finite cure that people can take some pills for a short duration and not have to take pills for the rest of their life, and that inspires me every day.” Episode recorded: September 30, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, editor, audio engineer: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Transmission Electron Micrograph of Hepatitis B virus particle - Getty Images.
You might not know it, but Melbourne has little earthquakes, even in the city centre and quite frequently.So says Michael Webster, engineering geologist at consulting, design and construction company, Golder Associates, and guest lecturer for the Master of Engineering at the University of Melbourne.“A lot of people know about the earthquakes down in Gippsland or the Otways, but actually in Melbourne itself, there have been earthquakes. You’d have to be a seismic instrument to actually feel these ones but they are there at all depths – some of them quite deep, some of them shallow,” he says.From the geology beneath Melbourne, Michael has created an intricate, three dimensional picture.“There are two lava flows under Melbourne, so you effectively get these beautiful layers cutting across each other, building up over about three to four million years to the present day,” he says.“So, in collaboration with the Arts Centre Melbourne and Development Victoria, we 3D printed a ground model and put on an exhibition at the Testing Grounds in Southbank.“It ran for a few weeks and it was lovely to see people’s interest and connection with the ground.“I’ve always found that geology is one of the more approachable sciences. If people talk about gravity waves it’s absolutely fascinating, but with geology it’s there – it is rivers, volcanos, lava.”Episode recorded: September 17, 2019.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, editor and audio engineer: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner image: Golder Associates.
A lot of Aboriginal people don’t necessarily feel comfortable accessing health services, explains Gwenda Freeman, Associate Lecturer in Aboriginal Health at the University of Melbourne. “Whereas you might have been brought up to go to the doctor when you are unwell, for Aboriginal people (going to a doctor) might be a much bigger issue,” she says. “There might be issues of racism, there might be history of difficulties, there might be hesitancy about western medicine and all sorts of cost and other anxieties that often prevent people from being able to access what we would consider basic health services.” As a lecturer in the Specialist Certificate qualification in ‘Empowering Health in Aboriginal Communities’, Gwenda says the course provides a pathway for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to undertake the Master of Public Health degree, opening possibilities for Indigenous people to be at the table in organising health services for their own community. “There’s been a lovely coming together recently of traditional healers – traditional Aboriginal healers – and what you might call western medicine.” For example some Indigenous healers – the Ngangkari – have been recruited by the South Australian Health Department to work in hospitals and health services in Adelaide alongside mainstream medicine. “They’re very happy to because Aboriginal people can see that western medicine offers some things that traditional medicine doesn’t. But also, that traditional medicine covers things that western medicine neglects. So, it’s a good coming together.” Episode recorded: October 7, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, editor and audio engineer: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Getty Images.
The 13th century physician and astronomer Zakariya ibn Muhammad al-Qazwinin was an influential member of the literary circles in Iraq and advisor to the Mongol Governor of the area. One of his major works is the Wonders of Creation, a kind of compilation of the knowledge of the universe, says Dr Stefano Carboni, lecturer in Islamic Art at the University of Western Australia and 2019 Macgeorge Fellow at the University of Melbourne. “Starting from the outer spheres where the throne of God is found and then coming down to the sphere of the angels, the fixed stars, the planets, the sub-lunar sphere and then everything that happens on earth. That includes the sphere of air, so all the phenomena – the atmospherical phenomena that happen in our skies.” Professor Carboni explains that the majority of books in the 13th century would be illustrated scientific manuscripts, or even works of Arabic literature that looked very much in the tradition of late Byzantine art. And when the Mongols arrived they brought the Chinese edition. “It’s an incredibly important period in the formation of the - of art history, basically, in Iran.” Episode recorded: September 5, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, editor and audio engineer: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Image: A map of the inhabited world, from Ajaib al-makhluqat wa-gharaib al-mawjudat (Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing) by al-Qazwini (d. 1283/682). The copy was made in 1537/944, probably in western India. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.
Music has this unique ability to connect with emotion, and with memory, so they’re very intricately linked, says Professor Felicity Baker, Head of Music Therapy and Director of the International Research Partnerships for the Creative Arts and Music Therapy Research Unit at the University of Melbourne.“When you hear a piece of music and then the memories become evoked as a result of that, the neural network is activated, and it also then leads to the activation of more positive moods.”Professor Baker studies how music, especially singing and songwriting, can be used to treat people with a range of conditions – from young people with traumatic brain injuries to adults with substance abuse issues and, especially, people with dementia.“We’re actually showing the family carers how to use music in really strategic ways to support the care of the person that they’re looking after. But we’re also interested in preserving the relationship between the carer and the person that they’re caring for,” Professor Baker says.“So, using music in a way that helps to bring that person to the present.”Special thanks to the Dandenong Ranges Music Council, Caladenia Dementia Care, Melbourne, the Musical Memories Choir from the Continuing Care Clinical Service Unit, Austin Hospital, Melbourne, Judy and John Kearney, Sue Mountain and Betty Hamilton.For more information about Felicity Baker’s work and the Music Heals Minds And Hearts appeal, click here or email annual-appeal@unimelb.edu.au. Episode recorded: August 29, 2019.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer, editor and audio engineer: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Image: Getty Images.
In her new book Future Histories, author and lawyer Lizzie O’Shea asks what historical social experiments like the Paris Commune can tell us about modern online democracy. “I sort of see Mark Zuckerberg’s call for regulation of his platform somewhat cynically,” she says. “I think he’s trying to do that in anticipation of it coming inevitably. So, he’s going to try and manage that process.” According to the author, this is the moment for us to organise and think about how we can install more democracy into how decisions are made over these platforms. This includes asking questions like what kind of technology should get prioritised and developed? And how do we allocate those resources rather than just leaving it to private companies to do themselves? “I guess this is a conceptual framework that I’ve sourced from indigenous ways of knowing and governing. I looked to places like Aboriginal Australia, New Zealand prior to colonisation, and also in North America, in Canada,” says Ms O’Shea. “So looking to those societies as peoples who have collectively managed resources for a long time, often in hostile environments, and that we might have something to learn from them in terms of managing the environment that we live in online in ways that prioritise respect and common humanity rather than money-making and exploitation.” Episode recorded: August 23, 2019. Interviewer: Silvi Vann-Wall. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Shutterstock.
Impaired memory is a symptom of schizophrenia and University of Melbourne PhD student Cassandra Wannan has identified areas of the brain that give us new clues as to what’s going on. Up to 1 in 100 people worldwide will experience schizophrenia. It can stem from a number of factors, including genetics, trauma, and substance abuse. For centuries there’s been limited understanding of how schizophrenia operates, leading to misdiagnosis or insufficient treatment. In order to better our understanding of schizophrenia, Cassandra Wannan recently authored a paper on schizophrenia and memory impairment. Confirming the role of memory loss in schizophrenia may be a major step towards fully understanding the illness. Interview recorded: July 23, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, editor & audio engineer: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall & Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Getty Images.
Physics is sometimes described in terms of two frontiers, says Professor Jamieson, a physicist at the University of Melbourne and Chief Investigator of the Victorian node of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computer Technology. “One frontier is cosmological. You look out into the abyss of space, an enormous scale of space and time.” “So that’s a journey into the wide frontier as we explore the cosmos with evermore powerful telescopes and use the laws of physics as the guide to understand what we see.” He says that the other frontier is the inward bound, the frontier into the subatomic - that is, the atomic and subatomic building blocks of matter. This research is providing new insights into the way the world works and so has unlocked the potential of quantum technologies, like quantum computing, with its enormous potential. “We have the standard model for particle physics that seems to explain, very successfully, the way matter works and interacts, but there are some nagging loose ends that need to be tidied up,” Professor Jamieson says. “We have the precedent that 110 years ago, Einstein tugged at the loose ends dangling out of classical physics and he caused it all to unravel… and that has set us on a new journey into relativity and quantum mechanics that we’re still travelling on today.” Episode recorded: July 16, 2018. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer & editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall & Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Shutterstock.
Associate Professor Duane Hamacher has spent 11 years immersing himself into the world of Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous science. Working closely with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders and communities to learn about their astronomical knowledge and teachings, Associate Professor Hamacher also mentors and supports Indigenous students pursuing studies in astronomy, physics, and space science. “I was very fortunate to be able to learn directly from many Elders,” says Associate Professor Hamacher. “The sky serves as a textbook, a logbook, a mnemonic a way of remembering everything on the earth you can see in the sky so that was quite fascinating." “So reading the stars means you can observe changes in their positions and properties and know how to interpret that to be able to tell things like changing weather or animal behaviour or navigation." He says what we have now is a whole generation of Aboriginal students who are studying astrophysics, who are studying Indigenous astronomy. “They are paving the way in this space to do something that I can’t do and people like me cannot do.” Interview recorded: July 9, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer, editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Galactic Emu - Aboriginal astronomers mapped the sky by creating shapes from the dark clouds of dust in front of the centre of the Milky Way. Shutterstock.
Following his uncle’s brain injury, Dr David Gonsalvez studied neuroscience and now researches the connections between brain cells and how they change in diseases like Multiple Sclerosis. “The cells that I study make the insulating material myelin, that covers all of the wires in the brain,” says Dr Gonsalvez. Our ‘wiring’ is formed by axons, the long stalks that grow out of the brain’s neurons and carry electrical signals to other neurons. Myelin is wrapped around axons to insulate the signals, just like wires in a house. By studying the impact of the environment on myelin and how it forms, Dr Gonsalvez and his team hope to also understand what happens when it degrades and the electrical signal is disrupted, as happens in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). “I’m starting to get really interested in whether or not those features of growth are impacted by your environment and conditions,” Dr Gonsalvez says. “Any situation that you’re put in, any interaction you’re having with the environment, and any interaction you have with other people and anybody, will have an impact on your brain.” Episode recorded: June 19, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Image: Getty Images.
One of anthropologist Professor Andrew Dawson’s research papers is titled ‘Why Marx was a bad driver: Alienation to sensuality in the anthropology of automobility’. The name gives an insight into his interest in the way movement, mobility and migration informs cultures and communities around the world. “Anthropologists often see cultures and communities as outcomes of people living in places. The fact is that people have always been mobile, and increasingly are mobile, especially with globalisation. So, we have to change the way we think about our objects of study,” says Professor Dawson. By joining people as they move around in cars or on buses, he gets a unique understanding into why they’re moving in the first place; toward or away from something. “Moving is absolutely natural, it’s part of the human condition, unfettered movement”. Interview recorded: June 14, 2019. Interviewer: Steve Grimwade. Audio engineer, producer, editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Getty images.
Genomics is a rapidly evolving technology that can help identify the genetic cause of a condition in a person. It can also find a person’s predisposition to various diseases like some cancers. When science first sequenced all the genes in the entire human genome, it became possible for scientists to compare the genomic patterns of larger groups of people – looking for more clues to health and disease in the ‘big data’. Professor Clara Gaff was awarded the Most Valuable Woman in Leadership in the Biomedical Space for 2019 for her work as Executive Director of the Melbourne Genomics Health Alliance. And the way genomic technology has advanced still stuns her. “The rates of diagnosis using this technology surpasses what I had expected,” she says. “It’s something I could never have imagined.” Episode recorded: May 16, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Shutterstock.
There’s been a growing shift in animal welfare; an increasing awareness of the mental wellbeing of animals rather than purely their biological functioning – that is, an animal’s physiology, reproduction and injury. Mike Mendl, professor of Animal Behaviour and Welfare at Bristol University in the UK, is drawing on animal behaviour, human psychology and cognitive neuroscience to improve animal welfare. “Data from human studies shows that people who are unhappy or depressed tend to be much more pessimistic about the future and they make more careful, cautious decisions about ambiguity,” says Professor Mendl. Professor Mendl is working develop ways of measuring animal welfare scientifically and with aim of improving the quality or conditions for all animals. Episode recorded: May 15, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Getty Images.
Previously seen as an older man’s disease, increased rates of prostate cancer in younger men has been associated with an increased incidence of obesity. “There are a number of changes that happen in the body when you have obesity, that could lead to the progression of cancer,” says Professor Watt, Head of the Department of Physiology, School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Melbourne. “Essentially what we’ve found is that, unlike other cancer types, which rely heavily on glucose to fuel both their growth and their proliferation, prostate cancer cells are very highly reliant on fatty acids.” Working with researchers at Monash University, Professor Watt’s group have shown that they can block the capacity of these prostate cells to take up fatty acids which slows their growth dramatically. “We think this has very important implications in understanding both the progression of the disease, but also ways in which we might be able to therapeutically target prostate cancer in the future.” Episode recorded: May 6, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Shutterstock.
Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. By the time we reach the age of 80, around 15 per cent of us will have glaucoma. By using gene therapy, University of Melbourne ophthalmology professor, Keith Martin, and his team are aiming to encourage the cells that connect the eye to the brain to make new photoreceptors that pick up light, replacing those that have been lost. “The cells I’m most interested in glaucoma are called retinal ganglion cells and these are the cells that connect the eye to the brain,” says Professor Martin. “When light hits the eye, photoreceptors pick up that light and they signal through to these retinal ganglion cells that send the messages back to our brain. If we lose that cable that connects the eye to the brain, the picture quality degrades.” These days, if glaucoma is identified early - it can be effectively treated in most cases. But Professor Martin’s research goes a step further. “We’re moving beyond the era where all we could do for this chronic degenerative disease was slow things down, and we’re now really talking about restoring function in a realistic way.” Episode recorded: April 10, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Shutterstock.
Chiptune is the electronic music that was integral to the experience of playing the early computer games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. And the art of composing a chiptune was all about being innovative in the face of the constraints that came with using a simple sound chip.“One of the really nice things about Chiptune is because it is so raw and open and simple, you are forced into a situation where you have no option but to create,” says Professor Kenny McAlpine, a Melbourne Enterprise Fellow in interactive composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and author of Bits and Pieces: A History of Chiptunes.“Because of the constraints of the sound chip, because they could only do limited music, the composers, when they tried to step outside of those constraints and push beyond them, had to look for other ways of achieving complexity and that had to happen through code,” he says.The irony is that despite all the creativity and ingenuity that goes into making a great Chiptune, Professor McAlpine says the best soundtracks shouldn’t be noticed.“They should get under your skin, they should affect you. All I want you to do is play and be in the moment.”Episode recorded: March 28, 2019. Interviewer: Steve Grimwade. Producer, audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Waring Abbott/Getty Images.
Before paper, we had papyrus - made from reeds in Egypt, or parchment - made from the skin of various animals. And then China invented paper in order to collect Buddhist texts. From there, over the next two centuries, the use of paper moved through Central Asia used by merchants, government and commerce. But, how did we get from Ancient Egyptian scrolls to modern-day office paper? Jonathan Bloom is the now-retired Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College. He is also the soon-to-be retired Hamid Bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. Sheila Blair is the Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College Emerita, as well as the soon-to-be retired Hamid Bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. Between them, they have explored how paper spread around the world, transporting ideas and information. Episode recorded: March 12, 2019. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-producers: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Getty Images.
Sir Peter Cook is well known for his ‘big and naughty’ architecture. The Emeritus Professor at University College London, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Frankfurt Staedelschule, Sir Peter co-founded the avant-garde architectural group Archigram and worked on constructions like the radical Art Museum in Graz, Austria. Sir Peter says that buildings and structures must be designed for people. “...it’s also a question of timing, positioning, spacing, iconography, to what extent something is special. Now, that almost comes back to architecture. If you just give a very bland piece of architecture, then you’re putting an enormous amount of onus on the inhabitant to do something special which they may not be up to. The result is boredom into boredom.” Episode recorded: January 31, 2019. Interviewer: Louise Bennet. Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall & Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Banner: Roof of Kunsthaus in Graz, Austria/Shutterstock.
While progress has been made, men still hold 60 per cent of senior positions within the Australian Medical Research Institute’s 49-member organisations, according to 2018 data. For International Women’s Day, six female leaders in medical research come together to discuss the professional challenges they’ve overcome, to help encourage more women in science to build successful, enduring careers. Professor Fabienne Mackay, head of the School of Biomedical Sciences, joins Professor Kathryn North AC, Director of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute with Laureate Professor Ingrid Scheffer AO and others to dispel some myths about women working at the cutting-edge of medical research. “Role models will not ask aspiring young women what would help them, but rather what stops them,” says Professor Mackay. “At a point in your life something will drive your passion, it will come early or later depending on the person, but once you have that passion nothing should stop you.” Recorded: March 7, 2019. Reporters: Dr Andi Horvath and Buffy Gorrilla. Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Buffy Gorrilla and Arch Cuthbertson. Audio engineer: Arch Cuthbertson. Banner: Getty Images.
Professor Eva Nogales started her career in a time where barely any women were seen in science departments. In college, she skipped biology to focus on physics, relying on her high-school knowledge of the former to shape her career as a biophysicist. Now, she’s using her understanding of the microtubules in our cells for improving disease management, including slowing the uncontrollable growth of cancer. This niche understanding of our cell behaviour at the molecular level is already improving the lives of humans everywhere, and the technique used by Professor Nogales called “cryo-EM” is taking the world of structural biology by storm. She recently visited the University of Melbourne to receive the 2019 Grimwade Medal, and to deliver the oration titled: Visualising the molecular dance at the heart of human gene expression. Episode recorded: February 14, 2019.Interviewer: Steve Grimwade.Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath.Banner: Berkeley Lab.
Workplace bullying. Chances are we’ve all seen or experienced it at least once in our lives. From the extreme of sexual or physical assault, to the subtler eye-rolls that exist in the ‘grey area’ of bullying. Dr Victor Sojo, a lecturer and Research Fellow at the Centre for Workplace Leadership at the University of Melbourne, says all these negative behaviours can lead to a toxic work environment and, as a result, impact on productivity. “At the most basic level within organisations, people need to make rules clear about what behaviour is acceptable and what behaviour is not acceptable,” he says. And the #MeToo movement is increasingly defining what’s not acceptable. Dr Sojo says that’s giving people who have been feeling marginalised, disrespected and abused the opportunity to speak up. “We need more women in positions of power so that they could actually have a voice about how we are going to manage the situation. This is very important, because right now, I’m a guy talking about this.” Episode recorded: December 21, 2018. Interviewer: Louise Bennet. Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner: Shutterstock.
When we talk about bushfires in Australia, we talk about the devastation. But Professor Cristina Montiel Molina from the Complutense University of Madrid says we need to re-think that. “We don’t consider fire a natural element in our lives, but it’s a part of landscape,” says Professor Molina. “We don’t really know how to live with fire.” In fact, Professor Molina says that mega fires we’ve experienced in Europe, Australia, Chile and California in recent years are our own fault - as result of poor decisions around spatial planning, land management and fire policies. And, in order to manage the risk posed by fire, we have to change our attitude. Episode recorded: December 19, 2018. Interviewer: Steve Grimwade. Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Banner image: Shutterstock.
The Australian city of Melbourne has been voted the world’s most liveable city numerous times - but does that status make those of us who live here complacent about the city’s long-term future? Professor Lars Coenen is the inaugural City of Melbourne Chair of Resilient Cities - an initiative between the City of Melbourne and University of Melbourne. The aim is to strengthen the city’s resilience in the face of sustainability challenges like global warming. But key to creating a sustainable city is innovation, done in a purposeful way that contributes to our societies, cities and our regions. And that, says Professor Coenen, is where Australia needs to raise its game. Episode recorded: November 29, 2018. Interviewer: Steve Grimwade. Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall. Banner image: Shutterstock.
Professor Roy Robins-Browne, renowned vaccinologist who retired from the University of Melbourne late last year, and Professor Myron (Mike) Levine, a microbiologist from University of Maryland are “scientific soulmates”. The two met in 1979, when Professor Robins-Browne’s interest in the varieties of E. coli that cause diarrhoea took him to the Center for Vaccine Development of the University of Maryland in Baltimore. At this time, Professor Levine was working in developing countries on the epidemiology, treatment and prevention of infectious diseases. Both believed this disease was caused by a pathogen - they just had to convince the rest of the world. Episode recorded: November 19, 2018. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall. Banner image: Shutterstock.
The Justice For LB campaign, which was launched following the death of 33-year-old Connor Sparrowhawk in a British residential unit, has made the issue of preventable deaths among people with an intellectual disability more visible. It’s an issue that can be solved; and that it’s time to start addressing it, say researchers and campaigners. Dr Andi Horvath chats with prominent UK campaigners Dr George Julian and Chris Hatton about what needs to change. For more information about Connor Sparrowhawk and the Justice For LB campaign, visit justiceforlb.org Episode recorded: November 12, 2018. Interviewer: Andi Horvath. Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall. Banner image: Shutterstock.
A farm labourer and builder’s mate in England, a porter in Scotland, a new immigrant in Israel; Professor Nigel Rapport’s fieldwork has offered him opportunities to explore the precious reality of human individuality in a wide range of circumstances. Episode recorded: October 18, 2018. Interviewer: Steve Grimwade. Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall. Banner image: Jeremy Bishop/Unsplash.
Biologist Professor Randy Schekman received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2013, along with colleagues, for his work on cell membrane vesicle trafficking - a major transport system within our cells. A passionate advocate of the scientific method and open-access journals, Professor Schekman argues that science needs to be vocally defended now, more than ever. Episode recorded: September 19, 2018. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall. Banner image: Shutterstock
“Just being able to say beautiful words, to put beautiful words together, is a way of moving through time and living your life and holding onto your life more valuably.”Professor David Mason, former Poet Laureate of Colorado, on why poetry is so ubiquitous and important.Episode recorded: September 17, 2018.Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath.Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall.Banner image: Taylor Ann Wright.
Politics in the digital age is increasingly being shaped by tech-savvy activists; the Edward Snowdens and Julian Assanges of the world. But it’s when these ‘nerds’ join with others that true change happens - like Spain’s Indignados movement becoming a force in the country’s mainstream political system. Dr John Postill discusses his new book The Rise of Nerd Politics in this new episode of Eavesdrop on Experts. Episode recorded: September 4, 2018. Interviewer: Steve Grimwade. Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Co-production: Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall. Banner image: Getty Images.
“If you knock on a door and it doesn’t open, keep knocking. It’s persistence that gets results in journalism.” The Boston Globe’s Editor At Large, Walter V Robinson, was famously immortalised by Michael Keaton in the Oscar-winning movie Spotlight, about his team of investigative reporters that lifted the lid on institutional child sexual abuse in Boston’s Catholic Church. Here he discusses the importance of investigative reporting, and the challenges it faces today.Episode recorded: June 1, 2018.Interviewer: Louise Bennet.Audio engineering: Arch Cuthbertson.Producer and editor: Chris Hatzis.Co-production: Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall.Banner image: Front page of the Sunday Boston Globe on May 8, 2016, featuring details of abuse at a private school in New England. Picture: Getty Images.
Pneumonia is the biggest killer of children worldwide. But when it comes to fighting the disease, particularly in remote communities, the key problem is access to medicine and technology. Oxygen, with antibiotics, is crucial to pneumonia treatment, but not every healthcare facility has oxygen available. In fact, some don’t even have electricity. In 2011, a team of physics researchers - including Associate Professor Roger Rassool from the University of Melbourne - collaborated with colleagues from a wide range of disciplines to develop the first electricity-free oxygen concentrating system, known as FREO2. FREO2 draws water from local river streams and uses it to produce oxygen, without electricity. And now, it’s saving lives. Episode recorded: August 28, 2018. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-Wall. Audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Banner: Getty Images.
In his new book, Transit Life published by MIT Press, Associate Professor David Bissell encourages us to think about how we use our daily commute, and it is shaping our relationships, how we work and how we build our cities. He chats about the joys and pains of commuting to Steve Grimwade.Episode recorded: August 21, 2018Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Chris Hatzis, Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer and editor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Shutterstock
In this bonus episode of Eavesdrop on Experts, our reporter Dr Andi Horvath ventures into the misunderstood world of quantum physics and, specifically, quantum sensing. While the discussion about “spooky” quantum phenomena like Schrödinger’s famous cat is about a hundred years old, there’s a revolution coming in quantum sensing. Quantum sensors exploit of the quantum mechanical behaviour of atoms or ions to measure physical quantities such as frequency, acceleration, rotation rates, electric and magnetic fields, or temperature with the absolute accuracy. The sensors use properties (like entanglement) to achieve measurements beyond the reach of traditional systems, and are currently are used in devices like atomic clocks and magnetometers. And while sensors like this have been around for at least a decade, the new generation of quantum sensors are making major advances with real-world impact. Episode recorded: March 27, 2018. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Audio engineering: Arch Cuthbertson. Production: Chris Hatzis, Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall. Editor: Chris Hatzis. Banner image: Paul Burston/University of Melbourne.
Synthesisers are the stars of the Grainger Museum’s latest exhibition, Synthesizers: The Sound of the Future. Theexhibition celebrates these democratising instruments, with a particular look at Melbourne’s emerging electronic music scene in the 1960s and ‘70s. Chris Hatzis takes a stroll through the exhibition and chats with curator Heather Gaunt, MESS's director and sound artist Byron Scullin, and artist and composer David Chesworth.Music used in episode:"Kraut Mich Mit Einen Dachshund""3 3/4""Flea Circus""Necrophilia"All songs by David Chesworth from the album 50 Synthesizer Greats, originally released in 1979 and reissued by Chapter Music in 2017.Synthesizers: The Sound of the Future exhibition at the Grainger Museum runs until Sept 9, 2018.Episode recorded: August 9, 2018Interviewer: Chris HatzisProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer: Arch CuthbertsonProducer and editor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Non Event/Flickr
Loneliness and isolation can be a very real issue for many older Australians. Dr Amanda Krause’s research is looking at how listening to the radio can help.Episode recorded: August 3, 2018Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer and editor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Getty ImagesThe survey for Dr Krause’s Radio for Wellbeing research project can be completed online. You can also visit the Community Broadcasting Foundation website for more information.
Back in the day, ‘applied life science’ might have referred only to winemaking. Nowadays the massive biotechnology industry is responsible for a vast array of projects that fight diseases, find the functional age of cells, and even create effective alternatives to vaccines. But, as Dr Lynn Johnson Langer warns, many of these exciting new projects will never leave the lab without the right funding and the development of relevant and in-depth business skills. Episode recorded: July 18, 2018. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-Wall. Audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis. Banner image: Henk Caspers/Naturalis Biodiversity Center.
Associate lecturer Susan de Weger is a French horn player. In fact, she’s a self-confessed “failed musician”, who walked away from music and went on to establish a multi-million dollar IT consulting practice in Europe. But music didn’t walk away from her. Once she returned to Australia, she decided to change her internal narrative and tackle a Performance Master’s degree at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne. Now she teaches music entrepreneurship to a new generation of musicians, helping young performers build careers that are artistically and financially rewarding.Episode recorded: July 3, 2018Interviewer: Dr Andi HorvathProducer, audio engineer and editor: Chris HatzisCo-production: Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-WallImage: supplied
If Facebook continues growing at its current rate - by 2130 the number of dead users will surpass the living. In fact, the number of the dead on Facebook is already growing fast. By 2012, just eight years after the platform was launched, 30 million users with Facebook accounts had died, and that number has only gone up since. These days, it’s not unusual to see memorial pages on social media - but how is the digital world changing our approach to death? From algorithms that can post tweets in our style after we die to bequeathing a digital legacy - Dr Martin Gibbs from the Interaction Design Lab at the School of Computing and Information Systems, alongside Associate Professor Tamara Kohn and graduate researcher Hannah Gould, both from the School of Social and Political Sciences, are exploring the impact of digital disruption on death itself.Episode recorded: 20 June 2018Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer and editor: Chris HatzisBanner: Getty Images
In this encore presentation of Eavesdrop on Experts, environmental psychologist Dr Wouter Poortinga shares how the 5p plastic bag tax in the UK reduced consumption between 70 and 90 percent almost overnight. He discusses how, with a little bit of prompting, habits can change and how we need a plan to stop wasting take-away coffee cups.Episode recorded: 8 February, 2017Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisAudio Engineering: Gavin NebauerEditor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Claudia Hooper and Lep Beljac
Get emotional - it's for your own good. For decades, emotional stability - that is, not being outwardly emotional - has been upheld as the pinnacle of normal functioning. But things are changing, and Dr Peter Koval wants to show everyone why letting your emotions show is the way of the future.Episode recorded: 29 May 2018Interviewer: Dr Andi HorvathProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer and editor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Emotion/Flickr
Climate scientist and paleoclimatologist Dr Joelle Gergis has spent over a decade painstakingly piecing together Australia’s climate history, using historical records dating back to the First Fleet, natural records held in our trees, corals and ice and computer modelling. As she outlines in her book Sunburnt Country, published by Melbourne University Publishing, Australia’s climate has always been “spectacularly erratic”, but human activity has accelerated these rates of change. As the developed nation most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, she says we must act now to slow its worst impacts.Episode recorded: 11 May 2018Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer and editor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Brisbane floods, 1893/State Library of Queensland
Professor Frances Separovic has amassed many ‘firsts’ in her career as a scientist, including being the first female chemist to become a member of the Australian Academy of Science and the first female Head of the School of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne. Our reporter Dr Andi Horvath sits down for a chat with Frances, where she discusses the road she travelled to reach the peak of her profession, from school in Broken Hill to Deputy Director of the Bio21 Institute.Episode recorded: 30 April 2018Interviewer: Dr Andi HorvathProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer and editor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Professor Separovic (centre, right), with her research team at the Bio21 Institute. Picture: Peter Casamento/Bio21
Rivers in New Zealand, Australia, India and Colombia have all been granted legal rights recently. Environmental law expert Dr Erin O’Donnell explains to our reporter Dr Andi Horvath why granting nature legal rights is becoming more accepted.Episode recorded: 23 March 2018Interviewer: Dr Andi HorvathProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer and editor: Chris HatzisBanner image: The Whanganui River in New Zealand was the first in the world to be awarded legal rights. Picture: Tim Proffitt-White/Flickr
When social media micro-targeting is shaping political views and ‘alternative facts’ abound, is there any hope for democracy? Cognitive psychologist Professor Stephan Lewandowsky explains why we still believe something to be true, even after we have been told it is not, and why we are all so willing to believe what we read - including fake news. In our post-truth era he suggests we all need to become a little more cynical, to ward off misinformation and guard against its potential to manipulate.Episode recorded: March 26, 2018Interviewer: Dr Andi HorvathProducers: Chris Hatzis, Dr Andi HorvathEngineer and editor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Getty Images
Cultural geographer Tim Edensor is passionate about place. His career has taken him from the Taj Mahal to industrial ruins in England's north, and now to Melbourne and its stone buildings. Wandering is the best way to get to know a place, says Dr Tim Edensor, and as a cultural geographer who has explored everything from what Christmas lights reveal about British class identity to Melbourne's old stone buildings, he should know.Episode recorded: March 1 2018Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer: Arch CuthbertsonBanner image: Travellers Travel Photobook/Flickr
Anthropologist Monica Minnegal has spent her career observing "the extraordinary things that people do", with much of her work dedicated to learning more about the Kubo people in Papua New Guinea. A community in the last uncontrolled part of the country, the Kubo are now encountering the West through mining companies and navigating the many cultural and social changes that brings.Episode recorded: February 23, 2018Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis
In 1980 Ben Shneiderman published one of the first texts in the field that would come to be known as human-computer interaction, and has since pioneered innovations we take for granted today, like touchscreens and hyperlinks. He has now turned his attention to maximising the real-world impact of university research, by combining applied and basic research; a topic he addresses in his new book 'The New ABCs of Research'. He chats with our reporter Steve Grimwade.Episode recorded: December 14 2017Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Van-WallAudio engineer: Gavin NebauerEditor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Getty Images
Acting is not natural - but it can be learned, and the VCA's Rinske Ginsberg passes on her wisdom about how the body can express an internal state; as well what it takes to make it as an actor. The Melbourne Fringe 'living legend' talks to Steve Grimwade, reflecting on life in Melbourne's radical arts scene of the 1980s, and how performance and art making has changed since.Episode recorded: December 8 2017Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer: Arch CutherbertsonEditor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Laura Canovaro/Flickr
You're chatting and posting online to your various social media accounts. But where does that data go? Who else is seeing your daily data habits? And does your social media define your identity? In this episode, Professor Luciano Floridi from the University of Oxford explores some of the ethical questions about our digital lives that are being asked by us more and each day.Episode recorded: 25 October 2017Interviewer: Dr Andi HorvathProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisCo-producer: Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer: Gavin NebauerEditor: Chris HatzisBanner image: iStock
The European experiment has been both revolutionary and successful, but having lurched from one crisis to the next in recent years does the future look as bright? Shaken by financial crises, Brexit and growing numbers of refugees, many - including US President Donald Trump - have questioned whether the European experiment is doomed to fail. In this episode Professor Loukas Tsoukalis from the University of Athens explains why he believes the EU will survive the current crisis, and what policies will help.Episode recorded: 23 October 2017Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisAudio engineer: Gavin NebauerEditor: Chris HatzisProduction assistant: Claudia HooperBanner image: Elfleda/Flickr
How can music and food help promote healing? In this episode we explore how music transcends barriers to bring diverse peoples together through a common language. We head to a performance by Associate Professor Adrian Hearn's band, Suns of Mercury, at the Festival of Nations.Episode recorded: 25th October, Festival of Nations 4-5th October 2017Interviewers: Dr Andi Horvath and Claudia HooperProducers: Chris Hatzis, Claudia Hooper and Dr Andi HorvathEditor: Chris HatzisAudio engineer: Arch CuthbertsonBanner image: Pixabay
How do you produce a seriously juicy steak? What's the difference between brewing a lager and a pale ale? How can students produce award winning wine? What role do drones have in the future of farming? In this special episode of Eavesdrop on Experts, the team hits the road to meet the agriculture experts based in the rural town of Dookie in northern Victoria, where the University of Melbourne has a campus. They bring a unique mix of expertise from the chemical molecules responsible for flavour to a knowledge of the history of age-old food practices, and explain how these can be reinvented for the 21st century and a more sustainable future.Recorded: 18 October 2017Interviewers: Dr Andi Horvath and Claudia HooperProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Claudia HooperEditor: Chris HatzisAudio engineer: Arch CuthbertsonBanner image: Claudia Hooper/University of Melbourne
How do plants sense and respond to the world around them - and do they listen when we talk? Dr Kim Johnson shares how an early fascination with plants' movements led to studying how they adapt to their environments. Far from being passive organisms, plants are constantly sensing and responding to their surroundings, including us. She discusses how plants have contributed to scientific understanding of processes like RNA silencing and how the mechanisms that give plants their shape can help grow better crops.Recorded: 24 October 2017. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris Hatzis. Editor: Chris Hatzis. Audio engineer: Chris Hatzis. Production assistant: Claudia Hooper. Banner image: Claudia Hooper/University of Melbourne.
How can genome sequencing help not only cancer treatment, but also its prevention? Two men who are looking to answer that very question, Professor Sean Grimmond and Dr Peter Campbell, discuss their research journeys and the challenges that lie ahead.Recorded: September 18, 2017Interviewer: Dr Andi HorvathProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisAudio engineer: Gavin NebauerEditor: Chris HatzisProduction assistant: Claudia HooperBanner image: Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre/ Claudia Hooper and Lep Beljac, University of Melbourne
The best mechanisms for change are debate, dialogue and discourse and yet this is remains something we struggle to do. Professor Joseph Lo Bianco says we need to explore new models for public discussion that don't silence controversial words, opinions and views. Coming from an Italian migrant family, Professor Lo Bianco experienced first-hand the kind of discrimination and hostility that exists in situations where distrust and fear of the Other is rife. Whilst Australia has, thankfully, moved forwards from the time when the public use of languages other than English were looked down upon, prejudices still exist and need to be combatted. Professor Lo Bianco reflects on his work in South East Asia, where he facilitates dialogue in some of the most challenging and seemingly intractable of violent conflicts. He shares how important it is to protect Indigenous languages and ensure mother-tongue education opportunities exist.Episode recorded: 14 September 2017Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisAudio engineer: Gavin NebauerEditor: Chris HatzisProduction assistant: Claudia HooperBanner image: Pixabay
How can a teaspoon of nanoparticles have a greater surface area than a football field? It's not a silly riddle, but the reality of the burgeoning field of nanodynamics, which among endless applications, could revolutionise medicine and tailor cancer treatments. PhD student Matt Faria shares his commitment to discovering more about these particles' potential and how his dedication to experimentation lead him to jump out of a plane. Low-gravity isn't cheap, and without access to the international space station Matt and his colleagues took it upon themselves to skydive from 14,000 feet, testing how synthetic crystals form in zero gravity.Episode recorded: 12 August 2016Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisAudio engineer: Arch CuthbertsonEditor: Chris HatzisProduction assistant: Claudia HooperBanner image: Pixabay
More and more parents are taking discrimination cases to court, alleging that schools are not making adequate provisions to accommodate their children's learning needs. Why do so many feel the need to resort to such extreme measures? Teacher and researcher Dr Shiralee Poed says it's really important that every child can go to their neighbourhood school, and it is possible for teachers to cater for a diverse range of learning needs. She shares her thoughts on the controversial My School ranking website, the learning interventions that work and her advice for aspiring teachers.Episode recorded: 13 October 2016Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisAudio engineer: Arch CuthbertsonEditor: Chris HatzisProduction assistant: Claudia HooperBanner image: Pixabay
In the wake of President Trump's election, Washington Post op-ed columnist Dana Milbank questions whether the media should have given him so much free publicity and the role of journalists in an age where people can filter out the news they don't want to hear. He also questions the ethics of Wikileaks and muses on the misuse of the term 'fake news' - particularly by President Trump - to diminish unflattering coverage. Is propaganda on the rise and can journalists do anything about it?Episode recorded: 29 June 2017Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisAudio engineer: Arch CuthbertsonEditor: Chris HatzisProduction assistant: Claudia HooperBanner image: Pixabay
In this bonus episode, we head down to Newell's Paddock in Melbourne's inner-west to see the local community rejuvenate the former industrial site. We uncover the paddock's murky past as a former night soil dump, typhoid hot spot and abattoir. Speaking with residents, academics, teachers and students, we see how efforts to engage the community in urban renewal are are contributing to the site's restoration (and attracting many native waterbirds along the way).Recorded: 28 June 2017Interviewer: Claudia HooperProducers: Claudia Hooper and Dr Andi HorvathAudio engineer: Chris HatzisEditor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Claudia Hooper/the University of MelbourneFriends of Newell's Paddock and Friends of Maribyrnong Valley are planting native shrubs in the area in lieu of gifts to the over 1000 delegates who attend the Ecocity World Summit 2017.
Our reporter Dr Andi Horvath is given privileged access to the University of Melbourne's rare books collection, stored in a darkened room kept at 19°C, where books rest upon cushions and magnificent manuscripts and folios can be found. Susan Millard and Andi thumb the pages of great (and sometimes rather quirky) illustrated works, revealing the surprising stories behind why some of the 20th century's most celebrated artists decided to turn over a new leaf and add their art to books and poetry. From Henri Matisse's random rabbits and crayon fleurs de lys around the poems of a battle of Agincourt prisoner, to Joan Miró's distinctive colour blotches, they find that books and art belong on the same page. The Art on the Page exhibition is running from 1 August 2017 - 14 January 2018 at the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne.Episode recorded: 7 July 2017. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris Hatzis. Audio engineer: Arch Cuthbertson. Editor: Chris Hatzis. Production assistant: Claudia Hooper. Banner image: Theo Strasser (1956- ) Ghost bones Melbourne - Anajah Press, 2017.
In 2013 the University of Melbourne bought the Germaine Greer Archive, which includes over 150 hours of audio. Archivist Kate Hodgetts has listened to the audio collection in full. She talks us through some of its most notable moments, and how it reveals Greer's more "human, candid side". Much of the content comes from Greer's solo travels around Australia in search of a plot to land to buy, with her audio recorder for company. The recordings reveal a witty person with a deep appreciation for the beauty of the Australian landscape. Other records document her time reporting on the Ethiopian famine, and interviews with prominent female artists.
Producers: Dr Rachel Buchanan and Kate Hodgetts
Consulting producer: Dr Andi Horvath
Audio engineer: Gavin Nebauer
Editing: Kate Hodgetts, Gavin Nebauer and Arch Cuthbertson
Voiceover: Chris Hatzis and Claudia Hooper
Production assistant: Claudia Hooper
5 Things About... is a creation of Dr Andi Horvath
Banner image: Kate Hodgetts/The University of Melbourne
Dr Andi Horvath meets Dr Seona Candy - an academic at Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, and an expert in the importance of urban green areas. As the EcoCity World Summit comes to Melbourne, Dr Candy says our focus on building resilient, sustainable ecocities of the future must focus on its socio-, ecological, and technological systems; because a city is not just about its infrastructure or its technology, it's about its people.Recorded: 20 June 2017Interviewer: Dr Andi HorvathAudio engineering: Arch CuthbertsonCo-production: Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Claudia HooperThanks to Belinda YoungImage: Green space in Japan/Getty Images
Our reporter Dr Andi Horvath is given privileged access to the usually off-limits to the public Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology. She speaks to Professor Stefan Lohmander, an anatomy expert, about how to decrease our risk of osteoarthritis.Episode recorded: 24 May 2017Interviewer: Dr Andi HorvathProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisAudio Engineer: Arch CuthbertsonEditor: Chris HatzisProduction Assistant: Claudia HooperBanner image: Jim Hooper
What does it mean to oversee more than 35 million internally displaced and stateless peoples? Erika Feller shares her many years of experience working for the United Nations Refugee Agency and contemplates Australia's current refugee policy.Episode recorded: 4 May 2017Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisAudio Engineer: Arch CuthbertsonEditor: Chris HatzisProduction Assistant: Claudia HooperBanner image: Climatalk.in / Flickr
Environmental psychologist Dr Wouter Poortinga shares how the 5p plastic bag tax in the UK reduced consumption between 70 and 90 percent almost overnight. He discusses how, with a little bit of prompting, habits can change and how we need a plan to stop wasting take-away coffee cups.Recorded: 8 February 2017Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisAudio Engineering: Gavin NebauerEditor: Chris HatzisBanner image: Claudia Hooper and Lep Beljac
Professor Anne Kavanagh, Head of Gender and Women's Health Unit, Centre for Health Equity, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health shares how changes in her own life led her to question our understanding of the health of those living with a disability. A proud activist, Professor Kavanagh shows us that having a disability need not equal poor health - society needs to change.Recorded: 15 March 2017Interviewer: Dr Andi HorvathProducers: Dr Andi Horvath and Chris HatzisEditor: Chris HatzisAudio Engineer: Gavin NebauerProduction Assistants: Claudia Hooper and Cecilia RobinsonBanner Image: Pixabay
Why is poo a taboo? How do our lavatory practices affect our health? What is a toilet graveyard? How can mapping our defecation spots help improve sanitation? Which cultures are the most likely to use excrement-related swear words? Come with us as we weave between psychology and science to unpick and unpack the wonders, weirdness and wackiness of one of our most primal activities. Welcome to (slightly more than) five things about poo. With guests Prof Nick Haslam from The University of Melbourne and PhDc Naomi Francis from the Nossal Institute, Melbourne, Australia.
In the evolutionary timeline for mammals, we've not been around that long as a species. Paleoanthropologist and Miegunyah Fellow at the University of Melbourne Professor Bernard Wood asks what does it mean for our planet that we continue to decimate the environment of our closest relatives? Also, find out how looking for the fossils of our ancestors is like a drunk looking for their keys under a lamppost and discover the hominem species you never knew existed...Recorded: 6 June 2016. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producers: Andi Horvath and Chris Hatzis. Editor: Chris Hatzis. Engineer: Arch Cuthbertson.
Join reporter Steve Grimwade as we eavesdrop on Prof Laura Parry. She discusses the potential for the aptly-named hormone relaxin in treating hypertension and heart disease. Find out how ditching maths and languages to follow snails led Professor Parry to her work as researcher in cardiovascular disease and pregnancy. Listen in as she shares her thoughts on the thornier topics in medical research: animal testing and Big Pharma.Recorded: 29 July 2016. Interviewer: Steve Grimwade. Producers: Chris Hatzis and Andi Horvath. Editor: Chris Hatzis. Engineer: Arch Cuthbertson.
With her posse of dedicated volunteers, bio-scientist Annie Aulsebrook is out catching swans at Albert Park Lake. She's studying the effect of light pollution on our urban birds. She chats to Dr Andi Horvath about Black Swan myths, capturing techniques and how lakeside research isn't all swanning about.Recorded: December 2016. Interviewer: Dr Andi Horvath. Producers: Chris Hatzis, Dr Andi Horvath. Editor: Chris Hatzis. Engineer: Arch Cuthbertson.