Ockham’s Razor

What do boiled bandicoot, smuggled salami and an invisibility cloak have in common?Dr Deb Bower can tell you. She's a conservation biologist working on reptiles and amphibians ... with no shortage of fieldwork adventures to share.And the key to understanding the relationship between those seemingly very different items lies among the rough forest tracks of Papua New Guinea.Originally broadcast 7 March 2021.

520 million years ago, the oceans teemed with some of the most bizarre animals ever to have lived.

Every day we make hundreds of choices, big and small, that build to become the story of our lives – the friends we make, the careers we choose, our partners and our purpose.

What if our entire universe, including you and I, could be boiled down to one object: a vibrating string?

They breathe air but live underwater, and like their land-dwelling counterparts their bites are venomous.

Nathan Brooks-English usually studies the geological processes that make mountains but on one particular field trip, the thing he learned most about was human connection.

You’ve got one, I’ve got one, and even cows have them. I’m talking, of course, about a microbiome – that collection of trillions of microorganisms that live on and in us and that we literally couldn’t live without.You know who else has a microbiome that’s a matter of life and death? One of our favourite insects: the honeybee. This week, we’re hearing from Mengyong Lim, who’s been getting up close and personal with bees’ digestive tracts to make sure we humans aren’t wreaking too much havoc on them…

The year is 1911, and a young man by the name of Thomas Midgely Jr. is graduating university with a degree in engineering.Thomas doesn’t know it yet, but he will have a greater impact on the Earth’s atmosphere than any other single organism.He will help create two world-changing chemical inventions that will improve the lives of many, and negatively change two parts of our ecosystem in the process with decades-long consequences.

If there’s one thing Australians know how to be smug about, it’s that our country is home to some of the most incredible ecosystems in the world.But today, we’re visiting one that is massive in size, massively economically important … and massively underappreciated, to the point that that you may never have even heard of it.

Mention the term “startup” and your mind probably goes to Silicon Valley and high-tech computer science.But startups exist in regional Australia as well – and what’s more, they’re crucial to our future.This week, we’re hearing from Elena Kelareva on startups in Gippsland, in regional Victoria – and how getting away from preconceptions is one of the first steps to startup success.