Science Friction
ABC listen
Science Friction's latest season is: Artificial Evolution. In 1996, Dolly the Sheep became the first ever cloned animal. Nearly 30 years later, genetic technology has reshaped the world around us. What exactly has happened, where are we headed, and are we OK about it?
In this series, environment reporter Peter de Kruijff tells the surprising stories of genetic engineering. Meet the scientists changing the food we eat and creating animals with organs we can use. Hear about the criminal conspiracy to clone a giant sheep, and the teams bringing extinct animals back from the dead.
Artificial Evolution traces the influence of genetic technology from Dolly into the future. It’s the latest series of Science Friction, an award-winning podcast from ABC Radio National.
Brain Rot (Season 3): How does being chronically online affect our brains? Technology reporter Ange Lavoipierre explores the wildest ways people are using tech — from falling in love with AI companions to data-dumping a life into a language model — and the big questions about our own screen use.
Cooked (Season 2): Why do some studies show ice cream is good for you? Why do some people say they feel good going carnivore, and do we really need as many electrolytes as the internet tells us? Food and nutrition scientist Dr Emma Beckett cuts through these confusing findings to explain how nutrition science works.
AI Overlords (Season 1): AI didn't come from nowhere, and its development hasn't been a smooth, straight line — it's been rife with drama, conflict and disagreement. Technology reporter James Purtill looks at where AI came from, who controls it and where it's heading.
In this series, environment reporter Peter de Kruijff tells the surprising stories of genetic engineering. Meet the scientists changing the food we eat and creating animals with organs we can use. Hear about the criminal conspiracy to clone a giant sheep, and the teams bringing extinct animals back from the dead.
Artificial Evolution traces the influence of genetic technology from Dolly into the future. It’s the latest series of Science Friction, an award-winning podcast from ABC Radio National.
Brain Rot (Season 3): How does being chronically online affect our brains? Technology reporter Ange Lavoipierre explores the wildest ways people are using tech — from falling in love with AI companions to data-dumping a life into a language model — and the big questions about our own screen use.
Cooked (Season 2): Why do some studies show ice cream is good for you? Why do some people say they feel good going carnivore, and do we really need as many electrolytes as the internet tells us? Food and nutrition scientist Dr Emma Beckett cuts through these confusing findings to explain how nutrition science works.
AI Overlords (Season 1): AI didn't come from nowhere, and its development hasn't been a smooth, straight line — it's been rife with drama, conflict and disagreement. Technology reporter James Purtill looks at where AI came from, who controls it and where it's heading.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Oct 6, 2019 • 36min
Pulsar woman: It's not a bird, it's not a quasar, it's...
The signals were weird. But was what happened afterwards even weirder?
Sep 29, 2019 • 59min
Broad Band - the untold story of the women who made the internet
Have you heard these stories of what was and what could have been? You'll want to. If we CARE enough, could the internet be way, way better?
Sep 22, 2019 • 30min
Bioerror to bioterror - does synthetic biology give new tools to terrorists? Part 2
Will bioterrorism become more targeted with the help of new tools in biotechnology and synthetic biology? From your cells to crops, pandemics to plagues - are the risks real or far-flung? Natasha Mitchell was the only journalist in a NATO security workshop considering the threats. Hear what insiders have to say.
Sep 15, 2019 • 29min
Bioerror to bioterror - what if a human-engineered virus escaped the lab? Part 1
Scientists can now 'engineer' biological organisms never before found in Nature. What if they make a mistake, and a synthetic virus escapes the lab? Or a rogue mind turns to synthetic biology to wage bioterror? Is anyone watching?
Sep 8, 2019 • 26min
Lovers in the Lab: when your passion for science becomes passion for each other
Meet three couples who have taken their romances way further than most. Frank, passionate, hilarious stories of making it work.
Sep 1, 2019 • 30min
Tai Asks Why - the seventh grader with a cult science podcast and mind for big ideas
Meet a 12 year old scientist who's got a whole lot of questions...enough to take you to the moon and back.
Aug 25, 2019 • 31min
Only technology will save us from ourselves - Science Friction's Beaker Street Great Debate
The battlelines are drawn, brains tuned, arguments sharpened and teeth gnashing as two teams go head to head at the BeakerStreet@TMAG festival at Hobart's Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery for National Science Week. Your fearless adjudicator, Science Friction host Natasha Mitchell, cannot and will not be bribed*. (*Except with wombats).
Aug 18, 2019 • 29min
This famous physicist wants to solve a big mystery – cancer
Why is a famous physicist and cosmologist usually interested in Big Questions about the Universe now diving into the deep history of cancer?
Aug 11, 2019 • 27min
Artists on the loose at the Large Hadron Collider - Science Friction at the CERN
88 metres underground, in the labyrinth of chambers and corridors of the world’s large particle accelerator, art and science collide in wild and wonderful ways.
Aug 4, 2019 • 26min
A mind on the move - Nobel winner Venki Ramakrishnan on being an outsider, borders and Brexit
How can a Nobel Prize winning scientist feel like an outsider?
