Science Friction

Chemist Kim Kwan didn’t realise how much they needed to find their queer crew in science until they did.  Rami Mandow threw in a successful career in finance and business to find true love — astronomy.  They share frank, fearless stories about coming out as third culture kids and why bringing their whole selves to science - their queer self and their nerd self - has been transformative.

Australia is hosting the 2023 World Pride festival and queer botanists are celebrating by bringing their full selves to their science.Ryan O'Donnell is an accomplished opera singer and musical theatre performer turned botanist studying orchids and fungi.Botanist Hervé Sauquet is piecing together the evolutionary history of flowering plants – most of which are bisexual.  They're here, they're queer, they're fabulous and join Natasha to discuss why connecting the personal and the professional matters to science. 

From the nomadic world of the Sahara Desert to a fantasy wonderland inside a Melbourne industrial warehouse ... meteorites are a growing business and a controversial one. Are the secrets inside space rocks at risk of being lost to wealthy collectors in the West? And, the battle of the Arab world’s first — and first female — meteorite scientist to save her geological heritage.

A rock celebrity with a wild biography.  Saharan nomads, a weight-loss doctor feeding an unusual addiction, scientists seeking the origins of Everything. 'Black Beauty' has it all. The meteorite with a mighty story, with love from Mars.

Scientists Jonathan Napier and Cathie Martin remember when they needed armed guards and high fences to protect their genetic experiments. But the rules around genetically modified crops are rapidly changing. What could this mean for your dinner plate? (REPEAT)

A pair of twin girls is born in the late 1980s and their mother, Chris, is told a series of ‘facts’ about them.Each born with their own placenta, Chris is told it’s extremely unlikely that her twins are identical, but, if they were, they’d be a perfect DNA match. She’s also told that her daughters have a much higher likelihood as adults of conceiving twins themselves.These were the foundations of how Chris and her daughters understood their ‘twin-ness’ as they grew. But in recent years, new research has proven that none of these assertions is true.So what has science learned about twins in recent years and what are the mysteries that researchers are still trying to solve? And even if you’re not a twin, maybe you were at some point in your development? There could be a way to find out very soon.For RN Summer we're playing some our favourite programs from the past year. This program was first broadcast in February 2022.GuestsProfessor Jeff Craig@DrChromoProfessor in Epigenetics and Cell Biology at Deakin University School of MedicineDeputy Director, Twins Research AustraliaChris KulasElizabeth Kulas’s motherJennifer KulasElizabeth Kulas’s twin sisterHostElizabeth KulasScript editing by Joel Werner

Science journalist, biologist, podcaster, teacher and activist Dr Ilya Kolmanovsky is a superstar science communicator.He hosts one of the biggest Russian language podcasts. Bigger than podcasts on sex or politics.But he's no stranger to the brutality of Russia's political leadership.Now, with Putin's violent invasion of Ukraine and as a new Iron Curtain descends, Ilya and thousands of others inside Russia have just made the most wrenching decision of their lives.For RN Summer we're playing some our favourite programs from the past year. This program was first broadcast in March 2022.Guest:Dr Ilya KolmanovskyScience journalist, biologist, podcaster, presenterFurther information:Goliy Zemlekop (Naked Mole-Rat) podcasthttps://zemlekop.libsyn.com/websiteSound engineer: Matthew Sigley

Leading computer scientist and co-founder of Black in A.I, Dr Timnit Gebru, was hired by Google to co-lead its Ethical AI team with another tech industry trailblazer Dr Margaret Mitchell.The team investigated the ethics of artificial intelligence to understand and prevent its potential harms.Timnit was the first Black woman the company had employed in a research scientist role.Then Google terminated her contract sparking an international outcry.Some 7000 industry colleagues and others, including thousands within Google itself, signed a petition protesting her departure.Then Dr Margaret Mitchell was fired too.Now Timnit is driving "community-rooted" artificial intelligence research free from what she describes as "Big Tech's pervasive influence".For RN Summer we're playing some our favourite programs from the past year. This program was first broadcast in April 2022.Guest:Dr Timnit Gebru@TimnitGebruComputer scientist and engineerFounder of the Distributed A.I Research Institute (DAIR)Co-founder, Black in A.IFurther info:The Algorithmic Justice LeagueCoded Bias (documentary film)Data in SocietyGender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification (Buolamwini, Gebru; 2018)Timnit Gebru's publications (Google Scholar)Petition in support of Dr Timnit GebruWhy Timnit Gebru Isn’t Waiting for Big Tech to Fix AI's Problems (Time, 2022)Timnit Gebru is building a slow AI movement (IEEE Spectrum, 2022)On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? (Bender, Gebru, McMillan-Major, Mitchell; 2021)AI at Google (Sundar Pichai, 2018)"The withering email that got an ethical AI researcher fired at Google" (Platformer, 2020)"We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here's what it says" (MIT Technology Review, 2020)"Inside Timnit Gebru's last days at Google - and what happens next" (MIT Technology Review, 2020)Google fires top AI ethics researcher Margaret MitchellOn racialised tech organisations and complaint - a goodbye to Google (Alex Hanna, 2022)Constructing a Visual Dataset to Study the Effects of Spatial Apartheid in South Africa (Sefala, Gebru, Mfupe, Moorosi, 2021)The In/justices of AI (Science Friction, ABC RN, 2020)Chatbot mania and algorithms of oppression (Science Friction, ABC RN, 2017)

What does it take to reimagine your life?In this occasional Science Friction series, scientists who end-up their lives and strip themselves of their professional identity to become artists.Kolkata-born engineer Nishant Jain flew in the face of expectations, threw in a PhD in biomechanics, and reinvented himself as a cartoonist, writer, and self-taught artist.Now the self-described 'Sneaky Artist' hosts a podcast of the same name and sells his urban artworks to a growing global fanbase.For RN Summer we're playing some our favourite programs from the past year. This program was first broadcast in April 2022.Guest:Nishant Jain@SneakyArtThe Sneaky ArtistArtist, cartoonist, writer, urban sketcherVancouver, Canada

It started with an idea.Then came the university car park full of tonnes of fish heads.Now this extraordinary 20-something couple have deployed a mighty maggot army to turn 50 tonnes of food waste a week into … well, you'll want to listen to find out.A story of science, ingenuity, and revolution.We throw out a third of the food we produce, and the food system is one of the biggest contributors to global warming. Let's stop the rot!For RN Summer we're playing some our favourite programs from the past year. This program was first broadcast in July 2022.Guests:Phoebe GardnerCEO and co-founder, BardeeArchitectAlex ArnoldCTO and co-founder, BardeeScientistStephanie StubbeVet and founder, AniPalAnna AugustineProject ManagerTrader HouseJames GrantJunior sous chefCumulus, MelbourneFurther information:BardeeThe Melbourne Accelerator program