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 conta ..read more

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 ..read more

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 University Professor 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 connection Our sound engineer is Arch Cuthbe ..read more

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 prot ..read more

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 assistanc ..read more

“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 ar ..read more

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 en ..read more

“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 pers ..read more

“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 t ..read more

“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 ge ..read more