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Science on Mornings on triple j

Once a week for a magic hour, Karl is Live on Air on triple j. It's an hour devoted to the collective exploration of some of the great mysteries of life, such as "why does the water in the shower slow down just when it gets hot?"

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Science on Mornings on triple j

Join Zan Rowe and her scientific guests, with a bunch of curious triple j listeners for a weekly injection of science, myth-bashing and answers! Science on Mornings is published every Thursday.

Join Zan Rowe and her scientific guests, with a bunch of curious triple j listeners for a weekly injection of science, myth-bashing and answers! Science on Mornings is published every Thursday.

All in the Mind

Why do we often avoid speaking our mind? Does swearing have an evolutionary function? What do linguistic taboos do to your brain? How are new words born? Acclaimed author of The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker is a self-confessed verbivore. To him language offers a window into the human mind and how it works. He joins Natasha Mitchell in a feature interview to argue there's nothing mere about semantics.

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Venerable Robina Courtin, acclaimed Australian Tibetan Buddhist nun, has excavated the suffering mind at its greatest depths of despair. Founder of the Liberation Prison Project, she's helped thousands of inmates release themselves from the prison withintheir mindusing Buddhist techniques. Venerable Tenzin Palmo was one of the first Westerners to be ordained as a Buddhist nun, spending years undergoing intense meditative practice in an isolated cave in the Himalayan mountains. We can all be our own therapist is their powerful claim. Read Transcript

What makes someone gay? The quest for the biological roots of sexual orientation remains rife with controversy. Is it in your genes, handedness, or the hormonal soup of the early foetus? Or, is the answer hidden deep inside the brain? Homo or heterothe science of sexual attraction captures everyone's attention. Read Transcript

As old as the state of Queensland itself, Goodna Mental Hospital became Australia's largest asylum, housing 50,000 people over its lifetime. During a time of major institutional and cultural upheaval, the Office of the Patient's Friend opened its doors in 1977, the first patient advocacy service to operate within the confines of an Australian psychiatric hospital. Part advocate, part whistle-blowerrunning the service has taken a might of steel and a heart of gold. Thirty years later, Nadia Beer remains in the role. Read Transcript

As old as the state of Queensland itself, Goodna Mental Hospital became Australia's largest asylum, housing 50,000 people over its lifetime. During a time of major institutional and cultural upheaval, the Office of the Patient's Friend opened its doors in 1977, the first patient advocacy service to operate within the confines of an Australian psychiatric hospital. Part advocate, part whistle-blowerrunning the service has taken a might of steel and a heart of gold. Thirty years later, Nadia Beer remains in the role. Read Transcript

In Conversation

In this polar year many initiatives are offering new insights into changes in Antarctica. Dr Phil Tucak from Perth has spent several months exploring sites where Weddell seals are found. His studies of their behaviour and biology at a time of change are both illuminating and exciting. Read Transcript

Australia could move entirely to renewable energy systems and transform our economy in ten years. It's a bold idea but one that co-author of Climate Code Red, Philip Sutton, believes is doable and absolutely necessary. Alexandra de Blas is in conversation with Philip Sutton about how he thinks we can rescue our climate from its state of emergency...in a decade. Read Transcript

The quiet hero of snoring therapy has just received a Clunies Ross Award, yet another recognition for physiologist Professor Colin Sullivan of Sydney University. His work began over thirty years ago and has led to a global, multibillion dollar industry based on masks directing airflows over the user's face. But is it true that apnoea, when people stop breathing as they snore, is behind most of today's vascular disease? And what next in this immensely important research? Read Transcript

Why do humans, of all the primates, have so many babies? And what happens when sisters offer to carry babies for other members of their family? What happens to kinship? Professor Marilyn Strathern, a social anthropologist at Cambridge and head of Girton College, and Karen Kramer, another anthropologist at Harvard, have been tracking the complexities of motherhood and babies across many cultures, with surprising results. Read Transcript

Ockham’s Razor

Professor Jane Goodall from the University of Western Sydney is fascinated by the dramatic unpredictability of culture change. Today she focuses on the debates surrounding climate change. Read Transcript

150 years ago Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace made a joint presentation to the Linnean Society of London of their views on biological evolution. But who was Alfred Wallace? Emeritus Professor Tony Larkum from Sydney University relates the story of this unsung man. Read Transcript

Today Richard Begbie from Canberra looks at the environmental cost of air travel. Airplanes add around 750 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year to the atmosphere and in the process burn 250 million tonnes of a non-renewable resource. Read Transcript

Ian Dunlop is Deputy Convener of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and warns that the oil supply will eventually run out and with that and the global warming issue in mind, we need to look for alternatives. Read Transcript

The Health Report

Australia has one of the highest success rates in organ and tissue transplantation, but it also has one of the world's lowest donation rates. About 3,000 Australians are on the official organ and tissue transplant waiting list and 20% of the people waiting for a heart, lung or liver transplant will die before they receive one. ABC journalist Phil Ashley Brown met a patient 20 minutes after she received the good news that she would get new lungs and he follows her progress through the transplant and recovery.  Read Transcript

A special feature about post traumatic stress disorder, which is very timely after the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader. It's an extraordinary story of the lessons learned from the war in Bosnia, treating the psychological trauma in adolescence.  Read Transcript

According to Professor Michael Kahn from Tufts University in Boston, about two thirds of oral cancer cases go undiagnosed until they are in the advanced stages when the cancer has already travelled to other sites in the body. It is extremely important that dentists are aware of this problem and screen their patients accordingly.  Read Transcript

Breast cancer prevention in women at high risk Listen Now

A large number of cases of breast cancer in women at high risk of the disease could be prevented if anti-oestrogen medications were used. Research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer in Melbourne has looked at this issue.  Read Transcript

Research done in Israel assigned 322 moderately obese people to one of three diets to investigate the effectiveness of the diets on weight loss. They looked at low-carbohydrate, Mediterranean or low-fat diets.  Read Transcript

The validity of published research findings Listen Now

Norman Swan talks to Professor John Ioannidis from the University of Ioannina in Greece and Tufts University in Boston about his paper which has the title: 'Why Most Published Research Findings Are False'.  Read Transcript

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