The humble crisp has come a long way since its invention more than 200 years ago. You can get them in flavours such as bolognese, cheeseburger and beef rendang … which taste uncannily like bolognese, cheeseburger, and beef rendang. So how are these complex flavours made, and how do food chemists get them tasting so close to the real deal?

Nearly two decades ago, a small group of scientists in Australia came surprisingly close to resurrecting the extinct gastric brooding frog.  Hear from the scientists involved about the highs and lows of de-extinction efforts, and the challenges facing researchers today. 

Since President Donald Trump retook office, the state of research in the States has been precarious for many, with billions of dollars of proposed cuts from science and health research. But there is a silver lining: other countries such as Australia are implementing programs to recruit US researchers looking to relocate.

We often hear about places where the air quality is bad, even dangerous, but what about where the air is the cleanest on Earth? That air can be found blowing onto the north-west tip of Tasmania at Kennaook/Cape Grim, where an air pollution station has quietly been keeping track of how humans have changed the makeup of our atmosphere for 50 years. So what does the world's cleanest air tell us?

A weekly injection that stops that hankering for hot chips and donuts? Many people on Ozempic and similar medications report this phenomenon, saying they no longer have incessant thoughts about sweets and fried food. So how do these drugs, known as GLP-1 agonists, work in the brain to dial down "food noise" and help people lose weight?

It's the size of a sesame seed, but it could cause unfathomable destruction to Australia's forests and urban canopy. A beetle called the polyphagous shot-hole borer (Euwallacea fornicatus) is silently spreading through Perth and its surrounds, forcing councils to chop and chip hundreds of trees — even century-old Moreton Bay figs. So how does the tiny pest cause such massive problems?

First they learnt how to flip open wheelie bin lids. Now they're using water fountains. Masters of the urban landscape, sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) are more than capable of some quirky (and sometimes messy) antics. So what do these entertaining exploits tell us about cockie innovation — or even cockie culture?

Pauline Newman meets biosecurity officer Brent Madden who explains how a dog’s obsession with tennis balls is used to elicit a desired behaviour.

Challenging ideas such as whether plants communicate and planting according to cycles of the moon - a healthy scepticism presented with hope and vision.  

Professor Marilyn Renfree describes the genius and spirit of her late husband reproductive biologist Roger Short.

Get ready for gravitons, dark photons and altered transition states. Kathryn Zurek takes us on a tour of a bewildering world, our world, with us knowing so much, while at the same time, knowing so little.

A couple of months ago, a killer started mobilising off the South Australian shore — one that would wipe out marine life, make surfers feel sick, and smother picturesque beaches in thick foam. The culprit? A bloom of tiny organisms called microalgae. We can't see them with the naked eye, but in big enough numbers, they can devastate ecosystems. So what made the South Australian algal bloom so lethal, and can anything be done about blooms like it?

Len Fisher tackles accusations that some scientific papers and some science books contain misinformation. How well are they checked? Are academics too busy or too few to monitor the work of others?

In her book Beyond Green, Geographer Lesley Head argues that Indigenous presence in wilderness in Australia has existed in a balanced way. And Robyn is taken on a walking tour of the highlands around the Shoalhaven River in NSW by two Indigenous guides.

If you were impressed by generative AI such as ChatGPT, then artificial general intelligence or AGI promises to really knock your socks off. Over the past couple of decades, tech companies have been racing to build AGI systems that can match or surpass human capabilities across a whole bunch of tasks. So will AGI save the world — or will it spell the beginning of the end for humanity?

The next time you pick up a bag of spuds from the supermarket or fill up the car with petrol, you can thank the Treaty of the Metre for the metric system that underpins daily life. The treaty was signed exactly 150 years ago, when delegates from 17 countries gathered on a Parisian spring day to establish a new and standardised way of measuring the world around us. But the metre's inception predates the treaty that bears its name by nearly 100 years. So how did it come about, and how has its definition changed over the centuries?

It can come, not only from the indulgent use of drugs, but also from the exchange of genes within our own guts.

Claire Saxby shows how the restless Earth can have fissures in its crust leading to huge explosions from deep in the sea, forming islands such as Hawaii whilst allowing thousands of living things to flourish under water.

Long-term stress may have consequences. These are being studies in marmots and humans.

The diapause, the suspension and then triggering of foetal development, has allowed Australian marsupials to battle the extreme environment with remarkable success.