"Overshoot means we consciously and willingly allow to go above 1.5 while waiting for the right technology...to then rapidly bring down the overshoot. It would fulfill the goal laid out in the Paris Agreement however the damage done on the way is tremendous. The obligation of scientists is to lay out different ( plausible) scenarios. Its government…

"We changed the world to start to see that automobile dependence was not a good thing...we were much hated by the automobile associations, the vehicle companies, the oil companies. They used to run people who would follow us everywhere. And they were given money to write papers attacking us." Professor Peter Newman reflecting on his work in the US …

If you follow thought leaders on the energy transition, you’ll be familiar with the hashtag Electrify Everything. The argument is that a huge proportion of ‘global energy needs’ can be met with electricity sourced from renewables – and to use it we simply need to – electrify everything. This is the message of Australian inventor and engineer Saul G…

"I think it’s a scandal in this country that so much wealth is being extracted and Aboriginal people are no better off." Paul Cleary is author of "Title Fight: How the Yindjibarndi Battled and Defeated a Mining Giant". For over a decade he followed this story as a journalist, before finally sitting down to the task of recording the complex and trou…

The power of great storytelling has never been more evident than in the fight to change hearts and minds around sustainability, environmental care and climate action. The people who can sweep us along in their enthusiasm and can-do attitude offer solid foundations for optimism as we witness the earth struggling …and the solutions seem too much for …

It began with a deep sea cod. David Carter and Jeff Hansen are people who have the courage of their convictions. What’s surprising about their alliance is that at first glance one might struggle to see HOW their convictions are aligned. David Carter is CEO of Austral Fisheries. He’s spent 42 years with the company, working from the ground up as a g…

There’s a whiff of hope out there. Sounds like a strange thing to say as Australia comes to grips with the early days of the corona virus pandemic as this episode is recorded. We are a nation that has literally NO IDEA what 2020 will be like. Yet, there’s still hope and author Andrew Wear has tapped into it. Andrew is a very experienced public poli…

Can meditation really save the world? Tom Cronin thinks so. Big ideas and the people who chase them are captivating. Tom Cronin’s big idea is to bring an ancient practice, meditation, and sweep the message of it's benefits across the globe using the even more ancient art of storytelling. The practice of meditation is tens of thousands of years old …

The idea of an artificial womb – a place where a prematurely born baby could continue to safely gestate closer to full term, is one scientists have worked on intermittently since the late 1950’s. Until recently it’s been considered a wild card, a fairly unorthodox angle on dealing with pre-term birth. Currently there are a handful of teams around t…

Dominic Smith’s fourth novel, the New York Times best seller "The Last Painting of Sara de Vos" won both Indie Book of the Year AND the Australian Book Industry awards Literary Fiction Book of the Year in 2017. For Rare Air, he joins me to discuss his most recent novel, The Electric Hotel. Set around the birth of cinema, as the Lumière Brothers sen…

Eighteen years ago, when I started as a student of the Pilates method, I had no idea how quickly it would become a significant part of my daily life. A few years into my practice, I qualified as an instructor in Sydney, but didn’t last long as a teacher, finding the effort of giving so intensively in the studio was a tough offset to my job as a mot…

As a former food critic, chef, author and TV personality Matthew Evans is not new to the ethical sourcing of food. It’s been a passion for well over a decade, and the first book he published on the topic was 2010’s The Real Food Companion. Fast forward through many beautiful publications, and numerous TV series and we arrive at his most recent book…

Professor Nadia Rosenthal has devoted her distinguished career to the understanding of how humans might harness the regenerative powers of some animals, to combat the vagaries of injury and age. Professor Rosenthal's research focuses on the role of growth factors, stem cells and the immune system in repairing injury and her primary focus is on hear…

Joe Williams would be the first to agree that he won the genetic lottery in a lot of respects. A proud Wiradjuri man, born in Cowra, west of the Blue Mountains in NSW, he was spotted early as a naturally gifted rugby player. Joe was recruited at thirteen years old and played with the NRLbetween 2004 to 2008. After switching to boxing in 2009, Joe w…

When I was looking for inspiration, I came across @lisatamati a genuine legend of the ultra-running scene. Similar age to me, she has run over 140 ultras, over 70,000 kms, all the while battling asthma and back that was broken when she was 21. While she epitomises the gritty competitor, she is also a deeply compassionate, community minded person. E…

“I think I knew on some level that I wasn’t conventional, that I wasn’t an acceptable kind of girl and I worried very much (as a young woman) about how that might affect me…and it took me a very long time to realise that it was a waste of time trying to control how other people responded to me.” I met Jane Caro at the 2019 Perth Writers Festival ju…

It's essential there's mystery around the life of a sex worker. No need to explain why. When a worker and client are in the room together, what transpires can feel deeply positive, therapeutic, even, over time, transformative. But outside the room, that exchange is weighed down by layers of societal judgement that can render it degenerate, immoral …

The word is "repartee". Anglican priest Father Chris Bedding has it by the truckload, yet he's extremely careful to make sure that his significant comedic and improvisational talents are kept out of the Church context. Called to the priesthood while still at school, there's no doubt Chris takes the complex and demanding role as parish priest very s…

Composer Cat Hope has been described as “a superstar of Australian new music” best known for her graphic scores and new score-reading technologies. It’s fascinating to wonder how the daughter of a military family with no especial leaning towards the arts has ended up being an internationally recognised authority on experimental music. Despite the b…

Ever wondered what it means to be Sikh? In Harjit Singh, we couldn't have found a better or more patient explainer. Harjit was a little kid when he came to Australia (Perth) with his family. Growing up there were times when he wondered if it were possible to be an Aussie and Sikh at the same time, for example after 9/11 when people assumed he would…

There are so many life experiences in the melting pot that makes Aisha Novakovich who she is today. Parents from starkly different backgrounds, losing her Dad very young, being fostered out to numerous homes, and learning to be a Westerner before she learned to be a Muslim. By her early teens Aisha already had a strong sense of social justice and w…

"It hits you in a spot where it makes you feel that no-one values Indigenous people. We’ve done nothing wrong. I come from a proud generation of Yindjibarndi people." This is the second part of our interview with Michael Woodley, CEO of the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation. Michael describes how, aged in his twenties, supporting a young family a…

Nick Lawrence is a remarkable human being. Dealing with gender dysphoria made life difficult enough, from refusal to wear girly clothes as a very young child to coming out as lesbian as a teenager, Nick was approaching 30 before he decided to take the plunge and take steps to transition. On top of that, based on his loneliness and lack of community…

“Until we know no more Yindjibarndi are coming, we’ve got no right to give this country away.” Michael Woodley, Bidarra law carrier, CEO Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation As a journalist and sometimes just as a human being, I have followed the story of the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation and Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group in their na…

Religious vocation isn’t commonly discussed anymore, so it’s hard to get a sense of how prevalent the calling is. When we think of vocation, it’s often the image of a nun or priest in robes that springs to mind. Major Margaret MacDonald’s story is a modern story of vocation, of giving one’s life to God’s work by rolling up sleeves and getting among…

“When I say I’ve been sober for 21 years, I mean entirely sober. I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, I stopped drugs I stopped everything. I haven’t had a cup of tea. I stopped every single stimulant and thing that could in any way alter my behaviour. I am that kind of person. I’m an all or nothing person. I was ALL. I was a polyglot user of any…

“When I was 18 and roused up and passionate I probably wanted to pull the pillars of the world down. I certainly have learned over a lifetime that the most effective way of bringing change is to show that there are other ways of doing things better and more humanely.” Trawling the internet doesn’t reveal as much as you’d expect about poet John Kins…

“We all had nicknames and because I knew a little bit more than the rest of the guys they said you better be The General…and when I went to Jamaica in ‘84 I met Mortimo Planno who was a very important Rastafari and introduced myself as The General and he said 'You should be the General for Justice' … so from ‘84 onwards its been General Justice." H…

As a young boy growing up in Vancouver, Canada, Tina Ross had one big wish. To be a girl. She had no way of explaining why she felt different. But those differences made her withdrawn and anti-social because she could never “be herself”. A letter wrongly addressed to “Tina Ross” was to give the young boy a name, when finally, decades later living i…

"We said it would be really nice if the first tissue-engineered sculptures to be presented within a cultural context would be a something like a worry doll because it would express our anxieties and worries and the fact that it's not that simple." Hidden away in the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology at the University of Western Austra…

“I’m sick and tired of the things you never get tired of…so that’s why I decorate my house the way I do” Every community has characters. Evi Ferrier is one of Perth’s. Her home, in the swanky suburb of Mosman, is mosaicked from top to bottom - a riot of eye-catching colour in a sea of boring good taste. Her free spirit and sense of fun pervades eve…

"My father lived and breathed soldiering... and he didn't want me to be in the Army. But he signed the paper... and away I went on a career I've loved." Mick Malone's 27-year career in the Australian Defence Force was mostly spent in the SAS, including a twelve month tour of duty in Vietnam. His passion for military books was ignited by the reading…

It was arguably THE GUT that brought Dr Michael Mosley his earliest public recognition. His 1994 documentary on the work of West Australian researchers Professor Barry Marshall and Dr Robin Warren brought nominations for an Emmy, A BAFTA and also brought a LOT of mail.The experience marked the realization that Hippocrates was on to something 2500 y…

It was arguably THE GUT that brought Dr Michael Mosley his earliest public recognition. His 1994 documentary on the work of West Australian researchers Professor Barry Marshall and Dr Robin Warren brought nominations for an Emmy, A BAFTA and also brought a LOT of mail. The experience marked the realization that Hippocrates was on to something 2500 …

"I didn't learn that people didn't have the same visions as me until later in life" Although Rebecca Millman was used to the powerful intuition of her family members, she didn't accept or hone her abilities as a psychic medium until she was well into her 20's. There were plenty of experiences, including having objects thrown at her when she was alo…

“I’d sit by myself in the middle of the lawn being very sad that it was me. But very thankful it hadn’t happened to someone I knew.” Symon Still was a born athlete. He moved just because he could. Growing up in a family that was always doing some form of sport, it was natural he would fill many hours of the day trying to improve his fitness and ski…

"People really don't understand how poorly chemicals are regulated in Australia and how poorly risk is managed." Jane Bremmer was mother to a small baby when she and her partner Lee Bell moved into their first home in the Perth foothills. It wasn't long before they discovered they were living opposite a massive open toxic pit of petroleum waste, wh…

"There is no hope - you don't see anything that indicates your life will change." Joe Tuazama reflects on his seven years in a refugee camp in Guinea, where every day the main goal was to find enough to eat. First his family fled Liberia to Ivory Coast. But Ivory Coast was terrible in it's own way, so the family headed to refugee camps in Guinea, b…

I got a small piece of paper with a bullet telling me 'you have to leave, otherwise this will be it for you'. Doctor Eman Ahmad had been practising medicine in her home city of Basra in Southern Iraq for twenty years, but over time civil unrest and international attacks meant bombing and assassinations became part of daily life. She was given the o…

A career in the world of Indigenous art is a natural fit for Wardandi woman Clothilde Bullen, who has a number of acclaimed artists in her family. For ten years she was the curator of Indigenous art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia ( AGWA) and her depth of understanding about the potential positive impact of art to communities is second to n…

Militant activists don't often have fans in the media and general public with many having no time for their "lawlessness". In episode two of the Rare Air podcast, militant activist Simon Peterffy, who heads up the Forest Rescue group in WA, highlights his profound fears for the health of the planet. He has no time for petitions and cake stalls - he…

The story has a fairytale quality. Tina Harrod grew up in a tiny NZ town and arrived in Sydney aged 17 with a suitcase, a few hundred dollars and one incredible voice. That voice has been the ticket to a wonderful and profound life experience, in which she has discovered her true gift as a songwriter with encouragement and mentoring from her "unive…

Just found this conversation recorded live on RTRFM in 2010 ( the actual interview starts at 3'11). I can't believe myself - what drug was I on?Af Meri Fatin

It's essential that's there's mystery around the life of a sex worker.When a worker and client are in the room together, what goes on can feel deeply positive, therapeutic, possibly transformative.But outside the room, that exchange is weighed down by layers of societal judgement that can render it degenerate, immoral and dangerous.New Zealand-born…

The word is "repartee". Anglican priest Father Chris Bedding has it by the truckload, yet he's extremely careful to make sure that his significant comedic and improvisational talents are kept out of the Church context.Called to the priesthood while still at school, there's no doubt Chris takes the complex and demanding role as parish priest very se…