AMplify - The Australian Museum Podcast

From copy girl to editor at the age of 23, Ita Buttrose’s boundary-pushing career at The Telegraph, Cleo, The Australian Women’s Weekly and The Sunday Telegraph won her status as a feminist icon. The legendary media trailblazer, businesswoman, best-selling author and 2013 Australian of the Year continues her active leadership role as a committed community and welfare contributor. Recorded 21st August 2018 in the Hallstrom Theatre at the Australian Museum. Lunctime Lecture Series: Australians Shaping the Nation is a series of talks with six distinguished Australians who are shaping the nation across science, sport and the arts running from 21 August to 25 September 2018.

Drawing on scholarship and activism connected to cultivation by Indigenous peoples, this talk - examines texts by Indigenous writers alongside historical and contemporary media texts about gardens and gardening to explore the diverse ways in which relationships (human and non-human) are mediated and nurtured through acts of gardening. Recorded 14th June 2018. HumanNature is a landmark lecture series at the Australian Museum that offers a range of talks by leading international scholars in the Environmental Humanities. It will draw on insights from history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and related disciplines and explore the important roles that the humanities can play in addressing some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our day. This Lecture Series is jointly funded and coordinated by the University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, Western Sydney University, the University of Sydney and the Australian Museum.

This lively panel is hosted by Director and CEO of the Australia Museum Kim McKay AO and features 2017 Eureka Prize winners Associate Professor Madhu Bhaskaran, Dr. Emilie Ens and Dr. Bryn Sobott. The discussion covers a diverse range of topics including citizen science, science in challenging and remote settings, wearable technology and the profile of science in Australia. The full list of 2018 finalists is available on the Eureka Prizes’ website, with winners to be announced at a black tie award dinner at Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday 29 August.

What are plants? What can they do? And how can we bring a feminist approach to our relationships to them? Listen as Catriona Sandilands explores our relationships with botanical others, including shifting understandings of what plants are and what they can do. In this time of accelerating environmental and social change, Sandilands asks: what might we learn, what new approaches and possibilities might become possible, through a feminist botany? Recorded 12th July 2018. HumanNature is a landmark lecture series at the Australian Museum that offers a range of talks by leading international scholars in the Environmental Humanities. It will draw on insights from history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and related disciplines and explore the important roles that the humanities can play in addressing some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our day. This Lecture Series is jointly funded and coordinated by the University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, Western Sydney University, the University of Sydney and the Australian Museum.

For more than two decades Oron Catts (Director of SymbioticA, an artistic laboratory at the University of Western Australia) has been at the forefront of experiments in the manipulation of fragments of living systems for artistic ends. This lecture explores the role that art has played and continues to play in shifting understandings of what life is and does. Recorded 24th May 2018. HumanNature is a landmark lecture series at the Australian Museum that offers a range of talks by leading international scholars in the Environmental Humanities. It will draw on insights from history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and related disciplines and explore the important roles that the humanities can play in addressing some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our day. This Lecture Series is jointly funded and coordinated by the University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, Western Sydney University, the University of Sydney and the Australian Museum.

Hear Mike Hulme, University of Cambridge, explores some of the many fascinating ways climates are historicized, known, changed, lived with, blamed, feared, represented, predicted, governed and, at least putatively, re-designed. Recorded 23rd April 2018. HumanNature is a landmark lecture series at the Australian Museum that offers a range of talks by leading international scholars in the Environmental Humanities. It will draw on insights from history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and related disciplines and explore the important roles that the humanities can play in addressing some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our day. This Lecture Series is jointly funded and coordinated by the University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, Western Sydney University, the University of Sydney and the Australian Museum.

Hear from Deborah Bird Rose from the School of Humanities and Languages at UNSW, as she examines the intersection of humans, animals and landscape, and the fragility of their relationships in the face of environmental crisis and loss. Recorded 8th March 2018. HumanNature is a landmark lecture series at the Australian Museum that offers a range of talks by leading international scholars in the Environmental Humanities. It will draw on insights from history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and related disciplines and explore the important roles that the humanities can play in addressing some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our day. This Lecture Series is jointly funded and coordinated by the University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, Western Sydney University, the University of Sydney and the Australian Museum.

The icy expanses of Antarctica were an unforgiving frontier for early explorers. Among them was Sir Douglas Mawson, who faced frostbite, exposure and exhaustion in his journeys across the frozen continent. He passed some of his time writing love letters to his wife back home. But how did he stumble on a meteorite in all that ice and snow? Our new podcast series reveals the hidden stories behind some of the world’s greatest wonders. Join journalist Charles Wooley and Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay as they explore the astounding objects and specimens of the 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum exhibition, housed in the nation’s oldest museum gallery.

Early British settlers were so flummoxed by the platypus that they thought it an elaborate hoax, created by stitching a duck’s beak onto the body of a mole. But Australia’s greatest charlatan is an entirely different creature to behold. Our new podcast series reveals the hidden stories behind some of the world’s greatest wonders. Join journalist Charles Wooley and Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay as they explore the astounding objects and specimens of the 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum exhibition, housed in the nation’s oldest museum gallery.

One of the most significant objects in the Australian Museum’s collection is a humble, hand-crafted bird-shaped pestle. Its invention marked a crucial moment in human history, upon which entire civilisations grew. The influence of the simple stone object stretched all the way to the Pacific, where this story takes a sudden, violent twist. Our new podcast series reveals the hidden stories behind some of the world’s greatest wonders. Join journalist Charles Wooley and Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay as they explore the astounding objects and specimens of the 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum exhibition, housed in the nation’s oldest museum gallery.

The wilful and wanton destruction of the Tasmanian Tiger is a sad reminder of the importance of conserving our natural history. Charles Wooley reveals the tragic tale of the man who shot the world’s last Tasmanian Tiger in the wild. And the team tells the story of resurrecting the world’s rarest insect, now living on a lonely volcanic rock at sea. Our new podcast series reveals the hidden stories behind some of the world’s greatest wonders. Join journalist Charles Wooley and Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay as they explore the astounding objects and specimens of the 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum exhibition, housed in the nation’s oldest museum gallery.

Mel Ward started life on the stage as an acrobat and comedian. But something about the creatures he found on the beach as a child kept calling him back to the sea. But what drove him to collect 25,000 crabs from around the world? And what exactly is eccentric dancing? Our new podcast series reveals the hidden stories behind some of the world’s greatest wonders. Join journalist Charles Wooley and Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay as they explore the astounding objects and specimens of the 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum exhibition, housed in the nation’s oldest museum gallery.

Working in a museum in the 19th century was a hazardous occupation. In 1831, the Australian Museum’s inaugural custodian William Holmes accidentally shot himself with his own shotgun, while collecting a cockatoo. But the sudden demise of museum curator, Darwinian and “guardian angel” Gerard Krefft, was more curious still. Our new podcast series reveals the hidden stories behind some of the world’s greatest wonders. Join journalist Charles Wooley and Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay as they explore the astounding objects and specimens of the 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum exhibition, housed in the nation’s oldest museum gallery.

Sydney in the early 1800s was a fledgling colony, full of convicts, soldiers, settlers and social climbers – the kind of town where you might win and lose your fortune in a single day. With the release of Australia’s first bank note and the subsequent gold rush in NSW came the whiff of financial security. But how did a large gold nugget go from an abandoned mine shaft to a government office corridor game of cricket? Our new podcast series reveals the hidden stories behind some of the world’s greatest wonders. Join journalist Charles Wooley and Australian Museum Director Kim McKay as they explore the astounding objects and specimens of the 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum exhibition, housed in the nation’s oldest museum gallery.

Step inside the Westpac Long Gallery – home of . The nation’s first museum gallery is a treasure in its own right. Newly restored, it showcases the most important items in the museum’s collection of more than 18 million scientific specimens and cultural objects. Our new podcast series reveals the hidden stories behind some of the world’s greatest wonders. Join journalist Charles Wooley and Australian Museum Director Kim McKay as they explore the astounding objects and specimens of the exhibition, housed in the nation’s oldest museum gallery.

In the latest episode of AMplfiy, Australian Museum Director & CEO Kim McKay AO is joined by Michael Mel, Manager of the West Pacific Collection at the Australian Museum.

Join us on an archaeological journey through Jordan, over 8,000 years in the making, to the ancient cities of Pella, Petra and Jerash. Discover first-hand what it's like to be an archaeologist working in the Middle East uncovering Bronze and Iron Age city walls, palaces and temples; Greek and Roman townhouses, theatres and colonnaded streets; Byzantine churches and industrial workshops; and an early Islamic cityscape brought to a sudden end by a massive earthquake. The archaeological site of Pella in Jordan has been continuously occupied for more than 8,000 years! Stretching from the beginnings of settled life in the Neolithic to the dense urban environments of the Late Antique world. Hear about the highlights from 50 years of excavations from Stephen Bourke (USYD), archaeologist and Director of the Pella Excavation Project. This talk discussed some of the major discoveries made over the years, and their significance to on-going research on the history of the southern Levant, the birthplace of all the major monotheistic religions and the wellspring of Western Civilisation.

The AM held its annual AMRI Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony on Wednesday 9 August 2017, designed to recognise eminent researchers and science communicators who have made outstanding contribution to science and biodiversity conservation.

Kids are full of difficult, challenging questions. Why are we destroying the reef? Why won't we accept refugees on our shores? Is it ever ok to tell a lie? Each of our minor and momentous decisions shape the world we’re making for our children. In this episode of AM Live, Dr Simon Longstaff offers engaging approaches to teaching children how to think and behave ethically.

For NAIDOC week, Laura McBride talks to Kim McKay about her indigenous heritage, the start of her museum career and how museums play a special role to be able to change the way Aboriginal people are portrayed.