Plain Speaking

John Daley, Chief Executive of the Grattan Institute, joins the podcast to examine the growth of international education in Australia, and to discuss what impact the coronavirus is having on Australian universities. This episode was recorded in the University of Melbourne.

Ireland's Ambassador to the United States, Dan Mulhall, joins the podcast to discuss the continued relevance of Irish America and diplomacy in a time of increasing nationalism throughout the world.

How has our understanding of the universe changed overtime, how will our universe end and are we alone? Katie Mack, Assistant Professor of Physics at North Carolina State University joins us on the podcast to discuss. Katie is a theoretical astrophysicist who studies a range of questions in cosmology, the study of the universe from beginning to end. Throughout her career she has studied dark matter, the early universe, galaxy formation, black holes, cosmic strings, and the ultimate fate of the cosmos. Alongside her academic research, she is an active science communicator and has been published in a number of popular publications such as Scientific American, Slate, Sky & Telescope, Time.com, and Cosmos Magazine, where she is a columnist. You can find her on Twitter as @AstroKatie.

Lord David Puttnam joins the podcast to discuss the value of arts and humanities degrees.Lord Puttnam spent thirty years as an independent producer of award-winning films including The Killing Fields, Chariots of Fire, Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone and Local Hero. Together these films have won ten Oscars, ten golden globes, twenty-five Baftas and the Palme D'Or at Cannes from 1994 to 2004, he was Vice President and Chair of Trustees at the British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) and was awarded a BAFTA Fellowship in 2006. He is also a Fellow of the British Film Institute and is a member of the House of Lords in Westminster.

Keith Humphreys, former drug adviser to the Obama and Bush White Houses and the Esther Ting Memorial Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University, joins the podcast to outline how America's opioid crisis occurred, and what other countries can learn from it.

Former Irish President Mary Robinson, who also served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, discuses climate change.