Earshot

The caste system has impacted the lives of many South Asians for thousands of years, but how does it affect communities here in Australia?

What's it like when an ordinary day suddenly spins out of control? Three people tell their stories of a near-death experience

In the remote Aboriginal communities of Central Australia, a musician most of us have never heard of, was “bigger than The Beatles”.

Come inside a neo-natal intensive care unit, where the lives of premature babies hang in the balance. Four mothers remember the excitement and the agony of their babies' first few months of life.

A documentary maker can’t forget the hopes and dreams of a 14-year-old boy he interviewed and returns to the same rural town nine years later to track him down.

Cystic fibrosis affects nearly 4000 Australians but how much do you know about what it's like to live with?

30 years ago Bill was a Policeman and Brett was a teenager heading towards a life of crime. But then Bill said something to Brett that turned his life around. This is a rare encounter between two men whose lives have been scarred by violence and anger, who want to reach out and help each other to heal.

2020 will forever be remembered as the year which was turned upside down in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic. Using intimate audio diary recordings, this series follows 11 people from around the country and across several generations through this rollercoaster year. In the final episode, we hear from a group of people in their 40s.

Covid-19 has turned everyone’s lives upside down and as the year has dragged on, we are all learning to live with a new post-pandemic economic and social reality. Using intimate audio diary recordings, this episode captures the lives of four people in their 30s, who've all experienced the precarious nature of existence this year.

Covid-19 has created a new economic and social reality. Using intimate audio diary recordings, this series follows the lives of 11 people, spread around the country and spanning several generations, through the rollercoaster of 2020

A gay family story with a twist. Gay couples John and Charlie, and Ruth and Betty hit some very modern day family dilemmas.

About twenty years ago two gay couples met by chance in Sydney. Betty and Ruth wanted to have children, so did Charlie and John. But the boys didn't just want to be sperm donors, they wanted a family. Four parents two gaybies tracks the foursome over the next two decades, as their unconventional family plan hatches

What if instead of looking at the world through complex systems like politics, economics, community health, we observed the world through the lens of ice?

The All Blacks have taunted their opponents with haka for more than a century. But the world saw haka in a new light after the Christchurch terror attacks in 2019 triggered spontaneous haka performances in streets, parks and outside the Al Noor mosque.

What can dinosaurs and giant worms tell us about the meaning of time?

Chinese-Australia singer, Rainbow Chan, returns to her mother’s village in Hong Kong. She meets some charismatic grannies who sing surprisingly subversive and feminist protest songs, known as bridal laments.

The Ashkenazi Jewish population have a much higher risk of cancer than other people. In this story three families talk about receiving the news that could drastically change their lives.

Landays is a powerful and subversive form of poetry in Afghanistan, performed by women. Part of traditional folk culture, the poems are oral and improvised. And for the women who give voice to them, there's a price to pay.

On the 30th birthday of Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth we do a deep dive into the multi-billion dollar world of the beauty vlogger and the young feminists who love it.

Anyier Yuol has been a soccer star, beauty queen and a refugee. She's on a mission to change the face of Australian fashion and the lives of young African-Australian women.

Take a near empty tram through Melbourne in curfew and meet the people behind the masks who are keeping the city alive.

Before the tumours on her auditory nerve turn Kylie Webb’s world silent, she has a few sounds she’d like to hear one more time.

A documentary maker can’t forget the hopes and dreams of a 14-year-old boy he interviewed and returns to the same rural town nine years later to track him down.

Australia is facing a shortage in shearers — long hours, injury, poor working conditions, and extended trips away from home are making the job a difficult proposition for the next generation.

Have you been having more vivid dreams lately? You’re not alone. We delve into the collective unconscious to find out what’s behind these ‘quarantine dreams’.

What does your voice say about you? Not your choice of words, but all the extra information the voice carries, like our emotions, accents, even apparently our identity. Details that big tech and governments are more and more interested in each day.

Every month many young Australians pack their bags and travel to Israel to join the Israeli Defence Force. And when they do, the army calls them lone soldiers.

A family receives devastating news that changes their lives and propels them into a future they never imagined.

As New Year's Eve approached, the crossroads town of Cann River in the heart of East Gippsland was facing the flames of an unprecedented bushfire season. Three residents describe their response to the threat.

During the pandemic lockdown a documentary maker grows increasingly obsessed with his neighbours and sets out to meet them all.

A split second was all it took to shatter Judi Green’s life. It took decades, a lot of forgiveness and a little luck to piece it back together.

In the final episode Peter Mares is in Brisbane to see if the not-for-profit community housing model offers some solutions to the crisis in affordable housing.

An obscure Japanese musician has found millions of fans thanks to YouTube. Hiroshi Yoshimura's ambient synth music is perfect for long background listening and keeps you on the YouTube platform for hours, caught in the attention economy.

Peter Mares travels to Adelaide, home to the South Australian Housing Trust, which once set the gold standard for state housing authorities worldwide, but now struggles to house even the most vulnerable and needy citizens. With the public sector failing to meet the need, Peter goes onsite with an enterprising developer who claims he can build and sell houses at price that even pensioners can afford.

Peter travels to Hobart which in late 2019 was named Australia’s least affordable capital city for renters. More than one in four Australian households rent from a private landlord. There are growing numbers of long-term renters, older renters, and families renting with young children.

The COVID-19 virus has exposed the failings of Australia’s housing system like never before: rough sleeping and homelessness, the insecurity of renting, and a real estate boom-bust cycle. Our housing mess can be measured in lost productivity, poor health, high debt and growing inequality. Peter Mares visits four capital cities, to investigate what’s gone wrong with housing in Australia, and what we might do about it, beginning in his home town of Melbourne

A paramedic, an Indigenous educator in the remote Kimberley, and an international student turned bike courier take us to the frontline of working through COVID-19.

From the trenches of the home schooling front a teacher, a student and a parent tell the story of the education revolution brought on by COVID-19.

Stolen hand sanitizer, an iso wedding, losing all three of your jobs in one week—life at home in lockdown in Australia, as told through the intimate audio diaries of three women.

In 2019, the famous flying great white sharks of South Africa’s False Bay completely disappeared, leaving locals, scientists and a booming tourism industry desperate for answers. Are shark-eating orcas or climate change to blame? Or could the answer lie across the Southern Ocean in Australia?

The story of one man's slide into the white supremacist movement in Canada, and the aftermath. How do we deal with those who've engaged in the politics of hate when they decide to walk away from it?

The story of one man's slide into the white supremacist movement in Canada in the late 1980s, and which asks the question; whose voices should be heard in the aftermath of violence, as a community attempts to move towards life after hate?

The fascinating life story of Homer Rieth — a composer, poet and founder of the Minyip Philosophical Society.

If your government failed to provide running water, electricity, roads, safety from gender violence, or other staples of everyday life, what would you do? In the Solomon Islands people are taking matters into their own hands, even schoolgirls. If their government can’t provide, they’ll try.

We make it easy for New Zealanders to work in Australia but not so easy for them to survive in times of personal crisis. Four Kiwis tell their stories of falling between the cracks.

Tombstones were once doors to the afterlife, where spirits could pass through. Today they're smaller, but they still mark a place where we can leave offerings, tell stories and think alternative thoughts.

Cystic fibrosis affects nearly 4000 Australians but how much do you know about what it's like to live with?

How do you make people care when they risk going to jail for it? Three women helped start a movement in Jakarta bringing attention to West Papua, and today it’s seen thousands protesting across the country. But the personal toll has been huge.

After her own traumatic birth Elly Bradfield started asking other mothers about their births, it was like swapping war stories. Why are so many Australian women leaving the birth suite traumatised?

150 years ago thousands of young men were taken from the Pacific Islands. Today the scars are still being felt.