Rear Vision - Podcast

Taiwan is one of the world’s key economies, yet it belongs to no international organisations and isn’t a member of the UN. Why is Taiwan diplomatically isolated and how does it survive economically?

While working from home during the pandemic has been a novel and sometimes difficult experience for office workers, companies and their employees have been experimenting with teleworking for decades.

While cybercrime and cybersurveillance are commonplace today, how many of us understand their effect our everyday lives? What’s revealed in the history of cybercrime, from its rudimentary beginnings in the 1980s to today?

Many Germans have only ever known one chancellor – Angela Merkel. Voters are about to choose a new leader for the first time in sixteen years and the election is being described as the most open and uncertain Germany has ever had.

The spread of the delta variant of Covid from the cities to rural and regional Australia has exposed weaknesses in the health system. Rear Vision traces the story of rural health care from bush medicine through to the pandemic.

Almost three thousand people died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. All planes were grounded and rumours and conspiracy theories swept the internet as a shocked nation tried to make sense of what happened.

The federal government believes the way to lower Australia’s carbon emissions is through technology and one of the technologies it is backing is carbon capture and storage or CCS. What is CCS, how and why was it developed and, most importantly, does it work?

Barnaby Joyce’s return to the leadership of the National Party is bound to stir things up in Australian politics. Where does he fit in the story of one of Australia’s oldest and most unusual political parties?

Afghanistan has been invaded by foreign armies five times in less than 200 years. Every occupation ultimately failed. What can we learn from this history?

The Taliban emerged from the rubble of the Soviet-Afghan war and in turn were ousted by the US led War on Terror. Twenty years on, the Americans and their allies gone and the Taliban are once again in control of Afghanistan. Who are the Taliban and what will their return to power mean?

In the early 1990s, Nelson Mandela and his political party, the ANC, ended apartheid peacefully but the leaders of the new democracy did not address the economic inequality of the apartheid era. Today it is tearing the nation apart.

The Tokyo Olympics have gone ahead despite the global pandemic, but it’s the not the first-time world events have conspired against the games. 40 years ago, the Olympics ran head long into the Cold War, and sport became collateral damage in a standoff between the USSR and the United States. This is the story of how Australia and its athletes were caught up in the crisis, and a how the impact of that time is still being felt today.

The Caribbean nation of Haiti, whose president was recently assassinated, is the world’s poorest and most unstable country. Yet this was not always the case. For over a century it was France’s richest colony and later became the first black-led republic. Why has Haiti become such a mess?

Bolsonaro's right-wing politics, boorish comments and mishandling of the Covid pandemic have invited comparisons with Donald Trump, but Brazil’s president came from a poor family and spent almost thirty undistinguished years in parliament before he won the top job.

In 2018, Ethiopia had a new, reformist prime minister and was opening up politically and socially while forging a peace deal to end its long conflict with Eritrea. Today, it’s at war with itself. What went wrong?

Orangemen—with their distinctive bowler hats, white gloves, and orange collarettes—are a Protestant Irish organisation. For centuries they have celebrated the military victory of the Protestant King William over the Catholic monarch King James with an annual parade. What is this all about and how does the Orange Order fit into the politics and social life of Northern Ireland today?

For fifty years, governments have cut taxes for corporations and the wealthiest people, arguing that this will stimulate the economy and lead to prosperity for us all. Known as trickle-down or supply-side economics, does it make any sense, and has it worked?

A scheduled Ryan Air flight from Athens to Vilnius was diverted as it flew over Belarus and told to land at Minsk because of a bomb threat. What can pilots do if there’s a bomb threat and how do we ensure international air safety?

In 2018 Australia signed a Treaty with Timor-Leste establishing sea boundaries based on a line equidistance from each other’s coasts. Yet Australia’s seabed boundaries with Indonesia, established in the 1970s are much closer to Indonesian than Australia. How did that happen, and is it fair?

Around the world there is a rapidly growing body of scientific evidence suggesting that psychedelic drugs are safe and highly effective when used under medical supervision. Why did promising treatments first become illegal and how did drugs once seen as possibly leading to madness or death become once again treatments for mental illness?