Tomorrow's World

For the first episode of 2022 Stella and Isla interview Dr Georgia Piggott, a researcher from the University of Auckland's School of Environment, about what net zero emissions actually means. They explore this through the example of Beijing's 2022 Winter Olympics, with additional comments from Professor Justin Hodgkiss, the co-director of The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, and a lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington.

This week Stella and Isla tell each other their favourite instances of a good old fashioned pivot in the lab. They discuss the invention of Viagra, sticky notes, slinkies and more, all discovered through open-minded approaches to what may be perceived initially as failed experiments. 

This week, Stella and Isla are inspired by the recent controversy surrounding the proposed CBS show 'The Activist', in which contestants are pitted against each other to achieve the greatest amount of change. They interview community psychologist Dr Niki Harré about why public outcry might have been so ferocious, and her project that discusses the psychology of environmental activism, The Infinite Game.

This week Stella and Isla give each other a wake-up call on how bad their memory recall can actually be. Investigating common misconceptions about how human memory operates, brain structures responsible for this, and evidence that says humans overestimate their ability to remember, Tomorrow's World reminds us all to use the COVID tracer app.