Sunday Extra - Separate stories podcast ABC listen

What happens when a person blows the whistle on wrongdoing? 

Can you guess this week's tweeter?

Recognised as Victoria’s Senior Australian of the Year 2024 for her work in animal advocacy, Glenys Oogjes shares her journey from Animal’s Australia’s first employee all the way to becoming the organisation’s CEO. 

In the late 7th century, silver coinage started to be used in north-west Europe, transforming the economies of the time.

But where did the silver in the coins come from? New research says the answer is Byzantine silver treasure and a mine in France.

In his latest book, Engineers of Human Souls: Four Writers Who Changed Twentieth Century Minds, author and former arts editor of New Scientist magazine, Simon Ings has focused on four writers: French nationalist Maurice Barre; Italian poet and muse for Mussolini’s fascism, Gabriele D’Annunzio; Maxim Gorky who was very close to Stalin; and Maoist writer Ding Ling.

The International Society for Humor Studies held its annual conference in Texas and one of the papers that caught the eye was, “How funny is ChatGPT?”. The answer seems to be, funnier than people, at least according Drew Gorenz, a PhD student at the University of Southern California and the man behind the data on whether artificial intelligence comes up with better jokes than folks.