Our Changing World

Since the 1800s, tuberculosis (TB) has been responsible for an estimated 1 billion deaths. In New Zealand today, we don’t get many cases of TB, but worldwide it is the leading infectious disease killer. In the early 1900s a TB vaccine was developed. Called the BCG vaccine, it’s still used today. While it is the best TB vaccine we have, it’s not actually great at preventing TB infection, only providing some protection for the younge...

2020 saw the start of two global pandemics. Covid-19, of course, but also H5N1 bird flu. The latter has swept around the world leaving millions of dead wild birds and marine mammals in its wake. It has reached everywhere – except Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Alison Ballance has been finding out why this strain of bird flu is so deadly, and what we are doing to get ready for its possible arrival on our shores.

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In late 2024 a cluster of sick green sea turtles washed up around the Rangaunu Harbour on the east coast of the Far North. It was just another mystery in a long line of all the things we don’t know about these ocean taonga. But a new telemetry study, using these very turtles, could change all that. The study has officially kicked off with the release of five satellite-tagged honu. Liz Garton finds out what secrets the researchers h...

One from the archives! By the 1990s Chatham Island tūī had all but disappeared from the main island. Slightly different to their mainland counterparts, these songbirds had survived on nearby Pitt and Rangatira islands. So a local conservation group decided to try bring them back. In this episode from 2010, Alison Ballance joins the ‘tūī team’ tasked with moving 40 birds from Rangatira island back to the main island.

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Smoke explosions. Fire tornadoes. Burning couches. It all happens in the fire lab: a purpose-built facility where researchers can safely set stuff on fire and study how it burns, for science. New Zealand experiences 4,500 wildfires every year, with the risk ramping up due to climate change. We visit the fire lab to watch a large gorse bush go up in flames and learn how this helps us prepare for future wildfires.

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How do you go about dissecting the world’s rarest whale? In December 2024, images from a concrete room in Mosgiel, just south of Dunedin, spread around the world as a team of people spent a week doing a scientific dissection on a spade-toothed whale that had washed up five months before. Claire Concannon joins them to find out what’s involved, what they have learned, and how the arrangements between local iwi and visiting scientist...

For nearly 30 years, researchers have been banding black petrel fledglings before they make their maiden migration to Ecuador. Only a handful of birds have ever come back. RNZ’s In Depth reporter Kate Newton travels to Aotea-Great Barrier Island to meet the birds, and the dedicated team trying to figure out the mystery of where they go.

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Each year, five Prime Minister’s Science Prizes are awarded in the most prestigious New Zealand science awards. We explore the AgResearch science that got the top recognition this year and catch up with two of the other winners. Science Communication prizewinner Professor Jemma Geoghegan talks about the hundreds of interviews she’s done about viruses, and Future Scientist prizewinner Rena Misra explains her project exploring how a ...

With its steep sides, forested slopes and heavy rainfall, Fiordland has interesting ecosystems both above and below the water. Below the surface of the inner fiords, a variety of sponges, corals, and other filter-feeding animals cling to the cliff-like reefs. Claire Concannon heads to Doubtful Sound with a research team who are habitat-mapping the fiords to better understand what’s there, and how things are changing over time. They...

Cooper’s orchid is New Zealand’s rarest and most elusive, with fewer than 250 plants left in the wild. It belongs to the group of potato orchids, which grow mostly underground as tubers – except for a brief period every few years when they push out a leafless stick with a few flowers. This largely subterranean lifestyle already presents a challenge, but saving this species is even harder because, like all orchids, the Cooper’s orch...

Kākahi are a keystone species in lake and river ecosystems, keeping the water clean by filtering one litre of water every hour. These native mussels once blanketed lakebeds across Auckland – but recent surveys found an alarming decline and disappearance across many lakes. A team of scientists and divers have mounted a rescue mission for one of the last remaining kākahi populations, trying to keep the mussels safe from invasive fish...

Claire Concannon spoke to RNZ's climate correspondent Eloise Gibson for the last episode of the Voice of the Sea Ice series. Listen to the full interview between Eloise and Claire in which they talk about the Paris Agreement, New Zealand's international climate commitments, and what we can do as individuals.

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Guests:

• Eloise Gib...

Human-induced climate change is impacting Earth’s global systems, including ice melt in Antarctica. What is the world doing to combat it? Signed in 2016, the Paris Agreement is the current global plan to tackle it. Countries pledge different emission reduction targets and then produce their workings and homework about how they are going about it. Where does New Zealand fit in? Are we doing our bit as a nation? And should we be both...

In February 2025, the world hit a new low for global sea ice extent. Arctic sea ice has been declining for several decades now, but Antarctic sea ice had been holding steady, until recently. With low summer sea ice extents for four years in a row, it appears that Earth’s warming has kicked Antarctic sea ice into a new regime. Claire Concannon speaks to scientists to understand what this means for Antarctica, what this means for us,...

Penguins that return to the ice in the middle of winter to lay their eggs. Seals that use cracks in the ice to keep their pups safe. And fish that have antifreeze proteins to survive in the icy cold waters... Antarctic life is tough, and full of surprises. Scientists are keen to piece together the Antarctic food web puzzle to better understand the interconnections, and to enable smart conservation decisions.

Guests:

• Arek Aspinw...

What’s it like to live and work on the frozen ocean? A team of researchers is camping out on the sea ice to investigate the small critters that live on the bottom of the ice, and among the sloshy platelet ice layer just below it. From microalgae to krill, these tiny organisms hold up the big complex food web of Antarctica. Scientists are keen to understand these communities, and how they might shift as the sea ice cycle changes.

G...

Step out on the sea ice just outside New Zealand’s Scott Base with researchers studying the physics of its annual cycle. Each year a massive patch of ocean around Antarctica freezes and then melts again come summer – Antarctica’s heartbeat. In winter, the ice effectively more than doubles the size of this already massive continent, and it plays a huge role in controlling our planet’s climate.

Guests:

• Dr Inga Smith, University of ...

Welcome to Antarctica - a land of ice, extremes, and ambition. From historic expeditions to modern day science projects, Antarctic exploration is a unique, and dangerous, experience. We meet one researcher involved in an epic journey across the largest ice shelf in Antarctica, mapping a safe route through a crevassed landscape for others to follow. Plus, we learn about the different types of ice found in this vast, frozen landscape...