The Yarn

Who do you think of when you think of an Australian pioneer?  Maybe Fanny Finch, the first woman to vote in Australia, who was also a woman of colour.  Or perhaps Rosaleen Norton, also known as the Witch of King's Cross. These are the trailblazers whose stories Dr Corey Martin is telling in her podcast, Maiden Australia. In this episode of News Bites, she discusses feminist approaches to storytelling and how podcasting ca...

It’s been called “a win for the ages”. Anthony Albanese is Australia’s first prime minster to win consecutive terms in more than two decades. His landslide victory has left the Coalition reeling, especially in major cities like Melbourne. 

For the final episode of Voters’ Voices, we’re focusing on Melbourne’s swing towards Labor. We’re also revisiting the key themes of this ...

Ahead of Australia's federal election on May 3rd, we’re bringing you another episode of Voters’ Voices. 

This week we're focusing on Marginal Melbourne — the city’s most tightly-contested electorates. Our reporters investigated the seats on a knife’s-edge this year and the hot-button issues that could decide their futures.

Featuring pieces by Ruby Perryman, Daniel Gawne, Ashleigh Wyss, and ...

Last week, we focused on young, disaffected voters ahead of the federal election on May 3rd. For episode two of Voter’s Voices, our reporters zoomed out. They went to a broader mix of voters, from retirees to small business owners. They found values were front of mind this year – like political honesty and social and environmental concerns.   

Featuring reporting by Maxine Ford, Morgan Reinwald, Kai-...

Ahead of Australia's federal election on May 3rd, we're launching a new series — Voters’ Voices. Episode one is all about what young voters really care about.  

Gen Z and millennial voters will outnumber baby boomers for the first time this year. It’s being called a cost-of-living election and our reporters investigated whether that’s true.They learned that young Australians feel poor, alienated,...

After more than a decade apart, a disabled 14 year old in Indonesia will be reunited with his parents in Australia. Despite being born in Melbourne, Jonathan Lumintang was later denied residency due to his cerebral palsy. A ministerial intervention has allowed him to stay — but other families aren’t as lucky.   

Our student Kristian Oka Prasetyadi reported on this issue for The Citizen and the ABC. For today&r...

Australia's first ever Christian terrorist attack — that's how Queensland police classified the 2022 mass shooting in the rural township of Wieambilla.

This week, producer Kirralee Nicolle revisits the incident in detail. She explores how Christian fundamentalism can turn deadly, especially in tandem with online conspiracies and mental illness.

This episode contains a high degree of violence and references to sexual assault.&...

Today we're focusing on the ties between the University of Melbourne and weapons manufacturers. While the University has downplayed these ties, our reporter James Costa has found it’s still pursuing new defence partnerships. In particular, the university is spruiking its forthcoming inner-city campus at Fisherman's Bend. The University’s behaviour during student protests last year has also come under scrutiny, particula...

We’re continuing our centenary celebrations by revisiting highlights from our News Bites series. Over the last three years, we’ve featured more than 40 of Australia’s top journalism experts.  These include newspaper editors, podcasters, war journalists, and our very own staff. Today you’ll hear some of their top tips for aspiring journalists, from making your first pitch to covering conflict zones. ...

Today marks the 100th episode of our award-winning student podcast, The Yarn. In the three years since we started, we’ve featured work from 151 emerging journalists and won the Climate Award at the Australian Podcast Awards. 

To celebrate our centenary, we’re revisiting the highlights from our environmental reporting. From the centre of a bee swam to a trip along the Murray River, we’re taking you to u...

Intimidated, lucky, chaotic: this is the emotional rollercoaster of the first days working in a newsroom. This episode is our survival guide to starting out in journalism, as delivered by three of our graduates. Gwen Liu from the Ballarat Courier, Harry Sekulich from the Daily Aus, and freelancer Wing Kuang speak to Senior Tutor Bernadette Nunn about how to survive and thrive when starting out in journalism. "The only way to do bet...

The Baillieu Library is the largest library here at the University of Melbourne. Walking through the library, the shelves are filled with books on everything from philosophy and history, to science and computing, all from a Western Eurocentric perspective. But the library also holds one of the largest collections of Rare East Asian books and materials in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Throughout this episode, J...

After President-elect Donald Trump's landslide win and a federal election looming, Australian politicians have lessons to learn from the US election.  

The Yarn spoke to two US political analysts, on different sides of the political aisle, to get a breakdown of the Republicans' success. 

Tim Lynch is a professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

Cory Alpert is a former Biden-Harris White House staffer, now a PhD ...

The Harry Brookes Allen Museum is one of many collections at the University of Melbourne. The University has collected artefacts that has contributed to a wealth of knowledge that is vital to Melbourne, Australia and the world. 

But the way University scholars collected these artefacts was not always done in an ethical way. Reporter Haoyue Deng learns how a rare marsupial mole is the key to the forgotten people behind some of the U...

What would Australia look like if we had monkeys swinging around our cities? In the late 19th Century, a number of associations called “acclimatisation societies” sprung up across Australia with the goal of bringing familiar plants and animals to what the British colonists saw as an impoverished landscape. 

This episode explores the massive ecological transformation that shaped what the university’s environment looks like today, an...

The Old Quadrangle is one of the most photographed spots on the University of Melbourne campus, with students and tourists alike posing under its iconic archways. 

The romantic European architecture feels like you've been transported to the set of Hogwarts, but did you know that the stones used to create this effect were stolen from Indigenous lands in Tasmania? 

Reporter Giulia Scenna investigates the history of our ...

Between the 1800s to1950s, anthropologists at the University of Melbourne were digging up burial sites of First Nations ancestors who had been laid to rest and collecting, rather stealing, their bodies. And while some of these human remains were returned to land and reburied, one collection remained hidden away at the university in a storage room until 2003. 

Uncover the true story of The University of Melbourne’s troubled past of ...

On the surface, the University of Melbourne is a historical spectacle – with its grand arches, stone facades, echoing hallways, and the chimes of the old clocktower.

But this university is also home to many secrets, from human remains unearthed on university grounds, to its role in nuclear testing on Indigenous lands.

In an eight-part series, students from the Centre for Advancing Journalism explore the university’s hidden past, re...

This week, we're bringing you another episode of News Bites, a series of live interviews about the craft of journalism.   

Today’s guest is Silvia Montaña-Niño. Silvia is a new CAJ lecturer and was a journalist at El Espectador, one of Columbia’s most important newspapers.  

At the start of her career, Columbia was besieged by guerilla warfare and death squads. Drug lords like Pablo Escobar waged brutal campaigns of terrorism. Targ...