This week we find out what it is to be flexitarian; discover the precautions farmers are taking to keep their workforce safe amid coronavirus; and learn how a vegetable could become part of your sunscreen.

A long-awaited inquiry into the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is released; backpackers under attack; the ACCC says regional fuel prices should drop as stocks turn over and world oil prices plunge.

Meet the passionate people preserving relics of the past in regional Australia. Whether it's old houses, churches, trucks, or trains, we'll introduce some of those undertaking painstaking restoration work to bring beauties of the past back to life.

This week how the closure of restaurants is hurting other boutique business; and butchers are bouncing back after a rush on meat.

South Australia repeal GM crop ban, Fire website outcry, Online machinery scams investigated, Sales of lavender booming

Feeding the village, tourist town helping residents get by with hampers of good grub; wildlife sanctuary staff making sure animals get lots of attention during lockdown; bustling market falls quiet as stalls stripped back to bare essentials, end of an era as nuns leave former convent, turned ecology site.

This week we find out why Australia wants a review of wet markets; why farmers can't get their tractors repaired and how agriculture is hitting its sweet spot.

Cedar Meats abattoir shuts after discovery of a coronavirus cluster and working from home (WFH) forces wool designers to produce comfortable clothing

Finding fossils in underground cave dig; street artist turning country town into open air art gallery; friends turn super sleuths to solve historic mystery; tricks to growing tasty tomatoes on huge trellises.

This week we find out why the US meat industry is in coronavirus chaos; hear the Belgian potato industry's cry for frites; and discover why this Mothers' Day will be a great one for flower growers.

How the US and China have handled the coronavirus contagion and the secret history of Labor's election debacle.

Is the government pulling the right levers to mitigate the economic impact of Covid-19. How long can the Australian economy survive shut downs before we tip into irreparable damage? 

Hear from the chair of Infection Control at the National University Hospital in Singapore, who says home isolation is impossible to enforce, and everyone who tests positive for coronavirus should be isolated in hospitals or in designated hotels until they recover. Plus, veteran British historian Max Hastings discusses his new history of the World War Two Dambusters raid.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has told the army to shoot to kill anyone who violates strict COVID-19 lockdowns. Has he gone too far, or is this just more of the strong-man machismo that made him so popular? We talk to Sheila Coronel, Professor of Investigative Journalism at the Columbia Journalism School. Also, why don't Australian prime ministers leave quietly? Australia has had 30 prime ministers since its Federation in 1901. According to political historian Norman Abjorensen they all have one thing in common: a marked reluctance to relinquish power.

What impact will Boris’ bout of COVID-19 have on his leadership and the nation’s fight against the virus?  His former boss, political columnist Charles Moore weighs in. Later in the program Moore discusses his best-selling three volume biography of Margaret Thatcher. Was the Iron Lady really an eco-warrior? Would she have supported Brexit?

Weighing up Turnbull’s legacy This week, former Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull published his memoir A Bigger Picture.  In it he settles old scores with colleagues over his 2018 ousting, which he describes as an “act of madness.” What is his legacy, and how will history judge our nation’s twenty ninth Prime Minister? Jacqueline Maley, columnist at The Sydney Morning Herald. Jennifer Oriel, columnist at The Australian   And, the death of a führer April 30th marks seventy-five years since Hitler’s suicide. Cambridge historian Brendan Simms challenges past scholarship on the führer, and argues that Hitler saw Anglo-American global capitalism, not Bolshevism – as Germany’s real enemy. He says this philosophical link reveals worrying connections between Hitler and the rise of populism today. Brendan Simms, Professor in the History of International Relations at Cambridge University, and author of Hitler: Only the World was Enough.  

How do we revive the economy once the pandemic passes? Coronavirus has Australia headed for a deep recession, so what can we do now to plan our way out of it? Is the answer more government intervention and state planning? Or, is now the time to launch a new reform agenda that sharpens the incentives to work, save, invest and hire? And, Alexander Downer: “I don’t know what China’s problem is” Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for an investigation into the origins of the virus. But China’s Ambassador in Canberra upped the stakes this week by threatening a trade and tourism boycott of Australia. Australia’s longest serving Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer says China’s Cold War style rhetoric will backfire on it, and it is in everyone’s interests to investigate the origins of the virus. But as we head into recession, can we afford to aggravate our largest trade partner?

Sweden's virus experiment: death sentence, or a way forward?

Tombstones were once doors to the afterlife, where spirits could pass through. Today they're smaller, but they still mark a place where we can leave offerings, tell stories and think alternative thoughts.

We make it easy for New Zealanders to work in Australia but not so easy for them to survive in times of personal crisis. Four Kiwis tell their stories of falling between the cracks.

If your government failed to provide running water, electricity, roads, safety from gender violence, or other staples of everyday life, what would you do? In the Solomon Islands people are taking matters into their own hands, even schoolgirls. If their government can’t provide, they’ll try.

The fascinating life story of Homer Rieth — a composer, poet and founder of the Minyip Philosophical Society.

The story of one man's slide into the white supremacist movement in Canada in the late 1980s, and which asks the question; whose voices should be heard in the aftermath of violence, as a community attempts to move towards life after hate?

The story of one man's slide into the white supremacist movement in Canada, and the aftermath. How do we deal with those who've engaged in the politics of hate when they decide to walk away from it?

In 2019, the famous flying great white sharks of South Africa’s False Bay completely disappeared, leaving locals, scientists and a booming tourism industry desperate for answers. Are shark-eating orcas or climate change to blame? Or could the answer lie across the Southern Ocean in Australia?

Stolen hand sanitizer, an iso wedding, losing all three of your jobs in one week – life at home in lockdown in Australia, as told through the intimate audio diaries of three women.

Crocodiles have been reported as far south as Angourie in northern New South Wales, but did they ever inhabit the region?

Flying a light plane to pick up bread from the local bakery is not something most Australians can relate to, but it is the unique reality for some who call Central Australia home.

Alice Baxby wasn't around to enjoy (endure) the scrunchie hair trend of the 1980s and '90s, but she's selling hundreds of the hair ties to help drought-affected families.

Floodwaters more than 50 kilometres wide came through Queensland's Channel Country earlier this year, but the extended weather forecast is not promising a return to average rainfalls.

Floodwaters that crippled North Queensland's cattle industry have turned the Channel Country further downstream into a landscape of dramatic contrasts.

Generations of droving families have been running cattle through outback Queensland, but that could soon end as young people leave the regions in search of other opportunities.

One man's rescue of a four-year-old girl from a fire 80 years ago has been formally recognised, and now the girl he saved wants to give something back to his family.