Our Changing World
RNZ
300 episodes
Dr Claire Concannon follows scientists into the bush, over rivers, back to their labs and many places in-between to cover the most fascinating research being done in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Episodes page 2 of 6
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The best use of your time
What does a ‘good day’ look like for you? Researchers are using wearable sensors and wellbeing surveys to understand how lifestyle patterns impact life satisfaction. Perhaps this can help us plan for more ‘good days’.…
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Return of the kākāpō files!
This upcoming summer is likely to be the biggest ever kākāpō breeding season, and RNZ will be following the twists and turns as they happen. The kākāpō files with Alison Ballance return for a second season. New Kākāpō…
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Restoring freshwater forests
Our freshwater ecosystems are facing numerous challenges. Many of New Zealand’s lakes have lost much of their native underwater plant life. At the Ruakura ‘tank farm’ in Hamilton, researchers have been working on a…
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Mixing oil and water, the greener way
Oil and water don’t mix — unless surfactants step in. At Auckland University of Technology, a team of chemists has created a new kind of surfactant made from wood pulp rather than fossil fuels or palm oil. They hope…
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Resurrecting Wellington's Flowers of the Underworld
Until late 2024, nobody had seen te pua o Te Rēinga “the flower of the underworld” in the Wellington region for more than a hundred years. A chance discovery of a small struggling population has kick started a race to…
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The rise of the gold clam
An invasive species has taken hold in the Waikato River, and it’s multiplying fast. Gold clams, tiny but relentless, are now found along a large stretch of the awa, where they threaten water infrastructure, and native…
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SAR4SaR - The folding, floating search and rescue device
New Zealand’s marine search and rescue region stretches from Antarctica to north of Samoa. If someone goes missing without any means of communication, that’s a lot of ocean to search. Now researchers and the New…
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What makes Ruapehu tick, and boom
It’s been 30 years since a dramatic series of eruptions at Mount Ruapehu. In that time, there have been great advances in monitoring and modelling volcanoes – but we still can’t look inside a volcano to see exactly…
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When the fame fades
Two years ago, the Australasian crested grebe, the pūteketeke, took out the title of New Zealand’s Bird of the Century. But when the Paris billboard got swapped out, and 'Lord of the Wings' ads no longer peppered…
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Putting AI to use in Aotearoa
From the public service sector to businesses to individuals, AI’s uptake across New Zealand has been rapid. And it’s not just large language models. Claire Concannon meets researchers who are harnessing different kinds…
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The Lough Hyne sponge mystery
This week, an underwater mystery connecting New Zealand and Ireland - the puzzle of the disappearing sponges of Lough Hyne. In the late 1990s/early 2000s James Bell was doing PhD research on the sponge communities that…
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Now on Wild Sounds: Voices from Antarctica
Need a nature fix? RNZ now has a podcast feed dedicated to our beautifully produced series telling stories from te taiao nature. Check out the Wild Sounds feed – now playing Voices from Antarctica, featuring Alison…
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Detecting cow burps from space
In March 2024, a satellite built to detect the potent greenhouse gas methane launched into orbit – backed by New Zealand to a final total of $32 million. MethaneSAT aimed to pinpoint large leaks from oil and gas…
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New Zealand science in space
In March 2024, a rocket launched from Florida carrying New Zealand’s first science payload to the International Space Station. The small cube, named Lucy, is a protein crystallisation lab developed by Dr Sarah Kessans…
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The I-spy carbon mobile
An elaborate game of carbon ‘I spy’ is happening on the streets of Wellington. With their brand-new mobile carbon lab, Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly GNS) can detect things like carbon dioxide and methane as they…
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The comeback bird
Takahē were believed to be extinct not once, but twice. Today their population is just over 500 – still not a huge number, but big enough that new homes are needed for these flightless manu. The latest area to welcome…
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Powering New Zealand
Gas shortages, a reversal of the ban of offshore oil and gas exploration, and a government plan to double geothermal energy in the next 15 years… There’s been a lot in the news recently about New Zealand’s energy…
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New Zealand’s youth vaping rates
New Zealand’s youth vaping rates are among the highest in the world. How did we get here and what will this mean for the future of our rangatahi? A 2018 court case paved the way for a loose regulatory start for vaping…
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The science of non-alcoholic beer
More and more of us are reaching for low or no-alcohol beers. As the market grows, the options are also expanding – but brewing beer without alcohol fermentation presents a tricky puzzle. In traditional beer brewing…
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Turning Taupō green
Project Tongariro was established as a living memorial for five people who died in a tragic helicopter accident. Last November, the project turned 40 years old. Over those four decades, activities have expanded beyond…
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The willows and the wetland
The battle on the frontlines of conservation continues around the motu. This week we head to the central North Island to join some of the staff and volunteers of Project Tongariro. Ecologist Nick Singers is…
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The dance of the lanternfish
During World War II, sonar operators discovered a ‘false seabed’ that appeared to move upwards during the nighttime. In fact, the sound waves were bouncing off huge numbers of small critters. This daily movement is the…
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A New Zealand approach to nuclear fusion
For a long time, nuclear fusion was viewed as a powerful, but unachievable, energy source, because the technological challenges were just too great. But recent advances, particularly in the development of powerful…
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Tauranga's living sea wall
In May 2024, 100 strange rocky structures were installed along Tauranga's harbour shoreline. These flower-shaped artificial rockpools, nicknamed 'sea pods', provide prime waterfront real estate for marine life – from…
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Protecting ‘Jaws’ – Aotearoa’s rarest freshwater fish
Speckled, pencil-thin and sporting an underbite: the lowland longjaw galaxias is New Zealand’s rarest freshwater fish species. With just seven known populations, this species is considered nationally endangered. Join…
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New insights from an old vaccine
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…
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Getting ready for H5N1 bird flu
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…
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Wild Sounds: The new podcast feed for nature
If you like Our Changing World, you should find and follow Wild Sounds: RNZ's new podcast feed dedicated to incredible natural science stories from New Zealand! Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details
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Tracking turtles
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…
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The Chatham Island tūī translocation
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.…
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Wildfire science heats up
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…
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Dissecting the world's rarest whale
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…
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The missing black petrels of Great Barrier Island
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…
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The 2024 Prime Minister’s Science Prize winners
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…
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Fiordland's underwater world
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…
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Helping New Zealand’s understated orchids
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…
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Keeping up with the kākahi
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…
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Bonus: RNZ climate correspondent Eloise Gibson
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…
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Voice of the Sea Ice 06 | Where to?
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.…
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Voice of the Sea Ice 05 | Changing times
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…
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Voice of the Sea Ice 04 | More life!
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…
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Voice of the Sea Ice 03 | Life!
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…
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Voice of the Sea Ice 02 | Antarctica's heartbeat
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 –…
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Voice of the Sea Ice 01 | A land of ice and ambition
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…
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Keeping tabs on Fiordland’s sharks and researching our deep-sea realm
Using acoustic tags and a network of receivers attached to the seafloor, researchers are tracking the movements of sevengill sharks in Fiordland. They want to understand how these apex predators adjust to changing…
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Recruiting the birds to help reforestation, and investigating ADHD and fidgeting
People with ADHD often fidget more than those without. Why might this be? Does it help them focus? Or distract them further? An Auckland Bioengineering Institute researcher has teamed up with the Mātai Medical…
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Trapping to help whio and searching for extreme life
The Eastern Whio Link project has been working to restore the whio or blue duck population in the rivers of the Waioeka Gorge. Sam Gibson, aka Sam the Trap Man, explains why he thinks the project has been so…
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Your friendly local environment centre
All around New Zealand, people are trying to make things just a little bit better for their communities. The 22 Environment Centres, or Hubs, found throughout the country aim to help with this. Claire Concannon visits…
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Trapping smarter not harder
Trapping is hard mahi, especially on rugged terrain thick with vegetation. If you need to check a trap frequently to clear it and refresh the lure, the kilometres of bush bashing quickly add up. Plus, in areas where…
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Summer science: 'Nature's itching to put the bush back'
The summer science series continues with an episode from RNZ podcast Country Life. From a block of gorse-infected scrubland on Banks Peninsula, renowned botanist Hugh Wilson has spent half a lifetime growing Hinewai…
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