“I don't think anyone really wakes up one day, gasping for breath and thinking everyone else is a lizard.”   

Like Molly, you probably know someone who has tried to convince you that vaccines are full of mind-controlling nanobots, or that 5G towers are really being used to brainwash us.

Maybe you’ve even heard some that actually make you stop and think: like, maybe something supernatural is going on in the Bermuda Triangle?  

A lot of people have lost faith in traditional institutions of power and are searching for answers that make sense of an often out-of-control world, even if those answers don’t make much sense either. 

The conversation around conspiracy theories – and the people who believe in them – quickly becomes an ‘us and them’ joke, full of eye rolls and unhelpful arguments.  

We’re trying to cut a path to a time before the conspiracy memes and comment threads to understand why this is happening, and what you can do to keep the conversation open.  

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Doomscroll Remedy is a University of Queensland podcast, produced by Deadset Studios. 

Hosted by Stephen Stockwell. Produced by Grace Pashley, Krissy Miltiadou and Rachel Fountain at Deadset Studios, in partnership with consulting producer Zoe McDonald and commissioning editor Greta Usasz at The University of Queensland.

What’s been keeping you up at night lately? 

Is it the pandemic? Has work been stressing you out lately? Or the fact your Great Aunt thinks the world is run by lizard people? Oh, or maybe it’s the fact that the ocean’s full of plastic – that seems like something you should probably be worried about, doesn’t it? 

And now you’re probably not feeling great – maybe your chest is a little tighter than before. 

How do you usually get over that feeling? What’s really happening in our body when anxiety takes over? 

Lots of us don’t even need a reason to feel anxious: some of us are just built like that.  

Turns out, humans actually evolved with this anxiety thing to help us survive as a species, and our brains learned some pretty neat ways to use fear in order to keep us alive.  

But what use is it to us now? And how can we manage it, so it still serves a purpose in our modern world? 

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Doomscroll Remedy is a University of Queensland podcast, produced by Deadset Studios. 

Hosted by Stephen Stockwell. Produced by Grace Pashley, Krissy Miltiadou and Rachel Fountain at Deadset Studios, in partnership with consulting producer Zoe McDonald and commissioning editor Greta Usasz at The University of Queensland.

We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land on which this show was made.

When you’re on the frontline of a raging bushfire, every second counts. 

Life-saving decisions have to be made in seconds, and anyone who’s lived through a bushfire can tell you the difference 5, 10 or 15 minutes can make.  

Even if you haven’t lived it, most Australians remember the images of glowing red skies, smoke-blanketed cities and angry thunderstorms that, instead of rain, brought more fire.  

The Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020 brought discussions about Australia’s changing climate to the forefront of the national consciousness, leaving many of us overwhelmed by the scale of the problem and how often we’ll be facing it in the future.  

We'll take you to where that deadly fire season started in Queensland: a little holiday town on the coast where fire spread with alarming speed. You’ll also meet the UQ researchers using artificial intelligence to support firefighters, communities and families to make those 5, 10 or 15 minutes count.  

Doomscroll Remedy takes you to the edge of the existential crises that keep us up at night and introduces you to the experts working to solve them.

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Doomscroll Remedy is a University of Queensland podcast, produced by Deadset Studios. 

Hosted by Stephen Stockwell. Produced by Grace Pashley, Krissy Miltiadou and Rachel Fountain at Deadset Studios. The consulting producer is Zoe McDonald and commissioning editor at The University of Queensland is Greta Usasz.

We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land on which this show was made.