What does it mean that the universe is dying — slowly, quietly, running out of usable energy? How does where a galaxy grows up shape what it becomes? And how do we actually know that the gold in your wedding ring was forged in the collision of two dead stars?

Associate Professor Luke Davies is an astrophysicist at the University of Western Australia, based at ICRAR (the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research). He leads some of the largest galaxy surveys on Earth, spending a decade mapping how a galaxy's cosmic neighbourhood shapes its growth, size, and fate — think nature versus nurture, but for entire worlds. He's also hosted Neil deGrasse Tyson and curated TEDxPerth.

We talk about what it means to literally look backwards in time, why the universe's slow death is more interesting than alarming, the violent stellar collisions that forged the elements in your body, and the deep questions the field still can't answer.

A conversation about galaxies, deep time, and what it looks like to spend a career staring into the past.

You can spend years building something impressive and still wonder if it's what you actually wanted.

Izzy Di Domenico is a lecturer, unit chair, and nine-year Deakin veteran whose path ran through a PhD and a stint inside elite AFL.

We talk about what academic life actually involves once you're in it, the identity shift a PhD quietly produces, and what it's like to step into leadership while still wondering if you really know what you're doing. We also get into AI in education — whether it's a useful tool or a crutch that stops students learning to think — and why universities are struggling to respond coherently.

Underneath all of it: the pressure of your 20s and 30s to keep moving, the trap of saying yes to everything, and the slow realisation that busy isn't the same as living.

If this one sounds familiar, send it to someone in their early career.

Most new dads want to be present and involved. Many quietly become passengers in their own family — and don't realise until it's already happened.

Norma Barrett is a public health researcher at Deakin University who studies the transition to fatherhood — particularly why so many men show up committed and still end up feeling peripheral, guilty, or unsure of their role.

We talk about what "passenger parenting" actually looks like, how it develops without men really choosing it, and whether it's possible to interrupt the drift. We also get into dad guilt and self-care, why fathers find it hard to ask for support, the pressure of the provider role, and how to speak honestly about fathers' needs without minimising what mothers carry.

This is a conversation about fatherhood. But it's also about identity, relationships, and the gap between the parent you hope to become and the one early parenthood can quietly shape you into.

If this episode lands for you, send it to a new dad or an expecting one.