All That We Touch

Every time we flush, we send a valuable resource down the drain: phosphorus, one of the essential building blocks of life and a key ingredient in the fertiliser that grows the world's food, along with nitrogen and potassium.
Meanwhile, we mine phosphate rock and potash, and generate climate pollution to manufacture ammonia (rich in nitrogen) to produce industrial fertiliser - essential for growing food to feed a hungry planet
But what if, instead of extracting our fertiliser in ways that damage the planet, we harnessed the waste our own bodies produce, feeding it back into the food chain, where it belongs?
In this episode, host Angelica Ojinnaka-Psillakis traces how humans went from managing waste locally to flushing it away without a second thought. And with researchers Jordan Roods and Kerry Tozer, she explores the growing movement to recover nutrients from urine and turn them back into fertiliser — from university labs in Sydney, to a redesigned toilet prototype, and to a community-scale ‘peecycling’ program in Vermont.
Voices
Angelica Ojinnaka-Psillakis — host; health and social researcher
Nicola Cama — historian, City of Sydney
Michelle Maloney — legal scholar, advocate for earth-centred governance
Kerry Tozer — doctoral researcher, Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS
Jordan Roods — doctoral researcher, Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS
Dana Cordell — associate professor, UTS; research supervisor to Kerry and Jordan
Cara Beal — professor of environmental science and health; director, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University
Abe Noe-Hayes — Rich Earth Institute, Vermont
Have your say
Jordan and Kerry have put together a short anonymous survey to hear what listeners think about urine recycling – "peecycling"! – and the problems it could solve. The survey link is in the show notes on the episode page. Participants who share their contact details go into a draw to win one of three $50 AUD Visa gift cards. Please make sure you read the participant information sheet and complete the consent requirements before completing the survey or uploading any audio or video that could identify you.
Try it for yourself
You can purchase your own bottle of eco-friendly urine-derived fertiliser to sprinkle on your plants via this link: https://www.nicegreentech.com/products
Further reading
You can find plenty of fact sheets and articles about the future of urine recycling and a circular nutrient economy at the NiCE Hub website.
You can learn more about the Rich Earth Institute here.
Credits
Host: Angelica Ojinnaka-Psillakis, with Jordan Roods and Kerry Tozer
Producers: Britta Jorgensen and Celine Teo-Blockey
Sound Engineering: Melissa May
Additional Music: Om Bhandari
Cover Art: Alexandra Morris
Editorial Support: Jane Curtis, Michelle Ransom-Hughes, Tamson Pietsch, Rachael Cusick
Executive Producer, Impact Studios: Sarah Gilbert
Thanks also to: Professor Ho Kyong Shon, Dr Ibrahim El Saliby, Associate Professor Jan-Olof Drangert, Professor Cara Beal, Dr Michelle Maloney, Dr Haley Joyell Smith, Gary Leeson, Mark Dunn, and Ed Hickson.
Liquid Gold is an Impact Studios production.

How can Wikipedia editors work with Indigenous content in a responsible way?
Hear a panel discussion with Indigenous lawyers Dr Terri Janke, Shavonne Wright, and Matilda Langford on the new Wikimedia Australia guide to respectful, accurate engagement with Indigenous knowledge.
Oral knowledge can't be referenced under Wikipedia's own rules, and that hits Indigenous knowledge hardest. Most Australian editors are non-Indigenous, and our research found their confidence with Indigenous content varies widely.
Hear how a new practical guide, developed with Wikimedia Australia and led by Dr Terri Janke, will support you to include and edit First Nations content on Wikipedia.
Recorded live at WikiCon Australia 2026.
Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) and Indigenous Data Sovereignty Guide
Wikimedia Australia has adopted the Guide as organisational practice for our Board, staff and funded projects. We are also pleased to share it as recommended good practice for editors and contributors who want to engage responsibly with Indigenous content across Wikimedia projects.
It's grounded in a set of clear values:
Valuing relationships and accuracy over quantity
Respecting Indigenous cultural authority and protocols
Being transparent about what is shared on Wiki platforms
Supporting Indigenous agency and authorship
Avoiding harm

Rather than prescribing rules, the Guide outlines a risk-assessment approach, helping contributors to think through whether the content in front of them is lower-risk (general, non-sensitive Indigenous content) or something that calls for a higher level of caution (culturally sensitive, secret or sacred, or offensive material), and steps to follow in each case.
It provides guidance on reliable sources and citation, metadata and description. It also addresses free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) – the principle that communities have the right to make decisions about their own knowledge before it's used.
Read the Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) and Indigenous Data Sovereignty guide
‘The White Paper: the questions we’re still sitting with’
The Guide gives practical direction. The CultureStrong White Paper is honest about what's unresolved.
It examines where open licensing and customary law pull against each other, where the law is silent, and where the wider Wikimedia movement, not just in Australia but worldwide, needs to keep talking.
It also looks ahead. It recommends developing a dedicated First Nations Protocol for Wikimedia Australia through a staged, Indigenous-led process shaped with communities, Knowledge Holders and Wikimedians.
Such a Protocol would deliver what the editing community is asking for: scenario-based guidance that reflects the diversity of the 200-plus First Nations across the Australian continent, and offering a methodology other Wikimedia chapters could adapt internationally.
Read the White Paper
The text above is from Wikimedia Australia’s Respecting First Nations knowledge on Wikimedia platforms
Voices
Heather Ford is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communication and Social Sciences at UTS. She is a former Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation and the author of “Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age” published by MIT Press.
Terri Janke is a Wuthathi, Yadhaigana and Meriam woman and a nationally and internationally recognised expert on Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP). As Solicitor Director and owner of Terri Janke and Company, Terri leads a multidisciplinary team delivering legal and advisory services across ICIP, copyright, trade marks, business law and governance.
John Paul Janke is a journalist, National Indigenous Affairs Editor at NITV and co-host of their flagship news and current affairs program The Point.
Shevawn Wright is a Nunga and Irish practising artist and lawyer with expertise in the fine arts as well as commercial and construction law. Her areas of specialty include infrastructure projects and arts related legal issues. Shevaun is passionate about empowering First Nations people to thrive in both the public and private sectors through legal advocacy, broader community training and innovative contractual solutions.
Matilda Langford is a paralegal at TJC who is skilled in community consultation, law, politics, and social media communications. Matilda completed her Bachelor of Arts (Politics) (2022) and her Bachelor of Laws (2024) from the University of Sydney.
Elliot Bledsoe is the President of Wikimedia Australia, the Australian chapter of the international Wikimedia Foundation – and he is Co-lead of Creative Commons Australia – the local Chapter of the CC Global Network which promotes and encourages the use of CC licences in Australia. Elliott also runs Agentry, an arts marketing micro-consultancy.
This panel discussion was recorded by Jane Curtis at WikiCon Australia 2026 in Canberra, Australia.
Credits
The executive producer of this series is Heather Ford.
The series is hosted by Heather Ford, Francesca Sidoti and Richard Cooke.
Produced by Jane Curtis. Associate producer is Francesa Sidoti.
Sound by John Jacobs.
Executive Producer of UTS Impact Studios is Sarah Gilbert.
It’s produced on Gadigal Country in Sydney Australia.
wikihistories is supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP220100662, ‘Wikipedia and the Nation’s Story: Towards Equity in Knowledge Production’.
Find out more at wikihistories.net

Every student uses Wikipedia. Some schools and teachers still tell them not to.
This episode asks why, and explains how to teach Wikipedia literacy to primary and secondary school students, instead of banning it outright.
Researchers Heather Ford and Simon Knight answer questions and hear advice from teachers Ben Lawless, Marty Douglas and David Boon, and librarian Michelle Sadler.
Hear what good, critical Wikipedia use looks like in the classroom or library: questions to ask before even opening Wikipedia; checking the Talk page; and lateral reading.
Using Wikipedia in the Classroom for teachers
A set of resources from the Wikimedia Foundation:
Using Wikipedia to foster media and information literacy skills: Teachers Introductory booklet PDF (2020, 10 pages)
Teachers’ Guide Module 1 PDF (2021, 72 pages)
Teachers’ Guide Module 2 PDF (2021, 65 pages)
Teachers’ Guide Module 3 PDF (2021, 56 pages)
Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom (All languages) PDFs

Five Ways to Use Wikipedia in the Classroom
A Wikimedia blog post on how to integrate Wikipedia into classroom practice with:
Source investigation
Editing for accuracy
Fact-Checking and Identifying Misinformation
Neutral Point of View Practice
Collaborative Editing

Using Wikipedia in the Classroom for students
A quick guide to using Wikipedia in a way that won’t make your teacher angry: Students Introductory booklet PDF (2020, 7 pages)

WikiEdu For Instructors and their Students
WikiEdu is an accredited program run in the US and Canada. However, its resources are available for everyone.
In its flagship program, higher education instructors replace traditional assignments with the creation and improvement of Wikipedia articles.
In place of writing a traditional term paper, students take on a real-world assignment that requires them to identify reliable sources, evaluate evidence, and synthesize complex information for a public audience.
Read instructor resources on:
crucial information for designing successful Wikipedia assignments.
successful strategies for incorporating Wikipedia assignments
engage in theoretical thinking around Wikipedia and knowledge production

Read students resources on:
Editing Wikipedia
Illustrating Wikipedia
Evaluating Wikipedia
topic-specific guidelines for contributors.

More reading
XKCD comic with 'Citation needed'
Original XKCD comic 285 Wikipedian Protester
An explanation of XKCD comic 285 on the 'explain xkcd' wiki

Using Wikipedia in the University classroom
Authentic assessments: using Wikipedia in the University classroom (University of Sussex blog, 2022): The Educational Enhancement Team at the University of Sussex, UK, on how many of their academic Schools and Departments are looking at how they can add more authentic assessments to their modules - including Wikipedia assessments.
Comparing Wikipedia, encyclopedias and AI
Comparing Wikipedia, Traditional Encyclopedias, and Generative AI: The Wikipedia Assignment as Tool for Student Information Literacies (WikiEd blog, 2025): Professor Katie Hold had students compare a traditional encyclopedia, a Wikipedia article, and a generative AI query on their research topics as an information-literacy exercise. Students grew more appreciative of Wikipedia's verifiable sourcing, while criticizing AI outputs for inaccuracies, broken citations, and closely mirroring Wikipedia without attribution. The exercise reinforced that all three sources work best as starting points for further research, not endpoints.
Research
Wikipedia no worse for science info than Britannica, study finds (The Guardian, 2005)
Internet encyclopaedias go head to head by Jim Giles (Nature, 2005)
Voices
Heather Ford is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communication and Social Sciences at UTS. She is a former Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation and the author of “Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age” published by MIT Press.
Simon Knight is a member of the University of Technology Sydney Centre for Research on Education in a Digital Society (UTS: CREDS), and its founding Director. Dr Knight researches how people learn to navigate uncertainty, disagreement, and evidence, and the mediating role of technology in that.
Credits
The executive producer of this series is Heather Ford.
The series is hosted by Heather Ford, Francesca Sidoti and Richard Cooke.
Produced by Jane Curtis. Associate producer is Francesa Sidoti.
Sound by John Jacobs.
Executive Producer of UTS Impact Studios is Sarah Gilbert.
It’s produced on Gadigal Country in Sydney Australia.
wikihistories is supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP220100662, ‘Wikipedia and the Nation’s Story: Towards Equity in Knowledge Production’.
Find out more at wikihistories.net

Five questions. Two hosts. One deceptively simple quiz. Can Wikipedia articles really be edited by anyone? Does the site rely on your $5 donations, or is there more to the story?
Host Heather Ford goes head-to-head with guest Simon Knight in a true-or-false showdown about Wikipedia. Almost nothing is as straightforward as it sounds.
This is All That We Touch: Wikipedia, a documentary podcast series exploring what shapes the world's most-read encyclopaedia, and how to use it better.
Every question in this episode comes the Wikimedia Foundation's 2025 Global Readers Survey, testing how well people understand the site they use every day.
Play along and test your knowledge!
Voices
Heather Ford is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communication and Social Sciences at UTS. She is a former Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation and the author of “Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age” published by MIT Press.
Simon Knight is a member of the University of Technology Sydney Centre for Research on Education in a Digital Society (UTS: CREDS), and its founding Director. Dr Knight researches how people learn to navigate uncertainty, disagreement, and evidence, and the mediating role of technology in that.
Quiz questions and more reading
Quiz question #1 True or false? Wikipedia articles can be changed by anyone.
You can and cannot change Wikipedia (Wikipedia) A community essay on editing, reverting edits, blocks and bans, page protection, oversight and deletion.
Who writes Wikipedia? (Wikipedia) A community essay on the types of editors and the demographic skew of the volunteer base.
Study reveals bot-on-bot editing wars raging on Wikipedia's pages (The Guardian, 2017) Over time, the encyclopedia’s software robots can become locked in combat, undoing each other’s edits and changing links, say researchers.
Quiz question #2 True or false? Wikipedia articles must have pictures
Wikimedia Commons A media file repository making available public domain and freely licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language.
Commons Courtesy: Reusing Creative Commons-licensed media is easier than you think by Joshua Leach (The Ink Tank blog, 2025)
Quiz question #3 True or false? Wikipedia articles change over time
Wikipedia at 25: What the data tells us (Pew Research Centre, 2026) Answers to some common questions about the site, based on data from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Statistics, including Which pages have been edited the most? And Which pages have had the most views or edits in a single day?
An Encyclopedia with Breaking News by Brian Keegan (MIT Press, 2019) Wikipedia's unexpected ability to generate high-quality articles about current events is a critical part of its success story; Keegan offers lessons taken from this for addressing the sludge polluting other online platforms.
The language geography of Wikipedia by Martin Dittus and Mark Graham (Oxford Internet Institute, 2022)
Deaths in 2026 Wikipedia page
Quiz question #4 True or false? The people who write Wikipedia articles are unpaid volunteers.
Wikipedia How-To Guides for editors with a conflict of interest (The Ink Tank blog) How to properly request updates, whether adding a new logo, correcting errors, or handling disputes, without violating Wikipedia’s policies.
Paid editors on Wikipedia: Should you be worried? (Kim Osman, The Conversation, 2014)
Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Paid contribution disclosure policy
Quiz question #5 True or false? Wikipedia relies on donations to support its operations.
How is Wikipedia funded? (Wikimedia Foundation, 2025)
Fundraising statistics (Wikipedia, 2025)

Credits
The executive producer of this series is Heather Ford.
The series is hosted by Heather Ford, Francesca Sidoti and Richard Cooke.
Produced by Jane Curtis. Associate producer is Francesa Sidoti.
Sound by John Jacobs.
Bell music composition by Maksim Voloshin-Cleary.
Executive Producer of UTS Impact Studios is Sarah Gilbert.
It’s produced on Gadigal Country in Sydney Australia.
wikihistories is supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP220100662, ‘Wikipedia and the Nation’s Story: Towards Equity in Knowledge Production’.
Find out more at wikihistories.net

In the future, will Wikipedia still be written by humans?
This episode asks what happens to that promise as two very different futures close in.
Co-host and author Richard Cooke calls Wikipedia ‘the last best place on the internet’ - one of the only things still standing from the early web's promise of a civic, collaborative internet.
This episode traces two futures already taking shape. The first is AI.
It might surprise you how long Wikipedia has used AI successfully. And unsuccessfully...
Like in the strange true story of a Wikipedia language edition almost entirely about insects, written in Cebuano by one Swedish professor's bot, as a tribute to his wife.
Now generative AI like ChatGPT is raising the stakes again.
The second future is hiding in plain sight, on Wikipedia's own turf: an ambitious project to turn its millions of articles into structured, machine-readable facts that could be translated into any language, instantly.
A utopian dream - or the thing that replaces human editors?
Voices
Heather Ford is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communication and Social Sciences at UTS. She is a former Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation and the author of “Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age” published by MIT Press.
Dr Francesca Sidoti is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the ARC Discovery project ‘Wikipedia and the nation’s story: towards equity in knowledge production’ in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
Richard Cooke is an author, reporter and screenwriter. The author of three books, he is the former US correspondent and current contributing editor to The Monthly magazine. His latest book is The Last Best Place On The Internet: A Human History of Wikipedia.
Dr Michael Falk is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Studies at the University of Melbourne, and is a computational literary scholar, data scientist, speaker and writer. In all his work, he aims to combine the creativity of the arts with the rigour and precision of data science.
Josh Lim a long-time Wikipedia editor, and the founder of Wikimedia Philippines. He speaks seven languages and works as a community manager. He has a strong interest in studying the dynamics of tech communities, particularly on the Wikimedia projects but also at large.
Research
Falk, Michael. ‘Wikilambda the Ultimate: The Wikimedia Foundation’s Search for the Perfect Language’. AI & SOCIETY, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-026-02899-w.
In 2020 the Wikimedia foundation launched its first new project in nearly a decade, and includes Abstract Wikipedia, a language-agnostic Wikipedia that will be dynamically translated into the reader’s native tongue.
The project is designed to address a fundamental bias in Wikipedia, namely its bias towards majority languages such as English and Spanish.
More reading
'Wikipedia Warriors'
List of people imprisoned for editing Wikipedia (Wikipedia)
EFF Launches New Offline Campaign for Saudi Wikipedian Osama Khalid by Jillian C. York (Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2026)
Wiki warriors: activists fighting to keep truth of brutal Marcos regime in Philippines alive (The Guardian, 2017)
The last best place
The Last Best Place on the Internet: A Human History of Wikipedia by Richard Cooke (Black Inc Books, 2026)
Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet by Richard Cooke (Wired, 2020)
How Wikipedia became the responsible adult of the internet by Stephen Harrison (Australian Financial Review, 2019)
Peer production
Here Comes Everybody: How change happens when people come together by Clay Shirky (Penguin, 2009)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler (Yale University Press, 2006)
Wikipedia and AI
Wikipedia bans AI-generated content in its online encyclopedia (The Guardian, 2026)
Breathe, Don’t Panic, there is a different story about Wikimedia + AI futures by Sadads (The Signpost, 2026)
Wikipedia goes to war against AI slop articles with new deletion policy (PC World, 2025)
Vandalism on Wikipedia (Wikipedia)
Cebuano Wikipedia
Wikipedia's largest non-English version was created by a bot. Generative AI poses new problems (ABC, 2025)
Cebuano Wikipedia, a large language edition Wikipedia finally has a WikiClub! (Wikimedia 2024)
Wikidata
Teaching Wikipedia to write itself by Rebecca J. Rosen (The Atlantic, 2012)
Abstract Wikipedia
WikiLambda the Ultimate by e mln e and Tilman Bayer (The Signpost, 2026)
Some reflections on designing Abstract Wikipedia so far by Maria Keet (Keet blog, 2023)
Leibniz' characteristica universalis [universal language] on Wikipedia
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz on Wikipedia
Credits
The executive producer of this series is Heather Ford.
The series is hosted by Heather Ford, Francesca Sidoti and Richard Cooke.
Produced by Jane Curtis. Associate producer is Francesa Sidoti.
Sound by John Jacobs.
Bell music composition by Maksim Voloshin-Cleary.
Executive Producer of UTS Impact Studios is Sarah Gilbert.
It’s produced on Gadigal Country in Sydney Australia.
wikihistories is supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP220100662, ‘Wikipedia and the Nation’s Story: Towards Equity in Knowledge Production’.
Find out more at wikihistories.net