The Briefing

Welcome to our Briefing ‘Summer Mode’ series, where we check in on your favourite stories of 2020, and catch up with the key people in those episodes to see if anything’s changed.   On today’s episode we catch up with Marcus Tomoff a 28 year old from Florida who got COVID-19 and infected his parents. Months after getting the virus, we find out what’s it like, and...

Welcome to our Briefing ‘Summer Mode’ series, where we check in on your favourite stories of 2020, and catch up with the key people in those episodes to see if anything’s changed.   On today's episode we’re joined by Googles Data Editor Simon Rogers to see if our top google searches have changed over the last few months since our episode in September, what our searches...

Welcome to our Briefing ‘Summer Mode’ series, where we check in on your favourite stories of 2020, and catch up with the key people in those episodes to see if anything’s changed since we first spoke to them.   On today’s episode we’re joined by Jacob Greber who took us on a road trip through Trump territory and the rust belt in the lead up to the election. He he...

Welcome to our Briefing ‘Summer Mode’ series, where we check in on your favourite stories of 2020, and catch up with the key people in those episodes to see if anything’s changed.   On today's episode we look at the 35,000 Aussies that are stranded overseas and cant get home for Christmas: Tim an Aussie living in Malta Dave an Aussie stuck in Berlin Jess an Aussie stuck in L...

2020 has been a year. We really thought the January bushfires were going to be the worst of it, but then came floods, a recession, and a global pandemic. It’s been so bad that it can be difficult to put into words.   Except that someone has. Writer, radio presenter and Chaser co-founder Dom Knight has written the 2020 Dictionary: The Definitive Guide to the Year the Planet Turned to Shi...

Four years ago 10-15 percent of ASIO cases were linked to the far right. Now, that figure has almost tripled. The head of ASIO, our national security agency, says that Neo-Nazis are one of the most challenging security threats in Australia. Reports tell us racially motivated terrorism, especially from white supremacists is “on the rise and spreading geographically.”  &nb...

Australia’s relationship with alcohol is changing, on average we're drinking less, in fact less than anytime in the last 50 years. In today's briefing topic, you’ll find out why.   Someone who’s watched this relationship from a safe distance, is comedian Shaun Micallef. He stopped drinking in his 20s and made a documentary series called "On The Sauce". He joins us on today's...

In this Briefing we’ll find out how you negotiate a rental decrease ! In some parts of the country the pandemic had a big impact on renters who are more likely to have insecure jobs.    As a renter it always feels like the landlord has the upper hand and that rent only ever goes up but that’s not the case at the moment in some of Australia’s biggest rental markets so it...

COVID-19 has really sped up the cashless tend and in today’s episode we’re Briefing you on how close we are to becoming a cashless economy, and the surprising and important reasons why we may never go 100% cash free.    The big four banks closed 170 branches during the pandemic and more than two thousand ATM’s were removed mid-year, it’s unclear whether they&rsquo...

The Paris agreement is having its 5th birthday tomorrow so you’ll be hearing a lot about it, and a lot about achieving net zero emissions by 2050 which is something our government haven’t committed to yet despite being a signatory to the Paris climate agreement.    In today's episode we’ll explain what the Paris agreement actually is and go back to basics with Andrew Hi...

A film about one of Australia’s darkest moments, the 1996 Port Arthur massacre is in production right now. It’s called Nitram which is Martin spelt backwards and is scheduled for release next year. The filmmakers want to shine a light on the gun laws that were brought in after the attack, but a long list of Tasmanians don’t want the film to go ahead, and in today's Briefing...

On this day one year ago Whakaari/White Island volcano off the coast of New Zealand erupted. Tragically there were 47 tourists on or near the island and around 12 of them were actually inside the crater. In total 22 people died, 17 of them were Australians.    So now that we’re one year on what have we learned about this tragedy? what should have been done differently? and who...

In 2016, 20-year-old Australian Elly Warren was killed on a night out with friends at a tourist resort in Mozambique. Her father Paul Warren is still fighting for justice having travelled to Africa and funded his own investigation. And as part of that investigation he hired a local woman to act as a sex worker and gather evidence on the key suspect.    In this Briefing topic, you&rs...

Streaming services have transformed the way we watch TV with 16 million Australians now accessing these platforms. But the giants Netflix, Amazon and Disney are all US companies with mostly US shows.   Last month the Australian government put out a proposal to force these streaming services to spend a certain percentage of their Australian revenue on Australian content. On today’s episo...

There’s been a running boom in 2020. During lockdown it was one of the only things you could do and in some parts of the country the number of people using running tracks and walking trails doubled during the height of the pandemic.   So in this episode we’re going to find out why so many of us turned to running and what we got out of it not just the physical side but the psycholo...

A national review has suggested that smartphone apps and wearable surveillance devices including ankle bracelets are among options that could allow returning travellers to quarantine at home rather than in a hotel. Since March, Hong Kong has been allowing travellers to home quarantine using a wrist bracelet that you scan into a phone app and it has been working effectively.   On today's episo...

Parler is a growing platform that calls itself the “world’s premier free speech social network.”  But is it free speech? or hate speech?   Parler has created a space for people who share a similar world view and those that feel their opinions are being blocked by more traditional social media sites. User numbers spiked dramatically after the 2020 US Presidential electio...

What may be a few easy taps on your phone to order takeout straight to your door, can be a treacherous and sometimes life-threatening trek for food delivery drivers. On average, one food delivery rider dies in Australia every fortnight. Five delivery riders have died nationally in the past nine weeks, four of them in Sydney.   The latest tragedy involved a 37-year-old UberEats cyclist from Ma...

Can “shareholder activists” bring meaningful action on climate change, even as the federal government continues to hold out? At 23 years old, Mark McViegh sued one of Australia’s biggest super funds over its handling of climate change, forcing them to commit to being carbon neutral by 2050. This year a number other superannuation funds have committed to achieving net zero carbon...

We'll explain the meaning of the symbol in the neo-nazi cartoon that cause Pete Evans fall from grace two weeks ago. We’ll find out what this means for Pete Evans future, and find out where the black sun symbol comes from, what it actually means, and how it relates to the cartoon.   Our guests today are Andrew Horney from the Sydney Morning Herald and Andrew Jakubowicz, a professor of s...

Robodebt is the automated process that wrongly calculated millions of dollars of Centrelink debt for Australians. Hundreds of thousands were impacted, and in 2019 they sued the government in a class action.    Last week the case was settled in the largest class action payout in the country, with $1.2 billion given back to victims. But many of those victims are not happy with the settleme...

It’s three weeks since the US Presidential election and Donald Trump is continuing court challenges and still refusing to concede defeat.   His fight against the result started long before the election when he began questioning the legitimacy of mail in ballots, and he continued with these allegations on election night when he appeared to be losing.   On today’s episode we fi...

A four-year investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan by Australian special forces was made public by the Chief of Defence Angus Campbell.   The key revelation from the report include the alleged unlawful killing of 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners by Australian troops between 2009 and 2013.   19 of those soldiers have been referred to the Australian Federal Police for prosec...

Facebook moderators are the 15,000 people around the world whose job it is to decide what content stays, what gets flagged with a warning, and what gets deleted. They are watching the worst stuff on the internet so you don’t have to, and now some of them are fighting back against the tech giant and winning.   In recent years thousands of moderators have come forward saying they now suff...

In this special edition of The Briefing we give you Mary Trump uncut , an extended episode of Tom Tilley’s compelling interview with Donald Trump's niece.   You’ll hear Mary’s fascinating insights into her uncle, who she refers to as ‘the worlds most dangerous man’.   With a PHD in psychology, Mary’s helps us understand more about the man, his mind, an...