Saturday Extra - Separate stories podcast

Cassie McCullagh, from The Bookshelf on Radio National chats about her favourite book, we share listener texts and preview what's ahead on this weekend's   Top 100 Australian Books Countdown .

Many of us develop a love of reading at school. Perhaps a special teacher or a favourite book made a lasting impression. But many of us also develop an aversion to reading in high school. Generations of Australians have studied the classics at school, Shakespeare, George Orwell, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird. But how much space is given to Australian literature, and what impact does it have...

The US Congress is the institution that most directly represents the will of the people: 535 representatives divided into two houses. Despite the importance of Congress, there's been an increasing trend for presidents to bypass the body and issue executive orders to achieve political goals. US historian Gary Gerstle unpacks the shrinking role of Congress, political polarisation, and whether the ce...

Next month, the United States congressional midterms will decide which party controls the Senate and House of Representatives. Both are currently held by the Republicans.  With rising grocery and petrol prices, the election comes as Donald Trump's approval rating reaches an all-time low.  Will the poll reveal the future direction of both major political parties in the USA? 

Ukraine has resumed strikes on Russian oil refineries, accusing Washington of a dangerous betrayal after the US withdrew support critical to Ukraine's defences against Moscow. The move comes as President Donald Trump strikes a diesel deal with Moscow, infuriating European leaders and exposing a growing rift over how best to bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.

Bogong moths are swarming across south-eastern Australia, finding their way into homes and washing up on beaches, prompting reactions ranging from disgust to delight. The tiny insects fly up to 1000km in an annual migration that was once commonplace but that is now extraordinary. Classified as endangered in 2021, could the bogong moth be making a remarkable comeback?

It's been 50 years since the end of China's Cultural Revolution, a decade of chaos that saw mass violence and political upheaval.  But, officially at least, China is not looking back and taking stock. 

A Melbourne-based innovator has won the 2026 Australian Good Design Awards for an invention that distributes solar power fairly throughout apartment buildings. Known as SolShare, the Australian-made technology makes rooftop solar accessible to apartment dwellers, and is being exported globally. 

Astronomers have detected a mysterious flash of radio energy, called a fast radio burst or FRB, that's been travelling across space for 10 billion years. These flashes only last a millisecond, but they may be vital in better understanding the story of the universe. Plus, if you think dawn on Earth is impressive, a NASA rover has taken a stunning image of dawn up on Mars.

AI data centre operator Firmus has pulled out of what would have been one of Australia's largest public listings. So how did the hype fall so flat?

Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, is facing its greatest scandal since the Cold War. Former spy chief August Hanning was arrested earlier this week on suspicion of espionage, treason and obtaining classified information for a foreign power. He ran the spy agency from 1998 to 2005 and is now being held in detention ahead of an expected court appearance next week.

This year's NRL grand final will feature the Sydney Roosters and the Newcastle Knights. And the story of the Knights is a fairytale in the making. The team finished last in the competition last year. Now they're just one win away from a premiership. As a result, the city of Newcastle is going absolutely ballistic.

After a 31-year career as the ABC's finance guru, Alan Kohler announced this week that he's leaving the organisation. He joins Saturday Extra to talk about the latest interest rate hike, the housing market, and how he became one of this country's great economic communicators.

Few writers in the world have written with more clarity or authority on the intersection of the modern-day media and modern-day politics than Gabriel Sherman.  Gabriel Sherman is a special correspondent with Vanity Fair, author of the book Bonfire of the Murdochs, and the screenwriter of the movie, The Apprentice, which tells the story of Donald Trump's rise to fame as a property developer in New...

The first round of voting in Brazil's presidential and parliamentary election starts on Sunday. The main contest is between the 80-year-old incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his rival Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former leader Jair Bolsonaro.

This week, a flydubai plane headed to Tel Aviv in Israel came frighteningly close to crashing after the pilot was stabbed by his co-pilot. We assess the latest information around the alleged terror attack and the geopolitical implications for the region.

It's AFL grand final day, so we talk to Melbourne's Lord Mayor Nick Reece for this month's instalment of The Last Thing. He shares some of the last great things he's read, watched and visited.

While we're all choosing our favourite books as part of Radio National's Top 100 Australian Books, which ones have had a big impact on Australian society and could be considered the most important and impactful? We thought we would ask two very bookish historians.

The Longest Nights is a popular Korean children's book that is being adapted for the stage by The Sydney Opera House and Seoul musical company Ipkoason.  The two-year long creative collaboration brings pansori, a traditional storytelling technique featuring drums and voice, to Aussie kids.

Comedian, TV host and author Shaun Micallef has combined his trademark humour with historical research to write the story of Matthew Flinders. Matthew Flinders was a British navigator who led the first circumnavigation of the Australian continent and helped popularise the name "Australia."

This week, 130 heads of government are in New York for the UN General Assembly. And for the first time ever, artificial intelligence has been centre stage.  But it's the undiplomatic rhetoric which has made headlines with Donald Trump using his speech to threaten to annihilate Iran.  That followed a strong rebuke from Iran's president, marking the first time the leader of a country at war with Ame...

Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington has ended after three days of talks, a state dinner and an extravagant welcome ceremony.  In a social media post, President Trump said that the leaders plan to meet twice more before the year’s end. What were the key takeaways from the summit?  

Australia's Indigenous Desert Alliance has been named a finalist in The Earthshot Prize for their work protecting desert habitat across 270 million hectares. The alliance of 70 Indigenous ranger groups has one of the world's leading cultural burning programs and supports threatened species including the Great Desert skink, bilby and night parrot. The Earthshot Prize was founded by Prince William i...

Next week, world leaders will meet at UN Headquarters in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Leaders like Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Anthony Albanese are set to speak, against a backdrop of an increasingly sidelined and underfunded UN. Topics are likely to range from AI to climate change to conflict in the Middle East to preparing for the next pandemic.

Paul Keating's ambition was to liberate Australia from our remaining attachments to Britain, achieve reconciliation, and reorient the nation in the Asian region. After unprecedented access to the former prime minister's papers, and a series of interviews, James Curran explores Keating's long-term vision for Australia.