If You're Listening

Matt spent a week camping entirely out of internet reception, so Kara does her best to get him up to speed on all the latest of the US-Iran war negotiations. Trump’s been doing most of his negotiation on Truth Social, and so every day is a new… more deranged revelation. Plus your questions about Iran, the price of petrol, and why there aren’t more oil pipelines answered! Follow If You're Listening...

Over the past few years, industrial scam compounds have surged throughout Myanmar, buoyed by the resources of powerful criminal networks, and hidden by the chaos of civil war. Occasional raids have uncovered that these compounds are staffed with hundreds of thousands of trafficked workers, kept there by force.  China has financially and militarily supported its neighbour Myanmar for years. But now...

Sisonke Msimang from the new ABC podcast Boycott! joins Matt to share her father’s journey as a revolutionary in the fight against apartheid.  Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

Turn on the tv and you’ll see no shortage of concerned journalists standing at fuel bowsers, shaking their heads at the rising prices. For plenty of young people, the idea that we might have to seriously limit our fuel consumption is unprecedented… But for anyone who lived through the 1970s, it’s all too familiar. So why did Donald Trump start this war? Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Liste...

In 1987 the USS Stark became the first U.S. ship sunk by missile fire since World War II. The missiles were fired by Iraq, America’s ally at the time, who claim they did it by mistake. Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

While governments scramble to find a way around the Strait of Hormuz, a pipeline sits half-finished in the desert that would have solved the problem. So why was it never completed? Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

As we’ve been looking into Iran over this month, we’ve had a lot of trouble finding out what is really happening on the ground. That’s due to the concerted and deliberate internet shutdowns carried out by the Iranian regime. And this isn’t the first time the internet has been shut down for Iranian users. It’s happened many times before.  Today, Matt speaks with Deakin University PhD candidate Amin...

Water is the lifeblood of all civilisations. In Iran, the water is drying up. That disappearance is becoming impossible to ignore, and after decades of mismanagement, the country’s water system is approaching a breaking point. Rivers that once crossed the Iranian plateau are drying to threads; aquifers are collapsing; lakes have retreated into salt flats.  The roots of the crisis stretch from the...

Author Saeed Fassaie shares his story of witnessing the Iranian revolutionary first-hand, from being a political fugitive, to a soldier, to building a new life in Australia. Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

There’s a persistent fantasy in Washington that regimes are like light bulbs: smash the fixture, screw in a new one, problem solved. The reality in Iran is closer to a tangled electrical grid that’s been growing since 1979. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps isn’t just a military unit; it’s a sprawling ecosystem. It runs companies, shapes politics, and embeds itself deep in the economic and soc...

Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert spent over 800 days in an Iranian prison interrogated by the Revolutionary Guard, and got into plenty of arguments while she was there.  Kylie returns to the pod to share with Matt what she learnt about the group, what she makes of the latest in the Iran war, and where Australia should go from here. Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Listen app . Check o...

Donald Trump once warned against endless wars. Now, he’s launched a strike killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many Iranian leadership figures, so what’s changed? Has Trump decided the Iranian regime’s threats are all talk?  Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

Matt and Kara answer your questions about the the unfolding situation in the Middle East. Who are the contenders for new leadership, how will this attack impact the global oil trade and does Donald Trump actually have a master plan? Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

Where did Jeffrey Epstein get his vast fortune from? Of all the questions surrounding this labyrinthine saga, the source of Epstein’s millions has been one of the most enduring, with the least available evidence.  Now, the deposition of billionaire businessman Les Wexner has provided a potential answer - Epstein simply scammed rich clients who didn’t know any better. Could the truth be so straight...

Matt and Kara try to answer your questions about the Epstein files without being sued... with only limited redactions. They get into the consequences for the Royal family, whether Epstein could possibly be “Q”, and whether they’ve changed their view on the claim Epstein was a Mossad agent. Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com...

A dark Epstein storm cloud is settling in over Europe — and it’s drifting straight across Westminster. As the newly released Epstein files reach London, Keir Starmer faces mounting pressure from within his own ranks, accused of knowing more than he’s let on.  Meanwhile, Lord Mandelson’s long-rumored association with Epstein is now headline material, raising questions about how deep the connections...

Space travel is a serious physical and mental challenge by all accounts. But what happens when an astronaut goes rogue mid-flight? Matt is joined by Fiona Pepper, co-host of the Science Friction podcast, to discuss a weird story the team stumbled across when researching flights leading up to the 1986 Challenger disaster. You can listen to The Challenger Legacy, the latest season of the Science Fri...

When news first broke of a billionaire sex offender with a private island… the story didn’t erupt through traditional media — instead it circulated through online message boards like 4chan. What began as internet trolling and fragmented rumour became fuel for something much bigger.  The Epstein case fed directly into the rise of QAnon, a conspiracy movement built on the belief that a hidden elite...

That's right, we're talking soil again. Is there a field of Ukranian chernozem soil sitting in rural New South Wales? Producer Pat joins Matt to finally find an answer. Plus, rumours of a chernozem black market… is it true, or just a dirty lie? Thanks to the New South Wales Soil Knowledge Network! Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube:  https://www.you...

For a long time, no matter which party was in power - the US government has operated within pretty defined guardrails… that is, until Donald Trump returned to the White House for a second term. The bold new direction is largely due to people like Stephen Miller: Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff and the key driver behind his immigration policy.  Stephen Miller has spent his entire political career wor...

Jon Lovett has been following the daily minutia of U.S. politics for a decade on his podcast Pod Save America. Ahead of their Australian tour, Jon joined Matt for a wide-ranging chat on how to deal with Trump, and whether the U.S. has a few lessons to learn from the Australian political system.  Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube:  https://www.youtu...

Matt is joined by psychologist and science writer Steven Pinker to discuss doomsday predictions, climate anxiety, and how best to split the balance between pessimistic fatalism and naïve optimism when considering the future. Listen to the full 1959 'Letters to the Unborn'  Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...

In the midst of the Cold War, it was a very real fear that a nuclear winter would obliterate life as we know it. Now, fortunately, that never happened.  But ironically fast forward to 2026 and the sense of dread of a nuclear war has been replaced by the impending threat of climate change, or being overrun by our AI overlords. So are we destined to feel doomed?  This is the final episode of Black S...

Matt and Kara discuss the book that inspired the Black Swan series… but didn’t make it into the final cut! Can experts, soothsayers, and psychics really predict what’s going to happen? This episode is connected to Black Swans, a four-part series by If You’re Listening 67 years ago, the ABC recorded a collection of predictions about the future—the one we’re living in now, in 2026. Their forecasts a...

In 1959 a flight to London took days and cost half a year’s average salary.  But things were changing rapidly. The invention of the Concorde meant that you could fly from Adelaide to London in just under seven hours.  Travel was getting faster and many expected we’d be routinely zipping around the world and travelling to other planets in no time. But now, aside from planes, most of our transport i...