If You're Listening

US President Donald Trump has set his sights on the Federal Reserve, his unprecedented threat to fire the Fed Chair Jerome Powell and replace him with someone more willing to lower interest rates sent financial markets into a tailspin.  It’s taken decades to build robust, independent central banks that people trust to fight inflation and keep the economy on track. But now a generation of populist...

Yes you read that right. It's a wild story from the latest series of No One Saw it Coming, a show about people, objects, and accidents that changed the course of history. Today, Marc Fennell joins Matt Bevan to chat about this unlikely alliance. Set during WWII, it’s a story about boats bursting into flame, mobsters with marvellous names, and the curious team-ups that come about in a country at wa...

This episode originally aired in September 2023. For a century, society has bullied and shamed people into trying to lose weight, without much result. Is the century-long search for a weight loss drug finally over? A seemingly accidental discovery by Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, people are hailing semaglutide (known as Ozempic or Wegovy) as a miracle weight loss drug — but it comes...

Last year, environment reporter Peter de Kruijff stumbled on the case of 81-year-old rancher Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, who was sentenced to six months in jail for a truly bizarre crime. He orchestrated an elaborate, multi-country conspiracy to smuggle the tissue of a rare bighorn sheep into the U.S. and clone it. Today, Matt chats to Peter about this outlandish plot. They also get into Barbra Strei...

This episode originally aired in August 2023. How do you plan for a country when you don’t even know how many people live there? That’s the problem China faced after decades of dodgy population data and the One Child Policy. No longer the world's largest country, China's population is shrinking, its property sector is faltering, and its economy is feeling the strain. Follow If You're Listening on ...

While working on last Thursday’s episode, Matt had the very sad but familiar experience of cutting one of his favourite parts out of the script. It’s the bizarre story of a group of American mercenaries who tried to invade Venezuela and collect the $15 million reward offered by the U.S. Justice Department for capturing President Nicolás Maduro. Matt chats with If You’re Listening producer Adair Sh...

The U.S. military has now attacked three boats off the coast of Venezuela in as many weeks. On the surface, it’s hard to see exactly what the administration is hoping to gain out of this. But when you look at it in a historical context, it makes a lot more sense. This follows a playbook the United States used 35 years ago to topple a Central American dictator they had decided they didn’t like. So...

It’s been almost two weeks since we woke up to the news of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. If you were online that morning, you probably saw rolling updates, speculation, conspiracy theories, and graphic footage — all before breakfast. But it hasn’t always been like this. When Abraham Zapruder filmed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, the public didn’t see those 26 seconds of fi...

In the days since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the internet has been awash with conflicting information about the assassin’s ideological motivations. Until recently, most people understood that political violence in America tends not to be organised, but one idea has galvanised many of those on the right: “they are trying to get us”.  Just minutes after the shooting, US President Donald Trum...

While researching our last episode on the bizarre wave of Iran-banked anti-semitic attacks in Australia and around the world, Matt ended up somewhere unexpected… Swedish TikTok. He was intrigued (and baffled) by a viral sound from a gangster known as the Kurdish Fox that blew up in late 2023. To help him understand this meme, Matt got in touch with the journalist who broke the story and released t...

There has been a spike in antisemitic attacks around the world, but there was something off about the ones happening here in Australia. The graffiti had Israel spelled wrong and they were committed largely by people with no clear ideological motivation. For many, the slapdash nature of these attacks raised a serious question about who was really behind them.  Recently ASIO revealed that at least s...

There’s a story Matt’s been trying to tell on If You’re Listening almost since day one. It’s about the agriculture, soil and water of Ukraine, and he thinks it’s fascinating. Over the years he's tried to write it into episode after episode, only for it to be cut out by four separate producers. Today, Matt attempts to convince Supervising Producer Kara Jensen-Mackinnon (and hopefully you, too) on h...

Donald Trump once said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine in one day. Well, it’s now been over 200 days and he’s finally admitted that it might be a little more complicated than he originally thought.  The man he’s sent to broker this important peace deal is his best bud Steve Witkoff, a lawyer turned billionaire real estate developer turned peace negotiator. In the last few months, W...

In 1999, a young American called Robert Bogucki dumped his bicycle and walked out into the Great Sandy Desert in remote northern Australia. In 2022, Erin Parke became obsessed with this story and the media circus surrounding it. It's a tale that spans three decades, two continents and a bizarre cast of characters: from booty-wearing bloodhounds, to a cigar-chomping, moustachioed American named Gar...

It’s no secret that Donald Trump has his sights set on a Nobel Peace Prize. He already claims to have brokered peace in a number of conflicts around the world - and is now planning ceasefire talks for Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine. So how does Trump intend to bring lasting peace to these decades-long conflicts?  Well, he’s tasked his best bud and former real estate tycoon, Steve Witkoff with...

When Palestinian statehood is recognised at the UN General Assembly in September, a small office tucked away in a residential street in Canberra will become the official embassy of Palestine.  This office is near many other embassies in the nation’s capital - some similarly unassuming, while others are incredible ornate architectural feats complete with gardens and water features. On a recent work...

Australia, the UK, France and Canada intend to recognise Palestine as a state at the UN General Assembly in September. But what does that actually mean?  Well Timor Leste, the small island nation 500km off the coast of Australia was recognised as a state back in 2002 after years of Indonesian occupation and violence, and might offer us a glimpse into what the future looks like for Palestinians.  F...

After an entire week looking into the Oslo Accords, we still had a residual urge to find out more about Mona Juul and Terje Rod Larsen, the Norwegian couple who were instrumental in brokering that landmark agreement.  We were reading about the Broadway play about their work, reading about the movie adaptation... and then suddenly, unexpectedly, Kara plunged into a rabbit hole. A very unexpected, b...

Even the most seasoned negotiators can’t agree on how to bring peace to the Middle East. Everyone agrees that - on a personal level - it’s a problem too big, too old and too entrenched for them to even have an impact on. Except Mona and Terje.  Norwegians Mona Juul and Terje Rød-Larsen looked at this extremely complicated conflict and said “we can fix this”.  Follow If You're Listening on the  ABC...

Getting accused of murder is never a good thing. But, hypothetically if you are going to get accused of murder, it’s generally for the best that it’s not somewhere like Houthi-controlled Yemen - a part of the world that barely has a functioning justice system. This is the reality for Nimisha Priya, an Indian nurse who has been convicted of murder and is currently awaiting trial in a Yemeni prison....

The internet is flooded with hour-long podcasts about what really happened to Jeffrey Epstein. Until recently, two of the most high profile Epstein conspiracy truthers were MAGA podcasters, Dan Bongino and Kash Patel. But that all changed when they joined the FBI.  In the last few months, Bongino and Patel have done a complete 180, and are now saying there’s nothing to see… So are they telling the...

So Jeffery Epstein probably wasn’t a Mossad spy. But online conspiracies like this pop up closer to home too. Could Israeli intelligence have been involved in Australia’s most traumatic mass shooting? There are people who think so. In this bonus episode of If You’re Listening, Matt is joined by Conspiracy Nation author Cam Wilson, who breaks down the pervasive PA96 conspiracy about the Port Arthur...

The Jeffrey Epstein rabbit hole has opened into a cavernous rabbit abyss and it seems no one is safe. Conspiracy theorists and right-wing podcasters are following a particularly spicy lead: that Epstein was actually Israeli intelligence.  It explains the curious circumstances around his death, the suppression of his so-called client list, and why Donald Trump seems keen to bury the story entirely....

Forty years ago, a man named Mordecai Vanunu came very close to exposing Israel’s secret nuclear enrichment facility in a bible group in the heart of Sydney. But before he could speak to journalists, he was lured to Rome by a beguiling blonde named Cindy. In this bonus episode of If You’re Listening we take a closer look at “Cindy” the mysterious Mossad honeypot who abducted Vanunu and changed the...

It’s widely accepted that Israel has nuclear weapons.  How many? Well, it’s impossible to know because to this day the Israeli government has never officially confirmed or denied that it possesses a nuclear arsenal at all, instead it maintains a policy of “strategic ambiguity”.  In truly one of the most extraordinary stories we’ve told on this show - we get to the bottom of how Israel hides its nu...