Late Night Live — Full program podcast

India Now - one in every six people in India is a Dalit or 'untouchable'. One of them is Sujatha Gidla, whose recent memoir opens a lid on the long fight for equal rights. In the 90s India saw a boom in billionaires, all eager to flaunt their wealth.

David Christian's new book explores the idea of a shared humanity in which our Paleolithic ancestors and Neolithic farmers play as important a role as the rulers, emperors and conquerors who have dominated scholarship.

Can psychedelic drugs change our world view - and if so, how? Author Michael Pollan delves into the spiritual and therapeutic implications of LSD, magic mushrooms and even toad venom. They are brainless, spineless, eyeless, and bloodless, but are jellyfish climate change winners?

A global poaching epidemic is threatening the existence of countless species including rhinos, tigers, savannah elephants - and the lesser-known pangolin; Oleg Gordievsky was a catch in a million for MI6 - a high ranking KGB agent who supplied sensational intelligence at the height of the Cold War.

PM Modi came to power in India on the back of a promise to fight corruption, but four years after his victory how much has changed? The subcontinent's Gen Y have built lives and some wealth through working in call centres but that comes with its own problems

The race for space has been accelerating in the last few years, and astronomer and planetary scientist Ian Crawford says the moon is a vital launching point for our interplanetary ambitions. Should we mine it, settle it, or leave it alone? Louisa May Alcott didn't want to write Little Women - but for 150 years, million of readers readers from Massachusetts to Mumbai have wanted to read it.

Mermaids appear in every culture - from indigenous Australian to European. Why do they have such huge and enduring appeal? The rise - and interminable rise - of America's radical right.

When Narendra Modi became PM of the world's biggest democracy in 2014, his victory illustrated the forces of change sweeping through India - political, economic and social. And meet the Australian family who went to live in an Indian slum.

Can the algorithms applied to health care be regulated and follow the remarkable progression of precision over history.

Why has chiropterophobia been so prevalent in art and literature in the West? Is it time to rehabilitate the bat? Can we have a new national drought policy in Australia , or do we simply repackage old policies from over a hundred years ago?

We journey back in time to wander Paris’s Left Bank, the epicenter of ‘haute culture’ in the 1940s and 1950s, discuss Samuel Beckett and the politics of aftermath and explore the effects of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau.

All the news from the year just gone by

Claire Mallinson, National Director of Amnesty International Australia on the past, present and future of the UN Declaration of Human Rights

All the not so fake news from Trumplandia. The gold rushes of the 19th century created new wealth and communities. But at what price? Stanford University political scientist Rob Reich argues that the private philanthropy practised by the mega-wealthy is usually an exercise in paternalism, power and tax avoidance.

Paddy Manning joins us with his take on Malcolm Turnbull's latest contributions, Martin Chulov updates us on the latest leaks on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and we hear about the ups and downs of women working at the BBC over almost 100 years,

We ask what the year in US politics looked like for Trump supporters, explore what lies behind the current battle on the Black Sea and rove the New Silk Roads with historian Peter Frankopan.

The American embassy in Cuba seemed to be making its staff sick - then things got really weird. Multiple scandals erupt at Interpol. Who was Bennelong and why has he been such a historically misunderstood figure?

All the not so fake news from Trumplandia. France has a long history of street protests, but has Emmanuel Macron's fuel tax sparked a 'high-vis' uprising of a different kind? The history of the push-button society.

The Liberal Party is divided over what went wrong in Victoria and now they are in minority government in Canberra and ten years on from the tragic attacks in Mumbai, Adrian Levy joins us to explain why the mastermind has not been brought to justice.

Can Theresa May survive the latest Brexit debacle? Every year the fires burn and so do debates about how to deal with them. Michael McGirr on the books that saved his life.

We look at Green infighting as Australia's election season hots up, discuss why America's alt-right has gone largely unmonitored and ask how you can tell food fact from fiction when research is funded by manufacturers.

All the not so fake news from Trumplandia. The traditional coloured shirts and smiles belie a tense APEC Meeting in Port Moresby. The political fantasies of Brexit conservatives: a return to Empire.

How would the history of the world look if it was written from the perspective of women and how training for a marathon has changed the life of Indigenous runners and their coach Robert de Castella.

Bruce Shapiro on all the un-fake news from the US; what happened to the idea of open government and freedom of information - judging by current events it's gone south. For a couple of hundred thousand dollars and a few cells from your dead pet, you can have an exact replica via a lab in South Korea.