Late Night Live - Separate stories podcast

In her recent address to the National Press Club, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said Australia should be 'monocultural' rather than multicultural. But is that a popular view in the community? Lowy Institute polling has recorded a decline in support for cultural diversity in Australia, albeit from a very high level of support (from 90% in 2024 to 73% in 2026). Lowy also identified a growing beli...

At its peak between 2015 and 2017, the Islamic State attracted tens of thousands of foreign fighters and inspired attacks worldwide. Today, its caliphate is gone, its Iraq and Syria strongholds have shrunk to a small insurgency, and much of its activity is driven by lone-actor attacks. Guest: Professor Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics at Deakin University. Producer: Ali Benton 

After months of turmoil inside the Labour party, plummeting polls and the Reform Party making major gains in local elections, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer finally succumbed to pressure to resign, saying he has accepted that his party colleagues no longer feel he is the right person to lead the party. Nominations for a new leader will open on 9 July, but it's likely the only contender will be the...

In 1945, sixteen Aboriginal men working at Birrundudu Station created 810 crayon drawings, commissioned by anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt. Using this unfamiliar medium, the men documented their extensive knowledge of Country, ancestral creation, history, and ceremonies of the region. GUEST: Dr John Carty, Professor of Museum and Curatorial Studies at the University of Adelaide ; Rober...

Before Robbie Swan and Fiona Patten co-founded the Australian Sex Party in 2009, they worked the halls of parliament, lobbying against the 1990s censorship of X-rated films in Australia. They pulled stunts, courted scandal and confronted political wowserism in their crusade for Australian erotica. A new tell-all book recounts their escapades. 

Founded during the French Revolution, the Paris menagerie was one of the earliest modern zoos and a model for later European institutions. It grew into an important centre for scientific study and public education, reflecting changing ideas about animals, science, and captivity in the nineteenth century. Guest: Richard W Burkhardt Jnr, Emeritus Professor in the Department of History, University of...

As artificial intelligence increasingly does what humans can do, and begins to possibly rise above human capabilities, the question is 'what does being human actually mean, in this era?' Anna Goldsworthy has been thinking long and hard about this era-defining change, for the latest issue of Australian Quarterly. Guest: Anna Goldsworthy, author of the latest Quarterly Essay, ‘The God we made: the t...

This month, earthworks commenced on a new stadium for Brisbane's 2032 Olympic Games. After years of debate, reviews, and a political backflip, Victoria Park was controversially selected by the current state government as the site for the new stadium. The park is the largest existing green space in Brisbane City and holds special significance to local Indigenous people. Questions remain about the p...

The US has refused to apologise for the deaths of Indian sailors killed by US strikes in the strait of Hormuz, straining relations between the two countries ahead of Indian PM Modi and US President Trump’s meeting at the G7 summit in France  this week. So far,  Modi has refused to directly condemn the killings, despite outrage from the public and the opposition.  Guest: Shruti Pandalai, India Chai...

The US and Iran have announced an interim peace deal, but is the deal more spin than substance? Plus, the Supreme Court will reach a series of massive rulings in the next fortnight - from Trump's attempt to revoke birthright citizenship, to political firings of executive branch officials.  Guest: Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor for the Nation and executive Director at the Global Center for Jour...

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has asked the US government for permission to release millions of mosquitoes in California and Florida which have been infected with a naturally occurring bacteria called Wolbachia. Their aim is to reduce the mosquito populations’ ability to spread diseases like dengue, Zika, and yellow fever virus, as part of the ' Debug ' programme, which is using robots and ar...

Why are white South Africans being fast-tracked for refugee status in the US, while millions of other refugees wait in line? Donald Trump's South African refugee program has sparked fierce debate, with supporters citing persecution and critics calling it a politically charged exception. Guest: Loren Landau, Professor of Migration at Oxford, and chair at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johan...

The terms of the peace deal between the United States and Iran included an immediate halt to fighting on all fronts, including in Lebanon; the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz; the lifting of sanctions on Iran; the unfreezing of Iranian funds; and a massive compensation scheme being set up for Iran. But Israel's Defence Minister, Israel Katz, says IDF security forces will remain in security zones...

What's in a face? The face is where all our senses come together, but we also perceive each other's faces through the prisms of culture and technology. Historian Fay Bound-Alberti's new book examines how our perceptions of the face have been shaped by ancient ideas of morality, social hierarchy and psychology.  Guest: Dr Fay Bound-Alberti is a professor of Modern History at King’s College London,...

Before the Bosnian war, Biljana Plavšić  was a renowned biologist and university dean. She later became the only woman convicted by an international tribunal for mass atrocities. So how did a respected scientist become a leader of a violent nationalist movement? Bosnian-Australian law professor Olivera Simic, tracked down Plavšić in Belgrade, and has collated a series of interviews with her, in a...

In June 1976, thousands of students took to the streets of Soweto, South Africa, to protest a government decision to make Afrikaans a compulsory language of instruction in Black schools. When police opened fire on the demonstrators, at least 200 students were killed. The violence sparked a wave of protests across the country, growing into a nationwide uprising against apartheid. Guest: Professor N...

Deep in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea winds the Sepik river. Rich with crocodiles, eels, turtles, prawns and fish, it’s one of the largest unpolluted freshwater systems in the world. The river is of huge cultural significance for the half a million people the river sustains, and is guarded by the water spirit, Sukundimi.  But for developers there are other riches. The land along the river ho...

The murder of Henry Nowak by a Sikh man in Southampton last year has sparked protests encouraged by anti-immigration Reform Party leader, Nigel Farage. Now Us Vice President JD Vance and US War Secretary Pete Hegseth have weighed in.  GUEST: Ian Dunt, columnist with i-news; co-host of the Origin Story podcast PRODUCER: Catherine Zengerer 

This weekend, the Swiss will vote on a proposal to cap the nation's population at 10 million (it's already at 9.1 million). Polling suggests the result will be tight, but how the cap would work for an EU member nation is unclear. Could this be Switzerland's "Brexit' moment?  Guest: Mercedes Ruehl, Switzerland and Austria correspondent, Financial Times Producer: Jack Schmidt

Journalist for The Atlantic Helen Lewis speaks with key figures of the so-called 'masculinist' movement in the United States - a movement pushing back against feminism, and advocating for a society wherein women live quiet domestic lives, perhaps even deprived of the right to vote.  Guest: Helen Lewis, journalist for the Atlantic Producer: Ali Benton

Spam may be derided in Western countries but in Asia and the Pacific it's still a beloved staple. It was created by Hormel Foods in 1937 to utilise surplus pork during the Great Depression, and became a staple of the American military diet during both the second world war and the Korean war. It's still loved in places where America had strong military bases like Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, and...

This week, the Pope will be in Barcelona to officially bless the final tower of La Sagrada Familia, the monumental Catholic basilica, which was 144 years in the making. The blessing will coincide with the centenary of architect Antoni Gaudi’s death.  Against the odds, the exterior of his extraordinary temple is finally complete. New Zealand-born architect, Mark Burry AO, spent nearly 40 years work...

In 1995, long before the 2001 'Tampa' refugee crisis, a small fishing boat arrived in Darwin, carrying eighteen East Timorese asylum seekers, including a six-month-old baby. The boat's arrival, and the activism of the passengers and their supporters in Australia, tested Australia's relationship with Indonesia in the last years of the Suharto regime. Guests: Vannessa Hearman, Associate professor of...

Heroin, cocaine, cannabis and opiates — it’s hard to imagine now, but in 19th-century Australia there were few restrictions on the use of these substances. As social attitudes shifted, so did the law, ushering in an era of prohibition. Yet over the past four decades, Australia has undergone another significant change — rethinking how it responds to illegal drug use and moving towards a harm-minimi...

While Ian Stevenson (1918–2007) was an academic psychiatrist with a strong professional reputation, he became known for researching an unusual topic for a behavioural scientist: the afterlife. Investigating questions such as “Can consciousness exist outside the brain?”, his career spanned more than sixty years. His work remains controversial, sitting at the edge of science, psychology and the unkn...