Late Night Live - Separate stories podcast

Anna Henderson's Canberra: Littleproud hangs on, One Nation surges, and Parliament returns

02 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What is going on with the conservative side of politics? A motion to spill the leadership of the Nationals failed on Monday afternoon, and by the end...

Barry Jones on a life of public service and the state of politics today

29 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

"Our politics is dumb and completely short-sighted and personally obsessed." At 93 Barry Jones, former ALP National President, writer and public inte...

America's first central banker was a reluctant revolutionary

28 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Thomas Willing was a merchant trader, America’s first bank president, and its first central banker. Willing bankrolled – and in the process helpe...

The Nationals' impact on the Coalition

28 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

With the National Party leaving the Coalition, and a Nats leadership spill pending, we look at the disproportionate power the Nats have wielded in th...

Springtails - the tiniest critters you've never heard of

27 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Springtails are pretty much everywhere, and all over the world. They are important nutrient recyclers, but not many people know about them.Guest: Mar...

Mark Carney was the hero of Davos, but what is he positioning Canada for?

27 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

When Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney stepped onto the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos , no-one expected him to set the world on fire...

Bruce Shapiro: is the killing of Alex Pretti in Minnesota a tipping point?

27 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

On January 24, nurse Alex Pretti was protesting the presence of immigration officers in Minnesota when he was detained and surrounded by Border Patro...

We've had 237 Straya Days: what do they say about us?

26 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

If you looked at Australian history through the lens of a single day — January 26 — what kind of nation would you be looking at? In his new book ...

The expansion of Indigenous Protected Areas

26 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Last year saw the biggest expansion yet of Indigenous Protected Areas. Advocates say IPAs are the ideal approach for managing ecologically important ...

Multicultural Australia under strain

26 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

On this Australia Day, we look at the political weaponising of multicultural Australia, and immigration, and we ask how this is playing out in voters...

How Oscar Wilde was reclaimed by his grandson

22 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

It’s 125 years since the death of Oscar Wilde. The famous playwright and author died alone in a French hotel in 1900. Since that time, so much has ...

Stephen Miller: the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda

21 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Stephen Miller, often described as the architect of Donald Trump’s immigration policy, has been a defining force behind some of the administration’...

Ian Dunt on pulling out of Adelaide Writer's Week and the challenge of tackling Trump's increasing threats

21 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Ian Dunt talks about his decision to withdraw from Adelaide Writer's Week and examines the fraying trans-Atlantic relationship between the US and UK,...

Where does King Charles get his money?

20 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

King Charles is worth more than $3 billion — although it's hard to put an exact figure on his fortune, because royal records aren't published and p...

Bruce Shapiro's America: what's next after Trump's year of chaos?

20 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

One year since US President Donald Trump's inauguration and the global order has been completely shifted, while the United States is now a country wh...

Do the hate speech laws go too far?

19 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

As the Albanese government drops key provisions from its hate speech legislation, Late Night Live takes a deep dive into what's left of the laws, and...

Bernard Keane's Canberra: can Albanese get hate speech laws through parliament?

19 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Crikey's political editor traces the path to the hate speech legislation being debated in Parliament this week, and looks at why One Nation is outpol...

LNL Summer: Tim Minchin on music, fatherhoood, the Internet... and nipples

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Tim Minchin turned fifty this year and just ran a marathon for the first time. He's returned home to Australia, with his new album Time Machine, and ...

LNL Summer: The murderous rampage of Joe and Jimmy Governor in 1900 New South Wales

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the winter of 1900, Wiradjuri man Jimmy Governor and his brother Joe murdered nine people across New South Wales, in a rampage that caused panic i...

LNL Summer: Cooperating over space resources

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Some of the same countries that are in conflict right now are sitting in United Nations meetings together to discuss the future of outer space. St...

LNL Summer: Zane Grey's shark-hunting adventures in 1930s Australia

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Zane Grey was an American western writer, celebrity and big game-fisherman. In so many ways, his life was larger than most. But it was in Australia...

LNL Summer: Why Pompeii keeps revealing new secrets

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The largest excavation in a lifetime is underway at the famous archaeological site of Pompeii — the Roman city buried in ash when Mount Vesuvius er...

LNL Summer: John Menadue critiques Australia's media and our relationship with the United States

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

John Menadue has been at the heart of Australian public life for over fifty years, working for the Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke governments. He oversaw ...

LNL Summer: Philippe Sands on war crimes and impunity - from Pinochet to now

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1998, the former Chilean head of state Augusto Pinochet was arrested on charges of crimes against humanity and genocide. Philippe Sands was called...

LNL Summer: A rich man obsessed with Mars? Welcome to the 1890s

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

At the turn of the 20th century, one American became obsessed with the idea of life on Mars. He carried his obsessions into a public movement that ma...

LNL Summer: Is a river alive?

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the last decade, courts around the globe have granted legal personhood or explicit rights to rivers, largely driven by environmental activism. In ...

LNL Summer: Fleeced: a story of wool and warfare

05 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

For millennia, wool has been more than just a textile fibre for cold climates—it has played a strategic role in warfare, both supporting armies wit...

LNL Summer: Palestinian psychiatrist Dr Samah Jabr on dealing with trauma in Gaza

05 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Samah Jabr is a world-renowned psychiatrist who has spent over twenty years practising in the West Bank and Gaza. In a powerful interview, she des...

LNL Summer: Have we forgotten the value of shade?

01 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

On a warming planet, heatwaves are proving increasingly deadly. But in the cities where most of us live shade can be hard to come by. In ancient time...

LNL Summer: Deep history, an Indigenous way of seeing the past

01 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

This nation’s past can be understood a whole lot better if Indigenous perspectives on history are listened to. It means considering rock art and ot...

LNL Summer: From Utopia to the Tate - the art of Emily Kam Kngwarray

31 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Emily Kam Kngwarray, from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory, picked up a paintbrush in her 70s for the first time, and now her work will...

LNL Summer: The woman who solved crimes with birds

31 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Author Chris Sweeney tells the remarkable story of Roxie Laybourne, the Smithsonian ornithologist who became the nation's leading expert in feather f...

LNL Summer: Why do we use the QWERTY keyboard?

30 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The QWERTY keyboard wasn't designed to be fast or logical. It was created in the 1870s to stop typewriter keys from jamming - and to suit telegraph o...

LNL Summer: Is it time to decriminalise jaywalking?

30 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In recent years, a number of states and cities in the US have decriminalised 'jaywalking', relaxing laws that campaigners argue have been disproporti...

LNL Summer: How prison architecture can change lives

30 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Should prison architecture be used for punishment, or could it be used to create hope, instead. Criminologist Yvonne Jewkes has helped design prisons...

LNL Summer: Abolishing terra nullius - the legacy of Chief Justice Gerard Brennan

29 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sir Gerard Brennan served as the 10th Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, the highest judicial position in the country. He was involved in ...

LNL Summer:Australia's love of cinema, indoors and outdoors

25 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Australia has a surprisingly long history of cinema enjoyment. It takes many forms, and pops up in a wide range of settings. Guest: Ruari Elkington,...

LNL Summer: Farewell Laura Tingle

25 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After 30 years of appearances on Late Night Live - spanning nine Australian Prime Ministers - Laura Tingle bade farewell to LNL as its political corr...

LNL Summer: Harriet Walter on what Shakespeare's women might have said

24 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Actor Dame Harriet Walter — known for her recent roles in TV hits like Succession and Killing Eve — has been performing Shakespeare on-stage for ...

Is it ethical to holiday in Antarctica?

24 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One hundred and twenty five thousand people visited Antarctica last year. Can the region cope with an ever growing tourism industry?Guest: Anne Hardy...

LNL Summer: AI. Don't believe the hype

23 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

AI, we’re told, has the potential to free us from mundane tasks, revolutionise industries, and solve global problems. Linguistics Professor Emily B...

LNL Summer: The Roosevelts deadly hunt for a giant panda

23 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

During the 1920s, dozens of expeditions scoured the Chinese and Tibetan wilderness in search of the panda bear, a beast that many believed did not ex...

LNL Summer: Kate Grenville confronts her settler ancestry

22 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

20 years on from her famous novel The Secret River, writer Kate Grenville retraces the footsteps of her settler ancestors, and asks what it means to ...

LNL Summer: Was Hitler's filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl complicit in Nazi atrocities?

18 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Leni Riefenstahl has been hailed as one of the greatest directors of all time, even though her most famous films were works of propaganda for Hitler...

LNL Summer: A no-frills history of the Australian beach shack

17 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Along the coast of Australia are hundreds of humble shacks, often with interesting stories to tell. Basic shelters for no-frills fishing, or homes fo...

LNL Summer: The feminist publishing house that launched Australia's best writers

17 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the early seventies two Melbourne feminists hatched an idea to set up their own publishing house. Diana Gribble was a socialite working in adverti...

LNL Summer: Geraldine Brooks, Rachel Kushner and Julia Baird at Adelaide Writers Week 2025

16 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Despite the promise that we were “all in it together”, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a flight from sociability. While that escape may have been a ...

LNL Summer: Robert Dessaix's life reflections

15 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Writer Robert Dessaix, now based in Hobart, was named Thomas Robert Jones by his adoptive parents. His name change to Dessaix, to reflect his French ...

LNL Summer: Alan Rusbridger on Trump's threats to journalism

15 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Veteran British journalist and editor Alan Rusbridger discusses Donald Trump’s attacks on the US press, Jeff Bezos’s editorial about-face at the ...

LNL Summer: Societies collapse. Will ours?

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We're living in unusual times, with political history being made every week and the seemingly imminent collapse of a certain global super power on th...

LNL Summer: The Australian workers the union movement left behind

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A new history of the union movement in Australia says marginalised groups like migrants, women, Indigenous Australians and LGBTQIA+ people were often...

LNL Summer: Radio propaganda wars in the Middle East

09 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Before the 1967 war, radio ruled the Middle East—TV was a rare luxury. For the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Israel, the airwaves...

LNL Summer: Omar El Akkad reckons with the West

09 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

'One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone wi...

LNL Summer: how 19th Century Americans thought about hair

08 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The thickness, colour and texture of facial and head hair showed character traits about men and women, it was believed in 19th century America. The a...

LNL Summer: Blue Poles, when a painting shocked Australia

08 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1973, the Australian government acquired the painting Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock for $1.3 million AUD. It created huge division in Australia, a...

Laura Tingle, Hannah Ferguson and Craig Reucassel farewell 2025

04 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

David Marr is joined by Laura Tingle, Hannah Ferguson and Craig Reucassel to review the monumental year of 2025 - including its weirdest moments - an...

Bush medicine: how Indigenous practice has survived millenia

03 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A new exhibition at the University of Melbourne's Medical History Museum, Cultural Medicine: The Art of Indigenous Healing celebrates 65,000 years of...

Geoffrey Robertson on the world's failures to prosecute war crimes

03 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Renowned human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson KC says the killing of two people who survived a US strike on a speed boat off the coast of Venezuela...

Ian Dunt's UK: Budget woes and a look back at 2025

02 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This year in British politics was defined by constant upheaval: leaders under pressure, parties fractured over strategy, major policies overturned or...

Bruce Shapiro's USA: how Trump has changed America in 2025

02 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Late Night Live regular Bruce Shapiro looks back at a remarkable, often febrile year in US politics, under President Donald Trump's second administra...

Draining the great Australian swimming pool

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the mercury rises for another Summer, millions of Australians - in city suburbs and country towns - will flock to the local municipal pool: these ...

Anna Henderson's Canberra: defence, weddings and alliances

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The government has taken much greater control of the defence budget and tries to marry defence land acquisitions with their housing targets; Prime Mi...

Anna Henderson's Canberra: a Defence overhaul, a Lodge wedding, plus Hanson and Joyce

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The government has taken much greater control of the defence budget and tries to marry defence land acquisitions with their housing targets; Prime Mi...

India's Maoist guerillas surrender after fifty year struggle

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1960s when counter-culture and unrest was peaking around the world, India's left-wing protest movement took the form of a group of militant Ma...

Crayons in the desert: the breathtaking Birrundudu drawings of 1945, revealed

27 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1945, sixteen Aboriginal men working at Birrundudu Station created 810 crayon drawings, commissioned by anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Bernd...

Bill Wallace: the world’s oldest prisoner, who died at 106 in an asylum in Ararat

27 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1925 in Melbourne, two young men were having lunch in a cafe in King Street, Melbourne when one of them lit a cigarette. Another diner confronted ...

Niki Savva on why the 2025 federal election was a political 'earthquake' in Australia

26 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The veteran Canberra journalist Niki Savva dissects the monumental result of the 2025 federal election. Where has it left both the Coalition in oppos...

Wooden toes, iron hands: the ancient artistry of prosthetics

25 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In ancient times, limb loss was not uncommon, and often deadly. For those that survived - and had money to spend - commissioning a bespoke prosthetic...

America's transgender troops take Donald Trump to court.

25 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In January, US President Donald Trump passed an executive order that banned transgender troops from serving in the American military. Now, several of...

How Nauru got rich

25 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Nauru became rich because it sat on one of the world’s purest and most valuable phosphate deposits — the key ingredient in fertiliser. When Nauru...

Haaretz' editor, Aluf Benn, on Netanyahu's political survival

24 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Golda Meir fell after the Yom Kippur War. Menachem Begin quit after the disaster of the 1982 Lebanon invasion. But despite the trauma of October 7, B...

Anna Henderson's Canberra: Pauline Hanson's burka stunt and environment laws final push

24 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Senate was suspended after One Nation's Pauline Hanson wore a burka in the chamber. The Senator claimed it was a national security issue, but Ann...

Jenny Hocking AM calls for free access to Dismissal archives

20 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the wake of 50th anniversary commemorations of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's dismissal, the historian and biographer Professor Jenny Hocking AM s...

Wind: the invisble force of nature that we can't live without

20 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's invisible, it drives us crazy, and we couldn't live without it: the wind has been a constant presence for all of history, and was one of the fir...

How the Quarterly Essay reached its 100th edition

20 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

25 years in the making, the Australian publication Quarterly Essay has reached its 100th edition. Editor Chris Feik shares how QE was born, and how i...

When foxes went feral

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Seventy years after foxes were first introduced to Australia in 1870, they had managed to spread across the continent. For the first time, their colo...

Hurricane devastated Jamaica seeks reparations for climate damage and years of slavery

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jamaica was devastated when Hurricane Melissa hit. Hundreds of thousands of homes were flattened, and whole towns were destroyed by one of the most p...

Bruce Shapiro's USA: Trump's backflip on the Epstein files

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bruce Shapiro joins Late Night Live as the US Senate approves the release of the Epstein documents, after a confounding backflip from the US Presiden...

Helen Garner on Erin Patterson's trial and a lifetime of keeping diaries

18 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Author Helen Garner sat through the trial of Erin Patterson, who was convicted of murdering members of her family with deadly mushrooms. She reflects...

Can we stop space from filling up with junk?

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Space is big... but not infinite. The area around the Earth is populated by thousands of satellites and a million pieces of space debris, and those o...

Calls to reject Myanmar's "sham" election as evidence revealed of torture by the Junta

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As Myanmar prepares for its first elections since the military junta took over in 2021, a new documentary from Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has ...

Anna Henderson's Canberra: what next for the Liberal moderates?

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the Liberal Party joins the Nationals in ditching a net zero emissions target for 2050, what is the fate of the remaining moderate MPs in the Libe...

Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz warns of 'inequality emergency'

13 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1966, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz wrote his PhD thesis on inequality. Almost sixty years later, after decades of research, numerous books, and ...

Gareth Evans says Australia should lead nuclear arms control talks

13 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As Russia and the US both threaten to resume nuclear testing and China has tripled its stock of nuclear arms, former foreign minister Gareth Evans ha...

Henry Reynolds turns Australian history upside-down

12 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The writing of Australian history has tended to focus on the south-eastern corner of the continent, but the story of colonisation north of the Tropic...

Australia's (very, very) early computer: CSIRAC

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The University of Melbourne is celebrating 70 years of Australian computer classes, which were first taught on CSIRAC, the earliest computer ever bui...

Brutal police killings in Rio's favelas shock the world as Brazil hosts climate summit

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On October 28, conservative Governor of Rio, Cláudio Castro, ordered over 2,500 police officers and soldiers to storm the city’s favelas at dawn. ...

Ian Dunt's UK: Trump threatens to sue the BBC

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for 1.6 million dollars, over an inaccurate clip aired on its flagship documentary program,...

The mysterious lost footage of Whitlam's dismissal

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fifty years on, the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on November 11th 1975 remains the most dramatic day in Australian political history. Bu...

The fight for gold at the heart of Sudan’s genocide

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rebel forces in Sudan have captured the city of el-Fasher in a coup so violent the blood stains could be seen from space. The RSF rebel army is led b...

Anna Henderson's Canberra: Gough Whitlam's statue and net zero fallout continues

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the 50th anniversary of the Whitlam dismissal approaches,  Prime Minister Albanese announces the commissioning of a statue of Gough Whitlam for C...

Peter FitzSimons on the life of Weary Dunlop

06 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The war medic Edward 'Weary' Dunlop became legendary in the POW camps of World War II for his courage and leadership, including putting his body betw...

50 years on, do modern Liberals still back Whitlam's dismissal?

06 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The dismissal of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam by the Governor-General on November 11, 1975 is perhaps the most dramatic and most contentious mo...

Author takes on AI company who pirated her book

05 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When New York based, Queer thriller writer Andrea Bartz, discovered the AI company Anthropic, had pirated her book to train its AI large language mod...

Trump's ballroom blitz

05 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Despite lacking approval for construction from the federal agency that oversees building projects, US President Donald Trump has commenced major reno...

Bruce Shapiro's USA: Zohran and a wave of Democrats put Trump on notice

05 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After a stunning ascent, Zohran Mamdani is the youngest mayor of New York in more than a century. Mamdani is a fierce critic of Donald Trump, and Tru...

The camera in the colony: Australia's oldest photographs

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The emergence of commercial photography technology in the mid-19th Century coincided with the rise of imperial control in the Pacific, including the ...

From Buddhist teacher to UN Secretary-General: The legacy of U Thant

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

During his decade as UN Secretary-General, U Thant played a pivotal role in resolving some of the most dangerous international crises of his time. Fr...

Kryptos: the 30-year code that was accidentally cracked

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When the CIA was building its new headquarters, they commissioned a statue designed to pay homage to the spy agency. 'Krytpos' was both a sculpture a...

Kids are about to be booted off social media

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On 10 December, the government's new law banning under-16s from having social media accounts will be enforced. It's a world-first attempt to rein in ...