Fire at Will

Has western society ever been more unhappy? Deaths of despair are at historically high levels. Antidepressant use is through the roof. Woke culture is encouraging us to feel guilty about pretty much everything. We are in desperate need of an injection of happiness.Fortunately, this week Will is joined by just the person to provide it. Professor Gad Saad is one of the world’s most important public intellectuals, and surely its most entertaining. His most recent book is titled, ‘The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life.’Follow Australiana on social media here.Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.Buy ‘The Saad Truth about Happiness’ here.

Capitalism was the driving force behind extraordinary advances in prosperity throughout the 20th century. But isolationist policies, stagnant wages and woke companies have led many to question whether the capitalist system has run its course.To assess the state of capitalism in 2023, Will is joined by self-described 'rabid capitalist', Hannah Cox. Hannah is a prominent American libertarian writer, commentator and activist. She is best known as the co-founder of Based, a hugely popular multimedia platform that uses new media to drive real-world policy outcomes.Follow Australiana on social media here.Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.Check out Based Politics here.

Who was the greatest-ever military general? What was history's most disastrous party? Is identity politics ruining the study of history? And what on Earth was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth?All these questions and more are answered by the co-host of the smash-hit 'The Rest is History' podcast, Dominic Sandbrook.Follow Australiana on social media here.Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.Buy tickets to see The Rest is History live in Australia here.

It may seem odd to describe a book that was published almost 30 years ago as highly topical. But the 1995 Miles Franklin Award winner, ‘The Hand That Signed The Paper’, is just that.The book's author, Helen Dale, has since established herself as one of Australia's true polymaths. She has continued to produce magnificent novels, such as 'Kingdom of the Wicked', as well as casting a liberal lens over the issues of the day for Law & Liberty (where she is a Senior Writer), The Australian, Quillette and most notably of course, The Spectator Australia.Subscribe to Helen's Substack here.Follow Australiana on social media here.Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.

International best-selling author Bjorn Lomborg has spent a career infuriating people by being sensible. He brought much-needed pragmatism to the climate debate, and he's now doing the same for international development.In his latest book, titled 'Best Things First', he presents the 12 most efficient solutions for the world's poorest and our global SDG promises.Follow Australiana on social media here.Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.Buy 'Best Things First' here.

John Anderson AC is a sixth-generation farmer and grazier from New South Wales, who spent 19 years from 1989 in the Australian Parliament, including six years as Leader of the National Party and Deputy Prime Minister.In this wide-ranging conversation with host Will Kingston, John discusses the health of public debate today, the upcoming Voice referendum and why politicians have forgotten the importance of 'the case for change.'Follow Australiana on social media here.Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.Visit John's website here.

One of the most important academic papers of modern times was published in 2017. It was titled, ‘The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct’. Thankfully, it wasn’t the content of the paper that started a global discussion, but rather the circumstances that surrounded it and the light that it shone on the current state of academia, woke ideology and notions of truth and freedom of expression.This week, host Will Kingston is joined by one of the pseudonymous authors of the paper, philosopher, writer, and one of the most interesting thinkers of our age, Dr Peter Boghossian.Follow Australiana on social media here.Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.Visit Peter's website here.

In some respects, the Romans feel strangely familiar. In the great men (and yes, they were almost always men) of the Roman Empire, we can glimpse human motivations, desires and flaws that we share today. At the same time, the Romans inhabited a world replete with some (thankfully) not so familiar features: eunuchs, prophecy, incest and barbarism.What lessons can we draw from a civilisation that is at once familiar to us, and yet so alien? To answer that question, host Will Kingston is joined by the preeminent Roman historian of our generation, Tom Holland. The third book in Tom’s series on Ancient Rome, ‘Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age’, is out now.Follow Australiana on social media here.Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.Buy tickets to The Rest is History’s Australia tour here.Buy ‘Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age’ here.

Drugs in the White House... Presidential court cases... Geriatric party leaders… Eight hour hunger strikes… And the odd attempted ‘insurrection.’ It’s fair to say that we’ve become desensitised to just how strange American politics has become. To help make sense of the madness, host Will Kingston is joined by Texas’ #1 radio host, the ‘Czar of Talk’, Michael Berry.Follow Australiana on social media here.Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.Listen to The Michael Berry Show here.

We live in an age where the lines between entertainment and political activism are so blurred as to be almost non-existent. Barbie is less a movie about a doll than a lecture about the patriarchy. The ‘Welcome to Country’ at most footy games will soon be longer than the game itself. And many stand-up comedians are less interested in telling jokes than they are about making political statements.Monty Franklin is not one of those comedians. Instead he’s become one of Australia’s most successful US-based comedians by poking fun at the things that make Aussies great. In the words of John Cleese, who co-wrote with Monty the upcoming film, ‘The Great Emu War’, ‘silliness always wins’.Follow Australiana on social media here.Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.Get tickets to see Monty’s show in Australia here.Follow Monty on Instagram here.