
Late Night Live - Full program podcast
From razor-sharp analysis of current events to the hottest debates in politics, science, philosophy and culture, Late Night Live puts you firmly in the big picture.
Latest episodes

May 21, 2025 • 54min
The Aussies the union movement left behind, and what causes a society to collapse?
A new history of the union movement in Australia looks at those often left out of the picture: migrants, women, Indigenous Australia and LGBTIQA+ people. Plus Cambridge scholar, Luke Kemp and his historical autopsy of why societies collapse.

May 20, 2025 • 54min
Tariff chaos on American shelves, Ukraine minerals deal and Lake Eyre in flood
Trump's constant changes to tariffs are wreaking havoc on US ports, logistics, and the price of goods. Any Russia/Ukraine ceasefire may be at a high cost to Ukraine, given the losses it agreed to in the recent US minerals deal. And Kati-Thunda Lake Eyre is on the brink of its biggest inundation in 15 years.

May 19, 2025 • 54min
Laura Tingle's Canberra, and Harriet Walter re-writes Shakespeare's women
7.30 Political Editor Laura Tingle surveys the path ahead for conservative politics in Australia. And from Lady Macbeth to Kate the Shrew - actor Dame Harriet Walter imagines what Shakespeare's women might have said, if the Bard's plays had a more female perspective.

May 15, 2025 • 54min
The Brazilian Marxists claiming unused land, and Australia's Antarctic obsession
Journalist Vincent Bevins on the popular Landless Workers Movement of Brazil - an agrarian movement which redistributes unused government land. And environmental historian Rohan Howitt, from Monash University, argues that Australia had an Imperial zeal to claim the Antarctic and Southern Ocean as its own.

May 14, 2025 • 54min
Who's still selling arms to Israel? And the legal rights of nature
Antony Loewenstein on the countries still supplying arms to Israel. And nature writer Robert Macfarlane asks, is a river alive?

May 13, 2025 • 54min
Ian Dunt's UK, Europe's thirsty data centres, and the survival of Indigenous message sticks
Ian Dunt unpacks the UK government's tough new plan to reduce migration. With swathes of Europe in drought, could new data centres exacerbate growing water problems? And the project preserving Australia's most ancient long-distance communication tool: the message stick.

May 12, 2025 • 54min
Laura Tingle's Canberra, US-China trade talks and the art of the courtroom sketch
Analysis of current events to the hottest debates in politics, science, philosophy and culture.

May 8, 2025 • 54min
Does our world lack moral ambition? And the Victorian obsession with orchids
Analysis of current events to the hottest debates in politics, science, philosophy and culture.

May 7, 2025 • 54min
The destruction of Gaza's universities, and Donald Trump's fantasy maps
Cambridge scholars Dr Wesam Amer and Dr Mona Jabril on the destruction of universities in Gaza. Plus, why does US President Donald Trump enjoy meddling with the world map?

May 6, 2025 • 54min
Bruce Shapiro's America, How Kerala got rich and vale Ted Kotcheff of Wake in Fright
Bruce Shapiro critiques Donald Trump's first hundred days in office. Fifty years ago Kerala was one of India’s poorest states, now it's one of the richest. How? And a tribute to Canadian Ted Kotcheff, who directed one of Australia's biggest cult films - Wake in Fright.