
Late Night Live — Full program podcast
Incisive analysis, fearless debates and nightly surprises. Explore the serious, the strange and the profound with David Marr.
Latest episodes

Jun 3, 2025 • 54min
Ian Dunt's UK, Pakistan and India's war over water, and who named our body parts?
Ian Dunt examines Britain's new defence plan, as Europe ramps up its war-readiness. Why water is at the centre of ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan. And how did some of the more obscure parts of the human anatomy get their names?

Jun 2, 2025 • 54min
Bernard Keane's Canberra, what America's 'comfort class' doesn't get, and the life of a food critic
Crikey's Politics editor Bernard Keane on the surprising defection of Senator Derinda Cox from the Greens to Labor, and US calls for Australia to increase its defence spending. Writer Xochitl Gonzalez critiques the widening chasm between the haves and have-nots in the US. Plus John Lethlean's colourful life as a food critic.

May 29, 2025 • 54min
The origins of the term 'national security', and actress Merle Oberon's false identity
The term 'national security' wasn't always around. It was invented, effectively, by US President Franklin D Roosevelt, as a call to Americans to get involved in WW2. And Hollywood actress Merle Oberon had to hide her South Asian origins in 1930s London and America, in order to work in movies and remain in America.

May 28, 2025 • 54min
Abalone cultural heritage in Tasmania and overtourism in the Canary Islands
First Nations in Tasmania have now secured permanent cultural fishing rights for abalone, and now they’re putting it back on the dining tables of Tasmanians. And the civil engineer who quit his job to campaign against the construction of a port in Tenerife.

May 27, 2025 • 54min
Bruce Shapiro's America, the money behind the 'Enhanced Games', and an ancient Roman cookbook
US President Trump is threatening to deport a group of men to war torn South Sudan. We track the money behind the Enhanced Games - a kind of Olympics on steroids. And there is much to learn from a famous cookbook from ancient Rome.

May 26, 2025 • 45min
Late Night Live farewells Laura Tingle
After 30 years of appearances on Late Night Live - spanning nine Australian Prime Ministers - Laura Tingle bids farewell to LNL as its political correspondent in Canberra, before commencing her ABC Global Affairs role. In a sprawling conversation, Laura recounts her early beginnings in journalism, the ebbs and flows of Canberra politics through the decades, and what she's come to admire in our representatives.

May 22, 2025 • 54min
D-day looms for Woodside's Burrup gas plant, and teaching troubled teens to hunt in the New Zealand wilderness
Australia's Commonwealth government is due to make a decision on the proposed 50-year extension of Woodside's gas lease on Western Australia's Burrup Peninsula. Marian Wilkinson investigates. And David meets the New Zealand hunter, fisher and gatherer Terressa Kollatt, now teaching troubled teens to forage for their own wild food.

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.