
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

Jul 25, 2024 • 54min
Pine Gap, academic publishing and the history of notebooks
A new documentary examines the life of military analyst Des Ball and his role in our understanding of Pine Gap, the big bucks that are being made in academic publishing and how notebooks have been a tool for creativity through history.

Jul 24, 2024 • 54min
Is Israel a liberal democracy and was William Shakespeare gay?
Saree Makdisi questions the perceptions by the West of Israel as a liberal democracy and Will Tosh questions whether William Shakespeare was gay, and does it really matter.

Jul 23, 2024 • 54min
Bruce Shapiro on Kamala Harris, Paul Davies on the benefits of AI and the beauty of the Brisbane River
Bruce Shapiro on how Kamala Harris can turn the Trump campaign on its head, theoretical physicist Paul Davies says there's a lot to be gained from artificial intelligence - if we're mindful about how we use it and Simon Cleary on his walk down the Brisbane River.

Jul 22, 2024 • 54min
Laura Tingle's Canberra, the Brittany Higgins defamation case and was Gaudi a saint?
Laura Tingle on the Opposition's renewed focus on Howard's battlers, Richard Ackland on whether Linda Reynolds should be suing Brittany Higgins over social media comments, and Antoni Gaudi - a bad-tempered genius, but was he a saint?

Jul 18, 2024 • 54min
Who is the new President of Iran and passport paradoxes
How much reform can we expect from the President of Iran while the Ayatollah Khomeini is still the Supreme Leader. How many countries can your passport get you access to? Passports provide freedom to cross borders but that freedom comes at a price.

Jul 17, 2024 • 54min
France in flux and how should we remember the war dead
France remains in limbo while deciding on a new Prime Minister and historian Joan Beaumont takes us to the war graves on the island of Ambon and asks how should we commemorate those that died in war now and into the future.

Jul 16, 2024 • 54min
The challenge for Keir Starmer and pioneering nurses in the AIDS crisis
Will British PM Keir Starmer be able to restore faith in politics in the UK? And who will the Tories choose as their next leader? Plus the little told story of the nurses who cared for, and advocated for, AIDS patients, when most people were afraid of them.

Jul 15, 2024 • 54min
Laura Tingle's Canberra, Bruce Shapiro post Trump assassination attempt and French sub secrets
Laura Tingle on which laws the Albanese government hasn't been able to get through parliament, Bruce Shapiro on the impact of the Trump assassination attempt on the upcoming election, plus the secret plan to unravel the French submarine deal.

Jul 11, 2024 • 54min
The young leftie Rupert Murdoch
The young Rupert Murdoch was a radical who espoused socialism, kept a bust of Lenin in his uni accommodation and then went on to build his empire from 1950s Adelaide. Walter Marsh is a journalist and author of Young Rupert - the making of the Murdoch empire, published by Scribe.

Jul 10, 2024 • 54min
Lara Marlowe on Robert Fisk, Azar Nafisi on reading dangerously
Lara Marlowe reflects on the life and work of her late partner, the great English writer and journalist Robert Fisk in her memoir Love In A Time Of War: My Years with Robert Fisk. And Azar Nafisi, Iranian-American writer and professor of English literature believes we need to read dangerously in order to resist the populist and polarising impulses of contemporary politics. Her book is called Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times