Who stole the mace from Victoria's parliament in 1891?
Writer and historian Sally Young solves the strangest crime in Australian political history: the theft of the ceremonial mace from Victoria'...
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Society & Culture
Late Night Live - Separate stories podcast
LNL stories separated out for listening. From razor-sharp analysis of current events to the hottest debates in politics, science, philosophy and culture, Late Night Live puts you firmly in t...
Episodes
20 of 457 episodes
Villain or victim? Kate Grenville investigates a colonial cold case
Kate Grenville's new book, 'The Country Schoolmaster: A Mystery in 88 Letters' began with the discovery of an unassuming bundle of letters i...
The piano teacher of Montparnasse
A chance encounter in 2003 led Heather Morris to meet 87 year-old Auschwitz survivor Lale Sokolov. For the next three years, Lale told her h...
The grumpy genius behind Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien created one of the most intoxicating imaginative worlds of the 20th century, but the man behind Middle-earth remains surprisi...
What can tree rings tell us about civilisation?
Tree rings are more than a record of a tree’s life. They’re an archive of climate, fire and environmental change. They can take us back thou...
Bruce Shapiro's USA: the Cornell case, a failed execution and Democrats could flip the House
Bruce Shapiro looks at the political fall-out from the Cornell University rape case, how the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee h...
Pub bedrooms and Christian fanatics: Lech Blaine's extraordinary childhood
Australian writer Lech Blaine shares the stranger-than-fiction story of his childhood, growing up with a loving foster family in a rural Que...
Simon Winchester on the wind: the invisble force we can't live without
It's invisible, it drives us crazy, and we can't live without it. The wind has been worshipped, feared and cursed across cultures, reference...
Breakfast in India
This author ate multiple breakfasts in each of ten Indian cities, with the aim of looking at India's diversity and layered societies through...
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor on why we need urgent controls on artificial intelligence
Confronted with a series of existential threats, like the climate crisis and the potential of AI to end life on earth, Naomi Klein and Astra...
How German history has been shaped by the peasant revolution of 1525
The German Peasants' War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across...
How trauma became a weapon in the culture wars
Trauma has become one of the defining languages of our age. Cultural theorist, Catherine Liu argues that our focus on individual suffering c...
Deep sea mining, Trump-style
Australian and Canadian-run companies, some with questionable credentials, are trying to cash in on Donald Trump's promotion of deep sea min...
David Marr's view of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in flood
David Marr is on holiday in the outback, to see Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in flood. He shares his birdseye view of the rare natural wonder.
Can Volkswagen return to its former glory?
Volkswagen was once the powerhouse of German industry. Now Chinese car makers are challenging its dominance, while Dieselgate still casts a...
Mark Kenny's Canberra: Is Australia too timid with Trump?
Mark Kenny reviews PM Anthony Albanese's week at the United Nations in New York, and asks whether the Australian leader should be more asser...
Australian doctors in Gaza
Dozens of Australian and New Zealand doctors and nurses have worked in Gaza over the past two years. They temporarily joined the local medic...
Vanilla, an extraordinary bean
A new book tracks this exotic 'spice' from the 16th century, and its origins in the world's only edible orchid, found in Central America, to...
Can we repair an Earth scarred by extraction?
Humanity has extracted more from the Earth in the past 50 years than in all previous history combined. James Crawford explores the global sc...
The 'miracle' of Australia's migration story
Immigration built Australia. Since the 1830s, when free settlers began to outnumber convicts in the colonies, some 12 million migrants have...