Correspondent Irris Makler joins Late Night Live from Israel, days away from the country's elections. Plus, Washington journalist Susan Page details Queen Elizabeth II's relationship with 13 US presidents, from Truman to Trump. 

Guests:

• Irris Makler, journalist and former Jerusalem correspondent, France24
• Susan Page, Washington, D.C. bureau chief for USA Today, author of 'The Queen and Her Presidents'

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Veteran Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad contemplates Iraq's 'impossible predicament' in the wake of the final withdrawal of remaining US personnel and amid ongoing corruption battles. Plus Indonesian writer Tari Lang recalls Indonesia's bloody 1965 coup, and growing up in the same neighbourhood as dictator Suharto. 

Guests:

• Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, journalist for The Guardian
• Tari Lang, author 'My neighbour, the dictator: Coming of age in the shadow of Indonesia's 1965 coup'

Bruce Shapiro counts down to the US midterm elections. Dr Rupa Nara of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) returns from a recent mission to the epicentre of the Ebola crisis. Plus, are researchers finally decoding the mysterious Inca 'language' of knotted strings? 

Guests:

• Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor for The Nation, Executive Director for the Global Centre of Journalism and Trauma
• Dr Rupa Nara, paediatrician, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)
• Professor Sabine Hyland, anthropologist from the University of St Andrews

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Anna Henderson on the attack on Independent MP for Indi, Helen Haines. Plus tensions between the PM and Treasurer Jim Chalmers over credit card payments, and why the Nationals won't support the EU trade agreement. Also on the show, India's youth movement, the Cockroach Janta Party, is testing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's grip on power. Plus hordes of yabbies are trashing rivers in southern Africa. 

Guests: 

• Anna Henderson, chief political correspondent, SBS
• Maya Tudor, Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
• Dr Rachael King, specialist in freshwater and marine invertebrates, Head of Research, SA Museum

A new documentary looks back at the career of fiercely independent journalist and host of Democracy Now ! Amy Goodman and why she thinks independent media and dissent are what will save us from despots. Plus another documentary looks back at the fight against the Hindmarsh Island bridge in South Australia, the place where Ngarrindjeri women conducted sacred women's business and refused to back down on their right to keep it secret. 

Guests: 

• Tracey Rigney, writer/director KUMARANGK: Sacred Women’s Business and Steve Kenny, one the lawyers who represented the Ngarrindjeri people
• Amy Goodman, journalist, co-host of Democracy Now!  Star of the new documentary film Steal this story, Please!

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Australia's unique alpine eucalypt is starting to die out. The High Country may never be the same again, a new book argues. And longstanding New Yorker magazine writer Susan Orlean, author of 'The Orchid Thief' and 'The Library Book', on her fascination with the stories of people who are not famous or powerful.

Guests: 

• Ant Sharwood and Anna Langford, co-authors of 'The last snow gum' (Hachette)
• Susan Orlean, on a speaking tour of Australia. Her latest book is 'Joyride: a memoir'

Ian Dunt on UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham's push for a reset in Britain’s relationship with the EU. Could this be the beginning of the end for Brexit? Yanis Varoufakis' take on Greece's recent multi-billion dollar defence deals with the US and Israel. Plus mathematics professor Clemency Montelle takes us through the history and the importance of zero. 

Guests:

• Ian Dunt, iNews columnist and regular LNL commentator
• Yanis Varoufakis - leader of the Democracy in Europe Movement and co-host The Econoclasts podcast
• Clemency Montelle - professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand

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When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was elected he promised to address a gap in federal anti-discrimination law which allowed faith-based schools to sack gay kids and teachers, but he has thus far failed to do so. Now Independent MP for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, has introduced a bill to end the right of religious schools and universities to punish gay and trans pupils and staff. Plus, as AI reshapes society, what does it mean to be human? Father Paolo Benanti, advisor to the Holy Sea on AI Ethics is in Australia to examine the moral questions posed by artificial intelligence.

Guests:

• Allegra Spencer, Member for Wentworth
• Father Paolo Benanti, Professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University, in Rome, and advisor to the Holy Sea on AI Ethics

Two writers investigate two mysteries from 19th Century Australia. 

Kate Grenville uncovers a bundle of letters in the archives about the NSW country school teacher Joseph Connor, accused of beating his students. Was he a monster or the victim of a small-town vendetta? And Sally Young solves Australia's strangest political crime: the theft of the ceremonial mace from Victoria's state parliament in 1891.

Guests:

• Kate Grenville, author, 'The Country Schoolmaster: A Mystery in 88 Letters'
• Sally Young, author, 'The Curious Case of the Stolen Mace: Solving Australia's Strangest Political Crime'

The Lord of the Rings made J.R.R. Tolkien one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. But who was the obsessive, conservative and often difficult man behind Middle-earth? And Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, has a new and equally remarkable true story to tell. In 1942 in Nazi-occupied Paris, the Nazis arrest a Jewish family, but their 11-year-old daughter escapes to her piano teacher, Andrée Levallois. Andrée is secretly a French Resistance operative who risks everything, including her own family, to hide the child.  

Guests: 

• DJ Taylor, author of The King under the Mountain
• Heather Morris, author of The Piano teacher of Montparnasse

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Our regular US political commentator on the Cornell University sexual assault case, the failed execution of Christa Pike, and the dire outlook for the Republicans, four weeks before the midterms.

Valerie Trouet, a paleo-climate scientist, compares tree rings from living trees with historical and archaeological wood to reconstruct climate patterns going back thousands of years. It enables her to look at how climate has influenced wars, empires and natural disasters.

Guests:

• Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with The Nation magazine and Director of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma
• Valerie Trouet, professor in the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. Book 'Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings'