Bruce Shapiro looks at the fight inside the Democrats between emerging populists and a conservative group called The Third Way. Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti's son talks about his father plans to run for president of the Palestinian Authority, from jail.  Plus how an Australian harpsichord player discovered a three-hundred-year-old cantata by a Venetian contemporary of Antonio Vivaldi, who was a disabled female orphan. 

Guests: 

• Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with The Nation magazine and Director of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma. 
• Arab Barghouti, son of Fatah party leader, Marwan Barghouti
• Elizabeth Anderson, Assistant Artistic Director, Australian Chamber Choir

PM Albanese and Opposition Leader AngusTaylor are doing a deal on gambling. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan have just signed a new NATO-like defence pact which commits each country to respond in the event of an attack on the other. So what are the implications for the Gulf conflict? Plus, from hieroglyphs to hashtags, the hidden history of punctuation and the tiny marks that have shaped how we communicate.

Guests: 

• Anna Henderson, SBS World News Chief Political Correspondent | National Press Club Director
• Professor Simon Mabon, Professor of International Politics at Lancaster University
• Florence Hazrat, author, On the Mark

Peter Garrent discusses the testimonies being presented at the crowdfunded AUKUS public inquiry which has so far recieved over 500 submissions, and heard from former PMs and ministers. Plus decades after Britain abolished slavery in its colonies, Australia was using Pacific island workers to harvest sugar, with many essentially held captive.

Guests:

• Peter Garrett, Lead Commissioner, AUKUS public inquiry, former Labor Minister
• Ryan Butta, author of 'Blackbirding: a reckoning with the Australian Slave Trade' 

In his new book, Crikey’s political editor, Bernard Keane, turns his eye not just to where Australia has gone wrong, but to how we can best position ourselves to navigate the triple threat of Trump, China and AI. Plus the eight thousand year history of wine - from Georgia to the present day.

Guests: 

• Bernard Keane, political editor, Crikey, and author of ‘Seize the Moment - Australia’s real opportunities in an unstable world,’
• Kathleen Burk, Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary history at University College London and author of  Wine, A global history

Ian Dunt on Nigel Farage's planned 'Operation Fortress', stopping all illegal boats. The Odyssey film-makers caused offence in an indigenous-owned region that Morocco claims as its own. And the push to rid Kangaroo Island of cats, both feral and pet.

Guests: 

• Ian Dunt, columnist with i-news, co-host of Origin Story podcast
• Sarah Yerkes, North Africa specialist and senior fellow with the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peac
• Michael Pengilly, Mayor of Kangaroo Island

Anna Henderson recaps an eventful Garma festival in Arnhem Land, which included a blistering speech from Noel Pearson. Is there hope for a reunified Cyprus, amid planned UN talks? Plus, why butterfly collectors are a dying breed.

Guests:

• Anna Henderson, chief political correspondent, SBS
• Dr. Erol Kaymak, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Eastern Mediterranean University
• Emil Leth Beiter, Danish writer and critic

The famous writer Oscar Wilde died alone in a French hotel in 1900. Since that time, so much has been written about the man - much of it rumour and speculation. In his new book, 'After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal', Oscar Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland sets the record straight. The book is thirty years in the making and is an exploration of Wilde’s posthumous reputation and how his imprisonment for homosexuality affected Wilde's family, friends and literary legacy.

• Guest: Merlin Holland, Oscar Wilde's grandson and author, Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal
• Producer: Ali Benton

Originally broadcast in January 2026.

Established in Moscow in 1989, the 'Night Wolves' motorcycle club continues to operate as a powerful propaganda arm of the Putin regime. Plus, the writer Sisonke Msimang defends the legacy of Sarah "Saartjie" Baartman, the African woman trafficked through early 19th Century Europe as a 'freak show' spectacle. 

Guests:

• Dr Olga Boichak, Senior Lecturer in digital cultures, Sydney University
• Sisonke Msimang, writer and activist, author of 'Defending the dead: the many afterlives of Sarah Baartman' in the latest Griffith Review

Our regular US commentator, Bruce Shapiro, looks at how President Trump is caught between pressure at home to get out of the Iran war, and pressure from Israel to stay in it.  Plus why use of the agricultural weed killer Paraquat has just been allowed to continue in Australia, despite being banned in many other countries. And this year's Census is getting more personal. 

Guests: 

• Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with The Nation magazine and Director of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma
• Sarah Rogers, Associate Professor in Geography, University of Melbourne
• Liz Allen, demographer, ANU

Anna Henderson on Pauline Hanson's discrimination court loss, and Labor rejecting Ed Husic's genocide motion at their national conference. How technology is transforming modern warfare and creating a new global arms race. Plus, one hundred years on, LNL looks at the dark side of Route 66. 

Guests: 

• Anna Henderson, SBS World News Chief Political Correspondent | National Press Club Director
• Steve Feldstein, author of Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare
• Dr Daniel Milowski,  author of 'Route 66 and the Formation of a National Cultural Icon: Mother Road to Mythic American Byway'

Australia likes to think it has no history of slavery, but two-thirds of Australia's colonial governors had links to the slave economy of the British Empire. A new book, Legacies of British Slavery in Australia and New Zealand reveals how slave money shaped the colonies. Plus, veteran architecture critic Paul Goldberger examines what Donald Trump's building agenda says about his politics, power and legacy.

Guests: 

• Professor Zoe Laidlaw, historian, University of Melbourne, co-editor with Sally Lydon of 'Legacies of British Slavery in Australia and NZ'
• Paul Goldberger, former architecture critic for The New York Times, and The New Yorker, and the author of 'Why Architecture Matters.'