Confronted with a series of existential threats, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor argue in their new book that wealthy billionaires, including the so-called "tech bros", have become focused not on how we can deal with those threats,  but who will best survive them.  They warn there is an urgent need for far more limits on dangerous technologies than US President Donald Trump's Whitehouse accord. Plus meet the author who breakfasted in ten Indian cities, to discover how Indian culture is reflected through its breakfast foods, makers and consumers.

Guests: 

• Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, co-authors, End times fascism and the fight for the living world
• Priyadarshini Chatterjee, Kolkata-based travel, culture and food writer

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The German Peasants' War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The response from feudal overlords was brutal, but while the rebellion was suppressed, it would continue to influence subsequent revolts, contribute to the emergence of peasant and worker movements in the following centuries and serve as a precursor to larger social and political transformations in Europe. 

• Guest: Professor Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oriel College, Oxford University and author of Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War, published by Hachette
• Producer: Catherine Zengerer

A host of new companies are rushing to apply for seabed exploration licences promised by the Trump administration - but are they equipped for this venture? Plus, trauma has gone from the clinic to the culture wars, but is a politics built around personal suffering crowding out class, power and solidarity?

Guests

• Todd Woody, Reporter, Bloomberg News
• Catherine Liu, Professor of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Author of Traumatised: The New Politics of public suffering

Mark Kenny reviews PM Anthony Albanese's week at the United Nations in New York, and asks whether the Australian leader should be more assertive in rebuking the US President, on issues like the regulation of AI. Volkswagon is cutting jobs, considering factory closures, and even turning one car plant towards defence production. Can the company reinvent itself before its glory days become history? And David Marr takes you to the outback, to see Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in flood. 

Guests

• Mark Kenny, Director of the Australian Studies Institute, host of Democracy Sausage podcast;
• Jack Ewing, Journalist, New York Times
• David Marr, Late Night Live presenter

Doctors work long hours in hospitals around the world, but visiting doctors in Gaza have to endure just some of what their local peers do: military attack, inadequate resources, inadequate food, and a starving, distressed population. 

Plus, the curious history of vanilla - and how, despite its exotic flavouring and difficult cultivation, "vanilla" became a term for bland. 

Guests:

• Dr Bushra Othman, Palestinian Australian General Surgeon from Naarm/Melbourne. Has done three stints in Gaza, and edited the book.
• Dr Amy Neilson, QLD-based specialist in rural and remote , tropical, and emergency medicine. Visiting Medical Officer in the NSW Hunter/New England regions. Senior lecturer in medical education at James Cook University, Cairns. Spent two weeks in Gaza in 2025.
• Professor Eric Jennings, historian, University of Toronto. Author of 'Vanilla: the history of an extraordinary bean’ (Yale University Press)

Australia is a nation built by migrants, but immigration has always been politically contested. A new history traces how we came to decide who belongs, who gets in and who is kept out, right back to the early days of the colony. Plus, historian James Crawford explores what happens when the resources that underpin modern life become harder to find, harder to extract and harder to replace.

Guests

• Mark Cully, author of Waves of Plenty: Immigration and the Making of Australia, published by Black Inc
• James Crawford, author of The Vanishing Earth: A journey through the last days of Abundance

Australia is a nation built by migrants, but immigration has always been politically contested. A new history traces how we came to decide who belongs, who gets in and who is kept out, right back to the early days of the colony. Plus, historian James Crawford explores what happens when the resources that underpin modern life become harder to find, harder to extract and harder to replace.

Guests

• Mark Cully, author of Waves of Plenty: Immigration and the Making of Australia, published by Black Inc
• James Crawford, author of The Vanishing Earth: A journey through the last days of Abundance

Bruce Shapiro surveys the path ahead to November's critical US midterm elections, as US President Donald Trump's polling sinks to a new low. Plus, the senior Guardian correspondent Luke Harding on how Putin has up-ended the postwar global order, with help from his American counterpart. 

Guests

• Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with The Nation magazine and Director of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma.
• Luke Harding, The Guardian's senior international correspondent, and former Moscow bureau Chief. Author of Betrayal: Trump, Putin and The New Age of Conquest

Anna Henderson is travelling with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, as he launches Australia's bid for a seat at the UN security council, does the United Nations have a future? And why bandicoots are doing your garden a fantastic service. 

Guests:

• Anna Henderson, Chief Political Correspondent, SBS
• Richard Gowan, Director of Global Issues and Institutions at the International Crisis Group
• Annabel Ellis, PhD candidate at the University of Sydney in the Behavioural Ecology and Conservation Lab

For millenia, Turkiye’s former capital of Istanbul has been at the centre of world affairs thanks to its geography straddling the Bosphorus, the natural canal that forms the border between Europe and Asia. President Erdogan is keen to see the country reclaim some of its former power and importance, and get rich in the process, as his reign becomes more and more autocratic. Suzy Hansen chronicles the age of authoritarianism in Turkiye through an intimate portrait of its people, how Istanbul handled hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, and how its streets now teem with nationalistic fervour, political repression and rampant corruption. 

• Guest: Suzy Hansen, journalist and author of From Life Itself: Turkey and Istanbul in the Age of Erdogan, published by Allen and Unwin
• Producer: Catherine Zengerer

The U.S.A.I.D program was established by President John F Kennedy in 1961, at the peak of Cold War tensions, but researcher Luke Fletcher says its roots date back to WWII, and a desire by the US to greatly expand its economic and military power. Plus, a tribute to Mary Gaudron, Australia's first female High Court judge.

Guests: 

• Luke Fletcher, Executive Director, Jubilee Australia Research Centre and author of America and the Birth of Global Aid, published by Routledge
• John Basten AO KC, former judge of the NSW Court of Appeal

Our regular UK correspondent appraises Ed Miliband's bold stance on West Bank. Meet Dutch-Australian Kim Sajet, former Smithsonian director who Donald Trump tried to fire. And the allure of world globes.

Guests:

• Ian Dunt, columnist with i-news; co-host of the Origin Story podcast
• Kim Sajet, Director of the Milwaukee Art Museum; former Director of the US National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
• Nikolaus Schobesberger, Director at the Globe Museum of the Austrian National Library in Vienna