Podcast · Society & Culture
by ABC Australia · English · Society & Culture
Smart analysis, lively conversations, and great company. Understand Australia and the world with Nick Bryant.
9 Oct 2026 · 7 min
Bogong moths are swarming across south-eastern Australia, finding their way into homes and washing up on beaches, prompting reactions ranging from disgust to delight. The tiny insects fly up to 1000km in an annual migration that was once commonplace but that is now extraordinary. Classified as endangered in 2021, could the bogong moth be making a remarkable comeback?
9 Oct 2026 · 18 min
It's been 50 years since the end of China's Cultural Revolution, a decade of chaos that saw mass violence and political upheaval. But, officially at least, China is not looking back and taking stock.
9 Oct 2026 · 11 min
A Melbourne-based innovator has won the 2026 Australian Good Design Awards for an invention that distributes solar power fairly throughout apartment buildings. Known as SolShare, the Australian-made technology makes rooftop solar accessible to apartment dwellers, and is being exported globally.
9 Oct 2026 · 11 min
Astronomers have detected a mysterious flash of radio energy, called a fast radio burst or FRB, that's been travelling across space for 10 billion years. These flashes only last a millisecond, but they may be vital in better understanding the story of the universe. Plus, if you think dawn on Earth is impressive, a NASA rover has taken a stunning image of dawn up on Mars.
9 Oct 2026 · 13 min
AI data centre operator Firmus has pulled out of what would have been one of Australia's largest public listings. So how did the hype fall so flat?
9 Oct 2026 · 14 min
Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, is facing its greatest scandal since the Cold War. Former spy chief August Hanning was arrested earlier this week on suspicion of espionage, treason and obtaining classified information for a foreign power. He ran the spy agency from 1998 to 2005 and is now being held in detention ahead of an expected court appearance next week.
2 Oct 2026 · 7 min
This year's NRL grand final will feature the Sydney Roosters and the Newcastle Knights. And the story of the Knights is a fairytale in the making. The team finished last in the competition last year. Now they're just one win away from a premiership. As a result, the city of Newcastle is going absolutely ballistic.
2 Oct 2026 · 17 min
After a 31-year career as the ABC's finance guru, Alan Kohler announced this week that he's leaving the organisation. He joins Saturday Extra to talk about the latest interest rate hike, the housing market, and how he became one of this country's great economic communicators.
2 Oct 2026 · 21 min
Few writers in the world have written with more clarity or authority on the intersection of the modern-day media and modern-day politics than Gabriel Sherman. Gabriel Sherman is a special correspondent with Vanity Fair, author of the book Bonfire of the Murdochs, and the screenwriter of the movie, The Apprentice, which tells the story of Donald Trump's rise to fame as a property developer in New York City.
2 Oct 2026 · 15 min
The first round of voting in Brazil's presidential and parliamentary election starts on Sunday. The main contest is between the 80-year-old incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his rival Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former leader Jair Bolsonaro.
2 Oct 2026 · 12 min
This week, a flydubai plane headed to Tel Aviv in Israel came frighteningly close to crashing after the pilot was stabbed by his co-pilot. We assess the latest information around the alleged terror attack and the geopolitical implications for the region.
25 Sep 2026 · 8 min
It's AFL grand final day, so we talk to Melbourne's Lord Mayor Nick Reece for this month's instalment of The Last Thing. He shares some of the last great things he's read, watched and visited.
25 Sep 2026 · 16 min
While we're all choosing our favourite books as part of Radio National's Top 100 Australian Books, which ones have had a big impact on Australian society and could be considered the most important and impactful? We thought we would ask two very bookish historians.
25 Sep 2026 · 8 min
The Longest Nights is a popular Korean children's book that is being adapted for the stage by The Sydney Opera House and Seoul musical company Ipkoason. The two-year long creative collaboration brings pansori, a traditional storytelling technique featuring drums and voice, to Aussie kids.
25 Sep 2026 · 21 min
Comedian, TV host and author Shaun Micallef has combined his trademark humour with historical research to write the story of Matthew Flinders. Matthew Flinders was a British navigator who led the first circumnavigation of the Australian continent and helped popularise the name "Australia."
25 Sep 2026 · 7 min
This week, 130 heads of government are in New York for the UN General Assembly. And for the first time ever, artificial intelligence has been centre stage. But it's the undiplomatic rhetoric which has made headlines with Donald Trump using his speech to threaten to annihilate Iran. That followed a strong rebuke from Iran's president, marking the first time the leader of a country at war with America has delivered a speech on US soil.
25 Sep 2026 · 13 min
Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington has ended after three days of talks, a state dinner and an extravagant welcome ceremony. In a social media post, President Trump said that the leaders plan to meet twice more before the year’s end. What were the key takeaways from the summit?
18 Sep 2026 · 10 min
Australia's Indigenous Desert Alliance has been named a finalist in The Earthshot Prize for their work protecting desert habitat across 270 million hectares. The alliance of 70 Indigenous ranger groups has one of the world's leading cultural burning programs and supports threatened species including the Great Desert skink, bilby and night parrot. The Earthshot Prize was founded by Prince William in 2020 to recognise initiatives that find solutions to the planet's greatest environmental challenges. Guest: Samantha Murray, CEO Indigenous Desert Alliance.
18 Sep 2026 · 13 min
Next week, world leaders will meet at UN Headquarters in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Leaders like Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Anthony Albanese are set to speak, against a backdrop of an increasingly sidelined and underfunded UN. Topics are likely to range from AI to climate change to conflict in the Middle East to preparing for the next pandemic.
18 Sep 2026 · 30 min
Paul Keating's ambition was to liberate Australia from our remaining attachments to Britain, achieve reconciliation, and reorient the nation in the Asian region. After unprecedented access to the former prime minister's papers, and a series of interviews, James Curran explores Keating's long-term vision for Australia.
18 Sep 2026 · 18 min
The former prime minister Kevin Rudd has warned that there is an urgent need for intergovernmental regulation of AI. Ahead of next week's meeting in Washington between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, what could a set of guardrails look like, and how would both the US and China be involved?
11 Sep 2026 · 23 min
Come from Away is a musical which tells the story of nearly 7,000 airline passengers who were stranded in the small Canadian town of Gander, Newfoundland, after the September 11 attacks. This week The New York Times dubbed it "the most enduring piece of 9/11 art." As part of our coverage of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we spoke with the Canadian husband and wife who co-wrote the musical.
11 Sep 2026 · 19 min
In the latest Quarterly Essay, one of Australia's leading public intellectuals tries to make sense of what's happening through a philosophical prism. In particular, he looks at the crisis of liberalism, a collection of ideas which has shaped politics and society since the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century.
11 Sep 2026 · 10 min
This week, an Anthropic researcher resigned over concerns that the technology could kill us all by the end of the decade. As AI developers weighed in supporting his prediction, many are asking if AI power is rapidly slipping out of human hands. Meanwhile in Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese introduced a draft digital duty of care bill that would allow social media users to opt out of the algorithm. As courts and governments across the globe try to wrestle back control of the algorithm, is Meta finally facing a global reckoning?
11 Sep 2026 · 20 min
Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, their impact continues to be felt in New York, across America and around the world. To mark the anniversary, we spoke with Lawrence Wright, whose acclaimed book The Looming Tower traces the rise of al-Qaeda and the events that culminated in the attacks.
4 Sep 2026 · 7 min
Get ready, another season of 'nest-flix' is beginning. Melbourne's peregrine falcon camera is back, meaning people can watch a live feed of a peregrine falcon nest, high up in the city's CBD.
4 Sep 2026 · 17 min
There are seats up for grabs at one of the world's most important tables, and Australia is putting up its hand to join. At the United Nations later this month, Anthony Albanese will be spearheading an attempt to join the Security Council for a two-year term that would begin in 2029. The last time Australia was on the council was between 2013 and 2014.
4 Sep 2026 · 26 min
When politicians make announcements wearing hi-vis and hard hats they are making a terrible miscalculation about who Australian voters really are, says one of Australia's great journalists George Megalogenis. Three major shocks have redefined the Australian electorate, and yet for decades politics has failed to keep up, with both major parties operating on outdated assumptions.
4 Sep 2026 · 8 min
At the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Palau this week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced $600 million to combat drug trafficking. The deal promises increased aerial surveillance across the Pacific, improved maritime capability, and additional training and support for police. As crime and HIV spirals out of control in countries like Fiji, will the investment be enough to squash the rapidly escalating illicit trade?
4 Sep 2026 · 15 min
Germany has blamed the Kremlin for attempting a drone attack at Leipzig airport last month targeting a Ukrainian plane. The heads of NATO and the European Commission have warned Russia is growing increasingly reckless and vowed to respond to a dangerous "new normal."
Smart analysis, lively conversations, and great company. Understand Australia and the world with Nick Bryant.
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