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It’s been called a forever war: the fight over how to teach children to read.

For decades, an outdated method has lingered in Australian classrooms as states protect schools’ right to teach how they wish.

Following a recent report from the Grattan Institute that found a third of Australian children couldn’t read well, state governments are finally picking a side and mandating the best way to teach reading.

Today, associate editor of The Saturday Paper Martin McKenzie-Murray on why “vibes-based learning” stuck around for so long and how children should actually be taught literacy.

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Guest: Associate editor of The Saturday Paper, Martin McKenzie-Murray.

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In the weeks since he was announced as Donald Trump’s running mate, some of JD Vance’s past remarks have resurfaced. He is now at the centre of a number of bizarre rumours and jokes.

 They’ve been picked up by some Democrats, who are labelling the two men on the republican ticket as ‘weird’.

Kamala Harris has chosen the man who started the ‘weird’ line of attack, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, as her running mate – 17 days after Harris herself became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

Walz has been described as a plain speaker with ‘dad appeal’ – a stark contrast to his opponents.

So, is being ordinary enough to win over American voters?

Today, senior researcher at The Australia Institute, Dr Emma Shortis, on the tactics of the two VP candidates and what their nominations say about their respective parties.

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Guest: Senior researcher at The Australia Institute, Dr Emma Shortis.

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Hardly any foreign journalists have been into Gaza since Israel’s bombings began. The Economist’s editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes is one of the few who has.

On a recent trip, Zanny visited the streets of Jerusalem, the Knesset, Gaza and the West Bank, and spoke to dozens of people about what will happen to Gaza when, or if, the fighting stops.

Now, an end to conflict in the Middle East seems further away than ever. Iran’s supreme leader has vowed to retaliate against Israel after the head of Hamas’ political bureau was assassinated in Tehran last week.

While tensions continue to escalate, the question remains: who will control Gaza once the dust settles?

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Guest: Editor-in-chief for The Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes.

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They’re hard to miss: the number of gambling ads flooding our screens and devices everyday. They’ve become such an inescapable part of sport that a parliamentary inquiry was formed, which looked at the impacts the ads have on the community. 

In the final months of her life, Labor MP Peta Murphy was the chair of that inquiry – and after hearing from the gambling industry, dependent sporting codes and families impacted by gambling addiction – her position was unequivocal: all ads for online gambling should be banned.

It’s been more than 14 months since the government received her recommendations and yet the proliferation of gambling ads has continued unabated. Now, the government could be set to water down a ban, in favour of caps on the number of ads per hour.

Today, Independent Senator David Pocock on the stranglehold the gambling industry has on Australian sport and politics and what it would take to change that.

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Guest: Independent Senator David Pocock

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It was supposed to be a routine call out when four police officers attended a property in regional Queensland just before Christmas in 2022.

The young officers approached the house, looking to do a routine welfare check, when they were fired on. After a siege that lasted hours, six people were killed, including two constables.

In the weeks that followed, media reporting focused on the strangeness of the town, and the strangeness of the Train family: two brothers and the woman that had been both of their wives.

Today, journalist and author of The Believer Sarah Krasnostein on the inquest into the Train family murders and the bigger questions that need to be answered if we’re to prevent similar attacks.

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Guest: Journalist and author of The Believer, Sarah Krasnostein

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In this episode of our sister podcast, Read This, host Michael Williams speaks with the winner of the 2024 Miles Franklin Award, Alexis Wright. Her epic novel Praiseworthy, also won the Stella Prize and has been described as “an astonishing feat of storytelling and sovereign imagination.

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At Sydney Airport on a muggy night in November 2022, a group of volunteers from Sydney’s northern beaches crowd inside arrivals waiting to greet a family they had never met.

Known as the ‘Manlygees’, they’re there to welcome a Kurdish family originally from Syria who had spent the past decade in a refugee camp in Iraq.

They’re part of an ambitious pilot program introduced in 2022, called the Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot, or CRISP, in which a sponsoring community acts as the safety net for refugees rather than government-funded settlement services.

But two years on, the program’s successes are hitting constraints, with experts questioning whether CRISP can become a genuine pathway to settlement, or whether it’s a shortcut to positive government PR.

Today, contributor to The Saturday Paper Cheyne Anderson on whether the experiment is working.

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Guest: Contributor to The Saturday Paper, Cheyne Anderson.

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It wasn’t so long ago that renewables pundits glowingly described hydrogen as the “Swiss Army knife” of renewable technologies, able to be turned to almost any purpose.

But more recently, the gas has become an expensive and painful point of political debate, with many experts tempering their praise.

Now, one of hydrogen’s biggest backers, mining magnate Andrew Forrest, has announced he is scaling back his green hydrogen projects.

Today, national correspondent for The Saturday Paper Mike Seccombe on how the green hydrogen dream evaporated.

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Guest: National correspondent for The Saturday Paper, Mike Seccombe.

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When Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to twenty years jail for sex trafficking crimes, journalist and writer Lucia Osborne-Crowley was there in the courtroom. 

She watched on as Ghislaine Maxwell – a British socialite, and close associate of Jeffrey Epstein – waited to hear her fate. And she listened as her victims testified to the harm inflicted by Maxwell’s predatory actions. 

But the more Osborne-Crowley learned, the more she came to understand the trial as a sham. Many other unnamed, powerful accused perpetrators associated with Epstein and Maxwell are, to this day, still protected. 

Today, Lucia Osborne-Crowley, author of The Lasting Harm, on the survivors of the crimes of Ghislaine Maxwell, and those who got away with it. 

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Guest: Author of The Lasting Harm Lucia Osborne-Crowley

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It was one of the biggest corporate scandals the country has ever seen when it was revealed that PwC had used confidential government information to enrich itself and its corporate clients. 

Since then there have been two parliamentary inquiries, an AFP investigation, nine investigations by the tax practitioners board, one internal review and an investigation by the international arm of the company. 

Yet important questions remain unanswered.  

Today, special correspondent Jason Koutsoukis on the key questions at the centre of the tax leaks scandal — and when we can expect answers to them. 

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Guest: Special correspondent for The Saturday Paper Jason Koutsoukis

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