Nick Feik, freelance journalist and former editor of The Monthly explains why the federal Labor government's response to the 2023 Intergenerational Report and the climate crisis is a sad joke on us all. He also tells us about the lack of whistleblower protections and the newly launched, The Whistleblower Project, Australia’s first dedicated legal service to protect and empower whistleblowers who want to speak up about wrongdoing, offering pro bono legal support and advice for whistleblowers.

Lucinda Holdforth, speechwriter and author, tells us what's wrong with 21st century virtues, like Authenticity, Vulnerability, Humility, Self-Care, Empathy, and Transparency, and how they've been captured by neoliberal thinking. Lucinda believes the quest for these attributes encourage people to put self before community and have replaced Courage, Truthfulness, and Integrity. To ensure a healthy democracy, do we need to reconsider what we think of as admirable traits in ourselves? Lucinda's book, 21st Century Virtues: How They Are Failing Our Democracy, is out via Monash University Publishing.

Historian Professor Darius von Güttner Sporzyński from the ACU talks about The Great, a humorous 18th century period TV series from Australian writer-director Tony McNamara. Loosely based around the life of Catherine The Great, reigning Empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796, Darius thinks that Catherine was even more fascinating than her TV show character. A friend of Diderot and Voltaire, a patron of women artists, and a believer in science – was she a truly enlightened ruler? The Great is streaming on Stan.