With a rogue United States causing havoc in the Middle East, is it time for Australia to abandon its 'good doggy' approach to US foreign policy?

In the final instalment of Global Roaming's three-part series, The World Reordered, hosts Hamish Macdonald and Geraldine Doogue are joined by one of Australia's most respected military thinkers, who argues Australia needs to 'grow up'.

Guest: David Kilcullen, Professor of Practice in the Center on the Future of War and the School of Politics and Global Studies, former Australian Army lieutenant colonel, counterinsurgency expert and author.

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How much do we Australians really understand South East Asia? Australia has long prioritised neighbours further north when it comes to our strategic alliances, but as China rises as a great power, have our blind spots become our greatest weakness? 

Michael Wesley joins Geraldine Doogue and Latika Bourke (The Nightly) to make the case for appraising South East Asia as more than a holiday destination, and in particular, why we should be doing more to partner with Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. 

Guest: Michael Wesley, author of Quarterly essay Blindspot: Southeast Asia and Australia’s Future

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In a broad-ranging conversation, Hamish Macdonald speaks to historian and host of the hit podcast Empire William Dalrymple about the pitfalls of trying to understand the contemporary world without a firm grasp of the past, whether India can replicate its success as an ancient superpower and how countries like Australia and Britain deal with uncomfortable truths from their past. 

The world is getting more dangerous. The closure of the Straight of Hormuz has sent shock waves around the world. The price of oil has skyrocketed and with fuel shortages now reaching Asia, Australia faces 'crunch time' on its energy security.

So how vulnerable are we right now? And how do our perceptions shape our foreign policy? 

Rory Medcalf from the ANU's National Security College has been studying how our security expectations match up our reality. He joins Hamish Macdonald and Kylie Morris to talk about why public opinion matters. 

Guest: Professor Rory Medcalf, Director of the ANU's National Security College. 

Further reading: 

Report - No worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience

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To celebrate Hamish Macdonald's new television series The Matter of Facts, we'll be taking a deep dive into the global ramifications of mis- and disinformation. First up is the world of AI deepfakes. 

Generative artificial intelligence has us questioning our own eyes and ears, and the rapid pace at which we're consuming information is quite literally changing our brains. How do we navigate this world without falling prey to manipulation?

In this episode, “deep reading” expert Maryanne Wolf joins Hamish Macdonald and Geraldine Doogue to unpack what it means to engage critically with information.

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Guest: Maryanne Wolf -- Director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. And author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.

This is the first of Global Roaming's mini series on misinformation and disinformation. Hamish's documentary is called The Matter of Facts, and will be released on iView on Tuesday 24th March 2026.

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With Ali Larijani killed, and the whereabouts of the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei unknown, who is calling the shots in Iran? 

Iranian-American historian Arash Azizi joins Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald to talk through the emerging power players, like Mohammad Bagher Ghabliaf and Saeed Jalili, and how much would genuinely change under their potential leadership. 

Guest: Arash Azizi, author of What Iranians Want

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With thousands dead and millions displaced in Iran, the humanitarian price of the US-Israel war will be steep. But there's another priceless casualty of war: art. With multiple UNESCO World Heritage sites in Iran sustaining damage, how do you protect a nation's cultural heritage during war time? 

Latika Bourke and Kylie Morris are joined by Basia Solokowska, who served as Defence and Crisis Management Officer at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Poland. She lifts the lid on how museums and art galleries prepare their collections for war, and the surprising role drones play in preserving our heritage.

Guest: Basia Sokolowska, Polish-Australian artist

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The so-called Operation Epic Fury isn't working according to Trump's plan, if he has one at all. Now, as Iran's blockade Strait of Hormuz threatens the global economy, will Trump's allies in NATO and Asia answer his calls for military assistance? 

Latika Bourke and Geraldine Doogue speak to Richard Haass, a foreign policy stalwart who has sat in US negotiations with Northern Ireland and Iran. They talk about why the US gave up on diplomacy, if Netanyahu would agree to a US brokered ceasefire, and why so many foreign policy experts in the States are deeply concerned about what happens next. 

Guest: Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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There's no way Australia could possibly be supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, right? According to Ukrainian MP Anastasia Radina, think again. 

During a visit to Australia to rally support for her besieged country, this episode the Ukranian MP sits down with Hamish Macdonald and Kylie Morris to argue the case for Australia to stop buying refined oil from India because of its links to Russia.

Guest: Anastasia Radina MP, Chair of the Ukrainian Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy

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Our inbox at Global Roaming is chockers with requests to take a closer look at China's history. So this episode, we're sharing a Sydney Writer's Festival panel recorded at the State Library of NSW with Frank Dikötter, pre-eminent China historian. 

Hear Hamish Macdonald and Geraldine Doogue speak to Dikötter about rummaging through smuggled archives to challenge CCP narratives of China's modern history, and what it tells us about Xi Jinping's power today.

Guest: Frank Dikötter, author of Red Dawn Over China

Further listening: The underground historians of China trying to preserve truth - Saturday Extra

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Find all the episodes of Global Roaming now via the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.