Late Night Live — Full program podcast

Our regular Canberra correspondent on the latest polling, and Independent David Pocock's new focus on taxing gas. Historian Peter Stanley argues for a new way to do war commemoration, and the spectacle of a flooded Lake Eyre/Kathi-Thanda is alluring, but fuel anxiety may limit the number of visitors. 

Guests

• Anna Henderson, SBS chief political correspondent
• Peter Stanley, former Australian War  Memorial historian
• Trevor Wright, owner of the William Creek pub and Wrightsair, which does Lake Eyre joy flights

The Melbourne legal scholar Marika Sosnowski spent many years researching violence and the law in Syria. Now she reckons with her own family's proximity to state violence in 1950s Palestine. Plus, it's easy to be cynical about the impunity of corporations that commit great financial crimes. But political scientist Pepper Culpepper thinks that, in the long run, corporate scandals can help restore democracy. 

Guests:

Marika Sosnowski,  Melbourne University. Author of ‘58 facets – on law, violence and revolution’ (Melbourne University Publishing)

Professor Pepper Culpepper, Oxford University. Co-author of Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How It Could Save Democracy (Bloomsbury)

Ian Dunt examines what Viktor Orban's loss in Hungary means for the EU and looks at questions around Donald Trump's mental capacity. There once was a plan that brought disparate countries together, to work for their common good, in Asia and the Pacific. And an author and scholar has been getting some very flattering emails from 'people' keen to promote his books.

Guests: 

• Ian Dunt, iNews columnist and regular LNL commentator
• Professor David Lowe, Deakin University, author of 'The Colombo Plan: development internationalism in Cold War Asia' (Cambridge University Press) 
• Dennis Altman, article on literary AI in the April issue of Australian Book Review 

Cuba's leader is defiant in the face of the country's worst humanitarian crisis in decades, while President Trump hints at inflicting more pain. And the Strait of Hormuz is the latest of many maritime chokepoints which, in the past, have destroyed or saved civilisations. 

        Guests:

• Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer with The New Yorker
• Damien Valdez, historian from the University of Cambridge

Professor Mark Kenny reflects on Australia's record fuel price hike and the Australian government's unfolding response. We meet the Log Cabin Republicans, a prominent organisation of gay conservatives that continues to support US President Donald Trump. Plus, amid reports of damage to cultural heritage sites in Iran, Australian archaeologist John Tidmarsh reflects on the beauty of damaged and destroyed sites across the Middle East region. 

Professor Mark Kenny reflects on Australia's record fuel price hike and the Australian government's unfolding response. We meet the Log Cabin Republicans, a prominent organisation of gay conservatives that continues to support US President Donald Trump. Plus, amid reports of damage to cultural heritage sites in Iran, Australian archaeologist John Tidmarsh reflects on the beauty of damaged and destroyed sites across the Middle East region. 

• Prof. Mark Kenny, former national affairs journalist and Director of the Australian Studies Institute, ANU
• Ed Williams, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, USA
• Dr John Tidmarsh, archaeologist and tour leader

Alec Derwent Hope (1907–2000) was one of Australia's most acclaimed poets. His first collection was not published until he was 48 years old, but its release cemented his reputation as the pre-eminent Australian poet of his time. The literary scholar Susan Lever knew Hope, and has written the first biography of his life - from rural Tasmania, to the halls of Oxford, and the heights of Australia's literary scene.

• Guest: Susan Lever, author of A.D. Hope - A life, published by LaTrobe

Susan's recommended reading:

• The Coast of Cerigo
• Moschus Moschiferus. A Song for St Cecilia's Day
• An Epistle: Edward Sackville to Venetia Digby
• Imperial Adam
• The Death of the Bird
• Inscription for a War
• The Return of Persephone 

Pulitzer prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee, recently laid off by Jeff Bezos's Washington Post, looks at the state of the arts in Trump's America., Plus, the story of Daniel Defoe's secret life as a spy, against Scottish independence, in the early 1700s, before he became the author of the famous 'Robinson Crusoe'.

Guests:

• Sebastian Smee, writer and art critic, formerly with The Washington Post
• Marc Mierowsky, author of 'A spy amongst us: Daniel Defoe's Secret Service and the plot to end Scottish Independence' (Yale University Press)   

Bruce Shaprio on the US President's latest ultimatum for Iran.  Prof.Assa Doron reveals how India has become the global epicentre for the world's antibiotic resistance problem. And anthropologist Luke Taylor celebrates the artistic legacy of the late Peter Marralwanga, the master bark painter of West Arnhem Land. 

• Bruce Shapiro, Executive Director at the Global Centre for Journalism and Trauma, Contributing Editor with The Nation
• Professor Assa Doron, anthropologist at Australian National University, co-author of A world of resistance: India and the global antibiotic crisis (with Alex Broom), Harvard University Press
• Luke Taylor, anthropologist and co-author of Peter Marralwanga: Painter of the Djang of Western Arnhem Land (with Ivan Namirrkki), ANU Press

The writing of Australian history has tended to focus on the south-eastern corner of the continent, but the story of colonisation north of the Tropic of Capricorn paints a vastly different picture of this country, its people, politics and ambitions. 

• Guest: Henry Reynolds, historian and author of Looking from the North: Australian History from the Top Down

In his new memoir, Former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, traces how the Democrats lost the working class and paved the way for Donald Trump. Plus ten years on since the release of the Panama Papers, has anything changed in the global financial system?