Late Night Live — Full program podcast

Author and journalist Gideon Haigh uncovers the intriguing tale of Australian man William Richard Wallace - the oldest prisoner in recorded history. Wallace was a convicted murderer and spent most of his life in the J Ward facility for the criminally insane in Ararat, Victoria. He died behind bars at 106, in 1989. And the story of the extraordinary Birrundudu drawings - a collection of some 800 crayon drawings on brown paper, created by 16 Aboriginal stockmen in the remote Northern Territory in 1945, during a three-month encounter with two German anthropologists. 

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The veteran Canberra journalist Niki Savva dissects the monumental result of the 2025 federal election. Where has it left both the Coalition in opposition, and the Labor party in government? And what does the result says about the political attitudes of modern Australia?

• Guest: Niki Savva, author of Earthquake: the election that shook Australia, published by Scribe

Nauru briefly had one of the highest per-capita incomes on earth, thanks to phosphate mining - so where did all the money go? Transgender troops kicked out of the US army by Donald Trump take their fight to court. Plus, how ancient cultures made - and talked about - prosthetic limbs.  

Pauline Hanson's burka stunt stymies the Senate while the Labor government is deep in negotiations with the Greens and the Coalition to get changes to environment laws through before the end of the year. Plus how Benjamin Netanyahu has survived politically in what Aluf Benn, editor in chief of Haaretz, argues is “perhaps the greatest break with the status quo of Israeli history.”

The acclaimed writer Simon Winchester turns his eye to the wind - the invisible force with the power to sustain, relieve, inspire, irritate and destroy us. From antiquity to today, we fear and revere the 'breath of the gods'. 

Plus, the bold Australian publication Quarterly Essay reaches its 100th edition. 

Bruce Shapiro looks at why Donald Trump has finally agreed to release the Epstein files. After being devastated by yet another hurricane, Jamaica is seeking reparations for both climate havoc and the impact of slavery. And how foxes colonised Australia.

Author Helen Garner sat through the trial of Erin Patterson, who was convicted of murdering members of her family with deadly mushrooms. She reflects on coming face to face with a murderer, her love of the courts, her faith and what happens when people have to face the consequences of their actions. 

Guest: Helen Garner, co-author of The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations about a Triple Murder Trial, with Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, published by Text. And How to end a story — collected diaries 1978 to 1998

Note: Erin Patterson is appealing her convictions, claiming there was a "substantial miscarriage of justice" during her trial.  

After the Liberal Party joined the Nationals in ditching net zero, what is the fate of remaining Liberal Party moderates in city seats? A new documentary reveals the brutality of Myanmar's civil war, as an election looms. Plus, with evermore man-made materials in orbit, how is traffic managed in space?  

As Russia and the US both threaten resume nuclear testing and China has tripled its stock of nuclear arms, former foreign minister Gareth Evans says Australia should lead a new arms control push. Plus economist Joseph Stiglitz is warning we are facing an “inequality emergency.”

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