Late Night Live — Full program podcast

Anna Henderson recaps an eventful Garma festival in Arnhem Land, which included a blistering speech from Noel Pearson. Is there hope for a reunified Cyprus, amid planned UN talks? Plus, why butterfly collectors are a dying breed.

Guests:

• Anna Henderson, chief political correspondent, SBS
• Dr. Erol Kaymak, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Eastern Mediterranean University
• Emil Leth Beiter, Danish writer and critic

The famous writer Oscar Wilde died alone in a French hotel in 1900. Since that time, so much has been written about the man - much of it rumour and speculation. In his new book, 'After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal', Oscar Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland sets the record straight. The book is thirty years in the making and is an exploration of Wilde’s posthumous reputation and how his imprisonment for homosexuality affected Wilde's family, friends and literary legacy.

• Guest: Merlin Holland, Oscar Wilde's grandson and author, Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal
• Producer: Ali Benton

Originally broadcast in January 2026.

Established in Moscow in 1989, the 'Night Wolves' motorcycle club continues to operate as a powerful propaganda arm of the Putin regime. Plus, the writer Sisonke Msimang defends the legacy of Sarah "Saartjie" Baartman, the African woman trafficked through early 19th Century Europe as a 'freak show' spectacle. 

Guests:

• Dr Olga Boichak, Senior Lecturer in digital cultures, Sydney University
• Sisonke Msimang, writer and activist, author of 'Defending the dead: the many afterlives of Sarah Baartman' in the latest Griffith Review

Our regular US commentator, Bruce Shapiro, looks at how President Trump is caught between pressure at home to get out of the Iran war, and pressure from Israel to stay in it.  Plus why use of the agricultural weed killer Paraquat has just been allowed to continue in Australia, despite being banned in many other countries. And this year's Census is getting more personal. 

Guests: 

• Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with The Nation magazine and Director of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma
• Sarah Rogers, Associate Professor in Geography, University of Melbourne
• Liz Allen, demographer, ANU

Anna Henderson on Pauline Hanson's discrimination court loss, and Labor rejecting Ed Husic's genocide motion at their national conference. How technology is transforming modern warfare and creating a new global arms race. Plus, one hundred years on, LNL looks at the dark side of Route 66. 

Guests: 

• Anna Henderson, SBS World News Chief Political Correspondent | National Press Club Director
• Steve Feldstein, author of Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare
• Dr Daniel Milowski,  author of 'Route 66 and the Formation of a National Cultural Icon: Mother Road to Mythic American Byway'

Australia likes to think it has no history of slavery, but two-thirds of Australia's colonial governors had links to the slave economy of the British Empire. A new book, Legacies of British Slavery in Australia and New Zealand reveals how slave money shaped the colonies. Plus, veteran architecture critic Paul Goldberger examines what Donald Trump's building agenda says about his politics, power and legacy.

Guests: 

• Professor Zoe Laidlaw, historian, University of Melbourne, co-editor with Sally Lydon of 'Legacies of British Slavery in Australia and NZ'
• Paul Goldberger, former architecture critic for The New York Times, and The New Yorker, and the author of 'Why Architecture Matters.'

One Nation is on a transformative mission, intent on professionalising its operation. But can they? Plus the trailblazing, and sometimes gun-blazing, women who built democracy around the world - they’re all fierce, all feminists, but not all of them were progressives.

Guests: 

• Jordan McSwiney, Senior Research Fellow, Canberra University, who specialises in right wing politics
• Paula Bartley, historian and author of 'Trailblazers, the first women elected to government’, published by Polity. 

Britain has its seventh Prime Minister in ten years as Andy Burnham moves into 10 Downing Street. A new documentary counts the staggering emissions of US military operations globally. Plus, is Australia becoming a nation of handouts for the rich? A leading economist makes the case for tighter means-testing.

Guests:

• Naomi Smith, commentator and CEO of Best for Britain
• Abby Martin, journalist and director of Earth's Greatest Enemy
• Professor Robert Breunig, director of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU

Anna Henderson looks at the government's decision to go on the front foot with their AI policy and how it will play out at Labor's upcoming national conference. The Guardian investigates a US air strike in Somalia which killed and injured 12 civilians, including children. Plus the Nazi bunker that could be destroyed to make way for a block of flats in Berlin.

Guests:

• Anna Henderson, chief political correspondent with SBS
• Mohamed Gabobe, freelance reporter in Mogadishu.
• Dr. Caroline Sharples, Senior Lecturer in history at the University of Roehampton, UK.

After a terror attack in Kashmir in 2025, India suspended a key water treaty between the nations, threatening to cut Pakistan’s water supplies off by building a series of hydro-electric dams which can divert water away from Pakistan. Pakistan has threatened nuclear retaliation if it goes ahead. Plus in the West Bank Israel has stepped up the bulldozing of olive groves, which the IDF claims is a security measure.

• Guests:
• Michael Kugelman, senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council, and writer of Foreign Policy magazine’s weekly South Asia Brief.
• Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian author, poet and human rights lawyer