Late Night Live — Full program podcast

Emerging First Nations astrophysicists, Krystal de Napoli and Karlie Noon, explore the connections between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander environmental and cultural practices and the behaviour of the stars, and what must be done to preserve this knowledge into the future.

Guests: Krystal de Napoli and Karlie Noon,First Nations astrophysicists

One of Australia’s most intriguing and popular Prime Ministers, Paul Keating talks to Phillip about his book After Words, back in 2011.

Guest: former Prime Minister, Paul Keating

Decades after the work of the Cambridge Ring of Spies was made public, more evidence was unearthed from the files of M15 and unseen family papers, revealing the true extent of Kim Philby’s betrayals and treachery in the work he did for the Soviet Union.

Guest: Ben MacIntyre is a columnist and Associate Editor of the Times of London and the author of A Spy Among Friends.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal transformed America between 1933 and 1938.  FDR’s defenders always credit him with having saved capitalism, while detractors argue the New Deal was an authoritarian program. A fascinating reassessment of his legacy.

Guests: 

Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University. Author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of our Time (W.W. Norton)

David Runciman, Professor from the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University

John Bell has spent most of his professional career in the company of William Shakespeare. In this interview, he takes us on a journey from his childhood; what drew him to the stage and a love of performing, as well as the life of William Shakespeare himself.

Guest: John Bell, author of On Shakespeare (Allen and Unwin).

Widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest stage, film and TV actors, Sir Ian McKellen, was in Australia to perform the stage production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

McKellen was knighted in 1991 for services to theatre in the UK, and is also a founder of Stonewall UK which lobbies for legal and social equality for gay people. They discuss playwrights, acting and the importance of gay rights.

Guest: Ian McKellen

Designer dogs are all the rage today, but the modern way of ordering and breeding dogs is an English invention which started in 1860.  Dogs began to be categorized according to their form and not function, and breeds became increasingly uniform and standardized.   So was this good or bad?

Guest Michael Worboys, author of Invention of the Modern Dog; Breed and Blood in Victorian Britain.

In 1977, a group of scientists led by Dr Carl Sagan from Cornell University, created a record of humanity to send into space in an attempt to make us comprehendible to aliens.

The contents included 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, other animals, among other things.

Dr Sagan said "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space."

Guest: Jonathan Scott, author of The Vinyl Frontier

Historian Bettany Hughes says it is high time we reappraised Venus-Aphrodite. "She was never just a goddess of romantic love - for millennia she represented something much stronger and darker." Likewise Helen of Troy - was she a goddess, princess or whore, mythical or real?

Guest: Bettany Hughes author of The History of Venus, and Helen of Troy; Goddess, Princess, Whore.

After losing a number of heartland seats, the 2022 federal election was widely seen as plunging the Liberal Party into an existential crisis. So how and why has the LNP strayed so far from Menzies original vision of 1944?

Guests:

Fred Chaney, former Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party (1989 – 1990)

Judith Brett, Emeritus Professor of politics at La Trobe University; author of Robert Menzies' Forgotten People and Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class.

Troy Bramston, Senior Writer and Columnist, The Australian. Author of Robert Menzies: the art of politics