Late Night Live — Full program podcast

When a proposed mine threatens Papua New Guinea’s Sepik River, the Sepik people resist the mine on their own terms, but will they succeed? And fifty years since the Soweto uprising, how South Africa has reckoned with its past.

Guests: 

• Emmanuel Peni, director of the PNG NGO Project Sepik, and co-Producer of the film.
• Theonila Roka Matbob, former PNG MP from Bougainville and winner of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize. 
• Professor Noor Nieftagodien, Head of the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand
• Seth Mazibuko, activist, former teacher and one of the original student leaders in the 1976 uprising

Ian Dunt on the continued fallout over the death of 18 year old Southampton University student Henry Nowak. In the US, a radical movement known as ‘masculinism’ wants to repel the advances of feminism. And this weekend (June 14), Switzerland will vote on a referendum proposal to cap its population at 10 million. But it remains unclear how such a “cap” would work, particularly in a nation with large companies that rely on skilled migrant labour. 

Guests:

• Ian Dunt, iNews columnist and regular LNL commentator
• Helen Lewis, staff writer for the Atlantic 
• Mercedes Ruehl , Switzerland and Austria correspondent for the Financial Times

Against the odds, the exterior of Antoni Gaudi's extraordinary Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona is finished, and Pope Leo will bless the newly completed final tower on the centenary of the famous architect's death. Plus, why Spam is considered a luxury good in Korea and is a beloved staple across Asia and the Pacific. The answer lies with the US military. 

Guests: 

• Professor Mark Burry, Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University of Technology's School of Design and Architecture, and Senior Faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. 
• Kelly Spring, food historian, co-presenter of the Hungry Historians podcast and author of ‘SPAM: a global history’ (2025, Reaktion/New South)

Teenage vaping, pill testing, injecting rooms, medicinal cannabis and the opioid crisis: a look at Australia's efforts to manage illicit drug use. And the little boat of East Timorese asylum seekers that strained Australia's relationship with Indonesia.

Guests

• Professor Des Manderson., Director of the Centre for Law, Arts and Humanities at the ANU. Author of 'High time: how Australia changed its mind about illegal drug use' (Black Inc Books)
• Associate Professor Vannessa Hearman, historian, Curtin University. Author of ‘The Good Sea: the journey of Tasi Diak and the Politics of Refugee Protection in Australia’ (MUP) 
• Jose da Costa, Timorese-Australian writer, film director, actor, who was onboard the Tasi Diak

Elon Musk looks set to become the world's first trillionaire when his company SpaceX goes public on the stock exchange. A new book asks if we're living in an age of 'Muskism'. Plus, the story of Dr Ian Stevenson, the distinguished 1950s psychiatrist who become a leading figure in the controversial field of 'parapsychology'' where he tried to prove the existence of consciousness after death. 

Guests: 

• Ben Tarnoff, writer and technologist, co-author of Muskism: A guide for the perplexed
• Jesse Bering, professor of psychology at University of Otago, author of The Incredible Afterlives of Dr. Stevenson: One Scientist’s Epic Quest for Evidence of Reincarnation, Apparitions, Poltergeists, and Other Matters of the Soul

Bruce Shapiro looks at the Republican backlash to Donald Trump's so-called IRS slush fund. How Ethiopian runners win over performance enhanced athletes and a protest in Glasgow took over Kenmure Street, and stopped immigration officers in their van. 

Guests:

• Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with the Nation, Executive Director at the Global Centre for Journalism and Trauma
• Felipe Bustos Sierra, Director Everybody to Kenmure st plus Tabassum Niamat, Executive Director, Bowling Green Together Community Centre and Kenmure St protester
• Michael Crawley, social anthropologist at Durham University, UK and marathon runner.

A new poll published in the Australian Financial Review has Pauline Hanson's One Nation ahead of Labor and the Coalition on primary vote, and Mark Kenny says political parties can't agree on how to respond. Meanwhile the government is bogged down in budget backlash. Millions of Syrians forced to flee the brutal Assad regime are now returning home, but with much of Syria destroyed what’s left to return to? Plus insect life on Lord Howe Island has significantly increased since the eradication of invasive rodents in 2019. 

Guests:

• Prof. Mark Kenny, Director of the Australian Studies Institute, host of Democracy Sausage podcast
• Kholoud Helmi, Syrian journalist and Managing Director of Enab Baladi news publications’s Daraya edition 
• Maxim Adams, PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, co-lead in a new study with the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, published in Biological Invasions

Historian and author John Ghazvinian argues that the past fifty years of hostility between the U.S. and Iran are an exception in a much longer relationship marked by fascination, cooperation, and mutual admiration. And an American journalist embeds with a group of young Republican conservationists, to try to pin down what they really value. 

Guests

• John Ghazvinian, historian, former journalist and author of America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present
• Gaby del Valle, journalist, article in Harper's Magazine about the American Conservation Coalition

Veteran war correspondent Janine di Giovanni has set up a project that trains journalists and researchers to gather evidence that can be used to prosecute war crimes in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and Syria. And the women who played a critical role behind the scenes at the Nuremberg trials.

Guests: 

• Janine di Giovanni, war correspondent, CEO and co-founder of The Reckoning Project
• Natalie Livingstone, author, The Nuremberg Women, At the trial that brought the Nazis to justice

Ian Dunt surveys the unfathomable political turmoil in the United Kingdom, as a monumental by-election looms for Andy Burnham, the key Labour rival of embattled Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Journalist Maria Ramirez examines the left-wing Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. a defiant political voice on the world stage. Plus, it's been 100 years since Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova first toured Australia, captivating audiences across the country.

Guests:

• Ian Dunt, columnist for i-news, cohost of Origin Story podcast
• Maria Ramirez, journalist for elDiario, Spain
• Emma Sandall, Australian dance artist, producer, writer