Journalist and former presenter of Media Watch, Richard Ackland, looks at how Australia's privacy laws are being used in place of expensive defamation cases in the wake of the Brittany Higgins/Linda Reynolds case, and how that might impact journalism going forward.

• Guest: Richard Ackland AM, journalist, publisher, lawyer
• Producer: Ali Benton

A flash revolution toppled Nepal's government earlier this month, as protests from young people over a social media ban quickly escalated into violence and the 73-year-old leader fleeing the country. An interim prime minister, Sushila Karki, has been appointed to lead the country back to stability. Will she succeed? Will Nepal?

• Guest: Biswas Baral, Editor of The Kathmandu Post
• Producer: Alex Tighe

Returning: Jimmy Kimmel. Not returning: the dozens of academics fired for comments on Charlie Kirk. America's love of free speech is being tested by Kirk's assassination, and Trump's speech at the memorial included the line, "I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them."

• Guest: Bruce Shapiro, Contributing Editor with The Nation, and Director of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma
• Producer: Jack Schmidt

Poetry has been part of Muslim expression since ancient times; from the 8th century, poetry flourished in Arabic, Persian, and later Urdu and Turkish. Rumi, the 13th-century Sufi mystic, is still celebrated all over the world. Now, for national poetry month,  the Sweatshop Literacy Movement has just published the world’s first collection of Muslim-Australian poetry, which aims to capture what it means to be a Muslim-Australian today, and reflect how poetry can transcend politics.

• Guest: Zainab Syed, poet and Editor (with Sara M. Saleh and by Manal Younus) of Ritual, published by Sweatshop Literacy Movement, and Adrian Mouhajer, Lebanese-Australian writer and editor from Lakemba in Western Sydney. 
• Producer: Catherine Zengerer

Mark Kenny examines the political path to Australia recognising Palestine ahead of the UN General Assembly and what it means for our relationship with President Donald Trump and the United States. Meanwhile the Opposition continues to vehemently oppose the move. 

• GUEST: Mark Kenny, Professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute, host of the Democracy Sausage podcast and political analyst for the Canberra Times

US President Donald Trump was elected on a law and order platform, but consumer and public affairs watch organisation, Public Citizen, Trump’s administration has withdrawn or halted enforcement actions against 165  corporations, and at least a quarter of them are in the tech sector.  

• Guest: Rick Claypool, Research Director, Public Citizen, author,  “Corporate Clemency - How the Second Trump Administration Is Halting Enforcement Against Corporate Lawbreakers” (Public Citizen, March 2025)  

  And “Deleting tech enforcement - Trump 2.0 Is Dropping Lawsuits and Investigations Against the $1 Billion-Spending Technology Sector” 

• Producer: Catherine Zengerer

Founded in 1947, the CIA was established under the mission 'know thine enemy'. Now, under US President Donald Trump, the agency is being gutted. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Tim Weiner, argues that Trump has instigated what he calls an “ideological purge” at the CIA. Analysts and officers with decades of experience are being pushed out (or told to leave) under the new leadership, of CIA Director John Ratcliffe

• GUEST: Tim Weiner, author The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century
• PRODUCER: Ali Benton

The Australian War Memorial has decided not to award a prestigious literary prize to journalist Chris Masters for a book about alleged war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith, insisting the rules prevent established authors from being considered. 

• GUEST: Peter Stanley, Principal Historian at the Australian War Memorial from 1980 to 2007. 
• PRODUCER: Catherine Zengerer

Patagonia is an outdoor clothing retailer than has grown into a global giant with a hundred stores around the world and an enormous online business, posting sales of more than a billion dollars a year. For decades, it has also been a beacon for social change and corporate activism. But in 2022 its founder, Yvon Chouinard, determined to get off the Forbes Billionaire list, gave his whole business away. He set up the Patagonia Purpose Trust, with 100 percent control given to the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting the environmental crisis and defending nature. but while Chairbound spent a lifetime trying to protect the environment, he also did lots of damage along the way. 

• Guest: David Gelles, climate reporter for the New York Times and author of “Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away” published by Text publishing
• Producer: Catherine Zengerer

Many emotions drive politics and culture: ambition, greed, altruism, anger. But what about humiliation? An Australian anthropologist makes the case that humiliation and its counterpart, dignity, are overlooked motivators of politics, both locally and globally.

• Guest: Professor Ghassan Hage, Professorial Fellow in Anthropology and Social Theory at the University of Melbourne
• Producer: Alex Tighe