Saturday Extra - Separate stories podcast

Comedian, TV host and author Shaun Micallef has combined his trademark humour with historical research to write the story of Matthew Flinders.

Matthew Flinders was a British navigator who led the first circumnavigation of the Australian continent and helped popularise the name "Australia."

This week, 130 heads of government are in New York for the UN General Assembly. And for the first time ever, artificial intelligence has been centre stage. 

But it's the undiplomatic rhetoric which has made headlines with Donald Trump using his speech to threaten to annihilate Iran. 

That followed a strong rebuke from Iran's president, marking the first time the leader of a country at war with America has delivered a speech on US soil.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington has ended after three days of talks, a state dinner and an extravagant welcome ceremony. 

In a social media post, President Trump said that the leaders plan to meet twice more before the year’s end.

What were the key takeaways from the summit?  

Australia's Indigenous Desert Alliance has been named a finalist in The Earthshot Prize for their work protecting desert habitat across 270 million hectares.

The alliance of 70 Indigenous ranger groups has one of the world's leading cultural burning programs and supports threatened species including the Great Desert skink, bilby and night parrot.

The Earthshot Prize was founded by Prince William in 2020 to recognise initiatives that find solutions to the planet's greatest environmental challenges.

• Guest: Samantha Murray, CEO Indigenous Desert Alliance.

Next week, world leaders will meet at UN Headquarters in New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

Leaders like Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Anthony Albanese are set to speak, against a backdrop of an increasingly sidelined and underfunded UN.

Topics are likely to range from AI to climate change to conflict in the Middle East to preparing for the next pandemic.

Paul Keating's ambition was to liberate Australia from our remaining attachments to Britain, achieve reconciliation, and reorient the nation in the Asian region.

After unprecedented access to the former prime minister's papers, and a series of interviews, James Curran explores Keating's long-term vision for Australia.

The former prime minister Kevin Rudd has warned that there is an urgent need for intergovernmental regulation of AI.

Ahead of next week's meeting in Washington between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, what could a set of guardrails look like, and how would both the US and China be involved?

Come from Away is a musical which tells the story of nearly 7,000 airline passengers who were stranded in the small Canadian town of Gander, Newfoundland, after the September 11 attacks.

This week The New York Times dubbed it "the most enduring piece of 9/11 art."

As part of our coverage of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we spoke with the Canadian husband and wife who co-wrote the musical.

In the latest Quarterly Essay, one of Australia's leading public intellectuals tries to make sense of what's happening through a philosophical prism.

In particular, he looks at the crisis of liberalism, a collection of ideas which has shaped politics and society since the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century.

This week, an Anthropic researcher resigned over concerns that the technology could kill us all by the end of the decade. As AI developers weighed in supporting his prediction, many are asking if AI power is rapidly slipping out of human hands.

Meanwhile in Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese introduced a draft digital duty of care bill that would allow social media users to opt out of the algorithm. As courts and governments across the globe try to wrestle back control of the algorithm, is Meta finally facing a global reckoning?