The ABR Podcast

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Stephen Long reviews Woodside vs the Planet: How a company captured a country by Marian Wilkinson and Extractive Capitalism: How commodities and cronyism drive the global economy by Laleh Khalili. Long describes the notion that Australia can maintain its current gas exports and save the planet as a delusion, one that is increasingly adopted by our political leaders. In fact, Woodside and the LNG industry at large have a business model, Long explains, that is ‘based on climate catastrophe’.

Stephen Long is a journalist who specialises in investigative reporting, analysis, and commentary. He is a winner of the Walkley Award, the Citigroup Award for Economic and Financial Journalism, and the Commonwealth Media Award. Here is Stephen Long with ‘Carbon bomb: Business models based on climate catastrophe’, published in the December issue of ABR.

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This week, on The ABR Podcast, James Curran reviews Turbulence: Australian foreign policy in the Trump era by Clinton Fernandes. Curran describes Turbulence as ‘an attempt to chart the coordinates of President Trump’s approach to the world’ and to explain how Australia, in ‘scrambling to remain relevant to Washington’, has become what Fernandes describes as a “US sentinel state”.

James Curran is Professor of Modern History at Sydney University and foreign affairs columnist for the Australian Financial Review. His books include Australia's China Odyssey: From euphoria to fear (2022) and he recently delivered a prestigious Boyer lecture, titled ‘Trump’s Gift’. Here is James Curran with ‘Skewering AUKUS: A point-by-point account’, published in the December issue of ABR.

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This week on The ABR Podcast, we feature a special essay by biographer Nadia Wheatley titled ‘Liars, inventors, embroiderers: Rewriting the life and myth of Charmian Clift’. ‘What does a biographer do’, Wheatley asks, ‘when she discovers she has something wrong?’ In Wheatley’s case, it was not something that just she had wrong, but something that her subject, Charmian Clift, also had very wrong about her mother, Amy Lila Currie. It was, in fact, a great big secret, the knowledge of which recasts the life of both Amy and Charmian, as Wheately explains.

Nadia Wheatley is the author of The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift, which won The Age Non-fiction Book of the Year in 2001 and the Australian History Prize at the New South Wales Premier’s History Awards in 2002. She is also the editor of Sneaky Little Revolutions: Selected essays of Charmian Clift (2022) and Clift’s previously unpublished autobiographical novel, The End of the Morning (2024). Here is Nadia Wheatley with ‘Liars, inventors, embroiderers: Rewriting the life and myth of Charmain Clift’, published in the December issue of ABR.

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This week on the ABR Podcast, Grace Roodenrys reviews KONTRA by Eunice Andrada, observing that the collection draws on a poetics of cultural excavation. As Roodenrys explains, Andrada retrieves and rewrites the ways that women’s bodies have been framed, worshipped, and fetishised. She goes on to say that ‘KONTRA must work to resist a number of powerful aesthetic schemes – traditions of writing and imagining women in which they wind up silent, grateful, holy, or dead.’

Grace Roodenrys is a writer and critic from Sydney. Her work has appeared in Meanjin, Cordite, Rabbit, The Saturday Paper, and elsewhere. Here is Grace Roodenrys with ‘Understand me now: Poetry which cuts into the work’, published in the November issue of ABR.

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This week, on The ABR Podcast, Jessica Whyte reviews A Philosophy of Shame: A revolutionary emotion by Frédéric Gros. Whyte applauds the attempt to ‘revolutionise how we think about shame’ and to consider shame not simply as a retrograde emotion but ‘a resource for political struggle’. But in Gros’ book, writes Whyte, there is ‘abstract quality’ to this discussion and, she says, the pressing question that is not answered by the book is ‘how shame could generate a response to today’s shameless violence’. Jessica Whyte is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of New South Wales and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Her third book, Shameless Inhumanity, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Here is Jessica Whyte with ‘For shame: Social value of an emotion’, published in the November issue of ABR.

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This week, on The ABR Podcast, Patrick Mullins reviews Hawke PM: The making of a legend by David Day. Approaching Day’s second volume of the Hawke biography, Mullins asks: ‘how much more can there be to say?’ And, in the end, he concludes that ‘without a new perspective and questions that could throw new light on Hawke, the facts marshalled are generally too dulled by over-familiarity to gleam’. Patrick Mullins is a winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the National Biography Award. Here is Patrick Mullins with ‘“Carte blanche from me”: Volume two in a PM biography’, published in the November issue of ABR.

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This week, on The ABR Podcast, Clare Corbould reviews The Shortest History of the United States of America by Don Watson. Corbould praises Watson’s ‘sharp observations’ and his ‘wry and knowing analysis’ but notes a ‘melancholic tone’ as he explores the United States’ slide ‘into populism and authoritarianism’. Historian Clare Corbould is Associate Head of School (Research) in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University. Here is Clare Corbould with ‘On so many levels: A sharp yet melancholic account’, published in the November issue of ABR.

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This week on The ABR Podcast we feature Rachael Wenona Guy’s short story ‘Limerence’, which placed third in the 2025 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. ‘Limerence’ deftly interweaves artifice and realism, narrative ellipses and unsettling meditation to create an uncanny confession. It stages a teenage girl’s obsession around the image of the dead young explorer and sailor John Torrington and life in a conservative town in an island state. The staging is paced, powerful, and evocative. That this death obsession makes life almost bearable for the girl marks the trysts and autopsies of social alienation and colonial legacies.

Rachael Wenona Guy creates writing, visual art, and performance. Her writing has appeared in numerous Australian and international journals and anthologies including Overland, Sleepers Almanac, Australian Poetry Journal, Australian Poetry Anthology, and most recently Raging Grace, an anthology of collaborative writing on disability. Walleah Press published her début poetry collection, The Hungry Air, in 2020. She is currently working on a new collection of experimental poetic memoir to be published in 2026. Here is ‘Limerence’, by Rachael Wenona Guy, published in the August issue of ABR.

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This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature Kate Fullagar’s essay ‘Questions for Mai: Joshua Reynolds’s portrait and the memory of Empire’. Fullagar delves into the history behind Joshua Reynold’s famous portrait of Mai, the first Pacific Islander to visit Britain. She considers what she calls a ‘complicated enmeshment of art, money, and national memory’ and investigates the portrait’s place in the British Empire. Kate Fullagar is Professor of History at Australian Catholic University, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, and Vice President of the Australian Historical Association. Here is Kate Fullagar with ‘Questions for Mai: Joshua Reynolds’s portrait and the memory of Empire’, published in the October issue of ABR.

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This week, on The ABR Podcast, Judith Bishop reviews Empire of AI: Inside the reckless race for total domination by Karen Hao and The AI Con: How to fight Big Tech’s hype and create the future we want by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna. Bishop seeks to cut through what she sees as prevailing ‘AI doomer/boomer ideologies’, where artificial intelligence is something that will either save us, or kill us. Judith Bishop is the 2024-2026 Tracey Banivanua Mar Fellow at La Trobe University and is writing a book about AI and human data. Here is Judith Bishop with ‘AI will kill us/save us: Hype and harm in the new economic order’, published in the October issue of ABR.

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