The Karl Stefanovic Show

The tradie behind Thunder From Down Under, Vegas' longest-running male revue, on Western Sydney, the Gold Coast and going all in with it all off.
Billy Cross grew up in housing commission in Sydney's west and left home at 16 on his L's. He did a bricklaying apprenticeship, got the ticket and never laid a brick. Then a Gold Coast nightclub asked him to take his shirt off. He couldn't dance. He learned.
That show became Manpower Australia, then Australia's Thunder From Down Under. It's been stripping in Las Vegas since 1993, and working the Strip full-time since 2001. But first, he lost his shirt in London's West End. Well, most of his Australian tour money, he says.
Karl and Billy get into:

• Leaving Liverpool at 16, and the bricklaying ticket he never used
• Hens, mums and grandmas: the Gold Coast Monday nights that started it all
• 1,500 seats in London, and 16 turned up, he says
• The VHS tape that got him a full hour on Phil Donahue
• All in or go broke: the first male revue with a permanent home on the Las Vegas Strip

This episode is brought to you by Tanda. Rostering, payroll and HR for Aussie businesses: tanda.com.au

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#thunderfromdownunder #lasvegas #goldcoast

Immigration is the hottest issue in Australia. But there’s a layer most people never see, and it’s bringing you dinner.

Sydney restaurateur Mario Libertini has spent 46 years in hospitality. He runs two busy restaurants. The customers are there. The staff aren’t. He hasn’t found an apprentice in five years, and he says the only workers he can get come from overseas.

Karl and Mario get into why young Australians are walking away from hospitality, how the new visa rules are turning work into a game show, what it means beyond restaurants for aged care, childcare and the farms, and why, after 46 years, Mario wouldn’t open a restaurant today.

In this episode:

• The big red button ad, and why it went viral

• Why young Aussies stopped wanting hospitality jobs

• The backpacker ballot and new student visa rules, explained

• Apprentices, social media and the “elevator generation”

• How to get young Australians back behind the bar

This episode is brought to you by Tanda. Find out more at tanda.com.au/karl

#immigration #hospitality #australia

Neville and Gladys retired to cattle country near Jandowae, Queensland, for peace, cattle and a view of the Bunya Mountains. Then some of the tallest wind turbines in Australia went up next door.

“I’m not against wind farms,” Neville says. “But you don’t want to be looking at them all the time.”

Karl heads out west to the Wambo Wind Farm to ask who decides where turbines go, and who lives with the decision. For the farmers hosting them, turbines are good money. The town gets a community fund. But for the neighbours who turned down the offer to host, it’s the noise, the shadow flicker, property values, and a community that’s been split.

Karl also hears from neighbour Fiona Duff, and from local member David Littleproud on setbacks, noise limits and who pays to pull them down in 30 years. Wambo was approved in 2020, before Queensland tightened its wind farm rules in 2025.

He was a Brisbane mechanic who mortgaged the house for a race car he built in his garage, then crashed it on live TV. Australia loved him so much it paid for him to go again.

Dick Johnson is a dying breed. A bloke who fixed his own car, paid his own way, and became one of the most loved sporting figures this country has produced. At 81, he’s still at it. His team won Bathurst this month.

In 1980, Dick mortgaged the family home to chase the biggest race in the country. He was leading when a rock rolled onto the track and ended it all on live TV. Then the phones lit up. Families and kids sent in their hard-earned cash and pocket money, Ford matched every dollar, and twelve months later Dick won the whole thing in a car the public paid for. He still has every letter.

Karl sits down with an Australian icon. Driving the family Holden to swim training at eight. National Service a few huts from Peter Brock. His first race in an $80 ex-taxi. Getting pulled over at 134km/h by a cop who’d chipped in for his comeback. The truth about who really put that rock on the track. And 56 years with Jill, because “if something was broke, we didn’t throw it out. We used to fix it.”

Plus his mum’s best advice: “Tell the truth always, you won’t have to remember a thing.”

00:00 Cold open
00:00 Bathurst 2026 and the fuel drama
05:02 “Before I fall off my perch”
06:43 Microwave pasta after winning Bathurst
09:46 Driving the family car at eight
13:39 National Service with Peter Brock
14:52 First race in an $80 ex-taxi
20:15 His first Bathurst
25:59 Mortgaging the house
28:14 The rock
33:17 Australia crowdfunds a comeback
40:02 Pulled over at 134km/h
44:06 Dick on Peter Brock
48:28 The Sierra years
53:38 Beating the factory teams at Silverstone
56:35 Roger Penske’s lifeline
58:56 A letter from Edsel Ford
61:24 56 years with Jill
62:20 Quickfire questions

This episode is brought to you by Tanda. Tanda makes it easier to be an employer. Check them out at tanda.com.au.

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#DickJohnson #Bathurst #KarlStefanovic

Insurance went up again? Shocker. An ex-insider says call their bluff.Luke Dugdell spent a decade policing insurers from the inside. Now he takes them on for a living. And shares some take-home hacks you can use today. His words: “they’ll charge you every dollar they can.”Ever called your insurer and watched the price drop? Tell us by how much.#insurancepremiums #karlstefanovic #costofliving

They lived at home until they got married. Before 40, they’d built more than $1 billion in assets. Karl Stefanovic sits down with self-made Sydney property developers Charbel Hazzouri and Anthony El-Hazouri, second-generation Australians whose fathers arrived from Lebanon with nothing. Karl visits the cousins at the new harbourside headquarters of Revelop, the property group they started in 2008 while still at uni. Charbel’s dad arrived at 18, rented a room from a woman with 30 cats and worked nights in a factory. Anthony’s dad sorted mail at Australia Post before finishing a PhD.From selling shower screens in the Trading Post and washing cars for $7 at nine years old, to marking out their first slab in Bronte (badly), the cousins explain how they built a property business from nothing: options, cash flow, doing more for free than for money, representing themselves in the Land and Environment Court, and buying shopping centres on gut feel, including a Big W they kept open with Liquorland vouchers.They finish on why they don’t think they’ve made it yet, what success looks like now, and their advice for a generation who have it even tougher.

Academy Award-nominated producer Lawrence Bender joins Karl Stefanovic for a revealing conversation about Hollywood, filmmaking and the extraordinary stories behind some of the biggest movies of the past four decades.

Bender takes Karl behind the scenes of his career, from meeting Quentin Tarantino and bringing Reservoir Dogs to life to the making of Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Inglourious Basterds and An Inconvenient Truth.

He reveals how he and Tarantino first met, how Reservoir Dogs came together when they were broke, the lessons he learned from Harvey Keitel, and the story of Christoph Waltz walking into a casting room and landing the role of Hans Landa after Bender and Tarantino had almost given up searching.

He also shares stories of working with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, the extraordinary pressure of making Inglourious Basterds on an impossible schedule, and the lesson he learned after almost 40 years in Hollywood.

He also discusses Red Alert, the four-part drama he produced about the experiences of families caught up in the events of October 7. He reveals what it was like filming in Israel while missiles were being fired, working with cast and crew who had lived through the events themselves, and why he considers the project one of the most important things he has ever done.

After decades working with some of Hollywood's biggest directors, actors and writers, Bender shares the lessons, risks and moments that have shaped one of the industry's most remarkable careers.

Subscribe to The Karl Stefanovic Show for more interviews, debate and conversations with some of the biggest names in Australia and around the world.

Dr Nick Norwitz MD PhD joins Karl for a fascinating conversation spanning cholesterol, statins, GLP-1s, peptides and the rapidly changing science of human health.

Norwitz reveals how his LDL cholesterol reached an extraordinary 574 after adopting a ketogenic diet – despite previously having normal cholesterol – and why he decided to spend seven years without treating it. He then underwent an advanced heart scan that found zero detectable plaque.

He explains why he believes cholesterol needs to be considered in the context of a person's overall metabolic health, challenges the idea that ‘lower is always better’, and discusses what he sees as major problems with the incentives driving medical research.

Norwitz also takes Karl inside the emerging world of GLP-1 drugs, peptides and human bioengineering – including his own controversial self-experiments with compounds such as retatrutide and MOT-C.

He reveals the astonishing effects he experienced from retatrutide, explains why he believes peptides could eventually transform how we approach muscle, fat, ageing and disease, and argues that the ‘super soldier serum’ may not be as far away as it sounds.

Plus, Norwitz explains why he believes the traditional model of large randomised trials may eventually give way to much more personalised approaches to medicine – and why he thinks we are entering an extraordinary new era of human biology.

Subscribe to The Karl Stefanovic Show for more interviews, debate and conversations.

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British journalist and commentator Jonathan Sacerdoti joins Karl Stefanovic to discuss Britain’s immigration crisis, integration, free speech and the changing face of the West.

Sacerdoti warns that Britain may have changed in a way that is ‘irreversible’, arguing that successive governments have allowed large numbers of people into the country while failing to demand enough integration. He also questions why the UK has struggled to stop illegal Channel crossings.

Sacerdoti also reveals what happened during his controversial Oxford Union appearances, including his viral debate on whether the West should be suspicious of Islam. He discusses threats, free speech and why he believes universities have become a battleground for competing ideas.

He also examines the Muslim Brotherhood and what he describes as its long-term strategy to build influence through Western institutions, before opening up about his father’s experience as a Holocaust survivor and why he believes freedom and Western values are worth defending.

Subscribe to The Karl Stefanovic Show for more interviews, debate and conversations on the biggest issues facing Australia, the UK and the world.

AI safety expert Dr Roman Yampolskiy joins Karl Stefanovic for a confronting conversation about the future of artificial intelligence – and what happens if we create a form of intelligence that humans can no longer control.

Yampolskiy warns that uncontrolled superintelligence could pose an extinction-level threat, arguing that current experiments show AI systems can lie, cheat, blackmail, bribe, hack systems and even sacrifice humans for their own survival. He says we have ‘basically failed to control them’ and questions whether humanity should continue developing general superintelligence at all.

In this episode, he explains:

• Why uncontrolled superintelligence could become an extinction-level risk – and why humanity may already have ‘basically failed to control’ AI systems.

• How experiments have shown advanced AI systems can lie, cheat, blackmail, bribe, hack systems and take actions designed to protect their own survival.

• Why once AI reaches human-level intelligence, virtually every cognitive job could theoretically be automated – and why physical jobs could follow as robotics advances.

• What happens to society when machines can perform most human work, including the future of universal basic income, wealth redistribution and the global economy.

• Why traditional career advice could become obsolete in an AI-driven world – and which skills may still matter as automation accelerates.

• The race for superintelligence, discussing Elon Musk, the global competition to develop increasingly powerful AI systems, and why he believes humanity cannot win an adversarial relationship with superintelligence.

• Simulation Theory: How the combination of AI and virtual reality could eventually create billions of simulated worlds – and the statistical argument for why we could already be living in one.

Subscribe to The Karl Stefanovic Show for more interviews, debate and conversations on the biggest issues facing Australia, the UK and the world.