Late Night Live — Full program podcast

Doctors work long hours in hospitals around the world, but visiting doctors in Gaza have to endure just some of what their local peers do: military attack, inadequate resources, inadequate food, and a starving, distressed population. 
Plus, the curious history of vanilla - and how, despite its exotic flavouring and difficult cultivation, "vanilla" became a term for bland. 
Guests:
Dr Bushra Othman, Palestinian Australian General Surgeon from Naarm/Melbourne. Has done three stints in Gaza, and edited the book.
Dr Amy Neilson, QLD-based specialist in rural and remote , tropical, and emergency medicine. Visiting Medical Officer in the NSW Hunter/New England regions. Senior lecturer in medical education at James Cook University, Cairns. Spent two weeks in Gaza in 2025.
Professor Eric Jennings, historian, University of Toronto. Author of 'Vanilla: the history of an extraordinary bean’ (Yale University Press)

Australia is a nation built by migrants, but immigration has always been politically contested. A new history traces how we came to decide who belongs, who gets in and who is kept out, right back to the early days of the colony. Plus, historian James Crawford explores what happens when the resources that underpin modern life become harder to find, harder to extract and harder to replace.
Guests
Mark Cully, author of Waves of Plenty: Immigration and the Making of Australia, published by Black Inc
James Crawford, author of The Vanishing Earth: A journey through the last days of Abundance
Australia is a nation built by migrants, but immigration has always been politically contested. A new history traces how we came to decide who belongs, who gets in and who is kept out, right back to the early days of the colony. Plus, historian James Crawford explores what happens when the resources that underpin modern life become harder to find, harder to extract and harder to replace.
Guests
Mark Cully, author of Waves of Plenty: Immigration and the Making of Australia, published by Black Inc
James Crawford, author of The Vanishing Earth: A journey through the last days of Abundance

Bruce Shapiro surveys the path ahead to November's critical US midterm elections, as US President Donald Trump's polling sinks to a new low. Plus, the senior Guardian correspondent Luke Harding on how Putin has up-ended the postwar global order, with help from his American counterpart. 
Guests
Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with The Nation magazine and Director of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma.
Luke Harding, The Guardian's senior international correspondent, and former Moscow bureau Chief. Author of Betrayal: Trump, Putin and The New Age of Conquest

Anna Henderson is travelling with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, as he launches Australia's bid for a seat at the UN security council, does the United Nations have a future? And why bandicoots are doing your garden a fantastic service. 
Guests:
Anna Henderson, Chief Political Correspondent, SBS
Richard Gowan, Director of Global Issues and Institutions at the International Crisis Group
Annabel Ellis, PhD candidate at the University of Sydney in the Behavioural Ecology and Conservation Lab

For millenia, Turkiye’s former capital of Istanbul has been at the centre of world affairs thanks to its geography straddling the Bosphorus, the natural canal that forms the border between Europe and Asia. President Erdogan is keen to see the country reclaim some of its former power and importance, and get rich in the process, as his reign becomes more and more autocratic. Suzy Hansen chronicles the age of authoritarianism in Turkiye through an intimate portrait of its people, how Istanbul handled hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, and how its streets now teem with nationalistic fervour, political repression and rampant corruption. 
Guest: Suzy Hansen, journalist and author of From Life Itself: Turkey and Istanbul in the Age of Erdogan, published by Allen and Unwin
Producer: Catherine Zengerer