Late Night Live — Full program podcast

The Lord of the Rings made J.R.R. Tolkien one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. But who was the obsessive, conservative and often difficult man behind Middle-earth? And Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, has a new and equally remarkable true story to tell. In 1942 in Nazi-occupied Paris, the Nazis arrest a Jewish family, but their 11-year-old daughter escapes to her piano teacher, Andrée Levallois. Andrée is secretly a French Resistance operative who risks everything, including her own family, to hide the child.  
Guests: 
DJ Taylor, author of The King under the Mountain
Heather Morris, author of The Piano teacher of Montparnasse
Get in touch:
We'd love to hear from you! Email us at latenightlive_rn@abc.net.au

Our regular US political commentator on the Cornell University sexual assault case, the failed execution of Christa Pike, and the dire outlook for the Republicans, four weeks before the midterms.
Valerie Trouet, a paleo-climate scientist, compares tree rings from living trees with historical and archaeological wood to reconstruct climate patterns going back thousands of years. It enables her to look at how climate has influenced wars, empires and natural disasters.
Guests:
Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with The Nation magazine and Director of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma
Valerie Trouet, professor in the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. Book 'Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings'

We revisit two memorable LNL conversations from recent times: Simon Winchester's cultural history of the wind, and Australian writer Lech Blaine's astonishing account of his beautiful, terrifying childhood - growing up in Queensland pubs stalked by Christian fanatics. 
Guests: 
Simon Winchester, journalist and author of The Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind
Lech Blaine, author of Australian Gospel

Confronted with a series of existential threats, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor argue in their new book that wealthy billionaires, including the so-called "tech bros", have become focused not on how we can deal with those threats,  but who will best survive them.  They warn there is an urgent need for far more limits on dangerous technologies than US President Donald Trump's Whitehouse accord. Plus meet the author who breakfasted in ten Indian cities, to discover how Indian culture is reflected through its breakfast foods, makers and consumers.
Guests: 
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, co-authors, End times fascism and the fight for the living world
Priyadarshini Chatterjee, Kolkata-based travel, culture and food writer
Get in touch:
We'd love to hear from you! Email us at latenightlive_rn@abc.net.au

The German Peasants' War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The response from feudal overlords was brutal, but while the rebellion was suppressed, it would continue to influence subsequent revolts, contribute to the emergence of peasant and worker movements in the following centuries and serve as a precursor to larger social and political transformations in Europe. 
Guest: Professor Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oriel College, Oxford University and author of Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War, published by Hachette
Producer: Catherine Zengerer