Late Night Live — Full program podcast

Trump flies over a US city in a jet, dumping excrement on protesters; welcome to the era of government-endorsed AI slop videos. Charlie Warzel from The Atlantic joins the show to talk about the US's experiment in government-by-meme. Plus: psychologist Steven Pinker argues that what drives society is knowing that what we know is widely know — in his term, "common knowledge". But what if our beliefs about everyone else's inner thoughts turn out to be wrong?

Gaza is today in ruins, with over seventy thousand dead and buildings everywhere rendered rubble by the onslaught from Israel since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. Many argue the war on Gaza began at this point, but historian Julie Norman has traced the history of both the land, its people and the terrible wars that have plagued what was once a beautiful and prosperous place for a century and destroyed the dreams of the Palestinian people. 
Guest: Julie M. Norman, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at University College London, and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House. Author of Gaza: The Dream and the Nightmare, co-authored with Maia Carter Hallward, Director of the PhD Program in International Conflict Management and Professor of Middle East Politics at Kennesaw State University
Producer: Catherine Zengerer

NSW Police responded with violence to a Sydney protest against Israeli President Herzog's support of Israel's war on Gaza. An American journalist describes the challenge of working through the Epstein files. And an Australian university librarian found a drawing and an inscription in the back of a very old book, which helped to reveal a 500-year-old mystery about the life of a famous Italian painter.

In parliament's second sitting week of the year, the Liberals are contemplating "non-existence". Australia recently formalised a major security treaty with Indonesia, which Albanese described as a "watershed moment". Plus: the toads are feral. How did cane toads get this way? And what can Australia do about these hopping menaces?

An unauthorised biography of US broadcaster Tucker Carlson shows how he wields his influence. And it's 100 years since the creation of Winnie the Pooh.