Late Night Live — Full program podcast

Against the odds, the exterior of Antoni Gaudi's extraordinary Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona is finished, and Pope Leo will bless the newly completed final tower on the centenary of the famous architect's death. Plus, why Spam is considered a luxury good in Korea and is a beloved staple across Asia and the Pacific. The answer lies with the US military. 
Guests: 
Professor Mark Burry, Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University of Technology's School of Design and Architecture, and Senior Faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. 
Kelly Spring, food historian, co-presenter of the Hungry Historians podcast and author of ‘SPAM: a global history’ (2025, Reaktion/New South)

Teenage vaping, pill testing, injecting rooms, medicinal cannabis and the opioid crisis: a look at Australia's efforts to manage illicit drug use. And the little boat of East Timorese asylum seekers that strained Australia's relationship with Indonesia.
Guests
Professor Des Manderson., Director of the Centre for Law, Arts and Humanities at the ANU. Author of 'High time: how Australia changed its mind about illegal drug use' (Black Inc Books)
Associate Professor Vannessa Hearman, historian, Curtin University. Author of ‘The Good Sea: the journey of Tasi Diak and the Politics of Refugee Protection in Australia’ (MUP) 
Jose da Costa, Timorese-Australian writer, film director, actor, who was onboard the Tasi Diak

Elon Musk looks set to become the world's first trillionaire when his company SpaceX goes public on the stock exchange. A new book asks if we're living in an age of 'Muskism'. Plus, the story of Dr Ian Stevenson, the distinguished 1950s psychiatrist who become a leading figure in the controversial field of 'parapsychology'' where he tried to prove the existence of consciousness after death. 
Guests: 
Ben Tarnoff, writer and technologist, co-author of Muskism: A guide for the perplexed
Jesse Bering, professor of psychology at University of Otago, author of The Incredible Afterlives of Dr. Stevenson: One Scientist’s Epic Quest for Evidence of Reincarnation, Apparitions, Poltergeists, and Other Matters of the Soul

Bruce Shapiro looks at the Republican backlash to Donald Trump's so-called IRS slush fund. How Ethiopian runners win over performance enhanced athletes and a protest in Glasgow took over Kenmure Street, and stopped immigration officers in their van. 
Guests:
Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with the Nation, Executive Director at the Global Centre for Journalism and Trauma
Felipe Bustos Sierra, Director Everybody to Kenmure st plus Tabassum Niamat, Executive Director, Bowling Green Together Community Centre and Kenmure St protester
Michael Crawley, social anthropologist at Durham University, UK and marathon runner.

A new poll published in the Australian Financial Review has Pauline Hanson's One Nation ahead of Labor and the Coalition on primary vote, and Mark Kenny says political parties can't agree on how to respond. Meanwhile the government is bogged down in budget backlash. Millions of Syrians forced to flee the brutal Assad regime are now returning home, but with much of Syria destroyed what’s left to return to? Plus insect life on Lord Howe Island has significantly increased since the eradication of invasive rodents in 2019. 
Guests:
Prof. Mark Kenny, Director of the Australian Studies Institute, host of Democracy Sausage podcast
Kholoud Helmi, Syrian journalist and Managing Director of Enab Baladi news publications’s Daraya edition 
Maxim Adams, PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, co-lead in a new study with the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, published in Biological Invasions