Late Night Live — Full program podcast

Mark Kenny reviews PM Anthony Albanese's week at the United Nations in New York, and asks whether the Australian leader should be more assertive in rebuking the US President, on issues like the regulation of AI. Volkswagon is cutting jobs, considering factory closures, and even turning one car plant towards defence production. Can the company reinvent itself before its glory days become history? And David Marr takes you to the outback, to see Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in flood. 
Guests
Mark Kenny, Director of the Australian Studies Institute, host of Democracy Sausage podcast;
Jack Ewing, Journalist, New York Times
David Marr, Late Night Live presenter

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