Late Night Live — Full program podcast

i Paper's Ian Dunt on Keir Starmer's political future and how UK asylum seeker policy is getting headlines in the tabloids. Plus why Germany is on a mission to revamp its military and defence systems. And the art of the dodge and deflect - how politicians spin their way out of answering questions

The Australian Democracy Network says our lobbying laws make it easy for the gambling industry to have the ear of our political leaders. After capturing Venezuela's leader, Cuba may be next on Trump's list, and questions are being asked about whether green burials are as environmentally friendly as they claim to be.

The Liberal Party has to make some big decisions about its direction, and journalist Anna Henderson is watching closely. Author Antony Dapiran on how the sentencing of publisher Jimmy Lai points to a rapidly changing Hong Kong. And Conny Aerts, a pioneer in making music from the vibrations of stars.

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