Late Night Live — Full program podcast

The arrival of the telephone changed the world. In the USA,  the first country to rapidly commercialise everyday phone usage, one company dominated that rollout: Bell. Alexander Graham Bell, while not the sole inventor of the phone, led its development, and secured the patent. Plus, writer Simon Miraudo, unearths cinema’s lost history, from films destroyed in fires to entire works erased from existence.
Guests:
James Gleick, science writer and historian, Author of 'The Telephone: A New History' (Picador)
Simon Miraudo, writer and film critic.
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Our regular UK political commentator Ian Dunt on why his country should temper its reaction to the US midterm results. How a dispute over which judges dominate a court could determine who rules Poland. And the world's rock arches are precious, but inevitably, will fall. 
Guests: 
Ian Dunt, columnist with i-news, co-host of the Origin Story podcast
Bartosz Brzesinski, senior reporter for Politico Europe
Jeffrey Moore, hiker, and Professor of Geology and Physics, University of Utah
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Israel's opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot has been asked to form the next government, putting an end to Benjamin Netanyahu's long political dominance. The former army chief now faces the task of assembling a governing coalition and navigating Israel's deep political divisions. Plus, Professor Richard Dawkins reflects on fifty years since writing The Selfish Gene, where developments in artificial intelligence might take us, and whether he's at risk of a death-bed conversion to believing in god. 
Guests:
Irris Makler, veteran Israel correspondent
Professor Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and author 
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The newly-published 20th annual Scanlon Foundation report into Australia's social cohesion has found that more and more Australians are feeling pessimistic about the future, amid growing financial pressures. But social cohesion remains fairly robust, with most Australia broadly supportive of immigration. Plus, the former Australian soldier and military strategist Professor David Kilcullen considers when (if ever) it is justified for a nation to intervene in the affairs of another - with troops, money or force.
Guests:
Dr James O'Donnell, demographer at ANU; lead investigator, Scanlon Foundation
Dr David Kilcullen, Professor of War Studies at the University of New South Wales; Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and CEO of the geopolitical risk analysis firm Cordillera Applications Group
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US correspondent Bruce Shapiro brings his analysis of the 'blue wave' that saw the Democrats take both the House and the Senate in a resounding repudiation of Trumpian politics in the US mid-term elections. Did any potential presidential candidates emerge? What's the future for the Republicans, and what can the Democrats achieve with Donald Trump threatening to veto their legislation? Plus in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries technological developments meant guns became small enough and affordable enough to be used by ordinary men. Italy led the way, helped along by Leonardo da Vinci. They caused havoc, and posed a difficult question for rulers - how to balance their need for defence versus how to control the use of guns in everyday life. 
Guests: 
Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with The Nation magazine and Director of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma.
Catherine Fletcher, author of The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires 
Get in touch:
Email us at latenightlive_rn@abc.net.au