Late Night Live - Full Program Podcast

What is the biological purpose of the handshake and why has it outlasted other forms of greeting?

Edmund Richardson recounts the story of Charles Masson, a self-taught archaeologist, and his quest to find the lost city of Alexandria.

Clothing historian Lucy Adlington on the ‘The Dressmakers of Auschwitz' and Charlie English's account of Hitler's war on modern art and the mentally ill.

They're very resource hungry and yet skyscrapers are, and will remain essential to future living, and the hounding of singer Billie Holiday by the FBI.

Environmental historian Emily O’Gorman explains why it's a mistake to set wetlands aside as areas not available for human interaction and use. Philosopher Lee McIntyre urges a push back against science denial and disinformation. David Rooney on how clocks have been deployed as instruments of faith, money and power, imposing social order and regulating behaviour.

Stuart Kell, author of Sold down the River: How robber barons and Wall Street traders cornered Australia’s water market. Gideon Haigh looks at Doc Evatt's legal rather than political legacy.

Quentin Beresford analyses the environmental history of the basin. Anne Sebba's 'Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy'

Richard Beasley's provocative account of what has gone wrong in the Murray Darling Basin. Hal Whitehead on how sperm whales communicate. Nancy Wisser's weird and wonderful world of Stonehenge replicas.

Phillip Adams sits down with Peter Cosgrove for a wide ranging discussion about Australia, its democracy and its future.

Wayne Quilliam picked up his first camera whilst in the navy thirty years ago and has not put it down since, photographing Indigenous communities around Australia and the world. Narayan Khandekar explains how art and science meet when it comes to the world of colour.

The koala is in real danger of extinction and yet politics are preventing any effective action being taken to protect them.

So often the complex issue of justice is viewed through the legal prism of criminal, distributive or procedural justice. But Dr Rowan Williams and Mary Zournazi argue that justice needs to confront individuals' suffering as well as the deep patterns of violence and denial in society.

Stephen Pyne's history of fire and humanity's complicated love-hate relationship with it. Patrick Nunn explores the possibility that some stories of drowned civilisations might shed light on actual geological events that happened multiple millennia ago.

Jackie French chats with Phillip Adams about her remarkable career as an author for children and adults, her books that are writing women back into history and her passion for wombats.

Where did the 91,000 members of the Stasi go after the fall of the Berlin wall? Was there a market for their skills? Ross Dobson is a chef and food writer who has looked through the history of Australian cookery to try and find our national dish.

Jon Lee Anderson has been a foreign correspondent for over 40 years and Staff writer with the New Yorker Magazine. He shares with Phillip the highs and lows of an extraordinary career across continents.

Ashley Gray tells the untold story of the rebel West Indian cricketers who toured apartheid South Africa. Australia’s ‘scuba-diving philosopher’ Peter Godfrey-Smith explores the evolution of animal consciousness.

Simon Winchester on how people's relationship to land, its borders and its ownership have changed over time and geography.

Isabel Allende explores how feminism has shaped her life over the past seven decades. Jennifer Higgie documents the lives of women artists and their self-portraits.

Our cheery panel find the humour in some of the most challenging parts of a difficult year.