Curtin’s Cast

This week on Curtin’s Cast, Nick Dyrenfurth sits down with political strategist and campaigner Ed Coper, author of the new book Angertainment: How Social Media Outrage Ruined Everything.

Over more than two decades, Ed has worked with an extraordinary range of political, civic and business leaders and movements, from Malala Yousafzai and Richard Branson to trade unions, climate campaigns, advocacy organisations and the Teal independents. He was also part of the team that helped build GetUp into one of Australia's most influential grassroots campaigning organisations.

In this conversation, Nick and Ed explore how social media platforms, algorithms and the attention economy have transformed politics, media and public life, rewarding outrage over persuasion and division over dialogue.

They discuss:

• What exactly is “angertainment” and why outrage has become a business model;

• Whether both Left and Right are vulnerable to the attention economy;

• Young men, identity, Andrew Tate and algorithmic rabbit holes;

• Which politicians understand social media best — and why;

Can democracy survive the age of angertainment? Ed Coper joins Curtin’s Cast to unpack one of the defining political and cultural challenges of our time.

Buy Ed's book here:

https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761636691/angertainment--ed-coper--2026--9781761636691

One Nation is now Australia's most popular political party. Pauline Hanson is Australia's most popular political leader. And new RedBridge–Accent MRP modelling suggests the Australian political system may be fragmenting faster than either major party understands.

This week on Curtin's Cast, Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras unpack the extraordinary polling behind One Nation's rise, the collapse of traditional party loyalties, and what it means for Labor, the Coalition and Australia's political future. Is this simply another protest vote, or are we witnessing the biggest political realignment in modern Australian history?

They explore why millions of Australians feel they're getting poorer in silence, how housing insecurity and falling living standards are reshaping political behaviour, why Labor's budget reforms have produced such a complicated reaction, and why the Coalition is failing to benefit from Labor's losses.

Plus: could Pauline Hanson really become prime minister? What would need to happen for One Nation to become a governing force? And is Victoria about to provide a preview of Australia's fragmented political future?

A provocative conversation about economic insecurity, political dealignment and realignment, institutional distrust and the forces reshaping Australian democracy.

Check out Episode 59 via Apple, Spotify and Youtube

No Kos this week — but Nick Dyrenfurth is joined by one of Australia’s leading public intellectuals and scholars of political leadership, Professor Paul Strangio, to unpack one of the defining political questions of our age:

Why has democratic politics become so chaotic — and why has Australia, so far at least, resisted full-scale democratic rupture?

Drawing on Paul Strangio’s new book ‘The Alchemy of Leadership: Seven Australian Prime Ministers in a Turbulent Twenty-First Century’ (Melbourne University Publishing), this wide-ranging conversation explores the collapse of old political loyalties, revolving-door prime ministers, media fragmentation, hyper-politics, populism, culture wars and the emotional exhaustion now embedded in modern democratic life.

From Howard, Rudd and Gillard to Abbott, Morrison, Albanese and the post-2025 political landscape, Nick and Paul examine how leadership itself has changed in the twenty-first century — and whether traditional democratic authority can still survive in the age of algorithms, permanent campaigning and anti-politics.

They discuss:

Why Australian politics became permanently unstable after 2007

John Howard’s role in “smuggling” conservative populism into the mainstream

Pauline Hanson, Trumpism and why Australia avoided full MAGA-style collapse

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.

Is Australian politics finally exiting the dead zone of managerialism and re-entering an era of genuine ideological conflict?

In Episode 57 of Curtin’s Cast, Nick Dyrenfurth and Australia’s "revered pollster” Kos Samaras unpack the political shockwaves from Labor’s 2026 budget — and why much of the legacy media may be completely misunderstanding what is happening.

As newspapers scream “political suicide” and compare the budget to the disastrous 2014 Hockey Budget, Nick and Kos explore why this is not 2001 or 2004 politics anymore. Millennials and Gen Z do not expect miracles — they want proof governments are finally willing to “touch the architecture” on housing, tax and intergenerational fairness.

Nick and Kos dive deep into:

why Labor now openly sees under-45s as its electoral base

the collapse of the old Howard-era political settlement

how this is the first serious reform battle in decades

Angus Taylor’s high-risk budget reply and the risks of chasing Pauline Hanson

why the Coalition’s proposal to strip non-citizens of welfare, NDIS and other benefits could detonate support among Chinese-Australian households

how “household voting” works politically in migrant communities

and why anti-Dan Andrews politics is a dead-end for the Victorian Libs

Plus: Kos hints at a bombshell new Redbridge/Australian Financial Review poll, predictions on Andrew Hastie and November's Victorian state election

For years politics and media have obsessed over angry young men, the manosphere and figures like Andrew Tate.

But what if the bigger political story is the radicalisation — and growing pessimism — of ‘Angry Young Women’?

This week Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras are joined by New Statesman staff writer Emily Lawford to discuss her major recent cover story on the rise of the Gen Z “femosphere” and the widening political divide between young men and women.

They discuss:

▪️ How young women are becoming more politically engaged, but more anxious and pessimistic

▪️ Why these young women are so down on young men, capitalism and animated by issues like Gaza
▪️ The rise of online feminist identity and activism
▪️ TikTok, social media and radicalisation pathways
▪️ Why young men and women are increasingly diverging politically
▪️ The impact on relationships, trust and social cohesion
▪️ What this means for Labor, the Greens and the future of democratic politics

Featuring Australian polling and focus-group insights from Kos Samaras and the team at RedBridge.

A serious conversation about one of the biggest — and least understood — political shifts reshaping the Anglosphere.

Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.