Late Night Live - Separate stories podcast

In 1995, long before the 2001 'Tampa' refugee crisis, a small fishing boat arrived in Darwin, carrying eighteen East Timorese asylum seekers, including a six-month-old baby. The boat's arrival, and the activism of the passengers and their supporters in Australia, tested Australia's relationship with Indonesia in the last years of the Suharto regime.
Guests: Vannessa Hearman, Associate professor of history, Curtin University, Perth. Southeast Asia specialist, especially Indonesia and Timor-Leste. Author of ‘The Good Sea: the journey of Tasi Diak and the Politics of Refugee Protection in Australia’ (MUP) 
Jose da Costa, East Timorese/Australian activist, was on the Tasi Diak voyage, fleeing East Timor. Actor and documentary maker 
Producer: Ann Arnold

Heroin, cocaine, cannabis and opiates — it’s hard to imagine now, but in 19th-century Australia there were few restrictions on the use of these substances. As social attitudes shifted, so did the law, ushering in an era of prohibition. Yet over the past four decades, Australia has undergone another significant change — rethinking how it responds to illegal drug use and moving towards a harm-minimisation approach.
Guest: Des Manderson, Director of the Centre for Law, Arts and Humanities, Australian National University.  High Time: How Australia Changed Its Mind About Illegal Drug Use 
Producer: Ali Benton

While Ian Stevenson (1918–2007) was an academic psychiatrist with a strong professional reputation, he became known for researching an unusual topic for a behavioural scientist: the afterlife. Investigating questions such as “Can consciousness exist outside the brain?”, his career spanned more than sixty years. His work remains controversial, sitting at the edge of science, psychology and the unknown. 
Guest: Jesse Bering, Professor of Psychology and head of the Science Communication program, University of Otago, New Zealand. Author,  The Incredible Afterlives of Dr. Stevenson 
Producer: Ali Benton

Elon Musk is tipped to become the world’s first trillionaire when his company SpaceX goes public on the stock exchange as early as next week.  To some, Musk is a genius entrepreneur propelling us towards a science-fiction future. To others, he's a troubled far-right “meme lord”, spouting immigration conspiracies on the Internet.  A new book – entitled ‘Muskism: a guide for the perplexed’ looks beyond the personality to understand Musk as a symptom and an avatar of the disruptive economic and political forces that are shaping this century. 
Guest: Ben Tarnoff is a writer and technologist, and co-author of Muskism: A guide for the perplexed with Professor of international history Quinn Slobodian
Producer: Jack Schmidt

There are many ways to attain endurance and high performance. The ethos of Ethiopian collective running contrasts sharply with the testosterone supplements, and focus on the individual, in last week's Endurance Games. 
Guest: Michael Crawley, social anthropologist at Durham University, UK. Marathon runner. Co-author, with Geoff Burns, of an article titled The Ethiopian Running Secret, in Aeon Magazine (April 2026), author of ‘Out of thin air: running wisdom and magic from above the clouds in Ethiopia’ (Bloomsbury, 2021) and To the Limit: The Meaning of Endurance from Mexico to the Himalayas (2024)
Producer: Ann Arnold