The Radio National Hour

This week in the US the Trump administration was forced to dump plans for a slush fund to compensate MAGA loyalists, and not even an f-bomb directed at Israel’s Prime Minister could shift the dial on peace negotiations in the middle-east. Republican strategist John Feehery says Trump supporters have a high tolerance for the President's adventurism but that there's growing anxiety in the GOP as we head towards the mid-terms. 
More than 55 million people are living with some form of dementia worldwide, and here in Australia, the disease is now our leading cause of death. Anthropologist Teun Toobesh has been travelling the world to understand the best way to help sufferers. Together with Jonathan de Jong he's turned this experience into an eye-opening documentary Human Forever.
Like father, like son; Nigerian musician Seun Kuti is continuing the family business, leading the band Egypt 80 established by Afrobeat pioneer and political firebrand  Fela Kuti.

African migrants are being evacuated from South Africa following a spate of deadly assaults and growing protests supposedly targeting undocumented foreigners. They’re being blamed for taking jobs, squeezing public services and driving crime. Is this xenophobic scapegoating really a protest against a failing government? 
In some European nations cooperatives account for as much as 40 percent of the housing stock, providing affordable and life-long security for millions of people but in Australia it's been dismissed as a hippie ideal. Sidsel Grimstah, Adjunct senior lecturer at Griffith University and a resident of coop housing in Oslo in Norway and Melina Morrison, CEO of the Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals say the model has the potential to change the traditional view of housing in Australia.
In his new book Ungrounding forensic architect Eyal Weizman argues that the wholesale destruction of Gaza is a deliberate strategy of dislocation, to remove people from this place, never to return.

The director general of the World Health Organisation says controlling the spread of Ebola in central Africa is everybody’s business, but governments are slashing their aid budgets.  Medicins Sans Frontier is funded almost entirely by private individuals and philanthropic organizations. The group's Humanitarian Affairs coordinator for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Anastassia Chkolenok, is working to rapidly deploying emergency teams into the epicentre of the outbreak..  
For decades, Australia has treated social housing as a safety net — something small, residual, and tightly rationed. But what if solving the housing crisis means thinking much bigger — and putting social and affordable housing at the centre of the system again? 
When former sports reporter Ralph Jackman swapped the newsroom for a classroom in a youth detention centre, it was like an extreme sport he hadn’t signed up for, but the experience changed his life and his attitude to opportunity....now he’s penned a memoir Detention about everything he learned in this classroom of life.

A heated phone call between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu raises fresh questions about just how strained that relationship has become, and about prospects for a peace deal with Iran.  
The government’s just put 40 million dollars into pre-fab housing, so can it deliver better houses, built faster and in greater numbers as well as it has overseas? 
Australians are now discarding their pianos in the thousands every year while Martin the piano tuner is keeping them on life support. His delicate and dying art is the subject of a new documentary The Piano Tuner.

How is National Reconciliation Week been acknowledged where you live and work? Has it been acknowledged? In the wake of the Voice Referendum some businesses and organisations have scaled back their commitments to reconciliation and reports of racism in the workplace are growing. Co-directors of Evolve Communities Aunty Munya Andrews & Carla Rogers, say that change won't come if organisations are only hosting morning teas once a year. 
This week were talking housing, not how it’s taxed, but how we can be more creative in building and funding it. The Community Land Trust model which has been used overseas for years to create affordable homes not just for one buyer, but for generations. 
It's almost impossible to imagine her as old, but Marilyn Monroe would have turned 100 today. This year three major exhibitions are being staged in the US and Great Britain honouring her legacy and seeking to answer the apparently illusive question, who was Marilyn Monroe? Michelle Morgan is the author of several books about Marilyn, including When Marilyn Met the Queen, she says Marilyn remains a deeply misunderstood woman