Extra - Full Program Podcast

A brief assessment of the implications of President Trump's announcement that he, and his wife Melania, have coronavirus.

An proposal gaining currency for the management of Covid from here on is hotspotting.

When Nicholas Kristof was growing up in the town of Yamhill, Oregon, his neighbours had their struggles, but they all shared a sense of optimism about the the future. Now a quarter of the kids he caiught the school bus with are dead - from bad personal choices, and from the failures of institutions meant to help them. It's a picture that's repeated across communities in the US. How, and when, did things go so badly wrong?

The resignation of top executives at Rio Tinto is the logical end of a series of governance missteps.

Rio Tinto’s destruction of two culturally and historically significant rock shelters in Juukun Gorge in the Pilbara, in May, shocked the nation. One of the reasons it happened is that WA legislation permitted it. This week, a long awaited amendment to that legislation – which was being worked on at the time of that cave blast – has been released for discussion. Can it prevent another Juukun disaster?

As Japan's PM resigns Professor Rikki Kersten considers his career's ups and downs

An update on the unfolding crisis in Russia: the apparent poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. As we go to air, Russian doctors have permitted a German airlift of Navalny. We look at the possible political contexts for this attack.

When war was declared against Japan on the 8th December 1941, Prime Minster John Curtin realised this was a new war in the Pacific. Military historian Peter Stanley outlines what he sees as the three key turning points of the Pacific War, not just in terms of the battles, but what it meant and still does, to Australia.

A preview of a United States Studies Centre publication coming out next week, forecasting what direction the US might take under a Biden Government, and what that might mean for Australia.

Last week we discussed the global plight of the estimated 300,000 stranded merchant seamen, who are unable to go ashore because of the coronavirus pandemic. There are hundreds in Australian waters at any one time.