Jack Schmidt

Australia will soon be getting a poet laureate. But what does that actually mean? We sit down with the UK laureate, Simon Armitage, to find out. 

Managing charitable trusts in Australia has become big business. 

After WWII, the CIA undertook experiments with psychedelic compounds like LSD, in the hope of discovering pharmacological weapons. The holy grail was a "truth serum" that might be used to extract secrets from the enemy. But the CIA wasn't the first to meddle with psychedelics in this way - in fact these experiments were first initiated in Nazi Germany. 

LSD is a relatively new drug, compared to many others. And its history has been influenced by some unlikely groups.

In the recent US election, Donald Trump made significant gains amongst young male voters aged 18-29. Some 56% of this cohort voted for Trump, compared with 41% in 2020. Journalist Jamie Tahsin, who has spent years investigating a part of the Internet known as the "manosphere", believes Mr Trump's media appearances with various young male online influencers boosted his campaign. And his 18 year old son Barron may have been a useful advisor. 

Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch's traces the complex and contradictory origins of Christian moral attitudes to sex and sexuality, from 3000 years ago, to now.  Guest: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor of the history of the church at Oxford University, author of Lower than the Angels: A history of Sex and Christianity

80 years ago, an exciting new poet by the name of Ern Malley burst onto the Australian literary scene. As it turned out, Ern was a hoax, concocted by two conservative poets intent on humiliating the country’s literary avante garde.  This story originally aired on 20 August 2024.

Many American cities have dire public transport systems, but it hasn't always been this way. How did they get so bad and how does Australia compare?

In 1891, 29 year old Lilian Cooper arrived in the city of Brisbane, recruited from London as Queensland's first female doctor. Alongside her life partner Josephine Bedford, the pair became beloved local figures. Lilian- a tall, smoking, no-nonsense practitioner - was fiercely independent, highly skilled and deeply admired by her patients. Her story is the subject of an award-winning musical, A Girl's Guide to World War, now on tour in regional Queensland. 

Nobody knows precisely where the game of cricket was born, but test cricket as we know it has been played for nearly 150 years. The so-called gentleman's game has not always been accessible to all - indeed the sport's development in the early years reflected prevailing attitudes to race, class and empire in the 19th Century. It's a sport full of marvels and contradictions, that continues to appeal to this day. Guest: Tim Wigmore, journalist and author of Test Cricket: A history