This year marks the 68th Eurovision Song Contest. Starting out as an expression of unity and goodwill after WWII and a technical experiment to create a live televised music competition across so many borders, Eurovision now features 37 countries, including Australia. So what happened with our entry for this year? And what else has been most controversial throughout the competition? In this episode, Bension Siebert and Chris Spyrou unpack the history, the scandals, and what’s been most topical so...
May 10, 2024•12 min•Season 5Ep. 217
Once upon a time, women’s magazines had a place on every hairdresser’s bench top, family kitchen table and teenager’s bedside drawer. That all changed with the advent and surging dominance of online media – and magazine numbers slowly dwindled with dozens of titles axed in Australia. Now, Cosmopolitan, one of Australia’s favourite magazines for women is making a comeback. Publisher of Cosmo, Katarina Kroslakova from KK Press, talks to Sacha Barbour Gatt about why Cosmo is making a comeback now a...
May 09, 2024•23 min•Season 5Ep. 216
Some true crime content – like The Teacher’s Pet or Up and Vanished has helped lead detectives to suspects, even resulting in convictions on cold cases. But armchair detectives don’t always get it right – like the TikTok star in Idaho who wrongfully accused a professor of murder. Take the popular Netflix series Baby Reindeer , based on a wild, but true story. Fans have started to investigate the real-life people characters were based on, despite the writer and director going to pretty great leng...
May 09, 2024•13 min•Season 5Ep. 215
Popular rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar are currently embroiled in a very public spat. It’s a feud that has a long history, but things have really escalated. Hip hop journo and author Simone Amelia Jordan explains why this feud is more than petty online drama. Headlines: US pauses weapons delivery to Israel amid Rafah offensive Treasurer forecasts a growth in disposable incomes in Budget sneak peak Stormy Daniels details Donald Trump encounter in hush money trial World reaches crucial clean ene...
May 08, 2024•22 min•Season 5Ep. 214
A local council in Sydney has voted to ban books about same-sex parents from its libraries. Six Cumberland City Councillors voted in favour of the ban, while five, including Mayor Lisa Lake, opposed it. The New South Wales Government has warned it could breach the Anti-Discrimination Act and even threatened to pull the council’s library funding, as a result. Councillor Steve Christou proposed the ban, arguing that most of the council’s constituents are conservative and religious, and don't want ...
May 08, 2024•13 min•Season 5Ep. 213
Australia’s birth rate has been in a relatively steady decline since a peak in the early 1960s. It’s rebounded a small amount after hitting a record low in 2020, but it still sits well below the total fertility rate of 2.1 that’s needed for a population to sustain itself. Is that a bad thing for Australia? And how does the rest of the world compare? On today’s deep dive we speak with Professor Amanda Davies from the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia to try to answe...
May 07, 2024•18 min•Season 5Ep. 212
Israeli tanks have reportedly been spotted just 200 metres from the edge of Rafah, less than a day after an estimated 100,000 Palestinian civilians were ordered to evacuate. Bordering on Egypt, the southernmost city of Gaza has become the last refuge for around 1.4 million Palestinians who have fled the violence and destruction elsewhere. The impending invasion comes after Hamas agreed to a proposed ceasefire that was declined by Israel, and after the forced the closure of foreign media outlet A...
May 07, 2024•13 min•Season 5Ep. 211
Witch hunts aren’t just the stuff of colonial America; they’re happening right now all around the world. People are still being persecuted and often murdered on suspicion of being involved in witchcraft, in a trend that’s currently being driven by fundamental Christianity, poverty and civil conflict. On today’s briefing we’re joined by Professor Miranda Forsyth to find out who is at risk, why they’re being targeted and what’s being done to address the issue. Headlines: Hamas accepts “softened” c...
May 06, 2024•20 min•Season 5Ep. 210
Over the weekend in Perth, a sixteen-year-old boy has been shot dead by police after allegedly wounding a man who was unknown to him with a knife. WA Premier Roger Cook has said that there were indications that the teenager had been radicalised online. The news comes just weeks after Sydney's Wakeley church attack, where another 16-year-old boy allegedly stabbed Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, in what has been labelled a terrorist act. In this episode, Bension Siebert speaks with internationally renow...
May 06, 2024•12 min•Season 5Ep. 209
Cities in China are sinking and satellite imagery shows Beijing is among one of the fastest going under. According to a new study in the journal Science, development and groundwater pumping are causing land subsidence and heightening the risks of sea level rise. Within 100 years, a quarter of China’s urban coastal land could sit below sea level. In this episode of The Briefing, we’re joined by Robert Nicholls, a climate scientist and civil engineer at the University of East Anglia who reviewed t...
May 05, 2024•20 min•Season 5Ep. 208
Ziggy Ramo is a Wik man, powerful storyteller and rapper - but it took him fives years to release his first album because the world wasn't ready to embrace his art and perspective. Soon after the Black Lives Matter movement Ziggy set his words into the world releasing his music and he’s now written a book – his memoir – Human? In this chat with Antoinette Lattouf, Ziggy explains how racism in Australia continues to dehumanise groups of people and what lead him to rap. Ziggy will be appearing spe...
May 03, 2024•30 min•Season 5Ep. 207
Smut used to be the kind of genre you’d find hidden away in the back corner of bookstores. But not anymore. Now, smut series are being featured on the New York Times Best Sellers list, and a quick search of #spicybook or #smut on TikTok will find hundreds of thousands of videos. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its issues. In this episode of The Briefing, Bension Siebert speaks with Esmé Louise James, author of “Kinky History”, to find out about the history of smut, discuss problematic char...
May 03, 2024•13 min•Season 5Ep. 206
Since the Matildas world cup frenzy we’ve seen a rise in soccer participation numbers – not just for young girls – but also boys and older women too. The A League Women season will come to a close tomorrow with Melbourne City taking on Sydney FC in what will hopefully be a record-breaking crowd. On today’s briefing, we chat to Moya Dodd, lawyer, sports administrator and former Matilda, to find out if these numbers are sustainable. Headlines: Police dismantle UCLA pro-Palestine encampment as Bide...
May 02, 2024•25 min•Season 5Ep. 205
Snus is a small tobacco sachet placed between your gum and upper lip. But now there’s a new form of ‘snussing’, with products that take out the tobacco and replace it with flavours like cool mint, espresso, or bellini, and leave in the nicotine. Advertised on TikTok as an alternative to vaping, following a federal crackdown on non-prescription vapes, are these products just another sneaky way to keep the tobacco industry alive? In this episode, Sacha Barbour Gatt speaks with Associate Professor ...
May 02, 2024•12 min•Season 5Ep. 204
A movement is growing around the world protesting Israel’s offensive against Palestine in the Middle East. This time it feels different. More than 100 students at Columbia University in New York were arrested last month when the college called in police to break up their protest, an encampment in the university’s quadrangle. Riot police were called in yesterday to remove students from a campus building. The arrests at Columbia marked a defining moment in the global protest – and similar protest ...
May 01, 2024•23 min•Season 5Ep. 203
Experiments on driverless - or autonomous - cars began 100 years ago, but only in the last twenty years have they become a genuine reality. Elon Musk's Telsa announced last month it was launching an autonomous taxi. How do they work? How safe are they? And how long will it be before we're all expected to share the road with autonomous vehicles? In this episode of The Briefing, we're joined by James Ward from Drive.com.au to discuss the latest developments in autonomous vehicles. See omnystudio.c...
May 01, 2024•12 min•Season 5Ep. 202
Over the last few weeks, our national conversation has been heavily focused on the number of lives that have been taken by men because of domestic violence. Arman Abrahimzadeh lost his mother to domestic violence in 2010 when his father murdered her in front of 300 people. Since then Arman has dedicated his life to trying to end family and domestic abuse - talking to perpetrators in prisons, young people and across schools. On this episode, Arman joins us to discuss how we can stop the abuse, st...
Apr 30, 2024•23 min•Season 5Ep. 201
Ozempic is the new wonder drug sweeping the world of weight loss. But now a new surprising side effect has potentially been uncovered. There's anecdotal evidence that semaglutide – the active ingredient in Ozempic, may also be able to reduce the desire for alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs. Now, research is being undertaken to find out if science can back up those claims. In this episode of The Briefing, Simon Beaton speaks with Dr Leigh Walker from the Florey Institute to find out what we kno...
Apr 30, 2024•10 min•Season 5Ep. 200
Imagine going to your doctor and having treatment forced upon you. This is called compulsory treatment and in Australia it’s legal. Compulsory mental health treatment is when a psychiatrist believes that a patient is at a severe risk of harming themselves or others, who can then be forced to take medication or undergo treatment. But how subjective is that decision on labelling the risk? And if the medical practitioner gets it wrong it means a loss of their rights, and quite often incredibly stro...
Apr 29, 2024•23 min•Season 5Ep. 199
At least 120-thousand people are experiencing homelessness in any given night in Australia. And this isn't a problem that only we are facing, with many countries around the globe struggling to tackle the homelessness issue. However, this isn’t the case in Finland. In their capital, Helsinki, the government aims to end homelessness – or get it down to where becoming homeless is likely to be very temporary for most people – by 2025. So how are they doing this? And could Australia learn from what t...
Apr 29, 2024•12 min•Season 5Ep. 198
Huge crowds gathered at the weekend to protest laws that see high-risk offenders released on bail. As anger mounts over this year’s soaring domestic violence death toll, we speak with Kay Schubach, a domestic violence survivor about what really needs to change to stop more Australian women dying at the hands of offenders released by our courts. In this episode of The Briefing, Kay joins Sacha Barbour Gatt to talk about what we can all do – from the public to government and judicial system - to b...
Apr 28, 2024•24 min•Season 5Ep. 197
Do you feel like you have a good work-life balance? It’s something that most people struggle with, particularly with current cost-of-living pressures. Tim Duggan is the co-founder of Junkee Media. As a young man who launched several digital media platforms he knows a thing or two about work life balance. He’s also the author of several books, his latest is called Work Backwards . In this interview with Tom Tilley he talks about what he did with the freedom to choose his work, after selling Junke...
Apr 27, 2024•41 min•Season 5Ep. 196
Nina Oyama wants people to hire more lesbians. She also has a fondness for iPads over mobiles. But most of all, Nina is funny. She’s a comedian, actor and award-winning writer and director who can go from smutty stand-up to sweet characters on screen. Her portrayal of the uptight eco warrior Courtney in Utopia or the anxious policewoman Abby in Deadloch being some of her stand out performances. Her latest live show is called 'Nina Oyama is Coming' and in this chat with Antoinette Lattouf, she ex...
Apr 26, 2024•35 min•Season 5Ep. 195
A rocket is set to take off soon from North Queensland, becoming the first locally made orbital rocket to blast off from Australian soil. It will also mark our country as one of only twelve around the globe that can boast space launch technology that goes from build to launch. Yet, strangely enough, this rocket is highly likely to fail. On this episode, Bension Siebert speaks with LiSTNR journalist, Courtney Thomas, to discuss why it’s so significant, and why the small town of Bowen, south of To...
Apr 26, 2024•9 min•Season 5Ep. 194
Columbia University in New York this week called in police to arrest pro-Palestinian protestors. Universities have always championed free speech. Is Columbia a sign of the changing nature of protest in our tertiary institutions? Once places that encouraged challenging discussions on politics and culture. In this episode of The Briefing, we’re joined by Tim Briedis, an academic and historian from the University of Sydney who specialises in the history of student activism, to discuss how and why p...
Apr 25, 2024•24 min•Season 5Ep. 193
At pubs around the country, people are watching pairs of coins tossed in the air for the classic ANZAC Day tradition of playing two-up. In most parts of Australia it’s illegal to play this quintessentially Australian game any day other than ANZAC Day. But one pub in Broken Hill – the far west New South Wales mining town near the border South Australia – it's played legally every Friday night. So how is it that two-up is legal any time of the year are mid-sized pub in the middle of the outback? R...
Apr 25, 2024•10 min•Season 5Ep. 192
On this Anzac Day morning, we reflect on the rise and rise of Anzac Day and how only a generation ago, it was declining before a huge upsurge in interest and favour in the late 1990s. The day has not always been as revered as it is today. We’re joined by Anzac historian Mat McLachlan to discuss the current popularity of Anzac Day, and whether it will survive into the future. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 24, 2024•18 min•Season 5Ep. 191
At the beginning of this week, a woman was allegedly murdered by her former partner while he was out on bail. He’d been charged with her rape as well as intimidation. The alleged incident has thrown our bail laws into sharp relief, with both federal and state politicians pledging to do more to keep women safe. In this episode of The Briefing, Sacha Barbour Gatt speaks with Dr Terry Goldsworthy, an associate professor in criminology at Bond University, about whether our bail laws need to change. ...
Apr 24, 2024•12 min•Season 5Ep. 190
Social media has become entrenched in our society, replacing town squares and the water cooler as the place we come together to share our lives, our thoughts and our ideas. But the internet can be a dangerous place, especially for kids, where predators lurk, scams are rife and content inappropriate for young eyes is readily available. Even innocent trends can prove dangerous; think intense skincare regimes designed for 30- somethings becoming popular among little kids who just want to be like th...
Apr 23, 2024•22 min•Season 5Ep. 189
For the first time, two independent candidates are attempting to run for federal parliament as ‘job-sharing candidates’. Lucy Bradlow and Bronwen Bock want to run for the Melbourne seat of Higgins as a single candidate on the ballot paper. They claim that they could do the role like any other job-share – splitting duties, making join decisions, sharing the salary – and that allowing job-sharing would make parliament more representative of modern Australian society. But is it constitutionally leg...
Apr 23, 2024•12 min•Season 5Ep. 188
