Late Night Live — Full program podcast

This episode focuses on a push to end exemptions that let faith-based schools discriminate against gay and trans students and staff. It also turns to the Catholic Church’s response to artificial intelligence, asking what AI means for human dignity and moral responsibility.

This episode follows two historical investigations set in 19th-century Australia: Kate Grenville’s search into the case of schoolteacher Joseph Connor, and Sally Young’s inquiry into the theft of Victoria’s ceremonial mace. It pairs a possible small-town injustice with an unusual political crime.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s life beyond Middle-earth shares the episode with a wartime story set in Nazi-occupied Paris. It pairs a portrait of Tolkien as obsessive, conservative and difficult with Heather Morris’s account of a child hidden by a piano teacher in the French Resistance.

US politics and climate history share the spotlight here. Bruce Shapiro weighs in on the Cornell sexual assault case, the failed execution of Christa Pike, and Republican prospects before the midterms, while Valerie Trouet explains how tree rings reveal climate patterns that shaped wars, empires, and disasters.

This episode pairs Simon Winchester’s cultural history of the wind with Lech Blaine’s account of a beautiful, terrifying childhood in Queensland pubs shadowed by Christian fanatics. It moves from big-picture ideas about nature and history to an intensely personal story of family, danger, and resilience.