Late Night Live - Separate stories podcast

When refugee activist and author Mij Tanith was asked to help an Afghan woman and her five daughters escape the Taliban, she hesitated, burned out after years of emotional toil. But once Mij heard her voice over the phone she couldn't say no. The clock was ticking for 'Laila' - not her real name. She had escaped to Iran, but only had 12 months before she would be deported back to Afghanistan, where girls' schools were being bombed. Mij got a group of supporters together through a not-for profit called the Circle of Friends and they set out about raising the $140,000 they would need to get her visa approved, and get Laila and her daughters on a plane and safely housed in Adelaide.  Guest: Mij Tanith, playwright, teacher, author of Laila’s Story (Spinifex Press, March 2026) and member of the Circle of Friends Australia refugee support network Producer: Catherine Zengerer

That power sends men mad, is a rule of politics and of history that goes way way back before Dr Freud. When riding in triumph through Rome, Caesar’s slave stood behind him in the chariot whispering into the Emperor’s ear: “Remember - you are a man.” No one as far as we know, is keeping Donald Trump’s pride in check as he parades through Washington in the back of the Beast. He lives surrounded by sycophants who tell him he is indeed the omnipotent leader he imagines himself to be. Fintan O’Toole’s diagnosis is - that while not mentally ill - Trump is in a broader sense, mad.    Guest: Fintan O'Toole, regular contributor to the Irish Times and advising editor to the New York Review of Books. Producer: Ali Benton

Three weeks before the end of WWII, the Germans invited the British to liberate the 60,000 prisoners - mostly Jews - being held at Belsen. But for the starving men, women and children of the camp, many seriously ill with typhus, liberation was not what they imagined or hoped for. The British initially refused to recognise them as Jews, and didn't know what to do with the thousands of displaced people who didn't want to go home.  Guest: Nadia Wheatley, historian and author of Strange New World - Belsen's first year of freedom  Producer: Catherine Zengerer

The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing the prospect of running against a rightwing-centrist super coalition in elections later this year, after two of his biggest political rivals - Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid - combined forces to form the new party Beyachad (Together) -  inviting a third party leader to join them. It's not the first time Bennett and Lapid have worked together, and questions remain about the longevity of their new political merger.  Guest: Irris Makler, former Middle East correspondent  

After the infamous mutiny on the Bounty the mutineers settled on remote Pitcairn Island. The Pitcairn Island Register is the original record of births, deaths, and marriages from the Bounty and it also records their fate. It dates back to 1790 and has, until now, been kept in the National Maritime Museum in London. Their descendants, now living on Norfolk Island, crowdfunded to have it returned and the Museum agreed their museum could have it on a three year loan. The register doesn't throw much light on what happened to the Tahitian women on the island, but one of their descendants has been discovering their stories via the cloth they weaved from bark. Guests: Helen Mears, Head of Curatorship & Research at Royal Museums Greenwich; plus Dr Pauline Reynolds, Chair, Norfolk Island Museums Trust and descendant of the original Pitcairn inhabitants Producer: Catherine Zengerer