NewsPolitics

If You're Listening

ABC Australia

The world is on fire. There's a coup. Inflation is through the roof, and AI is taking our jobs. What does it all mean? Each week, Matt Bevan explains the biggest story in world news while hiding in his basement from assassins and authoritarian regimes.

Recent episodes include an exploration of the relationship between India and China, a closer look at the Saudi Arabian city of NEOM, the conflict in the Middle East, the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, and Ukraine's incursions into Vladimir Putin's Russia. Matt Bevan draws connections between stories from the past and the events of the present to help listeners understand world news and international affairs.

The podcast also features series about big moments in world news; previous series have focused on the United States presidential election, the United Kingdom's 14 years of Conservative Party leadership, Donald Trump's relationship with Russia, Donald Trump's presidency and promise to Make America Great Again, the Mueller Report, Vladimir Putin's scheme to destroy western democracies, how the relationship between Australia and China came to the verge of collapse, and Australia's turbulent history with climate change.

There's a new episode of If You're Listening every Thursday.

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Episodes 40

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Wednesday · 26 min
Putin's billion-dollar quest for immortality
A hot mic caught Putin telling Xi that organ transplants could bring immortality. It's not just talk, and it's not new either: Russian leaders have spent nearly a century chasing eternal life, with some genuinely bizarre results. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app. Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
Monday · 23 min
The US-Canada border fight over a pig
With tensions between Donald Trump and Mark Carney heating up, it's the perfect excuse to revisit another time things got tense on the US-Canadian border… back before Canada was Canada. In June 1859, on a small island wedged between what's now Washington State and Vancouver Island, an American farmer raised his rifle at a pig that kept eating his potatoes, and pulled the trigger. Within weeks, that one dead pig had brought the United States and the British Empire to the brink of war. It became
September 30 · 25 min
Can AI predict the future?
The US-Israel war with Iran. The UK leadership kerfuffle. Who’d finish the top of the ladder in the AFL. At the start of 2026 none of these things would have felt all that predictable. But as Matt experiments with AI stuck in the recent past, he finds computers have gotten good at predicting certain kinds of futures — and he investigates what that means for us, and for Donald Trump. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app. Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/play
September 28 · 21 min
Thatcher's Falklands PSYOP radio station
The 1982 Falklands War wasn't just fought on land and at sea, but also over the airwaves. Radio was part of the strategy on both sides of the conflict, with Britain launching its own covert radio station as a form of 'grey' psychological warfare. Global Roaming producer Pat Sunderland tells Matt the story of Operation Moonshine. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app. Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
September 23 · 27 min
Are the UK and Argentina about to go to war…again?
In 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, and Britain took them back by force. But it was messier behind the scenes than it looked… leaked tapes, real and fake, revealed Ronald Reagan secretly urging Margaret Thatcher not to humiliate Argentina, even as the US publicly stood by its closest ally. More than 40 years later, the islands are back in the headlines, and Argentina's president Javier Milei, one of Donald Trump's closest ideological allies, is talking about claiming them. But this
September 21 · 17 min
Why there are abandoned tunnels under Dallas
We love a tunnel on this show. A few months ago Kara told Matt all about the FBI's secret tunnel under the Russian embassy in Washington. Today Matt takes Kara back underground, digging into the rise and fall of the pedway: an infrastructure idea that spread through North America in the 1960s and 70s, from Montreal to Dallas to Calgary, with mixed results. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app. Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS
September 16 · 28 min
Is Trump cracking Canada?
Donald Trump's trade war with Canada has renamed lakes, threatened to make Canada the 51st state, and slapped tariffs on everything from steel to snowmobiles. The surprising part is what it's doing to the country itself. Quebec, home to Canada's oldest and fiercest separatist movement, has been hit hardest by the tariffs, and yet, support for leaving Canada has dropped to its lowest level in decades. Meanwhile in oil-rich Alberta, largely spared by Trump's tariffs and booming from high oil price
September 14 · 19 min
How we feel about the AI apocalypse
In this highly anticipated mailbag episode, Matt and Kara finally answer the most-asked question in the If You're Listening inbox. Plus, they talk dirty bombs, whether or not Matt is qualified to be doing this, and give their takes on AI insiders’ warnings about humanity’s destruction. P.S. Please stop emailing us about mugs Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app. Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
September 11 · 25 min
How 9/11 shaped the man behind Trump's tariffs
On September 11, 2001, Howard Lutnick's firm Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 employees, including his brother and best friend, when the World Trade Center collapsed. Days later, he became a national pariah for cutting off their salaries, a gamble to keep the company alive long enough to eventually give their families a quarter of its future profits. It worked. Twenty five years on, that same billionaire is Donald Trump's Commerce Secretary, and the man driving his global tariff war. Lutnick's busines
September 9 · 29 min
Why Guantanamo Bay is so hard to close
It’s been 25 years since the September 11 attacks, and Guantanamo Bay is still open. But its use as a legal grey zone predates the War on Terror by a decade. In the early 1990s, thousands of Haitians fleeing a coup were held at Guantanamo, including hundreds of HIV-positive refugees held there indefinitely until Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins called it out at the Oscars. A US court ruling from that saga established that America's constitution doesn't apply on the base, because while the US has
September 7 · 26 min
The cat that broke Einstein’s brain
So, there’s a cat in a box and it’s trapped. Most people have at least heard of the term Schrodinger’s cat. But many of us don’t actually know what it is. Science reporter Jacinta Bowler might have the answers... They spent months with their head in quantum physics land for Dead and Alive, a series of Science Friction on ABC Radio National. Today we’re unpacking what this all means, and how it could lead to a technological revolution... That could solve the world’s biggest problems: feeding mo
September 2 · 25 min
Nepal's glacier time bomb
In August, a glacier collapse in Nepal triggered a catastrophic flood, and the danger still isn't over. Fragile new lakes have formed from the debris, and authorities are warning that another flood could burst through at any moment, putting rescuers still working in the area at risk. It's called a Glacier Lake Outburst Flood, and unlike most disasters, it doesn't really have an aftermath… the same lake can collapse again and again for years. These floods are becoming more common as the climate
August 31 · 24 min
The mystery of the Monkey Man
There was a very curious crime wave recently in India... a number of victims presented to the hospital with scratches and bites - like they'd been attacked by something. When questioned by police, they all described the perpetrator as a "Monkey Man". A short, half-monkey, half-man, dressed in a monkey-sized police uniform, and he was causing havoc. ABC Journalist Ann Jones has been looking into this Monkey Man for her new series, "Nature's Most Wanted". Check it out here: https://www.abc.net.a
August 26 · 28 min
Will Trump's weird obsession break the US Navy?
Sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln have spent more than 250 consecutive days at sea without a single port call, a new US Navy record. Leaked photos show broken toilets and meals of mystery mush, the result of being trapped on the wrong side of Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. But the real story is much bigger. The Navy's next-generation carriers were built around untested electromagnetic catapults that took over a decade and billions more than planned to get working, contributing to a
August 24 · 24 min
The scam queen of the Philippines
Earlier this year, we took a deep dive into the seedy underbelly of the scam centres of Cambodia and Myanmar. And there was one story that our producer, Pat Sunderland, uncovered that we couldn't really fit in. It's the story of a beloved mayor whose fall from grace changed the political landscape of the Philippines. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app. Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
August 19 · 27 min
Is the Secret Service too broken to protect Trump?
The Secret Service was created to hunt counterfeit money, and only started guarding presidents after three assassinations forced Congress's hand in 1901. More than a century later, agents still split their careers between protecting the President and investigating fake twenties. The agency is understaffed by over 20 percent, and burnt-out staff are hitting mandated overtime pay caps by the thousands. It's already led to scandal, security lapses, and a botched response to the assassination atte
August 17 · 36 min
Jonathan Swan on the real Trump White House
New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan has spent more than a decade covering Donald Trump, and he says nothing compares to this term. His new book, Regime Change, co-written with Maggie Haberman, argues Trump's second presidency is being run unlike any other in living memory: driven by gut instinct over briefings, staffed by loyalists chosen for devotion rather than experience, and designed to move faster than Congress, the courts or the media can keep up with. Follow If You're Listening on the
August 12 · 25 min
Why MAGA is turning on Russia
Last month Ukrainian drones struck an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea, the first direct link between the wars in Ukraine and Iran, and proof of a secret arms pipeline between Moscow and Tehran. The strike came amid an extraordinary shift inside MAGA world. Pro-Trump influencer Laura Loomer, who once called Zelenskyy an authoritarian and said Ukraine needed to be "denazified", has spent months touring Kyiv and doing friendly interviews with the Ukrainian president. Now Zelenskyy is using his ne
August 10 · 21 min
What happens when AI commits a crime
Last month, a new AI model from OpenAI made headlines when it hacked into another AI company's servers during testing. Nobody asked the AI to hack anything. It just decided that was the fastest way to get the answers it needed. Now the ABC's national AI reporter Cam Wilson has uncovered the first case of an autonomous AI hack here in Australia. Cam joins Matt to explain what happened, and who's responsible when an AI agent breaks the law. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app. Chec
August 5 · 21 min
Who's really bankrolling Nigel Farage?
Nigel Farage has some…strange revenue streams. The leader of Reform UK has been paid about £700,000 to front ads for a gold bullion company. His fixer, Posh George, once advertised money laundering on the dark web and served time in a US prison. His biggest Brexit donor Arron Banks claimed his fortune came from South African diamond mines that, when reporters checked, weren't actually operating. Now Farage's newest backers are crypto players, and he's using his platform to talk up both gold and

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