Geraldine Books is a Pulitzer Prize winning author whose work spans foreign affairs, fiction and politics. Her most recent books bring readers somewhere far more intimate. Memorial Days, released this year, is her deeply affecting meditation on love and loss written as she grieved the loss of her husband. Brooks also takes us behind the scenes of Kamala Harris' memoir 107 Days, and inside the process of ghost writing. Guest: Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winner author of Memorial Days.

Gary O’Donoghue is the BBC's North America correspondent who made headlines due to an sudden, exclusive interview with President Trump.  He was also in Butler, Pennsylvania, the day that Donald Trump survived the assassination attempt and led global news with his award winning reports from the scene. Gary, who goes by the social media handle @BlindGazza, also discuss the challenges of being a blind journalist and the encouragement he gives to young blind people.  

David Gonski is one of Australia's most respected and connected leaders — known as the "chairman of everything".  After 20 years at UNSW as its longest serving Chancellor, David Gonski is stepping down.  He led the top university through COVID, funding crises and criticism of the sector's reliance on international students. What are his parting thoughts?

The struggle between the US and the Europeans over the Ukraine war and the security of the continent is at a historic turning point — for the first time since the end of World War II, there are concerns that America is abandoning its NATO allies. European leaders will meet again this weekend to discuss using Russian assets and cash that have been frozen in the EU for a loan to help Kyiv fund its military and economy. Guest: Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Centre on the United States and Europe, Brookings.

At the start of this year, we said we would bring you the best commentators, the biggest brains, and people with lived experience on the ground. We promised to help make sense of the world and abide by one of the first rules in journalism — never be boring. So how did we do?

18-year-old Tommy Lamb has been on the road for over 100 days, making his way from Manchester in England through Europe and Asia in the hope of making the start of the third test in Adelaide. He's travelled 16,000 kilometres without taking a plane, relying on trains, buses, boats, motorbikes and hitch-hiking. Along the way he lost and found his passport, had a serious motorcycle accident and he's now stuck in Singapore looking for a boat ride. He has just one rule — to play cricket in every place he stops.

Next week, Australia will become the first country in the world to ban social media accounts for users under 16, a rare bipartisan move, with both sides of government backing the legislation in an effort to curb the harmful impacts of social media on young people. Under the new rules, children under 16 will be barred from creating or maintaining accounts on platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, Twitch, Threads, X, Kick and YouTube. How will it work, what parents, teens, and platforms need to know ahead of the ban.

Sam Mostyn took up the role of being the Governor-General in Australia in July last year, and she’s only the second woman to perform the role.  Nick Bryant caught up with Governor-General at her official Sydney residence, Admiralty House, to discuss her role at a time of polarisation, the importance of service, accusations that she is "woke" and how care has a deep and resonant place in our Australian identity.

Myanmar's late-December elections are unfolding in what UN rights officials describe as an atmosphere of fear, violence. Ahead of that poll, which has been widely dismissed as an attempt by the military junta to obtain legitimacy, the country has released and dropped charges against more than 8-thousand people, many of them political detainees. But there's no sign of freedom for any of the country's top democratic leadership, including the former leader Aung San Suu Chee. 

The Trump administration has released an updated National Security Strategy, which warned, among other things, that Europe faced what it called "the stark prospect of civilisational erasure."  The new strategy document also pledged to use "lethal force to defeat drugs cartels" which it said would replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades. It is the use of lethal force against alleged drug boats from Venezuela in the Caribbean that has dominated US politics this week. Meanwhile, the US military build-up off the coast of Venezuela continues, with more ships stationed there since the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s.  What does all of this mean for the people of Venezuela?

It’s a chart topping podcast with millions of downloads around the world. Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland are distinguished historians — Oxford and Cambridge scholars, and bestselling authors. But their global fame comes from hosting the smash-hit podcast The Rest Is History which brings the past to life  past to life with gripping storytelling and expert analysis. They caught up with our own historian, Nick Bryant, while in Sydney this week for their national tour.

This week saw the eagerly anticipated release of the Australian Election Study (AES), compiled by academics at the Australian National University and Griffith University. The survey offers one of the most comprehensive snapshots of voter attitudes in the country. It digs into what drives Australians to vote the way they do — across parties, demographics and key policy areas — and helps explain both the mood of the electorate now and what future election outcomes might look like.

At least 128 people have died and 200 people are still missing. It's the city's deadliest fire in 70 years, and it ripped through a housing complex with 8 tower blocks and about 2000 apartments. An early theory is that construction materials used for a renovation fuelled the blaze.

To discuss the Washington attack and the broader trajectory of the Trump presidency we’re joined by one of the most influential observers of American politics. 

As US negotiators head to Moscow next week, doubts are mounting over what - if anything - Russia is willing to concede in a Ukraine peace deal.  New reporting suggests Washington’s proposal clashes with core Kremlin demands, and a leaked call in which envoy Steve Witkoff is heard advising a senior Russian official has ignited political fury in Washington. Meanwhile, Ukraine and its European allies insist any agreement must deliver real security for Kyiv.

China is an engineering state, obsessed with building megaprojects, while America is a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad. That’s the framework for a new book by Dan Wang which explores the merits and madness of Beijing’s engineering state – and how it compares with Washington. Through personal insights from living in both countries, Dan Wang explores China’s strengths and weaknesses, and offers a critique of how American leadership could lose the technological arms race to its rival.

As the popularity of Indian films surge in Australia,  a new era of bilateral film collaboration is being cemented through a cultural trade deal in India.  The International Film Festival of India (IFFI) is on in Goa, and filmmaker Rachel Griffiths is part of an Australian delegation there to sign a historic agreement that will open up new, reciprocal opportunities between the two countries, including a major distribution deal, academic knowledge exchange and program and career development schemes for film makers.

The widow of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi says she is hurt and disappointed that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman received a warm welcome at the White House this week. US President Donald Trump fiercely defended the Crown Prince saying he wasn't aware of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, effectively contradicting CIA assessments that the Saudi ruler likely ordered the murder of Khashoggi in 2018. Jamal Khashoggi was critical of the Saudi regime, and his widow says his brutal murder up-ended her life.

As we enter the final parliamentary sitting week of the year Sussan Ley seems to have just survived the political killing season.  The Liberal Party leader's climbdown over net zero by 2050 has quelled a mutinous party room, for now at least. With the Coalition in disarray, and One Nation surging in the polls,  the centre has been left wide open for Albanese's Labor government.

South Africa is hosting the G20 this weekend and it should be the country's big moment, a chance to showcase its diplomatic and economic potential. But Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and the leaders of Argentina and Mexico are skipping the meeting. Without the participation of major powers, is the G20's ability to function as a credible forum fundamentally undermined?