Please Explain - from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, a weekly podcast that cuts through the noise to give you insight into the stories that drive the nation.
Subscribe to The Age: https://subscribe.theage.com.au/ or The Herald: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/
Get in touch with the team: pleaseexplain@theage.com.au or pleaseexplain@smh.com.au
It’s starting to feel a lot like an election season.
In the last month, three senior government MPs have declared they will not contest the next election. There’s rumours of more to come. But as the prime minister flew through Queensland this week, he urged political watchers not to underestimate him.
Scott Morrison is determined to fight this election on the economy, arguing a Bill Shorten government would drive Australia into recession. The bottom line will certainly be top of mind for most voters, but as this stinking hot January draws to a close, another issue burns.
Listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
While you're there, check out other great podcasts from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age: Wrong Skin, Phoebe's Fall, Bold Businesses and the Real Footy Podcast.
The cliches about our identity get rolled out every Australia Day. But in recent times, what, and more importantly, who counts as Australian has been co-opted by far-right fringe groups with a view to exclusion. Undeniably, Australian pride is not as simple as many would like to think.
This week on Please Explain, national editor Tory Maguire examines Australian identity in 2019 and how Australians might redefine what it means to be proud of their country.
Guests:
Lisa Davies - Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald.
Stan Grant - ABC's Global Affairs and Indigenous Affairs analyst. He is about to release his book Australia Day.
Michelle Simmons - 2018 Australian of the Year and quantum phsyicist at the University of New South Wales.
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No deal, no confidence and no plan. On March 29, Britain is scheduled to depart the European Union officially after 46 years.
After this week's failed vote, and the clock ticking down to d-day, our latest episode of Please Explain looks at the best - and worst - case scenario for the Brits, and the EU.
Guests: Nick Miller: Europe correspondent, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
James Chessell: Executive Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and former London Correspondent for the Australian Financial Review.
John McDuling: business, media and technology writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
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Australian house prices have finally ceased their extraordinary run and started falling back down to earth. Meanwhile, having sat on its hands with interest rates at record lows for more than two years, the Reserve Bank is keeping watch for signs it can begin raising rates to normal levels.
This week on Please Explain, guest host Jessica Irving assembles a crack team of economic experts to help you make sense of what’s to come for your wealth, your mortgage and your paypacket.
Guests: Ross Gittins, Economics Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald Shane Wright, senior economics writer in Parliament House, Canberra Martin North, Principal of Digital Finance Analytics
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It's summer - and that means some serious book time. It just so happens three of our best reporters wrote, or are writing, some great long form yarns. This episode you'll hear three interviews about three huge stories that captured the nation last year.
South East Asia correspondent James Massola and fixer Veena Thoopkrajae take us behind the scenes of the incredible underground retrieval of 12 Thai boys and their coach, in the book The Great Cave Rescue.
Senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist Helen Pitt won the 2018 Walkley Book Award for her ode to the Sydney Opera House, The House, which was released just in time for the Everest racing scandal debate.
And, Walkley award-winning reporter Adele Ferguson gives us a sneak peak at her forthcoming book Banking Bad: How greed and broken governance conspired to break our trust in corporate Australia.
Please Explain - from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, a weekly podcast that cuts through the noise to give you insight into the stories that drive the nation.
Subscribe to The Age: https://subscribe.theage.com.au/ or The Sydney Morning Herald: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/
What stories defined 2018?
This week, Please Explain listeners get a peek into our exclusive subscriber-only events where journalists and editors are themselves in the hotseat in front of a live audience to field all manner of questions about the state of the world, and reflect honestly on their work.
Please Explain - from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, a weekly podcast that cuts through the noise to give you insight into the stories that drive the nation.
Subscribe to The Age: https://subscribe.theage.com.au/ or The Herald: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/
Sued, gagged and broke: nobody does defamation quite like Australia. It has provided some of the best-read and most colourful cases in our legal history - but defamation law is so bedevilled with complexities and anachronisms that it leaves many lawyers and judges shaking their heads.
In the latest episode of Please Explain, investigative journalist Kate McClymont, Larina Alick, editorial counsel for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and group executive editor James Chessell delve into the risks of publishing, including the social media dangers that most users of Facebook and Twitter are completely unaware of.
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Ever had a full-blown case of the post-holiday blues? Here's how to cope with everyday life after the best trip of your life.
Geoff Manchester and Darrell Wade were just a couple of backpackers who had a good idea, and that idea has transformed into a multi-million dollar business, Intrepid. Geoff talks to Ben Groundwater about how travel has change and how we can all continue to be good and sustainable travellers.
When it comes to Google and Facebook, you are the commodity.
That's what ACCC chair Rod Sims said of the Australian inquiry into the tech behemoths. "Their business is about gathering data about you and they do that in more ways than you think," he said.
In this episode of Please Explain our panellists national editor Tory Maguire, media and telecommunications reporter Jennifer Duke and technology reporter John McDuling discuss the broad and sweeping changes the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission recommend for the two tech giants.
McDuling catches up with Sims himself and foreign and investigations editor Michael Bachelard takes time out while on assignment in Jordan to chat to Please Explain about his experiences in refugee camps near the border of Syria.
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From sunsets in Ha Long Bay to bustling Ho Chi Minh and cultural Hoi An, this is a travel guide for first-timers (and return travellers) to one of Asia's most loved destinations, Vietnam. Ben Groundwater, Annie Dang and Intrepid's Geoff Manchester talk sights, food, experiences and more.
As the last sitting week ends, the Liberal Party is in a "pretty volatile state".
The minority government has become more minor, it has lost control of the floor and the leadership change has bewildered foreign leaders at the G20 in Buenos Aires.
But how far does it need to go to recover, and can it?
In this week's episode of Please Explain, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age's chief political correspondent David Crowe, political and international editor Peter Hartcher and Nine's political editor Chris Uhlmann join Tory Maguire to discuss what has led us to this point, and what we may see from the flailing party in the lead up to a possible May 2019 election.
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From peaks of Patagonia to the red deserts of Australia, these are the top places for an adventure in the outdoors (and you don’t need to be a nature lover to do it).
Whichever way you cut it, the Liberal Party is in serious trouble. With the Victorian Liberals banished to the political wilderness for the next four years, is the federal Liberal Party doomed to the same fate in the election next May?
Is there a brand of conservatism that appeals to Victoria, NSW and Queensland all at the same time?
How do they turn the ship around? Or, is it already too late?
Joining host Jacqueline Maley this episode is former Liberal Party leader John Hewson, as well as our in-house politics heavy weights: Federal Editor and Canberra Bureau Chief Bevan Shields, and Associate editor and special writer based in Melbourne, Tony Wright.
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This week we take a look at must do highlights of a country that everyone seems to love - and find out why Canada is such a great destination for travellers.
The Holy City of Jerusalem seems a world away from Canberra, but for weeks now our politicians have become obsessed with the location of Australia's Embassy in Israel. Will our government follow the US in reversing decades of foreign policy and move its diplomats from Tel Aviv?
Why has this come to the surface now? What is it really about?
This week on Please Explain, The Herald and The Age’s Chief political correspondent David Crowe and Nick O’Malley, senior writer and former foreign correspondent, join host Tory Maguire to unpick the motives behind a move.
Vic Alhadeff, the CEO of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, and Sara Saleh, a Palestinian Australian human rights advocate and writer, also give Tory their five-minute pitches for and against such moving the embassy.
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This week we're not looking at the world, but at how the world looks at us. Sue Williams and Rob McFarland join host Ben Groundwater to discuss the things that might shock foreign visitors on their first visit to Australia.
When alleged sexual harassment victims are used for "political point scoring", the motivations of our politicians becomes questionable.
Corrections Minister David Elliott's decision to air allegations against former opposition leader Luke Foley under parliamentary privilege, without the victim's consent, has led to Mr Foley's resignation, a defamation threat and a public apology.
This week on Please Explain, The Age's social affairs editor Miki Perkins, Women’s Agenda contributing editor Georgina Dent and activist and campaigner Sally Rugg discuss the impact #metoo has on the powerful.
Jacqueline Maley also speaks with senior crime reporter John Silvester on the devastating impact the Bourke St attack has had on Melbourne.
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We all travel for different reasons - for an adventure, to escape the daily grind, to eat the most amazing foods in the world. But does travel have the power to change who we really are? Ben Groundwater talks to Flip Byrnes and Rob McFarland.
In the wake of a near collision between US and Chinese warships in the South China Sea, defence and national security correspondent David Wroe said, in the interest of diplomacy, 'sooner or later somebody's going to have to back down'.
Australia's diplomatic freeze, prompted in part by foreign interference laws introduced under Malcolm Turnbull, appear to be thawing as Marise Payne makes the first diplomatic trip by a foreign minister to Beijing in almost three years.
This week on Please Explain, world editor Michael Bachelard and defence and national security correspondent David Wroe just how significant is this Beijing visit by our foreign minister really is. Tory also speaks to US correspondent Matthew Knott on the line from the US, where the midterms have just wrapped up.
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