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If You're Listening: Daily Summaries Delivered
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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.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 2 days ago27 min
Taiwan’s violent, messy, beautiful democracy
A fistfight erupts in Taiwan's parliament. Punches fly as two rivals find themselves at the centre of the chaos. On one side is Chen Shui-bian, a member of Taiwan’s progressive DPP who became Taiwan's first president from outside the long-ruling KMT. On the other is Han Kuo-yu, a KMT populist. But this isn't just another political brawl. Their careers mirror Taiwan's transformation from authoritarian rule to one of Asia's most vibrant democracies. At the heart of the story is an unresolved question: what is Taiwan? While politicians have spent decades debating the answer, most Taiwanese people have embraced the status quo, neither part of China nor formally independent, but something in between.Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app.Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
- 4 days ago19 min
Was Taiwan's Olympic champion sabotaged?
To this day, international recognition of Taiwan is a fraught issue - with only a handful of countries affirming their claim of statehood. Today, Matt's producer Adair tells him the strange saga of Taiwan's Olympic ambitions, including the tale of a Taiwanese man once called the greatest athlete in the world, and the potential plot to take him down.Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app.Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
- 1 weeks ago25 min
Taiwan’s 100 year fight for freedom
For decades, Taiwan has existed in political limbo: claimed by China, governed separately, and shaped by a history far more complicated than most people realise.After the Second World War, Taiwan was handed back from Japan to China just as the mainland descended into civil war. Mao Zedong’s Communists eventually defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, who fled to Taiwan and rebuilt the Republic of China government there. Taiwan was marketed internationally as “Free China” but on the ground, it was a different story. Taiwanese people were subject to nearly 40 years of martial law: censorship, political persecution, arrests, and violent crackdowns on dissent. Eventually the people started to push back. Today, Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province. But in Taiwan, a growing number of people see themselves as something entirely separate: not Chinese, but Taiwanese.Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app.Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
- 1 weeks ago23 min
The secret techbro city of the future
A team of tech billionaires and venture capitalists have proposed a city that promises to revive the American Dream. But secret landgrabs, legal disputes, and good old reliable NIMBYism stands in their way.Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app.Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
- 2 weeks ago26 min
Trump and Xi Jinping’s deadly game of chess
The world watched Donald Trump and Xi Jinping sit across from each other in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last week. Two leaders with radically different foreign policy styles but the same conviction: that the future belongs to the bold.Trump’s approach to foreign policy has looked like a blitz attack, complete with tariffs, airstrikes and threatening to close strategic chokepoints to force rivals into line. In contrast, Xi’s strategy is slower, colder, and arguably more dangerous. He’s spent years stockpiling resources, staging large-scale military exercises and playing the long game around Taiwan. Two very different strategies, but the same ambition. Two grandmasters are playing for control of the chessboard.Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app.Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
- 2 weeks ago19 min
What is Palantir doing in Australia?
Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app.Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
- 3 weeks ago23 min
Will anything stop Palantir?
The shadowy U.S. tech company Palantir has had a meteoric rise from complete obscurity to transforming the nature of surveillance forever. Pivotal to that rise is its unorthodox CEO, the philosophising tech-entrepreneur Alex Karp. As Palantir integrates itself into systems in every facet of life, from Australian supermarkets to the controversial U.S. ICE raids, Alex Karp provides justifications and bold mission statements for his company, citing a laser-focus on maintaining U.S. hegemony across the world. In doing so, he believes Palantir prevents the rise of undemocratic, far-right movements. But is there any line that Palantir won’t cross to assert U.S. superiority? And could they be in danger of undermining the democracy they claim to defend? Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app.Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_NqFollow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app.Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
- 3 weeks ago24 min
The FBI dug a tunnel under the Russian embassy
The CIA and the FBI famously weren't talking to each other in the lead-up to 9/11. This is the story of why. Supervising producer Kara Jensen-McKenna tells Matt about a decades-long secret FBI operation underneath the streets of Washington which ended in one of the most extraordinary betrayals in American intelligence history.Listen to Matt on No One Saw it Coming on the ABC Listen AppFollow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app.Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq
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About If You're Listening
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.
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