2025 Retrospective — A Listener (Zac Gross) Interviews Me

In this special end-of-year episode, the tables are turned: I’m the guest, and I’m interviewed by Zac Gross — an Australian macroeconomist and long-time listener of the show. We reflect on what I learned on the podcast in 2025 and what I changed my mind about. We also discuss the behind-the-scenes…

Cabinet is Australia's Operating System — Here's How It Works (Glyn Davis & Terry Moran)

Glyn Davis and Terry Moran are two of the very small number of Australians who have literally sat in the Cabinet Room, week after week, watching the machinery of government operate from the inside. Both served as Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) — the most senio…

Why Great Powers Sleepwalk to War — A Masterclass with Prof. Hugh White

2,500 years of strategic history, 11 books, one afternoon.  Hugh White is Australia's foremost strategic thinker: former senior adviser to Defence Minister Kim Beazley and Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in Defence, inaugural Director of ASPI, and principal…

Australia's last great act of economic courage — Peter Costello

Peter Costello is the longest-serving Treasurer of Australia (1996–2007). He led the most complex overhaul of Australia's tax system in the postwar era: introducing the Goods and Services Tax (GST) — a value-added consumption tax — while abolishing a range of indirect taxes (notably wholesale sale…

The Discovery of The Bacterium Behind 5% of All Cancers — Barry Marshall

One bacterium causes roughly 1 in 20 cancer cases worldwide. It’s the most cancer-causing pathogen we’ve found—and the main cause of peptic ulcers. Its discovery overturned an ironclad medical dogma that the stomach was sterile. Despite infecting about half of humanity, Helicobacter pylori wasn't …

Australia’s ‘Great Stagnation’: Everything You Need to Know About The Productivity Crisis — Greg Kaplan & Michael Brennan

Stagnation! The 2010s witnessed Australia’s weakest productivity growth in six decades. How much of the slowdown is homegrown? How much reflects the broader “great stagnation” plaguing the West? How much is simply an artefact of the way “productivity” is measured? And what would a credible new g…

Francis Fukuyama — AGI and the Recommencement of History

Francis Fukuyama is a Stanford political scientist and the author of (among many other works) The End of History and the Last Man—arguably the most influential work in political science of the past half-century. If “History” is driven by technology, how does Fukuyama now view biotech and AI—and th…

Laura Deming — On Pausing Biological Time & Preserving the Continuous Self

Laura Deming is a technologist and venture capitalist focused on anti-ageing and life extension. At 17, she founded The Longevity Fund (followed by age1), the first VC firm dedicated to longevity biotech, after being selected in the initial cohort of Thiel fellows (2011). Today she is also CEO and …

Eight Things I Learned From My Aussie Policy Series

I share the 8 biggest things I learned from my Australian policy series. The conversations totaled more than 12 hours of discussion. Grateful to my guests and to everyone who attended the live events. Was really fun to meet and hang out with you all!

Ken Henry — What Killed the Reform Era? [Aus. Policy Series - LIVE]

This episode is the seventh instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on April 29, 2025.  I speak with Ken Henry—former Treasury Secretary and chair of the landmark Henry Tax Review—about why Australia hasn’t achieved major economic reform since the GST, and what must chan…