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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.
There's a new episode of If You're Listening every Thursday.
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Matt answers your US midterms questions live(ish)
The US midterm results are still coming in, but already, the Democrats have won the US House of Representatives and the Senate in a landslide. Surprisingly, in an interview on Fox News, Donald Trump said he will accept the results, saying t
What’s actually at stake for Trump at the midterms?
It's US midterms eve, and since Matt hasn’t actually travelled to the US this election cycle, he's called up Four Corners reporter Mark Willacy. Mark has spent the last few weeks travelling across America, talking to voters and experts, inc
Israel’s October 7 inquiry hinges on this election
In 2018, Israeli intelligence obtained a Hamas planning document outlining almost exactly how the October 7 attack would unfold. A more detailed version followed in 2022, and Egypt and the UAE both delivered direct warnings in the weeks bef
The Bananas in Pyjamas’ doomed trip to Moscow
In 1998, the Bananas in Pyjamas visited Moscow as part of a promotional tour. Things did not go to plan. Today, Eric Campbell, the ABC’s Russia correspondent at the time, joins Matt to try to piece together what really happened. Eric also t
Lenin's WWII goo adventure
Surprise! We're popping in on a Sunday to answer your questions, many of which were about goo and the Canadian state of Alberta this month. Kara also tells Matt an incredible story from Russia during World War II — the Weekend at Bernie's-s
Is Trump going to bomb the bond market?
Donald Trump recently said that if his treasury secretary can’t get bond yields down, the next move might be the military. It sounds absurd, but the US bond market is the quiet foundation underneath almost every price in the global economy,
My name is Inigo Jones. Prepare for rain.
Before we knew about El Niño, La Niña and the other patterns scientists now use to make long-range weather forecasts, there were men like Inigo Jones, whose prediction methods owed more to astronomy than to meteorology. Farmers, constructio
The apocalyptic El Niño we didn't see coming
Toxic smoke haze is blanketing Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, after weeks of fires in Indonesia. In central Chile, flash flooding has trapped people on their roofs, and already Australia’s spring is unusually hot. Scientists have
A day out at the Hezbollah theme park
Over recent decades, Hezbollah has become deeply embedded in southern Lebanon. It runs everything from hospitals and schools to infrastructure projects, and even has its own theme park. Naturally, when an email landed in our inbox from list
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
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
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 pas
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 wa
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 humiliat
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 infrastructur
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 Can
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 in
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 gambl
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,
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 thei
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
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 "Mo
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
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 m
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 Pre
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
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 in
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'
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 pr
How to become an Albanian superstar
In 1995, 80-year-old British comedian Norman Wisdom stepped off the plane in Albania for the first time, to a crowd of cheering fans. Over four days he was swarmed in the streets, men came up to kiss him, and he met the president. Today, pr
