The Shot Podcast

Jo and Dave are joined by Director of the Australia Institute’s Climate and Energy Program Polly Hemming and writer and commentator Ketan Joshi to discuss the truth about Australia’s Climate policy (spoiler alert: devastatingly bad), plus an interview with Redbridge’s Alex Fein on Designated Information Drivers, what voters are really feeling and how progressive messages can cut through.

The Sunday Shot is back for your weekly dose of political conversation and analysis.  Jo and Dave are joined by author and lawyer Josh Bornstein and commentator and novellist Jane Caro to discuss the news of the week, plus an interview with the Jewish Council of Australia’s Sarah Schwartz.

Ronni returns to the podcast for the first time in 2025, joining Jo and guest Lech Blaine. Lech draws on research from last year’s Quarterly Essay on Peter Dutton Bad Cop to analyse Dutton’s Trumpian takes before the gang discuss Lech's riveting, rollicking family memoir Australian Gospel.

Jo and Dave crank their brains back into gear for the first podcast of 2025. They are joined by Thomas Mayo to discuss the challenges of post-Referendum Australia, the Nazification of MAGA and tiptoe through the annual January 26 Culture War. And they launch The Sunday Shot, the progressive alternative to Insiders coming in February.

Jo, Dave and Ronni ruminate on the good and mostly bad moments of 2024 and look forward to 2025, which brings a Federal Election but the release of Ronni’s debut novel, Gunnawah. Set in Riverina in 1974 as the Whitlam years are transforming Australia, Jo and Dave quiz Ronni on the inspiration behind the book and the complicated dangerous local politics of the time.

Jo and Dave talk with Chair of Private Media, publisher of Crikey and author of The Men Who Killed the News Eric Beecher on the future of journalism, the fallout for the Murdochs of the Nevada “Project Harmony” decision and whether Rupert is an horrific narcissistic psychopath with the power of immortality.

Jo and Dave talk to Zack Beauchamp, senior political writer at Vox and author of The Reactionary Spirit: How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World about the fragility of democracy and the autocratic agenda to destroy it from within.