If You're Listening

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, including former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan. Mark and Matt talk about why some Republicans are bracing for a bad night, whether Donald Trump could interfere in the vote, and what a forecast Democratic win in Congress, and possibly the Senate, could mean for the next two years. Watch Matt’s midterms livestream on the If You’re Listening YouTube channel at 3pm AEDT tomorrow: https://youtube.com/live/bgmZfIZD0aU Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IfYoureListeningABC

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 before the attack. None of it stopped what Israelis call the worst single day in the country’s history. More than 1100 days later, Israel still hasn’t opened an independent inquiry into the attack, and Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls for one. His rival Gadi Eisenkot has promised to launch one immediately if he wins. So will Israel get a proper reckoning with October 7? It all comes down to a single election. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IfYoureListeningABC

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 talks about meeting Boris Yeltsin in a broom cupboard, the changing face of Russian media, and why Russian politicians took aim at Peppa Pig. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IfYoureListeningABC

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-style odyssey that kept Vladimir Lenin's corpse safe. We're going to do this regularly, so if you have questions for Matt and Kara send them through as emails or voice notes, to ifyourelistening@abc.net.au. And to ask Matt questions live as the US midterm election results roll in on November 4 at 3PM AEDT, subscribe to our brand new YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@IfYoureListeningABC Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app .

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, from your mortgage to a company’s loan. When investors lose faith in a government’s ability to manage its money, as happened under the UK’s Liz Truss in 2022, bond yields spike, and borrowing gets more expensive for everyone, instantly. Trump’s tariffs, his war in Iran and his promised $5,000 dividend cheques have investors nervous all over again, and bond yields are climbing. Unlike Liz Truss, Trump has nobody above him to sack him over it. So who actually pays when the bond market loses faith in Donald Trump? Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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, construction companies and brides-to-be all turned to these unorthodox weathermen, who charted the cycles of the planets and the spots on the surface of the sun. Today, producer Jess O’Callaghan tells Matt about the wild west of weather forecasting, before we really knew how to do it. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 confirmed it’s an El Niño year, and it’s expected to be one of the worst on record, tipping the odds for these extreme weather events. But we haven’t always had this warning — in 1982 there was a whole heap of apocalyptic weather, and no unifying theory to bring it all together. That “super El Niño” would totally change how we think about forecasting the weather. Now climate change threatens to send us back to the 1980s. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 listener Alex who’s actually been to that theme park, we wanted to know every detail. So Matt gave him a call. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 now Washington State and Vancouver Island, an American farmer raised his rifle at a pig that kept eating his potatoes, and pulled the trigger. Within weeks, that one dead pig had brought the United States and the British Empire to the brink of war. It became known as the Pig War. No One Saw It Coming host Marc Fennell tells Matt how it all played out, and why it took the German Kaiser to settle it. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 past, he finds computers have gotten good at predicting certain kinds of futures — and he investigates what that means for us, and for Donald Trump. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 warfare. Global Roaming producer Pat Sunderland tells Matt the story of Operation Moonshine. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 humiliate Argentina, even as the US publicly stood by its closest ally. More than 40 years later, the islands are back in the headlines, and Argentina's president Javier Milei, one of Donald Trump's closest ideological allies, is talking about claiming them. But this time things have changed, this time the US might not automatically side with Britain. A Pentagon memo has reportedly floated reconsidering support for UK sovereignty over the islands, after Britain refused to help with the war in Iran. So which ally does Trump actually pick? Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 infrastructure idea that spread through North America in the 1960s and 70s, from Montreal to Dallas to Calgary, with mixed results. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 Canada's oldest and fiercest separatist movement, has been hit hardest by the tariffs, and yet, support for leaving Canada has dropped to its lowest level in decades. Meanwhile in oil-rich Alberta, largely spared by Trump's tariffs and booming from high oil prices, a once-fringe separatist movement is gaining ground, with a referendum on leaving Canada looming in October. As far as Trump is concerned, he doesn't care where the cracks appear…as long as Canada eventually caves in. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 insiders’ warnings about humanity’s destruction. P.S. Please stop emailing us about mugs Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 gamble to keep the company alive long enough to eventually give their families a quarter of its future profits. It worked. Twenty five years on, that same billionaire is Donald Trump's Commerce Secretary, and the man driving his global tariff war. Lutnick's business thrives on chaos rather than growth, and having survived and profited from the worst days of his life, he seems entirely unafraid of the economic wreckage his tariffs are causing. So what happens when a man built to bet everything on volatility gets his hands on the entire US economy? This episode was originally broadcast May 2025. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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, including hundreds of HIV-positive refugees held there indefinitely until Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins called it out at the Oscars. A US court ruling from that saga established that America's constitution doesn't apply on the base, because while the US has complete control there under a 1903 treaty, Cuba technically retains sovereignty. That's the same loophole the Bush Administration used when it opened a detention centre there in 2002, and 25 years on, the US still hasn't figured out how to close it. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 their head in quantum physics land for Dead and Alive, a series of Science Friction on ABC Radio National. Today we’re unpacking what this all means, and how it could lead to a technological revolution... That could solve the world’s biggest problems: feeding more people, curing disease, optimising public transport so there are never any delays ever again...That is... If it ever gets off the ground. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq

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 rescuers still working in the area at risk. It's called a Glacier Lake Outburst Flood, and unlike most disasters, it doesn't really have an aftermath… the same lake can collapse again and again for years. These floods are becoming more common as the climate warms. But there's also a rare bit of good news: a decade ago, Nepal's own army successfully defused a similar lake, flying equipment up a mountain to build a permanent drain. Alaska's capital Juneau has the same problem and the same fix on the table. It just hasn't built it. Follow If You're Listening on the ABC Listen app . Check out our series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTPrMoGHssAfgMMS3L5LpLNFMNp1U_Nq