Celebrated writer and thinker Amitav Ghosh explores rebirth, regeneration and the cycles of life with host Dr Sreedhevi Iyer. Originally presented on Wednesday 27 May by The Wheeler Centre in partnership with RMIT University. Amitav Ghosh is one of India’s most celebrated writers. With a career effortlessly spanning fiction, non-fiction and reportage, his work is characterised by big picture thinking with an unwavering drive to bring the climate crisis into stark focus. These qualities are on display in his captivating new novel, Ghost-Eye, a story that begins in mid-century Calcutta, with a child who claims to remember a past life and leaps to contemporary Brooklyn, where a middle-aged antiquarian is drawn into investigating a family mystery. As the two seemingly unrelated stories converge, Ghosh crafts a narrative that offers a powerful meditation on fate, meaning and the awakening of wonder. Ghosh sits down with Sreedhevi Iyer to discuss his latest novel, what it means to write about the climate breakdown and his remarkable career to date. Featured music is 'No One There' by Ava Low.The official bookseller was Readings.Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hear from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales as he discusses the importance of trust in our online and offline communities and how Wikipedia evolved into one of the internet’s most reputable sources of information. With host Sally Warhaft. Originally presented on Wednesday 20 May 2026 by The Wheeler Centre in partnership with RMIT University.When Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia more than two decades ago, he changed the landscape of knowledge forever – although at the time, almost no one realised it. Today, Wikipedia draws 11 billion monthly views in the English language alone.In the current ‘post-truth’ era, the internet is a sea of disinformation, the rise of AI threatens to erode hard-won knowledge and facts are increasingly malleable. In his new book, The Seven Rules of Trust, Wales shows us that it's more important than ever to return to the problem at the heart of it all: that without trust, we have no knowledge. And without knowledge, we can't fight back.In this fascinating edition of The Fifth Estate, Wales sits down with host Sally Warhaft to discuss the importance of trust in our online and offline communities, how Wikipedia evolved into one of the internet’s most reputable sources of information and shares his optimistic take on the future.The official bookseller was Hill of Content.Featured music is 'Different Days' by Chill Cole.Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Beloved humourist Kathy Lette joins host Elizabeth McCarthy to discuss her big-hearted, cheeky and deeply relatable novel, The Sisterhood Rules.  Originally presented on Wednesday 25th March 2026 by The Wheeler Centre.Full of laugh-out-loud humour and flashes of devastating pathos, Kathy Lette’s The Sisterhood Rules is a romp through secrets, scandal and the unbreakable – if occasionally exasperated – bonds of sisterhood. Twin sisters Isabel and Verity have always been inseparable – until Verity has an affair with Izzy's husband, leaving them hopelessly estranged. But when their mother goes missing, Verity and Izzy are forced to reunite to find her. From there, the problems only get bigger: their mother has a new younger lover and where there's a will … he'd clearly like to be in it. Can the sisters stop their mother from making a truly terrible mistake? And, while they’re at it, can they salvage their own relationship from the rubble? The official bookseller was Hill of Content Bookshop. Featured music is 'Lucy's Trail (Don't Give Up)' by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist.Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Acclaimed British journalist Emily Maitlis reflects on a remarkable career at the forefront of global news, sharing insights and behind-the-scenes stories from some of the world’s most explosive headlines. With host Sally Warhaft. Originally presented on Thursday 5 March 2026 by The Wheeler Centre.Over a decades-long career, Maitlis has covered everything from the Paris terror attacks and the Grenfell fires to Brexit, interviewing everyone from prime ministers and presidents to Nobel laureates and Hollywood stars.She is perhaps best known for her 2019 interview with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – then Prince Andrew, Duke of York – regarding his association with Jeffrey Epstein. The four-hour conversation was widely credited with prompting Mountbatten-Windsor to relinquish his honorary military titles, royal patronages and ultimately resign from public duties.Maitlis recounts the world-changing events she has witnessed, as well as the bust-ups, blow-ups, scoops, walk-outs and unexpected triumphs that come with making – and breaking – the news. The official bookseller was Readings. Featured music is 'Living in a Fantasy' by Pulsed.Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join national treasure Shaun Micallef as he takes the stage to delve into this bitingly funny Victorian Gothic tale for the modern age. With Jacinta Parsons. Originally presented on Tuesday 31 March 2026 by The Wheeler Centre in partnership with Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Move over, Dracula, and take a number, Nosferatu: there’s a new vampire in town, and after several thousand years he’s realised that the trouble with immortality is that eventually … it sucks.To soothe his sickened soul, the Comte De’Ath embarks on a grand holiday. From psychoanalysis in Vienna to blood transfusions in London, the Comte learns that a change of scenery can do wonders for the eternally living. Along the way, he meets the Queen, helps win the Second Matabele War, nudges Henry Ford towards the American Dream and even manages to fall in love. But with his own funeral scheduled at Carfax Abbey, the real question looms: can he become mortal again in time to attend it? The official bookseller was the Sun Bookshop. Featured music is ‘Traveling again’ by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist.Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A host of Melbourne International Comedy Festival comics gather to explore how comedy survives, thrives and occasionally lands a punch on authoritarianism.  The powerful often say they have a sense of humour. This turns out to be true – provided the joke is about someone else. From public denunciations to legal action and intimidation, comedians across the world are increasingly required to work within narrowing spaces, where the right punchline at the expense of the wrong politician carries the risk of personal and professional consequences. When laughter is policed this closely, what does it reveal about the strength – and fragility – of power? Join host Tom Ballard alongside leading comic voices Bahaa Dabbagh, Leon Filewood and Sam Jay for a timely conversation on the role and power of comedy in an age of rising authoritarianism.  This event was recorded on Saturday 28 March 2026 at The Wheeler Centre. It was presented in partnership with Melbourne International Comedy Festival  Featured music is ‘Golden Hour’ by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist. Content warning: This episode contains strong course language.Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Literary icon Nell Zink joins host Jaclyn Crupi to discuss her seventh much acclaimed novel, Sister Europe. In this dazzling satire of modern life, an eclectic cast of characters gathers at a tedious literary award ceremony in Berlin. Over the course of the evening, their assumptions, foibles and irrepressible humanity are slowly brought to light.A Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and the celebrated author of Avalon, Doxology and Nicotine, among others, Nell Zink is widely hailed as a singular voice in literary fiction. In a Melbourne first, she takes the stage at The Wheeler Centre to discuss her sharp and tightly wrought new novel, Sister Europe, and its animating themes: loneliness and the possibility of transcending it, the tension between old and new worldviews and the challenge of defining one’s identity in an increasingly complex world.This event was recorded on Tuesday 3rd March 2026 at The Wheeler Centre.The official bookseller was Hill of Content Bookshop.Featured music is Lucy’s Trail (Don’t Give Up) by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist.Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction, Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel is a chilling dissection of surveillance culture, technological overreach and the quiet, everyday ways people become complicit in their own monitoring. Set in a near-future America shaped by predictive surveillance, Lalami tells the story of a woman swept into a surreal dystopia where dreams are weaponised by the state. Accused of a crime she hasn’t committed – yet – and detained indefinitely in a retention centre in the Californian desert, she must navigate a world in which corporations trade in the contents of our subconscious and algorithms claim the authority to determine guilt, innocence and destiny. Lalami joins host Sonia Nair to explore the seductive pull of technology, the commodification of the private self and the unnervingly plausible future where a single line of code could seal a person’s fate. This event was recorded on Wednesday March 4th 2026 at The Wheeler Centre.The official bookseller was The Chestnut Tree Bookshop.Featured music is ‘Different Days’ by Chill Cole.Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At 13, Kate Reid already knew exactly where she was headed: a career in Formula 1 and a life lived at full throttle. But after earning a degree in aerospace engineering and taking up a coveted position at one of the top F1 teams in the UK, she discovered that the reality didn’t match what she’d dreamed. So, she made a swerve no one expected: to forge a career in pastry.  With her Melbourne-born bakery Lune Croissanterie now famous worldwide, Reid sits down to reflect on her unique path, from initially pursuing aerospace engineering at RMIT University, to following her lifelong passion for F1 racing, to finding fame as the mastermind behind ‘the best croissant in the world’ (The New York Times).  Join Reid as she discusses perfection, obsession and making her own kind of success story, with host Alice Zaslavsky.    Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hear Omar El Akkad discuss his searing work, 'One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This' with host Tasneem Chopra. Sparked by his viral tweet during the bombardment of Gaza – viewed over 10 million times – Omar El Akkad’s 'One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This' lays bare the fractures he has seen in the West’s empty promises of freedom and justice.  In this timely session, the Egyptian-Canadian novelist and journalist reflects on how events like the Black Lives Matter protests, the escalating climate crisis and the violence in the Middle East have reshaped his understanding of migration, power and inequality and forced him to confront what it means to live in a West that has betrayed its fundamental values.   Praised by Richard Flanagan as ‘a howl from the heart of our age’, El Akkad’s book explores exactly how the West has failed and offers hope for a way forward. Originally presented on Wednesday 22 October 2025 by The Wheeler Centre. The official bookseller was Amplify Bookstore. Featured music is 'City Phases' by John Abbot.Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.