Podcast
The ABR Podcast
Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google, or Spotify, or search for ‘The ABR Podcast’ on your favourite podcast app.
‘“Carte blanche from me”: Volume two in a PM biography’
by Patrick Mullins
This week, on The ABR Podcast, Patrick Mullins reviews Hawke PM: The making of a legend by David Day. Approaching Day’s second volume of the Hawke biography, Mullins asks: ‘how much more can there be to say?’ And, in the end, he concludes that ‘without a new perspective and questions that could throw new light on Hawke, the facts marshalled are generally too dulled by over-familiarity to gleam’. Patrick Mullins is a winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the National Biography Award. Here is Patrick Mullins with ‘“Carte blanche from me”: Volume two in a PM biography’, published in the November issue of ABR.
Recent episodes:
This week, on The ABR Podcast, Patrick Mullins reviews Hawke PM: The making of a legend by David Day. Approaching Day’s second volume of the Hawke biography, Mullins asks: ‘how much more can there be to say?’
... (read more)
This week, on The ABR Podcast, Clare Corbould reviews The Shortest History of the United States of America by Don Watson. Corbould praises Watson’s ‘sharp observations’ and his ‘wry and knowing analysis’ but notes a ‘melancholic tone’ as he explores the United States’ slide ‘into populism and authoritarianism’
... (read more)
This week on The ABR Podcast we feature Rachael Wenona Guy’s short story ‘Limerence’, which placed third in the 2025 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. ‘Limerence’ deftly interweaves artifice and realism, narrative ellipses and unsettling meditation to create an uncanny confession.
... (read more)
This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature Kate Fullagar’s essay ‘Questions for Mai: Joshua Reynolds’s portrait and the memory of Empire’. Fullagar delves into the history behind Joshua Reynold’s famous portrait of Mai, the first Pacific Islander to visit Britain.
... (read more)
This week, on The ABR Podcast, Judith Bishop reviews Empire of AI: Inside the reckless race for total domination by Karen Hao and The AI Con: How to fight Big Tech’s hype and create the future we want by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna. Bishop seeks to cut through what she sees as prevailing ‘AI doomer/boomer ideologies’, where artificial intelligence is something that will either save us, or kill us.
... (read more)
This week on The ABR Podcast we feature Tracey Slaughter’s short story ‘Sediment’, which placed second in the 2025 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. ‘Sediment’ takes the form of twenty-seven brilliant points about living and loving in a female share house. It encompasses intense casual relationships and snarks at a landlord and his rotten portfolio.
... (read more)
This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature Sean Scalmer’s commentary ‘Albanese’s “Australian Way”: The rise of “progressive patriotism” and its complex past’. Scalmer investigates Albanese’s definition of the ‘Australian Way’, which ‘served as a touchstone on the campaign trail’, and asks what this ethos represents for the Labor government, particularly in the context of Australia’s complex history of labour reform.
... (read more)
This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature ‘Deeper into darkness: Iran after the twelve-day war’. Australian journalist Zoe Holman writes on life in Iran after the recent twelve-day war, investigating whether conflict brought Iranians closer to democracy or further away from it.
... (read more)
This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature Nathan Hollier’s commentary ‘“Come nearer to Asia”: Australia’s place at Bandung, 1955.’ Seventy years after the 1955 Asian-African Conference, Hollier reflects on Australia’s official absence from this historic ‘postcolonial moment’, as well as its unofficial presence.
... (read more)
This week on The ABR Podcast we feature Tara Sharman’s short story ‘Shelling’, which won the 2025 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. In ‘Shelling’, we meet a woman in flight, driving with the corpse of her dead father stowed in the boot of her car.
... (read more)