RN Breakfast - Separate stories podcast ABC News

It was the art of listening that turned Heather Morris' friendship with Lale Sokolov into an international bestselling novel and television miniseries. 

The author joins RN Breakfast to share the story behind 'The Tattooist of Auschwitz' ahead of her upcoming appearance at the 20th International Conference on Thinking in Melbourne. 
Guest: Heather Morris, author

AI-hallucinations, like a case last month when Google's AI summaries suggested cats had visited the moon, are a serious issue for the rapidly expanding technology.

Now researchers from Oxford University have outlined a system for flagging unreliable or inaccurate text generated by large language models. So, how does it work?

Guest: Dr Jonathan Webb, ABC Science Editor

Brainteaser (answer in the audio):
 
If you write out the numerals from 1 to 1000, which digit occurs the most times?

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The award-winning series Stuff the British Stole is back with a blockbuster second season, filmed across 11 different countries, from Kenya to Canada, Ireland to the Amazon.

Presenter Marc Fennell told RN Breakfast he's "always looking for the grey areas" when choosing what stories to tell. He says there's a moral quandary at the heart of every episode. 
Guest: Marc Fennell, journalist, Stuff The British Stole presenter

The conflict between Hamas and Israel has polarised the left and right in countries across the world, more than any other issue in recent times.

Against that backdrop, the New York Times columnist and prominent defender of Israel, Bret Stephens is in the country to give a talk hosted by the Centre for Independent Studies. He joined RN Breakfast to give his assessment on the situation.
Guest: Bret Stephens, New York Times columnist

 

EDITOR’S NOTE:

This interview has been edited to correct a reference to the firebombing of a Palestinian-owned restaurant in 2023.  Investigations by Victoria  police have found no evidence the attack was religiously or racially motivated. The ABC apologies for the error.

 

Former Telstra boss and nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski has given his backing to the Coalition's plans to build seven nuclear power plants across Australia.

Switkowski once advised the Howard government on nuclear issues - and has dismissed concerns about the high cost of building small reactors, because of their longterm value as a source of reliable power.


Guest: Ziggy Switkowski 

 

The ABC's new Chair, Kim Williams has begun a campaign to lobby Canberra for extra government funding, outlining his vision for the national broadcaster to be a "national campfire" that brings Australians together.

He told RN Breakfast "democracy is fraying at the edges", and has urged a "much more vigorous style of engagement in fact-based exchange" in our discourse.The ABC Chair says Australians actually crave and love respectful debate and we need to see this structured into our public conversations in a much more robust way.

Kim Williams says people to return to the ABC as a "safe-place" for a range of views, and perspectives freely exhibited and interrogated. 
Guest: Kim Williams, ABC Chair