Late Night Live - Separate stories podcast ABC listen

The average farmer in America is no longer someone in gumboots mending fences and riding tractors. Barons is the story of seven corporate titans who now dominate the American food system. Many of them are still family-run companies worth billions. Austin Frerick says there are similar approaches to the industrialised food system that include political donations, cases of animal cruelty, worker abuses, corrupted academic research and the use of trade associations and shell companies to obscure links to their operations. And those companies are also operating in Australia.

Guest: Austin Frerick, fellow of the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale, and author, Barons: money, power, and the corruption of America’s food industry, published by Island Press.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has weighed in to the use of slogans at pro-Palestinian university campus rallies as a Rafah ground invasion grows closer. The Treasurer targets students in the latest cost of living measures announced ahead of next week's budget, but no sign of increases to Job Seeker, and the Opposition maintains pressure on Immigration Minister Andrew Giles after the bashing of a Perth woman allegedly involved a former detainee. 

Guest: Laura Tingle, Chief Political Correspondent, 7.30

What can two of Australia's literary greats teach us about letter writing? Brigitta Olubas and Susan Wyndham joined Phillip Adams in the studio to discuss an extraordinary new book of letters penned over forty years by novelists Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower. Hazzard and Harrower: The Letters is published by NewSouth Books. 

Lorraine Peeters, herself a stolen child and survivor of Cootamundra Home for Girls, has spent her life healing herself and others, creating the organisation Marumali which provides culturally powerful training to service providers. Her daughter, Shaan Peeters, is now taking over the reins as director.

Water rights were promised to Indigenous communities in the Murray Darling Basin a year ago. What has happened to those commitments from the Federal Government?

Guest: Uncle Brendan Kennedy is a Wadi Wadi and Tati Tati traditional owner from Robinvale in Victoria

Johann Hari discusses the health risks and rewards of the new weight loss drugs. What does the huge demand for these drugs say about our troubled relationship with food?

Guest: Johann Hari, author of Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight Loss Drugs (Bloomsbury)