Late Night Live — Full program podcast · ABC Australia

Ian Dunt's UK, India cuts trade deals, and the black market in polar bear fur

·54 min·2 clips

Forwarding classified government memos to a sex offender to pressure the Chancellor—that's how power actually works.

Late Night Live opens with Ian Dunt and the Epstein papers. David Maher asks what they say about Britain's political culture, and Dunt treats the papers less as gossip than as a revealing window onto the state of politics, with Peter Mandelson front and centre. The conversation is really about what the Epstein material is showing, and why it matters to how Britain is read from inside and outside the country. The show then shifts to India. Professor Ravinder Kaur is brought in to explain why India has suddenly signed major trade pacts with Europe and the United States after years of stalled negotiations, and the explanation stays grounded in agriculture, tariffs, security language, and the changing posture of the Trump administration. The geopolitical backdrop matters. Kaur points to the sense that both India and Europe have been drifting away from the US, to J.D. Vance's speech in Munich, to the way Trump has used tariffs against friends and foes alike, and to India's 50 percent tariffs in August as punishment for purchasing discounted Russian oil. The final substantive segment changes register again. David Maher speaks with Abraham Joff about Trade Secret, a documentary screened at the Edendenna Film Festival in Sydney, on the hunting of polar bears and the legal trade in fur. The episode notes that if you've got the cash and a gun, you can hunt one of these animals and bring the skin home to Australia, all perfectly legal. The issue is grim, and the segment keeps the focus on the uncomfortable fact that conservation, law, and morality do not always line up neatly. Late Night Live keeps the pace measured. It moves by question, correction, and return, letting each guest build the case instead of flattening it into a quick summary. The result is a broad late-evening hour of politics, trade, and cultural oddity, with enough room for the strange edges of public life.

As heard by us

A sharp late-evening sweep from British political culture to trade geopolitics and a legally absurd wildlife story.

Late Night Live moves from Ian Dunt on the Epstein papers and what they say about Britain's political culture, to India's new trade pacts with Europe and the United States, and then to the oddly specific business of polar bear fur that can still be hunted, bought, and brought…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when you want geopolitics, political scandal, and a legal loophole in one late-night hour.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Late Night Live — Full program podcast