Curtin’s Cast

Curtin's Cast Episode 51 - 8 April 2026 - Misha Zelinsky on World War 3

Has World War 3 already begun — just without a declaration?
This week on Curtin’s Cast, Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras are joined by the excellent Misha Zelinsky — Fulbright Scholar, economist, lawyer, and national security expert — to unpack a confronting idea: We may already be living through the early stages of the third great global conflict of modern times.
From Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine to chaos in the Middle East and rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific, Misha argues we are witnessing an unevenly distributed, undeclared world war — driven by a loose but dangerous alignment of authoritarian powers.
On episode 51 we cover:
Why historical analogies (1930s, WWI, Cold War) only go so far
Why defence experts now see a 20–30% chance of global conflict this decade
The rise of a “bad guys club”: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea
How Western democratic deterrence failed — slowly, then all at once
How modern warfare contains multiple overlapping theatres — military, economic, cyber — along with the familiar use of proxies
Whether democracies are strong enough — including internally — to prevail
This is a serious, sobering conversation about power, geopolitics, and whether the world has already crossed a threshold we don’t yet recognise.

Curtin's Cast Episode 50 - 1 April 2026 - Prof Frank Bongiorno on Bob Hawke

This week, Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras are joined by arguably Australia’s finest historian and public intellectual, Professor Frank Bongiorno, for our landmark 50th episode — and a big question at the heart of Australian politics:
Is Bob Hawke really the “gold standard”… or a myth we can’t escape?
Our conversation is anchored in the new book Gold Standard? Remembering the Hawke Government, edited by Frank, Carolyn Holbrook and Joshua Black — a major reassessment of Hawke’s record and reputation.
We unpack:
▪️ Why Hawke still dominates how we judge governments▪️ What actually made the Hawke model work▪️ Why reform feels harder today▪️ Whether Labor is misreading its own history
What matters now is what Albanese Labor can realistically learn from Hawke — and what his record tells students of Australian politics about the limits and possibilities of reform today.

Curtin’s Cast Episode 49 - 25 March 2026 - South Australian Election Review

A seismic election result in South Australia — but was it a Labor landslide, or a structural collapse of the Liberals? Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras unpack:
The Liberals finishing third and fourth across large parts of the state
One Nation’s 22% surge and what it really means
The critical importance of SA Premier Peter Malinauskas
Why this could be a warning shot for Victoria 2026
This is a deep dive into fragmentation, realignment, and the future of the two party system. Check out episode 49 wherever you get your podcasts.

Curtin's Cast Episode 48 - 18 March 2026 - Is the two-party system dead?

This week on Curtin’s Cast, Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras break down the most striking polling shift in a generation — and what it means for Australian politics.
 
Victoria is no longer a conventional contest. Both major parties are struggling to reach 30%. One Nation is now polling in the mid-20s. The next Victorian election won’t be one election at all. It’ll be eighty-eight by-elections happening simultaneously across the state.
 
In this episode we explore:
 
📊 RedBridge/Accent Victorian state election polling
👥 Generational and class realignment playing out in real time
🗳️ Check in on South Australia ahead of March 21
🌍 Whether Middle East conflict influences domestic voting behaviour
 
This is a deep dive into the end of the old electoral map — and what replaces it.

Curtin's Cast Episode 47 - 11 March 2026 - Dr Kylie Gilbert-Moore

This week co-hosts Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras are joined by Dr Kylie Gilbert-Moore — Middle East scholar, columnist and former political prisoner in Iran. After spending 804 days jailed in Tehran’s Evin Prison, Kylie offers a rare perspective on how the Iranian regime works and how ordinary Iranians see the world. In this episode we unpack:
• Iran’s widening war in the Middle East• The death of Ali Khamenei and rise of his son• Whether authoritarian regimes are stronger or more fragile during war• What Iranians actually think about the conflict• How the region might change if Iran’s regime falls
🎧 Listen now via Apple, Spotify or YouTube

Curtin's Cast Episode 46 - 4 March 2026 - Peter Khalil MP

This week Curtin's Cast is joined in the studio by Peter Khalil — Labor member for the federal seat of Wills in Melbourne, Assistant Minister for Defence, former Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, ex-national security adviser to Kevin Rudd, and previously the government’s former Special Envoy for Social Cohesion. From public housing in Melbourne’s north to junior tennis glory, from working as an executive with SBS to the frontline of Australia’s national security debate — Peter’s story is as global as it is grounded. And Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras go deep with Peter, exploring:🎾 Growing up in Melbourne’s north to immigrant parents — and what a good working-class boy was doing playing tennis✝️ Who are the Egyptian Copts? Peter gives us a history lesson — one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, tracing their lineage back to the early Church, shaped by centuries of survival, faith and minority resilience in the Middle East🧭 Why Peter chose the brutal occupation of parliamentary politics over a a successful and comfortable executive career 🏘️ On the ground in Wills — what voters are actually saying at the doors🤝 Social cohesion beyond the slogan — what happens when trust frays?⚠️ Extremism — left and right — protest, grievance, and social media accelerant🌏 Geo-political volatility — what does middle-power strategy look like now?All killer, no filler. Catch Episode 46 wherever you get your podcasts.

Curtin's Cast Ep 45 - 25 February 2026 - Polls, Pretenders & the Problem with the Liberal Party

This week it’s a one-on-one Kos vs Nick deep dive. No guests. No niceties. Just a hard look at the polling — and some of the rubbish floating around. We unpack:
📊 The latest federal and state polls — what’s real and what’s noise🔵 The new Liberal leadership — and why it’s not generational renewal🗳️ The same free-market fundamentalism dressed up with culture-war garnish📰 The same campaign/media tactics including obligatory News Corp sit-down🏙️ A leader who doesn’t hold an urban metropolitan seat💥 And the deeper truth: the problem isn’t just the leader — it’s the party
We also dig into:
📍 Victorian and South Australian polling🎤 The Mally campaign launch: One Nation is the real threat⚠️ How One Nation can eat into Labor’s base especially in Victoria
Then:
🏗️ Why issues like the CFMEU saga are viewed by voters as intra-elite squabbles🧍‍♂️🧍‍♀️ The widening gender divide and growing generational fracture — Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z — and how each tells a different political story
If you want to know where Australian politics is actually heading — beyond the hot takes — this is the episode for you!

Curtin's Cast Episode 44 - 19 February 2026 - Alastair Campbell on Trumpism and why Australia gives him hope

🎙️ New Curtin’s Cast: Alastair Campbell on democracy in the age of Trumpism
Politics everywhere feels simultaneously stuck and combustible — in the US, the UK and here in Australia. This week Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras are joined by Alastair Campbell — former Director of Communications and Strategy to Tony Blair, co-host of The Rest Is Politics, and one of the sharpest observers of modern democratic politics — for a wide-ranging and unsparing conversation. We explore:
Why UK Labour PM Keir Starmer governs with a commanding majority yet struggles to project purpose
How Anthony Albanese’s Australian Labor and Canada’s Mark Carney are resisting the right-wing populist surge
The global ecosystem of right-wing media, influencers and big money amplifying grievance and normalising transgressive politics of the MAGA, Reform UK and Aussie One Nation variety
Why figures like Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Pauline Hanson can get away with behaviour mainstream politicians cannot
What New Labour got wrong - namely the downsides of globalization 
Housing, intergenerational equality and climate are the means by which the social democratic centre-left can beat back the populist Alt-Right
Alastair also speaks candidly about his own reaction to Trump — even joking about how he has “Trump Derangement Syndrome” — and what that reveals about the emotional intensity of contemporary politics 🎧 Listen to episode 44 wherever you get your podcasts. 

Curtin's Cast Episode 43 - 9 February 2026 - Coalition implosion, One Nation surging and risks for Labor

🎙 Curtin’s Cast returns for 2026
Episode 43 | Polling shocks, Coalition fracture and the new politics of grievance
Australian politics is realigning in real time. In the first Curtin’s Cast episode of 2026, co-hosts Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras unpack a turbulent political summer — from polling shocks and Coalition breakdown to the surge of One Nation, the Gen X revolt, and the risks now facing a dominant but vulnerable Labor government. We discuss:
• What the polling is really telling us• Why the Coalition’s break-up (and make-up) doesn’t fix the right• One Nation’s consolidation and electoral prospects• Gen X as the new grievance cohort• How legacy media built a populist right-wing Frankenstein it can’t control• Why the Greens are stuck in neutral• Why Labor’s next term must be about delivery, not luck• What the 2026 SA and Victorian elections will reveal about federal politics
🎧 Listen now on Apple, Spotify and YouTube

Curtin’s Cast EOY Special - Nine Media’s Sean Kelly on Quarterly Essay #100: The Good Fight

As we wrap up Curtin’s Cast for 2025, a big thank you to everyone who’s tuned in this year — and a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and season’s greetings to all our listeners. Your support has helped make Curtin’s Cast one of the most widely listened-to political podcasts in the country, and we’re deeply grateful. To close out the year, we couldn’t ask for a better conversation.
Quarterly Essay has reached its 100th edition — a remarkable milestone for long-form political writing in Australia. And to mark it, Kos and Nick sit down with Sean Kelly, author of The Good Fight: What Does Labor Stand For? — an essay that asks an important, and uncomfortable, question in Australian politics.
Sean argues Labor’s challenge today isn’t simply electoral, but moral: a crisis of purpose, confidence and imagination. Why has the party that once reshaped the nation struggled to articulate what it stands for heading into 2026? What replaced the old sense of mission? And can a politics built on “kindness” survive a harsher, more unequal era?
📘 Buy Sean Kelly’s Quarterly Essay #100 here:👉 https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2025/11/the-good-fight
Thanks again for listening in 2025. We’ll see you in 2026 — with plenty more to talk about.