Curtin’s Cast

🚨 WE'RE BACK! Curtin's Cast returns – EARLY RELEASE 🎙️
Victoria's election campaign has just been blown wide open.
In a dramatic day of escalating political tension, Deputy Premier Ben Carroll has advised Premier Jacinta Allan that he intends to be a candidate for the Labor leadership should a spill occur.
With just four months until polling day, is Victoria now heading towards both an election and a Labor leadership crisis?
In Episode 63, Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras break down:
🔴 The latest Victorian polling📉 Labor's deteriorating position⚠️ The leadership speculation engulfing Spring Street📈 One Nation's extraordinary surge and whether it holds🔵 Why the Liberals still can't put the election away🇦🇺 A quick federal polling check-in and what it means for Anthony Albanese
This is one of the most timely Curtin's Cast episodes we've recorded.
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
#CurtinsCast #VicPol #SpringSt #AusPol #VictorianElection #Labor #OneNation #Polling #Politics

Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras are joined by acclaimed author, pianist and incoming ANAM Artistic Director Anna Goldsworthy to discuss her new Quarterly Essay, The God We Made: The Threat and Promise of Artificial Intelligence out now with Schwartz Media
Is AI another technological revolution, or something far more profound? What remains uniquely human in an age of machines? Why do we still crave imperfection, authenticity and live experience? And are we repeating the mistakes we made with the industrial revolution and social media?
From music, art and education to work, politics and existential risk, this wide-ranging conversation explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping our world — and what it means to remain human within it.
Listen wherever you get your podcast goodies!

Could the 2026 Victorian election mark the beginning of the end of Australia's century-old two-party system? One Nation is now leading or tied in most national polls. Leadership whispers around Victorian Labor Premier Jacinta Allan are growing. But is this bigger than one premier — or even one party?
On Curtin's Cast Episode 61 Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras unpack:
🔥 Why replacing leaders won't stop deeper political forces📊 What Redbridge modelling reveals about Labor & Coalition heartland seats🗳️ Why One Nation's rise threatens BOTH major parties💥 Why moral denunciation alone won't reconnect voters
🚨 If Victoria can produce a One Nation breakthrough, nowhere in Australia is immune.  Episode 61 of Curtin's Cast is out now! 🎧

This week on Curtin’s Cast, Nick Dyrenfurth sits down with political strategist and campaigner Ed Coper, author of the new book Angertainment: How Social Media Outrage Ruined Everything.
Over more than two decades, Ed has worked with an extraordinary range of political, civic and business leaders and movements, from Malala Yousafzai and Richard Branson to trade unions, climate campaigns, advocacy organisations and the Teal independents. He was also part of the team that helped build GetUp into one of Australia's most influential grassroots campaigning organisations.
In this conversation, Nick and Ed explore how social media platforms, algorithms and the attention economy have transformed politics, media and public life, rewarding outrage over persuasion and division over dialogue.
They discuss:
• What exactly is “angertainment” and why outrage has become a business model;
• Whether both Left and Right are vulnerable to the attention economy;
• Young men, identity, Andrew Tate and algorithmic rabbit holes;
• Which politicians understand social media best — and why;
Can democracy survive the age of angertainment? Ed Coper joins Curtin’s Cast to unpack one of the defining political and cultural challenges of our time.
Buy Ed's book here:
https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761636691/angertainment--ed-coper--2026--9781761636691
 

One Nation is now Australia's most popular political party. Pauline Hanson is Australia's most popular political leader. And new RedBridge–Accent MRP modelling suggests the Australian political system may be fragmenting faster than either major party understands.
This week on Curtin's Cast, Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras unpack the extraordinary polling behind One Nation's rise, the collapse of traditional party loyalties, and what it means for Labor, the Coalition and Australia's political future. Is this simply another protest vote, or are we witnessing the biggest political realignment in modern Australian history?
They explore why millions of Australians feel they're getting poorer in silence, how housing insecurity and falling living standards are reshaping political behaviour, why Labor's budget reforms have produced such a complicated reaction, and why the Coalition is failing to benefit from Labor's losses.
Plus: could Pauline Hanson really become prime minister? What would need to happen for One Nation to become a governing force? And is Victoria about to provide a preview of Australia's fragmented political future?
A provocative conversation about economic insecurity, political dealignment and realignment, institutional distrust and the forces reshaping Australian democracy.
Check out Episode 59 via Apple, Spotify and Youtube

No Kos this week — but Nick Dyrenfurth is joined by one of Australia’s leading public intellectuals and scholars of political leadership, Professor Paul Strangio, to unpack one of the defining political questions of our age:
Why has democratic politics become so chaotic — and why has Australia, so far at least, resisted full-scale democratic rupture?
Drawing on Paul Strangio’s new book ‘The Alchemy of Leadership: Seven Australian Prime Ministers in a Turbulent Twenty-First Century’ (Melbourne University Publishing), this wide-ranging conversation explores the collapse of old political loyalties, revolving-door prime ministers, media fragmentation, hyper-politics, populism, culture wars and the emotional exhaustion now embedded in modern democratic life.
From Howard, Rudd and Gillard to Abbott, Morrison, Albanese and the post-2025 political landscape, Nick and Paul examine how leadership itself has changed in the twenty-first century — and whether traditional democratic authority can still survive in the age of algorithms, permanent campaigning and anti-politics.
They discuss:
Why Australian politics became permanently unstable after 2007
John Howard’s role in “smuggling” conservative populism into the mainstream
Pauline Hanson, Trumpism and why Australia avoided full MAGA-style collapse
Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.

Is Australian politics finally exiting the dead zone of managerialism and re-entering an era of genuine ideological conflict?
In Episode 57 of Curtin’s Cast, Nick Dyrenfurth and Australia’s "revered pollster” Kos Samaras unpack the political shockwaves from Labor’s 2026 budget — and why much of the legacy media may be completely misunderstanding what is happening.
As newspapers scream “political suicide” and compare the budget to the disastrous 2014 Hockey Budget, Nick and Kos explore why this is not 2001 or 2004 politics anymore. Millennials and Gen Z do not expect miracles — they want proof governments are finally willing to “touch the architecture” on housing, tax and intergenerational fairness.
Nick and Kos dive deep into:
why Labor now openly sees under-45s as its electoral base
the collapse of the old Howard-era political settlement
how this is the first serious reform battle in decades
Angus Taylor’s high-risk budget reply and the risks of chasing Pauline Hanson
why the Coalition’s proposal to strip non-citizens of welfare, NDIS and other benefits could detonate support among Chinese-Australian households
how “household voting” works politically in migrant communities
and why anti-Dan Andrews politics is a dead-end for the Victorian Libs
Plus: Kos hints at a bombshell new Redbridge/Australian Financial Review poll, predictions on Andrew Hastie and November's Victorian state election

For years politics and media have obsessed over angry young men, the manosphere and figures like Andrew Tate.
But what if the bigger political story is the radicalisation — and growing pessimism — of ‘Angry Young Women’?
This week Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras are joined by New Statesman staff writer Emily Lawford to discuss her major recent cover story on the rise of the Gen Z “femosphere” and the widening political divide between young men and women.
They discuss:
▪️ How young women are becoming more politically engaged, but more anxious and pessimistic
▪️ Why these young women are so down on young men, capitalism and animated by issues like Gaza▪️ The rise of online feminist identity and activism▪️ TikTok, social media and radicalisation pathways▪️ Why young men and women are increasingly diverging politically▪️ The impact on relationships, trust and social cohesion▪️ What this means for Labor, the Greens and the future of democratic politics
Featuring Australian polling and focus-group insights from Kos Samaras and the team at RedBridge.
A serious conversation about one of the biggest — and least understood — political shifts reshaping the Anglosphere.
Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

One year on from the 2025 federal election, the political landscape is shifting again — and not in ways either major legacy party can fully control.
In this episode, Kos Samaras and Nick Dyrenfurth unpack the latest RedBridge/Accent/AFR  polling and the fallout from the Nepean by-election. Has One Nation’s surge peaked? And is there a “Trump dump” effect — where getting too close to Trump and MAGA begins to turn voters off?
Nick and Kos also explore Pauline Hanson’s emerging dilemma: a choice between battlers and billionaires, as her party draws support from working Australians while benefiting from the backing of right-wing figures like Gina Rinehart.
We also preview the looming Farrer by-election and examine what Nepean signals for both Labor and the Liberals — and the Victorian election ahead.

In this episode, Nick Dyrenfurth and Kos Samaras break down why AI anxiety is already political — not hypothetical — and why governments are at risk of repeating the biggest mistake of the last economic transition. We’ve seen this movie before. It didn’t end well. Over 70% of Australians think AI will cost jobs — and this time, the fear hits before the impact. Based off new Redbridge polling and the John Curtin Research Centre's new policy report, 'For All of Us: Making Artificial Intelligence Work for Working People', the argument is simple: if workers don’t share in the gains, they won’t accept the change. And if they don’t accept it, they’ll vote against it.