The Monthly

30/01/2025

“Gupta’s entire global empire is privately held, with hundreds of companies in different jurisdictions, so it’s almost impossible to know what’s going on...”

Paul Barry on the rise and fall of Sanjeev Gupta:

Sanjeev Gupta’s collapsing global businesses make his promises to revive and expand the Whyalla steelworks ring hollow

30/01/2025

“As I was in Whyalla talking to creditors who hadn’t been paid and workers who feared for their livelihoods, Gupta was getting the green light on a $10 million renovation.”

Paul Barry on the rise and fall of Sanjeev Gupta:

Sanjeev Gupta’s collapsing global businesses make his promises to revive and expand the Whyalla steelworks ring hollow

29/01/2025

Two-time Miles Franklin Award-winning author Michelle de Kretser has never been afraid of formal experimentation. Her seventh and latest book is bold and, once again, a heady mix of serious intellectual inquiry with beautifully observed characterisation and formal play. This week on the show, Michael sits down with Michelle for a conversation about ‘Theory & Practice’ and she reveals why writing it felt so different to all of her other books.
http://mnth.ly/thaBEPj

29/01/2025

“As Whyalla’s blast furnace was being shut down for the second time last August because those bills were unpaid, Sanjeev Gupta was causing a stir by splurging on a waterfront apartment in Sydney’s famous Finger Wharf.”

Sanjeev Gupta’s collapsing global businesses make his promises to revive and expand the Whyalla steelworks ring hollow

29/01/2025

Paul Barry on the rise and fall of Sanjeev Gupta:

Sanjeev Gupta’s collapsing global businesses make his promises to revive and expand the Whyalla steelworks ring hollow

28/01/2025

“Gupta and his entourage flew into Whyalla … and a cavalcade of politicians, journalists and local officials once again gave him a hero’s welcome. But by now some critics were calling it a charade.”

Sanjeev Gupta’s collapsing global businesses make his promises to revive and expand the Whyalla steelworks ring hollow

28/01/2025

April, 1945. The Soviets were close now, and all seemed lost. But the inevitability of Berlin’s fall did not prevent the Fuhrer’s final spasms of vindictiveness.

Remembering the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as we approach the 80th anniversary of his ex*****on on Hitler’s orders

28/01/2025

Elle Hardy: “The urge to celebrate anyone who opposed ‘the Reds’ turned into welcoming established war criminals to our shores. Yaroslav Stetsko, a hardened nationalist and anti-Semite, visited Australia in 1957, and was received by a list of luminaries.”

How postwar anti-communist zeal seeded the growing influence of far-right extremism in mainstream politics

27/01/2025

“The language of football fandom and the excitement of barracking – it’s hard to imagine another literary book with a higher exclamation mark per page ratio – is harnessed throughout.” Michael Williams on Helen Garner’s ‘The Season’

The latest book from one of our most compelling writers finds her contemplating old age through the lens of a grandson’s footy team

27/01/2025

“In the 1970s, the waterbed arrived in Australia. The waterbed is really a hybrid lilo/pool: the pool is put inside the lilo instead of beneath it and then brought indoors.” Kath Kenny on our love of pools

During a week staying at the Whitlam family home in Cabramatta, a series of unexpected aquatic resonances emerge

27/01/2025

Andy Hazel on D&D’s 50th anniversary: “The developers are carefully balancing the traditions of a beloved game for its 15 million active players with the goal of welcoming a new generation raised on videogames, many of which take inspiration from D&D.”

Role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons updates its rules – and its views on orcs’ inherent evil – to mark its 50th anniversary

26/01/2025

Kate Jinx on : “Turning up in an ice blue Hervé Léger bandage dress, she coolly takes it all in while Ivan slips along the polished floors in socks (Eastern European Timothée Chalamet does ‘Risky Business’), like a caffeinated puppy.”

Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winning take on a rags-to-riches story set in the s*x industry, and Guan Hu’s energetic, heartfelt story of a tough guy and a wild dog

26/01/2025

“There were no reliable statistics to prove it, but as we headed down the street I felt I was at the epicentre of illegal psychedelic therapy in Australia. Local sales of my latest book seemed to support the theory.” Rebecca Huntley in Mullumbimby

The limited legalisation of psychedelic-assisted therapy permits it in medicalised and hospital settings, but will that work for everyone?

26/01/2025

“The mixed responses of the First Nations community to Senator Thorpe’s engagement with the King reveal a community that’s perhaps weary of gesture politics after failing to garner enough support for their right to be heard.” | Megan Davis

Both Lidia Thorpe’s protest against King Charles and the subsequent civility policing served to demonstrate how the status quo continues without the Voice

25/01/2025

Former Philippines senator Leila de Lima, imprisoned for nearly seven years during Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”, on her hopes for democratic reform | Margaret Simons

Former Philippines senator Leila de Lima, imprisoned for nearly seven years during Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”, on her hopes for democratic reform

25/01/2025

Like meerkats with binoculars, Landcare Victoria Twitchathon participants compete to spot the most birds in six hours | Patrick Witton

25/01/2025

Brodie Lancaster: “There’s an excess of star power in the Arconia building this time around. But there’s something so joyful about seeing these actors getting the green light to play.”

The season’s best criminal drama, comedy capers, horror and true crime viewing, from ‘I’ll Be Gone in the Dark’ to ‘Longlegs’

24/01/2025

Julieta Caldas on Janet Frame’s ‘The Edge of the Alphabet’: “Friendless and borderline destitute, the three are people whose existence is tangential to the syntax of social relations, who do not feel themselves instrumental in the turning of the world.”

A reissue of the New Zealand author’s 1962 abstract classic of trans-oceanic passage and postcolonial melancholy