The Documentary (BBC) The Spy of Raspberry Falls is the real life story of the American CIA agent Kevin Mallory, who was sentenced to 20 years jail for selling state secrets to the Chinese. A former student of Brigham Young University, this member of the Latter Day Saints gradually started making mistakes, leading to his unmasking by the FBI.
Saturday Extra (ABC) Over the next few weeks, Saturday Extra is going to focus on Latin America. This week it is Venezuela, paralysed nation, where La Trobe Uni lecturer, Raul Sanchez-Urribarri who is Venezuelan, gives a picture of day-to-day life in Venezuela today. You can read an article that he wrote in 2017 about everyday life here too. I can only imagine that things have become even worse.
Earshot (ABC) The Western Australian state government has formally committed to seeking World Heritage status for the Barrup Peninsula, but in a remarkable balancing act, also wants to continue industrial development. Singing the Stones: Can Industry and Ancient Rock Art co-exist on the Barrup Peninsula , I’d have to say no- I don’t think so. I hadn’t realized that when the earliest rock art was created here, the sea was over 100 km away. Nor did I realize that the original owners were wiped out in the Flying Foam massacre, meaning that the battle for Barrup has had to be taken up by neighbouring traditional owners.
Rear Vision (ABC) This podcast starts off with Jared Kushner’s Peace to Prosperity plan (that sort of died, didn’t it?) It then backtracks to the King Crane Commission: America’s First Intervention in the Middle East, which took place in 1919 to inform the Conference of Versailles immediately following WWI. King and Crane were two American commissioners in what we would now call a focus-group inquiry. They were supposed to be joined by British and French investigators as well, but Britain and France had their own agendas and largely sabotaged the investigation. An interesting lost opportunity.
Espanolistos. Among the many Spanish videos on the web, Spanishland School is my main online learning resource. I did their intensive course last year and I travelled to Colombia earlier this year with them for a 5 day immersion trip. I have paid to join their Parceros program which gives structure and damned good teaching, but Andrea also has many freely-available videos on YouTube and Espanolistos is their free podcast. It’s all in Spanish and if you go to their website, you can get the transcript. This week’s episode 139, called 10 Translations has Andrea asking her American husband Nate to translate a number of sentences using the past tense. He might be married to the teacher, but she doesn’t let him get away with much.
Duolingo Podcasts (Spanish). This is an old one that has been floating around on my phone for about a year ‘Shakespeare en la Montana‘. A young university graduate is infatuated with a fellow student and follows her up to the highest mountain in Venezuela where they work with village children in putting on a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, reinterpreted by the children. The Spanish in this podcast is very slow and very clear, supplemented by English commentary that makes it very easy to follow
Heart and Soul (BBC) When I was in Rwanda, I went on a walking tour of the Muslim district of Kigali, which had gained much more acceptance after the Muslim community generally refused to be involved in the genocide, and indeed even sheltered people from it. Unlike the Catholic Church. This episode, Rwanda’s Muslims 25 years after the genocide explores the increasing size of the Muslim population, many formerly of Christian origins, who were disgusted by the Catholic Church’s response and have been attracted by the evangelical-like techniques of newly converted Muslims.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 
I’ve been to the Burrup a few times in the course of my work and it is very, very heavily industrialised. Returning it to museum status, which it deserves is unfortunately impossible. I wrote recently about Indigenous culture and much lower sea levels in the last 10,000 years without giving any thought to Burrup. Lisa Hill and I were wondering what treasures may still be waiting to be found.