Best Louisa Lim Podcasts (2025)

1
Journalism Against Autocracy: Mikhail Zygar’s AN Smith Lecture 41:29

Play Pause

29d ago41:29

41:29

Exiled Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar says the Russia-Ukraine war is far from over. He believes Vladimir Putin is prolonging the conflict to fuel propaganda and silence critics. This week on The Yarn, we’re sharing Zygar’s 2025 AN Smith Lecture—Journalism Against Autocracy. Addressing a sold-out audience at Melbourne University, Zygar recounts co…

1
News Bites: Amplifying Untold Stories 17:14

1M ago17:14

17:14

Who do you think of when you think of an Australian pioneer? Maybe Fanny Finch, the first woman to vote in Australia, who was also a woman of colour. Or perhaps Rosaleen Norton, also known as the Witch of King's Cross. These are the trailblazers whose stories Dr Corey Martin is telling in her podcast, Maiden Australia. In this episode of News Bites…

1
Voters' Voices: Election Post-Mortem 13:24

2M ago13:24

13:24

It’s been called “a win for the ages”. Anthony Albanese is Australia’s first prime minster to win consecutive terms in more than two decades. His landslide victory has left the Coalition reeling, especially in major cities like Melbourne. For the final episode of Voters’ Voices, we’re focusing on Melbourne’s swing towards Labor. We’re also revisiti…

1
Voters’ Voices: Marginal Melbourne 18:56

2M ago18:56

18:56

Ahead of Australia's federal election on May 3rd, we’re bringing you another episode of Voters’ Voices. This week we're focusing on Marginal Melbourne — the city’s most tightly-contested electorates. Our reporters investigated the seats on a knife’s-edge this year and the hot-button issues that could decide their futures. Featuring pieces by Ruby P…

1
Voters’ Voices: Demographic Divides 17:31

2M ago17:31

17:31

Last week, we focused on young, disaffected voters ahead of the federal election on May 3rd. For episode two of Voter’s Voices, our reporters zoomed out. They went to a broader mix of voters, from retirees to small business owners. They found values were front of mind this year – like political honesty and social and environmental concerns. Featuri…

1
Voters’ Voices: Generation Now 16:36

2M ago16:36

16:36

Ahead of Australia's federal election on May 3rd, we're launching a new series — Voters’ Voices. Episode one is all about what young voters really care about. Gen Z and millennial voters will outnumber baby boomers for the first time this year. It’s being called a cost-of-living election and our reporters investigated whether that’s true.They learn…

1
Visa Victory: A Family’s Fight Against Ableism 13:06

3M ago13:06

13:06

After more than a decade apart, a disabled 14 year old in Indonesia will be reunited with his parents in Australia. Despite being born in Melbourne, Jonathan Lumintang was later denied residency due to his cerebral palsy. A ministerial intervention has allowed him to stay — but other families aren’t as lucky. Our student Kristian Oka Prasetyadi rep…

1
A War Cry From Wieambilla 27:11

3M ago27:11

27:11

Australia's first ever Christian terrorist attack — that's how Queensland police classified the 2022 mass shooting in the rural township of Wieambilla. This week, producer Kirralee Nicolle revisits the incident in detail. She explores how Christian fundamentalism can turn deadly, especially in tandem with online conspiracies and mental illness. Thi…

1
China on the Couch: Xi Jinping's Psy-boom 48:02

3M ago48:02

48:02

In our third episode on beliefs and ideologies, we explore China’s newfound enthusiasm for psychiatry. Counselling was only registered as a profession in 2001 yet has seen a massive boom under Xi Jinping. The psy-boom is such that even party branch meetings are doing mindfulness exercises, and practitioners are trying to indigenise counselling prac…

1
Angling for Defence Contracts at Fisherman’s Bend 17:14

3M ago17:14

17:14

Today we're focusing on the ties between the University of Melbourne and weapons manufacturers. While the University has downplayed these ties, our reporter James Costa has found it’s still pursuing new defence partnerships. In particular, the university is spruiking its forthcoming inner-city campus at Fisherman's Bend. The University’s behaviour …

1
Three Years of News Bites 20:57

3M ago20:57

20:57

We’re continuing our centenary celebrations by revisiting highlights from our News Bites series. Over the last three years, we’ve featured more than 40 of Australia’s top journalism experts. These include newspaper editors, podcasters, war journalists, and our very own staff. Today you’ll hear some of their top tips for aspiring journalists, from m…

1
The Yarn at 100 22:39

4M ago22:39

22:39

Today marks the 100th episode of our award-winning student podcast, The Yarn. In the three years since we started, we’ve featured work from 151 emerging journalists and won the Climate Award at the Australian Podcast Awards. To celebrate our centenary, we’re revisiting the highlights from our environmental reporting. From the centre of a bee swam t…

1
News Bites: Journalism Survival Guide 29:52

4M ago29:52

29:52

Intimidated, lucky, chaotic: this is the emotional rollercoaster of the first days working in a newsroom. This episode is our survival guide to starting out in journalism, as delivered by three of our graduates. Gwen Liu from the Ballarat Courier, Harry Sekulich from the Daily Aus, and freelancer Wing Kuang speak to Senior Tutor Bernadette Nunn abo…

1
Let's Get Spiritual: State, Digital Spirituality and Feng Shui in China 46:54

5M ago46:54

46:54

To welcome the Year of the Snake, we’re launching a new series looking at belief in China. Young Chinese people are increasingly turning to spirituality - even online manifestations of it - and feng shui, in this moment of high unemployment and economic stress. For a Party guided by materialism, this spike in spiritual interest presents a dilemma: …

1
Sisters doing it for themselves? Marriage Refusal and Little Milk Puppies 44:27

5M ago44:27

44:27

China is in the grip of a gender war. While government officials are texting and even cold calling women to urge them have children, the fertility rate continues to drop. Better educated and often better paid their male peers, many urban Chinese women are simply choosing not to marry. To discuss the growing female backlash to the Party’s pro-natal …

1
Give me Maw: China's Craze for the Cocaine of the Seas 42:48

7M ago42:48

42:48

Few outside the Chinese wedding banquet circuit have heard of fish maw, a flavourless, unappetising-looking swim bladder found in bony fish. In dried form, a kilo from the right species goes for around $150,000 on the world market, double the price of a kilogram of cocaine. The most prized maw is found in one of the remotest corners of the planet, …

1
Uncurated: DONATIONS 9:06

7M ago9:06

9:06

The Baillieu Library is the largest library here at the University of Melbourne. Walking through the library, the shelves are filled with books on everything from philosophy and history, to science and computing, all from a Western Eurocentric perspective. But the library also holds one of the largest collections of Rare East Asian books and materi…

1
Special Report: US Election Postmortem 15:25

7M ago15:25

15:25

After President-elect Donald Trump's landslide win and a federal election looming, Australian politicians have lessons to learn from the US election. The Yarn spoke to two US political analysts, on different sides of the political aisle, to get a breakdown of the Republicans' success. Tim Lynch is a professor of American politics at the University …

1
Uncurated: COLLECTORS 17:07

8M ago17:07

17:07

The Harry Brookes Allen Museum is one of many collections at the University of Melbourne. The University has collected artefacts that has contributed to a wealth of knowledge that is vital to Melbourne, Australia and the world. But the way University scholars collected these artefacts was not always done in an ethical way. Reporter Haoyue Deng lear…

1
The Centre of the Vortex: Survivors' Notes from Hong Kong Writers 40:30

8M ago40:30

40:30

Writers from Hong Kong face a Kafkaesque decision in the years since draconian security legislation was imposed on the city: to stay and be subject to intense censorship, or to write freely from exile. In this episode, Louisa speaks to two award-winning authors who have chosen different paths. Lau Yeewa is still living in Hong Kong; her book Tongue…

1
Uncurated: COUNTRY 19:13

8M ago19:13

19:13

What would Australia look like if we had monkeys swinging around our cities? In the late 19th Century, a number of associations called “acclimatisation societies” sprung up across Australia with the goal of bringing familiar plants and animals to what the British colonists saw as an impoverished landscape. This episode explores the massive ecologic…

1
Uncurated: STONES 18:32

8M ago18:32

18:32

The Old Quadrangle is one of the most photographed spots on the University of Melbourne campus, with students and tourists alike posing under its iconic archways. The romantic European architecture feels like you've been transported to the set of Hogwarts, but did you know that the stones used to create this effect were stolen from Indigenous lands…

1
Uncurated: REMAINS 18:39

8M ago18:39

18:39

Between the 1800s to1950s, anthropologists at the University of Melbourne were digging up burial sites of First Nations ancestors who had been laid to rest and collecting, rather stealing, their bodies. And while some of these human remains were returned to land and reburied, one collection remained hidden away at the university in a storage room u…

1
Introducing Uncurated Season 3 2:24

8M ago2:24

2:24

On the surface, the University of Melbourne is a historical spectacle – with its grand arches, stone facades, echoing hallways, and the chimes of the old clocktower. But this university is also home to many secrets, from human remains unearthed on university grounds, to its role in nuclear testing on Indigenous lands. In an eight-part series, stude…

1
Special Criminal Zones: China’s Pig Butchers Pivot to the West 48:05

9M ago48:05

48:05

In our third episode on pig butchering scams, we explore the origins of the Chinese criminal syndicates that enslave people from at least 66 different countries. We examine the institutions supporting this appalling business, from the Thai military to cryptocurrencies, Burmese border guard forces to special economic zones. And the marks for these s…

1
News Bites: Threats to Journalism with Silvia Montaña-Niño 25:47

9M ago25:47

25:47

This week, we're bringing you another episode of News Bites, a series of live interviews about the craft of journalism. Today’s guest is Silvia Montaña-Niño. Silvia is a new CAJ lecturer and was a journalist at El Espectador, one of Columbia’s most important newspapers. At the start of her career, Columbia was besieged by guerilla warfare and death…

1
News Bites: Racing the Clock with Dr Caroline James-Garrod 25:06

9M ago25:06

25:06

Today’s News Bites guest is journalist and CAJ Lecturer Dr Caroline James-Garrod. Caroline got her start as a cadet at Leader Community Newspapers in Melbourne. Since then, she’s had an expansive career working across the country and abroad. She’s also seen major industry upheavals, from the rise of the 24/7 online news cycle to the era of mass job…

1
News Bites: Journalism in Times of Crisis with Khalid Amiri 30:15

10M ago30:15

30:15

This week, we're bringing you another episode of News Bites, a series of live interviews about the craft of journalism. Today’s guest is Khalid Amiri, who was a prominent news presenter for the Afghan state broadcaster RTA. He’s known for his courageous reporting and outspoken criticism of the Taliban. After Kabul fell in August 2021, Khalid and hi…

1
Sci-Fi: Myths and Monsters 14:31

10M ago14:31

14:31

In Victorian London, a persistent rumour spread of a murderer who could leap between the city’s alleyways to avoid detection. Newspapers called him spring-heeled jack—one of the first ever urban legends. He wasn’t real, but the fears that inspired him were. Fears of rapidly changing urban spaces and the upheavals of industrialization. This week, we…

1
Cognitive hazing: The Disinformation War on Taiwan? 44:22

10M ago44:22

44:22

Taiwan is ground zero for cognitive warfare, with the island subject to more disinformation than any other democracy. The targets are political candidates, media outlets, even boy bands. The threat is so serious that Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice recently set up a Cognitive Warfare Research Center. To explore this war for Taiwanese minds, Louisa and…

1
Sci-Fi: New Frontiers 15:18

10M ago15:18

15:18

A decade before the global internet even existed, William Gibson coined the term "cyberspace". He was describing a realm of pure information in his 1983 novel Neuromancer. The story unfolds in a future where data flows form the arteries of an interconnected world. It’s one of many inventions that appeared in novels and films years before they mater…

1
Sci-Fi: Technology's Toll 14:45

10M ago14:45

14:45

Back in the 13th Century, a catastrophic eruption in Indonesia ushered in a “volcanic winter”. Sulfur smothered the sky, causing crop failure and famine as far away as Europe. Almost 800 years later, geoengineers are considering replicating this effect on purpose. The theory goes that plumes of aerosols could shield us from the sun and combat clima…

1
Sci-Fi: Alternate Realities 17:53

10M ago17:53

17:53

When we think of navigation, we imagine satellite imagery mapping our world with laser-point precision. But not all maps are for navigating reality. "World building” describes the mapping of entire fictional realms. Think the vast continent of Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings, or the expansive galaxies of Star Trek. But it doesn’t end there. It ca…

1
Sci-Fi: Post-Human 13:32

11M ago13:32

13:32

2030. That’s the date renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil says humans could merge with machines and achieve immortality. He's is a disciple of transhumanism — a movement aiming to cheat death through technological innovations. We might not get there by 2030, but this week, we’re bringing you stories about the breakthroughs paving the way. Stories about …

1
News Bites: Protect, not Punish 32:02

11M ago32:02

32:02

For Australian whistleblowers, the truth often comes at price. The Human Rights Law Centre says federal whistleblowing laws have failed to protect a single person since their inception, and those who speak out risk exorbitant fines or even jail time. Today, you’ll hear from a panel of experts who say reforms are long overdue: Kieran Pender (an expe…

1
The Pig Butcher’s Payroll: Inside a Romance Scam 49:18

11M ago49:18

49:18

After our last episode on an online romance scam operating out of Palau we were contacted by Neo Lu, who was trafficked to work in an online scam camp on the Myanmar-Thailand border, the victim of a $US3 trillion global criminal industry. He joins Louisa and Graeme to offer jaw-dropping detail on life inside a scam centre, the mechanics of pig butc…

1
Fraud Factories and Pig Butchery: Chinese Triads go Pacific 46:33

1y ago46:33

46:33

Chinese triads have been making a Pacific play, notably in the tiny nation of Palau. There a notorious triad boss - nicknamed Broken Tooth - reinvented himself as a CCP-linked businessman trying to set up a 'gangster-themed' casino, while police busted a Chinese 'fraud factory'. In Palau, this scam scheme was linked to businessmen touting United Fr…

1
News Bites: Dylan Bird on Building a Career in Audio 29:32

1y ago29:32

29:32

Today we're returning to our News Bites series which spotlights the work of staff and students at the Centre for Advancing Journalism. This week’s guest is podcaster, PhD candidate, and former journalism student Dylan Bird. You might recognise his voice from Triple R’s Future Perfect program, which Dylan hosts. He also works behind the scenes on th…

1
A Stalled Deal to End the Encampment 13:53

1y ago13:53

13:53

24 hours after announcing a partial victory, the pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Melbourne is still intact and students are still occupying the Arts West building. It’s not what they were anticipating yesterday. During a press conference last night, a pro-Palestine spokesperson said the university had agreed to a deal that could end t…

1
How Protesters Occupied Arts West 11:05

1y ago11:05

11:05

On Wednesday, dozens of pro-Palestine protesters occupied the University of Melbourne’s Arts West building. They say this sit-in will last until they are either forcibly removed or their demands are met. They’re calling for the divestment of university funds from weapons manufacturers. The university has threatened those involved with severe conseq…

1
S3E12: S03E12: Wing Kuang on Starting a Career in Journalism 25:45

1y ago25:45

25:45

“What makes you different from your peers who also want to get a job in journalism? ABC audio producer and digital reporter Wing Kuang is an expert at turning a disadvantage into an asset. Having first come to Australia as an international student, she encountered a lot of barriers to finding a job as a journalist. She says that community radio pro…

1
Here be Dragons: LRP turns 100 40:19

1y ago40:19

40:19

For our hundredth episode, there was only one choice in the Year of the Dragon. We tackle the scaly mythical beast, which now finds itself central to the Party’s image. We look at the political efficacy of the dragon for the CCP, which has recently launched a nationalistic rebranding campaign for the ‘loong’ to distinguish it from evil Western drag…

1
A Fortnight of Student Protest 12:27

1y ago12:27

12:27

Coming up to its third week, the Gaza solidarity camp at the University of Melbourne is growing — It’s almost quadrupled to at least ninety tents. But the encampment is coming under increasing pressure. Last Thursday, pro-Israel demonstrators marched across campus, culminating in a face off with pro-Palestine students amid a heavy police presence. …

1
S3E11: S03E11: Kirsti Melville on Working with Sound 24:42

1y ago24:42

24:42

“The minute I walk into that space, I turn my audio ears on.” ABC broadcaster Kirsti Melville is an award-winning radio documentary maker, who always starts planning for an audio feature by thinking about sound. Melville describes how she triages the audio in any recording environment, and how she works with sound to create immersive and impactful …

1
Special Report: The Gaza Solidarity Encampment 15:18

1y ago15:18

15:18

On ANZAC Day last week, protesters set up camp at the University of Melbourne’s Parkville campus. Since then, the “Gaza solidarity encampment” has been the epicentre of several peaceful demonstrations attracting hundreds of participants. On Monday, more than 300 protesters marched on campus demanding the university to cut ties with weapons manufact…

1
S3E10: S03E10: Tamara Oudyn on Voice in Audio Journalism 25:44

1y ago25:44

25:44

“Your voice is such a personal quality…It’s like your own aural fingerprint.” As an ABC voice coach and journalist, Tamara Oudyn is shaping the diverse voices of the national broadcaster. Here she describes the lessons she teaches cadets, including the role of the 3ps - pitch, pace and pausing - in broadcasting. Her emphasis is on training young jo…

1
Tram Tales: The Show Must Go On 10:30

1y ago10:30

10:30

Melbourne’s status as Australia's live music capital is under threat. Since the start of the pandemic, one third of small and mid-sized venues nation-wide have closed their doors for good. This week we’re bringing you stories about how performers along the number 19 tramline are getting by. It's the third episode of Tram Tales. Our new series about…

1
S3E9: S0309: Jo Lauder on Audio Storytelling 25:47

1y ago25:47

25:47

"The thing that I love about audio is that...it's really intimate." ABC journalist Jo Lauder says audio can be really effective in transporting the listener to a particular time and place. She explains how she goes about planning different types of audio pieces, whether for Triple J's Hack or long-form narrative podcasts like Saving the Franklin. S…

1
Tram Tales: Odd Jobs 14:28

1y ago14:28

14:28

Ask a group of teenagers about their dream jobs and you’ll likely hear a familiar list: doctor, lawyer, architect, psychologist... According to an OECD survey, these are some of the most desired jobs among students worldwide. But what about all the jobs they don’t even know exist? This week, we’re bringing you stories from off the beaten career pat…

1
S3E8: S03E08: Daniel Browning on Objectivity in Journalism 22:57

1y ago22:57

22:57

“Who measures objectivity? Who judges objectivity?” Objectivity is traditionally seen as a cardinal tenet of journalism, but Daniel Browning's long experience in Australian newsrooms has left him questioning whether objectivity is possible, or even beneficial. The Bundjalung and Kullili man, who leads the ABC's Indigenous Radio unit, says First Nat…