If You're Listening with Matt Bevan

A bromance is a powerful thing. Lennon and McCartney. Holmes and Watson. Gilbert and Sullivan. Han and Chewy. But occasionally a bromance can nearly get you killed. A month ago the entire world watched transfixed as a former chef named Yevgeny Prigozhin marched with his private army on Moscow. At the core of this mutiny is a bromance between Prigozhin and a guy you've probably never heard of — General Sergei Surovikin. Prigozhin assumed his friend Surovikin would back him up, but he flaked, and now both men are missing. So how did Prigozhin's bromance with Surovikin nearly bring down the Russian Government? And what's the punishment for even thinking about trying to roll Vladimir Putin?

Donald Trump has been charged with trying and failing to delete CCTV evidence of farcical, and allegedly criminal behaviour. It's just the latest charge in the case against the former president over his… interesting decision to take classified documents with him when he left the White House. Could it land him in jail? We tell the story of how Trump got into this predicament, and his plan to get out of it.

Inflation in Argentina is at 100 per cent. The government is printing money fast and locals are spending in US dollars because the peso is so unreliable. The economy is like a rollercoaster. It might be tempting to think, "they're different over there", but here's the thing: they're kind of not. Argentina — one of the wealthiest countries in the world — was once uncomfortably similar to Australia. Until it totally lost control of its own economy

Microchips are in your car, your microwave — there might even be one in your kettle. They run everything. And the best microchips are made by TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. TSMC chips have put Western tech companies and militaries streets ahead of China, and China is not happy about it. TSMC is so important, that the world could go to war over it.

While everyone has their eyes on the war in Ukraine, another war is threatening to break out in West Africa. There's been a seemingly unstoppable wave of coups washing along the edge of the Sahara, gaining strength each time. After the recent military coup in Niger, locals were seen chanting "down with France" and "long live Putin". What are France and Russia doing in West Africa? And could they end up in a proxy war?

China's economy is struggling. Similar things are happening across Asia but in China it's happening extremely fast. And a big part of the reason why is the disastrous One Child Policy and years of dodgy population data. How can you make plans for a country when you don't know how many people you have? Now the population is going backward, the property sector is faltering, and China is in a world of trouble.

For a century society has bullied and shamed people into trying to lose weight, without much result. Now, a seemingly accidental discovery by Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk may be the first weight loss drug that actually works. People are hailing semaglutide, marketed under the names Ozempic or Wegovy, as a miracle weight loss drug — but it comes at a cost. One clear winner is the Danish economy, as semaglutide has shot Novo Nordisk into the stratosphere as the most valuable company in all of Europe.

The US, Russia, China and India are all sending missions to the moon — and all to its totally unexplored south pole. Why? Well, in order to make the next giant leap, we need to build a petrol station on the moon. How a discovery made a century ago will allow us to use the moon as a stepping stone to explore the solar system.

When world leaders received their invitations to the 2023 G20 summit in New Delhi, everyone got a bit of a surprise. It referred to Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of Bharat, not India. The debate over the naming of India stretches back nearly 80 years, and tells an important story about the country's history. And Modi's new push for a change in the constitution is just the latest in a series of political fights centred on race, religion and unity in India.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered in Vancouver in June. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has just come out saying the Indian Government assassinated him. India is, of course, denying it. So who was Niijar? Why would anyone — much less the Indian Government — want to kill him? And is there more to this story than meets the eye?

In September last year, Elon Musk refused to let the Ukrainian military use his Starlink satellites to attack Russia. Musk jumped on Twitter and posted “Starlink is meant for peaceful use only”. So how did we get into a situation where Elon Musk gets to personally decide whether a Ukrainian military operation succeeds or fails? And was he justified in refusing to help?

In 2021, a doctor from Florida met with a group of men to plan the overthrow of the Haitian President. The plot triggered a series of events which led to the president's death, the almost total collapse of the government, and the rise of mob rule in Haiti. So why is Kenya now being sent in to save the day?

Last week, Hamas burst out of the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, killing at least 1,400 people, the vast majority of them Israeli civilians. But Hamas' origins go back decades, to its founder Ahmed Yassin. How did a disabled refugee from Gaza become one of the most influential men in Palestine? And how did he take Hamas from obscurity to wresting control of the Gaza Strip?

The Israeli Government has one of the most well-resourced intelligence communities in the world, specifically tasked with preventing attacks from Hamas. So how did it fail to detect an operation that involved months of planning, meetings in multiple countries, and thousands of militants? This is part two in our series on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

While Israel tries to defeat Hamas, they also have to worry about a much more dangerous paramilitary group on their northern border: Hezbollah. The express purpose of Hezbollah, which formed 40 years ago, is also to eradicate Israel. It would be a nightmare for Israel if Hezbollah swings in and backs Hamas up. So where did Hezbollah form, why do they hate Israel, and what hand did Israel have in their creation?

The Israeli hostages Hamas took back on October 7th still have not been rescued. The 1976 Entebbe rescue mission is legendary and gave Israel a reputation — they get hostages back no matter what. Now this reputation is putting enormous pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rescue the hostages again. The question is — can he?

As international sanctions have cut into North Korea's ability to import and export things, they've become desperate for cash. They've been running crazy schemes to get it — smuggling, stealing, lying, cheating, swashbuckling — but that's nothing compared to what they make from stealing cryptocurrency. In fact, most of their foreign currency now comes from stolen crypto. So, can anything be done to stop the world's first nuclear-armed crypto bro, Kim Jong-un?

China is using cash to try and shore up support in the Pacific. In Honiara, the Solomon Islands capital, they just built most of the venues in the Pacific Games precinct. And China is not alone. Like a geopolitical version of The Bachelor, China, Taiwan, Australia and the United States are all trying desperately to win Honiara's heart. This tussle has caused panic in Taipei and Canberra, anger in Beijing and Washington, and actual violence in the Solomons. It's hard to think of a more perfect example of trouble in paradise.

The world's most famous artificial intelligence company, OpenAI — the creator of ChatGPT — was set up to create a superintelligent AI, while at the same time safeguarding humanity from an omnipotent robot overlord which could enslave us all. But last week the company fell into chaos. OpenAI fired its wunderkind CEO Sam Altman. Just days later, under intense pressure, Sam Altman was put back in charge and the entire board was booted. So is an AI apocalypse possible, and with Altman back in charge, will OpenAI be able to protect us from its own robots?

China's pandas are not just pandas. They're diplomats. You're friendly to China? You get a panda. You criticise China? You get no pandas. In recent years China has been hostile toward the West, with the most literal symbol of their displeasure being the withdrawal of their pandas from zoos around the world. And yet, Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to be having a change of heart. This may indicate something very important — a return to a more peaceful relationship with the West. But why? And why are pandas the key to understanding it?

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a new problem. As well as fighting Russia, he also has to fight Israel and Hamas for the world's attention. The shift in attention to Gaza has already meant Ukraine has lost crucial support. The question is — can Zelenskyy get the world to care about Ukraine again? And if not, what will that mean for the war?