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Clare and Yves are joined by Emeritus Professor Judith Brett, scholar of Australian politics and political history and author of such award-winning books as Robert Menzies: Forgotten People (2016) and The Enigmatic Mr Deakin (2017) and most recently, Doing Politics: Writing on Public Life (2022). What does it feel like to be obsessed with the past? The group discusses the psychoanalytic journey from an obscure Viense poet to Robert Menzies, reading for patterns, and writing history as an act of reparation.

Yves and Clare are joined by British historian and disability scholar Lauren Pikó, whose work explores the cultural histories of landscape. Lauren is the author of Milton Keynes in British Culture: Imagining England (2019). How does one look at archives and research through a disability lens? The group discusses the importance of presence and absence, digitising the archive, and accessibility of institutional and archival research.

Clare and Yves are joined by Dr Lauren Burns, aeronautical engineer and author of Triple Helix: My Donor-Conceived Story (2022). How do you move forward when you hit the research brick wall again and again? What if your greatest archive is your own DNA? The group discusses carbon fibre, what was hidden becoming obvious, and genetic bewilderment.

Yves and Clare are joined by Dr Mike Jones, archivist, historian, deputy director of the ANU’s research centre for deep history, and author of Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum (2021). What dangers lie in sacralizing the archive? Is it truly possible to allow everyone control over their own story? The group discusses the historian’s professional anxiety, patrolling the disciplinary boundaries of archival work, and a hidden code in paperclips.

Clare and Yves are joined by journalist and broadcaster Tamara Oudyn whose latest ABC podcast series, ‘The Good Divorce’, tells the story of the seemingly elusive good divorce. Where does the research begin for a topic that’s still so taboo? The group discusses the key ingredients that make good talent, sources as a human archive, and balancing the light and shade in the world today.

Clare and Yves are joined by Duane Hamacher, a cultural astronomer from the University of Melbourne, specialising in Indigenous astronomy. Duane’s book, The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders Read the Stars (2022), is the product of 10 years of collaborative research with Indigenous elders. How does a boy from Missouri wind up reading the antipodean stars? What gets overlooked when knowledge is discredited as myth and legend? The group discusses outsiders, variable stars changing the history of science, and researching with ears open, mouth shut.

Clare and Yves are joined by Associate Professor Anna Clark, historian and author of Making Australian History (2022). How does one tell the history of history itself? Can we expand the very notion of the archive with a leap of imagination? The group discusses fateful timetable clashes, the opaqueness of deep time, and the limitations of a chronology-obsessed history with a capital H.

Clare and Yves are joined by the spectacular Kate Grenville to discuss searching for secrets, fictionalising colonial history and Kate's latest non-fiction book, Elizabeth Macarthur's Letters.

Yves and Clare are joined by literary biographer Bernadette Brennan and documentary filmmaker Tosca Looby, who have recently documented the life and times of two of the most influential women in recent Australian history, to learn how the archive shapes and limits the stories we tell about powerful women.

Yves and Clare are joined by Professor John Carty and Dr Jared Thomas from the South Australia Museum to learn how the museum is grappling with its collection of unidentified Indigenous human remains — an archive of bones — and explore how the museum’s historical artefacts can operate as a “cultural seedbank” to facilitate the memory of and reconnection with Indigenous knowledges.

Yves and Clare are joined by Catherine Dwyer, the filmmaker behind Brazen Hussies (2020), a history of the rebels and activists who brought the women’s liberation movement to Australia. What happens when someone’s story is in contention with the archive? What do you do with the footage left on the cutting room floor? The group discusses uncovering buried treasure, the methodology of visual storytelling, and the nitty-gritty of using archival footage in Australia.

Yves and Clare are joined by Samia Khatun, historian, filmmaker, and senior lecturer at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Samia’s latest book, Australianama: The South Asian Odyssey in Australia (2019) takes aim at the claim that the knowledge traditions of Enlightened man have superseded the epistemologies of peoples colonised by European empires. Are the archives themselves the problem, or the questions we ask of them? The group discusses an extraordinary discovery in the middle of the Australian outback, the historian’s power of time travel, and the potential of the dream archive.

Clare and Yves are joined by medical historian and public history advocate extraordinaire, Dr Peter Hobbins. In 2020 Peter’s expertise surrounding the influenza pandemic of 1918 came into play as the world grappled with the Covid-19 crisis. What can we learn from the past? Is history really cyclical, or more parallel? The group discusses an archival submarine, misgivings with a digital archive of data, and documenting the pandemic in real time (#covidstreetarchive).

Yves and Clare are joined by Lynne Kelly and Margo Neale, co-authors of Songlines: The Power and Promise (2020), the first in a ground-breaking series on “First Knowledges”. How do songlines, visualized as pathways of knowledge that crisscross the continent, act as an embodied knowledge system? What is the connection between memory and place? The group discusses the recipe for unforgettable information, the “third archive”, and the mind-altering power of bringing humanity into… everything.

Yves and Clare are joined by Mark McKenna, historian and award-winning author whose latest book Return to Uluru (2021) tells the hidden history of a story at the heart of the nation. Does the contemporary white historian present themselves in the role of a savior figure? The group discusses the emotional and ethical difficulties of working with personal archives, the significance of a storyteller’s own identity, and the gendered nature of a colonial history that seeks to penetrate the center of a nation.

Clare and Yves are joined by international archive addict, academic, and author of the new novel Take Me Apart (2020), Sarah Sligar. How significant is the role of interpretation in an archive, and does a work of fiction allow for a greater exploration of meaning? The group discusses what personality type predisposes one to become an archive addict, going “down the hole,” and assuming the role of detective amongst the documents. Is all archival research, after all, an act of snooping?

Clare and Yves are joined by interdisciplinary contemporary Australian artist Brook Andrew, whose work converses with the archives in an interrogation of the legacies of colonialism and modernism. Can confronting the trauma of the archives take us to places of freedom and healing? Where is the line between critique and trauma porn? The group discusses the archival turn in contemporary Indigenous art, the learnt voyeurism of culture, and art as a release from the archive.

Clare and Yves are joined by Jess Hill, award-winning journalist, television presenter, and author of the 2020 Stella Prize winner See What You Made Me Do (2019). Hill’s book puts perpetrators - and the systems that enable them - in the spotlight. Too often, Hill writes, “we ask the wrong question: Why didn’t she leave? We should be asking: Why did he do it?” The group discusses overcoming rage and confronting internalized misogyny, the emotional complexities of the human archive, and eating stolen academic journal articles for breakfast. If you, or someone you know, need assistance and support through domestic and family violence in Australia you can call the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service: 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

Clare and Yves are joined by Gideon Haigh for a special live episode. Gideon opens the batting for Season 3 with an eloquent ramble through cricket, inquests, insanity, activism, what happens when you turn up on descendants’ doorsteps unannounced and how, once seen, certain things you find in the archives can never be unseen. Archive Fever diagnosis: terminal.

Clare and Yves are joined by Associate Professor Michelle Arrow, historian of modern Australia at Sydney’s Macquarie University and author of The Seventies: The Personal, the Political and the Making of Modern Australia (NewSouth Publishing, 2019). Is there a power behind romanticizing the archive, or the cliche of playing archival detective? Michelle explores the rich archival basis of her work on the 1974 Royal Commission on Human Relationships, the transcripts and sensitive submissions locked away in “a bunker in the bush”. The group discusses the Commission taking stock of the impact of second-wave feminism and the ethical implications of working on the history of the not-so-long-ago seventies. Michelle also uncovers the perceived national security threat posed by a spoon.