Allan — Preferences and Tastes¶

Status¶

Built from the full corpus (all 113 episodes, processed April 2026). Complete.

Purpose¶

This page gathers evidence of Allan's intellectual, cultural, and personal preferences as they emerge across the corpus. Each entry includes source, context, and a brief note on what it reveals about him as a person and thinker.

Books Recommended (With Commentary)¶

Allan and Darren share reading/watching/listening recommendations at the end of most early episodes. Allan's choices are unusually revealing.

Stephen Pinker — Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress¶

Episode: Ep002 (2018-08-10) Allan's comment: "450 data-rich pages on why the World is better than you think it is. And in these difficult times, we need a cheery note... a reminder of the values that we need to keep fighting for." Reveals: Allan reads empirical social science; is moved by data about human progress; has an underlying Enlightenment commitment that grounds his defence of the international order. He read it during a period of geopolitical stress — he reads to be cheered up, and data cheers him.

Brendan Taylor — The Four Flashpoints: How Asia Goes to War (Black Ink, ANU)¶

Episode: Ep003 (2018-08-23) Allan's comment: "If you want a background in what's going on it's a terrific read and also has some unexpected conclusions — his view, unlike a lot of commentary, is that the South China Sea matters less than some of the other areas." Reveals: Allan values current Australian strategic literature; attends book launches; appreciates conclusions that challenge the consensus.

Ian Johnson — The Souls of China (Penguin)¶

Episode: Ep005 (2018-10-04) Allan's comment: "A wonderfully deep and insightful account of the growth of spiritual thought in China as the economy and society transform... it's a real reminder to me that... we've got to understand the society deeply and in all its dimensions." Reveals: When "overwhelmed by geopolitics and economics," he turns to social/spiritual history. His China understanding is not just strategic — he wants to know the people. The choice of this book on the way to Beijing is significant.

Paul Krugman — "Competitiveness, a Dangerous Obsession," Foreign Affairs (1994)¶

Episode: Ep008 (2018-11-14) Recommended by a podcast listener; Allan had not read it before. Allan's comment: "Trade is not a zero sum game... he predicts some of the very risks we're now seeing, protectionism and trade wars, and bad public policy. I thought it was a terrific message." Reveals: Allan had not read this classic despite being in the field for 50 years — he admits this freely. He is genuinely educable by others. He applies 30-year-old economic theory to current policy in real time.

Ben Macintyre — The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War¶

Episode: Ep013 (2019-03-01) Allan's comment: "It's the remarkable and thrillingly written story of Oleg Gordievsky, who was the senior KGB officer, the head of the London residency, the most important Russian spy ever recruited by the Brits... it also makes important points about the usefulness of intelligence information to policymakers. What Gordievsky was able to reveal about how senior officials in Moscow thought about the world was really influential in shaping the way both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan responded to the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev. The author is a British journalist, so he wrote page-turningly." Reveals: Allan can read a Cold War spy thriller both as narrative pleasure ("thrillingly written," "page-turningly") and as policy evidence. He references Gordievsky's material in the next episode as substantive analysis of nuclear risk. He also recommends Macintyre's earlier A Spy Among Friends (on Kim Philby) — suggesting he had read both and was tracking Macintyre as an author. Notably, in the same episode he reveals his own early career connection to Five Eyes intelligence work.

Richard Neustadt and Ernest May — Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-makers (Free Press, 1986)¶

Episode: Ep026 (2019-08-21) Allan's comment: "I'm always wary of historical metaphors, whether it's Thucydides and Sparta and Athens or Munich or the Maginot Line. And for any of our listeners who are interested in the subject, I suggest for them and for all our parliamentarians and public servants, the classic book, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-makers by Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, both from the Kennedy School of Government." Reveals: This is a prescribed text, not a casual recommendation — Allan addresses it explicitly to "parliamentarians and public servants." Neustadt and May's argument is that decision-makers systematically misuse historical analogy, reaching for the nearest memorable comparison without testing its fit. The recommendation is triggered by Hastie's Maginot Line analogy. That Allan knows this book well enough to reach for it in the moment, and frames it as required reading for the policy class, reveals something about his analytical formation. Neustadt (who also wrote Presidential Power) was among the most influential political scientists at the Kennedy School; May was a historian of American foreign policy.

Hugh White — How to Defend Australia (La Trobe University Press, 2019)¶

Episode: Ep023 (2019-07-08) Allan's comment: "The critical thing about Hugh's writing is that he won't let you look away. You have to either agree with him or else work out carefully for yourself the reasons you don't. And I think the book, in addition to being a terrifically good read, is hard thinking of the sort Australia badly needs now, whether you agree with all the conclusions or not." Reveals: Notably, Allan does not disclose whether he agrees with White's conclusions — he recommends the intellectual discipline the book imposes. He adds that White's argument responds to the question Menzies originally raised about self-defence. This is Allan's standard for serious strategic writing: it doesn't let you look away; it forces engagement. "Hard thinking of the sort Australia badly needs now" is a stronger endorsement of the quality of the debate than of the specific conclusions — he is recommending a mode of thinking, not a policy position. Allan and Hugh White are contemporaries in the Australian strategic debate; this is a collegial endorsement from someone who values the rigour without necessarily sharing the view.

Unnamed New York Times Security Correspondent — book on cyber policy¶

Episode: Ep007 (2018-11-02) Context: Allan had told Darren in an earlier conversation that he "badly needed to update my knowledge of cyber policy." Reveals: He identifies and addresses gaps in his knowledge deliberately. He names the gap; he reads to fill it. Likely The Perfect Weapon by David Sanger (NYT national security correspondent).

Daniel Schönpflug — A World on Edge: The End of the Great War and the Dawn of a New Age (trans. from German)¶

Episode: Ep012 (2019-02-20) Allan's comment: "I like the fact that it was written by a German, so this is sort of a point of view slightly different from the history as I normally read. And it takes a global view incorporating people like Gandhi and Ho Chi Minh... it was a reminder of what the world feels like when you don't really know what's going on. And that makes it very relevant to current contemporary times." Reveals: Allan values non-Anglophone historical perspectives and explicitly seeks them out. He reads for emotional resonance ("what the world feels like") not just analytical content. He reads literary-historical figures (Virginia Woolf, Schoenberg appear as characters in the book) alongside high-political ones. He uses historical disorientation as a mirror for the present.

Kai-Fu Lee — AI competition book¶

Episode: Ep009 (2018-11-29) Context: Unnamed specifically in transcript but clearly Kai-Fu Lee's work on AI and geopolitics. Reveals: Allan is reading about AI and technology geopolitics as the competition between the US and China intensifies. He is expanding his analytical frame.

Yuval Noah Harari — "Why Technology Favours Tyranny," The Atlantic¶

Episode: Ep009 (2018-11-29) Allan's comment: "Something we really got to begin to get our minds around here." Reveals: Reads The Atlantic; engaged by political-philosophical questions about technology and governance.

Music¶

The National — I Am Easy to Find (2019)¶

Episode: Ep020 (2019-05-30) — first music recommendation in the series Allan's comment: "This is a stressful time in the world. So when Matt Berninger, the lead singer, sings, I am just so tired of thinking about everything. I respond, I know how you feel. But despite that, the layers and textures and the sheer expansiveness of the album leave you hopeful in the end that diversity and disintegration are not the same thing. And I'm going to cling to that." Reveals: Allan has been listening to this album "over and over during the past couple of weeks" — sustained, repeated engagement. He identifies emotionally with the lyric about exhaustion from thinking about everything. "This is a stressful time in the world" is a rare direct personal disclosure. Yet the album ends in hope: "diversity and disintegration are not the same thing" — a distinction he draws from the album's aesthetic experience and which has clear political resonance. The phrasing "I'm going to cling to that" is unusually vulnerable. Note: Darren also knows The National and recommends "Fake Empire" from a decade earlier — both hosts share the musical reference.

Bob Dylan — Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020 album)¶

Episode: Ep051 (2020-07-04) — first and only Dylan recommendation in the corpus Allan's comment: "It's not very often that 79-year-old Nobel Prize winners release albums of new music. So I've been listening to Bob Dylan's rough and rowdy ways. The collection begins with the appropriately named I Contain Multitudes, which of course references Walt Whitman, but really brilliantly encapsulates Dylan himself. And it ends with Murder Most Foul, an extended 17-minute long meditation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy and on American life. Look, the album is much more than a late career novelty. It's a really fine addition to Dylan's body of work." Also recommends: Andrew Ford's music show on ABC, which has a discussion of the album with Australian poet and Dylan fan Robert Adamson. Reveals: Allan treats Dylan seriously as a literary artist, not as nostalgia — "a really fine addition to Dylan's body of work" is a comparative critical verdict, not sentimentality. He is drawn specifically to the album's literary and historical weight: I Contain Multitudes (Whitman reference), Murder Most Foul (17-minute Kennedy meditation). He knows Robert Adamson as a poet and Dylan fan — situating himself in literary-intellectual networks. His recommendation of Andrew Ford's ABC music show suggests he listens to serious music criticism. Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize (2016) is the framing hook — Allan finds it appropriate, not surprising.

Films and Television Dramas¶

Julie Suarez — J.B. Chifley: An Ardent Internationalist (Melbourne University Press, 2019)¶

Episode: Ep029 (2019-09-24) Allan's comment: "Chifley was Prime Minister from 1945 to 1949... one of the most useful contributions the book makes is explaining how Chifley himself, calm, plain-spoken, drawing on his own experiences, went about building community support for a position which set Australia up well for the following 50 years." Reveals: Allan reads this biography explicitly as a contemporary guide — Chifley's post-WWII challenges (navigating great-power change, party opposition to internationalism, unpopular but necessary positions) map directly onto Morrison's 2019 situation. He praises Suarez for restoring Chifley to a central position alongside Evatt. The qualities he identifies in Chifley — "calm, plain-spoken, drawing on his own experiences" — are the same qualities Allan himself exhibits throughout the corpus; he is drawn to leaders who resemble his own analytical style. He honestly notes the book "still carries some of the weight of its origins as a PhD thesis" without letting it undermine the recommendation.

The Wandering Earth (流浪地球, dir. Frant Gwo, 2019; based on novella by Liu Cixin)¶

Episode: Ep028 (2019-09-09) Allan's comment: "Science fiction usually reveals as much about the time it is written as about the future it foresees... It's not a Chinese nationalist rant. It's more a portrayal of China as a servant of humanity... the Confucian respect for the wise grandfather who helps save the day... sociologically and politically, it's worth a look and it's now on Netflix." Reveals: Allan watches Chinese popular cinema and reads it as political document. His frame is explicit: sci-fi as evidence about self-image and aspiration, not entertainment. He distinguishes "servant of humanity" from nationalist chest-thumping, noting Russians and Brits also feature, and identifies familiar Hollywood tropes "with Chinese characteristics." The analytical eye never stops — even on a plane from Seoul he is mining the film for insight about China. He notes the Chinese Australian character named Tim from Melbourne as a detail worth mentioning — the multicultural dimension of a Chinese global-rescue narrative. Watched on the plane returning from Seoul, September 2019.

HBO — Chernobyl (2019, dir. Johan Renck)¶

Episode: Ep026 (2019-08-21) Allan's comment: "I was working on the Soviet Union in ONA when the explosion occurred, and I can still remember our efforts to try to work out what was happening... The series is devastating to watch with accounts of some astonishing personal heroism by those who were responding on the ground and appalling cowardice by many of their bosses. If you want a perfect example of the consequences and dangers of authoritarian systems and the absence of free press, it's all there. I can't recommend it highly enough." Reveals: This recommendation is inseparable from its autobiographical weight. Allan watched Chernobyl happen in real time as a Soviet analyst at ONA in April 1986; he is now watching it dramatised 33 years later. The series is simultaneously historical drama, intelligence history, and political argument — all categories Allan inhabits at once. His endorsement phrase ("I can't recommend it highly enough") is his strongest in the corpus to this point. He connects the series explicitly to a policy argument: the consequences of authoritarian systems and the absence of a free press are not historical curiosities but live analytical concerns.

BBC — Brexit: The Uncivil War (starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings)¶

Episode: Ep016 (2019-04-06) Allan's comment: "It focused on the Leave campaign and its very intense campaign director, Dominic Cummings, who successfully took on the combined forces of the British political establishment, including both major parties. It was Cummings himself, and this comes through in the film, who is responsible for the inspired 'take back control' slogan... Benedict Cumberbatch does a really brilliant job with the part. It's funny and it's revealing and horrifying simultaneously. Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage appear in possibly unfair but richly deserved caricatures." Reveals: First film recommendation in the series. He chose a politically engaged fictional/documentary drama precisely because he had been analysing Brexit analytically all episode; the film enriches his analytical framework. The qualifier "possibly unfair but richly deserved" is characteristic — acknowledging the caveat but endorsing the judgment. Available "on several video platforms in Australia."

Journalism and Television¶

ABC Foreign Correspondent — Sean Dorney in PNG¶

Episode: Ep004 (2018-09-06) Allan's comment: "It's a really moving tribute to one of the great Australian journalists... I've been looking at the ABC program, Foreign Correspondent, which you can catch on iview." Reveals: Allan watches quality long-form television journalism. He is moved by it ("really moving"). He connects journalism about Australia's neighbourhood to political understanding — he uses Dorney's PNG reporting to illuminate what Julie Bishop "really understood." He uses ABC iview.

Podcasts¶

Carnegie Endowment — Diplo Pod — Evan Feigenbaum, "Where is the U.S.-China relationship going?"¶

Episode: Ep014 (2019-03-15) Allan's comment: "In the continuing search for sensible, informed commentary, I recommend a recent podcast from the Carnegie Endowment's excellent series, Diplo Pod. Evan Feigenbaum, who's just become vice president of studies at Carnegie, did one called 'Where is the U.S.-China relationship going?' Feigenbaum has long experience in China and Asia, particularly in the State Department. And I thought that given how directly Australian interests are affected by U.S. policy towards China, this was a really useful, informed account of how things have got to this point and where they are heading. And that's sobering for Australian listeners to think about." Reveals: "Sensible, informed commentary" is his explicit criterion — shared with his description of Mike Morell's show. He values practitioners and former government officials over journalists and academics. He frames the recommendation specifically for Australian listeners — he is always thinking of the audience's interests, not just his own. Carnegie is a natural fit: a think tank at the serious, evidence-based end of the policy world.

The Dismal Science podcast — Mark Thorwell and Ivan (Australian Institute of Company Directors)¶

Episode: Ep070 (2021-03-29) Allan's comment: "If you want to understand Australia's international interests, you need a solid understanding of the Australian economy as well. So I was really pleased to discover that an old friend and colleague of mine from the Lowy Institute, where he was head of the International Economy Programme, Mark Thorwell, who's now the chief economist for the Australian Institute of Company Directors, has a terrific weekly podcast called The Dismal Science... Relaxed and easy chemistry, not unlike our own chemistry, Darren... So the dismal science is a great companion piece to Australia in the World if you're looking for a way of keeping informed about the Australian economy." Reveals: The recommendation doubles as biographical: Thorwell is identified as an "old friend and colleague" from Lowy, and the "plural of anecdote is not data" anecdote is attached. Allan frames the podcast as a "companion piece to Australia in the World" — a complementary resource for the economic dimension of Australian international interests. "Not unlike our own chemistry" is a rare explicit self-compliment about the podcast's conversational format. His NFT verdict — "probably not a great idea unless you're a billionaire in the tech industry who's trying to show off to all his mates" — is characteristically blunt. "It bewilders me the entire thing" is honest. He also reveals he is "always indebted" to Thorwell for the intellectual correction — this recommendation carries both analytical and personal freight.

Sinica podcast — "Getting Chinese Politics Wrong," interview with Jude Blanchett (Freeman Chair, CSIS Washington)¶

Episode: Ep069 (2021-03-13) Allan's comment: "It's a discussion of the dangerous heuristics that analysts and policymakers use when they're thinking about China and the dangers of doing those sort of quick shorthand judgments without drawing on solid research, and they do an interesting discussion in particular about thinking about Xi Jinping in that regard. So it's an enjoyable discussion about an ever-present problem." Reveals: Allan recommends a podcast specifically about analytical method — how analysts think about China, not just what they conclude. "Dangerous heuristics" and "quick shorthand judgments" are precisely the analytical failures he himself resists throughout the corpus. He is recommending a podcast that is, in effect, a methodological self-portrait: a practitioner who values solid research over pattern-matching, who insists on primary sources, who is sceptical of the "central command centre" heuristic (Ep062) and the "chaos vs. strategy" binary. The Sinica podcast also appears in his China information diet at Ep056 (Adam Tooze on Sinica). Blanchett (CSIS Freeman Chair in China Studies) is in his regular listening range. The phrase "an ever-present problem" is characteristic understatement: he treats analytical discipline as a standing challenge, not a solved problem.

Natasha Kassam and Darren Lim — "Future Shock: How to Prepare for a China-led World," Australian Foreign Affairs (February 2021)¶

Episode: Ep068 (2021-02-25) — the de facto reading recommendation; Allan explicitly nominates it in place of the absent reading segment Allan's verdict: "It's a great article, which asks important questions and provides interesting answers. This is my blurb. And I hope all our listeners will read it for themselves." At episode's end: "I am going to be rethinking some of the issues that we've talked about for a while yet." Reveals: Several things at once. First, the self-aware reference to "my blurb" — he knows he is performing the reading-segment role for this episode and does so consciously. Second, the endorsement structure: "asks important questions" (form) and "provides interesting answers" (substance) — covers both dimensions without flattening them. Third, and most importantly: "I am going to be rethinking." Recommending a book or article that forces him to revise a prior view is the highest category in his taxonomy ("changes your understanding," Ep040, on Krastev/Holmes). He does not use that formula here, but the disclosed revision ("one I confess I've subscribed to myself" on the China model export question) puts the Kassam/Lim essay in the same company. He reads it both as policy content and as intellectual challenge to his own settled views.

Seneca podcast — Michael Swaine, Jessica Lee, Rachel O'Dell on the Quincy Institute's East Asia strategy paper¶

Episode: Ep067 (2021-02-06) Allan's comment: "I don't agree with all their prescriptions, but one of the really interesting conclusions they draw is that if, as they recommend, the US moves to a military strategy of denial rather than control in East Asia, then Australia and forces based here become a much more important element in the strategic equation. So it's worth listening and pondering that." Reveals: He supplies the institute's founding principle without prompting — it is named after John Quincy Adams, whose dictum "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy" is its organising idea. He does not endorse the paper's prescriptions but applies his standard policy-relevance test: what is the implication for Australia? The denial-vs-control distinction is the extract he chooses: if the US relies on denial rather than power projection, Australia's strategic geography and basing become more important. He is reading a Washington think-tank paper and immediately translating its strategic logic into Australian terms — the practitioner's reading habit. Third podcast-format recommendation in the series (cf. Carnegie Diplo Pod, Ep014; Wind of Change, Ep049), confirming sustained and eclectic podcast listening habits.

Mike Morell — Intelligence Matters (featuring Chris Johnson on China)¶

Episode: Ep006 (2018-10-18) Allan's comment: "It's a very non-Trumpian, non-Pencean, non-Boltonian view of the world informed by deep knowledge. And it's always good to hear that sort of thing." Reveals: Allan listens to podcasts; prefers intelligence professionals' analysis to political commentary; values "deep knowledge" explicitly. Was already an "avid podcast listener" before Darren approached him.

Intellectual Preferences (Implicit and Explicit)¶

Non-Anglophone perspectives¶

Evidence: Ep012 (Schönpflug chosen partly because "written by a German"). Allan actively seeks perspectives outside his usual reading. This suggests awareness that his default lens is English-language and he needs to correct for it.

Counterintuitive conclusions¶

Evidence: Ep003 (Taylor's unexpected conclusion that the South China Sea matters less than other flashpoints). He values work that challenges consensus. This is consistent with his own practice of offering counterintuitive readings (Obama-Trump structural similarity; "independent foreign policy" being a demand for a "different" one).

Historical disorientation as a lens for the present¶

Evidence: Ep012 (Schönpflug: "a reminder of what the world feels like when you don't really know what's going on"). He reads history not just for lessons but for the experiential texture of uncertainty — useful when navigating a genuinely confusing present.

Empirical optimism over theoretical pessimism¶

Evidence: Ep002 (Pinker). He finds data about human progress genuinely moving and grounding. This is not naïve — he is deeply worried about the international order — but he holds onto the evidence of improvement as an anchor.

Information Diet (Described Directly)¶

Episode: Ep034 [00:31:45.040 --> 00:33:30.680]

"I find it very, very easy to ignore social media. I'm not on Twitter or Facebook or any other social media. I make the assumption that things that are important will eventually reach me... through the filter of the regular Australian and international media, through think tanks like Lowy and Brookings and CSIS, Council on Foreign Relations, through podcasts — things like China Power from CSIS or Seneca. But speeches, I think, are really important and mostly ignored... The thing I'm always looking for is ways of thinking about the subject — that points me in the direction usually of longer reports and essays rather than immediate news summaries."

The most complete statement of his information management approach in the corpus. Key features: - Hierarchy: speeches first → think tank reports → quality media → podcasts; social media excluded entirely - Named institutions: Lowy Institute, Brookings Institution, CSIS, Council on Foreign Relations - Named podcasts: China Power (CSIS), Seneca (Quincy Institute) - Meta-criterion: "ways of thinking about the subject" — he reads for analytical frameworks, not for news. This is why he recommends books and speeches more than articles. - Trust architecture: quality gatekeepers, not real-time feeds. "Things that are important will eventually reach me." Confidence, not passivity — this is a deliberate, calibrated filter.

Things Allan Explicitly Does NOT Do¶

"As you know Darren, I'm a conscientious objector to social media." — Ep012

Not merely absent from it — actively opposed. The "conscientious objector" framing is moral, not just habitual.

Disney+¶

[Darren recommends The Mandalorian on Disney+] Allan: "No, I haven't. I don't think we get Disney." — Ep037

Consistent with the established non-techie portrait: no Foxtel, no social media, and now no Disney+. The phrasing "I don't think we get Disney" is characteristic — not "I don't subscribe to Disney+" but a slight uncertainty about what streaming service comes with what, suggesting genuine unfamiliarity with the subscription landscape. Extends the portrait of a person whose entertainment technology is not just limited but slightly puzzling to him.

Notes on Reading Habits¶

Reads recommendations from podcast listeners and cites them on air (UPU raised by a listener, Ep007; Krugman recommended by a listener, Ep008)
Reads on planes and during travel (Souls of China on the way to Beijing, Ep005)
Reads over the summer break (Schönpflug read "over the break," Ep012)
Has gaps he knows about and addresses deliberately (cyber policy, Ep007)
Prefers books that change how he thinks: "it's always good to find something that changes the way you think about issues" (on Krugman, Ep008)

Adam Gopnik — A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism (Riverhead Books, 2019)¶

Episode: Ep032 (2019-10-23) Allan's comment: "A beautifully written defence of the philosophical tradition that I identify with myself, but in the proper way of Liberal's Gopnik tests its claims soundly and fairly against the critiques of authoritarianism and conservatism on the right and radicalism in its different varieties on the left. So it's an elegant refresher course on where the values of free speech, representative democracy, rule of law, racial and gender equality that we define as Australia's national values, where they come from and how they need to be defended." Reveals: The most explicit philosophical identification in the corpus. Allan says Gopnik is defending "the philosophical tradition that I identify with myself" — the classical liberal tradition: free speech, representative democracy, rule of law, racial and gender equality. Combined with Pinker (Ep002 — empirical optimism), this confirms a coherent philosophical formation: a Enlightenment liberal with an empirical cast. He praises Gopnik for testing claims against critics — the same intellectual discipline visible throughout his own analytical practice. "Virtually nothing that he can't write engagingly about" is a genuine compliment from someone who takes writing seriously as a craft.

Katie Leng — "The Strangeness We Feel" (song)¶

Episode: Ep032 (2019-10-23) Context: Not a formal recommendation — disclosed while explaining the original title for his Australian Foreign Affairs piece: "The title of the piece was set by the editor. I called it The Strangeness We Feel because that was a line from a Katie Leng song, which just happened to be floating around in my head all the time. And I thought, yeah, that gets it." Reveals: Allan was listening to Katie Leng (Australian indie/folk artist) while writing his major China policy article. He found in the song lyric a precision about the Australia-China moment that policy language couldn't supply. The phrase "floating around in my head all the time" suggests sustained, repeated listening. He chose a pop lyric as his preferred title for a serious analytical piece — which is entirely characteristic.

Andy Greenberg — Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers (Doubleday, 2019)¶

Episode: Ep042 (2020-03-10) — recommended by a podcast listener; Allan passes it on Allan's comment: "He writes what's essentially a detective mystery about attribution and motive centering on the Russian cyber attacks on Ukraine... a pacy style that gives even someone as un-techie as me a fair understanding of the process. Cyber is now a permanent feature of statecraft and warfare, and Sandworm is a great way into it for a non-specialist." Reveals: Continues the pattern of reading and citing listener recommendations (cf. Krugman, Ep008; UPU, Ep007). The "un-techie as me" self-description is now a fixed formula for technology-topic recommendations — he has repeated it across multiple episodes. He specifically values the "pacy style" — writing quality matters alongside analytical content. The recommendation also signals his effort to maintain currency on cyber as statecraft even outside his native expertise zone.

Rory Medcalf — Contest for the Indo-Pacific: Why China Won't Map the Future (La Trobe University Press, 2020)¶

Episode: Ep042 (2020-03-10) — "essential reading" Allan's comment: "If you're interested in the debate about the contest for the Indo-Pacific, including what that contest actually is, then this is essential reading." Reveals: Allan had credited Medcalf in Ep039 as "probably deserving more credit than anyone else for bringing the framing concept of the Indo-Pacific into Australian strategic discourse." The "essential reading" endorsement is his strongest for an Australian strategic text in the series to date. The book had just been launched with speeches by both Payne and Wong. Allan recommends it without extensive commentary — the Medcalf crediting in Ep039 had done the biographical/analytical work; this is the book recommendation payoff.

Wind of Change podcast (Spotify, Patrick Radden-Keefe, 7 episodes)¶

Episode: Ep049 (2020-06-14) Allan's comment: "In which the American journalist Patrick Radden-Keefe pursues over seven episodes a rumour he has heard that an iconic rock song from 1990, Wind of Change, by the German heavy metal group, The Scorpions, which was Europe's soundtrack to the end of the Cold War, was actually written by the CIA. Look, it's great fun and nostalgic for me because I was around at the time, but relevant for you and your generation, Darren, as a reminder of how espionage, propaganda and influence operations worked in a pre-social media age." Reveals: Personal nostalgia and professional identification — in 1990 Allan was professionally engaged with Soviet and Cold War affairs (ONA Soviet analyst in the 1980s, then PM&C/Hawke government). "I was around at the time" marks generational ownership of that historical moment. He also frames it analytically for Darren's generation: a window into how Cold War influence operations worked, pre-social media. Second podcast-format recommendation (cf. Ep044 Klein/Osnos). He is an active podcast listener across topics including creative process (Song Exploder, Ep046) and investigative journalism.

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015)¶

Episode: Ep049 (2020-06-14) — prompted by the George Floyd killing and BLM protests Allan's comment: "Ta-Nehisi Coates's powerful book, Between the World and Me, which was published in 2015 and addressed to his son about the experience of growing up Black in America, it was hugely insightful for me." Reveals: Allan had been listening to Coates on a podcast interview "a couple of days ago" before recommending the book. He connects the recommendation to his personal memory of seeing the 1968 riot scars on 14th Street in Washington (early 1980s) and to Australia's failures toward Indigenous Australians. He does not develop an extended analytical commentary — just "hugely insightful for me" — which, given his usual habit of embedding recommendations in policy frames, marks the response as genuinely personal. One of very few reading recommendations in the corpus that is primarily about the human experience of racial injustice rather than about policy.

Money Heist (La Casa de Papel), Netflix¶

Episode: Ep046 (2020-05-06) Allan's comment: "I love heist movies, and there's a terrific Spanish series on Netflix called Money Heist, complete with a master criminal called The Professor, which is a great way of taking your mind off the current reality, which is what we all need." Reveals: The only pure entertainment recommendation in the corpus to this point — no analytical overlay, no policy application. "I love heist movies" is one of the most direct genre-preference statements in the corpus. The character type of "the Professor" (a meticulous planner operating through layers of indirect control, managing specialists toward a complex objective under pressure) has obvious professional resonance for someone who spent decades as an intelligence analyst and DG. Allan also mentions Song Exploder in passing — having heard the composer Ramin Djawadi discuss writing the Game of Thrones score — extending his podcast listening beyond news and current affairs into creative process.

Peter Edwards — Law, Politics and Intelligence: A Life of Robert Hope (New South Books)¶

Episode: Ep045 (2020-04-23) Allan's comment: "It's the first ever biography of Justice Robert Hope, the man who more than any other created the Australian intelligence community as we know it... Hope's always been one of my public policy heroes. I met him as a young ONA analyst in Washington, and I was very pleased that I was able to persuade Julia Gillard to name the ONA building in Canberra after him... I really urge any of our listeners with an interest in Australian intelligence or public policy generally to seek it out. It's an important contribution to our understanding of ourselves." Reveals: Deeply personal recommendation — Hope is "one of my public policy heroes," a formulation used for very few people in the corpus. The recommendation functions partly as institutional autobiography: by describing what Hope built (ONA, the modern intelligence community), Allan is describing the institutional world that shaped him. The closing formula "important contribution to our understanding of ourselves" echoes the Ashton Robinson recommendation (Ep033 — "Australia has too few memoirs from our diplomats, soldiers and intelligence analysts"); both reflect his consistent view that Australia under-documents its own statecraft. He also notes the book launched during COVID lockdown and has not received the attention it deserves — actively trying to remedy that.

Ezra Klein podcast / Evan Osnos on US-China relations; Peter Hessler New Yorker article on the Peace Corps in China¶

Episode: Ep044 (2020-04-09) Allan's comment: "I wanted to recommend an interview Ezra Klein had a week or so ago on his podcast with the fine New Yorker journalist Evan Osnos. It's a really excellent short account... of how and why China-US relations have sunk to what Osnos describes as their worst point since Mao. But then as a companion piece I also wanted to point to an article by another New Yorker journalist Peter Hessler... he's reflecting on the meaning and consequences of the Trump administration's decision to pull the tiny US Peace Corps program — which he notes costs less than the State Department spends annually on membership of the International Pacific Halibut Commission — the decision to pull that out of China. So it's sad and a bit nostalgic." Reveals: Unusual to recommend podcast episodes rather than books — Allan does it rarely; this is an exception prompted by the episode's US-focus. The pairing is characteristic: one analytic overview (Osnos on the structural US-China trajectory) and one human-scale particular (Hessler on the Peace Corps). The Halibut Commission detail — the Peace Corps costs less than State Department's Halibut Commission membership — is a sharp bureaucratic absurdity that Allan highlights without elaboration. He also references Hessler's earlier book River Town (2001) as "a really funny account" — an older recommendation folded inside a current one. The New Yorker appears twice; Allan is a consistent reader of long-form American journalism.

Hilary Mantel — The Mirror and the Light (Fourth Estate, 2020) / Wolf Hall trilogy overall¶

Episode: Ep043 (2020-03-28) — The Mirror and the Light recommended on publication; Wolf Hall trilogy assessed as a career-long favourite Allan's comment: "When the first book in this series, Wolf Hall, came out in 2009, I wrote on the Lowy Interpreter that it was the best book I'd ever read about politics, not Tudor politics, but politics full stop. If any of our younger listeners aspire to work in Parliament House, you won't find anywhere a better evocation of the talents required by a political staffer than Cromwell in his relationship with Henry... For those of us who believe in the work of public service, I can't think of many bureaucratic heroes in literature. I mean, maybe George Smiley in Le Carré's work, but Thomas Cromwell, flawed as he is, is one of them, and like Smiley, he's also a superb intelligence manager and assessor." Reveals: Allan's highest fiction recommendation in the corpus — explicitly stated: "the best book I'd ever read about politics, full stop" (written in 2009, not revised). This supersedes every other recommendation in the corpus including Krastev/Holmes ("changed my understanding," Ep040), which is the highest non-fiction category. He reads the Mantel trilogy as a practical manual for political work: Cromwell as model for political staff management ("the talents required by a political staffer"), intelligence assessment, and bureaucratic survival. The recommendation is made with the weight of eleven years of engagement with the earlier volumes behind it. He also predicts The Mirror and the Light will win Mantel a third Booker Prize — "if Mantel doesn't get her third Booker Prize for this, she's been robbed" — which proved incorrect (the book was not shortlisted in 2020). Pairing Cromwell with George Smiley as "bureaucratic heroes in literature" shows how he reads fiction: for its analytical content about power, not for pleasure alone.

Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes — The Light That Failed: A Reckoning (Penguin, 2019)¶

Episodes: Ep039 (preview, not yet finished); Ep040 (full recommendation, completed) Allan's comment (Ep040): "Some books deepen your understanding of an issue but there are a valuable few which change your understanding and this was one of those for me... the authors make a powerful case that the reason for the emergence of populism in states like Poland and Hungary was not at all concerned about an influx of new immigrants, of whom there were very few, but a deeper anxiety about the impact of emigration and depopulation in those countries." Reveals: Allan's highest recommendation category — "changed my understanding," explicitly contrasted with the more common "deepen your understanding." Krastev (Bulgarian political scientist, Vienna) and Holmes (NYU law professor) argue that Eastern European imitation of Western liberalism after 1989 generated resentment rather than conversion. Allan's chosen standout insight: Polish/Hungarian populism is not an immigration backlash (almost no immigrants in those countries) but an emigration anxiety — young people leaving, populations declining, communities hollowing out. He also notes: "how regrettably rare European and especially East European voices have been in the international policy debate in Australia — or maybe it's just in my own reading" — a characteristic self-correcting aside that treats his own reading habits as a potentially biased sample. The book connects directly to his Ep037 word of the year ("sovereignty") and the Ep039 Raisina discussion of nationalism.

George Packer — Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (Knopf, 2019)¶

Episode: Ep037 (2020-01-10) — "best foreign policy book of 2019" Allan's comment: "This is an unusual biography because it's about a man who never quite made it to the top of his profession... The book is a revelation of how much was going on in debates inside Washington that we didn't know about. Now, I'm not complaining about that, there's no reason for the US administration to lay its internal debates open to mid-level allies, but as we just saw again in our ignorance of the US assassination of Soleimani, Australia needs to be constantly alert to the changing dynamics of American policy." Reveals: Allan selects the book partly because he was personally inside the period it describes — "as someone who was heavily involved in the Canberra discussions about Afghanistan and Pakistan during the period Holbrooke was the US representative." The personal stake is introduced as "just one final point," characteristic understatement for what is a genuine biographical disclosure. He extends the book's policy lesson directly to the Soleimani killing: mid-level allies are not briefed on internal US debates; the pattern is structural and present-day. The closing elegiac frame — Holbrooke as "one of the last exemplars of a vision of American power in the world... that are only now turning to rubble" — is the note Allan chooses for his 2019 year-in-review. He also praises Packer as writer: biographical form is chosen specifically because "Packer is one of the very best American writers of long-form narrative nonfiction."

Ashton Robinson — Meeting Saddam's Men: Looking for Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction¶

Episode: Ep033 (2019-11-07) Allan's comment: "A really terrific account of the search for WMD after the invasion of Iraq and Australia's participation in it. Australia has too few memoirs from our diplomats, soldiers and intelligence analysts about the practical work of statecraft. And this is a terrific addition to the genre. And it's also a reminder that if Australia wants to affect standard setting... we do need to build and preserve real technical expertise — nuclear arms control, or in this case, the control of chemical weapons. So it's a really good book for policymakers, particularly younger policymakers in Canberra to read." Reveals: Allan values practitioner memoirs highly — he identifies a gap in Australian political literature and this book fills part of it. He launched the book, indicating he was personally involved in its reception. The author is "a former colleague of mine from ONA." He recommends it to "younger policymakers in Canberra" — characteristically prescriptive about who should read what. The policy argument embedded in the recommendation (build and preserve technical expertise) is consistent with his advocacy across the corpus for investing in the instruments of foreign policy.

Joseph Nye — Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump (Harvard University Press, 2020)¶

Episode: Ep057 (2020-09-26) Allan's comment: "Nye has been at Harvard since 1964, with stints in government dating back to the Carter administration. So his analysis is informed by practical experience and deep knowledge... the book forces the reader to think about whether there are differences between a values-based foreign policy and a moral foreign policy. And if there are, where do they lie? A moral foreign policy, Nye argues, involves not just the intentions of the policymaker, but the consequences that flow from their actions and the means that were used." Reveals: Allan reaches for Nye at a moment when the episode has just raised the Australia-Thailand values asymmetry — i.e., would Australia speak out if protests were in Hong Kong but not in Thailand? Nye's distinction (values-based vs moral) gives Allan the analytical vocabulary he needs. His familiarity with Nye (soft power concept, Harvard career, Carter-era government service) suggests sustained engagement with Nye's work across decades. The recommendation also reflects his preference for authors who combine academic depth with practical government experience — Nye's "stints in government" are singled out as validating the analysis.

Episode: Ep056 (2020-09-10) Allan's framing: "We need historians more than ever." Recommends two discussions by Adam Tooze (economic historian, formerly Cambridge, now Columbia, author of Crashed): (1) an appearance on the Sinica podcast about China and the geopolitics of the pandemic; (2) a conversation with economist Tyler Cowen about what economic history can tell us about navigating the current crisis. Reveals: Allan reaches for economic historians at moments of crisis — Crashed (on the 2008 GFC and its political aftermath) maps onto the COVID/China moment. "We need historians more than ever" is the prescriptive framing: not just a personal recommendation but a statement about what kind of intellectual resource is most needed. The Sinica podcast appears in his China information diet (Ep056) and here as a recommendation — he is a regular listener. His recommendation of the Tyler Cowen conversation adds an economics-meets-history dimension, consistent with his preference for analysts who bridge disciplines (cf. Krastev/Holmes).

Evan Osnos — "Joe Biden Explained" (Ezra Klein Show podcast, 2020)¶

Episode: Ep061 (2020-11-16) Allan's comment: "Really thoughtful and useful from an Australian practical point of view, introductions to the two men." Framed as one of two recommended pieces on the leaders who will most influence Australia's immediate future — Biden and Xi. Reveals: A third Evan Osnos reference in the corpus (cf. Age of Ambition recommended and noted multiple times; Ezra Klein/Osnos US-China episode in Ep044). Allan is a consistent follower of Osnos's New Yorker reporting. He reaches for the podcast interview format here rather than Osnos's full biography — characteristic preference for the precise, current-moment piece over the full book when speed matters. Also confirms continued engagement with the Ezra Klein Show as a source.

Tewes and Torrigan — "Shi Dada and Daddy Power, the Party and the President" (Little Red Podcast, 2020)¶

Episode: Ep061 (2020-11-16) Allan's comment: Part of a paired recommendation with the Osnos/Biden episode — "both of them, I thought, were really thoughtful and useful from an Australian practical point of view, introductions to the two men." Reveals: Allan pairs a China-specialist academic podcast (Little Red is an Australia-based China podcast, recommended elsewhere as part of his China information diet) with the US-focused Osnos interview for a single framing exercise: understanding the two leaders who will shape Australia's near-term environment. Frederick Tewes is a well-known China leadership scholar (ANU-associated); the episode's title — "Shi Dada and Daddy Power" — uses Xi Jinping's informal Chinese nickname ("Uncle Xi" / "Big Daddy Xi"). That Allan reaches for this as a recommendation signals both his Little Red listening habit and his interest in leadership-focused analysis of Xi.

Anne Applebaum — Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and Departing of Friends (Doubleday/Allen Lane, 2020)¶

Episode: Ep059 (2020-10-29) Allan's comment: "A companion piece, in a way, [to Krastev/Holmes The Light That Failed] because it's a book that shows, in effect, the human side of that failure... She was running around with people like Boris Johnson, and the book describes the deep breach of relationships which accompanied the 21st century split between liberalism and populism, as lifelong friends started excusing and facilitating the populists like Orban and Trump... It's personal and sad, and its outlook is pessimistic. 'Given the right conditions, she writes, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all our societies eventually will.' So it's a warning note." Reveals: Allan explicitly pairs this with Krastev/Holmes (Ep040 — his "changed my understanding" book): where that gave the structural explanation for Eastern European populism, Applebaum gives the personal dimension. He endorses her pessimistic outlook without qualification — "any society can turn against democracy" is quoted approvingly. His familiarity with Applebaum's earlier work (Gulag, Iron Curtain) is implied; he introduces her biography and the journal world she inhabits (The Spectator, The Atlantic, Washington Post) with evident familiarity. The book's pairing of intellectual argument with personal grief about lost friendships appeals to someone who has watched Australian foreign policy networks fragment under the China debate pressure.

John Lewis Gaddis — George F. Kennan: An American Life (Penguin Press, 2011)¶

Episode: Ep058 (2020-10-11) — recommended as a "classic text for a career in international affairs" Allan's comment: "John Lewis Gaddis' magisterial biography of George F. Kennan, George F. Kennan, An American Life, on how one individual in the system can interact with and influence their own times — agency again, Darren." Reveals: Allan deploys the Kennan biography as an argument, not just a recommendation. It is framed immediately in terms of the agency debate running through the episode — Kennan is another Percy Spender or Gareth Evans, an individual who demonstrably shaped history rather than being a prisoner of structural forces. "Magisterial" is high praise from Allan, a qualifier he uses rarely. That he chooses it as a career-defining text suggests both long engagement with Kennan's work and professional identification with the problem Kennan embodied: how does one intelligence analyst/foreign policy thinker with no line authority actually shape outcomes? The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2012.

Christopher Hill (British) — The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)¶

Episode: Ep058 (2020-10-11) — recommended as a "classic text for a career in international affairs" Allan's comment: "Because there's so little useful that's been written on foreign policy compared with strategic and defense policy. And because foreign policy is what fundamentally interests me, I recommend Christopher Hill — and this is the British Christopher Hill, not the American one — the changing politics of foreign policy." Reveals: Allan chose this book to fill what he identifies as a structural gap in the literature: "there is so little useful that's been written on foreign policy compared with strategic and defense policy." This is not casual complaint — it reflects a career frustration. The practitioners' trade (foreign policy as political phenomenon) is undertheorised relative to strategic studies. Christopher Hill's work attempts a systematic account of how foreign policy is actually made as a political process. The parenthetical disambiguation ("not the American one" — Christopher Hill the American Marxist historian) is characteristic of someone who has used the book long enough to know the confusion exists. "Because foreign policy is what fundamentally interests me" is as direct a statement of intellectual vocation as he makes in this corpus.

Malcolm Turnbull — A Bigger Picture (Hardie Grant, 2020); Christopher Pyne — The Insider (Scribe, 2018)¶

Episode: Ep066 (2021-01-22) — not a reading recommendation; disclosed as research reading for Fear of Abandonment update Allan's verdict: - Turnbull: "at least has the saving grace of some serious content, however much its glory is in its own hero" - Pyne: "appears to have been put together in a blender" Reveals: Allan reads political memoirs as historical evidence rather than literature; he would prefer better sources but takes what he has. His willingness to read the Morrison-era coalition politicians' own accounts — "not fun recreational reading for the summer" — is methodologically serious: he is trying to build a fair historical picture of 2016–2020. His two-sided Turnbull verdict is characteristic precision: he concedes substantive content (credit where due) while naming the self-aggrandisement (credit where also due). Pyne receives no such charitable concession. The contrast establishes an implicit standard: a memoir needs to survive the author's vanity to be worth the time.

All In: The Fight for Democracy (documentary, dir. Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés, 2020, Amazon Prime)¶

Episode: Ep065 (2021-01-09) — recommended at the close of the January 6th emergency episode Allan's comment: "I was watching, before all this happened, a new documentary on Amazon Prime called All In: The Fight for Democracy, which is a history of voter suppression and features some of the work of Stacey Abrams, who more than any other person may have been responsible for getting Biden and the Democrats those two crucial Senate seats in Georgia. So that's worth watching." Reveals: He explicitly frames the recommendation as an "uplifting and hopeful note" — the documentary is offered as evidence that American democracy can renew itself from below. His crediting of Stacey Abrams as the person "more than any other" responsible for the Georgia Senate seats is a clear political assessment, not just a documentary plug. The fact that he was watching it before January 6th (during the summer break) and that it becomes newly resonant after Georgia and the Capitol events shows his tendency to read recommendation and current events together. He has access to Amazon Prime — extending the streaming inventory beyond Netflix (Money Heist, Ep046) and adding to the non-techie portrait a more complex digital media subscription than previously evident.

Patrick O'Brian — Aubrey-Maturin series (Master and Commander and sequels, 1969–2004)¶

Episode: Ep064 (2020-12-23) — named as his "best of 2020" escapist reading Allan's comment: "One of the great novels of Patrick O'Brian. For those who don't know them, they were published between 1971 and 2004, I think, and have been described as the greatest series of historical novels ever written and compared to the achievements of writers like Jane Austen. Captain Jack Aubrey is a Royal Naval Officer during the Napoleonic Wars, and his close friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin, is a [naturalist and intelligence agent]. I wouldn't know a flying jib from a mizzen stay sail, but you don't need to be into naval warfare to revel in the quality of O'Brian's writing and the subtlety of his characterisation. So these novels, I'm grateful to, because they've taken me a long way away from 2020." Reveals: The rarest kind of recommendation in Allan's corpus — pure escapism. He explicitly says the novels took him "a long way away from 2020" and frames the benefit as relief from the world rather than analytical illumination. "I wouldn't know a flying jib from a mizzen stay sail" is his standard disclaimer formula (cf. "as un-techie as me" on Sandworm) — he is pre-empting objections to recommending something far outside his technical knowledge. The endorsement of the comparison to Jane Austen signals he trusts the literary verdict: complex characterisation and social observation at the highest level, set in an exotic historical context. The Aubrey-Maturin series is 20 novels long; Allan does not say how far in he is, but "these novels" (plural) suggests he has read more than one. The choice is also consistent with his historical range: Mantel on Tudor England, O'Brian on Napoleonic naval warfare — both worlds utterly remote from Australian foreign policy, both valued for writing quality and human characterisation. Note: Transcript renders the character name "Jack Albury" — should be Jack Aubrey; also O'Brian's surname lacks the second 'e.'

The Bureau (Le Bureau des légendes), French TV series — all six seasons, SBS On Demand¶

Episode: Ep071 (2021-04-15) Route to recommendation: Via a French-led naval exercise (Operation La Perouse, Bay of Bengal — Australia, India, Japan, US, led by France) → French strategic engagement in the Indo-Pacific → "by a long stretch, I come to my recommendation." The connection is not manufactured; it reflects the way he thinks across domains. Allan's comment: "Everyone I know has already seen this, so I'm probably speaking to an audience who's already well familiar with it. But the series deals with the operational part of the French external intelligence service, the DGSE. Its real enjoyment for me comes not so much from the way it deals with the familiar tropes of intelligence fiction, though it's very good at those fingernail biting moments as well, but more from the way it incorporates the realities of bureaucratic life in a way that will be familiar to anyone who's worked in the public service, whether at the intelligence end of it or not." Reveals: Allan values The Bureau for exactly what he valued Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (Ep043) — the accurate depiction of bureaucratic and institutional life as it is actually experienced. The "fingernail biting moments" (thriller elements) are explicitly secondary to the portrayal of how intelligence organisations actually function. "Anyone who's worked in the public service" is his precise audience address — he is recommending it to people who will recognise the institutional dynamics, not primarily to espionage fiction fans. He has watched all six seasons — sustained, completed engagement, not sampling. This is consistent with his preference for George Smiley (cited alongside Cromwell in Ep043) as a "bureaucratic hero in literature": he reads and watches to understand how institutions actually work, not for plot. The self-deprecating lead — "everyone I know has already seen this" — is characteristic: he recommends things he values without claiming to have discovered them.

Rana Mitta — 2021 Reischauer Lectures, Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies¶

Episode: Ep072 (2021-04-25) Context: Sought out explicitly as an antidote to the "bumper sticker nature of much of what passes public discussion about China in Australia." Available on YouTube and the Harvard Fairbank Center's podcast (free). Allan's comment: "Really wonderful. And you can find them on YouTube and at the Harvard Fairbank Center's excellent podcast as well." The three lectures are organised through the themes of "newness, emotion and purpose" — "you'd never guess these in advance, I think." Mitta is "professor of the history and politics of [modern] China at Oxford" and draws on Japanese as well as Chinese history. Reveals: When public discourse on a topic fails him, Allan goes to primary scholarship — an Oxford professor who "actually knows what they're talking about." He contrasts this directly with the "Xi Jinping dictator for life stuff you see in newspapers, as though intra-party and regional politics aren't playing out in some form all over the country." The recommendation expresses an aesthetic preference (complexity over simplification) and a methodological commitment (expertise over position-taking). It also confirms his active information-seeking: he did not encounter Mitta passively but went looking for a scholarly antidote. Consistent with the "hunt and gather" self-description from Ep069.

David Brophy — China Panic: Australia's Alternative to Paranoia and Pandering (La Trobe University Press)¶

Episode: Ep075 (2021-06-09) Context: "At the moment, the Australian publishing industry seems to be churning out China books at the rate of one a week. Have you got yours in the pipeline?" Allan's comment: He disagrees with parts but values the book for making him think harder. "There are parts of his analysis that I would contest. But I did enjoy the way those disagreements provoked me to thinking in new ways or forcing me to bolster the defence of my own position on some of these issues, including the US relationship." Brophy is a Uyghur expert/activist — "he can be as critical of the PRC as some of the China hawks." Strengths: "good on the need for us to confront racism in our approaches to China and is critical of the way we use the idea of Australian values." Reveals: Allan reads books he disagrees with and recommends them for the productive friction. The recommendation pattern here is different from most in the corpus — it is explicitly not an endorsement but a provocation: "stimulating and well worth reading" because it forces position-sharpening. This is consistent with his description of reading Rana Mitta's lectures (Ep072) as an antidote to "bumper sticker" commentary and his general preference for expertise and scholarly rigour over politically comfortable reading. He also names the specific area of contest: "including the US relationship" — suggesting Brophy is more sceptical of the US alliance than Allan is.

Sam Harris and Neil deGrasse Tyson — "Are We Alone in the Universe?" (Making Sense podcast)¶

Episode: Ep076 (2021-06-19) Context: "Even I, even I Darren, sometimes feel a need to elevate my mind to broader horizons." Recommended as an explicit break from policy-focused content. Allan's comment: Covers "all the things that I really loved as a teenage sci-fi fan — the size of the universe, the search for extraterrestrial life and the renewed interest we've seen in UFOs." Notes Tyson's sobering COVID-as-alien-invasion-analogue point. Reveals: First disclosure of teenage sci-fi enthusiasm. Allan was a science fiction reader as a teenager — interested in cosmology, the search for extraterrestrial life, speculative horizons. The recommendation explicitly reactivates that adolescent enthusiasm rather than serving any policy purpose. He is also a listener of Sam Harris's Making Sense podcast — extending the established podcast inventory (Sinica, The Dismal Science, Reischauer lectures). The self-deprecating setup ("even I, even I") signals he is aware this is out of character for his usual recommendations and frames the departure as a human need for horizon-broadening. Consistent with his O'Brian Napoleonic War novels recommendation (Ep064) as escapism — he reaches for imaginative relief from the policy world when he needs it.

Frances Adamson — Address to the National Press Club, 23 June 2021¶

Episode: Ep077 (2021-07-02) Context: Adamson retiring as DFAT Secretary after five years; Allan attended her farewell reception the previous evening alongside the PM, FM, and Trade Minister. Allan's comment: Recommends for "close textual analysis" as "a superb example of diplomatic tradecraft." Structures around three themes: Australia's agency in foreign policy; reflections on China; diversity in the Foreign Service. Her diplomat formulation — "We are the sharp eyes, the attuned ears and the influential voice of Australia overseas" — prompts Allan's Game of Thrones analogy: "Can't you also hear echoes of the oath of the Night's Watch? I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the wall." He notes one paragraph on the development program as "well and delicately said." Reveals: Allan watches (or has watched) Game of Thrones — a rare piece of popular television in the corpus alongside Money Heist, The Bureau, and the Stacey Abrams documentary. More significantly, his recommendation of a speech "for close textual analysis" exposes his pedagogical instinct — he thinks about how diplomatic tradecraft can be taught through good examples. He also has a particular appreciation for speeches that communicate policy indirectly through careful phrasing, consistent with his method of close-reading leaders' speeches across the corpus.

Newspapers and Periodicals¶

Financial Times — "my favourite daily"¶

Evidence: Ep111 [00:44:53.470 --> 00:47:19.900]. Directly stated. Confidence: High (first explicit confirmation; consistent with repeated FT recommendations across the corpus).

"The Financial Times, which is my favourite daily..." — the first and only explicit statement of his primary daily newspaper. Consistent with repeated FT recommendations: Gideon Rachman (Ep103), the FT "Big Read" on Putin's Ukraine decision-making (Ep111 recommendation itself), and his general preference for quality international coverage. The FT recommendation in Ep111 doubles as a methodological contrast with the Nine Newspapers' Red Alert series: where the Red Alert used self-reinforcing panellists and theatrical graphics, the FT piece drew on named reporters, named sources, disclosed sourcing, and judgments "open to challenge." His ideal of analytical journalism stated through contrast.

New Reading Recommendations: Ep096–Ep113¶

John Lewis Gaddis — George F. Kennan: An American Life¶

Episode: Ep112 [00:33:40.620 --> 00:34:18.380] — Allan's final reading recommendation. Allan's comment: "John Lewis Gaddis' magisterial, and I don't use that word about many things, biography of George F. Kennan... It really is one of the most impactful books I've read about both international relations and about US foreign policy. And it ought to be on the reading list of everyone who worries about where the world goes next." Reveals: "Magisterial" is Allan's highest praise for a book — explicitly qualified as rarely used. That the Kennan biography earns it establishes Kennan as a sustained intellectual touchstone, not just a passing reference. The recommendation in his final episode carries the weight of a conclusion. Kennan — the analyst who saw clearly, wrote with precision, was often right and often ignored, whose Long Telegram shaped policy for decades from a single document — is an implicit self-portrait of the practitioner-analyst ideal. Allan recommends Kennan's Long Telegram itself for the DFAT show notes in the same episode. See also: Gaddis The Long Peace (1987) quoted at length in the same episode on "the pursuit of stability."

Annie Ernaux — The Years¶

Episode: Ep109 [00:34:20.720 --> 00:36:18.300] — recommended by Catherine, accepted against the grain of his own reading. Allan's comment: "A deeply personal memoir of Ernaux's life from the Second World War to 2008, fused or sort of entangled like quantum particles with the social and political history of France and the world over that period... You keep — or at least I kept — pausing as I was reading it to ask, how the hell is she doing this? It's really just a remarkable technique." Reveals: "How the hell is she doing this?" is genuine literary astonishment — the response of a voracious reader encountering a form he has not seen before. The memoir fuses personal memory with macro-historical sweep: exactly what the biographical-intellectual project of the podcast itself does. That it was recommended by Catherine — "whose taste in reading on the whole couldn't be more different from mine" — and that it produced this response is doubly significant. A reader who follows his wife's recommendation against his grain and is transformed by it.

Mick Herron — Slough House (Jackson Lamb) novels¶

Episode: Ep106 [confirmed in source page]. Reveals: Allan reads the Slough House spy fiction series for recreational pleasure — a continuation of his established preference for Le Carré and Ben Macintyre. The Slough House novels (featuring washed-up MI5 agents) share with Le Carré a bureaucratic-realist aesthetic: intelligence work as unglamorous, institutional, and often futile. His pleasure in this genre is consistent with his self-identification with the "bureaucratic hero" archetype (Ep043: Smiley and Thomas Cromwell as "superb intelligence managers").

Reading Recommendations: Ep078–Ep095¶

Richard Powers — The Overstory¶

Episode: Ep082 [confirmed in source page]. Allan's comment: Recommends the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about trees and environmental activism. Reveals: A serious literary novel with an ecological and political dimension — consistent with Allan's reading range (Ernaux, O'Brian, Gopnik). The Overstory is formally innovative and morally demanding; recommending it suggests Allan reads contemporary literary fiction as well as history and policy.

Oliver Burkeman — Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals¶

Episode: Ep089 [confirmed in source page]. Allan's comment: Recommends Burkeman's argument that the standard productivity-optimisation approach to time management is philosophically misconceived; the book's title refers to the approximate number of weeks in a human life. Reveals: Allan's interest in the philosophy of finitude and the right relationship to time — consistent with his reflections elsewhere on pace, patience, and the long view. Burkeman's central argument (stop optimising; embrace limitation) resonates with Allan's characteristic scepticism of managerial frameworks.

Colin Kahl and Tom Wright — Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order¶

Episode: Ep090 [confirmed in source page]. Allan's comment: Recommends as a structural analysis of COVID-19's geopolitical consequences. Reveals: Allan gravitates toward books that situate specific events in systemic perspective — consistent with The Light That Failed (Ep040), Sandworm (Ep042), and the Gaddis biography (Ep112). Both authors (Kahl: NSC staffer; Wright: Brookings) are in the practitioner-scholar tradition he most values.

Paul Kelly — Morrison's Mission¶

Episode: Ep093 [confirmed in source page]. Allan's comment: Recommends Kelly's account of the Morrison government's foreign policy. Reveals: Allan reads contemporary political journalism closely even when — perhaps especially when — it covers ground he knows from the inside. Paul Kelly is the most authoritative Australian political journalist of Allan's generation; recommending his Morrison analysis confirms Allan's respect for serious political biography even as he would have independent assessments of everything in it.

Graeme Wood — Atlantic piece on MBS¶

Episode: Ep094 [confirmed in source page]. Allan's comment: Recommends Graeme Wood's long-form Atlantic profile of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Reveals: Allan reads Anglophone quality long-form journalism as a primary source on leaders and countries he is assessing — consistent with the FT's Putin piece (Ep111). Wood's Atlantic piece is an example of the journalistic method he admires: named reporter, named observations, disclosed sourcing, judgments open to challenge.

Three Xi readings (Ep083)¶

Episode: Ep083 [confirmed in source page]. Allan's comment: Recommends three specific texts for understanding Xi Jinping's thinking — details in source page. Reveals: Allan curates reading lists for specific leaders, treating their public statements and speeches as primary analytical sources. Consistent with his explicit methodology of close-reading leaders' texts throughout the corpus.

Listening Recommendations: Ep078–Ep095¶

Adam Tooze — Chartbook (Substack)¶

Episode: Ep087 [confirmed in source page]. Allan's comment: Recommends Tooze's Substack newsletter on economic history and contemporary political economy. Reveals: Allan reads Tooze actively — consistent with his earlier Tooze recommendation (Ep019) on the end of the American political model. Chartbook is analytically demanding and historically grounded; Allan's enthusiasm for it is consistent with his preference for structural, historically-aware analysis over day-to-day commentary.

Lawrence Freedman — "Comment is Freed" (Substack)¶

Episode: Ep095 [confirmed in source page]. Allan's comment: Recommends Freedman's Substack — the emeritus professor of War Studies at King's College London is one of the most distinguished strategic studies scholars of the English-speaking world. Reveals: Allan reads across practitioner and academic lines; Freedman is a bridge figure — serious scholar but engaged with current policy. That Allan recommends his newsletter in the context of Ukraine coverage (Ep095, May 2022) confirms that he follows the best strategic-studies voices on live crises.

Watching Recommendations: Ep078–Ep095¶

9/11: Inside the President's War Room (Apple TV+)¶

Episode: Ep084 [confirmed in source page]. Allan's comment: Recommends the documentary on the Bush administration's response on September 11, 2001. Reveals: Allan recommends the documentary while having been in Beijing on the night of 9/11 (Ep082 fragment). He is watching a reconstruction of events he experienced from the other side of the world — as a practitioner in the China-watching world, not the Washington decision-making room. His recommendation of this documentary implicitly frames his own career position that day.

Velvet Underground documentary¶

Episode: Ep088 [confirmed in source page]. Allan's comment: Describes the band and documentary as "relics of my early 20s." Reveals: Allan's musical formation in the early 1970s included avant-garde rock — a cultural self-positioning quite different from the bureaucratic civil servant stereotype. The willingness to recommend a documentary about a band most associated with transgression and the New York underground art scene is characteristically surprising.

West Side Story (2021 Spielberg film)¶

Episode: Ep091 [confirmed in source page]. Allan's comment: Describes it as a masterpiece; went to see it in cinema alone. Reveals: Allan goes to the cinema alone — a small but significant fragment of domestic life. His use of "masterpiece" is precise and unhedged; he does not give this grade lightly (cf. "magisterial" for the Gaddis biography). West Side Story's combination of formal ambition, social seriousness, and emotional directness is consistent with his reading and film preferences throughout the corpus.