The 9pm Half-time Bingo Card Update 2025 with Snarky Platypus

Illustrative stock imagery of a bingo card and bingo player stamps, with an inset image of a random platypus.
Main image by Rudonni via Pixabay. Foreground bingo card originally by Milton Bradley Company, photo by Abby Hendrickson under under a CC-BY 2.0 Generic license. Platypus inset photo by Taronga Conservation Society Australia / Chris Wheeler. Digital composition by Stilgherrian.

Back at the start of the year, my good friend Snarky Platypus and I created a bingo card for 2025. A set of 25 things that might happen. Well, we’re half-way through the year, so let’s see how we went.

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The 9pm AUKUS and the Echidna with Sam Roggeveen

A middle-aged white bloke wears a black jacket and t-shirt and, with arms folded, looks straight into the camera. An inset shows a book cover reading: “The Echidna Strategy: Australia’s Search for Power and Peace by Sam Roggeveen”. And it has a picture of an echidna.
Sam Roggeveen (Photo: Petri Kurkaa). Inset: The cover of The Echidna Strategy. (Image: Black Inc Books)

Any moment now, Donald Trump might cancel AUKUS, the massive defence agreement which among other things would see Australia buying eight nuclear-powered submarines. AUKUS has become the big thing in Australia’s defence procurement, but do we need it? Sam Roggeveen thinks not, and he’s our guest today.

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Weekly Wrap 787: A late (lack of) news from Adelaide

A two-car diesel multiple unit train approaches a railway station platform in the golden hour of evening sunlight. It has a flat red nose and is otherwise fluted metal, with a grass green band along the windows. The door frames are edged with safety yellow. In the background is a huge eucalypt tree and a moody sky.

My week of Monday 23 to Sunday 29 June 2025 saw the start of a semi-holiday which will eventually total six nights in my home town of Adelaide. I won’t go into the details now, because this is being posted four days late. Rather, I’ll post a few images and some commentary on the coming weekend, and later there will be a podcast. But hey it’s Adelaide, so there’s obviously plenty of good food and wine.

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