It covers a wide variety of topics through interviews with the host, including current affairs, politics, science, philosophy and culture.

[3] Previous hosts include publisher and journalist Richard Ackland, and Virginia Bell, who later became a justice of the High Court of Australia.

Every second Wednesday, Adams is joined by Ian Dunt, editor-at-Large of politics.co.uk,[9] to discuss the latest political, cultural and economic news from Britain, Scotland, Ireland and Europe.

Less frequent regular contributors include the economist Satyajit Das and Tess Newton Cain, from Griffith University, who reports monthly on the Asia-Pacific region.

[10] In earlier years, prominent regular contributors have included Margo Kingston and Beatrix Campbell, discussing the political culture of Australia and Britain respectively, while one of Kingston's successors was the conservative Liberal Party staffer and commentator Christian Kerr, who gained notoriety when revealed as the author of the pseudonymous Hillary Bray political gossip column published by Crikey (which he helped establish).

Over the past 30 years guests have included Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Gerry Adams, Arundhati Roy, David Frum, Isabel Allende, Kevin Rudd, Oliver Stone, and former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as Christopher Hitchens, Gore Vidal, Arthur Miller, Arthur C. Clarke, Jessica Mitford, Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam.

Sixty five percent of listeners are university graduates; 90% are forty or older; 40% hold "AB" (e.g., white collar) jobs while 45% are not in the workforce (retired or home duties – not unemployed), and 55% are women.

The previous theme, adopted soon after Adams took over as host, was the third movement of Johann Sebastian Bach's Concerto for two harpsichords in C minor (BWV 1060).