One thing I try to do on this show is to frame conversations in a way that's going to be comprehensible, even generous, to people I disagree with, to have conversations that will resonate, that'll sound honest, to people from multiple different communities from across the whole political spectrum,

and thereby to create some kind of a coalition of reasonable people who can talk to each other,

regardless of what their prior assumptions about a topic are.

And I sometimes think that would be the hardest thing

about being a political leader, especially the leader of a democracy

in the 21st century, when so many of us get our information from different sources, so many of us

are siloed inside our social media feeds and our friendship groups and our news media ecosystems.

How do you try to stitch together the fabric of a nation when it comprises so many disparate parts?

How do you have conversations with 25 million people at once?

Conversations that are respectful but truthful, that are harsh,

but powerful, that are necessary, but sometimes just a little uncomfortable.

Today's guest needs literally no introduction.

The 29th Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull.

He spent the first 50 years of his life as a Rhodes Scholar, a lawyer,

merchant banker, venture capitalist. He rose to fame in the 1980s as a high-flying barrister representing billionaires like Kerry Packer, and he won a very high-profile

case against the British government to allow the publication of a memoir that was written by a British

spy. That's what first lent him a certain level of celebrity and notoriety, both in the UK

and in Australia. Then in 2004, he ran for Parliament and he won and became a bit of a fixture

of talk shows as a charismatic, wealthy politician and commentator, and it took him less than

four years in politics to ascend to the top of his party and become Australia's leader of the

opposition. He then was deposed a little more than a year later for having supported a sweeping climate change policy

proposed by the centre-left Labour government that was led by the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at the time.

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