A new publisher, Conduit Books, founded by UK novelist and critic Jude Cook, will focus on publishing literary fiction and memoirs by men: at least initially. Conduit is currently seeking its launch title, “preferably a debut novel by a male UK novelist under 35”. It aims to publish three books a year from 2026. Diminishing attention is now paid to male authors, Cook feels, creating a need for “an independent publisher that champions literary fiction by men”.

This argument has been made closer to home, too. Earlier this year, Australian poet and fiction writer Michael Crane bemoaned the diminishing space and attention for male authors, claiming to be unfairly overlooked as a white male author over 50.

Are there declining numbers of male authors in Australia and elsewhere? How is this reflected in prizes, readership statistics and sales? And if less men than women are reading, particularly literary fiction, then might this be a logical outcome of a gender divide in demand and engagement?

Prizes, working writers and sales

While more focused on age than gender, Crane noted “most books published locally are by women”. He also argued female writers have recently come to dominate the Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist.

There is some truth in this: since 2012, the year the Stella Prize was founded, there have been 12 women winners of the Miles Franklin and just one man. In the equivalent preceding period (1999–2011), there were ten men and three women. So, there has been a change – even a flip – in the past decade or so.

That said, older male authors have historically been overrepresented in literary culture, both within Australia and globally. The shift seems, in part, a correction.

While the number of working writers in Australia has grown steadily since 1983, the percentage of male writers has diminished: from 55% (in 1988) to just 17% (as of 2023), according to a recent Creative Australia study of Australian professional artists.

Looking at last week’s Australian bestseller list, topped by US self-help guru Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory, eight of ten authors are women. The bestseller list for Australian writers only, topped by colouring-in book Cosy Calm, is further dominated by women: no male writers are represented in the top ten.

Last year’s overall top ten bestseller list in Australia reads similarly: seven titles were authored by women. Two of these, ranked first and second, were RecipeTin Eats cookbooks by Nagi Maehashi.

In the UK, too, female authors are increasingly dominating publishing lists and the space and attention for male authors has dwindled. New and established male authors lack the “cultural buzz” associated with female authors like Sally Rooney, who have arguably captured the literary zeitgeist, wrote literary critic Johanna Thomas-Corr in the Guardian.

On the other hand, in the period when Australia’s leading literary prize had 12 women and one male winner (2012–24), the Man Booker Prize was still narrowly dominated by men, with eight male and six female winners. (Two women, Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, shared the 2019 prize.)

And in the US during that period, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was heavily dominated by men, with nine male and four female winners. (The 2023 prize was shared, between Barbara Kingsolver and Hernan Diaz.) The 2025 Pulitzer was announced today: the fiction winner is Percival Everett, for James.

Do men need better stories?

While Cook’s project has its sceptics, it seems well intentioned. As Cook notes, current conversations around toxic masculinity make it more important than ever to “pay attention to what young men are reading”. Other commentators have argued the decline of male authors and readers is a cause for concern, too.

In recent months, Las Vegas English professor David J. Morris argued in the New York Times that dwindling interest in literary fiction represents emotional, cultural and educational regression among men in the United States. He notes women readers now account for about 80% of US fiction sales.

The alienated, disaffected young men who have been drawn to the “manosphere” and contributed to Trump’s second election win “need better stories – and they need to see themselves as belonging to the world of storytelling”. He makes a good case for the importance of literary fiction in developing emotional intelligence – and that the decline in male readership is therefore troubling.

Cook seems to agree: he believes important narratives and voices are being overlooked. He is keen to publish novels and stories that focus on fatherhood, masculinity, working-class life, relationships and other topics that relate to “navigating the 21st century as a man”.

He stresses, however, that Conduit Books is not taking an “adversarial stance”. It will “not exclude writers of colour, or queer, non-binary and neurodivergent authors”.

Women read more than men

A February 2025 Australia Reads survey indicates “avid readers” (who regularly start new books and read daily) are predominantly women, whereas “ambivalent readers” and “uninterested non-readers” were far more likely to be men.

Furthermore, recent research suggests there is still a significant gender bias in male reading habits. Men made up less than 20% of the readership for the top ten bestselling titles by female authors, Nielsen Bookscan data revealed in 2023. Conversely, the readership for bestselling titles by male authors was more evenly split: 56% men and 44% women.

Women, on balance, read far more than men do, and are much more willing to read books by men than men are to read books by women. It would be fair to say all writers of literary fiction are largely dependent on a predominately female audience – and have been for a long time.

Back in 2005, when male writers were not exactly underrepresented in the literary marketplace, UK novelist Ian McEwan embarked on an experiment. Seeking to clear out some shelf space, he took a stack of novels to a nearby park and attempted to give them away to passersby. The free books were happily accepted by women, but he failed to give away a single title to a man. McEwan gloomily concluded: “when women stop reading, the novel will be dead”.

Publishing and demand

Cook believes works by men that grapple with themes especially relevant to male readers are “not being commissioned” in the current literary environment.

A 2020 diversity study reported 78% of editorial staff in the UK are women (though the same study indicates just under half of senior management roles in publishing are still occupied by men).

An anonymous male publisher told the Guardian a few years ago “the exciting writing is coming from women right now”, but this was “because there aren’t that many men around. Men aren’t coming through.”

Another publisher, from literary imprint Serpent’s Tail, said: “If a really good novel by a male writer lands on my desk, I do genuinely say to myself, this will be more difficult to publish.”

Sales figures seem to back this. The Guardian calculated, based on figures from the Bookseller, that 629 of the 1,000 bestselling fiction titles from 2020 were written by women, with 341 authored by men (27 were co-authored by men and women, and three were by non-binary writers). Of course, many still read the historical literary canon, which is overwhelmingly male.

Cook seems to argue men are now less interested in literary fiction because there are fewer contemporary male authors, and they attract less commentary and acclaim. But it is just as likely female authors have become more prominent because women are consistently more engaged with literary fiction – and the publishing market is simply adapting to cater to its principal audience.

Can we bring back male readers?

So will publishing and promoting more men bring back male readers? Or does this just amount to a demand that the overwhelmingly female audience for literary fiction should pay more attention to male authors? As literary critic Thomas-Corr notes, regardless of authorship, a lot of men

couldn’t give a toss about fiction, especially literary fiction. They have video games, YouTube, nonfiction, podcasts, magazines, Netflix.

Male writers are still well represented in these mediums, so perhaps it may be as or more important to devote serious attention to their narratives and storytelling practices. Novels aren’t, after all, the only engines for emotional intelligence or empathy.

Cook’s initiative will at the very least create more discussion around the growing absence of male authors and readers in literary spaces, and will probably ensure the first few titles published by Conduit Press will be received with interest. But given contemporary reading demographics, it seems reasonable to expect male authors will occupy an increasingly niche space in literary publishing.

Julian Novitz, Senior Lecturer, Writing, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Mother’s Day offers an opportunity to reflect on what motherhood means in different religions and cultures. As a scholar of Buddhism and gender, I know how complicated Buddhist attitudes toward mothers can be.

The historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, taught that family ties were obstacles to enlightenment. According to the Buddha, attachment to family causes suffering because family relationships eventually end and cannot offer lasting contentment. The main goal of Buddhism is to break the cycle of rebirth, which is characterized by suffering.

However, one family tie remained important for the Buddha – his relationship with his mother. Even after the Buddha left home, he continued to honor two mother figures – his biological mother, Maya, and his foster mother, known as Mahaprajapati Gautami in Sanskrit and Mahapajapati Gotami in the Pali language, which was used for early Buddhist scriptures in ancient India. These women played key roles in the Buddha’s life story, and they continue to inspire Buddhists today. Mahaprajapati specifically inspires women as the first Buddhist nun.

Many Buddhist scriptures describe reproduction and pregnancy in negative terms because they continue the cycle of rebirth. But Buddhist scriptures also express love and gratitude for mothers, especially the Buddha’s two mother figures.

Maya, the birth mother

Maya and Mahaprajapati were sisters who both married the Buddha’s father, Suddhodana, who ruled the region of Kapilavastu along the India-Nepal border. Maya’s name means “illusion,” which refers to a Hindu and Buddhist concept that the material world conceals the true nature of reality.

Miracles related to Maya appear throughout stories of the future Buddha Siddhartha’s conception, gestation and delivery. Siddhartha is the Buddha of the current world cycle, but in Buddhist tradition there were other Buddhas in the past and there will be more Buddhas in the future. Each one goes through many rebirths before they attain Buddhahood, and each Buddha’s final rebirth follows the same pattern. According to Buddhist texts, Buddhas-to-be wait for the right time to be born, they choose their own parents, and they are not conceived through sexual intercourse.

Early Buddhist texts claim that Siddhartha chose Maya as his mother because of her purity and entered her right side in the form of an elephant while she was sleeping. According to some Buddhist scriptures, during Maya’s pregnancy the future Buddha never actually touched her womb, which was considered impure in early Indian Buddhism. When Siddhartha was born, he is said to have emerged from Maya’s right side as she stood, holding onto a tree branch.

Maya died seven days after her son’s birth, meaning that she did not live to see him become an enlightened Buddha. As the Buddha, even though Siddhartha encouraged his followers to leave domestic life and cut family ties, he never forgot his birth mother.

Thanks to her good karma, Maya had been reborn in the heavens as a god, but in Buddhism gods are not as spiritually advanced as Buddhas. The Buddha used his spiritual powers to travel to the heavens, where he preached to Maya and encouraged her progress on the Buddhist path.

One Chinese text claims that Maya spontaneously lactated upon hearing her son’s words, showing that the bond between mother and son remained strong even after her death.

Mahaprajapati, the foster mother

Siddhartha’s aunt Mahaprajapati became his foster mother after Maya died. She cared for the young Siddhartha and breastfed him, having just given birth to her own biological son, Nanda.

When Siddhartha was preparing to leave home to follow a spiritual path, the chariot driver tried to convince him to stay by reminding Siddhartha how Mahaprajapati nursed him and telling Siddhartha he should be grateful for her motherly kindness.

Siddhartha left home anyway, which caused Mahaprajapati to collapse out of grief. According to the Mahavastu, the earliest Sanskrit biography of the Buddha, her “eyes, as a result of her tears and grief, had become covered as with scales, and she had become blind.” It was only after Siddhartha returned as the Buddha that her sight was restored.

At around the same time as the Buddha’s return to his kingdom of Kapilavastu, his father Suddhodana died, making Mahaprajapati a widow. The books with rules for Buddhist monks and nuns, known as the Vinaya, report that Mahaprajapati approached the Buddha to ask whether women like her, as well as women whose husbands had become monks, could leave home to join the Buddha’s monastic order.

The Buddha eventually agreed to this request but warned that including women as nuns would cut short the lifespan of Buddhist teachings in the world from 1,000 years to 500 years. Mahaprajapati became the first Buddhist nun, reaching enlightenment before passing away at the age of 120.

Scholars of Buddhism do not necessarily treat this episode as literally true, but instead see it as a reflection of mixed attitudes toward admitting women as nuns in the early Buddhist community. These mixed attitudes can still be seen today – for example, in the unwillingness to reinstate the order of nuns in Southeast Asia, which died out centuries ago.

In Buddhism, nuns must be ordained by a group of 10 fully ordained monks and fully ordained nuns. An order of nuns still survives in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, where Mahayana Buddhism is practiced. However, the monastic leaders in Southeast Asia, where Theravada Buddhism is practiced, decided that Mahayana nuns could not ordain Theravada nuns, leaving countries such as Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar without fully ordained nuns.

Legacies of the Buddha’s mothers

Both Maya and Mahaprajapati were loving mothers in the Buddha’s life story, but it is Mahaprajapati who has remained more of an inspiration for Buddhist women.

Reiko Ohnuma, a scholar of South Asian Buddhism, argues that Maya is remembered in Buddhist tradition as an idealized, if passive, maternal figure. Her death shortly after the future Buddha’s birth serves as a reminder that life is impermanent and characterized by suffering.

In contrast, Mahaprajapati lived a full life and played an active role in both raising the future Buddha and in advocating for women to join the monastic community. Early Buddhists may not have fully supported the inclusion of women in the Buddhist monastic community, but the nuns’ order was established nonetheless.

Mahaprajapati made this opportunity possible thanks to her unique position as the Buddha’s foster mother.

Megan Bryson, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Hadrian Garrard, the curator of Morris Mania – an innovative exhibition now showing at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, east London – tells the story of being in King’s Cross Station and spotting someone wheeling a shopping trolley covered in a plasticised Morris pattern. It reminded me of the time when a student thanked me for my teaching with a pair of Morris-themed flip-flops.

Mugs, tea towels, notepads, handbags and all manner of other incongruous objects make up this world of Morris merchandise. Much of it is made in China and remote from the purposes William Morris had in mind. How did this Victorian designer and socialist, known for championing craftsmanship and preferring substance over style, become an icon of consumer culture?

The exhibition’s tagline – How Britain’s Greatest Designer Went Viral – makes good sense. It’s not just that Morris stages an escape from the Victorian decorative world, but that his art proliferates in uncontrolled ways. The walk from Walthamstow station lays the groundwork in this regard: exhibition posters in shop windows, end-of-terrace murals and even the civic architecture, speak of something leaking from the gallery walls.

The first display in the exhibition tell the story of how we got here. Morris began spreading thanks to the commissions he received from aristocratic and royal clients. They were drawn to the medieval ethos of his work, and its rejection of industrialism in the arts. An important early contract was for the interiors at St James’s Palace.

But these establishment associations soon morphed and mutated, first among the English middle classes, who welcomed Morris’s designs into their suburban villas despite his new fondness for revolution, and then more remotely: one photograph shows Morris-patterned walls at St Peterburg’s Winter Palace, taken shortly after the Bolsheviks stormed the building. The socialism as it were, is turned inside out.

The earliest Morris merchandise was printed for a centenary exhibition at the V&A Museum in 1934. One of its patterned postcards appears in a display case, the souvenir of Morris’s own daughter, May, whose handwriting is on the back. In 1966, Morris’s designs went out of copyright, marking a watershed. Pop Victoriana and Laura Ashley floral dresses depended on it for their reproductive freedoms.

George Harrison’s “golden lily” jacket, from the Chelsea boutique Granny Takes a Trip, stands out as a poignant example of the ways in which Morris was recut and repurposed for the counterculture.

Morris’s “rose” pattern proves a particularly intrepid traveller, as the design chosen for the officers’ cushions on HMS Valliant, an early nuclear-powered submarine. Its onboard domesticity blends curiously with the menace of its mission.

Three turning points prepare us for the newest forms of Morris mania. The V&A’s 1996 exhibition repopularised Morris’s work, and thanks to new digital technology, its merchandise included printed mugs.

Then, in 2001, the British government instructed public collections to open their doors for free. In search of new income streams, museums turned to selling themed objects through their shops. The rise of China as a manufacturing hub complemented this emphasis – less by revolutionising working conditions and democratising design, as Morris had hoped, than with a flood of cheaply produced goods.

Beyond this revealing timeline, what really impresses is the exhibition’s care in preserving distinctions. It’s particularly careful to show that going viral need not mean selling out. From Nanjing – a major centre of Chinese manufacturing – comes a poster for the 2023 exhibition Beyond William Morris at the Nanjing Museum. It attracted over a million visitors, reminding us that behind the merchandise are new wells of love and respect.

Something similar applies at the level of making. For every sweatshop Hello Kitty, the same character appears in a beautifully crafted yukata (a casual kimono) in Liberty fabrics made in Japan.

A Brompton Bike hangs from the wall – manufactured in London, and sporting a handsome “willow bough” livery. Likewise, a neon “strawberry thief” motif, made at Walthamstow’s God’s Own Junk Yard, rekindles the embers of local production. This emphasis extends to the exhibition’s own making. A film documents the weaving of the Axminster carpet that furnishes the main room. Even the labels were dyed by hand with weld, a natural pigment whose use Morris revived.

In these ways, the exhibition champions ethical and bespoke production, while confronting the darker currents that move objects around our world. It also stays curious enough to push further by exploring the kitsch new frontier of “Morris” patterns generated by AI, or by populating a Victorian dresser with “crowdsourced” Morris bric-a-brac.

There might have been more space to consider why the surface effects of pattern travel so readily, and to quote Morris’s writings on the subject. But much of that is implicit and there for audiences to follow up.

Morris Mania excels by nurturing the joy behind all this promiscuous growth. Most pleasingly, that trolley from King’s Cross makes a reappearance, dressed here in an AI-adapted “strawberry thief”, courtesy of Sholley Trolleys, Clacton-on-Sea. Just like Morris himself, it was made in Essex.

Morris Mania: How Britain’s Greatest Designer Went Viral is at the William Morris Gallery until September 21 2025.

Marcus Waithe, Professor of Literature and the Applied Arts, University of Cambridge

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

One moment, your spaghetti is happily bubbling away in the pot. A minute later, after busying yourself with something else, you turn around to find a hot mess all over your stove.

Boiling liquid can rocket up very quickly, and we often only have a split second to act. But are there ways to prevent the pot boiling over in the first place? One kitchen hack you may have seen on social media is to place a wooden spoon across the top of the pot.

Does it work? As with many kitchen science questions, there is an answer – and there’s lots of nuance, too.

In short, it will work, but not for long periods of time. Let’s dig into the why.

What causes the bubbles?

Interestingly, a pot of rapidly boiling pure water will not rise up the sides of the pot.

Ingredients added to the water are the culprits for overflow and spillage. Pots of pasta, rice, porridge or milk are the most prone to boiling over and making a mess. A heavy stew is less likely to bubble over – unless you overfill the pot.

In cookery, the key food molecules are water, carbohydrates, proteins, lipids (the collective term for fats and oils) and, to a lesser extent, vitamins and minerals.

The main culprits for rapid boiling and overflow are carbohydrates and proteins. When carbohydrates or proteins (or a combination of both) come into contact with heated water molecules, their properties change and structures rearrange.

Changes can happen quickly if the heat is high. Excited by lots of heat, the water molecules begin to boil rapidly. As this occurs, bubbles form.

Why do the bubbles rise so quickly?

The carbohydrates involved in bubbling up and messing up your kitchen are primarily plant starches. Pasta or porridge products are derived from plant starches such as wheat, rice, potato or corn. If you’re boiling anything with milk, a protein called casein can contribute to the bubbles, too.

Casein and starches are known as colloids. “Colloidal dispersion” means that not all such particles will dissolve into a water solution, because some of these particles are too large. As bubbles form, the larger starch and/or protein particles start to coat the bubbles.

For pasta water or porridge, the heat and starch solution starts to form a gel. This gel becomes sticky and, depending on the type of starch and other additives, the temperature of the boiling solution can rise above 100°C.

So, they’re not just bubbles – they’re hot, sticky bubbles. Filled with air and coated with a sticky starch gel, as the solution continues to boil, the bubbles build on top of each other and rise up the sides of the pot.

It’s a little different with milk. Have you ever noticed a film across the top of boiled milk? Milk skin is formed by heated casein. When heated, the casein can become quite strong – like plastic – and coat each bubble. Milk bubbles are smaller and become more of a foam, but they can still rise quickly.

So, how does a wooden spoon stop the bubbles?

Placing a wooden spoon over a boiling pot acts as an interruption to the bubbles – it lowers the surface temperature and provides a porous surface to burst the bubbles. This stops them from climbing over the edge of the pot.

To understand why, picture another porous surface: the structure of a sponge. Because the sponge has a lot of holes in it, you can blow air through a dry sponge. However, air does not pass through a wet sponge because the holes are filled with water.

Wood is a porous material, and a dry wooden spoon is more porous than when it’s wet. On contact with the wood, the air in the bubbles is released.

But you can’t just leave a wooden spoon over the pot indefinitely and expect it to not boil over. As the spoon is exposed to heat, moisture, sticky starch or casein bubbles, it will soon become the same temperature as the liquid. That means it won’t reduce the surface temperature any more, nor be porous enough to burst bubbles.

This is why some people claim the spoon hack doesn’t work – because it has a limited window of effectiveness.

What should I do instead?

Stirring the pot or using the wooden spoon as a fan would work equally as well.

Better yet, try not to get distracted in the kitchen and select the correct kitchen tools for the job: use a bigger pot, and turn down the heat so it’s not just going full blast.

We like to treat working in the kitchen like a meditation. Remain present and in the moment. If you do get distracted, turn the stove to its lowest setting, switch it off or remove the pot from the heat. The phrase “a watched pot never boils” doesn’t count in this situation. Indeed, a watchful eye on the pot is essential.

Jay Deagon, Senior Lecturer of Home Economics, CQUniversity Australia and Gemma Mann, Senior Lecturer in Access and Equity in Education, CQUniversity Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It’s almost impossible to go a day without seeing or hearing about sport.

Walk around any city or town and you will almost always catch a glimpse of people playing sports in teams or participating solo.

Turn on the TV or radio and you’ll be able to find some kind of sport being played at international or national level.

Why do people love sport so much?

To answer this question, it’s worth a dive back into ancient history.

An ancient person’s perspective

One of the most famous figures from the ancient world, Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), once wrote that when he was a boy he was obsessed with playing sports:

I liked to play ball as a boy and my playing slowed my progress in learning to read and write.

In fact, Saint Augustine was so preoccupied with playing ball that his teacher was said to sometimes beat him for it. His teacher said it was bad to waste one’s youth on such things – it’s better to study hard.

Why was Saint Augustine obsessed with ball games? He loved to win:

I loved to play games […] in these games I was overmastered by my vain desire to excel, so I used to strive to win, even by cheating.

Plenty of people today probably share Saint Augustine’s view that winning is one of the things that make sport enjoyable.

Of course, there are many other reasons why people might like to play sport.

What sports did they play?

If you walked down a city street in ancient Greek and Roman times, it’s likely you’d come across children or even adults playing a ball game.

The Roman playwright Plautus (3rd/2nd century BC) even has one of his characters complain about people “who play ball in the street”.

Ball games were probably the most popular sporting activity in the ancient world and could be played in many different ways.

In one ball game, called episkyros, two teams competed against each other. If one team got the ball over the line behind the other team, they scored. Feet and hands could be used and tackles were permitted.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Of course, many other sports were also popular: athletics, swimming, wrestling, lifting weights and boxing were all favourites.

Ancient ideas about the origins of sports

For the ancient Greeks, the earliest mention of a ball game appears in the Odyssey, an epic poem composed by the poet Homer in probably the eighth or seventh century BC.

In the Odyssey, Nausicaa, daughter of the King of the Phaeacians, plays a ball game with some other girls on the beach. While they throw the ball, they sing songs:

Then when they had had their joy of food, she and her handmaids, they threw off their headgear and fell to playing at ball, and white-armed Nausicaa was leader in the song.

During the game, Nausicaa throws the ball too far. Her maid can’t catch it and the ball flies into the sea. All the girls shout out when it goes flying.

Already in the 3rd century BC, Nausicaa was sometimes regarded as the inventor of ball games. However, other people attributed the invention of ball games to different regions of Greece, saying the games were invented by the Sicyonians or Spartans.

But it is unlikely any Greeks were the original inventors of ball games.

In Egypt, thousands of years before Homer’s epics, there are already artistic depictions of ball games.

For example, in the tomb of the Nomarch of the 11th Dynasty (c. 2150-2000 BC), Baqet III, there is artwork showing women playing ball games and men wrestling each other.

Baqet III, whose tomb contained these artistic depictions of various sports, was likely a true sports lover.

Why did people like sports?

People liked ball games for many different reasons.

One was for the sheer fun and excitement. Another was because they were considered a healthy type of exercise.

Ancient Greek and Roman doctors even told their patients to play ball games to become healthier.

For example, the famous ancient Greek physician Galen (129-216 AD) wrote an essay titled On Exercise with a Small Ball.

He argued “exercises with a small ball are superior to other kinds of exercises”.

He claimed ball games were especially healthy because they moved all of the muscles and because teamwork was good for the soul.

People in the ancient world also thought just watching sport could be something worth doing.

The writer Lucian of Samosata (born 120 AD), for instance, said watching athletes competing for glory could help to encourage men to achieve similar feats: “many of the spectators go away in love with manfulness and hard work”, wrote Lucian.

So it seems there’s nothing new about our modern love of playing and watching sports, and this obsession will probably continue for thousands of years into the future.

Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In an age of cynicism and despair, Lady Gaga’s recent Coachella performance “The Art of Personal Chaos” brings audiences hope.

Over two weekends, audiences were treated to a visually lavish set, flawless choreography and strong vocals. Gaga’s performance in five acts — staged for fans as an opera house set in the Indio, California desert — was a self-reflexive event exploring many influences upon the singer.

Gaga’s performance paid homage to past greats such as Michael Jackson and Prince as well as her different past selves. From donning armour and crutches from her “Paparazzi” persona to her Fame-era look, Gaga showed that where she is today follows and emerges from every iteration of her artistic identity over the years.

The evocation and embodiment of her different selves suggested not only a journey of mixed emotions and struggles regarding fame, but her negotiation and resolution of these struggles as pathways into a promising future.

In a recent interview, Gaga highlights that for her, despite emotional struggles and pain, reflexiveness, acceptance and forward thinking can yield eventual peace and happiness.

For me as scholar who researches organizations, Gaga’s performance is an allegory of the need for stewarding change and transition in today’s world.

Allegory of the need to steward change

In my work with organizational scholars Peter Dacin and Derin Kent, we suggest that people involved in stewarding change and transition in organizations are “custodians” — people with a vested interest in protecting traditions, while also reimagining and renewing them over time.

As our work argues, custodians are agents of maintaining the best aspects of cultural continuity, as well as change. Such custodians in workplaces or social organizations facing disruption take valued remnants from the past and curate them to be accessible and relevant for the future.

Gaga’s performance reminds us how artists may be understood to serve this role for society at large. This leads us to view Gaga as an architect of future possibility, a “custodian of hope.”

Cultivating expectations, visions

Custodians of hope are deliberately prospective — meaning, they cultivate expectations and concrete visions for the future.

They craft futures that are worth preserving. They do this by translating current and past practices through renewal and reinvention and by keeping things continually refreshed. Gaga did this by reimagining her past hits during her performance and by injecting them with a new and renewed sense of energy and style.

As writer Coleman Spilde’s brilliant review in Salon noted, Gaga’s performance reminds us that in a world where it’s easy to feel defeated, “beauty is not lost; it’s just harder to find.”

Throughout several of the numbers performed during her Coachella set, Gaga showed that existing in the present is not so simple. Battles are fought and choices must be made. By embodying resilience, Gaga gives us hope and inspiration that in a world full of volatility and despair, small acts of resistance and emotional contagion can craft and recraft the future.

The past is a resource for renewal

According to recent research by organizational studies scholars Matthias Wenzel, Hannes Krämer, Jochen Koch and Andreas Reckwitz, people can work to make alternative futures that are not strictly bound to the past but still align with their values. We shouldn’t just passively allow the future to unfold: we need to be intentional about crafting truly desirable futures, as suggested by organizational scholars Ali Aslan Gümüsay and Juliane Reinecke.

As my research with entrepreneurship scholar Nico Klenner examines, custodians of hope care for the past while projecting the past into futures they and others desire.

Yet Gaga goes beyond merely preserving tradition. As a custodian, Gaga curates the past, showing us that tradition is not simply the weight or remnant of the past. Bits of the past are reworked and recrafted as she selectively incorporates past styles of Prince and Michael Jackson into her performance as well as nods to fashion moments of her varied personas.

As expressed by a fan on Tik Tok, dance moves choreographed during “Shadow of a Man” are reminiscent of Jackson. The past becomes a valuable resource for renewal and reinvention moving us towards what might be.

Evoke emotion to enlist others

However, invoking the past is not enough. To realize change, custodians need to evoke emotion to enlist others. As sociologist Ann Mische suggests, hope is ultimately an emotion of possibility.

As a custodian of hope, Gaga takes audiences through an emotionally laden and inclusive journey that reminds us how struggles can be overcome through acts of confrontation, defiance and resilience. For example, during her performance of “Poker Face” performed on a chess board, Gaga confronts a blond figure, an earlier version of her past self.

Early on in her second performance at Coachella, Gaga experienced a wireless microphone failure and grabbed a connected mic and exclaimed: “I’m sorry my mic was broken for a second; At least you know I sing live; And I guess all we can do is our best; I’m definitely giving you my best tonight; I love you so much,” sending the crowd into an uproar.

The audience experienced a collective sense of resilience or effervescence, in what seemed to be a public celebration of generosity and improvisation above perfection.

Collective sense of care

Through interactivity with the audience via the live performance and livestream, fans are drawn in to co-imagine the future not through Lady Gaga but with her. Asking the crowd to raise their “monster paws” signals encouragement and support highlighting the importance of a sense of collective care.

In addition to evoking emotion, Gaga reminded us of the importance of anchoring her vision for the future in the collective sense of care embedded in the Born This Way Foundation. For example, her #BeKind365 platform has logged millions of acts of kindness since its inception. This shows how value can be generated through structured supports or programs that link positive emotion with specific and concrete acts.

Gaga curates as well as extends the past through renewal and reinvention to enlist new believers into a plausible path forward. Her performance underscores that hope is not a one-off moment but rather, an ongoing custodial effort of curating and reconciling the past towards a kinder and more authentic future.

M. Tina Dacin, Stephen J.R. Smith Chaired Professor of Strategy & Organizational Behaviour, Queen's University, Ontario

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Labor’s federal election win means university fees and costs are set to change. But some of these changes will not be immediate.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already said planned cuts to student debt will be a top priority for the the new parliament. A new student debt repayment system will follow soon after.

But humanities students paying nearly A$17,000 a year for their studies – thanks to the Job-ready Graduates scheme introduced by the Morrison government – will probably have to wait until 2027 for lower fees.

Reduction in student debt

People with student debt will benefit from a 20% cut to how much they owe. As the Greens support wiping student debt entirely, Labor is likely to only need one or two other senators to pass the cut.

With more Labor senators elected, Labor will be less reliant on crossbenchers to get legislation through parliament.

Labor says the debt reduction will apply before 3.2% indexation is applied to HELP loan balances on June 1 this year. Given this deadline is mere weeks away, the necessary legislation will probably need to be retrospective.

On average, the 20% reduction will save Australia’s 3 million student debtors about $5,500 each.

A new student debt repayment system

Another promised Labor change will deliver quick cash benefits to the about 1.2 million people making compulsory student debt repayments.

If the Senate agrees, for the 2025-26 financial year, the income threshold to start repaying student loans will increase from $56,156 to $67,000. Anyone earning less than $67,000 in 2025-26 will repay nothing that financial year, compared to between $561 and $1,340 under current settings.

Once the $67,000 income threshold is reached, student debtors will repay 15% of their income above this amount up to an income of $125,000, when the rate moves up to 17%. For example, a person earning $68,000 will be $1,000 above the new threshold – 15% of $1,000 equals a repayment of $150. Under the current system, somebody earning $68,000 would repay $1,360.

Employers will deduct lower HELP repayments from their payroll, delivering extra cash to student debtor employees. Given the limited time before the thresholds are scheduled to change on July 1, employers may start with the old repayment system and transition to the new one after the necessary legislation passes.

Understand the fine print

During the election campaign, the Parliamentary Budget Office released work it did on HELP repayment scenarios for independent ACT Senator David Pocock, who was reelected on Saturday.

This showed how under Labor’s proposed system, people with student debt will take longer to repay and incur higher indexation costs. If student debtors are concerned about this they can make voluntary repayments.

What happens to the Job-ready Graduates scheme?

A key to reducing repayment times is students accruing less debt in the first place. The Morrison government’s Job-ready Graduates policy increased student contributions for business, law and most arts subjects. Currently they pay $16,992 a year for their studies.

The Coalition introduced this change in 2022 in a bid to encourage more university students to study “job-ready” teaching, nursing and STEM subjects.

A new Australian Tertiary Education Commission, which Labor plans to legislate in the second half of 2025, will review student contribution levels as part of its broader role in managing the domestic student funding system.

Last year, the Australian Universities Accord final report recommended student contributions should no longer be designed to steer course choices. Instead they should be based on expected future earnings.

Using this principle, humanities students would pay the cheapest student contribution level. But this will not happen quickly.

The new commission has a lot of work to do, with new student contributions forming part of a broader funding overhaul. The government then needs to accept any recommendations and legislate the new rates.

Unfortunately for current students, this process means that student contributions are unlikely to change before 2027 at the earliest.

International students

While many domestic students are set to eventually pay less for their education, international students face early increases in costs. During the election campaign, Labor announced student visa application fees will increase from $1,600 to $2,000. As recently as June 2024 the visa application fee was only $710.

This latest visa increase adds another item to an already long list of policies designed to discourage or block potential international students. It probably isn’t the last.

Although student visa applications have trended down, the number of student visa holders in Australia at the end of March 2025 was higher than at the same time in 2023 or 2024.

The government might try again to legislate formal caps on international student numbers. The Greens combined with the Liberals to block this in 2024.

Commonwealth Prac Payments

With Labor returned, eligible teaching, nursing and social work students will receive $331.65 a week when on mandatory work placements.

While the “Commonwealth Prac Payments” policy is scheduled to start on July 1, the necessary legal instrument is not yet in place.

Late in the election campaign the Coalition announced that, if elected, it would proceed with Prac Payments as a loan, rather than a grant.

With the election result, Prac Payments can go ahead as originally planned. The minister can authorise the necessary delegated legislation before parliament sits. While the Senate could later “disallow” Prac Payments, the new Senate numbers make this very unlikely.

Needs-based funding

Labor’s election win should see another so far unlegislated program – needs-based funding for equity students – proceed as promised from January 1 2026.

This will be a per student payment made to universities for each low socioeconomic status and First Nations student, along with each student enrolled at a regional campus. The idea is similar to needs-based funding for schools.

Whether or not current education minister Jason Clare remains in the portfolio, Labor has a large higher education agenda to implement. In some areas the detail is already clear. But significant work remains to develop the new Australian Tertiary Education Commission and a new domestic student funding system.

With several policy start dates due in the next eight weeks, the government will need to move quickly.

Andrew Norton, Professor of Higher Education Policy, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Picture this: a small audience is quietly ushered into a darkened room. They gasp in awe, as a brilliant night sky shines above. They wonder – as many after them will do – what trickery has made the roof above their heads disappear?

But this is a performance; the stars above an ingenious projection. For the first time a public audience has experienced the spectacle of the opto-mechanical planetarium. The location is the newly opened Deutsches Museum in Munich, built to celebrate science and technology. The date is May 7 1925.

Visualising the heavens

Throughout time, cultures around the world have used the stars to help make sense of the world, to understand where we come from and determine our place in the cosmos.

People have tried to recreate the movements of the stars and planets since antiquity. In the 1700s, the orrery, a clockwork model of the Solar System, was developed. The word “planetarium” was invented to describe orreries that featured the planets.

One room-sized orrery example was built by the self-taught Frisian astronomer Eise Eisinga. It’s still operational today in Franeker, Netherlands.

No human has ever been to the edge of the Solar System to see this view. Orreries, and other mechanical models of the universe like celestial globes, present views from impossible, external perspectives.

The first planetariums

The desire for a realistic view of the stars and planets, created from a perspective we actually see, gathered pace in the early 20th century as light pollution from growing cities diminished the view of the night sky.

People like Oskar von Miller, first director of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, wanted to return this vision of the stars and planets to everyone. (Ironically, von Miller’s earlier career was as an electrical engineer, rolling out the city lighting that contributed to light pollution.)

One early attempt to create this view of the night sky was the Atwood Sphere, installed in Chicago in 1913.

Approximately five metres across, it was made of sheet metal perforated with a star map. When viewed from the inside, the light shining through 692 pinholes replicated the Chicago night sky. The whole structure could even be rotated to simulate the motion of the stars.

A realistic display of the stars is one thing. Representing the planets, whose positions in the sky change from night to night, is a different one. Von Miller and others at the Deutsches Museum knew that fixed holes could not represent the complexity of a moving planet.

What if the planets were displayed by projection? If so, couldn’t the stars be projected, as well? With this realisation, a new kind of planetarium was born, borrowing the name from earlier orreries but working in a completely different way.

The task of building such a device was given to the German optical company Carl Zeiss AG. After many setbacks, their first planetarium projector was completed in 1923, with the first performance at the Deutsches Museum a century ago today.

Planetariums were a hit with the public. Within decades, they had spread around the world – the first planetarium in the United States opened in Chicago in 1930, while the first one in Asia opened in Osaka, Japan in 1937. The popularity of planetariums particularly accelerated in the US during the space race of the 1960s.

Australia’s oldest operating planetarium is the Melbourne Planetarium, managed by Museums Victoria since 1965. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Auckland’s Stardome Observatory has been in operation since 1997. The current longest-running planetarium in the southern hemisphere is in Montevideo, Uruguay, operational since 1955.

Changing pace of technology

The opto-mechanical planetarium projector remains a technological wonder of the modern world. Individual plates, perforated with pinholes, are illuminated by a bright central light. Separate lenses focus each projection from one of these star maps to fill the entire dome with about 5,000 stars.

The Sun, Moon and planets have separate projectors driven by gears and rods that mechanically calculate the object’s position in the sky for any time or place.

By the 1990s, a digital revolution had begun. With the advent of computers, the positions of the planets could now be calculated digitally. The Melbourne Planetarium became the first digital planetarium in the southern hemisphere when it installed the Digistar II in 1999.

This system, developed by computer graphics company Evans and Sutherland, replaced the multiple lenses of earlier projectors with a fisheye lens. A single beam of light swept across the whole dome so rapidly that it seemed to create a single image – albeit in a bizarre green colour, rendering a starfield of fuzzy green blobs.

The trade-off for a less crisp starfield was a 3D database with more than 9,000 stars. For the first time, planetarium audiences could fly through space, far beyond the edge of the Solar System.

Planetarium technology continues to develop. Today, most planetariums operate through video projection. Known as fulldome, the output from multiple projectors is blended together to create a seamless video, transforming the planetarium into a sophisticated 360-degree theatre.

A gateway to the stars

Astronomy has also changed over the last century. Just as Zeiss was completing its first projector, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that other galaxies exist beyond our Milky Way galaxy.

The stars shown on the dome in Munich in 1925 turned out to be just a tiny part of the universe that we know today.

Planetariums’ digital systems now incorporate data from telescopes and space agencies around the world. Audiences can fly off Earth, orbit the planets and moons of the Solar System, and explore the billions of known galaxies.

Yet some things have not changed. From orreries and lantern slides to opto-mechanical and digital planetariums, the communication of astronomy has always been about more than just the latest results of science.

The power of the planetarium over the last 100 years has been its ability to evoke wonder and awe. It taps into our enduring fascination with the vast mystery of the night sky.

Martin Bush, Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science, The University of Melbourne and Tanya Hill, Honorary Fellow at University of Melbourne and Senior Curator (Astronomy), Museums Victoria Research Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As we age, it’s common to notice posture changes: shoulders rounding, head leaning forward, back starting to curve. You might associate this with older adults and wonder: will this happen to me? Can I prevent it?

It’s sometimes called “hunchback” or “roundback”, but the medical term for a curved back is kyphosis.

When the curve is beyond what’s considered normal (greater than 40 degrees), we refer to this as hyperkyphosis. In more severe cases, it may lead to pain, reduced mobility and physical function, or lower quality of life.

Here’s how it happens, and how to reduce your risk.

What causes a curved back?

A healthy spine has an elongated s-shape, so a curve in the upper spine is completely normal.

But when that curve becomes exaggerated and fixed (meaning you can’t stand up straight even if you try), it can signal a problem.

One common cause of a curved back is poor posture. This type, called postural kyphosis, usually develops over time due to muscle imbalances, particularly in younger people who spend hours:

• hunched over a desk
• slouched in a chair, or
• looking down at a phone.

Fortunately, this kind of curved back is often reversible with the right exercises, stretches and posture awareness.

Older adults often develop a curved back, known as age-related kyphosis or hyperkyphosis.

This is usually due to wear and tear in the spine, including vertebral compression fractures, which are tiny cracks in the bones of the spine (vertebrae).

These cracks are most often caused by osteoporosis, a condition that makes bones more fragile with age.

In these cases, it’s not just bad posture – it’s a structural change in the spine.

How can you tell the difference?

Signs of age-related hyperkyphosis include:

• your back curves even when you try to stand up straight
• back pain or stiffness
• a loss of height (anything greater than 3-4 centimetres compared to your peak adult height may be considered outside of “normal” ageing).

Other causes of a curved back include:

• Scheuermann’s kyphosis (which often develops during adolescence when the bones in the spine grow unevenly, leading to a forward curve in the upper back)
• congenital kyphosis (a rare condition present from birth, caused by improper formation of the spinal bones. It can result in a more severe, fixed curve that worsens as a child grows)
• scoliosis (where the spine curves sideways into a c- or s-shape when viewed from behind), and
• lordosis (an excessive inward curve in the lower back, when viewed from the side).

In addition to these structural conditions, arthritis, and in rare cases, spinal injuries or infections, can also play a role.

Should I see a doctor about my curved back?

Yes, especially if you’ve noticed a curve developing, have ongoing back pain, or have lost height over time.

These can be signs of vertebral fractures, which can occur in the absence of an obvious injury, and are often painless.

While one in five older adults have a vertebral fracture, as many as two-thirds of these fractures are not diagnosed and treated.

In Australia, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and Healthy Bones Australia recommend a spine x-ray for:

• people with kyphosis
• height loss equal to or more than 3 centimetres, or
• unexplained back pain.

What can I do to reduce my risk?

If you’re young or middle-aged, the habits you build today matter.

The best way to prevent a curved back is to keep your bones strong, muscles active, and posture in check. That means:

• doing regular resistance training, especially targeting upper back muscles
• staying physically active, aiming for at least 150 minutes per week
• getting enough protein, calcium, and vitamin D to support bone and muscle health
• avoiding smoking and limiting alcohol to reduce risk factors that worsen bone density and overall wellbeing

Pay attention to your posture while sitting and standing. Position your head over your shoulders and shoulders over your hips. This reduces strain on your spine.

What exercises help prevent and manage a curved back?

Focus on exercises that strengthen the muscles that support an upright posture, particularly the upper back and core, while improving mobility in the chest and shoulders.

In general, you want to prioritise extension-based movements. These involve straightening or lifting the spine and pulling the shoulders back.

Repeated forward-bending (or flexion) movements may make things worse, especially in people with osteoporosis or spinal fractures.

Good exercises include:

• back extensions (gently lift your chest off the floor while lying face down)
• resistance exercises targeting the muscles between your shoulder blades
• weight-bearing activities (such as brisk walking, jogging, stair climbing, or dancing) to keep bones strong and support overall fitness
• stretching your chest and hip flexors to open your posture and relieve tightness.

Flexibility and balance training (such as yoga and pilates) can be beneficial, particularly for posture awareness, balance, and mobility. But research increasingly supports muscle strengthening as the cornerstone of prevention and management.

Muscle strengthening exercises, such as weight lifting or resistance training, reduces spinal curvature while enhancing muscle and bone mass.

If you suspect you have kyphosis or already have osteoporosis or a vertebral fracture, consult a health professional before starting an exercise program. There may be some activities to avoid.

Can a curved back be reversed?

If it’s caused by poor posture and muscle weakness, then yes, it’s possible.

But if it’s caused by bone changes, especially vertebral fractures, then full reversal is unlikely. However, treatment can reduce pain, improve function, and slow further progression.

Protecting your posture isn’t just about appearance. It’s about staying strong, mobile and independent as you age.

Jakub Mesinovic, Research Fellow at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University and David Scott, Associate Professor (Research) and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Anna Jagiellon was elected Queen of Poland in 1575. While many women rose to power by birth or marriage, Anna was actually chosen by nobles to rule. This achievement remains surprising.

Today, female world leaders are still rare. According to recent data, only about one in four national parliament members globally are women: 27.2% of parliamentarians in single or lower houses, up from 11% in 1995.

As of January 1 2025, in 25 countries women serve as heads of state or government. That number has improved over the past few decades, but men continue to dominate elected office. Anna’s story, set over four centuries ago, shows a woman could secure power through a vote, even in an era when female rulers were nearly unheard of.

The making of a queen

Anna was born in 1523. Her father was King Sigismund the Elder and her mother was Queen Bona Sforza.

The family, the Jagiellon dynasty, ruled a vast realm of Poland and Lithuania. Her brother, King Sigismund II Augustus, was the last male heir. When he died, Anna became the only living member of that royal line residing in Poland.

When Sigismund II Augustus died in 1572, Anna was not initially considered as eligible to ascend the throne: there was no tradition of a woman inheriting it. The Poles had only one previous queen regnant, a woman who rules a kingdom in her own right: Jadwiga, the queen whose 1386 marriage to Jogaila, grand duke of Lithuania, founded the centuries-long union of Lithuania and Poland. Lithuanians had none.

The nobility of the Jagiellon realm decided to elect their monarch, as Sigismund II Augustus did not have a son to inherit the throne. In May 1573, 22-year-old Henry Valois of France was elected king. His reign did not last much more than a year. In May 1574, his brother, Charles IX of France, died. Henry returned to France to become Henry III.

Anna had once been on the sidelines of court life. Perhaps she was overshadowed by her powerful mother and siblings. Yet after her brother’s death and Henry’s abandonment of the Polish throne, she leapt into politics.

In the time when the throne was vacant, Anna became an important figure in deciding who would rule next. Many people viewed her as a political pawn, but she aimed to protect her family’s legacy. She made bold moves to shape alliances and ensure she herself would not be pushed aside.

Election of a queen

In 1575, a group of nobles and officials assembled to pick the next monarch. This was the second time in Poland–Lithuania royal elections were held, instead of the throne passing down the dynasty line. Standing for royal election was unusual among women in the 16th century.

At that gathering, the electors did something almost unheard of in Europe: they chose a woman, Anna, to wear the crown. They also selected a husband for her, a man named Stephen Báthory, who would be her co-ruler.

Yet Anna was crowned as a queen in her own right, not just as a wife of a king. She signed laws, granted privileges and held ceremonies that emphasised her royal power. Some historians once doubted her independence, but newer research points out her keen political sense.

For instance, Anna invested her own money and energy to defend her inheritance from foreign claimants. She made deals to secure alliances and pushed hard to protect her family’s interests. Her role in Poland’s next royal election, after Stephen Báthory died, sealed her reputation as a serious political player.

Breaking gender barriers

Anna’s rule broke with expectations of her era. Like Mary I, the first queen to rule England in her own right (1553–58) and her successor Elizabeth I (1558–1603), she stepped into a job usually held by men.

She faced scepticism and criticism, often based on stereotypes about her age, her fertility or her ability to manage power. Some described her as emotional and unfit to lead. Others cast her as incapable because she had spent so long as a single woman.

Despite these biases, Anna went on to promote her family’s legacy. She commissioned a funerary monument for her mother in the Basilica of San Nicola in Bari and completed the Jagiellon chapel at Wawel Castle in which her father, brother and her own tombstone were placed.

She arranged key alliances and rewarded those who remained loyal. She also supported religious and cultural projects, building on the traditions of her royal parents. In that sense, she showed a queen could manage statecraft and political negotiations, just like any king of her day.

Lessons for today

Women in leadership continue to face hurdles in modern elections. Many still question their abilities or focus on their appearance. Some blame voter bias. Others highlight social structures that limit women’s options. That is why Anna’s story matters.

Her success in a challenging environment underlines two major lessons. First, women have long claimed a rightful place in government. Even in the 16th century, when few women held direct power, Anna achieved electoral victory and took an active role in shaping policy. She helped decide who would succeed her, proving her ability to steer the political landscape.

Second, history’s hidden figures deserve recognition. There are countless remarkable women from outside Western Europe who rarely appear in popular culture. Many stories can also be found in central or eastern Europe, once a vibrant powerhouse of diverse cultures. Yet global narratives often overlook this legacy, especially after 1945, when the Yalta Conference redrew political maps and sidelined histories of those who found themselves on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain.

Anna Jagiellon’s tale broadens our view of female leadership. Her life reminds us that a woman could win a political contest centuries ago, despite prejudice and rigid traditions. It proves there is nothing new about women excelling in positions of power.

Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Historian, Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fashion is one of the most powerful tools we have for understanding ourselves and the world around us. Nowhere is this clearer than in the story of Black American tailoring and the legacy of the Black dandy.

Inspired by scholar Monica L. Miller’s groundbreaking book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, the theme of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute spring 2025 show is Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.

The exhibition charts the evolution of the Black dandy from the 18th century to today. The story it tells is about more than suits. It’s about power, pride, resistance and joy.

Each year, the Met Gala takes its dress code from the institue’s spring exhibition. This year’s is “Tailored for You”. So who is the Black dandy, why are they so important to fashion today, and what can we expect to see on the red carpet?

The birth of the Black Dandy

“Black dandy” is a modern term. Figures like American abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818–95) or Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803) would not have called themselves dandies, but they used style with similar effect: as a tool of resistance, self-fashioning and cultural pride.

French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) first wrote about dandies in 1863, describing them as individuals who elevate style to a form of personal and aesthetic resistance.

Baudelaire’s dandy was not just stylish but symbolic. He was an emblem of modernity itself: a time marked by fluid identities, liminal spaces and the collapse of clear boundaries between gender, authenticity and social order.

Dandyism among Black men took root in the 18th and 19th centuries in both the United States and the Caribbean. Tailoring became a way to reclaim dignity under enslavement and colonialism.

Dandies take the clothing of an oppressor – aristocratic, colonial, segregationist or otherwise – and turn it into a weapon of elegance. Through meticulous style and refinement, dandies make a silent yet striking claim to moral superiority.

Douglass famously appeared in immaculate Victorian suits when campaigning for abolition, consciously dressing in the same style as those who denied his freedom.

Louverture used perfectly tailored French military uniforms during the Haitian Revolution against French colonial rule.

In the 1920s, Harlem dandies wore fine tailoring and flamboyant colours, rejecting the idea that poverty or discrimination should dictate presentation.

In perfectly tied cravats, polished shoes and sharply tailored coats, Black dandies refashion power on their own terms.

Presence through style

Dandies also challenge the narrow rules of masculinity.

Conventional menswear often demands restraint, toughness and invisibility. Dandies dare to embrace beauty, self-adornment and performance. This masculinity can be expressive, creative and even flamboyant.

The luxurious silk suits and carefully groomed appearance of American Jazz pioneer Duke Ellington (1899–1974) projected glamour rather than austerity.

The elegantly tailored overcoats and scarves of American poet Langston Hughes (1901–67) suggested a masculinity deeply entwined with creativity and softness.

Figures in Harlem’s ballrooms and jazz clubs blurred gender boundaries decades before mainstream conversations about gender fluidity emerged.

A tradition of Black tailoring

In a world where Black self-presentation has long been scrutinised and politicised, tailored clothing asserted visibility, authority and artistry. Dandies transformed fashion into a political declaration of dignity, resistance and creative power.

Black American tailoring practices blossomed most visibly in the zoot suits of the Harlem Renaissance, though they also had strong roots in New Orleans, Chicago and the Caribbean.

As seen in the Sunday Best of the Civil Rights era, Black tailoring walked the line between resistance and celebration: beautiful but with clear political intent.

In the 1970s, the Black dandy became more flamboyant, wearing tight, colourful clothes with bold accessories. He transformed traditional suits with exaggerated shapes, bright patterns and plaids inspired by African heritage.

Artists popular with a white audience like Sammy Davis Jr (1925–90), Miles Davis (1926–91) and James Brown (1933–2006) embraced the aesthetic, contributing to its widespread acceptance.

Meanwhile, a super stylish contingent of Black men in the Congo, La Sapeur, refined their look so spectacularly they would become the benchmark of the Black dandy for generations to come.

The 1990s saw a new era of Black dandyism emerge through luxury sportswear and hip-hop aesthetics.

Designer Dapper Dan (1944–) revolutionised fashion by remixing luxury logos into bold, custom streetwear, creating a distinctive Black aesthetic that bridged hip-hop culture and high fashion.

Musician Andre 3000 (1975–) redefined menswear by blending Southern Black style with bold colour, vintage tailoring and theatrical flair.

Today, the tradition thrives in the style of influencer Wisdom Kaye, the elegance of LeBron James, and the risk-taking of Lewis Hamilton.

Dressing for the red carpet

Tailored for You invites guests to interpret the dandy’s legacy in personal, bold and boundary-pushing ways.

Whether conforming to tradition, subverting expectations or creating something entirely new, this theme is a celebration of the freedom to dress – and be – on your own terms.

The Black dandy is a figure of defiance and desire, of ambiguity and brilliance, of resistance and beauty. Dandyism blurs boundaries between masculinity and femininity, artifice and authenticity, conformity and rebellion. It unsettles fixed identities and reflects broader tensions within modern life.

Black dandies have shocked, amused, offended, delighted and inspired society since their inception. In the sharp defiance of Douglass’ Victorian suits, the flamboyant spectacle of Harlem ballrooms, and the logo-laced rebellion of Dapper Dan’s streetwear, the Black dandy has continually forced the world to reckon with the politics of presence, pride and performance.

Despite being overlooked by mainstream fashion history, they’ve shaped the way we see elegance, masculinity and self-expression. This Met Gala and the accompanying exhibition are not just a celebration – they are a long-overdue recognition.

Toby Slade, Associate Professor of Fashion, University of Technology Sydney and Dijanna Mulhearn, PhD Candidate, School of Design. Author of Red Carpet Oscars, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In a world with political polarisation, war, extreme weather events and increasing costs of living, we need to be able to cope as individuals and communities.

Our capacity to cope with very real stressors in our lives – our resilience – can determine whether we thrive, just survive, or are deprived of a reasonable quality of life.

Stress vs resilience

Resilience means having the ability to cope with, and rebound from, life’s challenges and still achieve our goals.

Stress isn’t something to be avoided. We need to feel some stress to achieve our best. Exposure to manageable levels of stress and adversity develops our coping skills and resilience.

But if we feel too much stress, we can flounder or become overwhelmed.

The ability to re-activate ourselves when we feel down, fatigued or disengaged helps to optimise our focus and motivation. Sportspeople, for example, might listen to high intensity music just before a competition to increase their energy levels.

Conversely, the ability to dampen down emotional intensity can make use feel less stressed or anxious. Exercising, listening to relaxing music, or patting a much-loved pet can prevent high arousal from interfering with completing a task.

Effective emotion regulation is crucial for adapting to life’s ups and downs, and keeping us on a relatively even keel.

How does resilience develop?

Resilience emerges from interactions between personal and environmental factors.

In addition to emotion regulation skills, personal factors that can bolster resilience include academic achievement, developing a range of skills and abilities (such as sport and music) and problem-solving skills. Many of these skills can be fostered in childhood. And if one area of life isn’t going well, we can still experience confidence, joy and meaning in others.

People who reflect on traumatic experience and develop new positive meanings about themselves (getting through it means I’m strong!) and life (a greater appreciation) can also have higher levels of resilience.

Genetic factors and temperament also play an important role. Some of us are born with nervous systems that respond with more anxiety than others in novel, uncertain, or potentially threatening situations. And some of us are more likely to avoid rather than approach these situations. These traits tend to be associated with lower levels of resilience. But we can all learn skills to build our resilience.

Environmental factors that promote resilience include:

• a nurturing home environment
• supportive family and peer relationships
• cultural identity, belonging and rituals
• modelling from others overcoming hardship
• community cohesion
• government policies that provide social safety nets, strong education, anti-discrimination and inclusion
• investment in facilities, spaces, services and networks that support the quality of life and wellbeing of communities.

Can resilience be taught?

Many factors associated with resilience are modifiable, so it stands to reason that interventions that aim to bolster them should be helpful.

There is evidence that interventions that promote optimism, flexibility, active coping and social support-seeking can have small yet meaningful positive effects on resilience and emotional wellbeing in children and adults.

However, school-based programs give us reason to be cautious.

A trial across 84 schools in the United Kingdom evaluated the effectiveness of school-based mindfulness programs. More than 3,500 students aged between 11 and 13 years received ten lessons of mindfulness and a similar number did not.

There was no evidence that mindfulness had any benefit on risk for depression, social, emotional and behavioural functioning, or wellbeing after one year. Teaching school children mindfulness at scale did not appear to bolster resilience.

In fact, there was some evidence it did harm – and it was most harmful for students at the highest risk of depression. The intervention was not deemed to be effective or cost-effective and was not recommended by the authors.

In another recent trial, researchers found an emotion regulation intervention with Year 8 and 9 school children was unhelpful and even harmful, although children who engaged in more home practice tended to do better.

These interventions may have failed for a number of reasons. The content may not have been delivered in a way that was sufficiently engaging, comprehensive, age-appropriate, frequent, individually tailored, or relevant to the school context. Teachers may also not be sufficiently trained in delivering these interventions for them to be effective. And students didn’t co-design the interventions.

Regardless of the reasons, these findings suggest we need to be cautious when delivering universal interventions to all children. It may be more helpful to wait until there are early signs of excessive stress and intervening in an individualised way.

What does this mean for resilience-building?

Parents and schools have a role in providing children with the sense of security that gives them confidence to explore their environments and make mistakes in age-appropriate ways, and providing support when needed.

Parents and teachers can encourage children to try to solve problems themselves before getting involved. Problem-solving attempts should be celebrated even more than success.

Schools need to allocate their scarce resources to children most in need of practical and emotional support in non-stigmatising ways, rather than universal approaches. Most children will develop resilience without intervention programs.

To promote resilience, schools can foster positive peer relationships, cultural identity and involvement in creative, sporting and academic pursuits. They can also highlight others’ recovery and resilience stories to demonstrate how growth can occur from adversity.

More broadly in the community, people can work on developing their own emotion regulation skills to bolster their confidence in their ability to manage adversity.

Think about how you can:

• approach challenges in constructive ways
• actively problem-solve rather than avoid challenges
• genuinely accept failure as part of being human
• establish healthy boundaries
• align your behaviour with your values
• receive social and professional support when needed.

This will help you navigate the ebbs and flows of life in ways that support recovery and growth.

Peter McEvoy, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Five years ago, COVID was all we could think about. Today, we’d rather forget about lockdowns, testing queues and social distancing. But the virus that sparked the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, is still circulating.

Most people who get COVID today will experience only a mild illness. But some people are still at risk of severe illness and are more likely to be hospitalised with COVID. This includes older people, those who are immunocompromised by conditions such as cancer, and people with other health conditions such as diabetes.

Outcomes also tend to be more severe in those who experience social inequities such as homelessness. In the United Kingdom, people living in the 20% most deprived areas have double chance of being hospitalised from infectious diseases than those in the least deprived areas.

How many cases and hospitalisations?

In Australia, 58,000 COVID cases have been reported so far in 2025. However, testing rates have declined and not all positive cases are reported to the government, so case numbers in the community are likely much higher.

Latest data from FluCan, a network of 14 hospitals, found 781 people were hospitalised for COVID complications in the first three months of the year. This “sentinel surveillance” data gives a snapshot from a handful of hospitals, so the actual number of hospitalisations across Australia is expected to be much higher.

While deaths are lower than previous years, 289 people died from COVID-related respiratory infections in the first two months of the year.

What can we expect as we head into winter?

We often see an increase in respiratory infections in winter.

However, COVID peaks aren’t just necessarily seasonal. Over the past few years, peaks have tended to appear around every six months.

What are the most common COVID symptoms?

Typical early symptoms of COVID included fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose and shortness of breath. These have remained the most common COVID symptoms across the multiple variant waves.

Early in the pandemic, we realised COVID caused a unique symptom called anosmia – the changed sense of taste or smell. Anosmia lasts about a week and in some cases can last longer. Anosmia was more frequently reported from infections due to the ancestral, Gamma, and Delta variants but not for the Omicron variant, which emerged in 2021.

However, loss of smell still seems to be associated with some newer variants. A recent French study found anosmia was more frequently reported in people with JN.1.

But the researchers didn’t find any differences for other COVID symptoms between older and newer variants.

Should you bother doing a test?

Yes. Testing is particularly important if you experience COVID-like symptoms or were recently exposed to someone with COVID and are at high-risk of severe COVID. You might require timely treatment.

If you are at risk of severe COVID, you can see a doctor or visit a clinic with point-of-care testing services to access confirmatory PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing.

Rapid antigen tests (RATs) approved by Australia’s regulator are also still available for personal use.

But a negative RAT doesn’t mean that you don’t have COVID – especially if you are symptomatic.

If you do test positive, while you don’t have to isolate, it’s best to stay at home.

If you do leave the house while experiencing COVID symptoms, minimise the spread to others by wearing a well-fitted mask, avoiding public places such as hospitals and avoiding contact with those at higher risk of severe COVID.

How long does COVID last these days?

In most people with mild to moderate COVID, it can last 7–10 days.

Symptomatic people can spread the infection to others from about 48 hours before you develop symptoms to about ten days after developing symptoms. Few people are infectious beyond that.

But symptoms can persist in more severe cases for longer.

A UK study which tracked the persistence of symptoms in 5,000 health-care workers found symptoms were less likely to last for more than 12 weeks in subsequent infections.

General fatigue, for example, was reported in 17.3% of people after the first infection compared with 12.8% after the second infection and 10.8% following the third infection.

Unvaccinated people also had more persistent symptoms.

Vaccinated people who catch COVID tend to present with milder disease and recover faster. This may be because vaccination prevents over-activation of the innate immune response.

Vaccination remains the best way to prevent COVID

Vaccination against COVID continues to be one of the most effective ways to prevent COVID and protect against it. Data from Europe’s most recent winter, which is yet to be peer reviewed, reports COVID vaccines were 66% effective at preventing symptomatic, confirmed COVID cases.

Most people in Australia have had at least one dose of the COVID vaccine. But if you haven’t, people over 18 years of age are recommended to have a COVID vaccine.

Boosters are available for adults over 18 years of age. If you don’t have any underlying immune issues, you’re eligible to receive a funded dose every 12 months.

Boosters are recommended for adults 65–74 years every 12 months and for those over 75 years every six months.

Adults over 18 years who are at higher risk because of weaker immune systems are recommended to get a COVID vaccine every 12 months and are eligible every six months.

Check your status and eligibility using this booster eligibility tool and you can access your vaccine history here.

A new review of more than 4,300 studies found full vaccination before a SARS-CoV-2 infection could reduce the risk of long COVID by 27% relative to no vaccination for the general adult population.

With ongoing circulation of COVID, hybrid immunity from natural infection supplemented with booster vaccination can help prevent large-scale COVID waves.

Meru Sheel, Associate Professor and Epidemiologist, Infectious Diseases, Immunisation and Emergencies (IDIE) Group, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The common cold sore virus, which is often caught in childhood, usually stays in the body for life – quietly dormant in the nerves. Now and then, things like stress, illness or injury can trigger it, bringing on a cold sore in some people. But this same virus – called herpes simplex virus type 1 – may also play an important role in something far more serious: Alzheimer’s disease.

Over 30 years ago, my colleagues and I made a surprising discovery. We found that this cold sore virus can be present in the brains of older people. It was the first clear sign that a virus could be quietly living in the brain, which was long thought to be completely germ-free – protected by the so-called “blood-brain barrier”.

Then we discovered something even more striking. People who have a certain version of a gene (called APOE-e4) that increases their risk of Alzheimer’s, and who have been infected with this virus, have a risk that is many times greater.

To investigate further, we studied brain cells that we infected with the virus. They produced the same abnormal proteins (amyloid and tau) found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.

We believe that the virus stays mainly dormant in the body for years – possibly decades. But later in life, as the immune system gets weaker, it can enter the brain and reactivate there. When it does, it will damage brain cells and trigger inflammation. Over time, repeated flare-ups could gradually cause the kind of damage that leads to Alzheimer’s in some people.

We later found the virus’s DNA inside the sticky clumps of these proteins, which are found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Even more encouragingly, antiviral treatments reduced this damage in the lab, suggesting that drugs might one day help to slow or even prevent the disease.

Large population studies by others found that severe infections, specifically with the cold sore virus, was a strong predictor of Alzheimer’s, and that specific antiviral treatment reduced the risk.

Our research didn’t stop there. We wondered if other viruses that lie dormant in the body might have similar effects – such as the one responsible for chickenpox and shingles.

Shingles vaccine offers another clue

When we studied health records from hundreds of thousands of people in the UK, we saw something interesting. People who had shingles had only a slightly higher risk of developing dementia. Yet those who had the shingles vaccine were less likely to develop dementia at all.

A new Stanford University-led study gave similar results.

This supported our long-held proposal that preventing common infections could lower the risk of Alzheimer’s. Consistently, studies by others showed that infections were indeed a risk and that some other vaccines were protective against Alzheimer’s.

We then explored how risk factors for Alzheimer’s such as infections and head injuries could trigger the hidden virus in the brain.

Using an advanced 3D model of the brain with a dormant herpes infection, we found that when we introduced other infections or simulated a brain injury, the cold sore virus reactivated and caused damage similar to that seen in Alzheimer’s. But when we used a treatment to reduce inflammation, the virus stayed inactive, and the damage didn’t happen.

All of this suggests that the virus that causes cold sores could be an important contributor to Alzheimer’s, especially in people with certain genetic risk factors. It also opens the door to possible new ways of preventing the disease, such as vaccines or antiviral treatments that stop the virus from waking up and harming the brain.

What began as a link between cold sores and memory loss has grown into a much bigger story – one that may help us understand, and eventually reduce, the risk of one of the most feared diseases of our time.

Ruth Itzhaki, Professor Emeritus of Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Manchester and a Visiting Professorial Fellow, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We’ve all heard it before: eat your five-a-day, and try to get some exercise. It’s advice that’s simple in theory, yet in practice, not everyone is able to follow it. So what’s standing in the way?

Our research examined this question in depth. Using data from UK adults over the age of 50, we explored how socioeconomic status affects the likelihood of meeting the World Health Organization’s recommendations for physical activity and diet. These guidelines include at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity (or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity) physical activity per week and a daily intake of at least five portions of fruit and vegetables.

What we found points to a clear and concerning disparity. Wealthier older adults are nearly twice as likely to meet both exercise and dietary recommendations compared to their less affluent peers. And perhaps even more striking, those who don’t meet these health guidelines are significantly more likely to suffer from depression.

We analysed survey responses from more than 3,000 adults aged 50 to 90, using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. While nearly 70% of participants reported doing some form of physical activity, the data revealed a sharp wealth divide.

Adults in the highest wealth quintile (the top 20%) were almost twice as likely to be physically active as those in the lowest quintile. A similar pattern emerged for diet. Over 70% of those in the wealthiest group reported meeting the five-a-day guideline, compared to just over 40% in the lowest income bracket.

This matters, because not meeting government guidelines for physical activity and diet can have serious long-term health consequences. Regular exercise is known to increase HDL (or “good”) cholesterol, improve cardiovascular health, and reduce the risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers.

It also benefits brain health by lowering inflammation and even promoting the growth of new brain cells. Similarly, diets rich in fibre, vitamins, and antioxidants – found in fruits and vegetables – are associated with lower the risks of disease and cognitive decline, including conditions like Alzheimer’s.

Depression disparity

But the impact isn’t just physical. Our research also explored links between lifestyle and mental health. Around 19% of participants met the criteria for clinical depression, with the highest risk found among women, people living alone, smokers and those with lower incomes.

Alarmingly, rates of depression were nearly three times higher among those in the lowest wealth quintile (32.6% were depressed) compared to those in the highest (11.1%).

Lifestyle clearly played a role in depression levels. Among inactive participants, 30% reported symptoms of depression – more than double the rate seen in those who were physically active (13.7%). Likewise, those who didn’t meet the five-a-day guideline had a depression rate of 23.4%, compared to 15.7% among those who did.

These results suggest that staying physically active and eating well not only improves physical health but may also play a protective role in mental wellbeing. Yet not everyone has equal access to the resources, time, or environments that support healthy living. There is also the role of social isolation as a compounding factor.

Social disconnection is strongly linked to both poor physical and mental health, including depression and even increased mortality risk. Physical activity programmes that also offer social interaction – such as walking groups or community exercise classes – may provide even greater benefits.

Healthy ageing for everyone

The evidence shows that health disparities in later life are deeply tied to wealth and socioeconomic status. This means that addressing them requires more than encouraging personal responsibility – it calls for policy action.

Financial barriers to healthy food and physical activity need to be tackled through targeted programmes, subsidies and infrastructure investments. Making healthy options accessible and affordable – especially for those in lower-income groups – will benefit people and reduce strain on healthcare systems.

As populations continue to age, promoting health in later life is a public health priority. But that effort will only succeed if it recognises – and works to reduce – the inequalities that hold people back from living healthy, fulfilling lives.

Simon Evans, Lecturer in Neuroscience, School of Psychology, University of Surrey

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Arthritis – an umbrella term for around 100 conditions that damage the joints – affects 4.1 million Australians. This is expected to rise by 31% to 5.4 million by 2040 and cost the Australian health-care system an estimated $12 billion each year.

The two most common types, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, can both cause joint pain, swelling and stiffness. Both are more common in women. Neither can be cured.

But their causes, risk factors and treatments are different – here’s what you need to know.

What is osteoarthritis?

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis. It affects 2.1 million Australians, mostly older people. About a third of Australians aged 75 and older have the condition.

It can affect any joint but is most common in the knees, hips, fingers, thumbs and big toes.

The main symptom is pain, especially during movement. Other symptoms may include swelling, stiffness and changes to the shape of joints.

The main risk factors are ageing and obesity, as well as previous injuries or surgery. For osteoarthritis in the hands, genetics also play a big role.

Signs of osteoarthritis can appear on knee scans from around age 45 and become more common with age.

However, this type of arthritis not simply the “wear and tear” of ageing. Osteoarthritis is a complex disease that affects the whole joint. This includes the cartilage (“shock-absorbing” connective tissue protecting your bones), bones, ligaments (connective tissue holding bones and body parts in place) and joint lining.

How is it diagnosed?

Diagnosis is based on symptoms (such as pain and restricted movement) and a physical exam.

The disease generally worsens over time and cannot be reversed. But the severity of damage does not always correlate with pain levels.

For this reason, x-rays and MRI scans are usually unhelpful. Some people with early osteoarthritis experience severe pain, but the damage won’t show up on a scan. Others with advanced and visible osteoarthritis may have few symptoms or none at all.

What about rheumatoid arthritis?

Unlike osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease. This means the immune system attacks the joint lining, causing inflammation and damage.

Common symptoms include pain, joint swelling and stiffness, especially in the morning.

Rheumatoid arthritis is less common than osteoarthritis, affecting around 514,000 Australians. It mostly impacts the wrists and small joints in the hands and feet, though larger joints such as the elbows, shoulders, knees and ankles can also be involved.

It can also affect other organs, including the skin, lungs, eyes, heart and blood vessels. Fortunately, disease outside the joint has become less common in recent years, likely due to better and earlier treatment.

Rheumatoid arthritis often develops earlier than osteoarthritis but can occur at any age. Onset is most frequent in those aged 35–64. Smoking increases your risk.

How is it diagnosed?

As with osteoarthritis, your doctor will diagnose rheumatoid arthritis based on your symptoms and a physical exam.

Some other tests can be useful. Blood tests may pick up specific antibodies that indicate rheumatoid arthritis, although you can still have the condition with negative results.

X-rays may also reveal joint damage if the disease is advanced. If there is uncertainty, an ultrasound or MRI can help detect inflammation.

How is osteoarthritis treated?

No treatment can stop osteoarthritis progressing. However many people manage their symptoms well with advice from their doctor and self-care. Exercise, weight management and pain medicines can help.

Exercise has been shown to be safe for osteoarthritis of the knee, hip and hand. Many types of exercise are effective at reducing pain, so you can choose what suits you best.

For knee osteoarthritis, managing weight through diet and/or exercise is strongly recommended. This may be because it reduces pressure on the joint or because losing weight can reduce inflammation. Anti-obesity medicines may also reduce pain.

Topical and oral anti-inflammatories are usually recommended to manage pain. However, opioids (such as tramadol or oxycodone) are not, due to their risks and limited evidence they help.

In some cases antidepressants such as duloxetine may also be considered as a treatment for pain though, again, evidence they help is limited.

What about rheumatoid arthritis?

Treatments for rheumatoid arthritis focus on preventing joint damage and reducing inflammation.

It’s essential to get an early referral to a rheumatologist, so that treatment with medication – called “disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs” – can begin quickly.

These medicines suppress the immune system to stop inflammation and prevent damage to the joint.

With no cure, the overall goal is to achieve remission (where the disease is inactive) or get symptoms under control.

Advances in treatment

There is an increasing interest in prevention for both types of arthritis.

A large international clinical trial is currently investigating whether a diet and exercise program can prevent knee osteoarthritis in those with higher risk – in this case, women who are overweight and obese.

For those already affected, new medicines in early-stage clinical trials show promise in reducing pain and improving function.

There is also hope for rheumatoid arthritis with Australian researchers developing a new immunotherapy. This treatment aims to reprogram the immune system, similar to a vaccine, to help people achieve long-term remission without lifelong treatment.

Giovanni E. Ferreira, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, Institute of Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney and Rachelle Buchbinder, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Rheumatologist, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Google has announced it will roll out its Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to children under the age of 13.

While the launch starts within the next week in the United States and Canada, it will launch in Australia later this year. The chatbot will only be available to people via Google’s Family Link accounts.

But this development comes with major risks. It also highlights how, even if children are banned from social media, parents will still have to play a game of whack-a-mole with new technologies as they try to keep their children safe.

A good way to address this would be to urgently implement a digital duty of care for big tech companies such as Google.

How will the Gemini AI chatbot work?

Google’s Family Link accounts allow parents to control access to content and apps, such as YouTube.

To create a child’s account, parents provide personal details, including the child’s name and date of birth. This may raise privacy concerns for parents concerned about data breaches, but Google says children’s data when using the system will not be used to train the AI system.

Chatbot access will be “on” by default, so parents need to actively turn the feature off to restrict access. Young children will be able to prompt the chatbot for text responses, or to create images, which are generated by the system.

Google acknowledges the system may “make mistakes”. So assessment of the quality and trustworthiness of content is needed. Chatbots can make up information (known as “hallucinating”), so if children use the chatbot for homework help, they need to check facts with reliable sources.

What kinds of information will the system provide?

Google and other search engines retrieve original materials for people to review. A student can read news articles, magazines and other sources when writing up an assignment.

Generative AI tools are not the same as search engines. AI tools look for patterns in source material and create new text responses (or images) based on the query – or “prompt” – a person provides. A child could ask the system to “draw a cat” and the system will scan for patterns in the data of what a cat looks like (such as whiskers, pointy ears, and a long tail) and generate an image that includes those cat-like details.

Understanding the differences between materials retrieved in a Google search and content generated by an AI tool will be challenging for young children. Studies show even adults can be deceived by AI tools. And even highly skilled professionals – such as lawyers – have reportedly been fooled into using fake content generated by ChatGPT and other chatbots.

Will the content generated be age-appropriate?

Google says the system will include “built-in safeguards designed to prevent the generation of inappropriate or unsafe content”.

However, these safeguards could create new problems. For example, if particular words (such as “breasts”) are restricted to protect children from accessing inappropriate sexual content, this could mistakenly also exclude children from accessing age-appropriate content about bodily changes during puberty.

Many children are also very tech-savvy, often with well-developed skills for navigating apps and getting around system controls. Parents cannot rely exclusively on inbuilt safeguards. They need to review generated content and help their children understand how the system works, and assess whether content is accurate.

What risks do AI chatbots pose to children?

The eSafety Commission has issued an online safety advisory on the potential risk of AI chatbots, including those designed to simulate personal relationships, particularly for young children.

The eSafety advisory explains AI companions can “share harmful content, distort reality and give advice that is dangerous”. The advisory highlights the risks for young children, in particular, who “are still developing the critical thinking and life skills needed to understand how they can be misguided or manipulated by computer programs, and what to do about it”.

My research team has recently examined a range of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Replika, and Tessa. We found these systems mirror people’s interactions based on the many unwritten rules that govern social behaviour – or, what are known as “feeling rules”. These rules are what lead us to say “thank you” when someone holds the door open for us, or “I’m sorry!” when you bump into someone on the street.

By mimicking these and other social niceties, these systems are designed to gain our trust.

These human-like interactions will be confusing, and potentially risky, for young children. They may believe content can be trusted, even when the chatbot is responding with fake information. And, they may believe they are engaging with a real person, rather than a machine.

How can we protect kids from harm when using AI chatbots?

This rollout is happening at a crucial time in Australia, as children under 16 will be banned from holding social media accounts in December this year.

While some parents may believe this will keep their children safe from harm, generative AI chatbots show the risks of online engagement extend far beyond social media. Children – and parents – must be educated in how all types of digital tools can be used appropriately and safely.

As Gemini’s AI chatbot is not a social media tool, it will fall outside Australia’s ban.

This leaves Australian parents playing a game of whack-a-mole with new technologies as they try to keep their children safe. Parents must keep up with new tool developments and understand the potential risks their children face. They must also understand the limitations of the social media ban in protecting children from harm.

This highlights the urgent need to revisit Australia’s proposed digital duty of care legislation. While the European Union and United Kingdom launched digital duty of care legislation in 2023, Australia’s has been on hold since November 2024. This legislation would hold technology companies to account by legislating that they deal with harmful content, at source, to protect everyone.

Lisa M. Given, Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Millions of older adults take five or more prescription drugs every day to manage chronic illnesses. While polypharmacy is often necessary, this practice has also been linked to many negative health outcomes in older adults – including memory problems, increased risk of falls and greater frailty.

The most common prescription drugs involved in polypharmacy are those used to treat conditions such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and depression. Importantly, these same conditions are also known risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease.

This raises an important question: could polypharmacy have any influence on the progression of Alzheimer’s disease?

Our recent research in mice suggests that certain prescription drugs combinations might actually have a positive effect on memory and signs of Alzheimer’s disease. However, these effects appeared to differ depending on whether the mouse was male or female.

To better understand how polypharmacy may affect Alzheimer’s disease, we designed an experiment using mice that were genetically altered to develop Alzheimer’s-like brain changes. These mice had amyloid plaques – clumps of protein in the brain that, with time, are linked with memory loss and considered a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease .

We tested two different combinations of five commonly prescribed drugs, including: analgesics (painkillers), antithrombotics (to prevent blood clots), lipid-modifying agents (such as statins, which lower cholestrol), beta-blockers (which help controlling arrythmias and hypertension) and Ace inhibitors (used to treat cardiovascular conditions), as well as antidepressants.

Both groups of mice were given paracetamol, aspirin, an antidepressant, a statin and a blood pressure drug. The only differences between the two groups were the specific types of statin and cardiovascular drugs used. The first group were given simvastatin and metoprolol, while the second group was given atorvastatin and enalapril.

We gave these prescription drug combinations to both male and female mice. We then tested their memory, examined their brains for signs of disease and analysed blood samples for disease-related markers.

Our findings showed that polypharmacy has both positive and negative effects on Alzheimer’s disease progression. The effects largely depended on which specific drug combinations were used as well as the sex of the mice.

The first drug combination had beneficial effects in male mice. These mice showed better memory, reduced signs of Alzheimer’s pathology in the brain (such as the number and size of amyloid plaques) and fewer signs of the disease in their blood. This suggested that polypharmacy delayed the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

In females, however, the same combination had very little to no effect on signs and symptoms of the disease.

But for the mice in the second combination group, the results were different. The benefits previously seen in males disappeared. In female mice, their memory worsened.

We also looked at what happened when some of the drugs were taken on their own. In some cases, they had beneficial effects for the female mice – improving memory and signs of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain. For instance, the statin simvastatin improved memory and reduced signs of brain inflammation in female mice when the drug was taken on its own.

Polypharmacy and brain health

These results show how complex the effects of polypharmacy can be, especially in the context of a brain disease such as Alzheimer’s. They also suggest that men and women may respond differently to certain drug combinations.

This is not surprising. Biological sex is known to influence how drugs are absorbed and metabolised and their effect on the body. When it comes to polypharmacy, these differences can become more pronounced, having an even stronger effect on drug safety and efficacy.

This could partly help explain why the same drug combinations had very different effects in the male and female mice in our study. Other possible explanations for why certain drug combinations only improved signs and symptoms of the disease in male mice include sex differences in hormone levels and differences in immune responses that may influence how drugs work in the brain. Understanding these mechanisms will be key to tailoring safer and more effective treatments for the disease.

Our study confirms that current, universal prescribing approaches for older adults may not be ideal.

It’s also worth noting that older women are more likely to be polypharmacy users compared to men. This highlights the importance of understanding the effects of polypharmacy that are specific to men and women, and developing more personalised prescribing approaches.

Future translational studies (from mice to humans) looking at how drug combinations affect Alzheimer’s in males and females are also warranted to help reduce risks and improve healthcare in the ageing population.

The global population is continuing to age, which means that an even greater number of people are going to be at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. This is why it’s so important we understand all of the causes of the disease and how it can be prevented.

Silvia Maioli, Associate professor and Principal Researcher, Neurobiology, Karolinska Institutet and Francesca Eroli, PhD Researcher, Neurobiology, Karolinska Institutet

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“My only regret in life is that I didn’t drink enough champagne,” the English economist and philosopher John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) is reported to have said. As it turns out, there may be a surprising ounce of truth to that quote.

Picture this: a glass of champagne – bubbly, crisp and, for many, reserved for toasts and celebrations. Now imagine it being mentioned in the same sentence as a way to help prevent sudden cardiac arrest: a condition where the heart abruptly stops beating, killing tens of thousands each year, often without warning. Sounds too good to be true, right?

Yet, a Canadian study has uncovered a curious link. Using data from over half a million people in the health research database the UK Biobank, researchers found that those who consumed moderate amounts of white wine or champagne had a lower risk of experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. Surprising, especially given the widely held belief that red wine, not white, is what benefits the heart.

To rule out coincidence, the researchers double-checked their findings using genetic data – and the connection seemed to hold firm. This suggests there might be more to the story than chance alone.

The study didn’t stop at wine. It explored more than 100 lifestyle and environmental factors tied to sudden cardiac arrest, including diet, exercise, air pollution, emotional wellbeing, body composition and education levels – all of which have been independently associated with risk. The conclusion? Up to 63% of sudden cardiac arrest cases could potentially be prevented by addressing these risk factors.

Among all the protective factors identified, a few stood out: fruit consumption, regular computer use (yes, really) and moderate drinking of white wine or champagne were all linked to a reduced risk of sudden cardiac arrest. Why? That remains uncertain.

One theory is that white wine contains antioxidants that may support heart health. Another possibility is that people who drink these types of beverages may also be more affluent and more likely to engage in other healthy behaviour, such as eating well, exercising regularly – and have access to better healthcare.

But before you pop a cork in celebration, a word of caution: alcohol remains a complex and often contradictory player in heart health. Other large-scale studies suggest a U-shaped relationship between alcohol and cardiovascular disease. Non-drinkers may have a certain level of risk, moderate drinkers of one glass of wine a day may see some benefit, but heavy drinking sharply increases the risk of high blood pressure, stroke and heart failure.

One observational study involving over 400,000 participants even found that moderate drinking could raise the risk of arrhythmias, which in some cases can lead to sudden death.

So while champagne may offer a hopeful glimmer, it’s no magic bullet. The study’s broader message was clear: it’s the overall lifestyle that matters most. Better sleep, regular physical activity and a balanced diet significantly reduced the risk of sudden cardiac arrest – and could prevent nearly one in five cases.

On the flip side, obesity, high blood pressure and chronic stress were among the strongest risk factors, along with lower education levels and exposure to air pollution. These findings underscore that preventing sudden cardiac arrest isn’t just about personal habits: it’s also about the environments we live in and the policies that shape them. Cleaner air, better education and easier access to nutritious food could all play a role.

Sudden cardiac arrest is not entirely random. Many of the contributing factors are within our control. Managing stress, staying active, maintaining a healthy weight, getting quality sleep – and yes, perhaps enjoying the occasional glass of white wine – can all help. But the real power lies in stacking small, healthy choices over time. Prevention is rarely about a single change; it’s about the cumulative effect of many.

And in case you were wondering: Keynes suffered a series of heart attacks in 1946, beginning during negotiations for the Anglo-American loan in Savannah, Georgia. He described the process as “absolute hell”. A few weeks after returning to his farmhouse in Firle, East Sussex, he died of a heart attack at the age of 62.

Maybe he was right about drinking more champagne after all.

David C. Gaze, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Pathology, University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In a world with political polarisation, war, extreme weather events and increasing costs of living, we need to be able to cope as individuals and communities.

Our capacity to cope with very real stressors in our lives – our resilience – can determine whether we thrive, just survive, or are deprived of a reasonable quality of life.

Stress vs resilience

Resilience means having the ability to cope with, and rebound from, life’s challenges and still achieve our goals.

Stress isn’t something to be avoided. We need to feel some stress to achieve our best. Exposure to manageable levels of stress and adversity develops our coping skills and resilience.

But if we feel too much stress, we can flounder or become overwhelmed.

The ability to re-activate ourselves when we feel down, fatigued or disengaged helps to optimise our focus and motivation. Sportspeople, for example, might listen to high intensity music just before a competition to increase their energy levels.

Conversely, the ability to dampen down emotional intensity can make use feel less stressed or anxious. Exercising, listening to relaxing music, or patting a much-loved pet can prevent high arousal from interfering with completing a task.

Effective emotion regulation is crucial for adapting to life’s ups and downs, and keeping us on a relatively even keel.

How does resilience develop?

Resilience emerges from interactions between personal and environmental factors.

In addition to emotion regulation skills, personal factors that can bolster resilience include academic achievement, developing a range of skills and abilities (such as sport and music) and problem-solving skills. Many of these skills can be fostered in childhood. And if one area of life isn’t going well, we can still experience confidence, joy and meaning in others.

People who reflect on traumatic experience and develop new positive meanings about themselves (getting through it means I’m strong!) and life (a greater appreciation) can also have higher levels of resilience.

Genetic factors and temperament also play an important role. Some of us are born with nervous systems that respond with more anxiety than others in novel, uncertain, or potentially threatening situations. And some of us are more likely to avoid rather than approach these situations. These traits tend to be associated with lower levels of resilience. But we can all learn skills to build our resilience.

Environmental factors that promote resilience include:

• a nurturing home environment
• supportive family and peer relationships
• cultural identity, belonging and rituals
• modelling from others overcoming hardship
• community cohesion
• government policies that provide social safety nets, strong education, anti-discrimination and inclusion
• investment in facilities, spaces, services and networks that support the quality of life and wellbeing of communities.

Can resilience be taught?

Many factors associated with resilience are modifiable, so it stands to reason that interventions that aim to bolster them should be helpful.

There is evidence that interventions that promote optimism, flexibility, active coping and social support-seeking can have small yet meaningful positive effects on resilience and emotional wellbeing in children and adults.

However, school-based programs give us reason to be cautious.

A trial across 84 schools in the United Kingdom evaluated the effectiveness of school-based mindfulness programs. More than 3,500 students aged between 11 and 13 years received ten lessons of mindfulness and a similar number did not.

There was no evidence that mindfulness had any benefit on risk for depression, social, emotional and behavioural functioning, or wellbeing after one year. Teaching school children mindfulness at scale did not appear to bolster resilience.

In fact, there was some evidence it did harm – and it was most harmful for students at the highest risk of depression. The intervention was not deemed to be effective or cost-effective and was not recommended by the authors.

In another recent trial, researchers found an emotion regulation intervention with Year 8 and 9 school children was unhelpful and even harmful, although children who engaged in more home practice tended to do better.

These interventions may have failed for a number of reasons. The content may not have been delivered in a way that was sufficiently engaging, comprehensive, age-appropriate, frequent, individually tailored, or relevant to the school context. Teachers may also not be sufficiently trained in delivering these interventions for them to be effective. And students didn’t co-design the interventions.

Regardless of the reasons, these findings suggest we need to be cautious when delivering universal interventions to all children. It may be more helpful to wait until there are early signs of excessive stress and intervening in an individualised way.

What does this mean for resilience-building?

Parents and schools have a role in providing children with the sense of security that gives them confidence to explore their environments and make mistakes in age-appropriate ways, and providing support when needed.

Parents and teachers can encourage children to try to solve problems themselves before getting involved. Problem-solving attempts should be celebrated even more than success.

Schools need to allocate their scarce resources to children most in need of practical and emotional support in non-stigmatising ways, rather than universal approaches. Most children will develop resilience without intervention programs.

To promote resilience, schools can foster positive peer relationships, cultural identity and involvement in creative, sporting and academic pursuits. They can also highlight others’ recovery and resilience stories to demonstrate how growth can occur from adversity.

More broadly in the community, people can work on developing their own emotion regulation skills to bolster their confidence in their ability to manage adversity.

Think about how you can:

• approach challenges in constructive ways
• actively problem-solve rather than avoid challenges
• genuinely accept failure as part of being human
• establish healthy boundaries
• align your behaviour with your values
• receive social and professional support when needed.

This will help you navigate the ebbs and flows of life in ways that support recovery and growth.

Peter McEvoy, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Coeliac disease is not a food allergy or intolerance. It’s an autoimmune disease that makes the body attack the small intestine if gluten (a protein found in wheat, rye and barley) reaches the gut. Even a small amount – a tiny bread crumb – can cause damage and inflammation.

The only treatment is a gluten-free diet. This means completely eliminating foods containing the protein, such as pasta, bread, noodles and many processed products, and preparing food carefully to avoid cross-contamination.

But what about other forms of cross-contamination? One study surveyed 538 adults with coeliac disease about their dating habits and found 39% were hesitant to kiss their partners because of the disease.

But can gluten really be transferred this way, with a kiss? Research is only just beginning to look at this question – here’s what we know.

How harmful is gluten for people with coeliac disease?

Coeliac disease is common: surveys representative of the population estimate it affects one in 70 Australians. However, it tends to be under-diagnosed. Research suggests only 20% of those with coeliac disease have a medical diagnosis.

This means most sufferers are unaware they have coeliac disease, despite experiencing unpleasant symptoms.

When untreated, coeliac disease can stop the small intestine absorbing nutrients and lead to gut symptoms such as diarrhoea, abdominal pain, bloating and flatulence. It can also result in non-gut symptoms such as fatigue, skin rashes and brain fog.

However, touching gluten won’t have any effect. Gluten only causes damage to people with coeliac disease if it enters the gut. This is why it can be effectively treated with a strict gluten-free diet.

How much gluten is harmful?

Researchers have investigated how much gluten can result in harm to people with coeliac disease. One study found some people with coeliac disease experienced damage to their small intestine with as little as 10 milligrams of gluten per day.

For context, one slice of bread contains 2.5 grams of gluten. A very small amount can cause damage if eaten, such a tiny crumb accidentally transferred from a chopping board or plate.

Australian researchers have determined that a dose of gluten below 3mg does not cause an immune response on very sensitive blood tests.

Food regulatory authorities look at how much gluten is concentrated in particular foods to decide what is “gluten free”. In most countries a diet containing gluten at less than 20 parts per million (or 20mg per kilogram) is considered to be safe for people with coeliac disease.

But Australia and New Zealand have much stricter requirements for labelling a food as “gluten free”. Testing methods in Australia allow for detection as low as three parts per million – this is known as the “limit of detection”. Foods below this limit contain no detectable gluten and can be labelled gluten free.

So, what about kissing?

What does this mean for kissing? Can enough gluten be transmitted from one person to another via saliva to cause problems? To date, there is very limited data.

New US research presented today looked at ten couples, each with one partner who had coeliac disease.

In the study, the non-coeliac partner ate ten crackers containing gluten before the couple kissed for ten seconds.

The researchers found gluten transfer was minimal in the saliva. When the non-coeliac partner had a glass of water after eating the crackers, the gluten in their saliva was less than 20 parts per million (the international limit for gluten-free products).

While this data has not yet been peer-reviewed, their preliminary finding seems to support similar research from 2022 which looked at peanut allergy and saliva to estimate gluten levels in saliva.

It estimated that saliva after eating gluten could contain around 250 micrograms of gluten – one-twelfth of the minimum amount (3mg) believed to cause an immune response.

This means, for people with coeliac disease, kissing should not be an issue to worry about.

Other risks

The bigger risk for people with coeliac disease continues to be exposure to gluten from food – even food labelled “gluten free”.

One study found seven out of 256 manufactured food products sold as gluten free had detectable levels of gluten, in some cases as much as 3mg in a single serving.

In 2018 another study found almost 10% of food sold as gluten free at cafes and restaurants across Melbourne actually contained gluten. One food sample contained a gluten concentration of more than 80 parts per million.

Still, given Australia has strictest regulations in the world, the risk of getting sick from eating gluten-free foods is quite low.

The risk from kissing? Even lower.

If you want to look out for your loved one with coeliac disease, how you prepare food is more important. This includes preventing cross-contamination by storing and preparing gluten-free foods well away from foods containing gluten, and thoroughly cleaning equipment and utensils after they’ve been in contact with food containing gluten.

And next time you’re on a date at your favourite eatery – whether they advertise as gluten free, or just have gluten-free items on the menu – it’s a good idea to politely ask about their food handling practices.

Vincent Ho, Associate Professor and Clinical Academic Gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the United States’ top public health official, recently claimed some religious groups avoid the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine because it contains “aborted fetus debris” and “DNA particles”.

The US is facing its worst measles outbreaks in years with nearly 900 cases across the country and active outbreaks in several states.

At the same time, Kennedy, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, continues to erode trust in vaccines.

So what can we make of his latest claims?

There’s no Foetal debris in the MMR vaccine

Kennedy said “aborted fetus debris” in MMR vaccines is the reason many religious people refuse vaccination. He referred specifically to the Mennonites in Texas, a deeply religious community, who have been among the hardest hit by the current measles outbreaks.

Many vaccines work by using a small amount of an attenuated (weakened) form of a virus, or in the case of the MMR vaccine, attenuated forms of the viruses that cause measles, mumps and rubella. This gives the immune system a safe opportunity to learn how to recognise and respond to these viruses.

As a result, if a person is later exposed to the actual infection, their immune system can react swiftly and effectively, preventing serious illness.

Kennedy’s claim about fetal debris specifically refers to the rubella component of the MMR vaccine. The rubella virus is generally grown in a human cell line known as WI-38, which was originally derived from lung tissue of a single elective abortion in the 1960s. This cell line has been used for decades, and no new fetal tissue has been used since.

Certain vaccines for other diseases, such as chickenpox, hepatitis A and rabies, have also been made by growing the viruses in fetal cells.

These cells are used not because of their origin, but because they provide a stable, safe and reliable environment for growing the attenuated virus. They serve only as a growth medium for the virus and they are not part of the final product.

You might think of the cells as virus-producing factories. Once the virus is grown, it’s extracted and purified as part of a rigorous process to meet strict safety and quality standards. What remains in the final vaccine is the virus itself and stabilising agents, but not human cells, nor fetal tissue.

So claims about “fetal debris” in the vaccine are false.

It’s also worth noting the world’s major religions permit the use of vaccines developed from cells originally derived from fetal tissue when there are no alternative products available.

Are there fragments of DNA in the MMR vaccine?

Kennedy claimed the Mennonites’ reluctance to vaccinate stems from “religious objections” to what he described as “a lot of aborted fetus debris and DNA particles” in the MMR vaccine.

The latter claim, about the vaccine containing DNA particles, is technically true. Trace amounts of DNA fragments from the human cell lines used to produce the rubella component of the MMR vaccine may remain even after purification.

However, with this claim, there’s an implication these fragments pose a health risk. This is false.

Any DNA that may be present in this vaccine exists in extremely small amounts, is highly fragmented and degraded, and is biologically inert – that is, it cannot cause harm.

Even if, hypothetically, intact DNA were present in the vaccine (which it’s not), it would not have the capacity to cause harm. One common (but unfounded) concern is that foreign DNA could integrate with a person’s own DNA, and alter their genome.

Introducing DNA into human cells in a way that leads to integration is very difficult. Even when scientists are deliberately trying to do this, for example, in gene therapy, it requires precise tools, special viral delivery systems and controlled conditions.

It’s also important to remember our bodies are exposed to foreign DNA constantly, through food, bacteria and even our own microbiome. Our immune system routinely digests and disposes of this material without incorporating it into our genome.

This question has been extensively studied over decades. Multiple health authorities, including Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, have addressed the misinformation regarding perceived harm from residual DNA in vaccines.

Ultimately, the idea that fragmented DNA in a vaccine could cause genetic harm is false.

The bottom line

Despite what Kennedy would have you believe, there’s no fetal debris in the MMR vaccine, and the trace amounts of DNA fragments that may remain pose no health risk.

What the evidence does show, however, is that vaccines like the MMR vaccine offer excellent protection against deadly and preventable diseases, and have saved millions of lives around the world.

Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When the newspapers delivered their standard election-eve editorials, there were few surprises. Former Fairfax papers and smaller outlets offered qualified support for Labor, while the News Corp papers unashamedly championed the Coalition. In Adelaide, The Advertiser ran a curious line recommending a majority government of whatever persuasion, “lest our futures be in the hands of the mad Greens, self-serving teals or the independent rabble.”

How must those editors feel this morning? On the one hand, they got the majority government they wished for, and then some. The 2025 election will be mythologised in Labor circles for decades to come.

On the other hand, the “independent rabble” defied the expectations of some, and the best efforts of others, holding their seats and making gains in Sydney and Canberra, and potentially Melbourne and Perth as well. New crossbenchers will certainly be welcomed into the 48th parliament. And with the Coalition reeling from an historic defeat, they may all play a critical role in policy the debates to come.

Weathering the storm

The election campaign put all of the incumbent independent MPs through their paces. Coalition candidates and some of their outspoken media allies applied enormous personal pressure, with accusations of weakness on the issue of antisemitism and piercing questions from conservative news outlets about the transparency of some independent MPs’ donations.

Vast sums of money were also involved. In the Perth-side seat of Curtin, for example, independent MP Kate Chaney’s supporters and the Liberal Party allegedly spent $1 million each on their respective campaigns.

In the end, incumbent independents benefited from the historic pattern in federal politics: that a good independent is a tough proposition to beat. At election time, successful independent MPs benefit from the advantages of incumbency, the ability to point to specific policy or project victories arising from greater political competition for the seat, and the flexibility to adapt more quickly to changing voter attitudes, unencumbered by any party machinery.

Zali Steggall in Warringah and Helen Haines in Indi enjoyed their third successive wins, Rebekah Sharkie in Mayo a fourth general election win (she won a competitive byelection in 2018), Andrew Wilkie in Hobart a sixth victory on the trot, and north Queensland’s Bob Katter yet another term after 50 years of parliamentary service.

At the time of writing, all of the independents who won their seats in 2022 appear to have been returned. (The exception was Kylie Tink, whose electorate was abolished last year.) The closest count is in Goldstein, where incumbent Zoe Daniel narrowly leads her Liberal predecessor Tim Wilson. Other incumbents, such as Sophie Scamps in Mackellar, Allegra Spender in Wentworth, Monique Ryan in Kooyong and Kate Chaney in Curtin, have enjoyed distinctive swings toward them. In the formerly safe Labor seat of Fowler, where the party hoped to win, independent MP Dai Le enjoyed a handsome primary vote swing of around 6% in her favour.

Changing hands

The picture has been more mixed for the rest of the crossbench and other minor parties. The Greens seem set to lose two of their Brisbane seats, but a close race in the formerly safe Labor seat of Wills in Victoria may yet provide a win. Another record spendathon from Clive Palmer will see the Trumpet of Patriots win zero seats. One Nation may keep Queensland senator Malcolm Roberts in his place, but there do not appear to be any other gains for Pauline Hanson’s team.

Coalition defectors fared poorly, too. Monash MP, independent and former Liberal Russell Broadbent, appears to have secured just 10% of the primary vote, placing him behind both major parties and the community independent candidate.

In the Perth seat of Moore, Liberal defector Ian Goodenough has fallen behind Labor, Liberal and the Greens, with preferences flowing mainly to Labor candidate Tom French. Right-wing LNP defector Gerard Rennick appears unlikely to win his contest for a Queensland senate seat. In the regional NSW seat of Calare, ex-National MP Andrew Gee appears the only one able to buck the trend, coming second on primary votes and benefiting from a stronger flow of preferences than his National Party opponent.

New crossbench faces?

A series of close contests may yet result in extra independent members of parliament. Despite a bitter campaign, community independent Nicolette Boele appears likely to win in the north Sydney seat of Bradfield. In the Victorian seat of Flinders, independent Ben Smith has enjoyed a 5.4% swing toward him, and away from Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie, though preferences have not yet been published in that seat. In Fremantle, where the Australian Electoral Commission is yet to report any preference flows, independent candidate Kate Hulett may still be in with a shot to beat Labor’s Josh Wilson. The competitive result follows an impressive campaign from Hulett at the state election earlier this year.

After five weeks of vicious debates about the public service and Canberra, voters in the ACT sent clear messages to both major parties. Voices for Bean candidate Jessie Price appears to have run close to victory in Bean, and independent Senator David Pocock enjoyed an easy victory. Labor received less than a third of the primary vote in that Senate race, and barely one in seven ACT residents voted Liberal.

Not burning down the house

Despite that qualification, Labor’s victory is historic by several measures. It is one of only four occasions over the past 30 years where its primary vote actually grew at a federal election. It looks to have won a lower house majority comparable with that of the Howard government’s final term, and maybe even with the Coalition’s 2013 victory (when it won 90 seats, more than double the figure it is likely to have won this time). The two-party preferred vote shows Albanese securing the kind of victory that made John Curtin a Labor hero in 1943.

So what role does that leave for independents in the 48th parliament?

Returning crossbenchers will regard their impressive primary votes as confirmation their voters want them to keep doing politics differently. The Liberal and National parties, on the other hand, will be consumed for much of the parliamentary term with introspection and institutional reckoning. Given how unhelpful their studied unity over the past term ultimately proved, it may be there’s more infighting within the Coalition during the next parliament.

Does it matter that the crossbenchers will not hold the balance of power in the lower house? Not necessarily. In the event of a serious policy misstep from the Albanese government during this term, the crossbenchers may prove to be the more influential voices of opposition in the lower house.

Sometimes a solo voice speaks with powerful volume. In 2001 the rural independent for Calare, Peter Andren, proved to be a singularly powerful voice against the Howard government’s draconian offshore detention program for asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat. Andren defied the national trends (and the local opinion polls) and was returned with an increased primary vote, and again in 2004. When he died, some said his opposition to the Howard government showed “more guts and decency” than “all the other Coalition and ALP candidates combined”.

Several of the current independents have earned themselves a national profile and are trusted advocates on issues such as public integrity and accountability, climate and energy policy and even foreign and security affairs. There will certainly be few MPs left on the opposition benches who can speak with compelling authority on some of these issues. In the face of an emboldened Labor government, their opposition to contentious legislation may sometimes have outsized influence.

In pragmatic political terms, it is arguably in the Labor Party’s interests to negotiate, and to be seen to negotiate, with the crossbench. The independents in formerly safe Liberal seats are some of the biggest obstacles in any future Liberal pathway back into office.

Newly-elected Labor MPs may also depend on preferences from community independent candidates next time they go to the polls. The Menzies government owed part of its longevity in the late 1950s and 1960s to its ability to win the preferences of the Democratic Labor Party, an anti-communist breakaway party from Labor.

Independents are nothing like the DLP, and many run open tickets instead of strictly recommending preferences on their how to vote cards. But in some seats, including the leader of the opposition’s seat of Dickson, independent and Greens voters’ preferences will have proven crucial for Labor’s success.

‘Every day is minority government in the Senate’

The other crucial reason independents still have a role to play is the Senate. Pocock recently remarked that “every day is minority government in the Senate”. Albanese’s victory, no matter how impressive, does not extend to a majority in the red chamber.

The last time a party won a majority in the Senate was in 2004. Before that, it was 1977. No matter how large a lower-house majority, negotiation and compromise are simply unavoidable for laws to get passed in the federal parliament.

The Greens will now hold the balance of power in the Senate. Other crucial crossbenchers include Pocock and, assuming she is re-elected as the sixth senator for Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie. During the 47th parliament, Pocock and Lambie often proved decisive in shaping, amending and sometimes postponing legislation they felt needed improvement.

Both will bring a range of priorities to the 48th parliament. They may also collaborate more routinely with lower house crossbench colleagues to make those critical votes in the senate count for everything that they are worth. That would be a good thing. After all, both chambers really do matter in our parliamentary system.

Editor’s note: this article was updated on May 5 to take account of the updated vote counts in the electorate of Bean and for the Senate.

Joshua Black, Visitor, School of History, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Among the many lessons to be learnt by the Liberal-National Coalition parties from the election is that they should stop getting into bed with News Corporation Australia.

Why would a political party outsource its policy platform and strategy to people with plenty of opinions, but no experience in actually running a government?

The result of the federal election suggests that unlike the Coalition, many Australians are ignoring the opinions of News Corp Australia’s leading journalists such as Andrew Bolt and Sharri Markson.

Last Thursday, in her eponymous program on Sky News Australia, Markson said:

For the first time in my journalistic career I’m going to also offer a pre-election editorial, endorsing one side of politics […] A Dutton prime ministership would give our great nation the fresh start we deserve.

After a vote count that sees the Labor government returned with an increased majority, Bolt wrote a piece for the Herald Sun admonishing voters:

No, the voters aren’t always right. This time they were wrong, and this gutless and incoherent Coalition should be ashamed. Australians just voted for three more years of a Labor government that’s left this country poorer, weaker, more divided and deeper in debt, and which won only by telling astonishing lies. That’s staggering. If that’s what voters really like, then this country is going to get more of it, good and hard.

The Australian and most of News’ tabloid newspapers endorsed the Coalition in their election eve editorials.

The election result was a repudiation of the minor culture war Dutton reprised during the campaign when he advised voters to steer clear of the ABC and “other hate media”. It may have felt good alluding to “leftie-woke” tropes about the ABC, but it was a tactical error. The message probably resonated only with rusted-on hardline Coalition voters and supporters of right-wing minor parties.

But they were either voting for the Coalition, or sending them their preferences, anyway. Instead, attacking the ABC sent a signal to the people the Coalition desperately needed to keep onside – the moderates who already felt disappointed by the Coalition’s drift to the right and who were considering voting Teal or for another independent.

Attacking just about the most trusted media outlet in the country simply gave those voters another reason to believe the Coalition no longer represented their values.

Reporting from the campaign bus is often derided as shallow form of election coverage. Reporters tend to be captive to a party’s agenda and don’t get to look much beyond a leader’s message. But there was real value in covering Dutton’s daily stunts and doorstops, often in the outer suburbs that his electoral strategy relied on winning over.

What was revealed by having journalists on the bus was the paucity of policy substance. Details about housing affordability and petrol pricing – which voters desperately wanted to hear – were little more than sound bites.

This was obvious by Dutton’s second visit to a petrol station, and yet there were another 15 to come. The fact that the campaign bus steered clear of the sites for proposed nuclear plants was also telling.

The grind of daily coverage helped expose the lateness of policy releases, the paucity of detail and the lack of preparation for the campaign, let alone for government.

On ABC TV’s Insiders, the Nine Newspapers’ political editor, David Crowe, wondered whether the media has been too soft on Dutton, rather than too hard as some Coalition supporters might assume.

He reckoned that if the media had asked more difficult questions months ago, Dutton might have been stress-tested and better prepared before the campaign began.

Instead, the Coalition went into the election believing it would be enough to attack Labor without presenting a fully considered alternative vision. Similarly, it would suffice to appear on friendly media outlets such as News Corp, and avoid more searching questions from the Canberra press gallery or on the ABC.

Reporters and commentators across the media did a reasonable job of exposing this and holding the opposition to account. The scrutiny also exposed its increasingly desperate tactics late in the campaign, such as turning on Welcome to Country ceremonies.

If many Australians appear more interested in what their prospective political leaders have to say about housing policy or climate change than the endless culture wars being waged by the coalition, that message did not appear to have been heard by Peta Credlin.

The Sky News Australia presenter and former chief of staff to prime minister Tony Abbott said during Saturday night’s election coverage “I’d argue we didn’t do enough of a culture war”.

Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University and Andrew Dodd, Professor of Journalism, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

More than half of the world’s population currently lives in cities and this share is expected to rise to nearly 70% by 2050.

It’s no wonder “smart cities” have become a buzzword in urban planning, politics and tech circles, and even media.

The phrase conjures images of self-driving buses, traffic lights controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) and buildings that manage their own energy use.

But for all the attention the term receives, it’s not clear what actually makes a city smart. Is it about the number of sensors installed? The speed of the internet? The presence of a digital dashboard at the town hall?

Governments regularly speak of future-ready cities and the promise of “digital transformation”. But when the term “smart city” is used in policy documents or on the campaign trail, it often lacks clarity.

Over the past two decades, governments around the world have poured billions into smart city initiatives, often with more ambition than clarity. The result has been a patchwork of projects: some genuinely transformative, others flashy but shallow.

So, what does it really mean for a city to be smart? And how can technology solve real urban problems, not just create new ones?

What is a smart city, then?

The term “smart city” has been applied to a wide range of urban technologies and initiatives – from traffic sensors and smart meters to autonomous vehicles and energy-efficient building systems.

But a consistent, working definition remains elusive.

In academic and policy circles, one widely accepted view is that a smart city is one where technology is used to enhance key urban outcomes: liveability, sustainability, social equity and, ultimately, people’s quality of life.

What matters here is whether the application of technology leads to measurable improvements in the way people live, move and interact with the city around them.

By that standard, many “smart city” initiatives fall short, not because the tools don’t exist, but because the focus is often on visibility and symbolic infrastructure rather than impact.

This could be features like high-tech digital kiosks in public spaces that are visibly modern and offer some use and value, but do little to address core urban challenges.

The reality of urban governance – messy, decentralised, often constrained – is a long way from the seamless dashboards and simulations often promised in promotional material.

But there is a way to help join together the various aspects of city living, with the help of “digital twins”.

Digital twin (of?) cities

Much of the early focus on smart cities revolved around individual technologies: installing sensors, launching apps or creating control centres. But these tools often worked in isolation and offered limited insight into how the city functioned as a whole.

City digital twins represent a shift in approach.

Instead of layering technology onto existing systems, a city digital twin creates a virtual replica of those systems. It links real-time data across transport, energy, infrastructure and the environment. It’s a kind of living, evolving model of the city that changes as the real city changes.

This enables planners and policymakers to test decisions before making them. They can simulate the impact of a new road, assess the risk of flooding in a changing climate or compare the outcomes of different zoning options.

Used in this way, digital twins support decisions that are better informed, more responsive, and more in tune with how cities actually work.

Not all digital twins operate at the same level. Some offer little more than 3D visualisations, while others bring in real-time data and support complex scenario testing.

The most advanced ones don’t just simulate the city, but interact with it.

Where it’s working

To manage urban change, some cities are already using digital twins to support long-term planning and day-to-day decision-making – and not just as add-ons.

In Singapore, the Virtual Singapore project is one of the most advanced city-scale digital twins in the world.

It integrates high-resolution 3D models of Singapore with real-time and historical data from across the city. The platform has been used by government agencies to model energy consumption, assess climate and air flow impacts of new buildings, manage underground infrastructure, and explore zoning options based on risks like flooding in a highly constrained urban environment.

In Helsinki, the Kalasatama digital twin has been used to evaluate solar energy potential, conduct wind simulations and plan building orientations. It has also been integrated into public engagement processes: the OpenCities Planner platform lets residents explore proposed developments and offer feedback before construction begins.

We need a smarter conversation about smart cities

If smart cities are going to matter, they must do more than sound and look good. They need to solve real problems, improve people’s lives and protect the privacy and integrity of the data they collect.

That includes being built with strong safeguards against cyber threats. A connected city should not be a more vulnerable city.

The term smart city has always been slippery – more aspiration than definition. That ambiguity makes it hard to measure whether, or how, a city becomes smart. But one thing is clear: being smart doesn’t mean flooding citizens with apps and screens, or wrapping public life in flashy tech.

The smartest cities might not even feel digital on the surface. They would work quietly in the background, gather only the data they need, coordinate it well and use it to make citizens’ life safer, fairer and more efficient.

Milad Haghani, Associate Professor & Principal Fellow in Urban Risk & Resilience, The University of Melbourne; Abbas Rajabifard, Professor in Geomatics and SDI, The University of Melbourne, and Benny Chen, Senior Research Fellow, Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.”

This statement might have been written last year – or last week – as a comment on the current state of political reporting. It is actually from Lying in Politics, an article by Hannah Arendt published in The New York Review of Books in November 1971. Her reflections were prompted by the release of the Pentagon Papers, which provided devastating evidence of the discrepancy between US government narrative about its role in the Vietnam War and the actual policies of engagement.

Review: Age of Doubt: Building Trust in a World of Misinformation – edited by Tracey Kirkland and Gavin Fang (Monash University Publishing)

Somehow, the sense that we can no longer trust public institutions and the information they feed us always seems immediate: a pathology of recent development. Age of Doubt: Building Trust in a World of Misinformation, a collection of essays edited by ABC journalists Tracey Kirkland and Gavin Fang, addresses the misinformation crisis as “one of the central issues of our time”.

Arendt wrote in response to a particular moment of crisis in public trust. There is no question that we are currently facing another. But if the problem isn’t new, what is “new” about the present crisis? What gives the issue an escalated priority now?

The 25 short articles in the book offer a range of diagnoses. Journalists and news editors feature prominently, but there are also contributions from heads of major public institutions. Their brief was to consider how and why trust has been replaced by doubt: the title of the book is printed on the cover so that the first word is overlaid by the second.

The implication that trust is the opposite of doubt is problematic. Mistrust or suspicion are surely the antitheses. And if trust is replaced by doubt, is that necessarily a bad thing? An environment riddled with propaganda and disinformation tends to generate fierce certainties about false beliefs. It promotes excessive levels of trust in influencers and highly manipulative public figures. This is not something the anthology sets out to address.

Cut flowers

Several of the contributors see the trust breakdown in almost existential terms, as part of a deep history of divided perceptions. Fang returns to Plato’s cave, where the inhabitants are restrained from turning in the direction of the real world and can only see its shadows on an inner wall. Everyone sees these shadows differently.

The relevance of this ancient metaphor to a culture increasingly dominated by screens is all too obvious. Fang quotes linguistics professor Nick Enfield, who calls for “a literacy around our own limitations”. The loss of common vision also concerns Simon Longstaff, director of the Ethics Centre, who suggests that we are at a similar juncture to that faced by French philosopher René Descartes in the mid 17th century. As the certainties of the past collapse, the loss of a common standard of judgement is making trust impossible.

Former New York Times journalist Ben Decker, a specialist in information warfare, compares the problem to coastal erosion. “It’s not like we didn’t see this coming,” he asserts. Marshall McLuhan, one of the pioneers of media theory, was warning us about it in the 1970s. Disinformation existed long before the internet. Like Fang, Decker sees it as an existential problem. We must focus on how to “increase empathy at scale”, rather than investing ever more in programs to counter disinformation.

Anglican archbishop Michael Stead diagnoses the empathy deficit as an inevitable consequence of loss of faith. A society that is no longer Christian continues to operate on Christian foundations, leaving us “like cut flowers”, without the common ground we need for survival.

Many of the contributors regard the COVID pandemic as a turning point. Conspiracy theories spread as a secondary and ultimately more enduring virus. Kaz Ross, a specialist in extremism and conspiracy theories, explains how they arise in the gap between an unexpected event and our capacity to account for it. Once the false accounts are up and running, it is hard for genuine explanation to get traction.

Former Victorian Police Commissioner Graham Ashton had to front up to situations in which the community was judging police actions without knowing the circumstances. Instantaneous online reactions exacerbated the tensions. The experience reinforced his conviction that police must be part of community, not other to it.

That’s easily said, and it puts another vote in the empathy box. But the word “empathy” itself is being enlisted to carry too much weight in the quest for solutions. What does it mean in these contexts?

The only person here with a convincing answer to that is Yolŋu elder Yalmay Yunupingu. Yunupingu is coming from a place where community is continuously lived rather than constantly referred to, where practices of truth-telling go back through generations. The kinship system, Gurrutu, is the foundational truth from which trust is grown.

There are none of Archbishop Stead’s cut flowers here. Instead of well-intentioned talk of something called empathy, there are rules, responsibilities and protocols. Children are educated in these through storytelling. Language is a precious heritage to be honoured and cultivated – a salient reminder that the betrayal of truth begins with speaking falsely.

Where does agency lie?

Telling a lie to a circle of people whose faces you can see carries a very different moral force from wielding the firehose of falsehoods in a global media environment. When Kirkland says “something in this current age is different, sometimes dangerously so”, we are steered towards the central questions of where agency lies, and to what extent the problem is inherent in new forms of media.

Social media platforms are an easy target, and one journalists are especially inclined to pick, for obvious reasons. As Nic Newman and Amy Ross Arguedas from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism point out, journalists are often targets of vindictive posts from bloggers who have no accountability for what they say.

Polarisation is being supercharged in the pandemonium of social media. Plummeting levels of trust in professional news media tend to correlate with escalating levels of aggravation on TikTok or X. But that is only part of the story, which requires more sustained focus than it gets from this rather disparate collection of writings. Social media are as various as any other form of public communication. It is easy to overlook the role of public commentary in responding to real problems and critiquing the roles high-profile reporters and presenters play in the political arena.

There is as wide a difference between an abusive spray on X and a serious discursive exchange on Threads as there is between political feuding on Sky and the kind of news reporting we expect from the ABC. News journalists who are feeling the pressure might do well to attend to some of the more cogent criticism on public platforms, rather than sweeping it all into the basket of deplorables.

None of the contributors who are engaged in news journalism are proposing this kind of rapprochement as one of the solutions to the yawning gulf of mistrust, even though there are many distinguished reporters who have a significant social media presence and use it to promote ethical awareness on issues of critical importance. Australians Van Badham and Debbie Spillane, Guardian writer George Monbiot, Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic, and MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman are among those who do this effectively.

Radical impartiality

ABC presenter Patricia Karvelas takes on the “radical impartiality” challenge that dogs all political journalists at the national broadcaster. In a measured and well-documented overview, she cites data on falling levels of satisfaction with government, loss of faith in democracy, and the rise of influence campaigns funded by “bad actors sowing dissent”.

Then comes the question of what radical impartiality looks like in this volatile environment, where high profile figures like herself can only measure their performance by being attacked with equal virulence from the left and the right. The solution, says Karvelas, lies in raising democratic literacy levels and equipping the public with tools to be better adjudicators.

That is a rather condescending view, which goes along with being satisfied that the public have been given a voice when their text messages are read out or when they get to ask a question of a panel of celebrity speakers. But this only widens the gulf and increases the frustration. Perhaps people make comments on social media because they have a point to make that is being missed by the voices issuing from television and radio?

News professionals, even in the most distinguished circles, can be remarkably obtuse on matters that are their core business. “Every tribe has its myths, and journalists are no exception,” writes Fergus McIntosh of the New Yorker. Fact-checking he says, has become “a pursuit bordering on mania”. But as the go-to solution in a disinformation fire-storm, the practice is just not cutting through.

Are those who manage staff budgets catering for some 30 dedicated fact-checkers at the New Yorker unaware that deception and manipulation do not reside in individual “facts” (however defined), but in the connections between them, the way they are strung into pseudo-logical assertions, thrown out in colourful non-sequiturs, or woven into narratives heavily loaded with implication?

Those are exactly the kinds of things that get picked up in social media communities, where participants correlate their understanding from a range of sources and share them with others who do likewise.

It is Danish news director Ulrik Haagerup, CEO of the Constructive Institute, who offers the most agile and insightful perspective on these matters. His contribution is all about the challenge of self-appraisal. He reports on workshops for editors – held at News Corp, of all places – in which the agenda was identifying how to do and see things differently.

This exercise begins with a resolve “to rethink continuously the business of storytelling”. At the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Haagerup led experiments with stories that asked different kinds of questions and shifted some hardwired premises about how news communication should be framed. One strategy involved accompanying politicians to regional locations, where they were asked to talk to “real people”.

In picking “trust” rather than “truth” as the central theme of the anthology, the editors have wisely sidestepped the risks of inviting didactic or polemical views. “Truth carries within itself an element of coercion,” Arendt warns. Trust may involve an acceptance of the Plato’s cave dilemma. No one lays claim to the truth more vehemently than the propagandist who appeals to reason with lies.

Jane Goodall, Emeritus Professor, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The internet’s latest absurd obsession is: who would win in a no-rules fight between 100 average human men and one adult male gorilla?

This hypothetical and strange question has taken over Reddit, TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. Some argue that humans once hunted mammoths so, clearly, we would win. Others point out that a silverback gorilla can lift close to 1,000kg and could throw a grown man like a rag doll.

To be honest, it’s not really a question we need to answer – and yet, as usual on the internet, everyone has an opinion.

But, beyond the jokes and memes, this silly debate provides an opportunity to reflect on human evolution. What are the real strengths of our species? What have we sacrificed? And what can a gorilla, our majestic, powerful and endangered distant cousin, teach us about our own nature and evolution?

Gorillas and humans: two branches of the same evolutionary tree

Gorillas are one of our closest living relatives. Along with chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans, they belong to the great apes or Hominidae family. Chimpanzees share about 98.8% of their DNA with us, while gorillas come a close second, sharing around 98.4%.

The last common ancestor between humans and gorillas lived roughly 10 million years ago, and it is also the same ancestor for chimpanzees.

Since the evolutionary split, humans and gorillas have followed very different paths. Gorillas have adapted to dense forests and mountainous terrains, while humans have evolved to live in the open, but realistically to multiple and various environments.

Despite the substantial difference in ecological niches, humans and gorillas share many traits, such as opposable thumbs, facial expressions, complex social behaviours and emotional intelligence.

Mastering forest power

In the recent Dune saga, to win, Duke Leto Atreides wanted to develop “desert power”. Well, gorillas have mastered forest power.

And let’s be clear – in terms of raw power, the gorilla wins every time. An adult male silverback can weigh more than 160kg and lift about a tonne without going to the gym every day. Their upper-body strength is shocking. And that’s no evolutionary accident – it’s the result of intense competition between males, where dominance determines mating.

Additionally, gorillas are extremely tough and resilient, yet gentle and calm most of the time. Gorillas, like many primates, have a strong social intelligence. They use a variety of vocalisations, gestures and even chest drumming to communicate across distances.

They have shown the ability to use sign language, mourn their dead, and demonstrate empathy, attesting to sophisticated cognitive skills.

Trading muscles for minds

A fight between 100 men and one gorilla might lead to a lot of dead men, but we all know that men will come with weapons, strategies, drones, fire and other clever tricks.

Humans are not physically strong in comparison to many other mammals. Our strength as a species is our adaptability and our ability to collaborate in very large groups.

Our brains are, on average, three times larger proportionally than those of gorillas. This fantastic evolutionary adaptation has allowed us to develop abstract thinking and symbolic language, but most of all, to pass and build on complex knowledge across generations.

And this is our greatest superpower, our ability to cooperate across vast groups, far beyond the average gorilla social unit, which usually ranges from a few family members up to a group of 30 individuals.

Humans’ evolutionary history has led to trading brute force for social, cultural and technological complexity, making us Earth’s most versatile and dangerous species.

So, who’s the winner?

In a one-on-one brawl, the gorilla can make “human-mash” with one hand. There is no contest when discussing brute force and bare hands.

But humans fight dirty. Judging by our evolutionary success, humans would likely lose many battles but ultimately win the fight. Mountain gorillas were not on the brink of extinction in the 1980s without our help.

Our species has spread across all continents, all terrains, and all climates. We have reshaped ecosystems, walked on the Moon, and developed advanced technologies. But gorillas are another kind of success rooted in harmony with their environment, physical grace, and quiet strength.

Perhaps the real takeaway message isn’t who wins in a fight, but to realise that two very different and yet very close cousins have walked two separate evolutionary roads, each in their own distinct way. And both are nature’s triumph and accomplishment.

Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Professor in Geochronology and Geochemistry, Southern Cross University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When it comes to our health, we’re constantly being warned about being taken in by misinformation. Yet for most of us what we believe ultimately comes down to who we trust, including which “experts” we trust.

The problem is that not everyone who presents themselves as an expert is actually an expert. And an expert in one area isn’t necessarily an expert in everything.

The reality is that we often rely on superficial cues to decide who to trust. We’re often swayed by how confidently someone speaks, their perceived authority, or how compelling their story sounds. For some, it’s simply the loudest voice that carries the most weight.

Even if we feel we have some understanding of science, few of us have the time or the capacity to verify every claim made by every so-called “expert”.

So how can we distinguish credible experts from those that are not? Here are four things I look out for.

1. Dodgy experts don’t acknowledge uncertainty

One thing that separates trustworthy experts from dodgy ones, is their humility. They have a healthy respect of the limitations of science, the gaps in the evidence, and even the limitations of their own expertise.

And importantly, they communicate this clearly.

In contrast, one of the most common characteristics of the dodgy expert is they are misleadingly certain. They often present issues in overly simplistic, black-and-white terms, and they draw conclusions with misplaced confidence.

This, of course, is part of their appeal. A neat clear-cut message that downplays uncertainty, complexity and nuance can be persuasive – and often even more persuasive than a messy but accurate message.

One of the clearest examples of unfounded certainty was the confident claim by some “experts” early in the pandemic that COVID was no worse than the flu, a conclusion which ignored uncertainties in the emerging data.

2. The dodgy expert doesn’t strive to be objective

Credible experts follow a well-established and disciplined approach when communicating science. They present their understanding clearly, support it with evidence, and endeavour to remove emotion and bias from their thinking.

A core principle of scientific thinking is striving for objectivity – and language reflects this. Experts generally aim to provide high-quality information to assist the public to make informed decisions for themselves, rather than manipulating them to reach specific conclusions.

Dodgy experts often rely on overly emotional language, inject political agendas, or resort to personal attacks against critics in order to elicit strong emotions. This is a powerful tool for manipulating opinions when the evidence is lacking.

One of the most harmful examples of this is the use of emotional testimonials by dodgy experts who claim people have “beaten cancer naturally”, offering false hope and often leading patients to abandon proven treatments.

3. Dodgy experts cherry-pick evidence

Despite what those seeking to mislead you would have you believe, scientists only reach consensus when a large body of high-quality evidence points in the same direction.

So one of the most crucial skills experts possess is the ability to critically evaluate evidence. That means understanding its strengths and weaknesses, assessing its reliability, and synthesising what the full evidence base indicates. This task requires a deep understanding of their area of expertise.

Dodgy experts don’t do this. They tend to dismiss inconvenient evidence that contradicts their narrative and readily embrace flawed, or even discredited, studies. In short: they often cherry-pick evidence to suit their position.

Unfortunately, this tactic can be hard to spot if you don’t have an understanding of the full evidence base, which is something dodgy experts exploit.

A red flag that you are being misled by a dodgy expert is when there is a clear over-reliance on a single study, despite its low quality.

Perhaps the most well-known example of cherry-picking is the way dodgy experts rely on a single, discredited study to push the false claim that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine causes autism, while ignoring the vast body of high-quality evidence that clearly shows no such link.

4. Dodgy experts don’t change their mind when the evidence changes

Dodgy experts are often rigidly attached to their beliefs, even when new evidence emerges.

In contrast, genuine experts welcome new evidence and are willing to change their views accordingly. This openness is often unfairly portrayed as weakness, but it reflects an expert’s desire to understand the world accurately.

A striking example of this is the shift in our understanding of stomach ulcers. For years, ulcers were blamed on stress and spicy food, but that changed when Australian gastroenterologist and researcher Barry Marshall, in a bold move, swallowed Helicobacter pylori to demonstrate its potential role.

His self-experiment (which is generally not recommended!) was the first step in a broader body of research that ultimately proved bacteria, not lifestyle, was the primary cause of ulcers. This ultimately led to Marshall and his colleague pathologist and researcher Robin Warren being awarded a Nobel Prize.

As this example highlights, when presented with the evidence, clinicians and scientists acknowledged they’d got the underlying cause of stomach ulcers wrong. Clinical practice subsequently improved, with doctors prescribing antibiotics to kill the ulcer-causing bacteria.

This is how science informs practice so we can continually improve health outcomes.

In a nutshell

True expertise is marked by intellectual humility, a commitment to high-quality evidence, a willingness to engage with nuance and uncertainty, flexibility, and a capacity to respectfully navigate differing opinions.

In contrast, dodgy experts claim to have all the answers, dismiss uncertainty, cherry-pick studies, personally attack those who disagree with them, and rely more on emotion and ideology than evidence.

Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

I grew up playing in a lot of different bands, and my bandmates and I always held onto the belief that if we could just open for a more established act, it would pave the way to more success.

When I started playing in the indie pop band Passion Pit – a group known for its shimmering synths, energetic live shows and breakout hits like Sleepyhead and Take a Walk – we began gaining traction and soon had the chance to open for the British band Muse, in what would be our first arena shows.

Until then, we’d been headlining 3,000-capacity venues. Our label, management and booking team made it clear that this next step – playing in front of massive audiences – would catapult us to megastardom.

Reality was different. After playing our own packed shows where fans cheered and called for encores, we suddenly found ourselves in 15,000-capacity arenas, where it seemed like everyone was ignoring us: chatting among themselves, still getting to their seats or waiting in line for food and drinks.

It was a wake-up call. The transition from being a headliner at a smaller music venue to opener for a major act didn’t feel like a step forward. It felt like starting over.

Years later, as an academic studying the music industry, I found myself returning to this question: Does opening for a major act help an artist’s career?

There’s an assumption that it’s a golden ticket. But I’d seen plenty of openers, some incredibly talented, disappear from the spotlight soon after a tour ended. If touring is supposed to be a stepping stone to long-term success, why do so many promising acts fade into obscurity?

These questions became the basis for my most recent study. I wanted to see whether these high-profile opportunities deliver any benefits for a singer or band, or if they were more like a sugar high, providing little more than a brief boost in exposure.

It’s harder to stick out from the crowd

Popular music is a US$28.6-billion global industry, and music consumption, according to a 2025 report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, is at an all-time high. People around the world now spend an average of 20.7 hours per week listening to music on radio, streaming platforms, vinyl, CDs and social media.

The ease of listening to and recording music presents both an opportunity and a challenge for aspiring artists.

On one hand, streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music have removed traditional gatekeepers, making it easier than ever to release music and reach a global audience. But these platforms have also saturated listeners with content, and discovery is dictated more by algorithms rather than by word-of-mouth buzz, local touring circuits or traditional artist development.

Social media, especially TikTok, can launch an unknown act into viral stardom within days. However, the attention span of digital audiences is fleeting. Most people consume music passively – often through playlists they didn’t curate and might not even remember.

In other words, getting heard has never been easier. Being recognized and staying relevant? That’s the real challenge.

For artists trying to break through, it’s no longer a question of choosing between touring or posting content. It’s about doing both, constantly, at a high level.

Fleeting benefits

But while headlining tours are often seen as a marker of success, many emerging acts first step onto national stages as openers – raising the question, does opening for a major artist actually lead to meaningful career growth?

In my study, I analyzed the touring and streaming data of 57 opening acts on major U.S. tours in 2022 and 2023. For this project, “major” referred to nationally promoted, ticketed tours at venues with capacities of 2,000 or more, such as Harry Styles’ “Love On Tour,” Paramore’s spring arena run and Mitski’s “Laurel Hell Tour.” These tours drew large, dedicated fanbases – offering opening artists significant exposure.

Using platforms such as Pollstar, Songkick and Chartmetric, I tracked each artist’s listenership across Spotify four weeks before the tour, during the tour and four weeks after the tour. I also conducted surveys with 500 fans to better understand how people were discovering and engaging with openers.

The results were revealing. Most opening acts saw a streaming bump during the tour – usually between 18% and 20%, with some surging up to 200%.

But that momentum rarely held. Within weeks, streams often dropped by 6% to 10%, or returned to their pre-tour levels entirely. While a few artists managed to hold onto new listeners, most saw the gains quickly fade. And even when audiences enjoyed an opener’s set, their interest withered: They may have checked out a song or two after the show, but few became regular listeners.

These findings challenge the long-standing narrative that opening for a major artist is a surefire path to career growth. Exposure helps, but it’s not enough on its own. Without a clear post-tour strategy, that attention quickly fades.

Algorithms can’t generate loyalty

I’m not trying to discourage aspiring bands from going on tour. Far from it. Touring remains a crucial part of building a fan base.

In a landscape defined by passive consumption, there’s still something powerful about the shared experience of live music. A performance can create an emotional connection that a stream simply can’t.

Today, discovery often starts with a playlist. Someone hears a song and maybe adds it to their rotation. But they rarely click to learn more about the artist. Listeners follow the playlist, not the person behind the music. Many acts land on major playlists and go on to generate tens of thousands of streams. Others will even go viral on social media. And they still can’t sell more than 25 tickets to a local show.

Live performances offer something different. A great set can turn a casual listener into a true fan. I’ve heard countless people say a particular show changed the way they experienced that artist’s music, that it left a lasting impression and forged a bond with the singer or group.

That kind of loyalty doesn’t come from an algorithm. It comes from being in the room. And with more than 100,000 tracks uploaded to streaming services each day, artists need to use every tool they can to stand out.

Cutting through the noise

In an era when streaming revenue is notoriously slim, touring has become one of the few reliable sources of income for working artists. The top artists in 2017 earned 80% of their income from touring, 15% from recorded music and 5% from publishing fees.

Even though touring is far from a guarantee – especially if you’re not the headliner, as my research shows – it’s still one of the few ways left to cut through the noise. In the survey I ran for my study, 68% of concertgoers said they discovered at least one new artist through an opener, and 39% said the opener influenced their ticket purchase.

And there are success stories – instances where opening slots have helped launch lasting careers.

Billie Eilish opened for Florence + The Machine early on in her career, using that visibility to build a massive following. Taylor Swift, in particular, has a reputation for picking future stars: Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan all opened for her before becoming major names.

These examples are outliers, of course. For most openers, visibility comes quickly but fades just as fast.

Today’s artists need more than one big moment. There needs to be some sort of plan, whether it’s releasing new content, crafting a strong identity or figuring out ways for new fans to stay engaged after the show ends.

Because at the end of the day, it’s not about being seen once. It’s all about being remembered.

Jeff Apruzzese, Professor of Music Industry, Drexel University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It is late at night, and we are silently watching a bat in a roost through a night-vision camera. From a nearby speaker comes a long, rattling trill.

The bat briefly perks up and wiggles its ears as it listens to the sound before dropping its head back down, uninterested.

Next from the speaker comes a higher-pitched “whine” followed by a “chuck.”

The bat vigorously shakes its ears and then spreads its wings as it launches from the roost and dives down to attack the speaker.

Bats show tremendous variation in the foods they eat to survive. Some species specialize on fruits, others on insects, others on flower nectar. There are even species that catch fish with their feet.

At the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, we’ve been studying one species, the fringe-lipped bat (Trachops cirrhosus), for decades. This bat is a carnivore that specializes in feeding on frogs.

Male frogs from many species call to attract female frogs. Frog-eating bats eavesdrop on those calls to find their next meal. But how do the bats come to associate sounds and prey?

We were interested in understanding how predators that eavesdrop on their prey acquire the ability to discriminate between tasty and dangerous meals. We combined our expertise on animal behavior, bat cognition and frog communication to investigate.

How do bats know the sound of a tasty meal?

There are nearly 8,000 frog and toad species in the world, and each one has a unique call. For instance, the first rattling call that we played from our speaker came from a large and toxic cane toad. The second “whine chuck” came from the túngara frog, a preferred prey species for these bats. Just as herpetologists can tell a frog species by its call, frog-eating bats can use these calls to identify the best meal.

Over the years, our research team has learned a great deal from frog-eating bats about how sound and echolocation are used to find prey, as well as the role of learning and memory in foraging success. In our newly published study, we focused on how associations between the sounds a bat hears and the prey quality it expects arise within the lifespan of an individual bat.

We considered whether the associations between sound and a delicious meal are an evolved specialty that bats are born with. But this possibility seemed unlikely because the bat species we study has a large geographic distribution across Central and South America, and the species of frogs found across this range vary tremendously.

Instead, we hypothesized that bats learn to associate different sounds with food as they grow up. But we had to test this idea.

First, we and our collaborators spent time in the forest and at ponds to record the mating calls from 15 of the most common frog and toad species in our study area in Panama.

Then, we set up mist nets along streams in Soberanía National Park to capture wild bats for the study.

Frog call, bat response

For the testing, each bat was housed individually in a large, outdoor flight chamber. From a speaker on the ground in the center, we played calls from one frog species on loop for 30 seconds and measured the behavior of the bat, which was hanging from a cloth roost. As we expected, adult bats were generally uninterested in the sounds of species that were unpalatable, such as those with toxins or those that are too large for the bat to carry.

But it was a different story for young bats. Juveniles responded with significantly more predatory behaviors in response to the calls of toxic toads compared with the adults. They also responded more weakly than adults to the sounds of túngara frogs, a palatable, abundant prey that adult bats prefer.

Thus it seems that juvenile bats must learn the associations between sounds and food over the course of their lives. As they grow up, we believe they learn to ignore the calls of frogs that aren’t worth the trouble and zero in on the calls of frogs that will be a good meal.

To better understand how sounds drive prey associations, we measured the acoustic properties of the different calls. We found that some of the most noticeable features of the calls correlated with body size: Larger frogs produce lower-frequency calls – that is, their voices are deeper. Both the adult and juvenile bats responded more strongly to larger species, which would provide larger meals.

However, there was a clear exception in the responses of adults, where the toxic toads and very large frogs elicited much weaker responses than expected for their body size. This finding led us to hypothesize that bats have early biases to pay attention to sounds associated with larger body size. Then they must learn through experience that meal quality is not only about size. Some large meals are toxic or impossible to carry, making them unpalatable.

After the bats spent a few days with us, we released each one back at its original site of capture. The bats departed, taking with them a small RFID tag, just like the ones pet owners use to identify their dogs and cats, in case we meet again as part of a future study.

As the bats go on with their lives in the wild, we continue our quest to deepen our understanding of the subtleties of information discrimination. How do individuals weed through information overload to make choices that make sense and benefit them? That’s the same challenge we all face each day.

Logan S. James, Research Associate in Animal Behavior, The University of Texas at Austin; Rachel Page, Staff Scientist, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Smithsonian Institution, and Ximena Bernal, Professor of Biological Sciences, Purdue University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In this age of artificial intelligence, data tampering and genetic manipulation, it seems that the nature of fraud and deception in competitive sport is becoming increasingly sophisticated. So, it seems almost surprising to see cheating in sport take a relatively old-fashioned form of late: tampering with equipment.

Yet that’s precisely what unfolded last month in ski jumping, a winter sport whereby athletes soar down a ramp, take flight and aim to maximise both distance and technique. Over the last few months, several ski jumpers and their management have been suspended from the sport due to the intentional illegal tampering and modification of the suits they wear.

The case first came to light during the 2025 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships held in Trondheim in March. Two Norwegian athletes, Marius Lindvik and Johann Andre Forfang, were subsequently disqualified from the men’s large hill event due to allegations of illegal ski jump suit manipulation with the intention of improving their performance.

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A subsequent investigation revealed that their ski suits had been illegally altered. In response, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) provisionally suspended the two athletes, along with three Norwegian national team officials – including the head coach and their equipment manager. Both athletes ultimately admitted the illegal alterations.

The scandal then intensified as FIS expanded its investigation which then subsequently led to the suspension of three other Norwegian ski jumpers. Several members of the team were all found to have been involved in the decision to modify the suits for the championships.

This wasn’t the sport’s first brush with controversy surrounding its suits. At the 2022 Winter Olympics, several jumpers there were disqualified for wearing suits that were deemed too large, again raising concerns about fairness.

What did the cheating intend to achieve?

A successful ski jump can be divided into several phases: in-run, take-off, early flight, stable flight, landing preparation, and landing. The suit contributes to enhancing the performance in all of these phases by directly affecting the aerodynamics and flight characteristics of the athlete. As a result, the size and shape of the suit is heavily regulated.

In the case of this scandal, the Norwegian Ski Federation general manager told a news conference that a reinforced thread or an extra seam had been put in the jumpsuits of the first two athletes that were suspended.

This additional material was inserted into the crotch area of the suits, increasing the surface area and stiffness, potentially providing extra lift during a jump’s flight phases. This extra lift would essentially translate into an increase in flight time and therefore a potential increase in the jumping distance. These modifications were not detectable through standard visual inspection and were only discovered upon detailed examination of the suits by then tearing them open.

Of course, cheating in sport is not a new phenomenon. However, in some cases, such controversies are not cheating per se, but merely new technologies emerging that challenge our perceptions of a sport and its values.

Some examples of this were the use of full-body swimsuits at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, or the potential use of prosthetic legs in track athletics at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

However, sometimes cheating can occur whereby sports equipment is intentionally modified physically to provide a competitive advantage. A recent example of this is the Australian cricket ball tampering scandal in 2018 where balls were intentionally scuffed by players to change their behaviour when bowled.

Improving a piece of sports equipment to increase its performance is the field of mechanical ergogenics, or, when illicitly performed, colloquially known as “technodoping”.

Some consider that the physical capabilities of athletes in some sports have now plateaued to the extent that any future improvements in performance will need to rely predominantly on technological innovation. So perhaps it can be understood why the suits were targeted in this particular sport.

In April 2025, the FIS decided to lift the provisional suspensions of the five Norwegian athletes under investigation for suspected involvement in suit tampering because it is the competitive off-season.

However, the ban for the officials involved remains in place. In the wake of the scandal, FIS has now implemented stricter regulations to prevent future instances of equipment manipulation. These key measures included limiting athletes to a single, pre-approved suit for the year’s competitions, and the FIS storing and inspecting all suits.

These reforms aim to uphold the integrity of ski jumping and will hopefully restore confidence in the sport itself. The 2025 scandal stands as a clear reminder that in the pursuit of victory, sports must remain vigilant – because when innovation outpaces fair play, integrity is the first casualty.

Bryce Dyer, Associate Professor of Sports Technology, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the second episode of Apple TV’s The Studio (2025–) – a sharp satirical take on contemporary Hollywood – newly-appointed studio head Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) visits the set of one of his company’s film productions.

He finds the crew anxiously attempting to pull off an extremely audacious and technically demanding shot known as a “oner”, or “long take”. Chaos ensues.

But despite the difficulties associated with it, the long take has a long history and continues to be a promising creative choice in contemporary film and television.

High stakes on the set

The long take is a shot which captures a scene in a single, unbroken take.

It’s a risky endeavour. While most film and TV production is constructed through the use of coverage – different shots edited together – the long take can’t hide behind the editing process. Every minute detail needs to be perfectly planned, executed and captured.

As a result, the oner is often associated with big, ostentatious, showstopping set pieces that exemplify technical and directorial prowess. Think of the “Copacabana” sequence from Goodfellas (1990), or the opening scene of Children of Men (2006).

The shot has gained a cultish type of reverence among film enthusiasts, with countless online articles and videos counting down the “best long takes in film history”.

Yet the practice also has its detractors. Film critic A.A. Dowd’s recent article for The Ringer says that “to the unimpressed, oners often come across as an act of glorified self-glorification”.

This dichotomy is also highlighted in The Studio, when one executive complains long takes are just directors showing off. Rogen’s character counters the oner is, in fact, “the ultimate cinematic achievement”.

A theory of the long take

The long take has existed in nearly every stage of film history – from silent films to sound, from Asian films to European, and from art-house to mainstream.

The greatest advocate of the long take was arguably French film theorist André Bazin. In his piece The Evolution of Film Language, Bazin argued cinema’s greatest asset was its ability to capture reality – and the long take was central to his understanding of how film achieved that.

For Bazin, editing “did not show us the event, but alluded to it”. To illustrate his point, he examines a scene from Robert Flaherty’s controversial silent documentary Nanook of the North (1922), in which a hunter patiently waits for his prey.

The passage of time could have been suggested by editing but, as Bazin notes, Flaherty “confines himself to showing the actual waiting period”. If the act of editing creates a synthetic manipulation of space and time, then the long take does the opposite – bringing us closer to a true representation of reality. For Bazin, the length “is the very substance of the image”.

The tradition of the long take – of showing “reality” – is perhaps most upheld in the world of art-house cinema. Directors such as Chantal Akerman, Béla Tarr, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming-liang have used the long take to “de-dramatise” narrative, creating a deliberately slow pace to prompt audiences to contemplate aspects of existence traditional narratives usually ignore.

Mainstream cinema also uses the long take to show “reality”, albeit in a different manner. Here, the long take has often been used as a mark of authenticity for the amazing feats of practical performers, whether this is the wild stunts or camera trickery of Buster Keaton, the balletic graces of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or this white-knuckled fight scene from The Protector (2005), starring Thai martial artist Tony Jaa.

However, our strong association between the oner and a distinct directorial vision likely began with Citizen Kane (1941). In this film, screen reality itself is manipulated, as director Orson Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland liberated the camera to move as if it was its own player in the drama.

In the below example, the camera starts outside, before reversing backwards through a window and two different rooms. The actors are constantly repositioning themselves around the camera for dramatic impetus, rather than for reality.

Bazin would refer to this as “shooting in depth”. Subsequent auteurs also embraced this technique, including William Wyler, Max Ophüls, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg.

Many viewed it as a chance to up the ante from Welles, something the director did himself with the remarkable opening sequence of his 1958 film Touch of Evil.

The future of the long take

There are far too many oners for me to list here, and they seem to only be increasing. It’s now common to see entire films seemingly shot in one take, such as Russian Ark (2002), Birdman (2014), 1917 (2019) and Boiling Point (2021), to name a few.

Technological advancements have made the long take more achievable. Camera stabilisers enable greater freedom of movement, while digital camera tech allows us to record for longer durations.

Furthermore, digital compositing has made it easier to fake the long take, such as in Birdman and 1917. Both of these films use multiple long takes that are strategically edited to look like a single shot. Impossible-to-see cuts may be hidden in dark moments, or through fast whip pans.

Prestige television has also lifted the oner practice, with examples from shows such as Mr. Robot (2015-19), True Detective (2014–), The Bear (2022-), Severance (2022) and, of course, The Studio.

But perhaps the most remarkable recent example comes from Netflix’s Adolescence (2025), a show in which four separate standalone episodes are all shot in a single long take.

In the age of TikTok and shortening attention spans, it should strike us as positive to see a resurgence of the long take as a creative choice in so much contemporary film and TV.

Kristian Ramsden, PhD Candidate, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

So you want to write a self-help book? Let me help you.

First, you’ll need a catchy idea. Ideally it will name the key elements of something important. But keep it simple: “The 57 Habits of Highly Effective People” or “98 Steps to Infinite Happiness” aren’t going to cut it.

Your idea doesn’t have to be new. How many genuinely original ideas about human nature are there after thousands of years of self-reflection? Recycle old ideas but dress them in contemporary clothing.

Resist the temptation to be modest. In the crowded marketplace of self-improvement, you mustn’t hide your light under a bushel. Your readers know the norms of the genre and will tolerate levels of preening and hyperbole they wouldn’t accept anywhere else.

Speaking of that marketplace, don’t pretend there are no other self-help authors. Find ways to acknowledge and applaud popular ones and align their ideas with yours. It might be the beginning of a beautiful cross-promotional friendship.

Add a dash of science, but don’t overdo it. Like salt, too much will make the stew unappetising. The science is usually complex and unsettled, so doing justice to it will only muddy your message.

Where possible, upgrade the research you cite from psychology to neuroscience. Instead of “fear”, “self-control” and “pleasure”, say “amygdala”, “prefrontal cortex” and “dopamine”. People don’t have strong intuitions about brains, so they’ll be more impressed and credulous when you write about them.

If your recipe for personal growth has a specific focus – becoming a better partner or parent, losing weight, overcoming addiction or trauma, getting ahead at work – so be it. But see if you can widen its focus so it speaks to other topics.

Don’t underestimate the importance of your persona. You need to come across as capable but relatable. Use lots of personal anecdotes, both to illustrate your formula for success and to humanise yourself.

Show readers you share their everyday struggles and failings. They need to like you, not see you as an unreachable, envy-making icon.

The Let Them Theory

Anyone wishing to see this formula applied to perfection should look no further than Mel Robbins, author of the virally successful new book The Let Them Theory.

The Guardian reported a trend for Let Them tattoos. The hashtag #letthem has over 206,000 posts on TikTok. On her podcast, Oprah called the book both “a game-changer” and “a life-changer”. And within a month of its release date, it had sold over 1.2 million copies.

Robbins’ previous books, The 5 Second Rule (not about dropped food) and The High 5 Habit, were bestsellers, and she has built a vast online presence, including a podcast currently topping the iTunes chart.

Whereas her earlier works were intended to help people overcome inertia and under-confidence, Let Them moves into the troubled waters of relationships. Rather than make us better stewards of our personal motivation and self-esteem, it aspires to help us deal with the endless frustrations, impositions and disappointments of other people.

Robbins abandons her previous fondness for five-item formulas and gives us the mantra-like “Let them”. In essence, we should recognise we can’t control what other people think and do, and should therefore stop being bothered by it.

She shared a couple of examples on the NBC Today show recently: “The person you’re dating doesn’t want a commitment. Let them. Your company is laying people off. Let them.”

We spend too much time and energy accommodating others, trying to change them and worrying what they think of us. We can only control ourselves, so we should focus on choosing the life we want. This she calls Let Me, the inseparable but unsung companion to Let Them.

Robbins frames Let Me as a way to reclaim power. By allowing others to dictate how we act, think and feel, we give them the power to affect us. Saying Let Them takes back that power and allows us to wield it for our own benefit, she writes.

The book is saturated with the language of control and power. Lacking them is what troubles and motivates people, Robbins suggests.

The need for control is repeatedly described as a “hard-wired” feature of human nature. Described in a zero-sum manner – the more you have, the less I do – it is front and centre in Let Them’s account of what makes relationships challenging.

It’s important to clarify what Let Them doesn’t mean. To Robbins, it doesn’t mean we should passively accept everything in life. It doesn’t mean we should let people do bad things to us (“They want to poke me in the eye with a sharp stick? Let them!”).

Let Them also doesn’t mean we should be selfish. Many of Robbins’ examples look like enlightened selfishness, but she argues Let Them improves relationships by clarifying boundaries, reducing conflict and allowing loved ones to make positive changes by no longer enabling them.

In theory, Let Them means accepting and emotionally detaching from challenging aspects of other people, not disconnecting from them.

Despite these clarifications of what it is and isn’t, what Let Them entails remains somewhat ambiguous throughout the book. Whatever Robbins’ intentions, a reader might easily read it as a call to look out for number one, to cut difficult people loose and to see relationships as power struggles.

However beneficial its advice might be, Let Them asks us to insulate ourselves psychologically from other people. At its heart, it is a deeply individualistic prescription that draws a sharp line between the self and others.

Research evidence

The basic idea of Let Them can be distilled into three propositions. First, how we should respond to something depends on whether we can control it. Second, because we can’t control other people, the best way to cope with the challenges they pose is detached acceptance. Third, because we can control ourselves, we should seize responsibility and actively choose our own path, guided by our values.

Psychological research shines a light on each of these propositions. Whether the best way to cope with an event depends on its controllability has been a focus of research on coping strategies since the 1980s. The idea itself is much older, dating at least to the Stoics, and is spelled out in the famous Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Studies find forms of emotion-focused coping, which modify how we respond to an event rather than the event itself (including acceptance and distancing), are usually more effective when stressful events are outside our control. In general, though, problem-focused coping strategies, such as actively confronting the stressor, tend to be more effective, especially when it is to some degree controllable.

Studies generally find that flexible use of coping strategies is most effective, so Robbins’ advice to adjust our responses to the controllability of the problem is well founded. But is the detached acceptance she advocates effective?

Research on emotion regulation suggests it often is. Meta-analyses find using acceptance strategies is associated with better emotional outcomes, such as the ability to tolerate distress.

This finding should come as no surprise, because acceptance is a primary ingredient of the well-established Acceptance and Commitment Therapy approach to psychotherapy. It is also central to mindfulness interventions.

Even if acceptance strategies are effective and suited to uncontrollable problems, however, it doesn’t follow that we can’t control other people, as Robbins argues. They are not puppets on strings, of course, but they can be persuaded, instructed, cajoled, manipulated and role-modelled. In short, people can be controlled imperfectly, or influenced.

Robbins takes a black-or-white view of the uncontrollability of other people to justify letting them be. She then smuggles in the concept of influence when offering advice on how not to let them be: how to make friends and deal with slovenly spouses.

Just as others aren’t entirely outside our control, we aren’t entirely inside it. The Let Them world, where we control what’s ours and can’t control what’s theirs, is a polarised one far removed from the interconnected reality of social life.

Robbins’ third proposition is on more solid ground. She is unquestionably correct in promoting the value of an action-oriented, problem-focused or agentic approach to life. Countless studies point to the benefits of traits and mindsets that foster authenticity and autonomy. Even if the argument for Let Them can be questioned, Let Me is uncontroversial.

Self-help books might help

It’s easy (and fun) for bookish types to be snooty about self-help titles like The Let Them Theory. They can be simplistic, naïve, immodest, one-note, grandiose, unnuanced, breathless, name-droppy, scientifically unsupported or just plain wrong.

They can make change look easy – just follow these fail-safe rules for happiness! – when we know it’s hard. They often overlook how much the difficulties we face are beyond our control, and as a result they imply we’re responsible when we don’t overcome them.

All of this criticism is fair, but it also misses the point. The main goal of the self-help book – aside from selling itself – is to instigate change rather than to capture complex truths. It aims to convey an idea or technique that will hook into readers’ minds and inspire positive action, not to offer a sober, scientifically sound account of psychological reality.

Different hooks will work with different people. Let Them will resonate with some readers and give them an easy-to-apply, all-purpose tool (“mind-hack”, to use the vernacular) for approaching life problems. It won’t resonate with others. Many readers of the self-help genre read multiple books in the hope of finding new and better ways to be hooked.

This is exactly what a good therapist would do. Some techniques won’t work with a particular client and some formulations of their problems won’t make sense to them, however well-founded they may be. Therapy aims to find the keys that fit the client’s mental locks.

A self-help book may only offer a single key, and it may be the wrong one for many people. But for roughly the price of five minutes of therapy – based on the Australian Psychological Society’s recommended hourly consultation rate – that’s not such a bad deal.

If we accept that the aim of a self-help book is to persuade and be actionable, its simplifications and overconfident claims are features, not bugs. Easily remembered, simple ideas are exactly the ones that have a chance of being implemented. They might even work.

People may mock pop psychology, scoff at the inflated claims of self-improvement gurus and sneer at self-help books. Let them.

Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The lights are mostly back on in Spain, Portugal and southern France after a widespread blackout on Monday.

The blackout caused chaos for tens of millions of people. It shut down traffic lights and ATMs, halted public transport, cut phone service and forced people to eat dinner huddled around candles as night fell. Many people found themselves trapped in trains and elevators.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has said the exact cause of the blackout is yet to be determined. In early reporting, Portugal’s grid operator REN was quoted as blaming the event on a rare phenomenon known as “induced atmospheric vibration”. REN has since reportedly refuted this.

But what is this vibration? And how can energy systems be improved to mitigate the risk of widespread blackouts?

How much does weather affect electricity?

Weather is a major cause of disruptions to electricity supply. In fact, in the United States, 83% of reported blackouts between 2000 and 2021 were attributed to weather-related events.

The ways weather can affect the supply of electricity are manifold. For example, cyclones can bring down transmission lines, heatwaves can place too high a demand on the grid, and bushfires can raze substations.

Wind can also cause transmission lines to vibrate. These vibrations are characterised by either high amplitude and low frequency (known as “conductor galloping”), or low amplitude and high frequency (known as “aeolian vibrations”).

These vibrations are a significant problem for grid operators. They can place increased stress on grid infrastructure, potentially leading to blackouts.

To reduce the risk of vibration, grid operators often use wire stabilisers known as “stock bridge dampers”.

What is ‘induced atmospheric vibration’?

Vibrations in power lines can also be caused by extreme changes in temperature or air pressure. And this is one hypothesis about what caused the recent widespread blackout across the Iberian peninsula.

As The Guardian initially reported Portugal’s REN as saying:

Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as “induced atmospheric vibration”. These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.

In fact, “induced atmospheric vibration” is not a commonly used term, but it seems likely the explanation was intended to refer to physical processes climate scientists have known about for quite some time.

In simple terms, it seems to refer to wavelike movements or oscillations in the atmosphere, caused by sudden changes in temperature or pressure. These can be triggered by extreme heating, large-scale energy releases (such as explosions or bushfires), or intense weather events.

When a part of Earth’s surface heats up very quickly – due to a heatwave, for example – the air above it warms, expands and becomes lighter. That rising warm air creates a pressure imbalance with the surrounding cooler, denser air. The atmosphere responds to this imbalance by generating waves, not unlike ripples spreading across a pond.

These pressure waves can travel through the atmosphere. In some cases, they can interact with power infrastructure — particularly long-distance, high-voltage transmission lines.

These types of atmospheric waves are usually called gravity waves, thermal oscillations or acoustic-gravity waves. While the phrase “induced atmospheric vibration” is not formally established in meteorology, it seems to describe this same family of phenomena.

What’s important is that it’s not just high temperatures alone that causes these effects — it’s how quickly and unevenly the temperature changes across a region. That’s what sets the atmosphere into motion and can cause power lines to vibrate. Again, though, it’s still unclear if this is what was behind the recent blackout in Europe.

More centralised, more vulnerable

Understanding how the atmosphere behaves under these conditions is becoming increasingly important. As our energy systems become more interconnected and more dependent on long-distance transmission, even relatively subtle atmospheric disturbances can have outsized impacts. What might once have seemed like a fringe effect is now a growing factor in grid resilience.

Under growing environmental and electrical stress, centralised energy networks are dangerously vulnerable. The increasing electrification of buildings, the rapid uptake of electric vehicles, and the integration of intermittent renewable energy sources have placed unprecedented pressure on traditional grids that were never designed for this level of complexity, dynamism or centralisation.

Continuing to rely on centralised grid structures without fundamentally rethinking resilience puts entire regions at risk — not just from technical faults, but from environmental volatility.

The way to avoid such catastrophic risks is clear: we must embrace innovative solutions such as community microgrids. These are decentralised, flexible and resilient energy networks that can operate independently when needed.

Strengthening local energy autonomy is key to building a secure, affordable and future-ready electricity system.

The European blackout, regardless of its immediate cause, demonstrates that our electrical grids have become dangerously sensitive. Failure to address these structural weaknesses will have consequences far worse than those experienced during the COVID pandemic.

Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian, Professor of Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We’ve discovered that a meteorite struck northwest Scotland 1 billion years ago, 200 million years later than previously thought. Our results are published today in the journal Geology.

This impact now aligns with some of Earth’s earliest known, land based, non-marine microbial fossils, and offers new insights into how meteorite strikes may have shaped our planet’s environment and life.

A rocky treasure trove

The Torridonian rocks of northwest Scotland are treasured by geologists as some of the finest archives of the ancient lakes and river systems that existed a billion years ago.

Those water bodies were home to microbial ecosystems consisting of eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are single-celled organisms with complex internal structures that are the ancestors of all plants and animals.

But the Torridonian environments and their associated microbial communities were dramatically disrupted when a meteor slammed into the planet.

The record of this event is preserved in a geological unit known as the Stac Fada Member. It is comprised of unusual layers of rock fragments broken and melted by the impact.

Also, crucially, there are shock-altered minerals that closely resemble those found in famous impact sites such as Chicxulub (Mexico) and Sudbury (Canada).

In the case of the Stac Fada, these minerals were engulfed in high-energy, ground-hugging flows of smashed rock triggered by the impact that spread across the ancient landscape.

What is exciting about our new date for the Stac Fada impact is that it now overlaps in age with microfossils preserved elsewhere in the Torridonian rocks.

This raises some interesting questions. For example, how did the meteorite strike influence the environmental conditions those early non-marine microbial ecosystems relied on?

Finding out the date

Determining when a meteorite struck is no easy task.

We can use minerals to constrain the age, but they have to be the right kind. In this case it means something that wasn’t overly altered by the intense heat, pressure and fluids generated by the impact, yet robust enough to survive the ravages of deep geological time.

Suitable minerals are extremely rare, but we found a few in the Stac Fada rocks. One was reidite, a mineral that only forms under extreme pressure. The other was granular zircon, a uranium-bearing mineral formed by immense impact temperatures.

These minerals are, in effect, tiny stopwatches whose clocks start “ticking” at the time they form. Although these clocks are often damaged during the impact and the ensuing pulse of heat, we used mathematical modelling to determine the most probable time of impact.

Together, these techniques consistently pointed to an event 1 billion years old, not 1.2 billion years old as previously suggested. Given such vast spans of time, a 20% change in age might not seem dramatic.

However, the new age shows the timing of the impact coincides with early non-marine eukaryotic fossils. It also lines up with a major mountain-building event. This means the Torridonian lifeforms had to cope with significant, environment-altering phenomena.

Why this is important for you, me, and life in general

The origin of life is a deeply complex process that likely began with a series of pre-biotic chemical reactions.

While much remains unknown, it is intriguing that two ancient meteorite impacts, the 3.5-billion-year-old North Pole impact in Western Australia and now the 1-billion-year-old Stac Fada deposit in northwest Scotland, occur close in time to major milestones in the fossil record.

The North Pole impact occurs in a sequence of rocks containing stromatolites, some of the oldest-known fossils considered to be indicative of microbial life.

All life requires energy. The earliest forms of life are thought to be associated with volcanic hydrothermal springs. Impacts offer a plausible alternative. The immediate aftermath of a meteorite strike is extreme and hostile, and would ruin your day. But the long-term effects could support key biological processes.

Meteorite strikes fracture rocks, generate long-lived hydrothermal systems and form crater lakes that enable the concentration of important ingredients for life, such as clays, organic molecules and phosphorus. The latter is a key element for all forms of life.

In Scotland, the Stac Fada impact lies within an ancient river and lake environment that housed microbial ecosystems colonising the land. What makes the Stac Fada impact deposits fascinating is that, unlike most other impacts on Earth, they preserve the environments in which those pioneering organisms lived immediately prior to the impact.

Further, the impact deposits were subsequently buried as non-marine microbial habitats became reestablished. So, the Stac Fada rocks provide an opportunity to see how microbial life recovered from impact.

Extraterrestrial visitors in the form of meteorite collisions may not just have scarred Earth’s surface, but shaped its future, turning catastrophic events into natural crater-cradles of life.

Chris Kirkland, Professor of Geochronology, Curtin University; Timmons Erickson, Visting Research Associate, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University, and Tony Prave, Emeritus Professor, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of St Andrews

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When miniature dachshund Valerie was captured after 529 days alone in the wilds of Australia’s Kangaroo Island, experts speculated she survived partly by eating other animals’ poo.

While this survival tactic may have saved the resilient sausage dog, it highlights a behaviour that makes many dog owners cringe.

This type of “recycling” is surprisingly common in our canine companions. But why would dogs, even those with full food bowls, choose to indulge in such a revolting habit?

Here’s why some dogs can’t resist a faecal feast, known more technically as coprophagia.

What is coprophagia?

Coprophagia or coprophagy is the scientific term for eating faecal matter (poo). It’s a behaviour displayed across a number of animal species.

Around half of all dogs try eating poo at some stage – either their own, another dog’s, or other animals’. Research suggests about one in four dogs have made it a regular habit.

In wild canids like foxes and wolves, mothers will eat their puppies’ stools to keep dens clean and reduce scents that might attract predators.

It’s also thought that eating fresh faeces could reduce the likelihood of intestinal parasites being spread, offering an evolutionary benefit to our dogs’ wild counterparts.

Modern dogs still actively clean their puppies’ poo away in the first few weeks of life, a behaviour that puppies observe and can learn.

Nutritional factors

As unpalatable as it might seem to us, poo still contains considerable nutrients that offer valuable compounds as a food source when times are tough.

Dogs do have different preferences to us in terms of texture, taste and odour of their food, so we should not be hasty to dismiss what might appeal to them.

Medical reasons

The links between diet, gut flora and diseases that might influence behaviours like coprophagia are still emerging. At this stage, there seems to be no apparent link with age or diet.

There could be underlying health reasons for your dog seeking out a sneaky snack, so do mention it to your vet and get a health check if your dog is known to frequent the kitty litter box, for example.

Punishment in toilet training, living conditions that don’t provide enough to do or room to explore (like kennel facilities), and psychological distress have all been linked to dogs eating their own poo.

A strain on relationships

Our typical response to seeing dogs eat any kind of poo ranges from disgust to concern. At best it makes us less likely to want a lick to the face, at worst it can really strain our human-animal bonds.

One study from the United Kingdom showed that dogs eating their own poo after rehoming was in the top ten reasons for the adoption failing in the first four weeks when dogs were returned to the shelter.

Dogs can potentially transmit parasites and bacteria to humans through licking, regardless of whether they eat poo. This serves as a good reminder to ensure your dog receives appropriate parasite control and encourage all household members to follow good hygiene practices, like washing hands before eating.

Help, my dog keeps eating poo

While Valerie’s tale of survival shows us coprophagia may be life-saving in extreme situations, most of our doggo companions aren’t facing wilderness survival challenges.

Thankfully, coprophagia is often manageable.

Understanding why our dogs might eat poo – whether based on evolutionary instinct, medical issues or psychological triggers – can help us address this canine behaviour with compassion rather than just disgust.

If your dog indulges often, providing appropriate stimulation through regular exercise, social connection with people and other dogs, offering toys and safe chews can help. Sometimes, a trip to the vet might be needed to rule out any underlying health issues.

Dogs reprimanded for toileting accidents might eat the evidence to avoid future punishment, creating a new problem behaviour. Instead, rewarding your puppy or dog for toileting in the right location (and giving them frequent opportunities to do so) is likely to establish toileting routines you will approve of, making coprophagia less likely.

By the same token, dogs can’t eat what isn’t left lying around. Regular poo-pickups in your yard, dog park, kitty litter box and other likely locations will remove temptation and help set your dog up for success.

If Valerie has taught us anything, it’s that what might be considered our dogs’ most revolting habits are actually remarkable adaptations that deserve our understanding and empathy, even if we can’t rally enthusiastic support.

Mia Cobb, Research Fellow, Animal Welfare Science Centre, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Do something about it before it gets worse.

This was a response from a 16-year-old boy in one of our recent studies when asked what he would say to the prime minister about gambling in Australia.

This response is not uncommon.

Calls for action

Even before they can legally gamble at the age of 18, young people recognise the harms that the gambling industry (and those who profit from gambling, such as sporting codes) can cause to Australians.

And they are frustrated by a lack of government action to protect them from these harms.

They tell us that rather than prioritising the wellbeing of the community, the government is prioritising the profits of a harmful business.

Politicians are also hearing concerns about gambling from the young people they represent in their communities.

Urging parliamentary action on gambling advertising, former Australian rugby captain and Independent ACT Senator David Pocock told parliament:

Talk to parents and young people. They’ll name all the gambling companies. They’ll be able to recite odds. They’ll talk about the odds for the upcoming games of their favourite teams. What I’m hearing from people here in the ACT that I represent is that this is not the direction they want to go in.

Starting young

For more than a decade, our team has been talking to young people and their parents about the normalisation of gambling in Australia. We have carried out multiple studies that show how pervasive marketing tactics are normalising gambling for young Australians.

Young people tell us they see innovative marketing strategies for different gambling products (including betting, lotteries and casinos) everywhere, including during family-friendly television shows, through watching and attending sport and even while walking down the street.

They increasingly see promotions on social media sites such as TikTok and Snapchat.

They can name multiple gambling brands from a young age, and think gambling gives you a reason to watch sport.

When asked why, they say gambling adds to the fun and excitement of the game. Some tell us they would be convinced to gamble if they got a good “deal” from a company.

Newer forms of app-based gambling also make it is easier for young people to gamble anywhere, anytime when they turn 18.

As an example, a young person couldn’t sit in a classroom and drink alcohol when they reach the legal age, but it is not unusual for young people to tell us that classmates use apps to bet on major events while at school.

Some researchers have also documented the extent to which young people gamble before the age of 18.

One study found 31% of 12- to 17-year-olds had ever gambled and 6% had gambled in the past month. They found 8% were at some level of risk of gambling harm.

It’s no wonder parents are worried.

Their concern about the risks of gambling are similar to their concerns about alcohol: 70% are at least somewhat concerned about the risks associated with gambling for their children, and 27.7% are extremely concerned.

They comment that gambling products are “highly accessible”, “attractive” and “in your face”.

When parents try to talk to their children about gambling, they say it is almost impossible to “get the message across” given the constant exposure to ads that their children see in their everyday lives. As one father told us:

It’s advertised to children every day of the week when they watch their favourite sport stars, so they think it’s normal.

It’s time to act

Government decisions about how to respond to the gambling industry will have a major impact on young people’s futures. But young people have rarely (if ever) been given an opportunity by the government to put forward their views.

Research shows when they are given the opportunity to comment on gambling policy (and gambling industry tactics), they carefully consider the issues. They are also able to use their own experiences to suggest strategies that would help protect them and other young people from gambling industry harm.

The United Nations states children have the right to be consulted about issues that matter to them and impact their futures. This includes strengthening engagement with children and young people, recognising their “agency, resilience and their positive contributions as agents of change”.

Young people have been central actors in the climate justice movement, and have been key stakeholders in initiatives to respond to the tactics of the junk food and tobacco industries.

While we talk a lot about the impact of the gambling industry on young people, governments rarely consult them about the policies that are needed to protect them from harm.

Yet their message to the government in our research is clear. They:

• are concerned about the influence of gambling marketing on the normalisation of gambling for young people, and its short and long-term impacts

• believe current restrictions aimed at protecting young people are ineffective

• are critical of the overwhelmingly positive messages about gambling they are exposed to, with very limited information about the risks and harms associated with the industry and its products.

The following comment from a 15-year-old sums it up best:

The wellbeing of the population is more important than the revenue that comes in from these sorts of businesses.

Hannah Pitt, Senior Research Fellow – Institute for Health Transformation, Deakin University; Grace Arnot, Public Health Researcher, Deakin University; Samantha Thomas, Professor of Public Health, Deakin University, and Simone McCarthy, Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Commercial Determinants of Health, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

With ongoing cost of living pressures, the Australian and New Zealand supermarket sectors are attracting renewed political attention on both sides of the Tasman.

Allegations of price gouging have become a political issue in the Australian federal election. At the same time, the New Zealand government has announced that “all options” are on the table to address a lack of competition in the sector – including possible breakup of the existing players.

But it is not clear breaking up the supermarkets or other government interventions will improve the sector for shoppers and suppliers.

In 2022, I co-authored a government-commissioned analysis looking at whether New Zealand’s two main supermarket groups should be forced to sell some of their stores to create a third competing chain.

We found it was possible under some scenarios that breakup could benefit consumers. But key uncertainties and implementation risks meant consumers could lose overall.

A lot hinges on whether breakup causes supermarkets’ input costs to rise or product variety to fall. Even in more positive scenarios at least some consumers could be left worse off.

Watchdog concerns

Competition authorities – the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and New Zealand’s Commerce Commission – have conducted supermarket sector studies. They each expressed concern at significant barriers to entry and expansion in the sector and supermarkets’ resulting high levels of profitability.

This year, the ACCC concluded margins earned by Australia’s main supermarkets are among the highest of supermarket businesses in comparable countries. Similarly, in 2022 the Commerce Commission found New Zealand’s supermarkets were earning excess profits of around NZ$430m a year.

While high profits might mean that market power is being abused, it could also mean managers are doing a good job. Or have had a great run of luck. Alternative explanations for high profits would need to be ruled out before putting fingers on regulatory triggers.

Barriers to entry

The starting point is to acknowledge that high profits and prices go hand in hand with barriers to entry and challenges in achieving economies of scale.

In other words, some sectors are less competitive than others simply because a lack of demand or high costs make it unprofitable for additional competitors to either enter or remain in the market.

Countries like Australia and New Zealand, with low population densities and large service areas, face high costs of nationwide supply. They also face significant shipping distances from other countries. This limits the ability of overseas entrants using their existing buying and supply infrastructures.

That said, some barriers to entry might be artificial or caused by existing firms stifling new competitors.

Existing supermarkets in both countries have gained controlling stakes in the land needed to set up new supermarkets – something regulatory settings can prevent.

Another challenge for new chains is the process of getting planning and land use consents – something policymakers can address.

This points to key elements of a test for whether supermarkets are charging too much. One is a recognition that there can be natural reasons for limited competition, and unless technologies or consumer preferences change that will remain the case.

Another is a focus on the things that can be changed – whether at the firm or policy level – in a way that benefits consumers and suppliers. Finally, policymakers need to consider whether the benefits of implementing them outweigh the costs.

Testing the market

Building on work developed by Nobel economist Oliver Williamson, a “three-limb test” was used in the 2017 government-commissioned assessment of fuel pricing in New Zealand that I co-authored. The same could be used to assess the supermarket sector.

That three-limb test asks

• are there features of the existing industry structure and conduct giving cause for concern
• can those causes for concern be remedied
• would the benefits of remedying those concerns outweigh the costs of doing so?

If the answer to all three limbs is yes, that suggests suppliers are charging too much (or delivering too little) since there are practical ways to improve on the status quo.

A virtue of such a test is that is can be applied in any sector where there are high firm concentration, barriers to entry and high profit margins.

Importantly, the test looks beyond just what firms are (or are not) doing and asks whether policy and regulatory settings are ripe for improvements too.

The test is also pragmatic – it shouldn’t trigger changes unless they are clearly expected to do more good than harm. This is important if interventions are risky, costly or irreversible, especially in sectors that are important to all of us.

Politicians on both sides of the Tasman are floating the possibility of supermarket breakup, among other possible interventions. The three-limb test helps to identify whether any proposed interventions are a good idea and whether supermarket prices are higher than they need to be.

Richard Meade, Adjunct Associate Professor, Centre for Applied Energy Economics and Policy Research, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

At the end of March 2025, Penguin Random House announced booming sales, with a year-on-year increase of 8.5%. Even better, their profits rose 11.3%.

Reading this, you might think publishing is flourishing, but you will hear a very different story if you ask many Australian independent publishers. They will tell you it’s difficult to cover costs, let alone make profit.

With some data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and a breakdown of the costs involved in getting a book into your local Dymocks, I can show where some of the troubles lie. Which leads to the question: How can Australia protect its homegrown publishers?

Are books actually expensive?

Commonly held wisdom is that books are expensive in Australia. Perhaps in part because of this perception, books have, on average, roughly the same recommended retail price they did 15 years ago.

In the late 1990s, when the Australian Bureau of Statistics started collecting data on book prices, they seemed to be rising in line with the consumer price index (CPI). Since the early 2000s, the CPI has jumped, while books have hovered around the same price.

This is a partly a result of more books selling through discount department stores, which lowers the average price and has led to relative stability in prices. When I started working in publishing in 2008, a trade paperback usually cost around A$29.99; the average cost now is around $36.99.

So, what would have happened to book prices if they had increased in line with the CPI? According to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Inflation Calculator, a book that cost $29.95 in 2010 would cost $43.22 in 2024.

Over the same 15-year period, pulp and converted paper costs rose 51% and printing costs rose 34%. Wages in general rose 48% in that time. (However, the book editor’s award rate only increased 20%: from $1,007 per week for a book editor grade one in 2010 to $1,205 in 2025.)

In short, it costs much more to make a book now – but as the chart above clearly demonstrates, the retail price has barely moved. More books being sold through discount department stores, such as Big W, exacerbates the issue, so the return for publishers is generally lower per book than it was 15 years ago.

What a book costs in 2025

What follows is an indicative (not exhaustive) breakdown of publishing income and expenses for an independent publisher in 2025, for books sold in an independent bookshop. Small presses are less likely to have their books stocked in Big W.

Taking a $36.99 trade paperback as an example, these calculations are based on a 2,000-copy print run: a moderate to ambitious target for a literary fiction title. For ease of accounting, I have left out GST, except on author royalties.

An author receives 10% of the recommended retail price as a royalty rate. So for a $36.99 book, the author gets $3.69 for each copy sold.

The average bookseller discount is set at 47%. (For discount department stores such as Big W, it is often over 50%.) This means a publisher would receive $17.70 for each copy sold. From that, the publisher pays for editing and design, printing and distribution. For the purposes of this exercise, I am assuming this is 19% of the money the publisher receives from the booksellers. This is a modest percentage; it can be as high as 30%.

A sell-through of every printed copy is a publishing unicorn – you can imagine it, but it doesn’t exist. Inevitably, copies will be damaged in transit. And because of the sale or return policy, which allows booksellers to order copies on the understanding they can return them if the books do not sell, the tendency is for booksellers to do at least some over-ordering.

If a publisher sells 80% of the print run, the income would be $5,274. With their income, a publisher pays for overheads such as salaries, rent, insurance, purchases, software and hardware. They will also pay tax.

If they hired a freelance publicity or marketing firm, they would be in the red. If the book needed to be legalled for potential defamation suits, they would be in the red. If there were photoshoots and permissions to reproduce song lyrics, or an extra round of design or editing, they would be in the red.

What about ebooks?

For ebooks, the story is different. The publisher will have covered all the production costs. Without the printing, the margins are better. There is a negligible conversion fee, of around $200. The distribution and bookseller slices of the pie are smaller.

Author royalties on ebooks are higher as well – usually 25%. There are no returns, so each sale represents income. For a literary fiction title, the sales may be around 200 copies. If this is the case, the publisher’s income on an ebook priced at $16 would be just over $1200.

In some genres, ebooks dominate. But for the books independent publishers release, the income is usually modest – unless the title wins the Miles Franklin Literary Award, in which case they may sell a few thousand ebooks, or is set on school curricula, which means sales in the hundreds or low thousands each year.

How can small publishers keep making books?

Clearly, the numbers are not adding up in a sustainable way for the publishing industry. This poses the obvious question: can small local publishers continue to make books?

The short answer is yes. What follows are some paths to that future.

Increase book prices

The above heading is enough to rouse fear in the hearts of publishers and booksellers alike. If book prices go up, will customers still buy books?

It is one thing for a punter to wear the increase in the cost of a cup of coffee, which has been rising incrementally, although may jump up in the next few months. It represents a much smaller chunk of their fortnightly wage than the price of a book, especially in a cost of living crisis.

As a cautionary tale, we can look to another entertainment industry. Of course, books and films are different. Books make good presents, they can be passed on and usually read in a few sessions, but both are forms of entertainment or education that punters buy.

The cost of the average movie ticket has increased 27% in the last ten years. In the same period, the number of cinema-goers has declined.

More mergers

In the past year, three smaller Australian publishing houses – Affirm, Text and Pantera – have merged with bigger companies, perhaps reflecting the stresses shrinking margins are exerting on the local industry.

A large publisher, such as Penguin Random House, can negotiate competitive print prices and manage its own warehouses. This means the distribution costs are lower on a per-book basis. Profit margins can be more favourable than for smaller houses.

A big company views a merger as a quick way to increase market share and acquire backlist titles. For a small press, a merger can relieve cash flow and margin pressures. The concern for authors, and by extension literary agents, is that more mergers can mean fewer publishers, fewer publishing opportunities and less championing of local culture.

New models

Word of mouth has long been the most effective marketing strategy for books, but it is time consuming to orchestrate.

Historically, publishers have alerted readers to books through traditional media, publicity and marketing campaigns, and “co-op” with booksellers – where the publisher pays for prominent shelf space or places in customer catalogues. In exchange for a fee, a publisher might guarantee a small image of the book’s cover, an abbreviated blurb and placement up the front of a shop – a common practice with chains such as Dymocks.

These ways of reaching readers are still viable, but as media markets are increasingly splintered, the influence is diluted.

One successful option for authors with large followings is to hold events in collaboration with booksellers, where people can buy a ticket and book combo and meet the author. Such deals are only feasible for authors with existing name recognition, even more so if they also have their own social media presence.

These events often require production support and venue-hire fees. They usually only support new release titles, rather than creating a longer-term sales channel. The sticking point is that the authors who can draw a crowd are also usually able to sell their books without the help of booksellers.

For small publishers, another option is selling to readers directly, either through subscription models or through their websites, as the newly created Australia Institute Press (where I am managing editor) has been doing.

This involves postage and handling and additional accounting. But it means that, aside from printing costs and staff time, the return on investment can be as high as $20 for a $36.99 book. The difficulty with such a model is the exclusion of booksellers and the symbiotic relationship between independent booksellers and publishers that has underpinned the industry for generations.

Self-publishing, where authors either do the work themselves or engage others to produce the book – a system of publishers-for-hire – continues to grow. In the recent past, this was often seen as a predatory practice. But in a marketplace where authors are expected to bring their own social media following and market their books to pre-existing audiences, the value of publishers and the traditional bookseller supply chain becomes less clear.

The success of these models depends on an author having sufficient resources to pay upfront and on their ability to reach an audience on their own. But for influencers with a large following, or a following they build with minimal costs by publishing digitally, these are not limiting factors.

Literary authors, however, are less likely to have large audiences of their own. With average earnings of $18,200 per year, they are also less likely to be able to afford upfront costs.

Increase government subsidies

For independent Australian publishers to survive, there is one necessary condition that needs to change. The first is greater support from government for the publishing industry. During COVID, the government offered extra funding to support the arts.

As research from Julieanne Lamond and Melinda Harvey showed, the extra funds government given to literary organisations had a near immediate – and significant – effect on the amount of work literary journals published. The return on investment is quick, compared with artforms such as theatre, and the results are easy to quantify.

Funding for the arts in Australia is strikingly unambitious. There is an opportunity for governments to invest in the future of the sector and lay down the infrastructure for future generations. Writing Australia, the new federal government funding body, will be launched on July 1 2025.

The literature sector is waiting to see how much of the proposed increase in funding will support local writers, editors, publishers, designers, publicists and the many people who keep the industry running.

From 1969 until 1997, the Australian government subsidised publishers and printers with a Book Bounty that bolstered the local industry – to the tune of 25% subsidies of production costs for eligible books. Given current market conditions, if we want to ensure the future of Australian publishing, it may be time to launch a new bounty.

For the past few decades, the common wisdom has been that independent publishers develop new talent, which then bolsters the industry and forms each new generation of writers.

McPhee Gribble brought us Tim Winton and Helen Garner. Giramondo first published Michael Mohammed Ahmad. Text did the same for Robbie Arnott and Anna Funder.

Literary prizes in Australia recognise the talent these publishers foster. Five of the six titles on last year’s Miles Franklin shortlist were from small publishers, as are half the books on this year’s Stella Prize shortlist.

There are two campaigns this federal election that endeavour to encourage voters, and by extension politicians, to consider the arts. Books Create Australia is an initiative bringing together sometime allies, including publishers, booksellers and libraries announcing a set of requests. Save Our Arts has some similar requests, including regulation of AI and more funding.

Whether either campaign has an effect on the new parliament remains to be seen.

Australia has bid farewell to manufacturing and other industries, but we cannot produce our culture overseas. Without significant increases in support from government, Australian publishing is headed for further trouble.

Alice Grundy, Visiting Fellow, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“Theories are like toothbrushes,” it’s sometimes said. “Everybody has their own and nobody wants to use anybody else’s.”

It’s a joke, but when it comes to the study of consciousness – the question of how we have a subjective experience of anything at all – it’s not too far from the truth.

In 2022, British neuroscientist Anil Seth and I published a review listing 22 theories based in the biology of the brain. In 2024, operating with a less restrictive scope, US public intellectual Robert Kuhn counted more than 200.

It’s against this background that Nature has just published the results of an “adversarial collaboration” from a group called the Cogitate Consortium focused on two prominent theories: global neuronal workspace theory and integrated information theory.

Two big theories go head to head

With so many ideas floating around and inherently elusive subject matter, testing theories has been no easy task. Indeed, debate between proponents of different theories has been vigorous and, at times, acrimonious.

At a particularly low point in 2023, after the initial announcement of the results Cogitate has formally published today, many experts signed an open letter arguing that integrated information theory was not only false but doesn’t even qualify as scientific.

Nevertheless, global neuronal workspace theory and integrated information theory are two of the “big four” theories that dominate current discussions of consciousness. (The others are higher-order representation theories, and the local re-entry – or recurrency – theory.)

The theories are hard to summarise, but both tie consciousness to the activity of neurons in different parts of the brain.

Advocates of these two theories, together with a number of unaligned theorists, generated predictions from the two theories about the kinds of brain activity one would expect to be associated with consciousness.

Predictions and results

The group agreed that integrated information theory predicts conscious perception should be associated with sustained synchronisation and activity of signals in a part of the brain called the posterior cortex.

On the other hand, they said global neuronal workspace theory predicts that a process of “neural ignition” should accompany both the start and end of a stimulus. What’s more, it should be possible to decode what a person is conscious of from activity in their prefrontal cortex.

These hypotheses (among others) were tested by “theory-neutral” teams from across the globe.

The results were not decisive. Some were in line with predictions of one or other of the theories, but other results generated challenges.

For example, the team failed to find sustained synchronisation within the posterior cortex of the kind predicted by integrated information theory. At the same time, global neuronal workspace theory is challenged by the fact that not all contents of consciousness could be decoded from the prefrontal cortex, and by the failure to find neural ignition when the stimulus was first presented.

A win for science

But although this study wasn’t a win for either theory, it was a decisive win for science. It represents a clear advance in how the consciousness community approaches theory-testing.

It’s not uncommon for researchers to tend to look for evidence in favour of their own theory. But the seriousness of this problem in consciousness science only became clear in 2022, with the publication of an important paper by a number of researchers involved in the Cogitate Consortium. The paper showed it was possible to predict which theory of consciousness a particular study supported based purely on its design.

The vast majority of attempts to “test” theories of consciousness have been conducted by advocates of those very theories. As a result, many studies have focused on confirming theories (rather than finding flaws, or falsifying them).

No changing minds

The first achievement of this collaboration was getting rival theorists to agree on testable predictions of the two theories. This was especially challenging as both the global workspace and integrated information theories are framed in very abstract terms.

Another achievement was to run the the same experiments in different labs – a particularly difficult challenge given those labs were not committed to the theories in question.

In the early stages of the project, the team took advice from Israeli-US psychologist Daniel Kahneman, the architect of the idea of adversarial collaborations for research.

Kahneman said not to expect the results to change anyone’s mind, even if they decisively favoured one theory over another. Scientists are committed to their theories, he pointed out, and will cling to them even in the face of counter-evidence.

The usefulness of irrationality

This kind of irrational stubbornness may seem like a problem, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right systems in place, it can even help to advance science.

Given we don’t know which theoretical approach to consciousness is most likely to be right, the scientific community ought to tackle consciousness from a variety of perspectives.

The research community needs ways to correct itself. However, it’s useful for individual scientists to stick to their theoretical guns, and continue to work within a particular theory even in the face of problematic findings.

A hard nut to crack

Consciousness is a hard nut to crack. We don’t yet know whether it will yield to the current methods of consciousness science, or whether it requires a revolution in our concepts or methods (or perhaps both).

What is clear, however, is that if we’re going to untangle the problem of subjective experience, the scientific community will need to embrace this model of collaborative research.

Tim Bayne, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It would be impossible at this stage in the election campaign to be unaware that housing is a critical, potentially vote-changing, issue. But the suite of policies being proposed by the major parties largely focus on young, first home buyers.

What is glaringly noticeable is the lack of measures to improve availability and affordability for older people.

Modern older lives are diverse, yet older people have become too easily pigeonholed. No more so than in respect to property, where a perception has flourished that older people own more than their fair share of housing wealth.

While the value of housing has no doubt increased, home ownership rates among people reaching retirement age has actually declined since the mid-1990s.

Older people can also face rental stress and homelessness – with almost 20,000 homeless people in Australia aged over 55. Severe housing stress is a key contributing to those homelessness figures.

It’s easy to blame older Australians for causing, or exacerbating, the housing crisis. But doing so ignores the fact that right now, our housing system is badly failing many older people too.

No age limits

Owning a home has traditionally provided financial security for retirees, especially ones relying on the age pension. This is so much so, that home ownership is sometimes described as the “fourth pillar” of Australia’s retirement system.

But housing has become more expensive – to rent or buy – for everyone.

Falling rates of home ownership combined with carriage of mortgage debt into retirement, restricted access to shrinking stocks of social housing, and lack of housing affordability in the private rental market have a particular impact on older people.

Housing rethink

Housing policy for older Australians has mostly focused on age-specific options, such as retirement villages and aged care. Taking such a limited view excludes other potential solutions from across the broader housing system that should be considered.

Furthermore, not all older people want to live in a retirement village, and fewer than 5% of older people live in residential aged care.

During my Churchill Fellowship study exploring alternative, affordable models of housing for older people, I discovered three cultural themes that are stopping us from having a productive conversation about housing for older people.

• Australia’s tradition of home ownership undervalues renting and treats housing as a commodity, not a basic need. This disadvantages older renters and those on low income.

• There’s a stigma regarding welfare in Australia, which influences who is seen as “deserving” and shapes the policy responses.

• While widely encouraged, “ageing-in-place” means different things to different people. It can include formal facilities or the family home that needs modifications to make it habitable as someone ages.

These themes are firmly entrenched, often driven by policy narratives such as the primacy of home ownership over renting. In the past 50 years or so, many have come to view welfare, such as social housing, as a last resort, and have aimed to age in their family home or move into a “desirable” retirement village.

Variety is key

A more flexible approach could deliver housing for older Australians that is more varied in design, cost and investment models.

The promises made so far by political parties to help younger home buyers are welcome. However, the housing system is a complex beast and there is no single quick fix solution.

First and foremost, a national housing and homelessness plan is required, which also involves the states and territories. The plan must include explicit consideration of housing options for older people.

Funding for housing developments needs to be more flexible in terms of public-private sector investment and direct government assistance that goes beyond first home buyer incentives.

International models

For inspiration, we could look to Denmark, which has developed numerous co-housing communities.

Co-housing models generally involve self-managing communities where residents have their own private, self-contained home, supported by communal facilities and spaces. They can be developed and designed by the owner or by a social housing provider. They can be age-specific or multi-generational.

Funding flexibility, planning and design are key to their success. Institutional investors include

• so-called impact investors, who seek social returns and often accept lower financial returns

• community housing providers

• member-based organisations, such as mutuals and co-operatives.

Government also plays a part by expediting the development process and providing new pathways to more affordable ownership and rental options.

Europe is also leading the way on social housing, where cultural attitudes are different from here.

In Vienna, Austria, more than 60% of residents live in 440,000 socially provided homes. These homes are available for a person’s entire life, with appropriate age-related modifications permitted if required.

At over 20% of the total housing stock, social housing is also a large sector in Denmark, where the state and municipalities support the construction of non-profit housing.

Overcoming stereotyes

Our population is ageing rapidly, and more older people are now renting or facing housing insecurity.

If policymakers continue to ignore their housing needs, even more older people will be at risk of living on the street, and as a result will suffer poor health and social isolation.

Overcoming stereotypes - such as the idea that all older people are wealthy homeowners - is key to building fairer, more inclusive solutions.

This isn’t just about older Australians. It’s about creating a housing system that works for everyone, at every stage of life.

Victoria Cornell, Research Fellow, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Around 2,500 years ago, a princess living in what is now modern-day Iraq collected a number of artefacts, including a statue, a boundary stone and a mace head. The items, which show signs of preservation, date from around 2100 BCE to 600 BCE. This collection, it is generally thought, was the world’s first known “museum”.

Between Two Rivers, by Oxford scholar Moudhy Al-Rashid, tells the story of ancient Mesopotamia, a period in world history sometimes known as a “forgotten age”.

While Mesopotamian history is innately fascinating, Al-Rashid also notes its many historical “world firsts”: the first known writing system, the potter’s wheel, the first record of beer production and advances in agriculture.

Review: Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History – Moudhy Al-Rashid (Hodder Press)

The first museum

The world’s first known museum, and its curator, Ennigaldi-Nanna, are among these many firsts. The daughter of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus, Ennigaldi-Nanna was a priestess at the temple of the moon deity, as well as a princess.

Both Ennigaldi-Nanna and Nabonidus were keenly interested in history. Indeed, Nabonidus’ interest in excavating old temples and describing his findings once saw him described as the “first archaeologist”. This makes these figures well suited as the book’s central focus.

At its heart, Between Two Rivers is an ode to the power of history. It builds a persuasive case for history writing as a particularly human impulse, and for how lives of people living thousands of years ago can reflect and shape our modern lives in unexpected ways.

10 museum objects

The book is organised around the ten items from Ennigaldi-Nanna’s collection. This structural conceit creates a sense of unity, despite the diversity of topics the book covers. Each chapter is focused on one item. For example, an ancient granite mace head introduces a chapter on warfare, violence and death.

In chapter one, we are introduced to ancient Mesopotamian history. We’re also introduced to the author herself. Al-Rashid punctuates her prose with personal recollections and humour, as well as touching reflections on her experience of motherhood. She is our companion, tour guide and teacher as we navigate this journey into the past, helping the reader feel a personal stake in the scholarly adventure ahead.

Other chapters explore cuneiform script (the world’s first known writing), cities, leadership, education (including some of the earliest doodles by bored students), early scientific developments and the gods. The final three chapters look at economics, warfare and curator Ennigaldi-Nanna herself.

The book offers a useful timeline, though pictures of the ten ancient items and a map would have been useful additions.

Fun historical facts

The broad range of subjects, periods and people explored in this book results in the inclusion of many dazzling features of Mesopotamian history, rarely considered together. Indeed, there is a plethora of fun historical facts.

In the chapter on science, Al-Rashid notes the development of the zodiac and a mathematical precursor to modern calculus.

We get a brief overview of the fascinating diplomatic correspondence between New Kingdom Pharaohs and their West Asian vassals, known as the Amarna Letters. There is also the cuneiform tablet referencing the death of Alexander the Great, and an overview of the practice of divination (including an attempted palace coup).

These highlights from ancient evidence are balanced against frequent commentary from the author. She notes the less glamorous nature of much of it, such as economic texts and legal agreements.

Indeed, Al-Rashid is careful to note the limits of the evidence used to build this vivid picture of ancient Mesopotamia. She notes the difficulties of learning Sumerian, the world’s first known language, written in the intricate cuneiform script. In her chapter on leadership, she notes that further evidence for powerful women leaders may yet be discovered, while discussing what is currently known of these figures.

The author’s transparency and expert handling of evidence puts the reader at ease, while subtly championing the importance of continued studies in this field. This is timely, as the academic field of Mesopotamian history has seen significant cuts in the last decade.

Rediscovering cultural riches

Despite the rich cultural legacy of this region, Mesopotamian history is largely unknown in the modern day. While 21st-century audiences are often familiar with the works of Plato, Homer and Virgil, they may struggle to identify Enheduanna – a princess, priestess, and poetess who lived over 4,000 years ago – as the world’s first known author, or Sin-leqe-uninni as the editor of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

This is likely due to the circumstances around the recovery of the Mesopotamian writing script, cuneiform. This style of writing faded from use around the 1st century CE, and was only re-deciphered in 1857 CE. This meant that for almost two millennia, awareness of the Mesopotamian cultural legacy almost entirely disappeared.

This modern lack of awareness of Mesopotamian history is slowly changing. Between Two Rivers is part of an emerging trend in the field of Assyriology — the study of the languages, literature, history, laws and sciences of Mesopotamia — for producing accessible works, for non-specialist audiences.

Between Two Rivers further demonstrates the usefulness of this approach in bringing the riches of the ancient Near East to modern audiences.

Changing times

In recent years, we have seen new translations of the famous Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh, and the first volume dedicated to the works of the world’s first known author, Enheduanna.

There are new books on Mesopotamian religion and the cuneiform script by Irving Finkel, who has been an ambassador for the discipline for many years. Indeed, Al-Rashid notes his influence.

To write a book like this one, the author needs to have both mastery over the subject material and an engaging style of communication. Al-Rashid excels in both areas. For general audiences, Between Two Rivers is a fascinating, balanced introduction to this complex – and at times elusive – ancient world.

Louise Pryke, Honorary Research Associate, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

An antidepressant containing a form of the drug ketamine has been added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), making it much cheaper for the estimated 30,000 Australians with treatment-resistant depression. This is when a patient has tried multiple forms of treatment for major depression – usually at least two antidepressant medications – without any improvement.

From May 1, a dose of Spravato (also known as esketamine hydrochloride) will cost $A31.60 and $7.70 for concession card holders.

However, unlike oral antidepressants, Spravato can’t be taken at home. Here’s how it works, and who it’s expected to help.

What is Spravato?

The chemical ketamine is used as an anaesthetic. In this formulation it combines both the right-handed (designated “R”) and left-handed (called “S”) forms of the molecule.

This means they are mirror images of each other, similar to how your left hand is a mirror image of your right hand. The left- and right-hand forms can have different effects in the body.

Spravato contains only the left-handed version, giving the drug its generic name esketamine.

Spravato works by increasing the levels of glutamate in the brain. Glutamate is a key chemical messenger molecule that excites brain nerve cells, lifting and improving mood. It also plays a role in learning and forming memories.

How is it taken?

Spravato cannot be taken at home.

A patient can self-administer, but it must be done at a registered treatment facility, such as a hospital, under the supervision of medical staff so they can look out for blood pressure changes and monitor potential side effects.

The drug is provided as a single-use nasal spray. This application means it’s absorbed directly through the nasal lining into the brain, so it starts to work within minutes.

Spravato must also be taken alongside an oral antidepressant. This will be a new one the patient hasn’t tried before. In clinical trials, it was usually an SNRI or SSRI medication.

When a patient first starts on Spravato, they are given the spray twice a week in the first month. It is then administered once a week for the second month, and then weekly or fortnightly after that.

Once there are signs the medicine is working, treatment is continued for at least six months.

How effective is it?

Spravato was approved for sale in Australia based on clinical trial data from more than 1,600 patients who were administered the drug for a period of four weeks. Each was given either Spravato, or a nasal placebo, and an oral antidepressant.

Patients were given a starting dose of either 28 or 56mg, which could be then increased up to 84mg by their doctor.

By the end of the four weeks, a greater percentage of patients who were given Spravato were found to have had a meaningful response to the treatment when compared with patients who received the placebo. Patients who were taking Spravato were also found to relapse at a lower rate. For those who did relapse, it took the Spravato patients longer to relapse when compared with patients who took the placebo.

It is expected Spravato will benefit a wide range of patients. The clinical trials demonstrated effectiveness for men and women, people aged 18 to 64, and those from a range of different ethnic backgrounds.

Potential side effects

As with any medicine, Spravato may cause side effects, some of which can be serious. The most common include:

• dissociation (feeling disconnected from yourself or what is around you)
• dizziness
• nausea and vomiting
• drowsiness
• headache
• change in taste
• vertigo.

Because Spravato can potentially increase blood pressure, medical staff will monitor a patient before and after it is administered.

Usually, blood pressure spikes around 40 minutes after taking the drug, so a reading is taken around this time. After taking Spravato, if their blood pressure has stayed low, or it’s dropping, the patient is given the all-clear to go home.

Due to the potential for this and other serious side effects, Spravato carries a black triangle warning. This means medical staff are encouraged to report any problem or side effect to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. A black triangle warning is generally used for new medicines or medicines that are being used in a new way.

Who will be eligible?

To be eligible for a prescription, a patient will need to have been diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression. In practice, this means they will have unsuccessfully tried at least two other antidepressant drugs first.

Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration approved Spravato for use in Australia in 2021, meaning it was available but not subsidised. Since then, the sponsoring company, Janssen-Cilag (an Australian subsidiary of the multinational Johnson & Johnson), applied to have it added to the PBS four times.

In December 2024, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommended a PBS listing.

The new PBS listing, capping the price of a single treatment at $31.60, is a significant price drop. In 2023, single doses of branded Spravato were reported to cost anywhere between $500 and $900.

However, patients may still have to pay hundreds of dollars for appointments at private clinics where Spravato can be administered. Public places are available but limited.

Spravato may be suitable for you if you’ve tried different antidepressants without success. If it is suitable for you, then your doctor can discuss the next steps.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Nial Wheate, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University and Shoohb Alassadi, Associate Lecturer and Registered Pharmacist, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

According to a study from the United States, women experience weight stigma in maternity care at almost every visit. We expect this experience to be similar in Australia, where more than 50% of women of reproductive age live in larger bodies.

Weight stigma can present as stereotyping, negative attitudes and discriminatory actions towards larger-bodied people.

It occurs in other areas of health care and in society at large. But our research is focused on weight stigma in maternity care, which can cause significant harm for larger-bodied women and their babies.

What does weight stigma look like in maternity care?

Sometimes weight stigma is explicit, or on purpose. Explicit weight stigma includes health-care professionals having negative attitudes towards caring for larger-bodied pregnant women. This might present, for instance, when health professionals make negative comments about weight or accuse women of dishonesty when they discuss their dietary intake.

Sometimes weight stigma is implicit, or unintentional. Implicit weight stigma includes maternity care providers avoiding physical touch or eye contact during consultations with larger-bodied women.

Policies, guidelines and environments also contribute to weight stigma. Women in larger bodies frequently report feeling stigmatised and unable to access the type of maternity care they would prefer. Lack of availability of adequately fitting hospital clothing or delivery beds are other notable examples.

In a review published last year, we looked at weight stigma from preconception to after birth. Our results showed larger-bodied women are sometimes automatically treated as high-risk and undergo extra monitoring of their pregnancy even when they have no other risk factors that require monitoring.

This approach is problematic because it focuses on body size rather than health, placing responsibility on the woman and disregarding other complex determinants of health.

How does this make women feel?

Qualitative evidence shows women who experience weight stigma during their maternity care feel judged, devalued, shamed and less worthy. They may feel guilty about getting pregnant and experience self-doubt.

As one research participant explained:

One doctor told me I was terrible for getting pregnant at my weight, that I was setting up my baby to fail […] I was in tears, and he told me I was being too sensitive.

A 2023 Australian paper written by women who had experienced weight stigma in maternity care recounted their care as hyper-focused on weight and dehumanising, robbing them of the joy of pregnancy.

According to one woman, “there was no compassion or conversation, just blame”.

Beyond making women feel humiliated and disrespected, weight stigma in maternity care can affect mental health. For example, weight stigma is linked to increased risk of depressive symptoms and stress, disordered eating behaviours and emotional eating.

One of the key reasons why weight stigma is so damaging to pregnant women’s health is because it’s closely linked to body image concerns.

Society unfairly holds larger-bodied women up to unrealistic ideals around their body shape and size, their suitability to be a mother, and the control they have over their weight gain.

Self stigma occurs when women apply society’s stigmatising narrative – from people in the community, the media, peers, family members and health-care providers – to themselves.

Impacts on mum and baby

Several adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes have been linked to weight stigma in maternity care. These include gestational diabetes, caesarean birth and lower uptake of breastfeeding.

While we know these things can also be linked to higher body weight, emerging evidence shows weight stigma may have a stronger link with some outcomes than body mass index.

There are a variety of possible reasons for these links. For example, weight stigma may result in delayed access to and engagement with health-care services, and, as shown above, poorer mental health and reduced confidence. This may mean a woman is less likely to initiate and seek help with breastfeeding, for example.

Experiencing weight stigma also leads to a stress response in the body, which could affect a woman’s health during pregnancy.

In turn, the adverse effects of weight stigma can also affect the baby’s health. For example, gestational diabetes has a range of potential negative outcomes including a higher likelihood of premature birth, difficulties during birth, and an increased risk of the child developing type 2 diabetes.

But the burden and blame should not fall on women. Pregnant and postpartum women should not have to accept experiences of weight stigma in health care.

What can we do about it?

While it’s essential to address weight stigma as a societal issue, health services can play a key role in undoing the narrative of blame and shame and making maternity care more equitable for larger-bodied women.

Addressing weight stigma in maternity care can start with teaching midwives and obstetricians about weight stigma – what it is, where it happens, and how it can be minimised in practice.

We worked with women who had experienced weight stigma in maternity care and midwives to co-design resources to meet this need. Both women and midwives wanted resources that could be easily integrated into practice, acted as consistent reminders to be size-friendly, and met midwives’ knowledge gaps.

The resources included a short podcast about weight stigma in maternity care and images of healthy, larger-bodied pregnant women to demonstrate the most likely outcome is a healthy pregnancy. Midwives evaluated the resources positively and they are ready to be implemented into practice.

There is a long road to ending weight stigma in maternity care, but working towards this goal will benefit countless mothers and their babies.

Briony Hill, Deputy Head, Health and Social Care Unit and Senior Research Fellow, Monash University and Haimanot Hailu, PhD Candidate, Health and Social Care Unit, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As the world’s only surviving egg-laying mammals, Australasia’s platypus and four echidna species are among the most extraordinary animals on Earth.

They are also very different from each other.

The platypus is well adapted for a semi-aquatic lifestyle, spending up to 20 hours a day swimming in Australian waterways to forage for freshwater invertebrates. Echidnas, on the other hand, live entirely on land. They are widely distributed across Australia and New Guinea, and adapted for feeding on termites, ants and earthworms.

How did these differences emerge? Some researchers think echidnas evolved from a swimming, platypus-like ancestor. This hypothesis is based on evidence from aspects of their genes and anatomy, and from hypotheses about their evolutionary history.

However, this idea is controversial because fossil evidence for such a profound evolutionary transformation has been lacking – until now.

A bone from 108 million years ago

In our study published today in PNAS, we gleaned new data from a 108-million-year-old mammal humerus (arm bone), found 30 years ago at Dinosaur Cove, Victoria, by a team from Museums Victoria.

This arm bone, from a species called Kryoryctes cadburyi, belongs to an ancestral monotreme – a semi-aquatic burrower like the platypus. Our findings support the hypothesis that land-living echidnas evolved from a swimming ancestor.

Kryoryctes lived during the Age of Dinosaurs (the Mesozoic), when monotremes and monotreme relatives were more common than they are today. Glimpses of this past diversity are found in the fossil record in southern Victoria and Lightning Ridge, New South Wales.

Nevertheless, Australian Mesozoic mammal fossils are exceedingly rare, and mostly consist of teeth and jaws. Kryoryctes is the only one known from a limb bone, which provides significant information about its identity, relationships and lifestyle.

Tiny clues inside bones

In order to test the evolutionary relationships of Kryoryctes, we added it to a broader data set of 70 fossil and modern mammals. From there, we calculated an evolutionary tree. This showed Kryoryctes is an ancestral monotreme.

We also compared the external shape of the Kryroryctes humerus bone to living monotremes. These analyses indicated the bone is more like those of echidnas, rather than platypuses.

But it was a different story on the inside. When we looked at the internal structure of the Kryoryctes humerus with several 3D scanning techniques, we uncovered microscopic features of this arm bone that were actually more like those of the platypus.

Such tiny features inside bones yield crucial clues about the lifestyle of an animal. Numerous previous studies link bone microstructure in mammals and other tetrapods (four-limbed animals) with their ecology.

Using the wealth of data available for living mammals, we compared characteristics of the Kryoryctes humerus microstructure to those in platypuses, echidnas and 74 other mammal species.

These analyses confirmed that the Kryoryctes humerus has internal bone features found in semi-aquatic burrowing mammals (such as the platypus, muskrat and Eurasian otter), rather than land-living burrowing mammals such as the echidna.

From water to land

This discovery suggests that a semi-aquatic lifestyle is ancestral for all living monotremes. It also suggests the amphibious lifestyle of the modern platypus had its origins at least 100 million years ago, during the Age of Dinosaurs.

In this scenario, the modern platypus lineage has retained the ancestral semi-aquatic burrowing lifestyle for more than 100 million years. Echidnas would have reverted to a land-based way of life more recently.

For echidnas, a return to land appears to have resulted in adaptations such as their long bones becoming lighter, as shown in our study.

They possibly also lost several other features more useful for spending time in the water rather than on land, including the loss of a long tail, reduction of webbing between fingers and toes, reduction of the duck-like bill to a narrow beak, and a reduced number of electroreceptors on that beak.

However, precisely when this evolutionary transformation occurred is not yet known. The answer must wait until early echidna fossils are found – so far, nothing definitive has turned up anywhere.

The modern habitats of monotremes are increasingly under threat from environmental degradation, interactions with humans and feral predators, and climate change. This is especially true for platypuses. To ensure the survival of this ancient lineage, we need to better understand how their unique features evolved and adapted.

Sue Hand, Professor Emeritus, Palaeontology, UNSW Sydney; Camilo López-Aguirre, Adjunct Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto; Laura A. B. Wilson, ARC Future Fellow, Head of Biological Anthropology, Australian National University, and Robin Beck, Lecturer in Biology, University of Salford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In front of a crowd of party faithful last weekend, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton referred to the ABC, Guardian Australia and other news platforms as “hate media”. The language was extreme, the inference being these outlets were not simply doing their jobs, but attacking him and his side of politics because of ideological bias.

Speaking at a Liberal Party campaign rally in the Melbourne western suburb of Melton, Dutton said:

Forget about what you have been told by the ABC, The Guardian and the other hate media. Listen to what you hear [at] doors. Listen to what people say on the pre-polling. Know in your hearts that we are a better future for our country.

Melton is in the Labor-held seat of Hawke, which the Liberals believe they can win.

Dutton provided no evidence to support his accusation, for the good reason that there has been nothing in the ABC’s or Guardian Australia’s coverage of Dutton that could remotely justify it.

By a process of elimination, the “other hate media” to which he referred can only be The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, given the News Corporation mastheads have been unflagging in their support for him throughout the campaign.

What has been common to the campaign coverage by the ABC, Guardian Australia, The Age and the SMH has been close scrutiny of both sides and both leaders.

The three newspapers in particular have put renewed resources into independently fact-checking claims made by both Dutton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and have caught out both men telling falsehoods.

The broadcast news media on the whole have played it straight, except of course for Sky News after dark, which has been as relentlessly pro-Coalition as their News Corp newspaper stablemates.

Beyond these professional mass media platforms, there have been clearly partisan social media influencers working on both sides, as well as a range of podcasters, but none of these has been guilty of hate speech towards Dutton or anyone else.

The inescapable conclusion is that Dutton equates scrutiny of him by journalists with hate speech.

This is where his attitude becomes dangerous to democracy. It comes straight from US President Donald Trump’s playbook, where the professional mass media are “fake news” and the “enemy of the people”.

It is designed to play not just on people’s longstanding distrust of the news media in general – though not of the ABC – but on some voters’ sense of grievance at the way governments have treated them.

This worked for Trump in the United States, but it became obvious early in the campaign that any association with Trumpism was a strong political negative in Australia, particularly in the atmosphere of alarm generated by his tariff war.

Dutton then took pains to distance himself from Trumpism, and at the Liberal launch in Western Australia his face was a picture of alarm when Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, whom he had appointed to the Trumpian-sounding post of shadow minister for government efficiency, used the slogan “Make Australia Great Again”.

But it is typical of his incoherent campaign that at the start of the last week he should be echoing the Trumpian view of the media in such extreme terms, creating even more instability. In an ABC interview, his shadow minister for finance, Jane Hume, refused to support him, saying “that wouldn’t be a phrase I would use”.

It also raises legitimate questions about how Dutton would treat the media should he become prime minister. For example, if a media platform refused to obey his wishes, or provide him with coverage of which he approved, would its representatives be excluded from prime ministerial access?

Not long ago, such a proposition would have been inconceivable, but Trump banned the Associated Press (AP) from presidential access because it would not obey his instruction to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. A federal judge later found the ban violated the First Amendment, and ordered AP’s access to be restored.

It is very improbable Dutton would even try to impose his will on the commercial media in Australia, especially the newspapers.

In fact, Guardian Australia has turned his remark into a fundraising opportunity. It emailed subscribers with the subject line “A note from the ‘hate media’,” comparing Dutton’s language to that of Trump, and asking for financial support to keep holding figures like Dutton to account.

But his potential to punish the publicly funded ABC is another matter.

From statements he has made during the campaign, it seems certain the ABC would be in for more funding cuts and an investigation into its operations of the kind Trump has launched into America’s National Public Radio.

Coalition prime ministers going back to John Howard have had a hostile relationship with the ABC. Howard stacked the ABC board, and the panel that nominates its members, with ideological mates.

In the eight years from 2014 to 2022, under the Coalition governments of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, $526 million was cut from the ABC’s budget.

During that time, there was also a series of inquiries into the ABC, set up to satisfy politicians with a beef against the ABC, notably Pauline Hanson.

The day after Dutton’s “hate media” statement, the ABC’s 4 Corners program revealed he failed for two years to disclose he was the beneficiary of a family trust that operated lucrative childcare businesses when he was a cabinet minister.

This is unlikely to improve his view of the national broadcaster. He may even see it as more hate. In fact, it is just good journalism.

Denis Muller and Nicole Chvastek will discuss this further on their Truth, Lies and Media podcast on Wednesday April 30.

Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Another election, another wave of unsolicited political texts. Over this campaign, our digital mailboxes have been stuffed with a slew of political appeals and promises, many from the new party Trumpet of Patriots (backed by Clive Palmer, a veteran of the mass text campaign).

The practice isn’t new, and it’s totally legal under current laws. It’s also non-partisan. Campaigns of all stripes have partaken. Behold, the Liberal Party’s last-minute SMS to voters about asylum seekers before the 2022 federal election, or Labor’s controversial “Mediscare” text before the 2016 poll. Despite multiple cycles of criticism, these tactics remain a persistent feature of Australian election campaigns.

A recent proposal to update decades-old rules could help change things – if a government would put it into practice.

What does the law say about political spam?

Several laws regulate spam and data collection in Australia.

First, there is the Spam Act. This legislation requires that organisations obtain our consent before sending us marketing emails, SMSs and instant messages. The unsubscribe links you see at the bottom of spam emails? Those are mandated by the Spam Act.

Second, the Do Not Call Register (DNCR) Act. This Act establishes a “do not call” register, managed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which individuals can join to opt out of telemarketing calls.

Finally, there is the Privacy Act, which governs how organisations collect, use and disclose our personal information. Among other things, the Privacy Act requires that organisations tell us when and why they are collecting our personal information, and the purposes for which they intend to use it. It restricts organisations from re-purposing personal information collected for a particular purpose, unless an exception applies.

This trio of laws was designed to offer relief from unsolicited, unwanted direct marketing. It does not, however, stop the deluge of political spam at election time due to broad political exemptions sewn into the legislation decades ago.

The Spam Act and DNCR Act apply to marketing for goods and services but not election policies and promises, while the Privacy Act contains a carve-out for political parties, representatives and their contractors.

The upshot is that their campaigns are free to spam and target voters at will. Their only obligation is to disclose who authorised the message.

How do political campaigns get our information?

Secrecy about the nature and extent of campaign data operations, enabled by the exemptions, makes it difficult to pinpoint precisely where a campaign might have obtained your data from.

There are, however, a number of ways political campaigns can acquire our information.

One source is the electoral roll (though not for phone numbers, as the Australian Electoral Commission often points out). Incumbent candidates might build on this with information they obtain through contact with constituents which, thanks to the exemptions, they’re allowed to re-purpose for campaigning at election time.

Another source is data brokers – firms which harvest, analyse and sell large quantities of data and profiles.

We know the major parties have long maintained voter databases to support their targeting efforts, which have become increasingly sophisticated over the years.

Other outfits might take more haphazard approaches – former MP Craig Kelly, for example, claimed to use software to randomly generate numbers for his texting campaign in 2021.

What can be done?

Unwanted campaign texts are not only irritating to some. They can be misleading.

This year, there have been reports of “push polling” texts (pseudo surveys meant to persuade rather than gauge voter options) in the marginal seat of Kooyong. The AEC has warned about misleading postal vote applications being issued by parties via SMS.

Generative AI is hastening the ability to produce misleading content, cheaply and at scale, which can be quickly pushed out across an array of online social and instant messaging services.

In short, annoying texts are just one visible symptom of a wider vulnerability created by the political exemptions.

The basic argument for the political exemptions is to facilitate freedom of political communication, which is protected by the Constitution. As the High Court has said, that freedom is necessary to support informed electoral choice. It does not, however, guarantee speakers a captive audience.

In 2022, the Attorney-General’s Department proposed narrowing the political exemptions, as part of a suite of updates to the Privacy Act. Per the proposal, parties and representatives would need to be more transparent about their data operations, provide voters with an option to unsubscribe from targeted ads, refrain from targeting voters based on “sensitive information”, and handle data in a “fair and reasonable” manner.

The changes would be an overdue but welcome step, recognising the essential role of voter privacy in a functioning democratic system.

Unfortunately, the government has not committed to taking up the proposal.

A bipartisan lack of support is likely the biggest obstacle, even as the gap created by the political exemptions widens, and its rationale becomes flimsier, with each election cycle.

Tegan Cohen, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the lead-up to the 2025 Australian federal election, political advertising is seemingly everywhere.

We’ve been mapping the often invisible world of digital political advertising across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

We’ve done this thanks to a panel of ordinary Australians who agreed to download an ad tracking app developed through the Australian Internet Observatory.

We’re also tracking larger trends in political ad spending, message type and tone, and reach via the PoliDashboard tool. This open source tool aggregates transparency data from Meta (including Facebook and Instagram) which we use to identify patterns and items of concern.

While the major parties are spending heavily and are highly visible in the feeds of our participants, it is the prevalence of third-party political advertising that is most striking. We’ve observed a notable trend: for every ad from a registered political party, there is roughly one ad from a third-party entity.

Astroturfing and the illusion of grassroots support

One of the most concerning trends we’re seeing is a rise in astroturfing. This refers to masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear as though it originates from ordinary citizens or grassroots organisations.

Astroturfing ads do often adhere to the formal disclosure requirements set out by the Australian Electoral Commission. However, these disclosures don’t meaningfully inform the public on who is behind these misleading ads.

Authorisation typically only includes the name and address of an intermediary. This may be a deliberately opaque shell entity set up just in time for an election.

A key example seen by participants in our study involves the pro-gas advocacy group Australians for Natural Gas.

It presents itself as a grassroots movement, but an ABC investigation revealed this group is working with Freshwater Strategy – the Coalition’s internal pollster. Emails obtained by the ABC show Freshwater Strategy is “helping orchestrate a campaign to boost public support for the gas industry ahead of the federal election”.

Other examples we’ve encountered in our monitoring include groups with benign-sounding names like Mums for Nuclear and Australians for Prosperity. These labels and the ads they are running suggest grassroots concern, but they obscure the deeper agendas behind them.

In the case of Australians for Prosperity, an ABC analysis revealed backing from wealthy donors, former conservative MPs and coal interests.

The battle over energy

Nowhere is this more evident than in messaging around energy policy, especially nuclear power and gas.

In recent months, both major parties and a swathe of third-party advertisers have run targeted online campaigns focused on the costs and benefits of different energy futures. These ads play to deeply felt concerns about cost of living, action on climate change, and national sovereignty.

Yet many of these messages, particularly those that promote gas and nuclear, come from organisations with opaque funding and undeclared political affiliations or connections. Voters may see a slick Facebook ad or a sponsored TikTok explainer without any idea who paid for it, or why.

And with no obligation to be truthful, much of this content may be deeply misleading. It muddies public understanding at a critical moment for climate action.

Truth not required

Truth in political advertising isn’t legally required in all of Australia. While businesses can’t mislead consumers under consumer law, political parties and third-party campaigners are exempt from those same standards.

This means misleading or outright false claims – about opponents, policies or the state of the economy – can be repeated and amplified without consequence, provided they’re framed as political opinion.

Despite calls for reform from politicians, experts and civil society groups, federal legislation continues to lag behind community expectations.

South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory do have truth in political advertising laws, but there is still no national standard.

In the digital advertising environment, where ads are fast, fleeting, and often tailored to individuals, the absence of such independent scrutiny allows misinformation to flourish unchecked.

Most people are seeing very little – or so it seems

Paradoxically, our data shows the majority of participants are seeing very few political ads. Of the total ads seen, less than 2% pertained to political topics or the election specifically.

This is partly a result of how the advertising products offered by platforms like Meta and TikTok allow ads to be targeted to specific demographics, locations or interests. This means even two people in the same household may have entirely different ad experiences.

But it’s also a reminder social media ads are just the tip of the iceberg. Much political persuasion online happens outside paid ad campaigns – via influencer content, YouTube recommendations, algorithmic amplification, mainstream media coverage and more.

Because platforms and publishers aren’t required to share this broader content with researchers or the public, we can’t easily track it – although we are trying.

We need meaningful observability

If democracy is to thrive in a digital age, we need to be able to independently observe online political communication, including advertising.

Existing measures like campaign finance disclosures and transparency tools provided by platforms will never be enough. They don’t include user experiences or track patterns across populations and over time. This inevitably means some advertising activity flies under the radar.

We lack robust tools to understand and analyse our current fragmented information landscape.

Where platforms don’t provide meaningful data access to researchers and the public, tools like the Ad Observatory and PoliDashboard offer valuable glimpses into a fragmented information landscape, while remaining incomplete.

However, tools on their own are not enough. We also need to be willing to call out and act when politicians mislead the public.

Acknowlegement: The Australian Ad Observatory is a team effort. The authors wish to acknowledge the contribution of Jean Burgess, Nicholas Carah, Alfie Chadwick, Kyle Herbertson, Tina Kang, Khanh Luong, Abdul Karim Obeid, Lina Przhedetsky, and Dan Tran.

Daniel Angus, Professor of Digital Communication, Director of QUT Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology; Christine Parker, Professor of Law, The University of Melbourne; Giselle Newton, Research Fellow, The Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies, The University of Queensland; Kate Clark, Node Administrator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society, Monash University, and Mark Andrejevic, Professor of Media, School of Media, Film, and Journalism, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Did you start 2025 with a promise to eat better but didn’t quite get there? Or maybe you want to branch out from making the same meal every week or the same lunch for work almost every day?

Small dietary changes can make a big difference to how you feel, how your body functions and health indicators such as blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels.

You can meet your nutrient needs by eating a range of foods from the key food groups:

• vegetables and fruit
• protein (legumes, beans, tofu, meats, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds)
• grains (mostly wholegrain and high-fibre)
• calcium-rich foods (milk, yoghurt, cheese, non-dairy alternatives).

But you also need a variety of foods to get enough vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients from plant foods. Phytonutrients have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer and other functions that help keep you healthy.

Use these five dietary tweaks to boost your nutrient intake and add variety to what you eat.

1. Include different types of bran to boost your fibre intake

Different types of dietary fibre help improve bowel function through fermentation by gut microbes in the colon, or large bowel. This creates larger, softer bowel motions that then stimulate the colon to contract, leading to more regular bowel movements.

Add different types of dietary fibre – such as oat bran, wheat bran or psyllium husk – to breakfast cereal or add some into recipes that use white flour:

• psyllium husk is high in soluble fibre. It dissolves in water forming viscous gel that binds to bile salts, which get excreted and your body is then not able to convert them into cholesterol. This helps lower blood cholesterol levels as well as with retaining water in your colon, making bowel motions softer. Soluble fibre also helps slow the digestive process, making you feel full and slows the normal rise in blood sugar levels after you eat

• wheat bran is an insoluble fibre, also called roughage. It adds bulk to bowel motions, which helps keep your bowel function regular

• oat bran contains beta-glucan, a soluble fibre, as well as some insoluble fibre.

Try keeping small containers topped up with the different fibres so you don’t forget to add them regularly to your breakfast.

2. Add a different canned bean to your shopping list

Dried beans are a type of legume. From baked beans to red kidney beans and chickpeas, the canned varieties are easy to use and inexpensive. Different colours and varieties have slightly different nutrient and phytonutrient profiles.

Canned beans are very high in total dietary fibre, including soluble fibre and resistant starch, a complex carbohydrate that resists digestion in the small intestine and then passes into the colon where it gets fermented.

The body digests and absorbs the nutrients in legumes slowly, contributing to their low glycemic index. So eating them makes you feel full.

Regularly eating more legumes lowers blood sugar levels, and total and LDL (bad) cholesterol.

Add legumes to dishes such as bolognese, curry, soups and salads (our No Money No Time website has some great recipes).

3. Try a different wholegrain, like buckwheat or 5-grain porridge

Wholegrain products contain all three layers of the grain. Both the inner germ layer and outer bran layer are rich in fibre, vitamins and minerals, while the inner endosperm contains mostly starch (think white flour).

Wholegrains include oats, corn (yes, popcorn too), rye, barley, buckwheat, quinoa, brown rice and foods made with wholegrains, like some breads and breakfast cereals such as rolled oats, muesli and five-grain porridge.

Wholegrains aren’t just breakfast and lunch foods. Dinner recipe ideas include tuna and veggie pasta bake, chicken quesadillas and buckwheat mushroom risotto.

4. Try a different vegetable or salad mix every week

A review of the relationship between plant-based diets and dying of any cause followed more than half a million people across 12 long-term studies.

It found people who ate the most plants had a lower risk of dying during the study and follow-up period than those who ate hardly any.

Try adding a new or different vegetable or salad item to your weekly meals, such as rainbow coleslaw, canned beetroot, raw carrot, red onion, avocado or tomatoes.

Or try a stir-fry with bok choy, celery, capsicum, carrot, zucchini and herbs.

The more variety, the more colour, flavour and textures – not to mention phytonutrients.

5. Go nuts

Cashews, walnuts, almonds, macadamias, pecans and mixed nuts make a great snack.

(Peanuts are technically a legume because they grow in the ground but we count them as nuts because their nutrient profile is very similar to the tree nuts.)

You have to chew nuts well, which means your brain receives messages that you are eating and should expect to soon feel full.

Nuts are energy-dense, due to their high fat content. A matchbox portion size (30 grams) contains about 15 grams of fat, 5 grams of protein and 740 kilojoules.

While some people think you need to avoid nuts to lose weight, a review of energy restricted diets found people who ate nuts lost as much weight as those who didn’t.

My colleagues and I at the University of Newcastle have created a free Healthy Eating Quiz where you can check your diet quality score, see how healthy your usual eating patterns are and how your score compares to others. You can also get some great ideas to make your meals more interesting .

Clare Collins, Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

E-cigarettes or vapes were originally designed to deliver nicotine in a smokeless form. But in recent years, vapes have been used to deliver other psychoactive substances, including cannabis concentrates and oils.

Cannabis vapes, also sometimes known as THC vape pens, appear to have increased in popularity in Australia over the past few years. Among those Australians who had recently used cannabis, the proportion who reported ever vaping cannabis increased from 7% in 2019 to at least 25% in 2022–23.

The practice appears to be gaining popularity among young people, who are reportedly using devices called “penjamins” to vape cannabis oil. These are sleek, concealable vapes disguised as everyday objects such as lip balms, earphone cases or car keys.

On social media platforms such as TikTok, users are sharing tips and tricks for how to carry and use penjamins undetected.

So what’s in cannabis vapes, and should we be worried about young people using them?

Are cannabis vapes legal in Australia?

While medicinal cannabis is legal for some users with a prescription, recreational cannabis use remains illegal under federal law.

In Australia, recent vaping reforms have made it illegal to sell disposable vapes such as penjamins.

But there appears to be a robust illicit market for vaping products, including cannabis vapes.

Are cannabis vapes safe?

Cannabis vaping is often perceived to be less harmful than smoking cannabis as it does not involve combustion of the cannabis, which may reduce some respiratory symptoms. But that doesn’t mean it’s without risk.

Most forms of cannabis can be vaped, including cannabis flower and cannabis oil. The difference is, cannabis oil typically contains much higher concentrations of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) compared to cannabis flower.

THC is the ingredient responsible for the “high” people feel when they use cannabis. THC works by interacting with brain receptors that influence our mood, memory, coordination and perception.

The strength of these effects depends on how much THC is consumed. Vaping can produce a more intense high and greater cognitive impairment compared to smoking cannabis, as less THC is lost through combustion.

Our research in the United States and Canada found many people who vape cannabis are moving away from traditional cannabis flowers and increasingly preferring highly potent products, such as oils and concentrates.

Prolonged consumption of products with high THC levels can increase the risk of cannabis use disorder and psychosis.

Young people are particularly vulnerable to the risks of high THC exposure, as their brains are still developing well into their mid-20s. Those without previous experience using cannabis may even be more susceptible to the adverse effects of vaping cannabis.

Our study found those who vape and smoke cannabis reported more severe mental health symptoms, compared to those who only smoke cannabis.

Cannabis vaping can also affect the lungs. Findings from large population-based surveys suggest respiratory symptoms such as bronchitis and wheezing are common among those who vape cannabis.

Cannabis vapes don’t just contain cannabis

The risks associated with cannabis vapes do not just come from THC, but also from the types of solvents and additives used. Solvents are the chemicals used to extract THC from the cannabis plant and produce a concentrated oil for vaping.

While some can be safe when properly processed, others, such as vitamin E acetate, have been linked to serious lung injuries, including E-cigarette or Vaping Use-Associated Lung Injury (EVALI).

This condition hospitalised more than 2,500 people and caused nearly 70 deaths in the US between late 2019 and early 2020. Common symptoms of EVALI include chest pain, cough, abdominal pain, vomiting and fever.

This raises concerns about product safety, particularly when it comes to unregulated cannabis oils that are not subjected to any quality control. This may be the case with penjamins.

Which is worse: cannabis or nicotine vapes?

There’s no simple answer to this question. Both nicotine and cannabis vapes come with different health risks, and comparing them depends on what you are measuring – addiction, short-term harms or long-term health effects.

Nicotine vapes can be an effective way of helping people quit smoking. However, these vapes still contain addictive nicotine and other chemicals that may lead to lung injuries. The long-term health effects of inhaling these substances are still being studied.

Cannabis vapes can be used to deliver highly potent doses of THC, and pose particular risk to brain development and mental health in young people. Regular cannabis use is also linked to lower IQ and poorer educational outcomes in young people.

In unregulated markets, both these products may contain undisclosed chemicals, contaminants, or even substances not related to nicotine or cannabis at all.

The “worse” option depends on the context, but for non-smokers and young people without any medical conditions, the safest choice is to avoid both.

If you or anyone you know needs help to quit vaping, you can contact Quitline on 13 78 48, Healthdirect on 1800 022 222, or the Alcohol and Drug Foundation on 1800 250 015.

Jack Chung, PhD Candidate, National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research, The University of Queensland; Carmen Lim, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research, The University of Queensland, and Wayne Hall, Emeritus Professor, National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If you’ve ever tried to build a new habit – whether that’s exercising more, eating healthier, or going to bed earlier – you may have heard the popular claim that it only takes 21 days to form a habit.

It’s a neat idea. Short, encouraging and full of promise. But there’s just one problem: it’s not true.

The 21-day myth can be traced back to Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon in the 1960s, who observed it took about three weeks for his patients to adjust to physical changes. This idea was later picked up and repeated in self-help books, eventually becoming accepted wisdom.

But as psychologists and behavioural scientists have since discovered, habit formation is much more complex.

How long does it really take?

A 2010 study followed volunteers trying to build simple routines – such as drinking water after breakfast or eating a daily piece of fruit – and found it took a median of 66 days for the behaviour to become automatic.

We recently reviewed several studies looking at how long it took people to form health-related habits. We found, on average, it took around two to five months.

Specifically, the studies that measured time to reach automaticity (when a behaviour becomes second nature) found that habit formation took between 59 and 154 days. Some people developed a habit in as few as four days. Others took nearly a year.

This wide range highlights that habit formation isn’t one-size-fits-all. It depends on what the behaviour is, how often it’s repeated, how complex it is, and who’s doing it.

What determines whether a habit will stick?

Habit strength plays a key role in consistency. A 2021 systematic review focused on physical activity and found the stronger the habit (meaning the more automatic and less effortful the behaviour felt) the more likely people were to exercise regularly.

It’s not entirely surprising that easy, low-effort behaviours such as drinking water or taking a daily vitamin tend to form faster than complex ones like training for a marathon.

But whatever the habit, research shows sticking to it is not just about boosting motivation or willpower. Interventions that actively support habit formation – through repetition, cues and structure – are much more effective for creating lasting change.

For example, programs that encourage people to schedule regular exercise at the same time each day, or apps that send reminders to drink water after every meal, help build habits by making the behaviour easier to repeat and harder to forget.

Our research, which drew on data from more than 2,600 people, showed habit-building interventions can make a real difference across a range of behaviours – from flossing and healthy eating to regular exercise.

But what stood out most was that even small, everyday actions can grow into powerful routines, when repeated consistently. It’s not about overhauling your life overnight, but about steadily reinforcing behaviours until they become second nature.

8 tips for building lasting habits

If you’re looking to build a new habit, here are some science-backed tips to help them stick:

1. Give it time. Aim for consistency over 60 days. It’s not about perfection – missing a day won’t reset the clock.

2. Make it easy. Start small. Choose a behaviour you can realistically repeat daily.

3. Attach your new habit to an existing routine. That is, make the new habit easier to remember by linking it to something you already do – such as flossing right before you brush your teeth.

4. Track your progress. Use a calendar or app to tick off each successful day.

5. Build in rewards, for example making a special coffee after a morning walk or watching an episode of your favourite show after a week of consistent workouts. Positive emotions help habits stick, so celebrate small wins.

6. Morning is best. Habits practised in the morning tend to form more reliably than those attempted at night. This may be because people typically have more motivation and fewer distractions earlier in the day, making it easier to stick to new routines before daily demands build up.

7. Personal choice boosts success. People are more likely to stick with habits they choose themselves.

8. Repetition in a stable context is key. Performing the same behaviour in the same situation (such as walking right after lunch each day) increases the chances it will become automatic.

Why the 21-day myth matters

Believing habits form in 21 days sets many people up to fail. When change doesn’t “click” within three weeks, it’s easy to feel like you’re doing something wrong. This can lead to frustration, guilt and giving up entirely.

By contrast, understanding the real timeline can help you stay motivated when things feel slow.

Evidence shows habit formation usually takes at least two months, and sometimes longer. But it also shows change is possible.

Our research and other evidence confirm that repeated, intentional actions in stable contexts really do become automatic. Over time, new behaviours can feel effortless and deeply ingrained.

So whether you’re trying to move more, eat better, or improve your sleep, the key isn’t speed – it’s consistency. Stick with it. With time, the habit will stick with you.

Ben Singh, Research Fellow, Allied Health & Human Performance, University of South Australia and Ashleigh E. Smith, Associate Professor, Healthy Ageing, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.