Athletic footwear has entered a new era of ambition. No longer content to promise just comfort or performance, Nike claims its shoes can activate the brain, heighten sensory awareness and even improve concentration by stimulating the bottom of your feet.

“By studying perception, attention and sensory feedback, we’re tapping into the brain-body connection in new ways,” said Nike’s chief science officer, Matthew Nurse, in the company’s press release for the shoes. “It’s not just about running faster — it’s about feeling more present, focused and resilient.”

Other brands like Naboso sell “neuro-insoles,” socks and other sensory-based footwear to stimulate the nervous system.

It’s a compelling idea: The feet are rich in sensory receptors, so could stimulating them really sharpen the mind?

As a neurosurgeon who studies the brain, I’ve found that neuroscience suggests the reality is more complicated – and far less dramatic – than the marketing implies.

Close links between feet and brain

The soles of the feet contain thousands of mechanoreceptors that detect pressure, vibration, texture and movement.

Signals from these receptors travel through peripheral nerves to the spinal cord and up to an area of the brain called the somatosensory cortex, which maintains a map of the body. The feet occupy a meaningful portion of this map, reflecting their importance in balance, posture and movement.

Footwear also affects proprioception – the brain’s sense of where the body is in space – which relies on input from muscles, joints and tendons. Because posture and movement are tightly linked to attention and arousal, changes in sensory feedback from the feet can influence how stable, alert or grounded a person feels.

This is why neurologists and physical therapists pay close attention to footwear in patients with balance disorders, neuropathy or gait problems. Changing sensory input can alter how people move.

But influencing movement is not the same thing as enhancing cognition.

Minimalist shoes and sensory awareness

Minimalist shoes, with thinner soles and greater flexibility, allow more information about touch and body position to reach the brain compared with heavily cushioned footwear. In laboratory studies, reduced cushioning can increase a wearer’s awareness of where their foot is placed and when it’s touching the ground, sometimes improving their balance or the steadiness of their gait.

However, more sensation is not automatically better. The brain constantly filters sensory input, prioritizing what is useful and suppressing what is distracting. For people unaccustomed to minimalist shoes, the sudden increase in sensory feedback may increase cognitive load – drawing attention toward the feet rather than freeing mental resources for focus or performance.

Sensory stimulation can heighten awareness, but there is a threshold beyond which it becomes noise.

Can shoes improve concentration?

Whether sensory footwear can improve concentration is where neuroscience becomes especially skeptical.

Sensory input from the feet activates somatosensory regions of the brain. But brain activation alone does not equal cognitive enhancement. Focus, attention and executive function depend on distributed networks involving various other areas of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex, the parietal lobe and the thalamus. They also rely on hormones that modulate the nervous system, such as dopamine and norepinephrine.

There is little evidence that passive underfoot stimulation – textured soles, novel foam geometries or subtle mechanical features – meaningfully improves concentration in healthy adults. Some studies suggest that mild sensory input may increase alertness in specific populations – such as older adults training to improve their balance or people in rehabilitation for sensory loss – but these effects are modest and highly dependent on context.

Put simply, feeling more sensory input does not mean the brain’s attention systems are working better.

Belief, expectation and embodied experience

While shoes may not directly affect your cognition, that does not mean the mental effects people report are imaginary.

Belief and expectation still play a powerful role in medicine. Placebo effects and their influence on perception, motivation and performance are well documented in neuroscience. If someone believes a shoe improves focus or performance, that belief alone can change perception and behavior – sometimes enough to produce measurable effects.

There is also growing interest in embodied cognition, the idea that bodily states influence mental processes. Posture, movement and physical stability can shape mood, confidence and perceived mental clarity. Footwear that alters how someone stands or moves may indirectly influence how focused they feel, even if it does not directly enhance cognition.

In the end, believing a product gives you an advantage may be the most powerful effect it has.

Where science and marketing diverge

The problem is not whether footwear influences the nervous system – it does – but imprecision. When companies claim their shoes are “mind-altering,” they often blur the distinction between sensory modulation and cognitive enhancement.

Neuroscience supports the idea that shoes can change sensory input, posture and movement. It does not support claims that footwear can reliably improve concentration or attention for the general population. If shoes truly produced strong cognitive changes, those effects would be robust, measurable and reproducible. So far, they are not.

Shoes can change how we feel in our bodies, how you move through space and how aware you are of your physical environment. Those changes may influence confidence, comfort and perception – all of which matter to experience.

But the most meaningful “mind-altering” effects a person can experience through physical fitness still come from sustained movement, training, sleep and attention – not from sensation alone. Footwear may shape how the journey feels, but it is unlikely to rewire the destination.

Atom Sarkar, Professor of Neurosurgery, Drexel University

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

A variety show that’s still revered for its absurdist, slapstick humor debuted 50 years ago. It starred an irreverent band of characters made of foam and fleece.

Long after “The Muppet Show”‘s original 120-episode run ended in 1981, the legend and legacy of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo and other creations concocted by puppeteer and TV producer Jim Henson have kept on growing. Thanks to the Muppets’ film franchise and the wonders of YouTube, the wacky gang is still delighting, and expanding, its fan base.

As a scholar of popular culture, I believe that the Muppets’ reign, which began in the 1950s, has helped shape global culture, including educational television. Along the way, the puppets and the people who bring them to life have earned billions in revenue.

Kermit’s origin story

Muppets, a portmanteau of marionette and puppet, first appeared on TV in the Washington, D.C., region in 1955, when Henson created a short sketch show called “Sam and Friends” with his future wife, Jane Nebel.

Their motley cast of puppets, including a lizardlike character named Kermit, sang parody songs and performed comedy sketches.

Henson’s creations were soon popping up in segments on other TV shows, including “Today” and late-night programs. Rowlf the Dog appeared in Canadian dog food commercials before joining “The Jimmy Dean Show” as the host’s sidekick.

After that show ended, Rowlf and Dean performed on the “Ed Sullivan Show,” where Kermit had occasionally appeared since 1961.

From ‘Sesame Street’ to ‘SNL’

As Rowlf and Kermit made the rounds on variety shows, journalist Joan Ganz Cooney and psychologist Lloyd Morrisett were creating a new educational program. They invited Henson to provide a Muppet ensemble for the show.

Henson waived his performance fee to maintain rights over the characters who became the most famous residents of “Sesame Street.” The likes of Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster and Big Bird were joined by Kermit who, by the time the show premiered in 1969, was identified as a frog.

When “Sesame Street” became a hit, Henson worried that his Muppets would be typecast as children’s entertainment. Another groundbreaking show, aimed at young adults, offered him a chance to avoid that.

“Saturday Night Live’s” debut on NBC in 1975 – when the show was called “Saturday Night” – included a segment called “The Land of Gorch,” in which Henson’s grotesque creatures drank, smoked and cracked crass jokes.

“The Land of Gorch” segments ended after “Saturday Night Live’s” first season.

Miss Piggy gets her closeup

“The Muppet Show” was years in the making. ABC eventually aired two TV specials in 1974 and 1975 that were meant to be pilots for a U.S.-produced “Muppet Show.”

After no American network picked up his quirky series, Henson partnered with British entertainment entrepreneur Lew Grade to produce a series for ATV, a British network, that featured Kermit and other Muppets. The new ensemble included Fozzie Bear, Animal and Miss Piggy – Muppets originally performed by frequent Henson collaborator Frank Oz.

“The Muppet Show” parodied variety shows on which Henson had appeared. Connections he’d made along the way paid off: Many celebrities he met on those shows’ sets would guest star on “The Muppet Show,” including everyone from Rita Moreno and Lena Horne to Joan Baez and Johnny Cash.

“The Muppet Show,” which was staged and shot at a studio near London, debuted on Sept. 5, 1976, in the U.K, before airing in syndication in the United States on stations like New York’s WCBS.

The Muppets hit the big screen

“The Muppet Show” was a hit, amassing a global audience of over 200 million. It won many awards, including a Primetime Emmy for outstanding comedy-variety or music series – for which it beat “Saturday Night Live” – in 1978.

While his TV show was on the air, Henson worked on the franchise’s first film, “The Muppet Movie.” The road film, released in 1979, was another hit: It earned more than US$76 million at the box office.

“The Muppet Movie” garnered two Academy Award nominations for its music, including best song for “Rainbow Connection.” It won a Grammy for best album for children.

The next two films, “The Great Muppet Caper,” which premiered in 1981, and “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” released in 1984, also garnered Oscar nominations for their music.

‘Fraggle Rock’ and the Disney deal

The cast of “The Muppet Show” and the three films took a break from Hollywood while Henson focused on “Fraggle Rock,” a TV show for kids that aired from 1983-1987 on HBO.

Like Henson’s other productions, “Fraggle Rock” featured absurdist humor – but its puppets aren’t considered part of the standard Muppets gang. This co-production between Henson, Canadian Broadcast Corporation and British producers was aimed at international markets.

The quickly conglomerating media industry led Henson to consider corporate partnerships to assist with his goal of further expanding the Muppet media universe.

In August 1989, he negotiated a deal with Michael Eisner of Disney who announced at Disney-MGM Studios an agreement in principle to acquire The Muppets, with Henson maintaining ownership of the “Sesame Street” characters.

The announcement also included plans to open Muppet-themed attractions at Disney parks.

But less than a year later, on May 16, 1990, Henson died from a rare and serious bacterial infection. He was 53.

Of Muppets and mergers

Henson’s death led to the Disney deal’s collapse. But the company did license The Muppets to Disney, which co-produced “The Muppet Christmas Carol” in 1992 and “Muppet Treasure Island” in 1996 with Jim Henson Productions, which was then run by Jim’s son, Brian Henson.

In 2000, the Henson family sold the Muppet properties to German media company EM.TV & Merchandising AG for $680 million. That company ran into financial trouble soon after, then sold the Sesame Street characters to Sesame Workshop for $180 million in late 2000. The Jim Henson Company bought back the remaining Muppet properties for $84 million in 2003.

In 2004, Disney finally acquired The Muppets and most of the media library associated with the characters.

Disney continued to produce Muppet content, including “The Muppet’s Wizard of Oz” in 2005. Its biggest success came with the 2011 film “The Muppets,” which earned over $165 million at the box office and won the Oscar for best original song “Man or Muppet.”

“Muppets Most Wanted,” released in 2014, earned another $80 million worldwide, bringing total global box office receipts to over $458 million across eight theatrical Muppets movies.

The ‘Muppet Show’ goes on

The Muppets continue to expand their fandom across generations and genres by performing at live concerts and appearing in several series and films.

Through these many hits and occasional bombs, and the Jim Henson Company’s personnel changes, the Muppets have adapted to changes in technology and tastes, making it possible for them to remain relevant to new generations.

That cast of characters made of felt and foam continue to entertain fans of all ages. Although many people remain nostalgic over “The Muppet Show,” two prior efforts to reboot the show proved short-lived.

But when Disney airs its “The Muppet Show” anniversary special on Feb. 4, 2026, maybe more people will get hooked as Disney looks to reboot the series

Jared Bahir Browsh, Assistant Teaching Professor of Critical Sports Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

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

When most of us look out at the ocean, we see a mostly flat blue surface stretching to the horizon. It’s easy to imagine the sea beneath as calm and largely static – a massive, still abyss far removed from everyday experience.

But the ocean is layered, dynamic and constantly moving, from the surface down to the deepest seafloor. While waves, tides and currents near the coast are familiar and accessible, far less is known about what happens several kilometres below, where the ocean meets the seafloor.

Our new research, published in the journal Ocean Science, shows water near the the seafloor is in constant motion, even in the abyssal plains of the Pacific Ocean. This has important consequences for climate, ecosystems and how we understand the ocean as an interconnected system.

Enter the abyss

The central and eastern Pacific Ocean include some of Earth’s largest abyssal regions (places where the sea is more than 3,000 metres deep). Here, most of the seafloor lies four to six kilometres below the surface. It is shaped by vast abyssal plains, fracture zones and seamounts.

It is cold and dark, and the water and ecosystems here are under immense pressure from the ocean above.

Just above the seafloor, no matter the depth, sits a region known as the bottom mixed layer. This part of the ocean is relatively uniform in temperature, salinity and density because it is stirred through contact with the seafloor.

Rather than a thin boundary, this layer can extend from tens to hundreds of metres above the seabed. It plays a crucial role in the movement of heat, nutrients and sediments between the pelagic ocean and the seabed, including the beginning of the slow return of water from the bottom of the ocean toward the surface as part of global ocean circulation.

Observations focused on the bottom mixed layer are rare, but this is beginning to change. Most ocean measurements focus on the upper few kilometres, and deep observations are scarce, expensive and often decades apart.

In the Pacific especially, scientists have long known that cold Antarctic waters flow northward, along topographic features such as the Tonga-Kermadec Ridge and the Izu-Ogasawara and Japan Trenches.

But the finer details of how these waters interact with seafloor features in ways that intermittently stir and reshape the bottom layer of the ocean has remained largely unknown.

Investigating the abyss

To investigate the Pacific abyssal ocean, my colleagues and I combined new surface-to-seafloor measurements collected during a trans-Pacific expedition with high-quality repeat data about the physical features of the ocean gathered over the past two decades.

These observations allowed us to examine temperature and pressure all the way down to the seafloor over a wide range of latitudes and longitudes.

We then compared multiple scientific methods for identifying the bottom mixed layer and used machine learning techniques to understand what factors best explain the variations in its thickness.

Rather than being a uniform layer, we found the bottom mixed layer in the abyssal Pacific varies dramatically. In some regions it was less than 100m thick; in others it exceeded 700m.

This variability is not random; it’s controlled by the seafloor depth and the interactions between waves generated by surface tides and rough landscapes on the seabed.

In other words, the deepest ocean is not quietly stagnant as is often imagined. It is continually stirred by remote forces, shaped by seafloor features, and dynamically connected to the rest of the ocean above.

Just as coastal waters are shaped by waves, currents and sediment movement, the abyssal ocean is shaped by its own set of drivers. However, it is operating over larger distances and longer timescales.

Connected to the rest of the world

This matters for several reasons.

First, the bottom mixed layer influences how heat is stored and redistributed in the ocean, affecting long-term climate change. Some ocean and climate models still simplify seabed mixing, which can lead to errors in how future climate is projected.

Second, it plays a role in transporting sediment and seabed ecosystems. As interest grows in deep-sea mining and other activities on the high seas, understanding how the seafloor environment changes, and importantly how seafloor disturbances might spread, becomes increasingly important.

Our results highlight how little of the deep ocean we actually observe.

Large areas of the abyssal Pacific remain effectively unsampled, even as international agreements such as the new UN High Seas Treaty seek to manage and protect these regions.

The deep ocean is not a silent, static place. It is active, connected to the oceans above and changing. If we want to make informed decisions about the future of the high seas, we need to understand what’s happening at the very bottom in space and time.

Jessica Kolbusz, Research Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia

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

Is governing harder in the 2020s than in earlier decades? The instinctive, and popular, answer would be “of course it is”. While that’s also a correct answer, we should insert some qualifications.

Making the right or best decisions, especially in times of actual or looming crisis, has always been difficult. Consider the choices facing decision-makers, in Australia and abroad, during the Great Depression, when there was less understanding of how financial and economic systems worked than contemporary policymakers possess.

Consider also the choices that confronted leaders in past wars. Wartime prime minister John Curtin, grappling with decisions on which hung the lives of thousands of Australian troops, paced The Lodge grounds at night. And what of the challenges facing public health authorities trying to cope with the influenza epidemic that followed the first world war, compared with responding to the COVID pandemic in a time when vaccines could be developed quickly?

While keeping history in mind, however, it is undoubtedly true that contemporary governments face extraordinary changes and complexities. These come from many sources.

More demands for the provision of services. An interconnected world but fragmented public squares. Populations in democratic countries that have lost trust in government and in many other institutions. The rise of populism and the desire for instant answers to political and economic problems that do not lend themselves to easy, if any, solutions.

Modern travel, communications and technology have facilitated governing, as well as bringing their own challenges. Easier, faster and more comfortable travel means greater opportunities for face-to-face interaction, while imposing its own burdens. Email and “virtual” meetings have transformed interactions.

The internet is a massive information hub, the scale of which was beyond imagination only decades ago. It is also a monster that disseminates misinformation and disinformation on an industrial scale, and facilitates political intimidation.

Past reforms ‘not easy at the time’

Comparing the Bob Hawke and Anthony Albanese eras, “It’s become a truism of Australian politics that important economic reform peaked in the 1980s and 1990s. Sometimes the first two terms of John Howard’s government […] are given credit as well”, John Daley, of the Grattan Institute, wrote in Gridlock: Removing barriers to policy reform, in 2021. That report looked at the fate of a plethora of reforms the institute proposed between 2009 and 2019, finding more than two thirds of them had not been adopted.

In Australia, the Hawke–Keating government is often looked upon as a sort of “gold standard” for a reforming Labor government. It is unfair to measure a first-term administration against one that lasted several terms, and especially one that has been so mythologised. All the same, some critics have argued the Albanese government in its initial term was not pitching its aspiration high enough – let alone anything like as high as that earlier government.

Leaving aspiration aside, there is the other question. Was it easier in the Hawke–Keating days for a government to get things done – in particular, really difficult things? The answer is, almost certainly. But let us not romanticise the view through the rear vision mirror. Ken Henry, a public servant and Keating staffer during those days, told the National Press Club in 2025, “these reforms of the 80s and 90s mostly enjoy broad business and political support today, but they were not easy at the time”.

Moreover, some observers see downsides. “In recent months, there’s been a lot of breathless praise for the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. But where did some of those reforms lead?” ABC economics writer Gareth Hutchens wrote in 2025. “Some eventually led to appalling scandals that ended in royal commissions (banking, aged care, Robodebt). Changes to Australia’s labour market in that period contributed to the rise of underemployment and precarious work.”

Much momentum for Australia’s economic reforms in the 1980s, stretching into the 1990s, was imposed from outside. Australia was under pressure from external forces to open its economy to the world. This produced winners and losers, but in many cases the losers (whether from tax changes, or slashing tariffs) could, where considered necessary, be compensated. This didn’t prevent pain, but it could ameliorate some of it.

‘More pessimistic, fractious and negative’

By the time of the Albanese government, much of the big reform had been done, or tried. The public had become pain-averse; the drag of “reform fatigue” had been canvassed for years. Trust in government, declining for decades, was down again after a brief revival during the pandemic.

The more difficult territory – such as improving productivity, which had languished for years – proved to be harder to navigate than some of the landmark changes under Hawke, Keating and the early days of John Howard. With a tight budgetary situation, there wasn’t money to compensate losers – and there was less tolerance for policies where some people would lose.

By the 2020s the community had grown more pessimistic, fractious and negative, uncertain where the country was headed. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer’s Australian report highlighted the extent of “grievance”.

It found 62% of Australians had a moderate or high sense of grievance. (This was defined as a belief by the person that government and business make their lives harder and serve narrow interests, and that wealthy people benefit under the system while ordinary people struggle.)

Fewer than one in five people believed things would be better for the next generation. Nearly two thirds (64%) worried that government leaders purposely mislead by saying things they know are false or are gross exaggerations. The barometer found a “zero sum” mindset increasingly permeating Australian society:

Those Australians with high grievances are twice as likely to feel that ‘what helps people who don’t share my politics will come at a cost to me’ compared with those with low grievances.

An environment marked by distrust and grievance makes governing difficult, let alone the pursuit of reform. Moreover, the modern plethora of well-resourced interest groups will be positioned to exploit grievance – indeed that is often central to their business models. Social media is god’s gift to those fanning grievances.

On the whole, people are more trustful if they feel they have agency – the opportunity for a voice, however small. The increasing professionalisation of politics, and the thinning out of the memberships and power within the major parties have further weakened the connection between citizens and the political process.

In today’s world, for multiple reasons, fewer people are “joiners” of parties, or other organisations. At the same time, the major parties give less encouragement to the political amateurs who want to be involved.

‘Cartel parties’

As late as the 1980s and early 1990s, ALP rank-and-file members had some clout, with the party’s national conference fights over policy (for example, uranium mining and export, reform of the banking system, privatisation) carrying weight. Progressively, however, the extra-parliamentary Labor Party membership declined in importance (with the exception that it gained a 50% say in choosing the parliamentary leader).

This is in line with an international trend. John Daley and Rachel Krust write in their Institutional Reform Stocktake (2025) that “major parties around the world have increasingly become ‘cartel parties’ in which members promise each other the benefits of government patronage, part of the machinery of government operated by a professional political class”. As modern ALP national conferences became much bigger in size, they took on the nature of stage-managed rallies, losing policy teeth.

At the 2025 election, for the second time running, only about two thirds of electors voted number one for Labor or the Coalition. The loss of faith in the major parties has been accompanied by people seeking agency in part through the “community candidate” movement.

Independent candidates (“teals” but others, too) have attracted large numbers of enthusiastic followers. The number of House of Representatives crossbenchers swelled in the 2020s, compared with the preceding decades.

This fragmentation, however, does not necessarily promote reform. Crossbenchers can sometimes achieve change by advocacy on particular issues, or by using positions of power to extract concessions (for example, in the Senate). To achieve transformational change, however, may require a government with a substantial, or at least a comfortable, majority. We saw this with Howard’s GST reform, when a big majority went to near defeat.

The “localism” reflected in the community candidate movement has been matched to a degree in the big parties, which often feel the need to preselect a “local champion”, such as someone who has served as mayor, from the particular electorate, making it hard to get policy-oriented “high flyers” into seats, especially when these days fewer seats are “safe” for the party.

The electoral cycle as ‘permanent campaign’

Short federal parliamentary terms – a flexible three years – are not conducive to bringing in potentially unpopular policies. Addressing the British Labour conference in 2025, Albanese noted that in the United Kingdom, which has five-year terms, they had “the most valuable resource for any Labor Government” – time.

Both sides of politics acknowledge the handicap of short terms, but by now have accepted that terms cannot in practice be lengthened, because (on recent history) it would seem impossible to pass the required referendum.

Terms could be made fixed by legislation, however there has not been the bipartisan will for that. (After the 2025 election, the Special Minister of State, Don Farrell, did ask the parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to examine fixed four-year terms and increasing the size of the parliament.)

But the problem is not just the short length of terms. The electoral cycle has progressively become the “permanent campaign” with the government, especially the prime minister, seemingly never off the election trail, physically or mentally. This may have become so entrenched that longer terms might not significantly change things.

The contemporary phenomenon of the “continuous campaign” is reinforced by the frequency of opinion polling, and the attention given to it. It shapes much of the media discourse, and the use of it by the parties themselves means their eyes are, much of the time, on what the “focus groups” are saying. These trends were present in the 1980s but had reached new heights by the 2020s.

Leaders ‘crucial’ in driving reform

Much of the Hawke–Keating Government’s success in achieving economic reform was that it could harness the power and co-operation of the trade unions. The formal “Accord” between the government and unions meant the government could achieve trade-offs with the union movement – wage restraint in return for “social wage” benefits (Medicare, for example, and later a national superannuation contribution scheme).

The union movement of the day covered a much larger proportion of the workforce and had some impressive leaders who were willing to sign up to the government’s often controversial reform projects.

The Albanese government delivered significantly to the unions in its first term, including support for wage rises and a raft of changes to industrial laws, but it did not get offsets. The coverage of the union movement had shrunk drastically, and its leadership was not of the 1980s–90s calibre.

It is hard to recall how different the media landscape was in the Hawke–Keating years. This was the time before social media, and when the mainstream media were more influential for a government that wanted to drive change and achieve ambitious policy outcomes.

As a reforming treasurer, Keating was able to skilfully win influential parts of the media to his causes. Keating used to say, with his typical exaggeration, “if I’ve got the top five journalists in the press gallery supporting a policy, I’ve got the country”.

In the 2020s, not only are the media splintered every which way by the growth of social media, but traditional media are also increasingly polarised and less influential, especially with younger voters who obtain their information elsewhere.

The new round-the-clock, digital media environment has brought extra pressures on governing. How to sell measures has become almost as important in formulating policy as the substance. More generally, the government feels it imperative to fill the media space, which requires deploying ministers to the extensive round of morning TV and radio programs, interviews on the news channels through the day, evening current affairs, Sunday shows, and the like.

Arguably, the extent of the media burden on ministers takes away from the time and attention they can focus on detailed policy work.

Reform in any age requires leaders who can identify what needs to be done; grasp the policy challenges; are able and willing to be bold; and can persuade the public. The centrality of leadership in driving reform is crucial. In Hawke, Labor had a leader who could draw on strong personal popularity and was willing to spend political capital (although not be profligate with it – he acted as a restraining hand on his treasurer).

Albanese in his first term was a much more cautious brand of leader, mostly unwilling to exceed what he saw as his mandate. He also had a thin majority. Effective leadership must extend beyond the leader. Keating as treasurer was willing to stretch the boundaries. Albanese’s treasurer, Jim Chalmers, began his career by studying Keating attentively, but is still to be seriously tested himself.

Importantly, the Cabinet of the Hawke–Keating era was deep in its talent and its ambition. Its expenditure review committee was exceptionally hard-working. While the dynamics of the Albanese Cabinet are more opaque, there is not the breadth of talent or common reform purpose of its predecessor.

With Labor’s massive 2025 victory, calls immediately redoubled for the government to set its sights high. Slow economic growth, flatlined productivity and an uncertain external environment added to the push.

Stakeholders dusted off their reform proposals. A roundtable on “productivity”, which the treasurer immediately branded an “Economic Reform” Roundtable, was summoned by the government. That was the easy part.

Whether Albanese’s second-term government would have the will to significantly break the reform “gridlock” will be quite another matter. The prime minister might be a restraining hand on those inclined to hasten too fast.

This is an edited extract from The First Albanese Government, edited by John Hawkins, Michelle Grattan and John Halligan (New South), published on February 1.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

A few thousand years ago, sugar was unknown in the western world. Sugarcane, a tall grass first domesticated in New Guinea around 6000BC, was initially chewed for its sweet juice rather than crystallised. By around 500BC, methods to boil sugarcane juice into crystals was first developed in India.

One of the earliest references to sugar we have dates to 510BC, when Emperor Darius I of what was then Persia invaded India. There he found “the reed which gives honey without bees”.

Knowledge of sugar-making spread west to Persia, then across the Islamic world after the 7th century AD. Sugar reached medieval Europe only via trade routes. It was extremely expensive and used more like a spice. Indeed, in the 11th century Crusaders returning home talked of how pleasant this “new spice” was.

It was the supply potential of this “new spice” in the early 16th century that encouraged Portuguese entrepreneurs to export enslaved people to newly discovered Brazil. There, they rapidly started growing highly profitable sugar cane crops. By the 1680s, the Dutch, English and French all had their own sugar plantations with enslaved colonies in the Caribbean.

In the 18th century, the increasing popularity of tea and coffee led to the widespread adoption of sugar as a sweetener. In 1874, prime-minister William Gladstone abolished a 34% tax on sugar to ease the costs of basic food for workers. Cheap jam (one-third fruit pulp to two-thirds sugar) began to appear on the table of every working-class household. The growing demand for sugar in Britain and Europe encouraged further growth and profit, earning the name “white gold”.

Britain’s per capita sugar consumption skyrocketed from four pounds in 1704 to 90 pounds by 1901. While slavery was eventually abolished, the supply of cheap labour was sustained by new flows of indentured workers from India, Africa and China.

Britain’s naval blockade of Napoleonic France at the start of the 19th century prodded the French to seek an alternative to Caribbean sugar supplies. It gave birth to the European sugar beet industry.

Sugar beet is a biennial root crop grown for its high sucrose content, which is extracted to produce table sugar. The 20th century has seen this traditionally heavily subsidised and tariff-protected industry grow to produce approximately 50% of Europe’s sugar. This includes the UK’s consumption, which is now around 2 million tons of beet (60%) and cane sugar (40%) annually.

Delights and dangers

In 1886, Atlanta’s prohibition laws forced the businessman and chemist John Pemberton to reformulate his popular drink, Pemberton’s Tonic French Wine Coca. He replaced the alcohol with a 15% sugar syrup and added citric acid. His bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, chose a new name for the drink after its main ingredients – cocaine leaves and kola nuts – and created the Coca-Cola trademark in the flowing script we know today.

In 1879, Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter invented the world’s first commercial milk chocolate using sweetened condensed milk developed by his neighbour, Henri Nestlé. Milk chocolate, which contains about 50-52 grams of sugar per 100 grams, has now become a global favourite for its sweet taste and creamy texture.

Chocolate and cola have since solidified their status as global staples in the realm of fizzy drinks and sweet treats and have become essential indulgences for people worldwide.

In 1961, an American epidemiologist Ancel Keys appeared on the cover of Time magazine for his “diet-heart hypothesis”. Through his “seven countries” study, he found an association between saturated fat intake, blood cholesterol and heart disease. Keys remarked: “People should know the facts. Then, if they want to eat themselves to death, let them.”

With competing scientific advice John Yudkin, founder of the nutrition department at Queen’s College, published an article in the Lancet. He argued that international comparisons do not support the claim that total or animal fat is the main cause of coronary thrombosis, highlighting that sugar intake has a stronger correlation with heart disease.

He published his book, Pure, White and Deadly, in 1972. It highlighted the evidence linking sugar consumption to increased coronary thrombosis and its involvement in dental caries, obesity, diabetes and liver disease. He ominously noted: “If only a small fraction of what is already known about the effects of sugar were to be revealed about any other material used as a food additive, that material would promptly be banned.”

The British Sugar Bureau dismissed Yudkin’s claims about sugar as “emotional assertions”, and the World Sugar Research Organisation called his book “science fiction”. In the 1960s and 1970s, the sugar industry promoted sugar as an appetite suppressant and funded research that downplayed the risks of sucrose, while emphasising dietary fat as the primary driver of coronary heart disease.

Scientific debate over the relative health effects of sugar and fat continued for decades. In the meantime, governments began publishing dietary guidelines advising people to eat less saturated fats and high-cholesterol foods. An unavoidable consequence of this was that people began eating more carbohydrates and sugar instead.

Official dietary guidelines did not begin to clearly acknowledge the health risks of excessive sugar consumption until much later, as evidence accumulated toward the end of the 20th century.

In my new book, Food and Us: the Incredible Story of How Food Shapes Humanity I explore the fact that sugar is a relatively new addition to our diet. In just a short period of 300 years, or 0.0001% of our food evolution, sugar has become ubiquitous in our food supply. It has even evolved its own terms of endearment and affection for people, such as sugar, honey and sweetheart.

However, the global addiction to sugar poses significant and interconnected challenges for public health, the economy, society and the environment. The pervasive nature of sugar in processed foods, combined with its effects on the brain’s reward system, creates a cycle of dependency that is driving a worldwide crisis of diet-related diseases and straining health systems.

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Seamus Higgins, Associate Professor Food Process Engineering, Chemical & Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham

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People living on the low-lying shores of the Bristol Channel and Severn estuary began their day like any other on January 30 1607. The weather was calm. The sky was bright.

Then, suddenly, the sea rose without warning. Water came racing inland, tearing across fields and villages, sweeping away the homes, livestock and people in its path.

By the end of the day, thousands of acres were underwater. As many as 2,000 people may have died. It was, quite possibly, the deadliest sudden natural disaster to hit Britain in 500 years.

More than four centuries later, the flood of 1607 still raises a troubling question. What, exactly, caused it?

Most early explanations blamed an exceptional storm. But when my colleague and I began examining the historical evidence more closely in 2002, we became less certain that this was the full picture. For one, eyewitness accounts tell a more unsettling story.

The flood struck on January 30 1607 – or January 20 1606, according to the old Julian calendar, which was still in use at that time. The flood affected coastal communities across south Wales, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Devon, inundating some areas several miles inland. People at the time were no strangers to storms or high tides – but this was different.

Churches were inundated. Entire villages vanished. Vast stretches of farmland were ruined by saltwater, leaving communities facing hunger as well as grief. Memorial plaques in local churches and parish documents still mark the scale of the catastrophe.

Much of what we know about how the event unfolded comes from chapbooks, which were cheaply printed pamphlets sold in the early 17th century. These accounts describe not just the damage, but the terrifying speed and character of the water itself.

One such pamphlet, God’s Warning to His People of England, describes a calm morning suddenly interrupted by what witnesses saw approaching from the sea:

Upon Tuesday 20 January 1606 there happened such an overflowing of waters … the like never in the memory of man hath been seen or heard of. For about nine of the morning, many of the inhabitants of these countreys … perceive afar off huge and mighty hilles of water tombling over one another, in such sort as if the greatest mountains in the world had overwhelmed the lowe villages or marshy grounds.

Our interest in the event arose from reading that account. It gives a specific time for the inundation – around nine in the morning – and emphasises the fair weather and sudden arrival of the floodwaters.

From a geographer’s perspective, this description is striking. Sudden onset, wave-like forms and an absence of storm conditions are not typical of storm surges. To us, the language was reminiscent of eyewitness accounts of tsunamis elsewhere in the world. This suggested a tsunami origin for the flood should be evaluated.

Until the early 2000s, few researchers seriously questioned the storm-surge explanation. But as we revisited the historical sources, we began to ask whether the physical landscape might also preserve clues to what happened in 1607. If an extreme marine inundation had struck the coast at that time, it may have left geological evidence behind.

In several locations around the estuary, we identified a suite of features with a chronological link to the early 17th century: the erosion of two spurs of land that previously jutted out into the estuary, the removal of almost all fringing salt marsh deposits, and the occurrence of sand layers in otherwise muddy deposits

These features point to a high-energy event. The question was what kind?

Testing the theory

To explore this further, we undertook a programme of fieldwork in 2004. We examined sand layers and noted signatures of tsunami impact such as coastal erosion, and analysed the movement of large boulders along the shoreline. Boulder transport is particularly useful, as it allows estimates of the wave heights needed to move them.

Some fieldwork was filmed for a BBC documentary broadcast in April 2005, which featured other colleagues too. It included an argument for a storm, but also another suggesting it isn’t fanciful to consider that an offshore earthquake provided the trigger.

Our results were published in 2007, coincidentally the 400th anniversary of the flood. In parallel, colleagues published a compelling model supporting a storm surge. The scientific debate, rather than being resolved, intensified.

An updating of wave heights based on boulder data using refined formula was published in 2021, suggesting a minimum tsunami wave height of 4.2 metres is required to explain the coastal features – whereas, according to the calculations, storm waves of over 16 metres would be required. This is perhaps unlikely within the relatively sheltered Severn estuary.

The low-lying coasts around the Bristol Channel remain vulnerable to flooding. Storm surges occur regularly, though usually with more limited effects. Climate change is now increasing the risk through rising sea levels and more intense weather systems.

Tsunamis, by contrast, are rare. A report by the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs found it unlikely that the 1607 flood may have been caused by one. However, it also noted that offshore southwest Britain is among the more credible locations for a future tsunami, triggered by seismic activity or submarine landslides.

This distinction matters. Storm surges can usually be forecast. Tsunamis may arrive with little or no warning.

Scholarly and public interest in the flood has not waned. In November 2024, a Channel 5 documentary brought together several strands of recent research, concluding that the jury is still out on the flood’s cause.

That uncertainty should not be seen as a failure. Evaluating competing explanations is essential when trying to understand extreme events in the past – especially when those events have implications for present-day risk.

Whether the flood of 1607 was driven by storm winds, unusual tides or waves generated far offshore, its lesson is clear. Coastal societies ignore rare disasters at their peril.

The sea has come in before. And it will do so again.

Simon Haslett, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Physical Geography, Bath Spa University; Swansea University

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Imagine a city that thrived for thousands of years, its streets alive with workshops, markets and the laughter of children, yet that is remembered for a single night of fire. That city is Troy.

Long before Homer’s epics immortalised its fall, Troy was a place of everyday life. Potters shaped jars and bowls destined to travel far beyond the settlement itself, moving through wide horizons of exchange and connection.

Bronze tools rang in busy workshops. Traders called across the marketplace and children chased one another along sun‑warmed footpaths. This was the real heartbeat of Troy – the story history has forgotten.

Homer’s late eighth‑century BC epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, fixed powerful images in western cultural memory: heroes clashing, a wooden horse dragged through city gates, flames licking the night sky. Yet this dramatic ending hides a far longer, far more remarkable story: centuries of cooperation embedded in everyday social organisation. A story we might call the Trojan peace.

This selective memory is not unique to Troy. Across history, spectacular collapses dominate how we imagine the past: Rome burning in AD64, Carthage razed in 146BC and the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán falling in AD1521. Sudden catastrophe is vivid and memorable. The slow, fragile work of maintaining stability is easier to overlook.

The Trojan peace was not the absence of tension or inequality. It was the everyday ability to manage them without society breaking apart, the capacity to absorb pressure through routine cooperation rather than dramatic intervention.

When catastrophe outshines stability

Archaeology often speaks loudest when something goes catastrophically wrong. Fires preserve. Ruins cling to the soil like charcoal fingerprints. Peace, by contrast, leaves no single dramatic moment to anchor it.

Its traces survive in the ordinary: footpaths worn smooth by generations of feet; jars repaired, reused and handled for decades, some still bearing the drilled holes of ancient mending. These humble remnants form the true architecture of long‑term stability.

Troy is a textbook example. Archaeologists have identified nine major layers at the site, some of which are associated with substantial architectural reorganisation. But that isn’t evidence of destruction. Rather it simply reflects the everyday reality of a settlement’s history: building, use, maintenance or levelling, rebuilding and repetition.

Instead, I argue that Troy’s archaeological record reveals centuries of architectural continuity, stable coastal occupation and trade networks stretching from Mesopotamia to the Aegean and the Balkans – a geography of connection rather than conflict.

The only evidence for truly massive destruction that can be identified dates to around 2350BC. Against the broader archaeological backdrop, this stands out as a rare, fiery rupture – one dramatic episode within a much longer pattern of recovery and continuity.

Whether sparked by conflict, social unrest or an accident, it interrupted only briefly the long continuity of daily life – more than a thousand years before the events portrayed by the poet Homer in his tale of the Trojan war were supposed to have taken place.

But what actually held Troy together for so long? During the third and second millennia BC, Troy was a modest but highly connected coastal hub, thriving through exchange, craft specialisation, shared material traditions and the steady movement of ideas and goods.

The real drivers of Troy’s development were households, traders and craftspeople. Their lives depended on coordination and reciprocity: managing water and farmland, organising production, securing vital resources such as bronze and negotiating movement along the coast. In modern terms, peace was work, negotiated daily, maintained collectively and never guaranteed.

When crises arose, the community adapted. Labour was reorganised, resources redistributed, routines adjusted. Stability was restored not through force, but through collective problem solving embedded in everyday practice.

This was not a utopia. Troy’s stability was constrained by environmental limits, population pressure and finite resources. A successful trading season could bring prosperity; a failed harvest could strain systems quickly. Peace was never about eliminating conflict, but about absorbing pressure without collapse.

Archaeologically, this long-term balance appears as persistence: settlement layouts maintained across generations, skills refined and passed down, and gradual expansion from the citadel into what would later become the lower town. These developments depended on negotiation and cooperation, not conquest, revealing practical mechanisms of peace in the bronze age.

Why we remember the war

Stories favour rupture over routine. Homer’s Iliad was never a historical account of the bronze age, but a poetic reflection of heroism, morality, power and loss. The long, quiet centuries of cooperation before and after were too distant – and too subtle – to dramatise.

Modern archaeology has often followed the same gravitational pull. Excavations at Troy began with the explicit aim of locating the battlefield of the Trojan war. Even as scholarship moved on, the story of war continued to dominate the public imagination. War offers a clear narrative. Peace leaves behind complexity.

Reexamining Troy through the lens of peace shifts attention away from moments of destruction and towards centuries of continuity. Archaeology shows how communities without states, armies, or written law sustained stability through everyday practices of cooperation. What kept Troy going was not grand strategy, but the quiet work of living together, generation after generation.

The real miracle of Troy was not how it fell – but for how long it endured. Rethinking the cherished narrative of the Trojan war reminds us that lasting peace is built not in dramatic moments, but through the persistent, creative efforts of ordinary people.

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Stephan Blum, Research Associate, Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Medieval Archaeology, University of Tübingen

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A ziggurat (also spelled ziqqurat) was a raised platform with four sloping sides that looked like a tiered pyramid.

Ziggurats were common in ancient Mesopotamia (roughly modern Iraq) from around 4,000 to 500 BCE.

Unlike the Egyptian pyramids, they were not places of royal burials, but temples dedicated to the patron deity of a city.

How were they made?

Stone was relatively rare in Mesopotamia, so ziggurats were mainly made of sun-dried mudbricks coated with limestone and bitumen (a sticky, tar-like substance).

Their sides were decorated with grooved stripes and were often plastered with lime mortar or gypsum and glazed in various colours.

Unlike the pyramids, they had no internal chambers. The actual shrine was at the top of the structure where the god resided. It was accessible by steps and was believed to be a meeting point between heaven and earth.

Ziggurats towered over the centre of ancient Mesopotamian cities; as archaeological evidence indicates, they were typically built next to the palace or the temple of a city’s patron god to stress the role of the god in supporting the king.

How the Anu ziggurat became the White Temple

The Anu ziggurat, the oldest known, was built at Uruk (modern-day Warka, about 250 kilometres south of Baghdad) by the Sumerians around 4,000 BCE. (The Sumerians were an ancient people, among the first known to have established cities, who lived roughly in the area of modern Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.)

This ziggurat was dedicated to Anu, their sky god. Sometime between 3,500 and 3,000 BCE, the so-called White Temple was built on top of it.

The White Temple, approximately 12 metres high, was so named because it was entirely whitewashed inside and out. It must have shone dazzlingly in the sun.
The Sumerian culture was eventually taken over by the Akkadian Empire, followed by the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires. Throughout the rise and fall of empires, ziggurats continued to be built in the Ancient Near East.

In fact, the word ziggurat comes from the Akkadian verb zaqâru, meaning “to build high”.

Other famous ziggurats

Assyrian kings built an impressive ziggurat in their capital, Nimrud (about 30 kilometres south of Mosul). This ziggurat was dedicated to Ninurta, a Sumerian and Akkadian god of war and victory.

Ninurta’s father, the god Enlil, was worshipped at the ziggurat of the sacred city Nippur, in modern-day Iraq.

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II dedicated the ziggurat Etemenanki to the Babylonian king of gods, Marduk. The name Etemenanki means the Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth.

Etemenanki was located north of a different temple called the Esagil, which was Marduk’s main temple in Babylon.

Etemenanki likely inspired the story of the Tower of Babel in the Old Testament. Genesis 11 refers to a “tower” built of mud bricks instead of stone, which was intended to reach the heavens.

The building, perceived as an act of human pride, angered God, who caused the people to speak different languages and scattered them across the Earth.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Marduk often chose a woman to spend the night with him in the top-most shrine of his ziggurat.

The text has been often understood to refer to a “sacred marriage” rite involving the sexual union of a woman with the god.

However, it seems more likely to have been an incubation rite, when the god’s will is revealed to someone sleeping in a sacred place.

Constant preservation

Because of the relative lack of durability of mud bricks, ziggurats required constant preservation.

Etemenanki in Babylon had to be rebuilt several times until Alexander the Great ordered his soldiers to destroy it in 323 BCE so as to rebuild it from scratch.

However, Alexander’s premature death (historians continue to debate what he died of) meant the task had to be completed by his successors. But whether the rebuilding task was ever completed is uncertain.

Better preserved ziggurats include the Ziggurat of Ur (in the region of modern-day Tell el-Muqayyar in Iraq). The powerful king, Ur-Nammu, dedicated this ziggurat to the moon god, Nanna or Sîn, around 2100 BCE.

Another example is the ziggurat of Chogha Zanbil in modern Iran, which was built around 1250 BCE. It now stands only 24.5 metres tall, instead of the original estimated 53 metres.

A lasting influence on architecture

Ziggurats influenced architecture long after their demise, including the new tiered “skyscrapers” of the art deco era in the 20th century.

Modern ziggurats ended up dotting the New York skyline.

And, if you look closely, you’ll see that there’s a fair amount of ziggurat about the Empire State Building.

These modern examples serve as a fascinating reminder of a design and construction language that goes back to the Middle East over six millennia ago.

Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides, Associate Professor in Ancient History, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Macquarie University and Michael B. Charles, Associate Professor, Management Discipline, Faculty of Business, Arts and Law, Southern Cross University

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What will we see in the southern sky in 2026? A total eclipse of the Moon (at a convenient time), a blue Moon and a supermoon, the two brightest planets close together, and Jupiter disappearing behind the Moon in the daytime.

All except one of these events can be seen with the unaided eye, even in light-polluted cities.

In addition to these special events, we will see the annual procession of meteor showers and the nightly parade of constellations. Though best seen from a dark country location, the most interesting of these can still be seen from cities.

Here are some of the year’s highlights.

March, May and December: the Moon

An eclipse of the Moon (or lunar eclipse) will take place on the evening of Tuesday March 3. During the eclipse, the full Moon moves into the shadow of Earth and is likely to turn a red or coppery colour.

This is because sunlight is bent or refracted by Earth’s atmosphere onto the Moon. The bent light is red – it is the glow of sunrises and sunsets from around the globe.

Lunar eclipses are safe to watch with the unaided eye and offer a good opportunity for nighttime photography. For successful images, the camera or phone needs to be able to take timed exposures and should be firmly supported on a tripod or similar.

Seen from Australia’s south-east, totality (when the Moon is completely obscured) will occur between 10:04pm and 11:03pm local time. From Brisbane the times are an hour earlier, while from Perth the times are three hours earlier. From Aotearoa New Zealand totality will begin just after midnight.

Another lunar event is a “blue Moon” on Sunday May 31. This is a name sometimes given to the second full Moon in a single calendar month. This happens, on average, once every two or three years.

The final Moon event is a “supermoon” on Christmas eve, Thursday December 24. This occurs when a full Moon falls when the Moon is at the closest point to Earth in its monthly orbit.

This means the full Moon appears a little larger than usual. The supermoon looks most spectacular at moonrise, as an illusion in our brains magnifies the effect when the Moon is close to the horizon.

April, June and November: planets

Before dawn on the mornings of April 19–22, the planets Mercury, Mars and Saturn will form a tight bunch in the sky. Look towards the east.

On the evenings of Tuesday June 9 and Wednesday June 10, the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, pass within three moon-widths of each other from our point of view.

On Tuesday November 3, the crescent Moon will pass in front of Jupiter. Although this happens during the day, it will be visible with a pair of binoculars. (Note: do not point binoculars at the Sun! Children must be fully supervised.)

Times vary across Australia and New Zealand. From Sydney, the bright edge of the Moon covers Jupiter at 10:40am and Jupiter reappears at the dark edge at 11:39am.

December: meteor shower

Before dawn on mornings in mid-December, there is a favourable opportunity to view the Geminid meteor shower, one of the best such showers during the year. The shower occurs when the Earth runs into a stream of dust left behind by a rocky asteroid called Phaethon.

As the dust particles burn up in the atmosphere 100km or so above our heads, brief streaks of light called meteors can be seen. This year there is a good chance to see them, as the Moon will not brighten the sky.

This year, the peak of the shower is predicted for the early morning of Tuesday December 15. To see the meteors, try to find the darkest spot you can, and look towards the north as shown below. The meteors will appear to radiate from a point near Castor, in the Gemini constellation.

January and December: Taurus

Many of the constellations in the European tradition, visible from the northern hemisphere, were named in ancient times. Explorers and astronomers venturing south of the equator in the 18th century named most of the rest.

Previously, I have discussed the well-known constellations Orion and Scorpius and the Southern Cross and Sagittarius. For 2026, I want to talk about the zodiac constellation of Taurus, the Bull.

The best way to find Taurus is to extend a line downwards from the three stars of Orion’s belt until you reach a bright reddish star called Aldebaran.

Aldebaran sits in an inverted V-shaped group of stars. This is the Bull’s head, upside down for us as it was named in the northern hemisphere. The other stars in the group are part of a cluster called the Hyades.

Another cluster in Taurus is the Pleiades. This is named the Seven Sisters, not just in the European tradition, but by cultures around the world, including First Nations people of Australia.

With the unaided eye, most people can only see six stars in this compact cluster, but hundreds can been seen through a telescope. In 2025 astronomers found the Pleiades likely contains 20 times as many stars as previously thought.

The information in this article comes from the 2026 Australasian Sky Guide. The guide has monthly star maps and more information to help with viewing and enjoying the night sky from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Nick Lomb, Adjunct Professor, Centre for Astrophysics, University of Southern Queensland

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While the beach and swimming culture might feel like an intrinsic part of “Australianness”, this hasn’t always been the case. For many of us, swimming lessons, school swimming carnivals and weekends at the beach are defining childhood memories.

That deep connection to beach swimming helps explain why our responses to the Sydney region’s recent shark attacks and health concerns over South Australia’s algal bloom crisis feel like a form of collective grieving.

Swimming at the beach is seen as healing. It brings us together and connects people to the natural world. Yet our apparently intrinsic swimming identity is something that’s emerged over time. Our attitudes to swimming and beach-going have shifted according to social values and politics.

The “beach bodies” we celebrate as healthy and desirable would have been unthinkable in the 19th century, when sea bathing was a furtive, private affair for colonial Australians. Daytime public bathing was widely banned until around the early 1900s, when restrictions began to lift. And even when we did eventually hold swimming races, our first swimmers were hardly Olympic standard.

Meanwhile, a recent study by Royal Surf Lifesaving Australia warns that swimming culture might be on the retreat: fewer children are competing in swimming carnivals, or even have competence in the water. Drowning deaths increased last summer and swimming ability is falling “below minimum standards”, the report argues: 48% of Year 6 students and 84% of year 10 students are not meeting expected benchmarks for their age.

My research shows that Australia’s swimming culture didn’t evolve by accident: it was actively nurtured by swimming advocates and public education programs. A concerted public effort will be required to boost swimming skills and water safety once more.

Danger, modesty and bans

While most settler-colonial Australian coast dwellers in the 19th century viewed ocean bathing as essential for hygiene, being in the water also channelled all sorts of panics.

The ocean was a place where you drowned when ships went down, got taken by sharks, or simply succumbed to its depths. The beach was perilous. It took people.

Fear of the water also had a moral element. Bathing was necessary, but done in private and with modesty.

The swimming and diving feats of First Nations men and women were frequently commented on by colonists and observers. Aboriginal people “are bold and surprisingly expert, both in swimming and diving”, wrote William Govett in the Saturday Magazine in 1836.

In 1843, the missionary James Backhouse described Aboriginal women in Lutruwita (Tasmania) diving for crayfish “often using the long stems of the kelp to enable them to reach the bottom; these they handle as dextrously as a sailor would a rope in descending”.

And in Lieutenant William Dawes’ famous Dharug wordlist from 1790-91, we get the term “bóg’i” – to bathe or swim. (It’s a word still used today: “bogey holes” are features at Bronte Beach and Newcastle, where people can safely enjoy an ocean dip.)

But in 1810, Governor Lachlan Macquarie banned public bathing in and around Sydney Cove. The colonial bathing prohibition was extended in 1838 to all towns in New South Wales, “for the maintenance of the public peace and good order”. It was incorporated into the Colony’s Police Act:

it shall not be lawful for any person to bathe near to or within view of any public wharf quay bridge street road or other place of public resort within the limits of any of the towns aforesaid between the hours of six o'clock in the morning and eight in the evening.

To avoid prosecution, women and men discretely bathed behind privacy screens and segregated areas, away from public gaze, or at dawn and dusk, until the daytime bathing bans were lifted in the early decades of the 1900s.

Some people in the colonies could and did swim. Swimming races and demonstrations were held in places designated for segregated swimming, like Robinson’s Baths in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo Bay, or St Kilda Baths in Melbourne, during the middle decades of the 1800s.

Yet these carnivals were largely for entertainment and betting, rather than universal rites of passage. And mixed bathing continued to be scorned and policed until the turn of the 20th century.

During one Sydney competition in 1852, only two men entered the 100-yard race, and neither contestant swam overarm until the final few metres of the race, briefly accelerating their more sedate sidestroke.

Over the course of the 1800s, values about morality and modesty gradually shifted as views around gender, health and fitness changed – along with ideas about leisure and pleasure.

An 1860 news story about swimming matches in Port Phillip Bay touted the potential of swimming to strengthen both communities and physical bodies. “It is gratifying to see so many youngsters good swimmers,” the Melbourne Argus reported.

There was a significant racial element in all this, too, as the work of historians Marilyn Lake, Henry Reynolds and others explores. The colonies were anxious about their geographical isolation from Britain and obsessed with how their citizens might “measure up”.

At a time when ideas about bodily vigour and good health were growing, swimming was also viewed as a form of exercise acceptable for women. But swimming didn’t just promote physical fitness. Knowing how to swim was essential for public safety, especially for the Empire’s youngest subjects.

“The accidents that so often occur during the summer season would be reduced to a minimum, if women would but learn to swim,” one 1876 article from the Illustrated Sydney News insisted.

Swim safety and beach bodies

By the late 1890s, school swimming lessons had begun in Victoria and New South Wales. Amateur swimming associations were established around the country during this period. They advocated for the construction of public baths and the provision of lessons, along with that now famous rite of passage, the swimming carnival.

Bathing – once furtive and modest – was increasingly replaced with public swimming, for women and men. The more popular swimming became, the more people visited the beach.

In turn, people who visited the beach to swim, rather than stroll or splash up to their knees, further nibbled at 19th-century Victorian strictures of decorum. By the end of the 19th century, beach bodies were becoming markers of good health and virtue, rather than something to hide.

Surf life saving clubs

As the popularity of beach swimming grew, however, its physical dangers were thrown into ever sharper relief. Reports of tragic deaths were regular news right around the country.

Children were especially vulnerable. Newspapers reported stories like the drowning death of young Leslie Mitchell in December 1900. Seen wading knee-deep at St Kilda beach, he was found face down in the water only minutes later.

As accidents mounted, notes historian Caroline Ford, civic responses also grew. Many beachside communities established lifesaving clubs, like Bondi (formed in 1907), Cottesloe (in 1909) and Tweed Heads and Coolangatta (in 1911), and provided life-saving equipment like life-rings and surf-lines. There were also government inquiries into beach safety, which recommended funding for public education and surf lifesavers.

The Surf Bathing Association of New South Wales, formed in 1907, soon became the Surf Life Saving Association of Australia, and quickly expanded as clubs around the country were created.

The shift from furtive bather to confident beach swimmer reflected changing social attitudes. It also occurred during a critical time of emerging national identity – and federation.

Beach bodies became idealised figures of strength: admirable and desirable, rather than something to be ashamed of. Australian swimmers like Mina Wylie, Andrew “Boy” Charlton, Fanny Durack, and Annette Kellerman, were national heroes and celebrities. They won international races, appeared in variety shows and drew enormous crowds.

While that freedom-loving, strong and capable beach figure celebrated in popular culture at the time might have been bronzed by the sun, it was invariably white. The Immigration Restriction Act was one of the first pieces of federal legislation passed by the new nation in 1901 and it enshrined the White Australia policy.

The beach was a national leveller, of sorts, but only if you were actually welcome to sit on the sand in the first place.

Throughout the 20th century, as swimming became a sign of Australian egalitarianism and physical health, it was also a site of exclusion, as the 1965 Freedom Ride and 2005 Cronulla race riots demonstrate.

Australia’s celebration of beach and swimming culture – in all its complexity – went on to become a defining feature of national identity. And significant efforts supported by governments, surf lifesaving and community groups have attempted to make the beach an inclusive, safe place for everyone.

Ensuring beach safety is an ongoing part of those efforts.

Anna Clark, Professor in Public History, University of Technology Sydney

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Noise was first considered a public health issue in interwar Britain – called the “age of noise” by the author and essayist Aldous Huxley. In this era, the proliferation of mechanical sounds, particularly the rumble of road and air traffic, the blare of loudspeakers and the rising decibels of industry, caused anxiety about the health of the nation’s minds and bodies.

Interwar writers, such as Virginia Woolf, George Orwell and Jean Rhys, tuned in to the din. Their fiction is not just an archive of past sound-worlds but also the place where sound became noise and vice versa. As sound historian James Mansell has argued: “Noise was not just representative of the modern; it was modernity manifested in audible form.”

We now have more data and scientific evidence on the effects of environmental noise. The World Health Organization recognises noise, particularly from road, rail and air traffic, as one of the top environmental health hazards, second only to air pollution.

In the interwar period, without comprehensive data on noise and health, early campaigners relied on narrative. They created a particular story about noise and nerves to galvanise the public into keeping it down.

In 1933, the first significant UK noise abatement organisation, the Anti-Noise League, was founded by physician Thomas Horder. The league consisted of doctors, psychologists, physicists, engineers and acousticians (physicists concerned with the properties of sound) who lobbied government for a legislative framework around noise.

They sought to educate the public on the dangers of needless noise through exhibitions, publications and their magazine, Quiet.

Their campaigns drew attention to the very real health effects of environmental noise. But they also saw noise as waste: something to be eliminated in the pursuit of a maximally productive and efficient citizenry.

They drew on ideas of Britishness associated with what they called “acoustic civilisation” (or teaching the nation to be quieter) and “intelligent” behaviour to enact a programme of noise reduction as sonic nationalism.

Noise in modernist fiction

This interwar preoccupation with unwanted sound is also a sonic legacy of the first world war. Exposure to the deafening din of artillery, exploding shells and grenades caused catastrophic auditory injury. So much so, that the din was associated with loss of life and the devastating effects of shell shock.

The extreme noise of warfare also pushed doctors and psychologists to study how sound affects health. This work continued into the 1930s through government-backed bodies such as the Industrial Health Research Board. As a result, people in the interwar years became much more aware that the everyday sounds of machines and traffic could also be harmful.

But it wasn’t only doctors and acousticians who wrote about noise. Authors such as Rebecca West and H.G. Wells worked with the Anti-Noise League, while others, like Winifred Holtby, publicly refuted their findings. But more broadly, in the pages of interwar fiction, modernist writers engaged deeply with the shifting noisescapes around them.

The unprecedented noise levels of the wars, together with the proliferation of sounds in urban and domestic spaces and the auditory training required by new forms of sound technology, caused an attentiveness to sound and hearing. This was harnessed both metaphorically and structurally in the period’s literature.

Modernist writers such as Woolf, Orwell and Rhys listened intently to machines and the sound worlds they created. Once we start to listen for it, noise is everywhere in fiction of the period.

Proletarian factory novels of the 1930s such as Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole (1933) or John Sommerfield’s May Day (1936) draw new attention to toxic and harmful high decibel industrial environments.

Interwar novels such as Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) or George Orwell’s Coming Up for Air (1939), each with first world war veteran protagonists, register urban noise via the auditory effects of the conflict zone, or a kind of communal noise sensitivity, as well as through the healing or connective properties of sound. In Dorothy Sayers’ Nine Tailors (1934) a character is (spoiler alert) killed by the sound of a church bell.

Rhys’ short story Let Them Call It Jazz (1962) is set in London in the years following the second world war. It depicts the hostile environment faced by immigrants, such as those arriving from the Caribbean on HMT Empire Windrush, as protagonist Selina Davis is imprisoned for noise disturbance. She has been singing Caribbean folk songs in a “genteel” suburban neighbourhood.

The tale is one of cultural identity, the resistant power of sound, and the politicisation of noise. Black music is a form of sonic resistance; noise is both a silencing strategy for bodies and practices deemed “aberrant” and a resistant practice that exceeds and disrupts exclusionary codes of value and hierarchy.

These works, and many more, demonstrate that modernist writers, if we listen carefully, are theorists of sound who responded in complex ways to their shifting soundscapes. They counter the association of noise with negative affect or “unwanted” excess, by finding aesthetic and political possibility in noise.

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Anna Snaith, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, King's College London

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