Shows / The Conversation Weekly
The Conversation Weekly
A show for curious minds, from The Conversation. Each week, host Gemma Ware speaks to an academic expert about a topic in the news to understand how we got here.
Episodes
- The Conversation Weekly
How Big Porn made sexual violence mainstream
Twenty years ago, extreme and violent pornography was largely confined to a niche corner of the internet. Today, depictions of strangulation and sexual…
- The Conversation Weekly
America's death penalty: why executions are rising again
In Tennessee, death row inmate Christa Pike survived an attempt to execute her by lethal injection in late September. Meanwhile, plans to livestream a US…
- The Conversation Weekly
In Alberta, far-right populism drives bid to leave Canada
In the western Canadian province of Alberta, a political battle is playing out on people’s front lawns. Separatists are flying the royal blue Alberta flag…
- The Conversation Weekly
Nobel laureate Karl Deisseroth on how light is changing what we know about the brain
What is it that makes us conscious? How does the firing of neurons in one part of our brain make us feel aggressive, while others make us hungry or anxious?…
- The Conversation Weekly
Could a former IDF chief break Benjamin Netanyahu’s grip on power in Israel?
Israel is heading to the polls on October 27 and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing perhaps the toughest political battle of his career. He's been…
- The Conversation Weekly
Can we ever fully trust AI agents?
As more incidents emerge of AI agents going rogue during testing, can we fully trust them? In the latest hack, Australia revealed OpenAI agents hacked into a…
- The Conversation Weekly
Australia's 'barking mad' bet on nuclear submarines
The multi-billion dollar AUKUS defence deal between the US, UK and Australia is one of the most significant in our modern history. The three countries wanted…
- The Conversation Weekly
Ratko Mladić: the war criminal who became a martyr for Bosnian Serbs
To most of the world, former Bosnian Serb military general Ratko Mladić was a brutal war criminal whose actions during the Bosnian War killed thousands. For…
- The Conversation Weekly
Inside the booming ‘shadow fleet’ industry keeping rogue states afloat
It’s the middle of the night in April 2023 in the East China Sea. A North Korean-linked oil tanker sailing under another country’s flag suddenly goes dark. It…
- The Conversation Weekly
The music that made Dolly Parton a global icon
It was 1967, and country musician Porter Wagoner was introducing a guest on his weekly TV show. The camera cuts to a woman with big, blonde beehive, wearing a…
- The Conversation Weekly
How Ukraine is bringing the war home to Russia
In recent weeks, Ukrainian drones have targeted large warehouses across Russia, destroying millions of dollars of merchandise stored inside them. These…
- The Conversation Weekly
How Timor-Leste is fighting back against Asia’s scamming gangs
🔁 Rerun: originally published 12/12/25. We're revisiting this episode as we take a quick break but we'll be back next week with a new instalment of The…
- The Conversation Weekly
Loonies and bins: Britain's long love affair with novelty politics
It's pretty grim when your main political opponent is a man with a bin for a head. That's the situation that's faced Nigel Farage in the Clacton byelection in…
- The Conversation Weekly
The soviet origins of shadow libraries
Balázs Bödö's first interaction with a shadow library was when, as a young professor at university in Budapest, he was faced with a dilemma: what should he…
- The Conversation Weekly
A window into the murky world of peptides
Timothy Piatkowki was scrolling when a targeted ad landed in his feed. Cheap peptides! Straight from the factory! Naturally, he started a chat with the dealer…
- The Conversation Weekly
Save our brains: how dangerous is sport?
With growing evidence about concussion, repetitive head impacts and long-term brain disease, have we underestimated the risks of sport all along? How did we…
- The Conversation Weekly
How Manchester shaped Andy Burnham, the UK's incoming prime minister
Three months ago, Andy Burnham’s desk was filled with the business of running Greater Manchester. Buses. Housing. Policing. This mayoral region in the north of…
- The Conversation Weekly
How celebrities like Taylor Swift are fighting back against AI deepfakes
When Taylor Swift launched her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, in October 2025, she recorded two short clips to promote it. One for Amazon Music began…
- The Conversation Weekly
The anatomy of a super El Niño
El Niño has begun and forecasters predict a more than 60% chance that the naturally occurring phenomenon could become a very strong, or super El Niño later in…
- The Conversation Weekly
Cockroach party hits nerve with angry young Indians
A new youth protest movement in India that started as online satire is now staging an ongoing sit-in in New Delhi calling for the resignation of India’s…
- The Conversation Weekly
Teens are still on social media, but does that mean Australia's ban has failed?
When Australia banned under 16-year-olds from using social media in December 2025, it became a test case for a policy now being pursued by governments around…
- The Conversation Weekly
How the US finally fell in love with soccer
When Roberto Baggio missed a penalty in the 1994 Fifa World Cup final at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, more than 94,000 people were there to watch…
- The Conversation Weekly
Two scientists on their race to make a new Ebola vaccine
As health workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continue to battle an ongoing Ebola outbreak, scientists around the world are racing to develop a…
- The Conversation Weekly
The salt caverns used to stockpile oil
Buried underground in caverns dug out of salt on the Gulf coast of the US are millions of barrels worth of crude oil. This is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve…
- The Conversation Weekly
Argentina’s inflation ‘miracle’ is more of a mirage
The month Javier Milei took over as president of Argentina in December 2023, monthly inflation was 25.5%. The annual rate for that year was 211%. Now, it’s…
- The Conversation Weekly
The conspiracy theorists who feel vindicated by the Epstein files
As the revelations from the Epstein files continue to reverberate around the globe, those conspiracy theorists who were among the first to call for the release…
- The Conversation Weekly
China’s long game on Trump’s tariffs
As Xi Jinping prepares to host Donald Trump for a delayed summit in Beijing on May 14-15, a lot has changed since the US president's last visit to China in…
- The Conversation Weekly
Trump v Leo: the war of words over a just war
After Donald Trump took to social media to lambast Pope Leo's criticism of the Iran war, the pontiff told journalists "I'm not afraid of the Trump…
- The Conversation Weekly
Israel’s history shapes how it wages war
In around ten minutes on April 8, the Israeli military hit more than 100 targets across Lebanon. Israel called the attack Operation Eternal Darkness and said…
- The Conversation Weekly
How former insider Péter Magyar ousted Hungary’s Viktor Orbán
For 16 years, Viktor Orbán built an illiberal democracy in Hungary. Orbán and his Fidesz party managed to take control of many of Hungary's levers of power…
- The Conversation Weekly
The pseudoscientific scale looksmaxxers use to rate each other
If you have teenagers in your life, they’ll probably have heard of the PSL scale. Or at least the language associated with it. Chad. Stacy. Normie. Subhuman…
- The Conversation Weekly
The Making of One Nation: the unlikely rise of Australia’s Pauline Hanson
From a fish and chip shop in regional Queensland to the heart of Australian politics: this is the unlikely story of One Nation, Australia's most controversial…
- The Conversation Weekly
Artemis II: NASA’s long road back to the Moon
Final preparations are underway for NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission around the Moon for more than 50 years. Four astronauts, three men and…
- The Conversation Weekly
How the US cloned Iran's drones
The day after the US began bombing Iran, US Central Command confirmed it had used a new, cheap type of kamikaze drone called a Lucas for the first time in a…
- The Conversation Weekly
Mystery covid methane spike solved
Six years ago, as countries around the world went into COVID lockdowns, the air got cleaner. Factories slowed down, roads emptied and aeroplanes were grounded…
- The Conversation Weekly
Was the Gulf blindsided on Iran?
As Israel and the US continued to bomb Iran after killing the country's supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Iran lashed out at its neighbours with multiple drone…
- The Conversation Weekly
South Korea's birth rate is rising, but the population is still shrinking
South Korea’s very low birth rate and ageing population have long served as a cautionary tale for other governments worried that they’ll see similar…
- The Conversation Weekly
The 'national humiliation' behind Russia's war on Ukraine
As the 21st century dawned, a newly-elected Vladmir Putin was making friends on the world stage. He smiled for photo ops at G8 meetings, and was the first…
- The Conversation Weekly
How Minneapolis is organising against ICE
Whenever federal immigration agents pull up to a location in Minneapolis, people take their whistles out, start blowing them and start filming. In December, US…
- The Conversation Weekly
The Super Bowl that kickstarted prop betting in America
Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest night in American sports. A popular destination to watch – and bet – on the Super Bowl is Las Vegas, Nevada. And it was in Las…
- The Conversation Weekly
How Iran shut down the internet
On January 8, as thousands of Iranians took to the streets in nationwide protests, the government cut off the internet. Under cover of digital darkness, the…
- The Conversation Weekly
A lost US military base under Greenland's ice sheet
In the summer of 1959, a group of American soldiers began carving trenches in the Greenland ice sheet. Those trenches would become the snow covered tunnels of…
- The Conversation Weekly
A new treaty to protect our oceans
In a moment being celebrated by global marine conservationists, a new UN high seas treaty comes into force on January 17 providing a new way to govern the…
The Conversation WeeklyThe Making of an Autocrat: co-opt the military
In November, six Democratic lawmakers recorded a video directed at members of the US military and intelligence agencies. In it, they issued a blunt reminder…
The Conversation WeeklyThe Making of an Autocrat: suppress the people
The list of people Donald Trump has punished or threatened to punish since returning to office is long. It includes the likes of James Comey, Letitia James…
The Conversation WeeklyThe Making of an Autocrat: beat the courts
In democratic systems, the courts are a vital check on a leader’s power. They have the ability to overturn laws and, in Donald Trump’s case, the executive…
The Conversation WeeklyThe Making of an Autocrat: manufacture a crisis
Donald Trump has sounded the alarm, over and over again, that the United States is facing an “invasion” by dangerous gang members. He blames immigrants for the…
The Conversation WeeklyThe Making of an Autocrat: recruit an architect
Every autocrat needs a clan of loyalists, strategists, masterminds – these are the figures behind the scenes pulling the strings. They’re unelected and…
The Conversation WeeklyThe Making of an Autocrat: hijack a party
We used to have a pretty clear idea of what an autocrat was. History is full of examples: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, along with Vladimir Putin…
The Conversation WeeklyComing soon: The Making of an Autocrat
Is America watching its democracy unravel in real time? In The Making of an Autocrat from The Conversation, six of the world’s pre-eminant scholars reveal the…
- The Conversation Weekly
Venezuela's plan to resist a US invasion
In the latest escalation of tensions between the US and Venezuela, the US President Donald Trump ordered a "complete blockade" of sanctioned oil tankers going…
- The Conversation Weekly
How Timor-Leste is fighting back against Asia’s scamming gangs
Oecusse, a rugged, remote district of Timor-Leste in south-east Asia, is usually a pretty sleepy place. But in August, Oecusse was rocked by a large police…
- The Conversation Weekly
Why the US is fixated on South Africa’s white Afrikaners
Donald Trump’s fixation on South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority has become a central plank of US refugee policy, with their applications now given priority…
- The Conversation Weekly
The 40 scientists who decide which flu shot you'll get
Twice a year, 40 scientists gather together for five days to decide what strains of influenza to vaccinate against for the next flu season. It takes around six…
- The Conversation Weekly
How China cleaned up its air pollution
As Pakistanis and Indians struggle with hazardous air quality, in Beijing – a city once notorious for its smog – the air quality is currently rated as good…
- The Conversation Weekly
How early climate models got global warming right
Since the 1960s, scientists have been developing and honing models to understand how the earth’s climate is changing. One such pioneer of early climate…
- The Conversation Weekly
How organised crime infiltrated Brazil
At dawn on October 28, residents of Rio de Janeiro woke to the sound of gunfire. Battles continued throughout the day in the favelas of Alemão and Penha, as…
- The Conversation Weekly
Ghosts vs demons: a 16th century Halloween showdown
In the 16th century, witches and demons weren’t just for Halloween. People were terrified and preoccupied with them – even kings. In 1590, James VI of Scotland…
- The Conversation Weekly
Bitcoin buys: the risks and rewards of companies buying crypto
One American company called Strategy owns more than 3% of all bitcoin in existence. In August 2020, its executive chairman, Michael Saylor, pioneered a new…
- The Conversation Weekly
The hidden sources of forever chemicals
As one of the birthplaces of the industrial revolution, the River Mersey in northern England is no stranger to pollution flowing into its waters. Now it's got…