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The Conversation Weekly

The Conversation

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.

news news commentary

All Episodes

24:13

Ghosts vs demons: a 16th century Halloween showdown

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/10/30

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 – who was later also crowned James I of England – travelled by sea to Denmark to wed a Danish princess, Anne. On the return journey, the fleet was hit by a terrible storm and one of the ships was lost.James, a pious Protestant who would go on to sponsor the translation of the King James bible, was convinced he’d been the target of witchcraft

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22:37

Bitcoin buys: the risks and rewards of companies...

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/10/23

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 business model where publicly listed companies buy cryptocurrency assets to hold on their balance sheet.More than100 other public companieshave since followed Saylor’s lead and become bitcoin treasury companies, together holding more than $114 billion of bitcoin. There’s been a new rush into crypto treasury assets in 2025 following the general

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24:30

The hidden sources of forever chemicals

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/10/16

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 a new problem: monitoring showsthe amount offorever chemicals, also known as PFAS,entering the Mersey catchment area is amongsome of the highest in the world.In this episode we speak to water scientist Patrick Byrne at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK about why so many per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are still making it

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16:47

Nobel laureate Shimon Sakaguchi on his immune system...

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/10/09

Back in the 1980s, when Shimon Sakaguchi was a young researcher in immunology, he found it difficult to get his research funded. Now, his pioneering work which explains how our immune system knows when and what to attack, has won him a Nobel prize.Sakaguchi, along with American researchers Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell, were jointly awarded the 2025Nobel prizein physiology or medicine for the work on regulatory T-cells, known as T-regs for short, a special class of immune cells which prevent our

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27:01

The diagnosis dimension to the rise in autism

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/10/02

As Donald Trump gives oxygen to unproven theories about what might be behind a recent rise in autism cases, expertsrepeatedly pointto the changing nature of how autism is diagnosed and viewed.A key moment in the history of autism diagnosis was the publication in 1994 of a new version of theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It's a reference book of psychiatric conditions and how to diagnose them, used by psychiatrists and psychologists around the world. In this episode, Andrew

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27:30

Pressuring the Fed doesn't end well

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/09/25

Donald Trump is not letting up pressure on the US Federal Reserve. He's taken efforts to fire one of its governors, all the way up to the US Supreme Court. Trump's clash with the Fed echoes pressure that Richard Nixon put on the central bank in the 1970s to lower interest rates. In this episode, Cristina Bodea, professor of political science at Michigan State University, why that moment – and the inflation spike that followed – became a cautionary tale about what can happen if politicians threaten

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29:02

Palestinian statehood: the route to recognition

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/09/18

With France, the UK, Australia and Canada expected to recognise an independent Palestinian state at UN General Assembly in New York, what are the origins of the state they plan to recognise? In this episode, Palestinian-American historian Maha Nassar from the University of Arizona describes the events leading up to the original declaration of Palestinian independence in 1988, including the compromises made within the Palestinian liberation movement. Nassar then traces how we've got to the point

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23:44

The sovereign citizen movement's spread around the world

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/09/11

Police in Australia are continuing a huge manhunt in the mountains for Dezi Freeman, a man accused of killing two police officers and injuring a third in late August. Freeman identifies as asovereign citizen, someone who believes they aren't subject to the law.In this episode we speak to criminologist Keiran Hardy from Griffith University about the origins of the sovereign citizen movement in the US, how it spread to Australia and was taken up by the self-styled Prince Leonard in the 1970s, and why

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24:33

How China is weaponising the history of WWII

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/09/04

As China invited world leaders to a vast military parade marking the end of the second world war on September 3, President Xi Jinping said China is "never intimidated by bullies" and would "stand by the right side of history". In a coded message about China's territorial ambitions over Taiwan, Xi added that "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation was unstoppable".China and Taiwan both claim their forces bore the true burden of Chinese resistance against Japan during the second world war, and

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22:06

The secret ingredients for creative flow

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/08/28

If you’ve ever experienced a state of creative flow, perhaps when writing, playing music, or even gardening, you’ll know that it feels like everything just clicks into place. But what is actually happening inside the brain?This week, we're re-running an episode first published in June 2024 featuring neuroscientist John Kounios at Drexel University in the US. He scanned the brains of jazz musicians as they were improvising, and revealed the secret ingredients need to achieve a state of creative

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32:33

LSE IQ: is AI destroying the planet?

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/08/21

AI is transforming the world around us, offering increased productivity and promising to tackle difficult problems like global warming. But behind the scenes, its environmental costs are mounting. From massive energy use to vast quantities of water required to cool data centres, AI’s footprint is growing fast. So, in an age of water scarcity and climate crisis, can we justify this technological boom?As The Conversation Weekly team takes a production break in August, we're delighted to bring you an

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21:45

Teaching animals irrelevant skills can reveal the...

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/08/14

Scientists can get animals to do the strangest things. They’ve taughtgoldfish to drive cars, primates to performcalculations with Arabic numeralsand giraffes to dostatistical reasoning. But what’s the point?In this episode, biologist Scarlett Howard from Monash University in Australia – who has taught bees to tell the difference betweenodd and even numbers– defends the importance of these seemingly ecologically irrelevant experiments.She argues that they can help us understand the secrets of animal

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29:28

How the world got hooked on plastic

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/08/07

Countries around the world are meeting in Geneva in August to negotiate a global plastics treaty aimed at curbing plastic pollution. The last round of negotiations failed last November after oil-producing countries refused to sign up to a clause calling for the world to reduce its production of plastics.But how did the world become hooked on plastic in the first place? This week, we're re-running an episode we first aired in January 2025 featuring an interview with Mark Miodownik, professor of

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28:07

How Rupert Murdoch helped to build brand Trump

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/07/31

Donald Trump issuing Rupert Murdoch, alongside the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones and others, for libel after the Journal published an article alleging that Trump once wrote a “bawdy” birthday letter to the convicted sex offender, the late Jeffrey Epstein. Trump is seeking US$10 billion in damages. Trump and Murdoch have a transactional friendship that goes back decades. Despitepast tensions, this rupture is something new in a relationship that has continued to serve both men’s interests.In this

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28:19

Israel’s secret deal to build a nuclear arsenal

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/07/24

Israel has never officially confirmed or denied having nuclear weapons and has never signed thenuclear non-proliferation treaty. Instead, even asevidencehas emerged about its nuclear capabilities, Israel has maintained a policy of nuclear ambiguity.The origins of this opacity lie in a secret deal forged in a one-on-one meeting between Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, and the US president, Richard Nixon, at the White House in September 1969.In this episode, we speak to Avner Cohen, professor of

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26:01

What will batteries of the future be made of?

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/07/17

The majority of the world’s rechargeable batteries are now made using lithium-ion. Most rely on a combination of different rare earth metals such as cobalt or nickel for their electrodes. But around the world, teams of researchers are looking for alternative – and more sustainable – materials to build the batteries of the future.In this episode, we speak to four battery experts who are testing a variety of potential battery materials about the promises they may offer.Featuring Laurence Hardwick from

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23:42

An enduring anti-fascist legacy in Italy

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/07/10

Across Europe, far-right movements are gaining ground. By normalising nationalist rhetoric and challenging democratic institutions, these parties raise comparisons with former periods of fascism on the continent. Between 1943 and 1945, when Nazi forces occupied northern Italy, ordinary people in towns and villages across the country took up arms against fascism in one of Europe’s largest resistance movements. Now, 80 years later, in many of these same towns, anti-fascist sentiment remains unusually

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31:01

How Europe dropped the ball on its own defence

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/07/03

The language from European leaders was fawning and obsequious. At one point, the head of Nato, Mark Rutte, even called Donald Trump “daddy”. But when the US president left the Nato summit in late June, there was a sigh of relief that he had not made any more angry criticism of the alliance. And after months of American pressure, Nato members agreed to increase their spending on defence to 5% of GDP by 2035. So how did Europe become so unable to defend itself that it was forced to resort to outright

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33:55

Autism, RFK Jr and avoiding disability surveillance

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/06/26

Robert F Kennedy Jr caused controversy in April by promising to find a cause for autism by September. Claims by the new US secretary for health and human services that autism is a “preventable disease” with an environmental cause, contradict a body of research that suggests autism is caused by a combination of genetic and external factors.The US government announced that to support its new research effort into autism it would build a “data platform” involving data on claims, medical records and

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31:24

Self-censorship and what drives it

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/06/19

Faced with the choice in their daily lives, their work or their politics, why do some people decide to keep quiet, to censor themselves in anticipatory obedience, even if they’re not ordered to do so? In this episode we talk to self-censorship expert Daniel Bar-Tal at Tel Aviv University about what drives people to censor themselves, and its consequences for society.This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood with assistance from Mend Mariwany. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Sound

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