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PODCAST

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

17:11

The Making of an Autocrat: beat the courts

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/12/28

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 orders he has relied on to achieve his goals.Since taking office, Trump has targeted the judiciary with a vengeance. He has attacked what he has called “radical left judges” and is accused of ignoring or evading court orders.The Supreme Court has already handed the Trump administration some key wins in his second term. But several cases now before

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14:26

The Making of an Autocrat: manufacture a crisis

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/12/28

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 country’s economic problems and claims protesters are destroying US cities.Trump is not the first would-be autocrat to manufacture a crisis to seize extraordinary powers.As Natasha Lindstaedt, an expert in authoritarian regimes at the University of Essex, says in episode 3 of The Making of an Autocrat, a strongman “loves a crisis”."A crisis

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16:11

The Making of an Autocrat: recruit an architect

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/12/28

Every autocrat needs a clan of loyalists, strategists, masterminds – these are the figures behind the scenes pulling the strings.They’re unelected and unaccountable, yet they wield a huge amount of power.This is the role Stephen Miller has played for Donald Trump – he is the architect in chief for the second Trump administration. He has so much power, in fact, he’s reportedly referred to as the "prime minister."So who is Stephen Miller? And why are architects so important in helping a would-be

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17:12

The Making of an Autocrat: hijack a party

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/12/28

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 and Xi Jinping today. The list goes on.So, where does Donald Trump fit in?In this six-part podcast series, The Making of an Autocrat, we are asking six experts on authoritarianism and US politics to explain how exactly an autocrat is made – and whether Trump is on his way to becoming one.This episode was written by Justin Bergman and produced

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01:18

Coming soon: The Making of an Autocrat

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/12/22

Is America watching its democracy unravel in real time? InThe Making of an Autocratfrom The Conversation, six of the world’s pre-eminant scholars reveal the recipe for authoritarian rule. From capturing a party, to controlling the military, Donald Trump is borrowing from the playbook of strongmen thoughout history. This is the story of how democracies falter — and what might happen next.

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25:33

Venezuela's plan to resist a US invasion

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/12/18

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 into and out of Venezuela. His Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, called the move "warmongering threats", and accused the US of trying to steal its resources. In this episode we speak to Pablo Uchoa, a PhD candidate researching Venezuela's military, on how Venezuela has long been preparing for this moment, ever since a failed coup attempt

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25:57

How Timor-Leste is fighting back against Asia’s...

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/12/11

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 raid on a suspected scam centre, later linked by aUN reportto organised crime networks runningscamming operationsacross south-east Asia. And then in early September,a Facebook postby one of Timor-Leste’s highest political officials made some explosive allegations about a murky criminal underworld trying to get a foothold in the country.In this

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30:09

Why the US is fixated on South Africa’s white Afrikaners

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/12/04

Donald Trump’s fixation on South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority has become a central plank of US refugee policy, with their applicationsnow given priorityunder a new refugee system.This preoccupation by some Americans with white Afrikaners has a long history dating back to the publication of alarge sociological studyfocusing on poor white Afrikaners in the 1930s.In this episode, we speak to Carolyn Holmes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to

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26:05

The 40 scientists who decide which flu shot you'll get

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/11/27

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 months to prepare the vaccine – which usually includes protection against three different strains of flu. Europe and the US are heading into a flu season that some are warning could be particularly severe this winter. While even as summer approaches in Australia, the country is still registering high numbers of cases after a record-breaking

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22:19

How China cleaned up its air pollution

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/11/20

As Pakistanis and Indians struggle with hazardousair quality, in Beijing – a city once notorious for its smog – the air quality is currently rated as good.Ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government was so concerned about pollution that it introducedtemporary restrictionson cars, shut down factories and work on some construction sites. It would take a few more years before the Chinese government implemented a clean air action plan in 2013. Since then, China has achieved a dramatic

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24:38

How early climate models got global warming right

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/11/13

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 modelling is Syukuro Manabe, who won the Nobel prize in physics in 2021 for his work laying the foundation for our current understanding of how carbon dioxide affectsglobal temperatures. A seminal paper he co-published in 1967 was voted themost influential climate science paper of all time.In this episode, we speak to Nadir Jeevanjee, a researcher

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28:07

How organised crime infiltrated Brazil

The Conversation Weekly ·

2025/11/06

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 police mounted a huge operation targeting the Commando Vermelho, or the Red Command, one of Brazil’s largest organised criminal gangs.In the days that followed, as graphic images showed lines of bodies on the streets, it emerged that at least 115 civilians and four police officers had been killed, making it the most violent police operation in

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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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