The Conversation Weekly

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 shows the amount of forever chemicals, also known as PFAS, entering the Mersey catchment area is among some 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 into our rivers, many from sources that are lying hidden. Identifying thes...

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 2025 Nobel prize in 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 immune system from attacking our own body.

In this episode Sakaguchi te...

As Donald Trump gives oxygen to unproven theories about what might be behind a recent rise in autism cases, experts repeatedly point to 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 the Diagnostic 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 Whitehouse, a professor of autism research at the University of Western Australia, exp...

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 the independence of central banks.

This episode was written and prod...

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 where more than 150 countries will recognise an independent Palestinian state – a move that she believes is more of a symbolic gesture than a me...

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 a sovereign 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 the movement grew during Covid-19.

This episode w...

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 use this contested history to lay claim to power and territory. Now China is...

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 flow.

This episode was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware. Sound desi...

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 episode of LSE IQ, an award-winning, monthly social science podcast produced by a team from the Lo...

Scientists can get animals to do the strangest things. They’ve taught goldfish to drive cars, primates to perform calculations with Arabic numerals and giraffes to do statistical 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 between odd and even numbers – defends the importance of these seemingly ecologically irrelevant experiments.

She argues that they can help us understand the secrets of animal cognition, and even potentially unlock future technological developments for humanity too.

This episode was written and pr...

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 materials and society, at UCL in the UK. He explains the history of plastic, how it’s sh...

Donald Trump is suing 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. Despite past tensions, this rupture is something new in a relationship that has continued to serve both men’s interests.

In this episode, professor of journalism Andrew Dodd at the University of Melbourne takes us back to...

Israel has never officially confirmed or denied having nuclear weapons and has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Instead, even as evidence has 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 non-proliferation studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterrey in the US, about that 1969 dea...

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 the University of Liverpool, Robert Armstrong from the University of St Andrew's, Ulugbek Azimov from N...

 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 strong.

In this episode, we speak to political scientist Juan Masullo at Leiden University, who’s been finding out about the enduring legacy of these partisan movements.

T...

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 flattery of an American president?

I...

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 consumer wearables.

 In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Amy Gaeta...

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 design and mixing by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Re...

As Jaws marks its 50th anniversary, sharks continue to get a bad rap. Film after film portrays them as terrifying hunters, the bane of surfers and swimmers. But in Indonesia, sharks are the hunted. It’s the world’s largest shark-fishing nation, with more species of sharks found in Indonesian waters than in any other country.

So Indonesia was the ideal place for conservation scientist Hollie Booth at the University of Oxford to test out a new idea: would paying fishermen to release any sharks and rays caught accidentally in their nets help to keep more alive? List...

In October 2021, 136 countries agreed to establish new tax rules requiring large multinational companies to pay at least 15% in corporate tax. Nearly four years later, this ambitious agreement is finally being implemented around the world, but its success faces big challenges.

In the second part of The 15% solution, we examine progress towards implementing the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's global tax framework. Featuring Martin Hearson, a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany. Gemma Ware is the executive...

For decades, multinational corporations have used sophisticated strategies to shift profits away from where they do business. As a result, countries around the world lose an estimated US$500 billion annually in unpaid taxes, with developing nations hit particularly hard.

In the first episode of The 15% solution, we explore how companies have exploited loopholes in the global tax system. We speak to Annette Alstadsæter, director of the Centre for Tax Research at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and Tarcisio Diniz Magalhaes, a professor of tax law at the University of Antwerp in Belgium.

In 2021, a...

More than two thirds of guns recovered at Mexican crime scenes originate in the U.S. For decades, Mexico has struggled with staggering levels of gun violence fuelled in large part by weapons trafficked across its northern border.

Now an investigation published by The Conversation has arrived at a new estimate of the scale of this illicit gun trade between the U.S. and Mexico in 2022: 135,000 guns.

Investigative journalist Sean Campbell and Topher McDougal, a professor of economic development at the University of San Diego, spent a year combing through multiple databases and court documents...

For much of the 21st century, one theory has dominated research efforts to cure Alzheimer's disease: the amyloid hypothesis. Beta-amyloid is a protein that builds up in clumps, or plaques, in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease and is linked to their cognitive decline.

But in recent years, despite the emergence of a couple of new drugs targeting these plaques, some scientists have begun to doubt the amyloid hypothesis. Donald Weaver, a professor of chemistry at the University of Toronto in Canada, is one of them.

Weaver no longer believes there will be one...

Three months after the Trump administration made drastic cuts to its aid agency, USAID, the effects are being felt across the world, particularly in Africa. In this episode we speak to Bright Simons, an African aid expert and visiting senior fellow at ODI Global about where the decimation of US aid leaves the debate about the future of development assistance.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and...

Liverpool FC just won the English Premier League. Contributing to their 5-1 victory over Tottenham to seal the title was Mohamed Salah, the Egyptian superstar who is the league's top scorer in the 2024-5 season.

We're revisiting an episode that we first ran in December 2022 about research which used Salah to demonstrate how a celebrity footballer who is openly Muslim can help to reduce Islamophobia. Salma Mousa, now an assistant professor of political science at UCLA in the US, talks to us about her research.

This episode was produced and written by Gemma Ware, with...

The Trump administration’s cuts to funding for American universities and research have left many scientists reeling and very worried. At the National Institutes of Health, which has an annual budget of US$47 billion to support medical research both in the U.S. and around the world, nearly 800 grants have been terminated. The administration is considering cutting the overall budget of the NIH by 40%.

In this episode, we speak to three scientists, Brady West and Sunghee Lee from the University of Michigan in the US, and Glenda Gray, an expert in HIV vaccines from the University of Wi...

Few places on earth are immune to the explosion of anti-vaccination conspiracy theories and health disinformation fuelled by the COVID pandemic. But in countries like Brazil, where the disinformation flowed from the very top of government, the problem is even more acute and some people are exploiting the fear of others to make money.

In this episode we speak to Ergon Cugler at the Brazilian Institute of Information on Science and Technology about his new research into how peddlers of disinformation on social media also sell fake cures and vaccine detoxes. And we ask disinformation researcher Igor...

The Birkin bag made by French luxury retailer Hermès has become a status symbol for the global elite. Notoriously difficult to obtain, the world's rich obsess over how to get their hands on one. But when US retailer Walmart recently launched a much cheaper bag that looked very similar to the Birkin, nicknamed a "Wirkin" by others, it sparked discussions about wealth disparity and the ethics of conspicuous consumption.

In this episode we speak to two sociologists, Parul Bhandari from the University of Cambridge in the UK and Aarushi Bhandari from Davidson College in the US, a...

Some of the leading brains behind generative AI have warned about the risk of artificial superintelligence wiping out humanity, if left unchecked. But what if the influence of AI on humans is much more mundane, influencing our evolution over thousands of years through natural selection?

In this episode we talk to evolutionary biologist Rob Brooks about what AI could do to the evolution of humanity, from smaller brains to fewer friends.

This episode was written and produced by Gemma Ware. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full...

Five years since Covid, not only has the pandemic affected the way we live and work, it’s also influencing the way researchers are thinking about the past.

In this episode archaeologist Alex Bentley from the University of Tennessee explains how the pandemic sparked new research into how disease may have affected ancient civilisations, and the clues this offers about a change in the way humans designed their villages and cities 8,000 years ago.

This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood and hosted by Gemma Ware. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens and theme mu...

Ships transport around 80% of the world’s cargo. From your food, to your car to your phone, chances are it got to you by sea. The vast majority of the world’s container ships burn fossil fuels, which is why 3% of global emissions come from shipping – slightly more than the 2.5% of emissions from aviation.

The race is on to reduce these emissions, and quickly, to meet the Paris agreement targets. In this episode we find out what technologies are available to shipping companies to reduce their carbon emissions – from sails, to alternative fuels or a 'Google maps for the...

For over 40 years, the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, has waged an armed insurgency against Turkey, fighting for Kurdish rights and autonomy.

But in late February, Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK’s imprisoned founder, called for the group to lay down its arms and dissolve itself. Days later, the PKK, which is labelled as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, Europe and the US, declared a ceasefire with Turkey.

In this episode, we speak to political scientist Pinar Dinc at Lund University in Sweden about what’s led to this moment and whether it could be the begin...

When the first cases of COVID-19 began to spread around the world in early 2020, people in Iquitos, a remote city in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, weren’t unduly worried. They assumed their isolation would protect them. It didn’t. Peru, and Iquitos, were hit fast, and hard.

In a surreal situation, people were left to fend for themselves, fighting to get hold of oxygen on the black market for their loved ones and forced to put themselves in danger to survive.

In this episode we speak to researcher Japhy Wilson from Bangor University in W...

One hundred years ago, a paper was published in the journal Nature that would radically shift our understandings of the origins of humanity. It described a fossil, found in a lime mine in Taung in South Africa, which became known as the Taung child skull.

The paper’s author, an Australian-born anatomist called Raymond Dart, argued that the fossil was a new species of hominin called Australopithecus africanus. It was the first evidence that humanity originated in Africa.

In this episode, we talk to science historian Christa Kuljian about Dart’s complicated legacy and to pale...

Every day that he was locked up in a scam compound in Southeast Asia, George thought about how to get out. "We looked for means of escaping, but it was hard," he said.

Scam Factories is a podcast series taking you inside Southeast Asia's brutal fraud compounds. It accompanies a series of multimedia articles on The Conversation.

In our third and final episode, Great Escapes, we find out the different ways survivors manage to escape, what it takes for them to get home, and what is being done to clamp down on the industry.

A few weeks after Ben Yeo travelled to Cambodia for what he thought was a job in a casino, he found himself locked up in a padded room. “It’s a combination between a prison and a madhouse,” he remembers. He was being punished for refusing to conduct online scams.

Scam Factories is a podcast and multimedia series taking you inside Southeast Asia's brutal fraud compounds. The Conversation collaborated for this series with three researchers: Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne, Ling Li, a PhD candidate at Ca' Foscari University of Venice...

Scam factories is a special three-part series taking you inside Southeast Asia's brutal fraud compounds. Hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to work in these scam factories. Many were trafficked there and forced into criminality by defrauding people around the world.

The Conversation collaborated for this series with three researchers: Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne, Ling Li, a PhD candidate at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, and Mark Bo, an independent researcher.

In episode 1, our researchers travel to a village in Cambodia called Chrey Thom to see...

As the Trump administration ratchets up its threat to slap tariffs on allies and economic rivals alike, the world is bracing for another wave of costly economic disruption. This protectionist shift is all the more remarkable given how the US championed trade liberalisation for decades.

So what does it actually take for a country to use protectionism to grow its economy? Some developing countries have successfully used tariffs to do so, while others have struggled. In this episode, we talk to Jostein Hauge, a development economist at the University of Cambridge in the UK, about who wins...

Since Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter in 2022, many users have looked for alternatives, fuelling a wave of online migration from the social media platform.

How do alternative platforms such as Mastodon or Bluesky differ from traditional social media, and what does the future hold for these online spaces? In this episode, we speak to Robert Gehl, Ontario Research Chair of Digital Governance at York University, Canada, about the evolving landscape of decentralised social media.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany with assistance from Katie Flood and Gemma Ware...

As Germany heads towards elections on February 23, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) is polling in second place on 20% of the national vote. The AFD's roots are in nationalistic and racist movements. It continues to take an ultra anti-immigration stance and is calling for "demigration" – effectively the deportation of migrants. 

In this episode, Rolf Frankenberger, an expert on right-wing extremism at the University of Tübingen in Germany, talks to Laura Hood, senior politics editor at The Conversation, about where the AFD draws its support from and what type of Germany it wants to return to.

Th...