Podcast · News

The Conversation Weekly

by The Conversation · English · News

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.

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 25 min
Latest: 8 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026 · 15 min

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? These are the questions that drove the discoveries behind the 2026 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. One of the new laureates, Karl Deisseroth, a professor in the schools of medicine and engineering at Stanford University, speaks to us this week about his pioneering research into optogenetics that led him to become a Nobel laureate. This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Gemma Ware, Grace…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

1 Oct 2026 · 25 min
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 accused of treason over fresh allegations he was warned of a major Hamas plot ahead of the October 7 attacks. In this week's episode of The Conversation Weekly, Dov Waxman, a political scientist and Professor of Israeli Studies at the University of California explains why Israel's political magician might be out of tricks and how former IDF chief and political novice Gadi Eisenkot could be the one to upstage him. Read more Israeli…
24 Sep 2026 · 24 min
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 government database containing healthcare data. As calls mount from some within the AI industry for a slowdown, in this episode AI expert Nick Jennings, the vice-chancellor and president of Loughborough University in the UK, says tech leaders have choices about the way they develop these models. So what's the future for these AI agents? Can we ever fully trust them? And are our lives really at risk? This episode of The Conversation…
17 Sep 2026 · 20 min
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 to curb China’s growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific. To do it, Australia was going to get new nuclear-powered submarines. But in the five years since the agreement was first announced, it’s been anything but smooth sailing. In this week's episode of The Conversation Weekly, we speak with Hugh White, a security and defence analyst at the Australian National University, to explore how the secretive deal was struck and why it's…
10 Sep 2026 · 16 min
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 others, he was a martyr who defended the Serbian people. In late August, the 84-year-old died while serving a life sentence in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was laid to rest in Belgrade earlier this week with full military honours - a move which angered the families of the victims of his crimes. On this week's episode of The Conversation Weekly, why a war criminal being celebrated by some as a hero and how this…
3 Sep 2026 · 21 min
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 stops transmitting its location and simply vanishes from the map. Ten days later, the New Konk reappears on global tracking screens. It’s signal places it off the coast of southern China. Except it’s not. It’s actually in a bay hundreds of kilometres away. Commonly known as a “shadow fleet”, the New Konk is part of a clandestine network of vessels which are used to evade international sanctions. See pictures of the ship and track its…
31 Aug 2026 · 21 min
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 magenta mini dress with the same shade of lipstick to match. It was in that moment a star was born. Her name was Dolly Parton. In the following decades after that performance, Parton went on to become the “Queen of Country”. In this week's bonus episode of The Conversation Weekly, musicologist and Professor of Music at Hamilton College Lydia Hamessley explains the music that made Dolly Parton a global superstar. If you're after more…
27 Aug 2026 · 19 min
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 warehouses and logistics hubs belong to Wildberries, the Russian equivalent to Amazon. They're also taking aim at Ozon, Russia's second largest online retailer too. Ukraine says it’s targeting these companies because they’ve been providing supplies to soldiers on the front line. But as the war drags on well into its fourth year, is there anything that could put pressure on Putin to withdraw troops from Ukraine? Read more from Matthew Sussex…
20 Aug 2026 · 24 min
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 Conversation Weekly. 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 a UN report to organised crime networks running scamming operations across south-east Asia. And then in early September, a Facebook post by one of Timor-Leste’s highest political officials made some explosive allegations…
13 Aug 2026 · 23 min
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 UK. Count Binface has pledged to nationalise the singer Adele, cap the price of ice creams and build at least one affordable house. It might sound surreal, but the count isn’t the first satirical candidate in election history. Historian Richard Toye argues we should take them seriously. You can read his analysis on our website. This episode was written and produced by Isabella Podwinski, Justin Bergman and Ashlynne McGhee. Sound…
6 Aug 2026 · 20 min
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 teach his students? "Do I condemn my students to a second rate education and a second rate degree in the European Union? Or do I pirate the books and give them the education that they deserve?" This episode was written and produced by Gemma Ware and Mend Mariwany. Sound mixing is by Michelle Macklem and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Ashlynne McGhee is our Head of Editorial Innovation and Misha Ketchell and Stephen Khan are our editors…
30 Jul 2026 · 19 min
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 and found himself deep in the world of a thriving grey market. The more he found out, the less he realised we know about what’s really in these tiny drug vials being shipped around the world. You can see screen grabs of Tim’s exchanges with the peptide seller in a fascinating visual story he’s written for us about the experience. Read it here. This episode was written and produced by Isabella Podwinski. Sound mixing is by Michelle…
23 Jul 2026 · 16 min
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 get here, what do we really know about head injuries and given the risks, is it time to rethink children’s participation in sport? In this episode, we chat to Alan Pearce, a neuroscientist and Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne who has been researching sports-related concussions for more than two decades. This episode was written and produced by Isabella Podwinski. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme…
16 Jul 2026 · 27 min
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 England is home to 3 million people and Burnham, a former minister in the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has been its mayor for nearly a decade. But after a whirlwind ten weeks, Burnham travelled to Buckingham Palace on July 20 to meet King Charles, who appointed him as Britain’s new prime minister. At the heart of Burnham’s plans for power lies Manchesterism, a political philosophy that centres on giving cities…
9 Jul 2026 · 25 min
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 with “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift”. Another, for Spotify with “Hey, it’s Taylor”. These two phrases may sound a little mundane, but they’re now at the frontline of a legal fightback by celebrities like Swift against AI deepfakes. In April, Swift’s intellectual property company, TAS Right Management, applied to the US Patent and Trademark office to trademark them as registered sound marks, along with a photo of her, from her recent Eras tour.…
2 Jul 2026 · 22 min
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 2026. El Niño begins with warmer water in the Pacific Ocean near the equator and can have a cascade of dramatic effects on the world’s weather. But what chain of events has to happen for high temperatures in the Pacific to translate into severe floods, droughts and storms around the world? And what role does climate change play in El Niño? In this episode, Ioana Colfescu , an expert in climate and machine learning at the University of…
25 Jun 2026 · 26 min
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 education minister. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) was launched in late May by Abhijeet Dipke, a graduate of Boston University, in response to alleged comments by India's chief justice, Surya Kant, comparing unemployed young Indians to cockroaches. Dipke launched a parody political party, calling on all cockroaches to unite, which led to street protests in cities including Delhi, Pune, Jaipur and Bengaluru. The CJP latched onto mounting…
18 Jun 2026 · 27 min
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 world. This week, the UK announced a similar social media ban from 2027. So how’s it going in Australia? Have the teenagers emerged from a phone-lit glow to reengage in the real world? And what kind of difference is it having on their mental health? In this episode, we speak to Susan Sawyer , a professor of adolescent mental health at the University of Melbourne, who is running a number of ongoing studies examining the way young…
11 Jun 2026 · 26 min
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 Italian heartbreak and Brazilian ecstasy. To this day, no other World Cup has been as well attended as the 1994 tournament. Tickets were cheap and abundant, and despite the relatively low profile of the game in the US compared to sports like baseball or basketball, people went along to see what it was all about. Now, three decades later, as the 2026 World Cup returns to North America with games across Mexico, Canada and the US, soccer has…
4 Jun 2026 · 22 min
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 vaccine against the strain of the virus that’s causing it. Two approved vaccines exist for Ebola , but they target the Zaire strain of the virus, not the Bundibugyo strain causing the 2026 outbreak, which has so far killed 61 people with 359 confirmed cases in the DRC and neighbouring Uganda. In this episode, we speak to two scientists at the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, Teresa Lambe and Rebecca Makinson , who are…
28 May 2026 · 24 min
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, built up in the late 1970s. Globally, at the end of 2025, global strategic oil stockpiles were estimated at 2.5 billion barrels , with China holding the most. With the Strait of Hormuz now closed for more than two months, global oil supplies are being squeezed. In March, as part of a co-ordinated move by members of the International Energy Agency to release 400 million barrels of oil to prevent price spikes, the US began releasing 172…
21 May 2026 · 25 min
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 plummeted to 32% – still very high, but more stable. Milei, a right-wing populist famous for wielding a chainsaw on stage to make a point about fiscal conservatism, made cutting inflation a central part of his campaign. And yet economists like Can Cinar from City St George's, University of London, warn that Milei’s battle against inflation is more of a mirage, than a miracle. In this episode, Cinar explains how Milei’s government managed…
14 May 2026 · 29 min
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 of information about Jeffrey Epstein's legal cases are feeling vindicated. Before his death, Epstein already featured in many fringe online forums, including those centred on the Qanon conspiracy narrative that the world is run by an elite cabal of child sex traffickers. Now, many in these communities are saying "We told you so." In this episode, Art Jipson , a sociologist at the University of Dayton in Ohio, who researches social…
7 May 2026 · 30 min
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 November 2017. Trump's first trade war with China began in earnest the following year, ushering in a new era of trade tensions between the world's two largest economies. While Trump's second trade war raged in 2025, China reported a record trade surplus of US$1.2 trillion. Yes, direct trade with the US fell sharply, but China shifted its focus elsewhere, doubling down on an existing "great reallocation". In this episode, we speak to…
30 Apr 2026 · 26 min
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 administration". Part of the war of words between Trump and Leo is a question over whether the Iran war is a just one. Just war theory, first articulated by St Augustine in the fifth century, outlines the church’s moral guidelines for political and military leaders to consider before choosing to go to war. But it’s not static, and the church’s own position has become more restrictive in recent years. In this episode, Gerard Powers , the director…
23 Apr 2026 · 26 min
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 it struck Hezbollah command and control centres. The Lebanese government said at least 300 people were killed and 1,000 injured. Israel has a powerful and lethal army, and it’s been defending itself against attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. But why has it chosen such brutal military aggression? One historian, Yaron Peleg , believes the answer to this question lies in the early days of Zionism in the 19th century, when many Jews…
16 Apr 2026 · 29 min
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, from the judiciary to state-owned media, and weakened the institutions that could keep them accountable. Now, his regime has been ended by a former Fidesz insider, Péter Magyar, who managed to unite Hungarians to secure a two-third majority in the country's parliament. So how did Peter Magyar manage to beat his former boss? And what does Magyar's victory mean for the European Union, where Orbán was a belligerent, pro-Russian voice at the…
9 Apr 2026 · 30 min
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 PSL scale is a pseudoscientific attractiveness rating system used by looksmaxxers, men in a part of the manosphere who can go to extreme methods to change their appearance. The roots of this rating system lie in misogynistic online forums used by incels or involuntarily celibates, but now it’s all over social media. So how did the language of incels, and this one way of quantifying attractiveness and beauty, go so mainstream? In…
2 Apr 2026 · 25 min
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 minor party. For thirty years, One Nation and Pauline Hanson have been ridiculed, dismissed and shut out. Now, no one is laughing. This week we're running the first episode of The Making of One Nation, a new series from The Conversation hosted by Ashlynne McGhee. She explores how a party built on fear and grievance thrived, died and rose again to upend Australian politics. Hanson's infamous 1996 maiden speech to the Australian Senate —…
26 Mar 2026 · 26 min
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 one woman, will spend 10 days aboard the Orion spacecraft, going further into space than any other humans as they orbit the Moon and return to Earth. The mission is the next step of the Artemis programme, which plans to land astronauts back to the Moon by 2028. China has its own programme targeting a full crewed mission to the lunar surface by 2030. In this episode, we speak to Scott Pace , director of the Space Policy Institute at…

About 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.

The Conversation Weekly is a English news podcast from The Conversation. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: The Conversation
Language: English
Category: News
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 25 min
Latest episode: 8 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1550643487
Rights: Licenced as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

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