The Latest Breaking News from The Conversation

We don’t want to give you the wrong idea: things are bad. Antarctic ice sheets are melting, the fossil fuel lobby was everywhere at the COP talks, and even solutions like electric cars have their problems. And that just covers the past few weeks of this newsletter.

Imagine the dentist has just said you urgently need a A$2,000 dental crown. A week later, a pipe in your bathroom bursts, causing $8,000 worth of damage. Suddenly, you’ve been hit with a $10,000 financial shock.

Within four months of ChatGPT’s launch on Nov. 30, 2022, most Americans had heard of the AI chatbot. Hype about – and fear of – the technology was at a fever pitch for much of 2023.

Unique, prehistoric rock art drawings have been discovered in the Andriamamelo Cave in western Madagascar. The author was part of a team that discovered and described these ancient treasures. The discoveries contained several surprises, including hints at some remarkable cultural connections. First, scenes depicted in some cases linked up fairly…

If you really want to know how much Australia contributes to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere, you have to study all the “sources” and “sinks”.

For 16 years now the Scanlon Foundation has been producing an index of social cohesion in Australia. The most recent figures came out last month and they were the worst ever recorded. Since then, cohesion has continued to fray in the wake of October 7 and the ongoing conflict in…

With inflation driving up the cost of living, many are dreading not just the hassle of a big grocery shop, but also the bruising cost.

Across parts of academia, concerns are mounting that the Israel-Gaza war is having a chilling effect on academic freedom. In the second of two episodes of The Conversation Weekly exploring how the war is affecting life at universities, we speak to an Israeli legal scholar, now based in the UK,…

In this episode, Vinita sits down with two experts to break down the many layers — and Black stereotypes — in the much anticipated new film, American Fiction.