The Conversation Weekly

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• Nobel laureate Karl Deisseroth on how light is changing what we know about the brain

  October 8, 2026 · 15 min

  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…

• Could a former IDF chief break Benjamin Netanyahu’s grip on power in Israel?

  October 1, 2026 · 25 min

  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…

• Can we ever fully trust AI agents?

  September 24, 2026 · 24 min

  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…

• Australia's 'barking mad' bet on nuclear submarines

  September 17, 2026 · 20 min

  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…

• Ratko Mladić: the war criminal who became a martyr for Bosnian Serbs

  September 10, 2026 · 16 min

  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…

• Inside the booming ‘shadow fleet’ industry keeping rogue states afloat

  September 3, 2026 · 21 min

  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…

• The music that made Dolly Parton a global icon

  August 31, 2026 · 21 min

  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…

• How Ukraine is bringing the war home to Russia

  August 27, 2026 · 19 min

  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…