• Can’t stop the music

    Timothy Byron     |      December 5, 2022

    Hell is other people’s music, particularly contemporary pop and rap, but the data generated by plays on streaming services offers insights into broader aspects of human preferences and memory.

  • Qatar’s controversial World Cup

    Daryl Adair     |      November 21, 2022

    Few people, even the FIFA officials bribed to promote it, think that staging the World Cup in Qatar is a good idea, but events over the next month will decide whether or not the tiny gulf state has pulled it off.

  • Songlines, dreaming tracks and Aboriginal mapping

    Alan Stevenson     |      November 9, 2022

    Songlines, or dreaming tracks, mark the routes followed by localised “creator-beings” in indigenous Australian culture. These paths are recorded in traditional song cycles, stories, dance, and art, and are often the basis of ceremonies connecting native people to their land.

  • The Red Poppy Awards

    Carolyn Grant     |      November 8, 2022

    Matt Nable’s “Transfusion”, starring Sam Worthington, has won the coveted Red Poppy Award for Best Film at Sydney’s Veterans Film Festival.

  • The King of horror fiction

    Ari Mattes     |      October 30, 2022

    Despite being run over by a van in 1999, ‘retiring’ in 2002 and rarely nailing a good ending, Stephen King remains the world’s biggest selling horror writer, with over 65 novels under his belt.

  • Who goes where?

    Marcus Harmes     |      October 29, 2022

    The BBC has sold the global streaming rights for new Doctor Who episodes to Disney +, ending sixty years of free to air access on Australia’s ABC.

  • Not just a song and dance man

    Raphael Falco     |      October 25, 2022

    Bob Dylan once called himself just a ‘song and dance man’, but he’s much more than that. Perhaps the greatest modern song-writer, he has just released a book on the ‘philosophy of modern song’, but his creative process harks back to ancient traditions of writing poetry.

  • Veterans film festival comes to Sydney

    Carolyn Grant     |      October 12, 2022

    The 7th Veterans Film Festival will be held in Sydney for the first-time next month, showcasing over 20 new and retrospective films, hosting the prestigious Red Poppy Awards and offering an eclectic program of art, master classes and script readings.

  • A fine romance

    Beth Driscoll     |      October 8, 2022

    Romance novels seldom garner much critical interest but it remains one of the most popular genres of fiction, boasting sales which dwarf those of literary fiction.

  • Sad girl chic

    Charlotte Chalken     |      October 4, 2022

    Ottessa Moshfegh is to literature what Billie Eilish is to music, and both are laughing all the way to the bank.

  • Understanding the Mandela effect

    Deepasri Prasad     |      September 24, 2022

    The Mandela effect – the curious phenomenon of people sharing similar false memories about certain cultural icons – offers insight into how falsehoods originate and persist in a wider range of social and political situations.

  • Socrates the great

    Oscar Davis     |      September 22, 2022

    Although he never wrote a word on paper, the Oracle of Delphi declared Socrates the wisest of all human beings and his life and death has shaped the history of Western thought.