Hipster heaven

Melbourne, Australia – or at least one of our streets – has topped yet another global ranking, but what does it mean to be officially ‘cool’ and who decides?

Looking forward to the golden age

Leaving paid work opens the door to potentially the best stage of life, and a new study confirms the health and wellbeing benefits which can stem from retirement via an individual’s increased ‘locus of control.

Junk food nation

Eating more junk foods such as soft drinks, packaged snacks and sugary cereals is associated with a higher risk of over 30 different physical and mental health problems according to an umbrella review by Australian and international researchers.

Angry young men

Dire economic prospects are opening the door for an angry world of emotional manipulation that is targeting young men.

The four waves of feminism

Feminist history is generally packaged as a story of “waves”, the first lasting from the mid-19th century to 1920. The second wave spanned the 1960s to the early 1980s. The third wave began in the mid-1990s and lasted until the 2010s and some say we are experiencing a fourth wave in the online age of today.

Six more years of Sauron

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is about to rubber stamp his disastrous reign over Russia for another six years in a farcical election process in which opposition figures are not just banned and ignored but imprisoned and murdered.

How it all ends

What lessons can we learn from history about navigating the crises besetting the world today?

Sportsball sucks

Australia punches above its weight in global sports, and has the reputation of a “sports mad” nation, but in reality most people don’t care much about most sports and a fifth of the population actively hate it all.

Ten years after

Malaysia Airlines passenger flight MH370 disappeared a decade ago on March 8 2014. Though wreckage has washed up on East African shores, and the plane’s loss in the Southern Ocean was probably a suicide/mass murder perpetrated by its Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, there may be new attempts to find more wreckage on the sea bed and perhaps solve the mystery.

The ocean detectives

The longest science voyage yet by CSIRO research vessel RV Investigator has returned to Australia with one of the most comprehensive datasets ever collected in the Southern Ocean.

Teens behaving badly

A spate of high profile incidents in which teens attack passers by for no reason except social media hits has provoked a backlash, so academics are lining up to assure everyone that anti-social behaviour is society’s fault instead.

A worried nation

Over the past 15 years, more Australians have experienced growing psychological distress, and the latest edition of the annual HILDA survey shows the situation is getting worse, with economic problems piling up on ordinary families.