Latest Story
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Albanese on the back foot on antisemitism
Michelle Grattan | January 24, 2025Anthony Albanese points to the array of measures his government has taken to tackle the scourge of antisemitism but he can’t escape the impression of seeming perennially on the back foot and often lacking adequate empathy and sensitivity in dealing with the issue.
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Song and dance man
Open Forum | January 24, 2025Bob Dylan once described himself as ‘just a song and dance man’ but he remains the greatest songwriter of our times and a new biopic – A Complete Unknown – does justice to his massive influence on music and youth culture.
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America first
Elizabeth Buchanan | January 24, 2025The litany of executive orders that have dropped on the White House website tell us plenty about what Australia can expect from a second Trump term’s foreign policies.
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Delving into dementia
Alan Stevenson | January 23, 2025Dementia affects nearly 60 million people around the world, and air pollution is emerging as a major contributing factor to this global scourge.
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Analysing social media ‘clusters’
Open Forum | January 23, 2025Analysing social trends, disaster responses or customer insights using large language models to organise short text clusters just got easier thanks to a new project at Sydney University.
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Quantifying ‘life satisfaction’
Open Forum | January 23, 2025Data on almost 57,000 people from 65 countries suggests that a widely used research tool – the Satisfaction With Life Scale – holds up well when applied across diverse groups of people, underscoring its potential value in research and policymaking.
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Antisemitism on the agenda
Michelle Grattan | January 22, 2025After months of rejecting calls to confront and combat the growing wave of antisemetic violence across the country, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has finally summoned a national cabinet meeting to discuss the problem.
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The consolations of philosophy
Oscar Davis | January 22, 2025A new book “Anxiety – a philosophical guide” outlines four strands of philosophical inquiry – Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory – might offer comfort to the worried and distressed.
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Revenge and retribution
Emma Shortis | January 22, 2025In his inaugural address, Trump outlined a radical agenda to reshape American life and the United States’ role in the world.
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The fact of the meta
Mark Andrejevic | January 21, 2025A new Australian survey finds that people who rely on social media for news tend to have less regard for traditional civic values than those who rely on newspapers and non-commercial broadcasters such as the ABC.
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Safeguarding Australia
Joseph Zeller | January 21, 2025The government’s failure to address critical vulnerabilities in defence, energy security, and economic resilience exposes the nation to unprecedented risks.
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Power and progress
Marina Yue Zhang | January 21, 2025In their latest book, Nobel laureates Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson challenge the assumption that technology inevitably drives social welfare, contending that strong institutions and deliberate policy directions are just as important in shaping better outcomes.
