The Conversation Weekly

From a fish and chip shop in regional Queensland to the heart of Australian politics: this is the unlikely story of One Nation, Australia's most controversial minor party.
For thirty years, One Nation and Pauline Hanson have been ridiculed, dismissed and shut out. Now, no one is laughing. This week we're running the first episode of The Making of One Nation, a new series from The Conversation hosted by Ashlynne McGhee. She explores how a party built on fear and grievance thrived, died and rose again to upend Australian politics.
Hanson's infamous 1996 maiden speech to the Australian Senate — warning that Australia was "being swamped by Asians" — still echoes through Australian political life.
But who was Pauline Hanson before she became a phenomenon, and what did she actually represent? Was she a cause of a new kind of politics, or a symptom of one already forming?
We hear from Anna Broinowski, documentary maker and senior lecturer at the School of Art, Communication and English at the University of Sydney, who made a documentary and wrote a book about Hanson.
Follow The Making of One Nation to make sure you don't miss more episodes in the coming weeks.
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Final preparations are underway for NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission around the Moon for more than 50 years. Four astronauts, three men and one woman, will spend 10 days aboard the Orion spacecraft, going further into space than any other humans as they orbit the Moon and return to Earth.
The mission is the next step of the Artemis programme, which plans to land astronauts back to the Moon by 2028. China has its own programme targeting a full crewed mission to the lunar surface by 2030.
In this episode, we speak to Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University about why the US is going back to the Moon. Pace worked in space policy for the George W. Bush Administration, followed by a stint at NASA before his appointment as the executive secretary of the National Space Council during the first Trump administration, where he worked on the launch of the Artemis programme.
This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood and Gemma Ware was the executive producer. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.
If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.
NASA’s Artemis II mission will take an astronaut crew around the Moon – a space policy expert describes the long road to launch
Nasa’s Artemis II mission is crucial as doubts build that America can beat China back to the Moon
NASA announces a big shake-up of the Artemis Moon program
NASA’s Artemis II crewed mission to the Moon shows how US space strategy has changed since Apollo – and contrasts with China’s closed program
NASA’s Artemis II plans to send a crew around the Moon to test equipment and lay the groundwork for a future landing

The day after the US began bombing Iran, US Central Command confirmed it had used a new, cheap type of kamikaze drone called a Lucas for the first time in a combat operation. These drones were made in America, but their roots actually lie in Iran – they are reverse engineered copies of an Iranian drone called a Shahed that the Russians have also been using to bomb Ukraine.
In this episode, PhD researcher and military expert Arun Dawson at King's College London explains how the Iranians developed the Shaheds, why the US decided to copy them, and what role these low-cost drones might play in the future of warfare.
This episode was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware was the executive producer. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.
If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.
Not just Patriot interceptors: A defense expert explains the various weapons US and allies use to defend against missiles and drones
Drones over Ukraine: What the war means for the future of remotely piloted aircraft in combat
Iran war shows how AI speeds up military ‘kill chains’
The US is using repurposed Iranian drone technology to attack Iran – a military expert explains why

Mentioned in this episode:
The Making of an Autocrat
Search "The Conversation Weekly" for our new series: The Making of an Autocrat.
Is America watching its democracy unravel in real time? In The Making of an Autocrat from The Conversation, six of the world’s pre-eminant scholars reveal the recipe for authoritarian rule. From capturing a party, to controlling the military, Donald Trump is borrowing from the playbook of strongmen thoughout history. This is the story of how democracies falter — and what might happen next.

Six years ago, as countries around the world went into COVID lockdowns, the air got cleaner. Factories slowed down, roads emptied and aeroplanes were grounded. As people stayed home, the world burned fewer fossil fuels and so carbon dioxide emissions dropped.
But something else was also happening in the atmosphere. Levels of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas that warms the planet even faster than CO2, rose faster in 2020 than at any point since records began in the 1980s. And methane levels kept on rising during 2021 and 2022.
Ever since, scientists have been trying to piece together what caused this sudden mysterious increase in methane. Now, they think they have the answer – and it was partly due to COVID lockdowns.
In this episode, we speak to Philippe Ciais, a researcher at the Laboratory for Environmental and Climate Science at Université Paris-Saclay in France, and one of the authors of a new study in the journal Science about the spike in methane levels, who explains how they solved the mystery.
This episode was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Katie Flood and Gemma Ware was the executive producer. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.
If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.
Pourquoi les émissions de méthane ont-elles bondi de 2020 à 2023 ? Une étude permet enfin de répondre
Why fixing methane leaks from the oil and gas industry can be a climate game-changer – one that pays for itself
Coronavirus lockdowns cut global carbon emissions by an estimated 7% – what happens now?
Methane emissions are at new highs. It could put us on a dangerous climate path

Mentioned in this episode:
The Making of an Autocrat
Search "The Conversation Weekly" for our new series: The Making of an Autocrat.
Is America watching its democracy unravel in real time? In The Making of an Autocrat from The Conversation, six of the world’s pre-eminant scholars reveal the recipe for authoritarian rule. From capturing a party, to controlling the military, Donald Trump is borrowing from the playbook of strongmen thoughout history. This is the story of how democracies falter — and what might happen next.

As Israel and the US continued to bomb Iran after killing the country's supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Iran lashed out at its neighbours with multiple drone strikes, including against the US embassy in Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have a long and bitter rivalry. Yet, in recent years, the Saudis had begun building new diplomatic relationship with Iran, even as they and other Gulf states continued to host American military bases, and court American investment.
Now the Gulf states find themselves in the middle of the very regional conflict many of its leaders hoped to avoid. It's one which threatens longstanding efforts to cement the Gulf as a hub for finance, travel and tourism, and as an oasis of security.
Were they blindsided? Or did some actually want the US to attack Iran? With the US and Israel seemingly calling the shots, what will the Gulf states do now?
In today's episode, we speak to Simon Mabon, a professor of international relations at Lancaster University in the UK and expert in Saudi-Iran relations, about how the Gulf's delicate balancing act between the US and Iran came toppling down.
This episode was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Katie Flood. The executive producers was Gemma Ware. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.
If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Making of an Autocrat
Search "The Conversation Weekly" for our new series: The Making of an Autocrat.
Is America watching its democracy unravel in real time? In The Making of an Autocrat from The Conversation, six of the world’s pre-eminant scholars reveal the recipe for authoritarian rule. From capturing a party, to controlling the military, Donald Trump is borrowing from the playbook of strongmen thoughout history. This is the story of how democracies falter — and what might happen next.