The Conversation Weekly

🔁 Rerun: originally published 12/12/25. We're revisiting this episode as we take a quick break but we'll be back next week with a new instalment of The Conversation Weekly.
Oecusse, a rugged, remote district of Timor-Leste in south-east Asia, is usually a pretty sleepy place. But in August, Oecusse was rocked by a large police raid on a suspected scam centre, later linked by a UN report to organised crime networks running scamming operations across south-east Asia.
And then in early September, a Facebook post by one of Timor-Leste’s highest political officials made some explosive allegations about a murky criminal underworld trying to get a foothold in the country.
In this episode, we speak to Michael Rose, an anthropologist and adjunct lecturer at the University of Adelaide who has lived and worked in Timor-Leste, about how Asia’s scamming gangs set their sights on Timor-Leste as their next frontier – and the movement to keep them out.
This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood and Gemma Ware with assistance from Mend Mariwany. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. 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.

It's pretty grim when your main political opponent is a man with a bin for a head.
That's the situation that's faced Nigel Farage in the Clacton byelection in the UK.
Count Binface has pledged to nationalise the singer Adele, cap the price of ice creams and build at least one affordable house.
It might sound surreal, but the count isn’t the first satirical candidate in election history.
Historian Richard Toye argues we should take them seriously. You can read his analysis on our website.
This episode was written and produced by Isabella Podwinski, Justin Bergman and Ashlynne McGhee. Sound mixing is by Michelle Macklem and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Ashlynne McGhee is our Head of Editorial Innovation and Misha Ketchell and Stephen Khan are our editors in chief. You can 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.

Balázs Bödö's first interaction with a shadow library was when, as a young professor at university in Budapest, he was faced with a dilemma: what should he teach his students?
"Do I condemn my students to a second rate education and a second rate degree in the European Union? Or do I pirate the books and give them the education that they deserve?"
This episode was written and produced by Gemma Ware and Mend Mariwany. Sound mixing is by Michelle Macklem and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Ashlynne McGhee is our Head of Editorial Innovation and Misha Ketchell and Stephen Khan are our editors in chief. You can 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.

Timothy Piatkowki was scrolling when a targeted ad landed in his feed. Cheap peptides! Straight from the factory! Naturally, he started a chat with the dealer and found himself deep in the world of a thriving grey market.
The more he found out, the less he realised we know about what’s really in these tiny drug vials being shipped around the world.
You can see screen grabs of Tim’s exchanges with the peptide seller in a fascinating visual story he’s written for us about the experience. Read it here.
This episode was written and produced by Isabella Podwinski. Sound mixing is by Michelle Macklem and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Ashlynne McGhee is our Head of Editorial Innovation and Misha Ketchell and Stephen Khan are our editors in chief. You can 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.

With growing evidence about concussion, repetitive head impacts and long-term brain disease, have we underestimated the risks of sport all along? How did we get here, what do we really know about head injuries and given the risks, is it time to rethink children’s participation in sport?
In this episode, we chat to Alan Pearce, a neuroscientist and Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne who has been researching sports-related concussions for more than two decades.
This episode was written and produced by Isabella Podwinski. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. You can 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.