The Conversation

Editor's note

There are about 3,500 km between Perth and Melbourne - and coincidentally 3,500 million years in the history of life on Earth. As John Long found when he rode across the continent on his motorbike, the journey makes a good opportunity to ponder evolution.

All this and more in the latest long reads from The Conversation.

James Whitmore

Deputy Editor: Arts + Culture

A journey through life

Evolution and the art of motorcycle development, now that’s an interesting connection. Shutterstock/The Conversation

What evolution and motorcycles have in common: let’s take a ride across Australia

John Long, Flinders University

Travel from Perth to Melbourne and every kilometre you go represents 100 million years of life on Earth. So let's take a ride, on a motorcycle of course.

Friday essays

Friday essay: what do we want to be when we grow up?

Julianne Schultz, Griffith University

We need a new national narrative, for reasons of diplomacy, trade and social cohesion and to grapple with many global challenges. The humanities and social sciences will be vital in shaping it.

Friday essay: the rise of the ‘bin chicken’, a totem for modern Australia

Paul Allatson, University of Technology Sydney; Andrea Connor, Western Sydney University

The ibis has become an Australian cultural phenomenon. The birds' tenacity and fearlessness as environmental refugees mean they attract love and hate alike.

Friday essay: who owns a family’s story? Why it’s time to lift the Berndt field notes embargo

Claire Smith, Flinders University; Gary Jackson, Flinders University; Geoffrey Gray, The University of Queensland; Vincent Copley, Flinders University

In the 1940s, the last initiated Ngadjuri man, Barney Waria, gave a series of interviews to anthropologist Ronald Berndt. Almost 80 years later, Waria's grandson wants to share this material with his family.

Friday essay: the art of the colonial kangaroo hunt

Ken Gelder, University of Melbourne; Rachael Weaver, University of Melbourne

In the mid 19th century, kangaroo hunting was a sport. Colonial hunting clubs were established across Australia and everyone from Charles Darwin to Anthony Trollope tried their hand at shooting roos.

Who we are

It’s just a tiny part of the Y chromosome that kickstarts the development of testes. Kelly Searle/Unsplash

What makes you a man or a woman? Geneticist Jenny Graves explains

Jenny Graves, La Trobe University

There are many cultural and social factors involved in making a baby into a man or a woman. But biologically speaking, sex starts when you're just a tiny group of cells in your mother's uterus.

A view from Manus

Book Review: Behrouz Boochani’s unsparing look at the brutality of Manus Island

Alex Reilly, University of Adelaide

Boochani bears witness to the deterioration of the human spirit on Manus Island, where he's been detained with hundreds of other asylum seekers for the last five years.

Truth to power: my time translating Behrouz Boochani’s masterpiece

Omid Tofighian, University of Sydney

Behrouz Boochani wrote his memoir of incarceration on Manus Island one text message at a time. Translating this work of 'horrific surrealism' from Farsi to English was a profoundly philosophical experience.

Everyday blokes

Wes Mountain/The Conversation

Just a regular Joe (or Bill or ScoMo): how our leaders work hard at being ‘ordinary’

Frank Bongiorno, Australian National University

Australian prime ministers have long been interested in the names they go by, and how others should address them. But will the "ordinary Joe" approach pay off for ScoMo and Bill?

Making sense

World politics explainer: The Holocaust

Daniella Doron, Monash University

6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. What happened then, and how we can keep to the promise – “never again”?

World politics explainer: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Amy Maguire, University of Newcastle

When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, it unleashed one of the most devastating events in history, which still has implications today.

Classic reads

Guide to the classics: Donald Trump’s Brave New World and Aldous Huxley’s dystopian vision

Keith Booker, University of Arkansas; Isra Daraiseh

A lack of respect for history, a population conditioned to consume goods at breakneck pace, and pacification of individuals via an entertainment culture: parts of Huxley's novel strikingly resemble our own world.

Guide to the Classics: the poetry of Rosemary Dobson

Peter Kirkpatrick, University of Sydney

Across her long career, Dobson was celebrated as a poet who could take the reader beyond the immediate image to another insight.

 

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