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This week I’ve been listening to a great podcast my daughter put me onto: Stanford Uni’s In Bed With the Right. Hosts Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub delve into right-wing ideas about gender, sexuality and culture, from Andrew Tate to trans kids to the Christian right’s view of marriage and parenting.
In our Friday essay, Rodney Tiffen considers the wondrous about-face of America’s conservative, white Christians. Once shocked when a presidential candidate (Jimmy Carter) admitted to “lust in his heart”, last year they voted in a “serial sexual predator”. Tiffen’s analysis of how US President Donald Trump has rewritten conventional wisdom on presidential sex scandals is a vivid, riveting read.
In Bed With the Right also has an episode on Meta chief Mark Zuckerbeg, whose legal action preventing a former employee from promoting her memoir appears to have boosted her sales. Sarah Wynn-Williams’ Careless People offers fascinating insights, writes John Hawkins. I was particularly struck by her claim that parents working at Facebook (now Meta) did not allow their own teenage kids to have mobile phones.
The mobile age has coincided with a rise in medical diagnoses and the prominence we give them. Diagnostic labels, suggests Nick Haslam, “saturate our language, firehosed by social media”. Haslam’s thoughtful review of Irish neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan’s The Age of Diagnosis sheds light on the controversial topic.
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Suzy Freeman-Greene
Books + Ideas Editor
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Rodney Tiffen, University of Sydney
In 1976, America’s white evangelical Christians were shocked a candidate had lust in his heart. In 2024, around 80% of them voted for a serial sexual predator.
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John Hawkins, University of Canberra
Meta has obtained a court order to stop former senior employee Sarah Wynn-Williams from discussing her memoir – despite its new commitment to ‘free expression’.
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Nick Haslam, The University of Melbourne
A staggering rise in the prevalence of many medical conditions and the cultural attention we pay them is the subject of a new book, The Age of Diagnosis.
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Joshua Black, Australian National University
The historical controversy over Jackson Pollock’s ‘masterpiece’ revealed much about Australia’s attitude towards the arts.
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Jessica Gildersleeve, University of Southern Queensland
Yumna Kassab’s vignettes and fragments present a kaleidoscopic view of contemporary society.
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Matthew Sussman, University of Sydney
Charlotte Brontë’s first-person masterpiece is a landmark in the novel of interiority, the history of feminism, and the representation of religion and race.
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Natalie Wall, University of Liverpool
The trauma plot, and its exploration of the depths of victimhood and suffering, has been the novel’s passport to notoriety.
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More great reading
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Anna Johnston, The University of Queensland
Peter Kirkpatrick’s The Wild Reciter is a provocative romp that returns poetry to the Australian people.
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Shawn Simpson, University of Pittsburgh
Without being able to get into the heads of animals, it’s hard to say for sure. But instances of pig painters, whale crooners and bird sculptors certainly make it seem plausible.
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Corey Martin, Swinburne University of Technology
Of the top 50 most popular Spotify podcasts in Australia today, more than half come from overseas – and primarily the United States.
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Sam Whiting, RMIT University; Ben Green, RMIT University
The newly launched Australian Music Venue Foundation is partly modelled on the United Kingdom’s Music Venue Trust, but the UK model has a more radical approach.
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Massey University
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