One of the many benefits of my job is that I get to meet a lot of interesting people. Our team at The Conversation Canada regularly conducts workshops for academics and researchers to help them with “knowledge mobilization” – in plain words, that means how really smart people at universities can share their expertise with the general public. The Conversation is obviously a vehicle for such mobilization of knowledge. The best part of the workshops (which of course are all “virtual” these days) is when those in attendance start talking about their areas of research. That’s when the story ideas start to flow. Traditional media outlets hold daily news meetings to discuss what they’re covering that day – and over the decades, I’ve attended thousands of such meetings. But they’re nothing like the story meetings we hold with our academic authors, whose area of expertise can result in some fascinating takes on popular culture.

For your weekend reading pleasure, I’ve assembled a few of those fascinating takes published by us and our partners across the global network of The Conversation.

Have a great weekend and we’ll be back in your Inbox on Monday.