The Conversation Documentaries

One Nation didn't emerge in a vacuum, then or now. The global surge in right-wing populism has propelled the party and thirty years on, it’s arguably stronger than ever. But is its popularity a protest or a fundamental realignment of Australian politics? And what happens to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, post Pauline? In the sixth and final episode of The Making of One Nation, we speak to Jill Shepp...

The media made Pauline Hanson and One Nation, but now the party holds all the power. It’s a perfect storm for democracy: a shrinking and cowering traditional media, the toxic algorithms of the unmoderated social media cess pit and the warped reality of generative AI. But why is the party that once led the charge in the new internet age seemingly so restrained in weaponising AI? In the fifth instal...

It’s never held government, or even opposition, yet One Nation’s managed to exert an outsized influence on the public policy agenda. From borders to migration, multiculturalism to Indigenous affairs, the far-right party has mastered mainstreaming and captured the masses fleeing the Coalition. In the fourth instalment of The Making of One Nation, we speak to Josh Sunman, Associate Lecturer in Publi...

We’d all like deeply considered policy and informed debate to be at the heart of politics, but unfortunately controversies and scandals tend to steal the show. For most parties, scandals are disastrous: they lose seats, ministers and elections — but not One Nation. It's weathered defections and punch-ups (including a memorable smearing of blood on a Senate door), jail and chaos, and thirty years o...

You might remember this line in Pauline Hanson's maiden speech: "I'm afraid we're in danger of being swamped by Asians." It wasn't the first racist comment she'd made in public and it certainly wasn't the last. Over the years, her enemies have changed and she now targets Muslims and elites, but it's the same tactic and it's infiltrated Australian politics. This episode was written and hosted by As...

Listen to the full series by searching and following 'The Making of One Nation' (click here for Spotify or Apple .) Nearly thirty years on, Hanson's infamous maiden speech — 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 ki...

Search for "The Making of One Nation" and follow now. From a fish and chip shop in regional Queensland to the heart of Australian politics: this is the unlikely story of the country’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 is the story of how a party built on fear and grievance thriv...

In November, six Democratic lawmakers recorded a video directed at members of the US military and intelligence agencies. In it, they issued a blunt reminder: "The laws are clear: […] You must refuse illegal orders." The lawmakers were issuing the warning against the backdrop of US airstrikes on boats off the coast of Latin America the Trump administration claims are suspected drug runners. Many De...

The list of people Donald Trump has punished or threatened to punish since returning to office is long. It includes the likes of James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, as well as members of the opposition, such as Adam Schiff, Mark Kelly and Kamala Harris. In fact, he has gone so far as to call Democrats "the enemy from within", saying they are more dangerous than US adversaries like Russia and...

In democratic systems, the courts are a vital check on a leader’s power. They have the ability to overturn laws and, in Donald Trump’s case, the executive orders he has relied on to achieve his goals. Since taking office, Trump has targeted the judiciary with a vengeance. He has attacked what he has called "radical left judges" and is accused of ignoring or evading court orders. The Supreme Court...

Donald Trump has sounded the alarm, over and over again, that the United States is facing an “invasion” by dangerous gang members. He blames immigrants for the country's economic problems and claims protesters are destroying US cities. Trump is not the first would-be autocrat to manufacture a crisis to seize extraordinary powers. So, is the United States really facing a national emergency? Or is t...

Every autocrat needs a clan of loyalists, strategists, masterminds – these are the figures behind the scenes pulling the strings. They’re unelected and unaccountable, yet they wield a huge amount of power. This is the role Stephen Miller has played for Donald Trump – he is the architect in chief for the second Trump administration. He has so much power, in fact, he’s reportedly referred to as the...

We used to have a pretty clear idea of what an autocrat was. History is full of examples: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, along with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping today. The list goes on. So, where does Donald Trump fit in? In this six-part podcast series, The Making of an Autocrat, we ask six experts on authoritarianism and US politics to explain how exactly an autocrat is made – and whe...

We used to have a pretty clear idea of what an autocrat was. History is full of examples: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, along with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping today. The list goes on. So, where does Donald Trump fit in? In this six-part podcast series, The Making of an Autocrat, we are asking six experts on authoritarianism and US politics to explain how exactly an autocrat is made –...

Every day that he was locked up in a scam compound in Southeast Asia, George thought about how to get out. "We looked for means of escaping, but it was hard," he said. Scam Factories is a podcast series taking you inside Southeast Asia's brutal fraud compounds. It accompanies a series of multimedia articles on The Conversation. In our third and final episode, Great Escapes, we find out the differe...

A few weeks after Ben Yeo travelled to Cambodia for what he thought was a job in a casino, he found himself locked up in a padded room. “It’s a combination between a prison and a madhouse,” he remembers. He was being punished for refusing to conduct online scams. Scam Factories is a podcast and multimedia series taking you inside Southeast Asia's brutal fraud compounds. The Conversation collaborat...

Scam factories is a special three-part series taking you inside Southeast Asia's brutal fraud compounds. Hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to work in these scam factories. Many were trafficked there and forced into criminality by defrauding people around the world. The Conversation collaborated for this series with three researchers: Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at...

The neglect of working-class voters in the past few decades has had profound consequences for British political life. Disillusioned with the two main parties, many have turned to Nigel Farage’s Reform and others are simply not voting at all. With the next election likely to be a tight race in many key constituencies, something must be done to win these voters back. But as we find out in this fifth...

After the 2024 election, the British parliament looks very different, with a large Labour majority for the first time in more than a decade. Several cabinet ministers come from working-class backgrounds, including the prime minister, deputy prime minister and foreign secretary. What impact will the upbringing of this new parliament have on the way Britain is governed? In the fourth part of Know Yo...

In the third part of Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics , we explore how class is defined and measured, and how the UK’s changing class identity interacts with identity politics.  Featuring Daniel Evans , lecturer in criminology, sociology and social policy at Swansea University, Gillian Prior , deputy chief executive of the National Centre for Social Research, John C...

In the second episode of Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics , host Laura Hood, senior politics editor at The Conversation, looks back at a century of class in British politics to understand why Tony Blair's decision to move Labour away from the working class was such a watershed moment.  Featuring Mark Garnett , senior lecturer in politics at Lancaster University, Mar...

In the first episode of our new podcast series Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics , host Laura Hood, senior politics editor at The Conversation, explores when the relationship between class and voting broke down and why.  Featuring John Curtice , professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde and senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Researc...

The relationship between class and political preference in Britain used to be clear cut – Labour for the working class, the Conservatives for the middle class. But not any more. In a new five-part series, Know your place: what happened to class in British politics , Laura Hood, senior politics editor at The Conversation, explores what fractured the relationship between class and voting in the UK,...

We’re changing our name, from The Anthill, to The Conversation Documentaries!  Over the last few years we’ve used The Anthill podcast to run in-depth series on a range of issues. And that’s exactly what we’ll keep on doing. But we’re changing our name to better reflect that what you’re listening to are documentaries from The Conversation . We’re a not-for-profit independent news website and o...

The quest for a theory of everything – explaining all the forces and particles in the universe – is arguably the holy grail of physics. While each of our main theories of physics works extraordinarily well, they also clash with each other. But do we really need a theory of everything? And are we anywhere near achieving one? Featuring Vlatko Vedral, a professor of physics at the University of Oxfor...