An extraordinary two weeks in Rome ended Saturday with a standing ovation. Pope Francis had invited 191 bishops and clergy to the Synod on the family to speak their minds on issues such as divorce, premarital…
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In 1728, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI ordered that a 1,200-mile fortified chain of guard posts along the entire eastern boundary of his lands be made into a permanent Pestkordon. Travelers and their…
Whatever you do, don’t turn to Twitter for news about Ebola. The volume and tone of tweets and retweets about the disease will make you wish you were watching the zombie apocalypse of The Walking Dead…
Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look…
Recent months have seen a sharp jump in the value of the greenback, with more gains expected in the months ahead. After a period of prolonged weakness, the US currency once again is walking tall. Americans…
There’s growing pressure on Germany to spend more to support Europe – and for good reason. But it’s proving to be a hard sell to the country’s leaders. Germany’s budget is balanced and the government insists…
This article was published in 2014. An updated version was published in 2017 Foundation essay: This article was part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays…
In the fall of 2010, as The Walking Dead was about to debut on TV, I launched my Media Genres: Zombies course at the University of Baltimore and examined what that horror subgenre reflects about our culture…
One of nature’s most spectacular events occurs every autumn, when the leaves of hardwood trees burst into brilliant color before falling to the ground. These autumnal displays in the eastern United States…
Industrial civilization must become technologically, economically, politically, and morally sustainable to hold the earth’s temperature below 2°C (3.6°F) higher than its preindustrial average. The problem…
Earth is “fucked” and our insatiable growth economy is to blame. So argues Naomi Klein in her intentionally provocative best-seller This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Klein is the latest…
Brazil has a serious drug problem. The country lies beside the largest coca plantations in the world in Peru and Colombia. A sizeable part of the cocaine used in Europe moves through its vast territory…
The most positive aspect of the Brazilian election is not just that the two front-runners are are women, but that gender issues are not the major focus of this campaign in the media. Still, the likely…
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s government was sworn in just over one year ago, making this an opportune moment to review its performance from an international perspective. Abbott and his Canadian…
After a flurry of interest in the Scottish referendum, with the vote featuring on the front page of the New York Times and dominating nightly news programmes, Americans may now be wondering what all the…