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On November 24 1974, renowned American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson spotted “a piece of elbow with humanlike anatomy” poking out of a rocky hillside in northern Ethiopia. It was the first fossil of a partial skeleton belonging to “Lucy”, an ancient female hominin who took the story of human evolution back…

For generations, cod fishing was a way of life in Newfoundland and Labrador, the easternmost province in Canada. But in 1992, after cod stocks in the north Atlantic plummeted, the federal government imposed a moratorium on cod fishing. It was to last for 32 years until it was lifted in…

What happens when a gangster leaves their life on the street? How do they transition to something new? In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we find out through the life stories of two people who joined gangs as young men and came out the other side.

Amid deep political polarization and extreme campaign rhetoric, the U.S. presidential election on November 5 is likely to be decided by a small number of voters in swing states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan. But why is it so close?

Take a walk along a beach in parts of South Australia, and you may come across unusual patches of pink sand. When a team of geologists began analysing samples of this mysterious sand to find out where it comes from, their search took them back through time to a previously…

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were awarded the 2024 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery of microRNA, tiny biological molecules that tell the cells in our body what kind of cell to be by turning on and off certain genes.

The Middle East is perilously close to all-out war. In the year since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, millions of people have been displaced from their homes in Gaza, Israel, the West Bank and now Lebanon, and tens of thousands killed.

A new drug to prevent HIV infection is showing hugely promising results in clinical trials when injected every six months.

In 2018, the Australian philosopher Kate Manne coined the word “himpathy” to describe what she called “the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide and other misogynistic behavior”.

The only known specimens of Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii), a species of cycad, are all clones of the same male plant found over 100 years ago in a South African forest.

An epidemic of mpox in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is spreading quickly, particularly among young children. At least 20,000 people are known to be infected in the country, and more than 600 people have died, more than two thirds of them children. Cases have begun to appear…