The Sydney Morning Herald

THE ENVIRONMENTLiving HotClive Hamilton & George WilkenfeldHardie Grant, $27.99Clive Hamilton is a peddler of unvarnished truths; politically unpopular in the moment, they are often accepted in the fullness of time. His 2018 Silent Invasion – about Chinese influence in Australian politics – was dumped at the last moment by a …

It was once possible to walk the 1500 kilometres from Melbourne to Brisbane enclosed in native forest. Today Australian forests have been pushed to the margins, surviving as scattered islands, logged around and through. In most states this continues, enabled by expedient myths about forest’s resilience and replaceability that have …

It’s 3pm and we still haven’t booked a room for the night – meanwhile, my fiance, Mak, bops along to Take it Easy by the Eagles in the driver’s seat.

I get it – you’re a Scrabble purist horrified by Mattel’s “unforgivable” update of the game. They’ve released a “dumbed-down” version in which players work collaboratively on a series of challenges rather than compete against each other. “We want to ensure the game continues to be inclusive for all players,” …

Imagine living in a body that is, by overwhelming consensus, regarded as wrong. Imagine being told your entire life that you need to change it. Imagine trying everything humanly possible to do that, only to wind up exactly where you started, or worse off. Now, imagine there’s a drug that, …

POLITICS Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and the Battle for the Future Ian Johnson Allen Lane, $55 In 2012, I took a five-week bullet-train tour of China’s East Coast. Hoisted on pylons, I soared above the fields and villages of old China, to the surging cities of a bold new country. …

It’s crazy how quickly your child powers through noteworthy stages. In utero, they grow from a grain of rice to a grape, to a rockmelon. Then they’re born, and before you know it, they’re rolling, crawling, running, learning your real name isn’t Mum. Suddenly, they’re four years old and entering …

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is no greater love than that of a romance writer for their genre, which is especially true in the case of The Other Bridget by Rachael Johns, one of Australia’s most productive novelists. In Rachael Johns’ latest romance her main character, Bridget …

“There is certainly magic in the world, but it only works when you don’t try to control it and scale it.” says Tyson Yunkaporta in Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking. Tyson Yunkaporta worries that Indigenous knowledge will be appropriated and exploited. To prove this point he posits …

One of the first times endometriosis was mentioned in Australian media was in a 1949 article in the Catholic Weekly. Doctors in the piece prescribed pregnancy as a treatment for “one of the most crippling of female diseases”, which they claimed was suffered by women who didn’t have kids young …

Top HSC achievers of decades past took different paths: medicine, teaching, politics, filmmaking – and dancing in Las Vegas. They share their advice for the class of 2023.

Top HSC achievers of decades past took different paths: medicine, teaching, politics, filmmaking – and dancing in Las Vegas. They share their advice for the class of 2023, who will get their HSC results this week.

Dear Frozen, happy 10th anniversary. Disney, can we have something new now? The time has come to let it go. I know I’m treading on thin ice here, weighing in on a film for which I’m not the target audience, but let me explain. As we arrive at this anniversary, …

Newfound love for AFL and the cost of student public transport were the topics of the winning essays in the inaugural competition for young writers.

Photojournalist Barbara McGrady says she’s seen a change in attitude towards First Australians over 30 years through her camera lens.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up. Here’s what to know before you shop the sales.

The fizzy concoction Hard Solo is not the first product to be forced to change its name amid a wave of pressure.

Though it’s an increasingly controversial stance among those who subscribe to the gentle parenting movement, I make my children hug their grandparents. To some, enforcing my two young kids these kinds of rules is considered to be on par with sending them to Neverland Ranch for a sleepover. Our “child-focused” …

Gen Z is looking for more sustainable and economic ways of acquiring that special formal dress.

“At the heart of artificial intelligence is a fundamental deceit,” claims AI doyen Toby Walsh, in Faking It: Artificial Intelligence in a Human World, his fourth book on the subject. The con starts at the name. AI is not true intelligence. It does not arrive at conclusions (or outputs) through …

Due to a serious illness in a colleague’s family, I’ve become responsible for recruitment at a small company that is growing rapidly. I’m trying my best, but this is a whole new world for me, and I’m barely keeping my head above water. We are getting good responses to the …

Most of the time I’m simply cosplaying as a responsible adult. Like many Millennials, I’m increasingly startled by the suggestion that I’m now genuinely a grown-up, though seeing my childhood 90s fashion return to vogue renders it pretty hard to ignore. There are myriad ways in which I fall short. …

A few months ago, I left the disability support industry that I had worked in for 14 years behind. Despite finding the work hugely rewarding, supporting a young family on the industry’s wages was becoming harder, so I made the difficult decision to leave. Among the 222 recommendations the disability …

I am all for the matriarchy. In the words of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt theme song: “Females are strong as hell.” When done well, a female-led TV show or film can do justice to the complexities and diversities of women’s stories. But when it comes to gender-flipped reboots, like Australia’s …

Bali has many reputations. Kuta, once the centre of the tourist universe, is in decline having never recovered its pre-COVID glory when hordes of Bintang-singleted Aussies staggered through the Hard Rock Cafe foyer loaded with pirated DVDs. In the last few years, attention has shifted west to Canggu, into influencer …

There are all kinds of jobs involved in heterosexual sex. Some are more fun than others. But it’s women who have long been tasked with outlaying the time and money to facilitate a baby-free-bang. Yes, much like domestic chores, the mental load, child-growing and subsequent rearing, pregnancy prevention is typically …

“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth,” Doris Lessing famously said, and Gabbie Stroud’s move into fiction with Things That Matter Most is a testament to this. Stroud, who calls herself a “recovering teacher”, has written much on the ongoing teacher shortage, including her brilliant …

It’s that time of the year when two words strike fear into the hearts of parents who couldn’t papier-mache a boat to save their lives: Book Week. Last year, during a frenzied costume rush, I found myself embroiled in a debate with my three-year-old about why an Elsa (from Frozen) …

My toddlers adore Teletubbies. As soon as the show’s baby-faced sun-God rises in the sky, they go off like a frog in a sock. The Teletubbies plod on-stage with their dead eyes, weird noises, and anthropomorphic vacuum cleaner, and I silently categorise the various controversies surrounding them over the years: …

The best part of being a grandparent is getting to hand them back, right? Well, it doesn’t always work that way. Picture it: you’ve finally managed to retire, you’re settling into a new pace of life and the next few decades are shining ahead of you, gloriously golden. Then your …